This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
The brilliant blog authors Are you going to finish your plate?Caroline Décoste and Mathieu Charlebois, publish their first work in the form of absolutely hilarious essays on wacky grocery products and the show The Chiefs !with a touch of anti-capitalism.
It was in 2014 that the reviser, author and translator Caroline Décoste and the humorist and podcast director Mathieu Charlebois launched their blog Are you going to finish your plate?, with the aim of combining their “love of good expensive and great literature.”
Initially, the two accomplices focus on the humorous analysis of the most surprising ultra-processed products in the grocery aisles. Then, they recap each episode of the show The Chiefs !. Followers of their blog impatiently await their version of this popular show broadcast on ICI Télé.
Given the years of experience of the two blog authors, their book contains the winning recipe for a good episode of this show. Here are some examples of key ingredients.
– Music that builds tension. Listening to the orchestra pumping the timpani in an epic way like in a Wagner opera, you wonder if someone will die if the guinea fowl roast isn’t properly tied up.
– The phrase “It’s useless” thrown immediately after a candidate proudly announced that he or she was going to use a technique coollike “debone » asparagus in the Thermomix or prepare celery in four ways (in espuma, sous vide, in tartare, then with peanut butter).
– A final challenge that makes no sense.
The book presents a perfect balance between revised and expanded blog articles and new creations, each just as crazy as the next.
A socialist writing game
For the author duo, the detours taken during joint writing sessions are always more interesting than the main subject. “The products are just an excuse to write 2000 words on them,” explains Mathieu Charlebois. With the food offering dominating grocery shelves, there is no shortage of sources of inspiration. “We love weird food products and even when we think we’ve been to the grocery store, we still find ways to make jokes poutine,” adds Caroline Décoste.
Among their favorite detours are these thoughts about the capitalist nature of the contents of our grocery cart and about individualism in our society. The essay “When I go to the (poor) market, I put in my little (poor) basket…” sets the tone. “The good poor is the one who devotes all his energy to his own survival and to nothing else. On returning from his shift at minimum wage, he must stop at three grocery stores, by bus or on foot, to take advantage of the specials, following his 12-tab Excel table which lists all the good purchases of the week announced at The grocery store. »
In the book, their observations also show how people’s eating habits can translate into completely different ways depending on their social class. The text entitled “Karl Marx and cheese” is a good example of this. “When Caroline talked about the “most disgusting boxed macaroni”, Mathieu thought she meant “the best” or “the most extraordinary” and that she was talking about one of those macaroni fancy made with dehydrated raw milk farm cheese in an artisanal way (by patiently blowing on it) by a local and organic producer whose cows are carbon neutral. The kind you find on the bamboo shelves at the health food store, between the mac and faux cheese and the gluten-free one with quinoa macaroni and quinoa cheese sold in a quinoa box. But no. By “the sickest boxed macaroni”, Caroline meant the Bold and Cheesy mac and cheese of Cheetos, including the subtle graphic design of the box with an orange cheetah in sunglasses gorging eye of fluorescent pasta spontaneously puts a song by Vengaboys in our heads. »
After the book, the podcast? A TV version of their analyzes of the show The Chiefs ! ? One thing is certain, we don’t want to end the concept of Are you going to finish your plate?.
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Duty, relating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.