Sweet with salty is hardly an anomaly in the culinary world. Salted caramel anyone? Ham glazed with honey anyone? Basalmic glaze over tomatoes anyone?
I’ve never understood why people get so worked up over this combo. It’s totally rational and, for many, subjectively delicious (which is, like you say, all that matters).
No one freaks out when people order food with cilantro even though it literally tastes like soap to some people. They just say “cilantro is not for me, tastes like soap” and get back to their burger or whatever.
My nephew based his life on Dennis the Menace. I was cooking a family and got called out of the kitchen where I was working alone.
Two minutes later I come back in to find this kid (maybe 5?) waving my razor sharp french knife around.
I very carefully removed it from his grasp and when I wasn’t using it I put it under a towel at the back of the counter. Told his parents to watch him.
Later he’s got it again and a steak knife.
I take all the blades, put them in a box, and put them way up high.
Come back later and he’s got a chair against the counter, a box on the counter, and he’s heading back up the chair with more of mother’s cookbooks to pile up to stand on…
Some kids are a little more extreme.
Edit: cooking a family feast, not a family (see first paragraph).
Anyone who has ever been in a long term psych ward as a visitor or patient (where I come from anyway) would not want to go there for any reason. Half those guys don’t even know how to play cribbage.
The joke, IMO, is that no matter how crazy a social norm is, violating it causes us to feel shame and embarrassment. Comedy = tragedy + time. By taking the absurdity of the social norm to an extreme, the shame is all that is left to relate to unless you also love porcupines like I do and regularly hang out with other porcupine enthusiasts.
Sure, God could just make more money appear but think of the effect on the economy. His son completely disrupted the loaves and fishes business that time and look what they did to him.
When I was 14, I was not helping to cure cancer. My science fair project was about salt raising the boiling point of water. :) I’ll give him props but you’re right.
Yes, it really bugs me when I get downvotes but not one single comment articulating what they are not liking or what they disagree with. I could not care less about the score, I’m here for discussion and also debate. I often find when I ask “why the downvotes” it’s because people misinterpreted what I wrote (my fault, I need to be clear) or I used info they didn’t have (something I know because of an area of interest that I think it’s common knowledge in that group). Both can “fixed” by discussion.