I can't believe it's Polish butter
THIS WEEK: Mlekovita butter, Oreo x Coke Zero, Mrs Hinch's Cosy Season Lenor Scent Booster
Before we get into a long-winded story about someone calling me a butter racist, I just wanted to remind you that the Lucyverse Autumn Sale is now on, with annual subscriptions as low as they’ll ever be at just £30!
For that, you’ll get a year’s worth of freshly-made laughs, full access to the archive and the option to buy exclusive merch which is coming SOON.
Ready to make the leap into being a Lucyverse VIP? Go on, it’s fun! And lord knows we all need a bit of that…
THING: Mlekovita butter
You may remember that last week I was rather scathing about Lidl’s Emily in Paris madeleines, mentioning synthetic butter made from horse’s hooves, pumped through a large pipe in a facility in Poland. WELL. The very next day, when I opened that vile app I refuse to call anything but Twitter, I was greeted with this:
I was a bit flabbergasted, to be honest. To be called racist and arrogant is bad enough, but that below the belt mention of 1975 really got to me. (I may be old, but at least I remember the food riots of Gdansk!)
Anyway, even though I wasn’t actually talking about Polish butter in the first place, it made me think that maybe it’s time to update my Communist-era dairy-based narratives and put this (crazy) person’s theory to the test. So I went to Asda and bought this:
Looks good, doesn’t it? You can’t mess with that font, and with a fat content of 82% we’re off to a flying start! The packaging is great, but it doesn’t really come through in this screenshot. It’s actually encased in shiny electric blue foil which reminds me of Agnetha’s trouser suit in the Waterloo video, and it’s a flatter shape than boring British butter, which immediately gives it a bit of European razzle dazzle.
However, is it really better than any organic butter that can be found in Paris? Well, I don’t have my 10 Best Butters In The World list to hand, and my Parisian butter experiences are limited to the tiny packets of President you get at cheap hotel breakfast buffets, so I couldn’t possibly say.
What I will say though, is that it’s creamy, subtle and just as good as Lurpak, if not better. And it’s also £2.20, which is amazing value, because in Britain Lurpak Spreadable costs more than a month’s rent, and is security-protected in supermarkets with a chain attached to a nuclear bomb. Anyway, I loved it, so, as they say in Poland – myślę, że żart jest ze mnie!*
VERDICT: * I guess the joke’s on me!
THING: Limited edition Oreo Coke Zero
Cursed collabs are par for the course these days and nothing is off limits. No doubt next week there’ll be Biscoff x John West tuna or Heinz Tomato Ketchup drain cleaner or Love Hearts scented chemotherapy. But until then, the latest doomed celebrity pairing is Oreos and Coke Zero, a combination that never went together and never will. Why would anyone want a fizzy cookie?
At first, I thought it was for Halloween because of the goth can design and the quite frankly horrifying nature of the idea. But then I realised that those rings were Oreos, not the stripy tights of Jenna Ortega. So we must assume that this is just a regular weird belch from the distended belly of capitalism, and hope that it doesn’t hang around in the air for years like a dead bat with a novel coronavirus.
What does it taste like, though? Well, actually, it’s not too bad – a bit like fizzy non-alcoholic Kahlùa. So if you’re sitting on a bench in a deserted high street, I highly recommend that you top it up with Smurfnoffs vodka from Lidl and enjoy it before they do their next collab: Coke Zero x Nitromors.
VERDICT: Oreofying
THING: Mrs Hinch’s Cosy Season Lenor In-Wash Scent Booster
And finally, here’s another collab, but this one seems to be part of the fabric conditioner of society now - the inevitable appearance of influencer Mrs Hinch on every cleaning product ever made. Mrs Hinch has now become so synonymous with cleaning, like Mr Sheen or Mr Muscle, that she’s ceased to be a real person at all. In fact, let’s hope she never has to prove her identity to the authorities, because you may as well have a passport that says ‘Dr Oetker.’
These in-wash scent booster granules are part of a new range of performatively autumnal laundry liquids that will make your clothes smell of White Musk and Golden Maple, an aroma that sounds even more AI generated than Oreos and Coke Zero. But who am I to reject Mrs Hinch’s Cosy Season©? Perhaps not as fun as Brat Summer, but surely nicer than Means Tested Winter?
Unfortunately, like frogs with three eyes and 25 degree heat in September, it was all wrong. I’d never used this stuff before and it felt like I was throwing a fistful of lentils into the washing machine. And as I had neglected to buy the washing liquid and the fabric conditioner, it meant that there was no scent to boost, so instead of an overwhelming aroma of artificial pumpkin spice, there was absolutely nothing at all. Then I realised: this product doesn’t really exist unless you fully buy into the concept of Mrs Hinch and Cosy Season - EVEN THOUGH THEY DON’T REALLY EXIST, EITHER.
Still, it was only £2 from Home Bargains, so no harm done! (Apart from to all aquatic life, obviously).
VERDICT: Lenor, directed by David Hinch
I got carried away in Lidl last week and bought some Emily in Paris goats’ cheese and honey stuffed pasta. The moment I rang it through at the checkout I regretted it. But actually, it was delicious. I will continue to never watch Emily in Paris though, as it looks dreadful. And I remain baffled that Italian food was part of what seemed to be a Parisian themed week. Weird.
Ah, twitter. What a blast from the past. And typical they harangued you over there, rather than tell you to your face here. Just off to Asda now, lured by the Agnetha-blue wrapper.