The Pink Shoe Diaries

Conversation between the people sitting behind us at the game on Saturday night:

Guy: What's that smell?
Girl: Huh? I don't smell anything.
Guy: It smells like....black death
Me(turning around): Oh, that's me. Sorry guys!


Do I stink? Is this the point of this post? Alas, no. Today we discuss that which half the people in the world love, and half the people in the world loathe. That which smells to some of delicious goodness, and to others of, well, black death.



Black Liquorice.

I have always loved liquorice. LOVED IT. My favorite candy as a kid was the liquorice pipes my mom would get for my brother and I at the local Middle Eastern grocery store. My addiction was fueled in part by my mother, who always had a little stash of black liquorice bits stored somewhere in the house, and in part by my own predilection for sweets that are not totally sweet.

And as I got older and was introduced to the world of anise and fennel and Zambuca, well my love only grew stronger. I enjoy adding fennel randomly to dishes and seeing what a delicious difference it makes. Of course this is not the kind of thing one can do when one is having guests for dinner because most of the people who don't like black liquorice? HATE IT.

I am noticing this more and more now that I have taken to carrying a new kind of breath mint around. I saw these in Marty's a few weeks ago and HAD to have them. As someone who always must have some kind of mint on her, and as someone as I mentioned before who is wildly in love with all things liquorice, this was an easy match.


I am the go-to-girl for mints in my office and people (who should really learn to buy there own) consult me several times a week for a mint. The first time this happened, afer purchasing the liquorice altoids, I opened the tin and handed it over to a coworker. He sniffed once. "What the hell is that!?", he asked. "They're the new altoids!", I explained. He closed the tin and looked at it and then at me in horror. "Are you serious?", he asked me, obviously thinking I must not be. He then explained to me the apparently disgusting terror that is black liquorice. I found it odd that he felt so strongly about it (I also found it odd that he never buys his own damn mints but that is neither here nor there.)

As the weeks went on, I found the lines strongly divided between those who appreciated the coolness of a liquorice altoid, and those who felt I was working for the devil.

And so at the game on Saturday, when Adam and I popped an altoid and then the conversation I mentioned above took place, I knew exactly what was going on. So after I turned around in my seat and explained that the Black Death smell was in fact coming from me, I offered them each an altoid. The girl happily accepted. And the guy told her (and us) that he was not going to be touching her for the rest of the night.

It was probably worth it though.