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starb0n3 · 4 days

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TEEN IN A TIM BURTON MOVIE DIET 🦴🌫️

(inspired by @honeysugarfree)

.˚⊹.🎃₊˚𖦹⋆

You wake up with one thing on your mind: going out for a walk in the woods. But you can’t. You’re a teenager who has school, and your parents would kill you if you skipped school.

It’s too early to eat anything. Pass the time playing with your cat or simply reading by the window as the sun rises.

School is so boring when all you’re craving is a nice cup of warm soup or hot chocolate prepared by your mum. Whatever, you’ll suffer in silence and snack on whatever fruits you threw into your bag this morning.✧˖°.☾

For lunch, you’ll have leftovers from yesterday. roasted/baked/boiled veggies accompanied by rice or wheat. you don’t eat it all; it’s cold, and not that nice at all… Maybe your parents packed you a sandwich instead? make sure you don’t eat the crusts, though. they’re the worst part.

If you’re lucky, you might’ve even added one of your bakes as dessert (low cal pastry/cookie), or a small yoghurt. if you didn’t, don’t fret. your parent didn’t forget to include a fruit or veggie for health.

(¬ ´ཀ` )¬

Back home at last — not before you went on a small walk, though. your parents were worried about where you’d gone off too again, and you’re greeted by a warm broth/soup, or some more baked veggies.

you don’t finish your plate unless your walk was very tiring. you’re too eager to finish that book you started!

Once in a while, you might be allowed a piece of cake or some hot chocolate. not everyday, though. that would be bad for your teeth!

End the day with a cup of tea, reading under a warm blanket with a piece of your favourite chocolate or sweet. 🍂☕️🐈‍⬛

MEAL IDEAS I LOVE:

Chickpeas in tomato sauce with rice

Whole bread sandwich without the crust: tomato, cheese and cucumber (ham if you want, i’m vegetarian c:)

Ratatouille or Shakshuka with wheat/bulgur

Apple sauce cookies (i can share a good recipe if you want)

Pasta/zucchini gratin

Lasagna (spinach or veggies with tomato sauce - or mince, once again, i’m vegetarian)

potatoes (sweet is even better) with broccoli

Mushrooms with bread

Tomato salad (vinegar, herbs, olive oil)

Lentil/corn cakes with cream cheese

Pumpkin pie

Vegetable broth (or chicken) with vegetable dices

Potato soup

Tomato orzo soup

Mashed potatoes with lentils

Lentil soup

Beetroot (it’s so good even on it own)

REMEMBER!

You always prefer ‘halloween’ themed pastries — involving apples, pumpkin, carrots…

Eating isn’t a bother, you’re just a slow eater. don’t hesitate to share your love for sweets, while keeping consummation low.

You get tired of veggies so much! never finish a meal you don’t like.

Your favourite candy is liquorice, and most halloween themed ones like acorn or hard candy

Keep the chocolate low. it’s too heavy and nauseating!

If you must, have a piece of nutella/peanut butter and jelly toast, oats, or milk with fruits in the morning. i promise it’s much better than those ‘healthy’ alternatives (makes you satisfies and low calorie if you only have one)

No crisps — they’re too oily and dirty your books. Pop corn is so much better (and lower in cols) — caramel or pumpkin spice is a staple!

Cinnamon on apples… the best treat!

If you ever eat out with family, eat only a third of the meal and get the rest to pack. it’s so good you want to make it last!!

Bake and cook as much as you can! This will make your parents understand what you like, and not push to make you eat those gross overly fat foods.

Try to stay under 1,000 kcals, but don’t count calories obsessively. keep portions small and always leave a third of your plate.

Have fun!

(i’ll make a moodboard with meals etc, i hope you enjoy!)

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anyroads · 2 years

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OK you know what, if we're gonna talk about Bake Off then fuck it, let's do this.

It used to be this wholesome, lovely show! We used to watch it for the bakers! And the learning! And the light banter and occasional bit of coy innuendo! What happened?

Channel 4 happened. When they bought the show they made a number of changes, most of them Not Good™️. Not just in the sense of them resulting in a lot of 😬 and 🫠 moments, but in the sense of how they changed the show's purpose, atmosphere, and brand.

Look, I know most people are just like, "whatever, it's just a baking show," and yeah, sure. But it's one of the UK's most successful TV exports, and where it once shifted the tone of reality competition to being wholesome and supportive of contestants, it's since moved towards creating tension at the contestants' cost. So aside from the fact that most people watching it signed up to watch a nice show, it has also shifted the goalposts of what that even means. And that, lovelies and gentlefolk, is some bullshit.

I decided to break my rant analysis into four main parts: theme weeks, the hosts, the judges, and the bakers. Let's get to it!

Theme Weeks:

If you watch Bake Off, you know the show's always had a specific theme for each week. The staples that come up in most seasons are:

cake

biscuit

bread

pudding/dessert

pastry

patisserie

Less common but consistent are things like caramel and chocolate week.

Then there are the fun episodes! When GBBO was on the BBC, this started out with things tea week, tarts, pies, tray bakes, basically little tangents still focused on emphasizing specific baking skills. In Series 6 (still on the BBC) they had their first nation-focused theme week with French week -- fairly innocuous given that a lot of patisserie is French, France and England share much more culture than either cares to admit [Norman Flag dot gif], and it was a nice change from watching Paul make the bakers do recipes that involved boiling things while talking about how wonderful boiled doughs are (are they, Paul? Are they?).

The show kept mixing it up with innocuous themes like advanced dough and alternative ingredients weeks, European cakes, Victorian week, batter week, and botanical week. And while it was frustrating to watch Paul Hollywood mispronounce things like the Hungarian Dobos Torta and lecture bakers on babka when he clearly knew nothing about it (or about Jewish baking in general, go off Past Me), the show's general attitude was that the judges had their own opinions, which were separate from the immutable facts around the chemistry of baking (more on this later) and shouldn't affect how bakers are judged.

After the show moved to Channel 4, the number of themed weeks increased and more of them focused on specific countries. In 6 seasons on the BBC, there were only two country-focused theme weeks, and in 5 seasons on Channel 4 there have been five. And while they've also had themes like vegan baking, roaring 20s, the 1980s, spice week, etc. the show has really started to go hard on exoticizing other cultures in outright disrespectful and racist ways. There's been Italian and Danish week, German, Japanese (it wasn't, it was East Asian week), and now Mexican week (which doesn't touch on interspersed Jewish bakes that didn't get a theme week, like versions of bagels and babka set as technical challenges that were borderline hate crimes and mansplained by a guy who has no idea how to make either and once wrote in a cookbook that challah was traditionally eaten during Passover). Each time the hosts played up the theme with racist bits and jokes that can be used as evidence in court if your case is "why should shows with scripted content have a professional writing staff."

Which touches on other issues the show has now...

The Hosts:

When GBBO was on the BBC, the show was hosted by ✨Mel Giedroyc✨ and ✨Sue Perkins✨. They encouraged the bakers! They'd hold stuff for them sometimes! They were interested in them! If a baker had a breakdown, they would start singing copyrighted material to render the footage unusable! When the show moved to Channel 4, they left, though I'm not unconvinced that Channel 4 offered them impossible to accept contracts to force them out so they could rebrand the show. They replaced them with Sandy Toksvig and Noel Fielding. Sandy was a lovely host in the vein of Mel and Sue, and she and Noel had a relatively sweet rapport, but she left a few seasons ago and was replaced by Matt Lucas.

Noel Fielding is mostly known for his quirky brand of comedy, a sort of British Zooey Deschanel who's goth from the neck up, an upperclass British gay divorcee from the neck down, and basically an early 60s Beatle re: trousers. Matt Lucas has almost definitely never watched a single episode of GBBO and his most redeeming quality is his thinly veiled contempt for Paul Hollywood.

The two treat the baking tent as their personal playground. Far from the supportive attitude of Mel and Sue, they tend to get in the bakers' way during the most stressful moments, especially when they try to do hilarious "comedy" bits (I can't not put that in quotes) like Noel's talking wooden spoon thing, or Matt talking over Noel to do time calls. During theme weeks like Japanese and Mexican week, they do culture-specific bits that are both racist ("just Juan joke" and "is Mexico a real place?") and unsurprising, given that both Matt and Noel did blackface on their respective sketch shows and absolutely could and should have known better because it was already the current fucking century.

All this to say, there's now a separation between the bakers and the hosts, as if they're on different shows. The hosts are doing their own thing and the bakers are doing GBBO. The show has gotten meaner to the bakers, and the hosts aren't there to support them anymore, they're just there to be comic relief. Because when you refocus your show on stressing the bakers the fuck out, you need a forced laugh I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The Judges:

First of all, a sincere congratulations to Paul Hollywood who managed to squeeze I jUsT cAmE bAcK fRoM mExIcO aNd YeT sTiLL pRoNoUnCe PiCo De GaLLo As 'PiKa De KaLLa' and I aM aN eXpErT oN s'MoReS wHiCh aRe MaDe WiTh DiGeStiVe BiScUiTs AcCoRdiNg tO mE, aN eXpErT oN s'MoReS, just two in a giant pile of astoundingly wrong hot takes, into a short enough time span that they all aired within Liz Truss's term as Prime Minister. A true man of accomplishments.

In the interest of fairness, I need to preface this with a disclaimer that, due to the fact that I've been watching Bake Off for most of its run, I'm biased. Specifically, I can't stand Paul Hollywood's smarmy, classist, egomaniac ass because he's proven time and again he's more interested in looking smart than actually knowing what he's talking about. Since the show moved to Channel 4, they've changed the occasional handshake Paul would give bakers to the HoLlYwOoD hAnDsHaKe™️. It's gone from being an emphasis of someone's skill to a goal, a reward, and one that emphasizes the judges' place above the bakers.

The judges used to function as teachers, imparting their skills and insights to the bakers. When the show was on the BBC, the voiceover leading to a judging would focus on the bakers' work being finished, saying how it will now be evaluated based on their skill and how well they met the brief. The voiceovers now, on Channel 4, focus on the judging (literally saying something along the lines of, "the bakers will now be judged by Prue and Paul"). There is a clear distinction Channel 4's producers have made, to mark that the show is now about whether or not the judges approve, not whether the brief was understood and executed well. On the BBC, it was irrelevant whether the judges liked a particular flavor, as long as the bake was well-made. Now, the bakers are expected to know the judges tastes and cater to them, which is frankly bullshit. A judge doesn't have to like a flavor to know whether or not it was executed well, ie. is it carrying a bake and was it meant to etc.

The judges have been turned into a brand. Cynically, Channel 4 knows that by building them up and focusing the show more on them, they can exploit their image more for profit. In the process, they've become much more biased and their own biases have come out as well. Most recently in the flaming dumpster fire that was Mexican Week, Paul Hollywood tried to intimidate a baker by telling them he had just gotten back from Mexico (which must have been a fruitful learning trip if he couldn't even learn how to pronounce pico de gallo correctly). Where do I even start with this? Here's an amateur baker from England (the show specifically casts middle and lower middle class bakers for the most part??) who likely can't afford trips to Mexico, who lives in a country with incredibly limited access to Mexican cuisine, who is expected not only to understand the cooking and baking traditions of a completely different culture but to do so well enough to play with it and do something creative with it. On top of which, one of the judges is now using his privilege of traveling halfway around the world as some kind of leverage, as if this were a bar that any amateur British baker could clear.

Prue, meanwhile, has openly asserted her biases against cultural flavors and textures, prioritizing her own personal preferences over them, as if they were in any way relevant to the skills and knowledge necessary to execute the tasks she sets to the bakers. She has also been consistently elitist, criticizing bakers for choices they made that were clearly informed by their experiences within income brackets that are too low and foreign for Prue to comprehend. She once had a go at a baker on a Christmas special because his Christmas dinner themed bake didn't have a turkey, even though it was clear from the stories he shared of his own Christmases that his family likely couldn't afford one. "It's not really Christmas dinner without a turkey," Prue said into the camera angrily while sitting on a chair made of live orphans and telling the ghost of Christmas Future to come back when he had another museum gift shop necklace for her to round out her collection.

The show is no longer about which baker has the best skills. It's become about which mortal can appease the gods of Mount Olympus, ie. the judges.

The Bakers:

Remember when the show was about them? Channel 4 doesn't! Because this is a reality competition show, the bakers are chosen both based on their skills, as well as cast-ability. They're cast as characters, distinct from each other, from different areas, age groups, ethnicities. All of them are amateurs. All of them are middle or lower middle class. They've ranged from college students to supermarket cashiers to prison wardens to scientists.

Something I noticed when the show moved to Channel 4 is that the baker who goes home in the first week is always wildly behind the rest in skills. I have no proof of this other than my eyeballs and deductive reasoning skills, but I think that Channel 4 deliberately casts a ringer each season who they think will be an easy send-off in the first week, just to get the audience's feet wet.

Anyway, like I said, this show used to be about the bakers - about them building skills and learning, and having walked into the tent with a self-taught foundation and understanding of the processes and chemical reactions involved in baking. When the show was on the BBC, the end of each round had some (often brief) moments of tension - will they finish in time? Will they get their bakes on the plate before time is up? Did they forget to add sugar to their batter and only remember at the last minute? In the end, they usually managed to finish and we'd all breathe a sigh of relief and think, yeah! You go, Bakers Who I'm Rooting For!

Now, on Channel 4, the end of round drama has been stretched to be so much longer that they've composed extra music for it. The bakers often seem out of their depth, whether because the instructions for the technical challenge are too vague (bake a lemon meringue pie??? As if anyone in the UK under the age of 60 has had one in the last decade???), or because they were expected to bake something that required a more than a basic foundation they weren't told of. Often it seems like they just aren't given enough time, a tactic used by reality competition shows to manipulate contestants into giving the cameras more dramatic content. On top of all this, the hosts get in their way, instead of helping them plate their bakes. As has been pointed out before, when everyone fails the challenge, the real failure lies with whoever set it.

In conclusion:

The show no longer exists to teach the bakers - and the audience - skills or knowledge. It now manipulates contestants for dramatic effect and prioritizes showing conflict over wholesome content. Channel 4 sees the bakers as social media content they can churn out season after season, and don't care about them because in a few months there'll be a new batch to exploit. Meanwhile, the judges are also out of their depth, co-opting recipes from other cultures and butchering them horrendously, while the camera gives them nothing but status as they hold bakers to the expectation that they learn how to make things very much the wrong way. If you saw any of the tweets about Mexican or Japanese week, or read my post on how Paul Hollywood isn't allowed to go near babka ever again, you'll understand.

So what would fix all this? Scrap the current judges and the hosts altogether. Bring back Mel and Sue, and replace the judges with expert bakers who have a love of their craft and want to share it with others. The draw of GBBO used to be its warmth and comfort - if Channel 4 isn't going to start its own version of Master Chef For Bakers, then it needs to stop trying to find a balance of how it can insert that vibe into GBBO. It can't. That's not a thing. Stop trying.

#GBBO #paul hollywood #prue leith #the great british bake off

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writingrock · 13 days

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red velvet sweetness

pairing: katsuki bakugou x reader (gender neutral) summary: you always celebrate bakugou's birthday with a red velvet cake. It's his favourite. But he thinks he's changing his mind on what his favourite dessert is.

notes: prohero! katsuki bakugou, it's bakugou's birthday, mildly suggestive, almost smut, nsfw established relationship (married), red velvet haters go away

word count: 743

You always made sure Bakugou’s birthday was celebrated, even when he insisted he didn’t care for it. Every year, without fail, you’d find yourself planning his birthday weeks in advance, scrawling notes in the margins of your notebooks and making quiet preparations that he’d never know about. A small way to show him that he mattered, even when he pretended he didn’t.

It was never anything extravagant. Just a simple gathering of his closest friends, because you knew he’d never go for anything more than that. But the most important part— the part you always made sure to get just right— was the cake. A red velvet cake, his favourite. You’d learned that early on, through offhand comments and shared meals, the way his eyes would linger on the dessert menu just a second longer when red velvet was mentioned. It wasn’t overly sweet, just rich enough to suit his tastes, and it had quickly become a staple of his birthdays.

His eyes twitched at the red velvet cake on the table, candles flickering, waiting for him to blow them out. The crowd of his friends surround him as they sing for the birthday boy. Don’t get him wrong, he appreciated the effort you put into this little celebration. But his attention was elsewhere, something far more distracting than the cake. You knew red velvet was his favourite, but was it the same reason behind your outfit? The short red dress with white trimmings, pearly earrings, and that delicate silver necklace dangling at your neck, adorned with his initials. It was almost like you planned to be the sweetest temptation in the room, and damn, you were succeeding.

“You wanted this, didn’t you?” he growled, his voice low and rough as he captured your lips in a messy, hungry kiss. His self-control was hanging by a thread. “Dressed up so pretty just for me.” His crimson eyes drank you in, searing into every inch of you as one hand slid up your thigh, his touch hot and insistent. The other hand trailed to the back of your dress, his fingers finding the zipper, teasing it down as he pulled you even closer, deepening the kiss with a possessive hunger.

Every second of the party had been a test of his patience, watching you flit around the room, knowing exactly what you were doing to him. It took everything in him to wait until the last guest left, the front door clicking shut behind them. You’d insisted on tidying up first, trying to stall, but he wasn’t having it.

“Clean up? Don’t test me,” he warned, his voice thick with barely contained desire as he backed you against the kitchen counter, eyes dark and wild. You were out of excuses, and he was done waiting. Every nerve in him was alight with need, and he wasn’t about to let anything get between him and you— not tonight.

The expensive dress slipped off your body, the cool air kissing your body. It was a pity that such a luxurious dress was so quickly discarded onto the kitchen floor. But Bakugou could give less fucks. You barely had time to breathe his name before his lips were on yours again. Pulling you into the heat of his relentless desire. The kiss was rough and consuming, leaving you breathless as his hands roamed your sun-kissed skin, tracing over every curve he already knew by heart. He cupped your hips, fingers pressing into your softness, a possessive touch that spoke volumes.

He’s memorised every line, every dip, every mark that made you his. To him, your body was a sculpture he could never tire of exploring, no matter how many times his hands found their way across your skin. His touch was greedy, fueled by the insatiable hunger that only you seemed to ignite in him.

Bakugou’s breath was ragged as he pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes burning with an intensity that sent shivers down your spine. He could never get enough of you—of the way you felt, the way you moved against him, the way you surrendered to his touch. Each moment with you was a heady mix of passion and possession, and tonight, he wasn’t letting anything hold him back.

He might have to rethink what his favourite dessert is. It probably never was red velvet anyways. Because nothing could compare to the dessert he has bent over the kitchen counter.

a/n: kinda wrote it randomly. I can't write smut but this is a start??? Maybe???? Anyways, for my pookie @chocogoldie cuz I accidentally baited her today.

border credits: @enchanthings & @adornedwithlight

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