Fondue or fondon't?
Put your thing down dip it and reverse it
Davida here!
Contrary to what our shared vulgar sense of humor might have you believe, Dennis and I live a fairly chaste life together. Every night, we come home from work around 6, share a quiet meal, and then watch the news on opposite ends of the couch until about 9:30, when we don our pajamas and retire to our separate beds.
Far from the rockstar lifestyle I’m sure you had imagined, but it’s just how we live.
Actually, none of that is true.
In fact, every night, we come home from work between 9 and midnight, fuck around and play video games until like 2 am, dumpster dive for scraps, and then stare at each other glassy-eyed and slack-jawed until some ungodly hour, when he dons his pajamas, I also don his pajamas because mine are always dirty and I hate doing laundry, and we retire to our shared bed, which I mercilessly hog until we wake up at the crack of noon.
Rockstar lifestyle? Getting warmer, but still not quite.
Regardless, I will spare you any gory details regarding our intimacy. Why? Because first of all, you didn’t ask and also that’s gross. But also because the occasion for this blog post is one the few days of the year where nearly every couple’s sex life miraculously aligns, be it as a result of obligatory blowjobs or “okay but just this once” butt stuff.
So yes, what I’m saying is that it’s Valentine’s Day.
But how do so many couples get up the energy to turn up the heat, even just once a year? Viagra is an expensive hassle, especially if you try to slip the pharmacist $20 because you don’t have a prescription, are forcibly removed for loitering, end up temporarily incarcerated, and miss the holiday completely because apparently overnight holds don’t get conjugal visits.
The answer, of course, is aphrodisiacs.
You know what I’m talking about. Oysters, figs, chocolate-covered strawberries. Classic symbols of romance. But do they work? And more importantly, what’s the sexiest way to fondue them?
The most obvious answer is: in a pot shaped like a football helmet that your boss gave you for free.
The plan? To see if these items were best dipped in cheese or chocolate while nursing a glass of Franzia White Zinfandel.
Along with the fondue kit, I was given a bag of aged fondue cheese. It was also a few months expired, which I simply count as part of the aging.
Shaking the bag of cheese immediately yielded a pornographic squelching sound, which was auspicious.
The cheese itself, unfortunately, bore a smell I can best describe as “alcoholic uncle.”
Shortly before dumping the cold cheese directly into the fondue pot, we skimmed some instructions warning us not to do exactly that. The more you know!
Later, for the chocolate, Dennis heated some baking chocolate with heavy whipping cream and almost burned it. Flirting with danger.
The Aphrodisiacs
Strawberry
Cheese: Pretty good! The acidity complements the alcohol in the cheese for a bright, classy flavor. Sexy.
Chocolate: Barely worth noting just for how you can’t really fuck up a chocolate-covered strawberry. Reliable, comforting. Sexy, but with the lights off.
Fig
Note: In a moment of panic, before eating the first one I asked Dennis if dried figs have pits. I am not proud of this.
Cheese: From my notes: “FUCKED UP TEXTURE! FUCK.”
When you were a kid, did you ever have to dissect owl pellets in school? You know, those nasty little chunks of half-eaten garbage full of seeds and tiny bones and shit? I bet if you covered one in cheese and ate it, it would have exactly this texture. NOT sexy.
Chocolate: Still a weird texture, but the sweetness and gooiness of the chocolate made it all worth it. Dangerously sexy.
Watermelon
Did you know watermelon is an aphrodisiac? Me neither! But it makes sense in the context of a sultry summer picnic, I guess.
Cheese: Since the watermelon was cold, the cheese sauce seized up immediately, adding a nasty chunkiness to the bite. I instinctually swallowed it before the flavor could kick in, out of self-defense. Not sexy.
Chocolate: This was okay, but the very mild flavor from the watermelon didn’t do much for the chocolate. Dennis pointed out that it would be good if you used liquid nitrogen, and I like it when he talks about nerd shit so I’d say sexy for this one.
Oyster
I think raw oysters are supposed to be the sexy ones, but that wasn’t the most economical option for February in Chicago, so we got some smoked ones from Aldi. Whatevs.
Cheese: The oyster flavor miraculously overwhelmed the cheese, producing what amounted to an extra-slimy oyster. Not too sexy. Also, between the funky cheese smell and the oysters, at this point the kitchen smelled like a prom night backseat.
Chocolate: Oh yeah. Something here worked. I think it was the combination of the smokiness and the chocolate, but this was weirdly good. Dennis said the texture reminded him of chicken liver, which doesn’t sound sexy but it totally was.
So even though my initial plan here was to work solely with aphrodisiacs, Dennis wasn’t satisfied. As I am but putty in his tiny hands, I acquiesced to some additional snacks.
Lunchables
Cheese: The American cheese had an odd plasticky flavor which, combined with the already gas-tinged flavor of the fondue cheese, I’d highly recommend if you’ve ever been curious to ingest pure fossil fuel.
Not sexy, or sustainable.
Ham and cheese Lunchable all together
Cheese: For some reason this was terrible. I thought that just adding more cheese would be unremarkable at worst, but wow. Not sexy.
Chocolate: FUCK. YES. I have no idea why, but this fucking RULED. Dennis and I both lost our minds over this one. WHY WAS IT GOOD? I think it just overall had a really comforting flavor, like coming home. Extremely sexy.
Oreo, also from the Lunchables
Cheese: The cheese had a perfect bite that translated into an almost cream cheese flavor when eaten with the Oreo. So unexpected. So satisfying. So sexy.
Chocolate: Good but that’s to be expected. Snooooooze. Not sexy.
Vienna sausage
At this point we had put a sex jams Spotify playlist on. It really made the whole experience come alive. The commercials really helped since we don’t have a paid subscription.
Cheese: Yeah, sure, okay. Maybe it was the suggestive image of the creamy melted cheese on the wiener, but this was pretty okay. The middle of the wiener was cold and the texture was weird, but the flavor was pretty sexy.
Chocolate: Awful. I needed a Lunchable cracker chaser for this one. Miles from sexy.
The final verdict
At the end of this experiment, neither of us felt particularly amorous. Very full and slightly ill, maybe, but it was clear that no uglies were to be bumped this evening. But that’s okay! In the end, the boners we popped turned out to be the friends we made along the way. I will never forget you, chocolate-covered Lunchable.
Being with Dennis is a gift, and not to get all mushy like a fondued Vienna sausage, but I am so happy to get to do this stuff with him. Whether we are on each other like white on rice or we’re chilling on the beach in separate bathtubs, I am happy to have found my forever—even if forever means “until one of us accidentally poisons ourselves.”
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Hi, it’s me, Dannis. Keep bugging Davida to write more because she’s hilarious.
The usual. Share this on social media, forward it, give it to someone as a Valentine’s Day gift.
I’ll keep this short, but you know. Consider a paid subscription. It’ll help us (and motivate Davida) to write much more often. Also, it’ll help us get an actual Spotify account where we don’t have to listen to commercials during sex jams.
Also, apparently none of you were terribly interested in my button idea (see previous post), but I could still be convinced…