Nutella. Want some?

Sponsored post: My first Nutella memory involved a tent. No stranger to camping, thanks to parents who dragged me around Australia as the third person in a two man tent (good times), I was pretty scarred by the time a school camping trip came around. I was….how do you say…..A TOTAL BLOODY PRINCESS in the way teenage girls invariably are.

At the news we were to go on a school excursion to somewhere or other in the wilderness (have forgotten exactly where, teenager trauma will do that to you BECAUSE HAVE I MENTIONED THERE WERE LEECHES?), there was much urgent discussion as to how to make it more bearable. Cue Nutella.

I vividly recall going to the supermarket with my girlfriends and stocking up on small non-perishable items that could be packed along with our sleeping bags and thermal underwear. That’s when I first discovered Nutella comes in little portion sizes. With little plastic spatulas! Oh happy day. Filling my shopping basket with Nutella portions and apple babyfood (Made from apples! Like, fruit! So as not to get, you know, scurvy!), I felt better equipped to meet the physical and deprivational challenges of being a teenage princess in a tent in the bush in the middle of winter.

Fast forward to when I left school and lived in Italy for a year. There, Nutella is an icon. Like Vegemite and koalas. Forget pasta, Nutella is actually the national food. Italians have it for breakfast and as snacks. And – this is my favourite part – there is to be NO BASTARDISATION OF THE SACRED BRAND. No Nutella ice-cream (not officially anyway although the Nutella gelato I consumed in Orvieto several years ago was akin to a religious experience), no Nutella biscuits or chocolate bars. Just the real deal, in a jar.

These days I still keep a jar in the pantry and we break it out on French toast sometimes on the weekend and I also possibly might sometimes stick my finger in it. So there’s that.

I happen to know that there are several other MM readers hello Kerri Sackville who are fairly keen on this hazelnut spread. So the folks at Nutella are giving away a 220g jar to the first 50 commenters. Tell us about your  fond memories of Nutella in ancient or recent history. And what’s your favourite way to eat it now?

[And – preemptively: this is a post paid-for by Nutella and written by me. Everything I say in a sponsored post like this is true because I take the responsibility of trust far too seriously to be fake. While I am hoping to be paid in Nutella, I am not telling you what you should or shouldn’t eat. That’s between you and your pantry.]