Dear fanfic writer:

[conuly]

I can see you're not a cook. You can't exactly dice thyme. The leaves are pretty tiny. If they're fresh, you just strip them from the stem. I suppose you can then chop them more finely, but dicing? You'd have more luck trying to dice time.

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Comments

[hannah]

I recently saw a fic where someone trying to learn to cook as an adult attempted to dice thyme by cutting up the stems, not stripping the leaves. For someone of that skill level making that specific mistake, I'll allow it. But otherwise, I'm there with you.

[conuly]

Oof. It’s not a plant with tender stems either!

[ethelmay]

I don't think you can "dice" ANYTHING as thin as most leaves. You could cut a cabbage leaf into little squares, but only the larger ribs could become anything remotely resembling cubes.

[siderea]

As a general rule, we don't use the verb "dice" for any vegetable matter that could be described as approximately a plane, regardless of how it curves in space.

[conuly]

Hm. Could you say dice if you’ve rolled them up and forgotten the word chiffonade?

[siderea]

It's a free country* (*while supplies last) so you could if you wanted to. But I've never observed anybody doing it. I think the backup word for chiffonade is "slice".

[armiphlage]

"sick in a hospital town" seems to have a very enthusiastic web developer more interested in style than making it actually possible to read.

[conuly]

That can't be helped, but can you switch to reader mode?

[carbonel]

And stripping the thyme leaves from the stems is pretty fiddly because there are lots of branchings of stems. Signed, someone who appreciates the fresh thyme that comes with a lot of Hello Fresh meals, but not so much the work involved to get it in a useful state.

[conuly]

It's really a pain and a half.

[sallymn]

Small mistakes can throw us out of a story. That one would have flown by non-cook me, but Sis and other people I know would have been headdesking.

[conuly]

I imagine a lot of gardeners would wince too, if they know what dicing is.