- - - -
Just in time for Valentine's Day,
the Guardian in London has
reviewed and raved about
The Secret Language of Sleep.
And, for the rest of the week,
you can buy it for $5!
- - - -
- - - - [Got a new food you'd like to review? - - - - Sheetz Shmonster Breakfast Sandwich Submitted by Jason Morgan Desperate fingertips slide across the menu screen. You can barely make out the options through the alcohol haze. Your head pounds—double egg, double meat, double cheese. The skuzzy barfly you brought along scoffs at your pretzel bread selection just before she dashes to the bathroom. "Complete Order!" you command and begin the hunt for a drink that isn't shaken or stirred. The harsh neon lighting reflecting off the linoleum floor summons a ball of nausea into your throat. Just a couple minutes until a mountain of sausage and egg, covered in pepper jack and sandwiched between the soft, half-stale pretzel turns this night around. You can make it. You just need something to wash down your drunken transgressions. The cap of the half-gallon of Arizona Diet Green Tea is popped before you hit the counter. "Ticket," says the nameless attended, who silently looks you up and down. You pull the crumpled receipt from your front suit jacket pocket. "Is that your friend?" the attendant asks, pointing to the barfly who, freed from the porcelain trap, is now sniffing every donut in the display case. A gulp of cool, calorie-free tea resurrects your throat long enough to get her attention and call her over to the counter. "Number 198!" You snatch the greasy bag off the pick-up counter with one hand and grab the barfly with the other. Cold air rushes in as the automatic sliding doors open. You plop your tea onto the top of the red trashcan, rip the sandwich out of the bag and unwrap that bitch. Not even the sour smell of purged long island iced tea can ruin this moment. You close your eyes. A deep inhale—sweet sausage, microwaved egg, mushy pretzel. Your taste buds confirm it as you sink your teeth into the oily mass. Breakfast has never tasted so good at 3 a.m. You feel life filling your empty soul. (Or is it the cholesterol filling your veins?) "How can you eat that processed, fast-food junk?" asks the barfly, a thick strand of her tattered black hair stuck to her cheek dancing to the rhythm of her speech. You open your eyes. One bite left and the world is clear; your mind—sharp. You slowly open your mouth, exposing the sandwich's mashed remains. "It's not fast food. It's better food fast," you answer, shoving the last bit of sacrificial breakfast sandwich into your mouth, chewing with your mouth open. The barfly shudders and runs back inside. Caught, again, in the porcelain trap, that's one bar fly you won't have to deal with in the morning. Cool, calm and collected, you casually toss breakfast sandwich wrapper into the trashcan and make your way to the car. "Welcome to Sheetz pump number 3. Please pre-pay inside or at the pump before you begin fueling." A deep inhale—you give thanks for the Shmonster's sobering purity. It was a good night. - - - - Psychedelic Mini-Brownies Submitted by Kevin Dyerson I've made psychedelic brownies for a long-time, but now I've started making psychedelic mini-brownies. These are really good cause lots of the time you just want things to be more psychedelic. And you can make lots of them at once and then stash them all over. And then when you want things to be more psychedelic you can have one or two, and if you want things to be really psychedelic you can have four or five. And you sorta over bake them so they get dry and storeable. And you put them in small containers for when you want to make things more psychedelic. Like if it's a long boring day at your dumb job and you want to make the afternoon a little more psychedelic you can have one. Or if your wife is getting all naggy and saying stuff about things you're not doing and you want to make things more psychedelic. Or if the work you brought home is just hanging over your head and you just need, like, for things to be more psychedelic. These are all good times to have psychedelic mini-brownies around. - - - - Go-Go Taquitos Submitted by Brianna Privett Crestline is a small town in the mountains above the Inland Empire region of Southern California. Ten years ago they installed a McDonald's at a location formerly occupied by three eighty-foot tall pine trees. It's never quite been able to compete with that stronghold of a 7-11 that's been around for thirty years and stays open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week through snowstorms and wildfires alike. There's nothing else open around the clock for miles... it is an oasis of fast food and convenience in the middle of the most populated desert on earth. When the Go-Go Taquitos appeared on the endlessly rolling bars of the hot dog warmer last year, I altered my steady diet of dollar brownies and Arizona iced tea to try them out. I'd previously lost about fifty pounds through absolutely no effort of my own (but a fabulous effort on the part of my pissed-off gallbladder) and the women in my family have since made a habit of quizzing me about my slimming technique. I like giving them a new answer each time—olive oil, chickpeas for breakfast. A spiritual fast every third Monday. I bit into the Buffalo Chicken Go-Go Taquito with no expectations; anything called a taquito is already advertising that the meat is probably unidentifiable, the cheese nearly non-existent, and much depends on the addition of guacamole or salsa for a superlative taquito experience. The filling was lukewarm and posed no threat to my skin if some should squirt out the other end. The spice was minimal, and the chunks of meat were slightly less grey than I'd have accepted, which put the Go-Go Taquito firmly in the "good" category. Inspired by this rousing success, I made the Go-Go Taquito the center of my midnight meals for three solid months. My aunts asked me at our last family dinner if I'd been going to a new gym. I flexed my guns, rippling from the exertion of cramming my two daily Steak and Cheese or Monterey Chicken Go-Go Taquitos into my mouth on the drive home through the winding pine-needle littered highways and replied "No, no... just clean, healthy living." - - - - Hot Emergen-C Raspberry-Flavored Drink Mix Submitted by Michael Pesant Never mind the empty bag of Maxwell House in the break room, just pour this potent vitamin mix into a steaming mug of water. Some powder will escape into the air, enveloping you in a cloud of mineral goodness. Breathe it in. The drink looks like Star Wars, but the taste is a berry tea. Allow the soothing warmth of your fruity libation to ease you into the day. As you sip, seven mineral ascorbates blast into your bloodstream with the veracity of a seasoned woodsman. Guess what? You just got 15% of your recommended daily intake of magnesium, 13 % of your Zinc, and a cool quarter of your Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Manganese, and Pantothenic Acid. Feel your cells tingling as they absorb 417% DV of Vitamin B12. Take ten deep breaths. You've just ingested over sixteen times the amount of Vitamin C considered reasonable by leading experts. Can you feel it? You've left the mere mortals behind. You're now a superhuman entity. Feel free to roam about your office bathroom sans the usual facemask and gallon of anti-bacterial sanitizer. Let your hand linger on the toilet handle. Drink heartily from the coughs and sneezes of your coworkers; kiss them where they pee. Challenge your bolstered immunity. It will not be denied. Try moving something with your mind. Nothing major, maybe just that empty desk. Some light telekinesis. It moved. Did you see it? I thought you did. Have you defied the laws of physics? No. You're tripping balls on non-essential minerals. Good morning, World. - - - - Grillz Candy Submitted by Jonathan Jay Holley Grillz Candy is an artificially flavored choking hazard recommended for gourmands aged three and older who want to look like ridiculous caricatures of the Dirty South rappers who popularized jewel-encrusted dental accessories. Grillz Candy is essentially a lollipop with a fake chrome plastic handle in the shape of a partial upper denture. The idea is to jam it in your mouth, taste strawberry, smile, and, as is written in pink and yellow letters on the packaging, "have fun!/diviértete!" The reality is that you jam it in your mouth, taste strawberry, smile, and almost immediately start to gag as the small, slippery chunk of plastic slides past your gums and down your gullet like a well-oiled sardine. - - - - Central Market's Lemon-Flavored Homemade Marshmallows Submitted by Claudia Peterson My tolerance for mediocre lemon flavor, were it known to more people, would be legendary. I've happily drunk lemon sodas that were better suited to cleaning machinery than to consumption by humans. I've yet to meet a lemon bar I don't like, though I've met several with whom I'd have had a problematic relationship, had their presence in my extra-intestinal life not been so short-lived. As for gooey things, what's better? I'm perfectly content spending hours prying the last of a Sugar Baby from between two rear molars, tongue sore, taste buds occasionally and tantalizingly teased with sugary goodness. I understand these joys. I am a willing and gleeful participant. However. There's fake lemon flavor, and then there's Central Market's lemon-flavored homemade marshmallows. There's the Idea of Lemon occurring in a foodstuff thanks only to science and human ingenuity, an Idea that has only the most fleeting acquaintance with its family of origin. This Idea has its place in the culinary canon. Then there's the idea of what lemon would taste like were it a thing shat from the hinders of ailing livestock. Like, "Yeah, it's crap, literally, but it's the freshest-smelling crap you can imagine!" It's still crap. There's gooeyness, then there's the consistency that you can be certain exists elsewhere only in certain body parts left out in the desert sun for several days. You bite into one of these marshmallows, and something in your consciousness wilts as you recognize a consistency that you, with your human soul, were never meant to experience with your mouth. It's terribly, terribly wrong. Nothing with this consistency should ever be put in one's mouth, not even when one's very survival is at stake. The upside to these culinary abortions? There are two. One: they do a most impressive job of sticking to wooden privacy fences when thrown against them in a fit of astonished revulsion. (I suggest posting a warning sign for hobos if your privacy fence borders railroad tracks. It's only humane.) Two: neither I nor my dining companions that night (one of whom is a gifted and inspired cook, who to this day apologizes for his transgression in purchasing this pile of pale yellow cubes of horror) will ever make that mistake again. - - - - Canned Brown Bread Submitted by Lauren Hudson Every autumn, back in my years spent at F.E. Bellows Elementary, our school would hold a food drive just before Thanksgiving. This would be when we kids were told by our teachers to bring in canned food for people less fortunate than us, and that the class with the most cans at the end of a set period would win a pizza lunch or some other food that didn't come from a can. This (obviously) meant war. Each class wanted that goddamn pizza lunch. Kids would go home and ask for cans of food from their mothers, who, being the good citizens of the community that they were, would garnish us with a few items (usually the stuff that had remained dormant on shelves for months). But every kid knew two or three cans wouldn't be enough to win the fucking pizza lunch, so, once the lights went out, we would sneak into our respective kitchen cupboards and steal a few cans from our mothers' stores of food. Not wanting to expose our tactics, we were sure to only take one or two cans at a time—always from the back of the shelf. Anything more would be noticeable and warrant punishment. In fourth grade, I was assigned the task of food drive organizer. I was ecstatic and also anxiety-ridden: it was my job to produce results. If we won I would be loved and applauded! On the other hand, if we lost, I would be to blame and everyone would fucking hate me. I would probably have to eat lunch alone for at least four days, maybe even a week. As organizer, it was my task every morning to stand by the big cardboard box by the front of the room and receive and record all the canned donations from the other students as their names were called for attendance, and encourage everyone to do better, to do more. One day during role call, as the drive was winding down and each class particularly starved for a cheese and sauce filled forty-five minute victory lunch, one of my fellow classmates, Michelle Channing, was called by the teacher and proceeded to bring up an oversized can. "What is that?" I asked. "Bread." "What?" "Canned bread." "What do you do with it?" I asked. "Make left-over sandwiches." This fucked me up. Bread came in a plastic bag, not a can. I took the canned item from her and inspected it. It read: "canned brown bread." I threw the can in the wrapping-paper covered cardboard box, marked down another item donated by our class, and didn't give the canned food much thought after that. We lost the drive that year. I only had to eat alone for three days. Years later, while flipping channels, I came across the Good Eats with Alton Brown episode where he cooks brown bread in a coffee can. FLASHBACK! Remember the girl in fourth grade that brought in canned bread for the food drive? Did that shit still exist or was it a thing of the past? Phased out like Fruity Yummy Mummy cereal and Giggle Cookies? I immediately felt the need to do a little R&D and walked over to the 24-hour A&P super mart. As the automatic doors slid open I felt a wave of panic: where would I look? Should I start in the canned food section? Logically, one would think bread would be placed next to other bread, but instinct told me this was not the case. Not knowing where to begin, I started down the produce aisles, as they were (and always seem to be) closest to the entrance, and proceeded to walk down the remaining aisles in search of my prize—all the while trying my best not to look out-of-my-mind high at 2:30 am. After hitting the pasta and juice aisles, and becoming increasingly nervous that I was being shadowed by an A&P employee, I started to think that canned bread no longer existed, and that I would have to think of something else to buy as to not arouse suspicion. (Paper towels? Didn't we just run out?) But, as I turned down aisle seven, I learned I was wrong—holy shit was I wrong! Right there, sitting between the vegetarian baked beans and corned beef hash, was the same oversized can of brown bread that I remembered from my youth. I made a beeline for the register, paid my $2.59 plus applicable tax, and walked back home. Upon entering my apartment, I sat down at my kitchen table to inspect my canned good. The label looked enticing: a loaf of hearty brown bread resting on a wooden slab set in front of a glowing hearth. Directions read: "REMOVE both ends of can. If necessary, gently push loaf out one end with a spoon." I shook the can. It made no sound. This struck me as foreign to all other canned food experiences; the silence departing far from the gelatinous "sllllshhhh" noise that is indicative of whatever solid packed in liquid you would soon be ingesting. I followed the directions and opened both ends of the can. It did not come out. I used a spoon, like the directions had instructed me to do, and, with a little force, it slid out onto the plate. There it was—can indents and all! I inspected my find and questioned my next move. How should I eat it? Should it be toasted with butter? What was the proper way to cut it? Would it have a crust? I decided on slicing off the edge closest to me and trying it just as it was so I could experience canned bread in its pure form. Upon cutting into I discovered it was denser than I thought it would be. I took a small bite and its weight hit me head on. This was not what I expected of bread. This was some heavy mound of molasses-infused carbs. This was the fruitcake of bread, leading you to believe it would be good and wholesome, but instead as misleading as hell. Not wanting to waste my purchase, and also to justify the last forty-five minutes of my life, I finished about one-third of the loaf and covered the rest in plastic wrap, asking myself what I would do with the remaining piece. (How long would canned bread last once opened anyway? Would it go stale just like other bread? If so, could it be made into croutons?) As I pondered the remaining brown bread's fate I was certain of one thing and one thing only: I wasn't about to go and to make a goddamn leftover sandwich that was for sure. - - - - Maple Hill "Pumpkin Crunch" Fragrance Oil Submitted by Michaelanne Petrella A few weeks ago, I purchased a tiny bottle of oil called "Pumpkin Crunch" from a local farmer's market and it has changed me. I bet you think you know what it smells like, but you're stupid and don't even know. Maple Hill "Pumpkin Crunch" Fragrance Oil an amazing full-on smell celebration of the ages. It is, of course, inedible but that hasn't stopped me from eating the potpourri that I drowned that stuff with. I put it in my boyfriend's bath and he immediately scooped up a handful and TASTED HIS BATH WATER. Five drops makes the entire room smell good. It saddens me to have to exhale the stuff. This "Pumpkin Crunch" oil told Yankee Candle to suck it. I've even rubbed it inside my nostrils; it smells like Little Debbie and Harry London made pumpkin pie together and then they held hands and prayed over it while it cooked. This oil makes heroin seem like dog shit. - - - - Fabulous Frutini Gum Submitted by Matthew Mesick My mother wouldn't let me chew gum. Her rationale was that it wasn't gentlemanly. She was correct, her boarding school- and Seven-Sisters-educated mother had taught her well; and my observations gleaned from movies featuring Douglas Fairbanks confirmed this. But when I was in medical school, in one of my first acts of rebellion of my life, I thought I would take up gum chewing. I asked my younger brother (who while playing baseball used to mix his Red Man chew with bubble gum) which one I should try. "Here," he said, slapping an orange packet in my hand. My parotid and sublingual glands, overcompensated for the artificial sweetener in their midst, shot forth a hot stream of saliva, rich in enzymes, which, were the sugar real, would have broken the bonds and released the chemically stored energy for use by my body. But the active sites did not accommodate the sorbitol, and peptides were spilled, onanastically. My masseter and temporalis muscles strained under the load, and my taste buds and olfactory receptors transduced myriad signals to my cerebral cortex. I was weakened by the experience, as my knees buckled slightly. "What do you call it?" I asked. "The real name is Fabulous Frutini, but we just call it Angel Poon." "Why is that?" "Because if you were to go down on an angel, this is what it would taste like." I thought it tasted more like a "Nada-Colada" or "Banana Runts," than the savory, salty warmth I associated with the female anatomy, but I gave him a nod of assent, "Fabulous Frutini indeed." - - - - 100% Vegetarish Wiener Schnitzel Submitted by Briana Brockett-Richmond My fork pops through the crispy, golden brown breading, glides through the tender center and then exits the other side with another satisfying pop. The fried delicacy is not greasy in my mouth and, unlike many fried foods, leaves no disturbing coating on my tongue. The flavor is rich, but not overpowering. I am overwhelmed by its rewarding and surprising perfection. I suppose that there is nothing remarkable about a perfectly cooked Wiener Schnitzel in Germany. An equivalent delicacy is enjoyed daily by tourists and locals, but there is something revolutionary about this particular fried slab on my plate. As the package boasts, it is 100% Vegetarish. Vegetarian Wiener Schnitzel, despite its alluring alliteration, feels like an oxymoron, even to a life-long vegetarian. Arguably the most iconic meat dish in a national cuisine that worships meat, I can visualize the original, flesh-based version coming to life and expressing fury at the idea of a vegetarian joining in the cultural fun (in its plated form—not the original animal, for obvious reasons). But my Wiener Schnitzel expresses no negative sentiments. It welcomes me to my new Germanic home, and displays no Anthony Bourdain-type prejudice against my kind. Rather, it vehemently protests the idea that I can't truly experience a culture without forgoing my veggie ways (take that, Mr. Bourdain). When I first saw it in the grocery store, it seemed to throw a parade complete with a banner reading, "Willkommen." Now, if only I could get an equivalent welcome when I return to my own culture with a nice plate of 100% Vegetarish Fried Chicken. - - - - Kerbey Lane Café Gingerbread Pancake Mix Submitted by Jennifer Devroye Not long ago, I dreamt that my sister gave birth to a gingerbread baby. He was pliant and warm, like a baby is supposed to be, but with a flat body, circular head, and limbs splayed out as if mid-cartwheel. He gnashed his horrible little teeth at me and I looked into my sister's expectant face and told her he was a beautiful baby. This same sister gave me a package of Kerbey Lane Café Gingerbread Pancake Mix last Christmas. I finally used some last weekend. It yielded pancakes bearing an eerie resemblance to the gingerbread baby of my dreams; an unnatural transubstantiation of cookie into a fleshier form. Each bite yielded a cognitive dissonance. But those babies were tasty. - - - - Chia Goodness Submitted by Marina Koestler Ruben I purchased the cereal Chia Goodness because it claimed to be "the most nutritious seed ever." (Its price was commensurate with its perceived self-importance.) But I had trouble when I added milk. My first two attempts at chia prep yielded a gray glue dotted with equally gelatinous bulbous spheres. Think putrefying frog eggs or the evil, shrunken, dirty-dishwater stepsibling of bubble tea. Chia sat blandly on the tongue with the crunch of kiwi seeds and the smooth casing of mini-eyeballs. Drat. This was the latest in a string of my inadvisable purchases: hemp oil, açai juice, quinoa beverage. I had thrown each away. My husband, Adam, created a rule. In our newly no-waste household, you buy it, you eat it—particularly if you paid more than seven dollars for a small bag of cereal. I wanted to be chia-free, but how? Fortunately, there was a double batch of cranberry-ginger chia muffins, as per an online Chia Goodness recipe. Better yet, I didn't have to make them. Adam volunteered, declaring with glee that he himself also contained the most nutritious seed ever. That weekend, Adam made the muffins. The directions, in effect:
We gave our leftover muffins to my parents, who gave them to their Labrador Retriever, who died. (To be fair, the Lab had a preexisting condition. But the muffins couldn't have helped.) Now bankrupt, disempowered, very hungry, and muttering "Chia Badness" under his breath, Adam sent an angry e-mail to the makers of Chia Goodness. He made our position clear: We did not like it in a box, with a fox, or as a chia-cranberry-ginger-water-water-water cocktail. Quickly thereafter, Chia Goodness replied. They were sorry, so sorry, for our misfortune. Be on the lookout, they wrote. In compensation, you should expect a free shipment of Chia Goodness. We moved. - - - - Barbara's Bakery Chocolate Mini Cookies Submitted by Miriam Pollock I slowly tear open the box. "Big Flavor. Tiny Calories," proclaims the 100-calorie package of Barbara's Bakery brand organic chocolate "mini cookies" I retrieve from within. I'm decidedly suspicious, because I know from experience that this kind of "healthy" cookie has a tendency to be about as moist as the Sahara. The appearance and feel of the first small and crumbly cookie I remove serves only to confirm my initial prejudices. It's similar in consistency to sand, but it doesn't remind me of days spent languorously watching waves lap the shore. Rather, it reminds me of this one time my friend dared me to eat dirt. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: what is one to expect from packaged, mass-produced snack foods shipped across the country from Clinton, Massachusetts? But I try to forget the cookie's negative first impression as I prepare to bite into it. It does not snap, as I have expected, and its mild crunching sound is barely detectable. Its chocolaty layers seem to fall away in my mouth, and the rough texture is pleasing rather than sandy. The cookie is not chewy but is at least reasonably moist, and the tiny morsels of organic oats provide a nice contrast in texture. However, I detect only one flavor: chocolate. A chocolate that gets stuck in my teeth, a honeyed, sweet, Hershey's cocoa powder chocolate, a chocolate I am perfectly content to let mask any other flavors. I offer one to my friend. She, too, is pleasantly surprised, exclaiming, "These are pretty good!" Before I know it I have consumed the rest of the eleven cookies in the package. Sadly, dark brown crumbs are all that remain. The cookies have done little to quell my hunger and leave me wanting more. I am ashamed to admit I take out another package and make short work of its contents. The large quantity of sugar I have just consumed, together with the chocolate stuck in my molars, feels as though it's corroding my mouth. It's not unlike when you're at the movies and you just keep shoveling in the popcorn, and then your fingernails are scraping cardboard and fake butter and oil and salt, and you suddenly realize your lips burn and you've saved yourself a ton of money on lip-augmentation surgery. - - - - Blueberry Beer Submitted by Becky Adnot Haynes Hiking in Maine, my sister kept asking, "Are these blueberries?" before pulling things off of plants and eating them. She must have developed a taste for the stuff, which may or may not have been blueberries, because at dinner in town that night she immediately zeroed in on a 'Blueberry Beer' on the menu. "Is it very, very blueberry-y?" she asked our waiter. "It's fairly blueberry-y," he replied. He did not tell us that there would be actual blueberries floating in the beer, which tasted a lot like Bud Light. I drank four pints.- - - - Nissin Top Ramen, Chicken Flavor Submitted by Marina Weiss I craved ramen for the first time in middle school. I had never even eaten ramen before, but when lunchtime rolled around, I envied the kids who left the classroom to go get hot water. I imagined that they got to giggle together for a second before edging their way back with steaming Styrofoam bowls, trying not to scald themselves. Ramen had a dangerous glamour that threatened to slop over and spill boiling hot freeze-dried carrot and corn bits down my classmates' fronts. Ramen was the badge of privilege of those fourth-graders who could convince their parents to sacrifice nutrition for convenience. Ramen was freedom to rise and have unsupervised adventures. My cold leftovers in their Tupperware were literally yesterday's mashed potatoes by comparison. I was sold. And at the time I had no idea that ramen was not conventionally valuable in any sense—but it wouldn't have mattered a whit. It was precisely because Top Ramen was generally considered as wholesome and timeless as "grape drink" that it was so hard to finagle from parents. But that was only half of its appeal. I also honestly lusted after those soggy noodles. Although he never stooped to Cup O' Noodles, my father, a frugal Jew from a long tradition of frugal Jews, was at some point moved to purchase Nissin Top Ramen, Chicken Flavor by my shameless, fervid checkout-line pleas or, perhaps, by the same mysteriously thrifty force that drives him to Costco for wholesale rates on canned tuna. It's no surprise, really, that at the age of ten, I failed to identify degrees of cultural capital in other children's lunches. What is strange is that, fourteen years later, it still means nothing to me that Nissin Top Ramen, Chicken Flavor contains 910 milligrams of sodium. This quantity suggests that both the ramen noodles and the "seasoning mix" are just vermiform and powdered sodium, respectively, with, in the case of the "seasoning mix," some natural and artificial flavors thrown in. I listen when my mother, a long-lived WASP from a long line of long-lived WASPS, lectures me about what a high sodium diet will do to my blood pressure. I understand that there are no ingredients in Nissin Top Ramen, Chicken Flavor that have potential to impart health benefits with the dubious exceptions of chicken powder, celery powder, and dehydrated leek. I recognize that chicken powder is an unsavory enterprise, which should disturb the thinking consumer. Yet I slurp on. I would even go so far as to make a Sontagian argument that it is the "high camp," the total artifice, the very lack of actual nutritive value that attracts me to what is otherwise a bowl of greasy, yellow-tinged, salt-laden, convoluted carbohydrates. Ah, I think to myself, slurping happily, at 24, I am finally one of the kids who gets to choose to eat badly of her very own accord. - - - - Pho Submitted by Emily Garber It recently came to my attention that the Vietnamese noodle-and-broth dish spelled "pho" is not pronounced "foe," as I had always assumed, but "fuh." This was a heartbreaking revelation, because it shattered my dreams of opening hit restaurants called Pho Fo' Sho' (free Cristal with every bowl!) and Faux Pho (Pho Sho's vegan spin-off). However, my discovery did give me the courage to order pho for the first time, from a food cart near my office. I walked up to the booth proudly, with confidence. "I'll have the...number four," I said, totally chickening out. But soon my prize arrived, steaming hot and tucked securely into a plastic bag. I spirited the pho back to my desk and unpacked it. An abundance of vegetables greeted my eyes, and a delicious aroma wafted to my nose. I took a spoonful of broth and immediately burned all my taste buds off for the next three days. But it was delicious. I kept spooning. Best of all was the accompanying plastic bag containing a variety of kick-it-up-a-notch bounty: hot sauce, plum sauce, a lime segment, a bristling stalk of Thai basil, and enough bean sprouts to keep an Asian family full of phytochemicals for a month. I dumped everything in and began eating in earnest. Bite after bite of chewy tofu, plump mushroom, and crisp celery vanished into my mouth. Bliss. Suddenly, halfway through, I looked down. No vegetables were in sight. Instead, I was faced with an enormous mass of flavorless, soggy noodles. I began to regret squandering my plastic bag of treasures so soon. And why didn't I mix any of the mushrooms or celery down to the bottom? My salad days, as it were, were over. Anyway, I ate it. All I can say is: pho that. - - - - Pure Milk-Chocolate-Covered Submitted by Julia Calagiovanni Perhaps, like me, you have an elderly relative who is struggling with a lifetime Andes Candies addiction. The telltale signs: she pops them after every meal, and labors under the delusion that the rest of us are equally enamored with their sickly, extra-whitening mint flavor with hints of 1950s kitsch. Luckily, there's a more socially acceptable alternative, brought to us by the friendly folks at Nabisco. It could best be described as a genetic experiment involving an entire tube of Crest and a lifetime supply of Thin Mints, drenched in—yes—more chocolate. The end result is not exactly a health food. But when you don't have any teeth left, does it really matter? - - - - Roast Beef Po Boy Sandwich Submitted by Lizzie O'Shea I arrived in Louisiana and all anyone could talk about was Po Boys. This phrase, like so many in American English, seems suspiciously politically incorrect, like "mental retardation" or "fanny pack." Even "muffalata" seems slightly naughty. There are only so many visual indicators of quotation marks that you can give in a conversation before people start assuming you have a tic. After all, Americans are known for their elevated levels of irony and self-reflection, so it can be sometimes difficult to discern if one is being taken for a ride on the proverbial streetcar. So I try and stick to the word "sandwich". Obviously these edible delights are not new, but for me, as an Australian, they've never been featured in my culinary consciousness. Until now. I'm not normally a roast beef kind of woman. I'm a lentil kind of woman. So when I petitioned Chad, the guy who leaned against the grimy kitchen tiles, to tell me which was the best Po Boy, imagine my disquiet at his super-quick response of "roast beef." I liked Chad already; he was friendly, he had a Metallica tattoo and he thought I was English. He was from Tennessee, and boy, did he sound like it. His response to my inquiry was the quickest I had heard him speak since we'd begun chatting, which was not an insignificant amount of time, given that we had already discussed his mother's squirrel pie recipe (which is highly sought after) and his homebrew moonshine (which is not, except for the purpose of lubricating generators—or was he employing a sophisticated euphemism? Hard to tell.). Despite the pleadings from the better angels of my nature, I followed Chad's recommendation. The dish served to me was like one of those terrible sad stray dogs you see sometimes hanging around remote campsites. Half its guts were trailing around behind it. Indeed, the bread was almost like an afterthought, corks of carbs bobbing on a frothy tide of lumpy protein and non-descript gravy. The polystyrene plate creaked under the weight; it felt like the remnants of an entire cow, garnished with a limp pickle. Incredibly, I had no problem with the beef. Indeed, it was more delicious than the tofu steak I had had for lunch. But how did I attempt to eat this Leviathan? This White Whale of white bread? This Moby Dick of muffalatas? Every bite I took, more of the insides oozed out, less went in my mouth, and some found its way down my top. Physical integrity in a sandwich is important to me. Otherwise a sandwich loses its portability, elegance, and its social acceptability to those who must watch it be eaten. My Po Boy became two slippery pieces of gravy-flavored bread, the filling having slopped onto the plate below, rather than a gastronomical cross section of delicately balanced flavors and proportions. Despite such physical obstacles, I give the Po-Boy-oh-boy full marks for taste. In terms of being structurally sound, there is definitely room for improvement—it is the sandwich-which-ain't. Pass me a fork, please. - - - - Ham-Flavored Ruffles Submitted by Lindsay Eanet During my brief stint living in Pamplona, a city known mostly for its Hemingway-lauded Mardi-Gras-for-twentysomethings-with-a-deathwish festival, I often found myself wondering how a population who enjoyed so much animal fat, nicotine and bull-goading had (at least, according to our guides) some of the longest life spans in the world. And each month, down to my last few Euros before paying rent, I'd be faced with the proverbial two roads: buy the more substantive baguette, or the bag of Ham-Flavored Ruffles. For about half of this time, the baguette won out. But just as Juan Ramón Jiménez believed the soul of his beloved Moguer was in its bread, so I believed the soul of the entire country was in its ham and ham-flavored food products. Ham became less of a food and more of a presence, an apparition at various points in my day like Banquo's ghost leering at me as I dined alone on my sad-looking scrambled eggs while my roommates bopped around the kitchen listening to Spanish country songs about Consuelo who wants a boy like Johnny Cash, or at least that's what I could make of it. I could sometimes inexplicably even taste it in my milk. It was clear: in order to make this place home, I'd have to go forward with the Ham Immersion Process. The initial taste of the Ham-Flavored Ruffle is reminiscent of BBQ-flavored chips in the States, with a slightly lingering burnt meat sort of flavor and a smokiness that works well to counter the overwhelming essence of salt. If the creators were going after recreating the ham experience at all, at least they came close to what I imagine it must be like to bite into one of the giant hocks of cured ham that hang above every pintxos bar in Pamplona. All salt and a vague idea of an aftertaste of some sort of chewy meat product. They're not bad though, provided you're not stuck with the chip at the bottom of the bag with all the ham powder. Spain also has ham variations of Lays and Pringles, but something about the texture of the Ruffles, the crunch and definition of the ridges, likely, makes them a better complement to this particular combination of salt and artificial flavorings. There is also a "York'eso" variety of the Ruffles, promoting a ham-and-cheese combination, but trust me, this ham flavoring is better left unadulterated. Before I left, I was told Spain was the center of the culinary universe right now, with chefs in the major cities being elevated to demigod status and earning Anthony Bourdain's rarely shown affection. What I took with me, though, were the snacks. My love for Ham-Flavored Ruffles runs parallel to my affair with Pamplona: I was not swept off my feet in a flurry of red handkerchiefs and confused steers and violently passionate ex-pat trysts. Our relationship was cemented in lazy days drinking cheap wine in parks (and nothing goes better with cheap wine and Coke than Ham-Flavored Ruffles), in cheesy Euro-disco hits rather than flamenco strains, in ex-pat friends who had the same appreciation for Lady Gaga and La Liga soccer and greasy, processed treats. On my return home, I managed to get two snack-sized bags through Customs (by then reduced to the tasty, tasty niblets), which I later shared with friends in Missouri. They commented on the saltiness and offered a few nondescript "not bads," while I took the last handful of them for myself. As I broke down their carefully architected ridges with my molars, I smiled as the last greasy, comfortable taste of home hit the back of my tongue. - - - - Whole Foods Gourmet Gumdrops Submitted by Reema Ghazi In my head, gumdrops exist solely in the magical far-away kingdom of Candy Land, where mountains of them must be surpassed in the quest to find the lost King Kandy, and possibly depose him (or such was the dream in my sugar-addled days of youth). Imagine my confusion, then, when these artifacts of an alternate reality presented themselves during a weekly staff meeting, when my boss offered them up as the consequence of an aversion to "gummy things." First: Whole Foods Gourmet Gumdrops are gargantuan. So gargantuan, in fact, that busy Washington traffic momentarily came to a halt when a clear-eyed bus driver spotted me popping one of these gelatinous behemoths into my mouth from two blocks away, and was subsequently compelled to stop, once our paths had crossed, to scream "Looks like you got some candy! Can I have some?!" On to the flavors: There are six distinct flavors, each of which comes as no surprise given the package's point of origin: Acai Berry, Pomegranate, Pink Grapefruit, Key Lime, Tangerine, and Meyer Lemon. Gone are the days of red, purple, green, orange - no, the gumdrops of today must reflect reality, signal current trends, be hip. Luckily for the manufacturer, they are delicious and remarkably true to their labels. Biting into a magenta gumdrop, which more closely resembles a Crayola-created abstraction than an actual real-life fruit, is a affront to all that you thought you knew. Perhaps pomegranates actually are one-inch domes covered in sugar. Maybe Acai Berry isn't just a hyped-up blueberry touted by admen and scam artists, but a mouthwatering and compact little product that can easily be obtained in a matter of minutes. The blissful illusion is shattered, however, once you sample the Meyer Lemon. Just like Pine Sol, and recognizably "yellow," sticking to your teeth for a good 6-8 hours, just as the great King Kandy intended. Pawn these off to unsuspecting coworkers while you enjoy the remaining treasures of a lost Utopia. - - - - Frozen Banana Submitted by Leigh Patterson For years I struggled with frozen bananas. When you freeze a banana, its sweetness increases. Tenfold. Still, they're a pain and a half to eat, what with giving you instant brain-freeze and being rather messy for, well, a frozen banana. (They seem to evolve from rock solid to sludge-like in mere instants.) One day my friend says to me, "Cut them in coins!" Ay carumba! My life has never been the same. - - - - Japanese Delight Kombu Teriyaki Flavor™ Submitted by Heather Nodler If spaghetti squash and the Loch Ness Monster had a lost weekend, Japanese Delight Kombu Teriyaki Flavor ™ would surely be their resultant love child. A freeze-dried, meal-in-a-package, this foodstuff will assuredly please even the most finicky palate. Kombu delivers a power-punch of umami, the elusive and savory "fifth taste" of Japanese cuisine, and follows it up with a slightly cloying, teriyaki chaser. Freshwater never tasted so fresh by contrast! The chewy tendrils of this brackish substance evoke the pitch-black, nautical depths from which they emerged, reaching eagerly across your plate, like a giant, mossy squid in pursuit of Captain Nemo himself. Before you venture to prepare kombu, you may wonder, "What if I am but a simple westerner, unschooled in the timeless traditions of salty Asian seaweed preparation?" Fear not, my green friend, for Japanese Delight Kombu Teriyaki Flavor ™ affords a surprisingly effortless prep to even the novice maker of pre-packaged ocean detritus. Just add water and your favorite meat or meat alternative, and voila, you have a delicious tangle of seaweed, encircled by a moat of sweet, brown liquid. According to the wrapper's narrative: "This kombu product captures the essence of Japanese cooking and enables American consumers to easily cook sea vegetables." Wow, can one product really do all that? Japanese Delight Kombu Teriyaki Flavor ™ is terribly wholesome to boot. A scientific fact − again, quoth the package − "the nourishment found in kombu is acquired through the gentle wave action of underwater currents." Patented Gentle Wave Action (GWA) is a cultivation method demonstrably superior to that of the rival kombu brand, which is violently stripped of its rich, green nutrients by hyperactive, aquatic eddies. Once the kombu has been prepared and served, you may, like my octogenarian neighbor, take a moment to spice up your sea spaghetti with a dash of smugness, giggling at the Japanese Delight ™ copywriter's use of hyperbole and the split infinitive, then congratulating yourself on having embarked on an epicurean adventure to the oceans of the exotic East. Congratulations, indeed, and welcome aboard the SS Orientalist! If, like my pre-adolescent stepdaughter, your palate will only permit nautically-themed foods on the scale of Kraft shells and cheese, you may scrunch up your nose and make a sullen retreat into the living room for an episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Whatever − that leaves more Japanese Delight Kombu Teriyaki Flavor ™ for the rest of us, and your pasty pasta will be ready in about ten minutes. Before you head out, why is it that those blond kids live in a hotel, again? Nevermind... One last tip − Japanese Delight Kombu Teriyaki Flavor ™ is optimally prepared with cubed, processed soy product − tofu can be a delicious and nutritious solution to the omnivore's dilemma, not to mention a generous comedic entrée for dinner guests prone to shrieking "It's peeeeeeople" at mealtime. - - - - Gorp Submitted by Katelyn Sack Some say the name comes from the sound this blessed mixture makes when it hits the floor. Others maintain it was a gift from otherworldly creatures and that the name means "ambrosia" in their green-scaled tongue. The composition of gorp is no easier to pin down than its provenance. With ample variation depending on available supplies, gorp is typically a mixture of plain full-fat yogurt, fish oil, ground flax seed, Floradix liquid vitamin supplement, blackstrap molasses, and fruit. The fruit might be mashed banana in the morning and at lunch and applesauce in the afternoon. Like my great-grandma May Belle (she of mayonnaise-cake fame) professed: "Whatever you have will do." More importantly, gorp is an ideal baby food. Its ridiculous quantity of omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, calcium, iron, B vitamins, potassium, magnesium, pectin, and vitamin C will advance early childhood development by leaps and bounds. I submit as proof my brilliant infant twin charges, who speak some Russian ("Da!"), French ("Tête!"), and Italian ("Mamma!"), in addition to already knowing that the doggy says, "Woof!," the kitty cat, "Meoooow!," and the fox, "Shazzam!" Gorp washes down nicely (if not neatly) with V8 thrice a day, supplying babies all the nutrition they'll need for life. Shazzam. - - - - Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Kisses Submitted by Will Hindmarch A lady at the grocery store was giving out free samples of these. My wife tried one, then brought home a bag of them. She said they were so rich, so ridiculous, that a single one of these seasonal treats could be a dessert. I must have eaten six of them just now, while proofreading this. They're new, but I'm not sure they're food. Though these are Hershey's candies, they're not chocolate at all. Each dollop, though, is presented in the shape of a gnome's hat, wrapped in crinkled foil, so I guess they qualify as Kisses. Each little candy is a compound of orange outside and, on the inside, where the almond would be in an almond Kiss, white stuff. The package includes a little cutaway schematic. Depending on ambient lighting, the orange may seem to be the exaggerated peachy flesh tone of a crayon or the cartoonish pallor of a woozy Oompa-Loompa. They are weirdly soft. Instead of chewing them, try pressing the candy with your tongue to the roof of your mouth, forming a spread. Imagine that each is a dose of pasty homeopathic medicine prescribed by a witch, a bit of Halloween doled out to heal the need for holiday sweets. To be sure, a Pumpkin Spice Kiss is sweet, but also subtly savory. Pumpkin spice, it seems, is any combination of cinnamon, clove, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, and mace (which isn't what I thought it was; it's the sheath the nutmeg seed comes in) or anything that tastes like any combination of that stuff. My wife put one at the bottom of her coffee, to make a knockoff pumpkin-spice beverage, and it sort of melted into a dose of autumn flavors, but it also transmuted into a waxy, oily slick across the coffee surface. Still trying to puzzle out this mix of old-fashioned flavors and newfangled paraffin-like substance, I offered a couple of friends some free sample Pumpkin Spice Kisses. One of them stopped in midchew, her face contorted, unsure how to get away from the thing in her mouth. "I feel like I ate a candle," she said. - - - - Monster Biscuit Submitted by Dave Snyder As an enthusiast of cryptozoology, I was excited this morning to try the Monster Biscuit, a breakfast sandwich from 7-Eleven. But what kind of monster? I wondered. Griffin? Chupacabra? Too impatient to wait until I got to my office, I scanned the ingredient list for what monster (or monsters!) I'd be eating. I wasn't familiar with any monsters on the list: propyl gallate, apocarotenal, erythorbate (which is probably a man-eating earthworm, don't you think?). There was an ingredient called "bha," which might be a dragon-snake or something from India, but mostly Monster Biscuit was made out of stuff like cottonseed oil, corn-syrup solids, artificial flavors, and pork. Undeterred, I tried Monster Biscuit when I got to work. I'm no expert, but I'd say that Monster Biscuit has the mellow gaminess of yeti and the mouthfeel of Tennessee wampus cat, with more than a hint of skunk ape in its bouquet. - - - - Sangria Fresca Orbit Gum Submitted by Molly Young You see, it took on the elements of an odyssey. First, we were called to adventure. "Orbit has released a sangria-flavored gum," I told them. We couldn't wait to try it. Would it be a Spanish-style sangria? Would there be a realistic wine flavor? Would alcoholics be permitted to sample it? A road of trials followed. We stopped at gas stations in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, but didn't find the desired gum. We tried Mint Mojito flavor (decent) and, at a low point, Fabulous Fruitini flavor, which tasted of cheesy popcorn. So far, the union of cocktail flavors and chewing gum had gone very, very badly. A week later, back in New York, I found it. Wrapped up like a new toy amid a row of other flavors, the sangria package had an ill-chosen orange-and-purple color scheme. I think it was supposed to invoke the fruit ingredients of the original beverage. The gum itself was the color of a rotten tooth. By now, my companions were gone and I was left to try the gum alone. Very thoughtfully, I unwrapped a little gray piece and put it on my tongue. The taste? Well, I was chastened. There was no orange flavor, no lemon. No brandy or Cointreau. Not even a suggestion of wine. It was grape, all grape. Graper than grape jelly and more persistent, too. How disappointing. I spit it out, soberly. A lesson had been learned. - - - - The Laughing Cow Light Cheese Wedges Submitted by Reid Brian Hall Middle-school P.E. It's a metaphor unto itself. Really, I can't think of many other images that stir up as many visceral, nauseatingly vivid memories. Whenever I feel the knurled surface of one of those tough, red playground balls, I can't help but feel it slamming into my ear, blinding me with pain while stinky cotton shorts cling to my thighs with sweat. Whenever I see indoor bleachers, I immediately taste my gummy tongue in my mouth, and in my mind I'm hunched over, battling for breath while my peers shoot up and down the stairs with ease. A fat kid in middle-school P.E. That was me. If P.E. was the Crimean War of my middle-school life, then cheese was my Florence Nightingale. Every day after school, I sought refuge in Kids in the Hall reruns and a thick block of lactose-filled comfort. Crackers? Not necessary. Just a sturdy slice off the Costco block of cheese − usually cheddar or gouda − that perpetually haunted the refrigerator shelves. Cream, cottage, curd, wheel, baby loaf: these were the materials from which happiness was fashioned. Of course, adolescent cheese-aholism has a strange way of leading to childhood obesity, and childhood obesity has a strange way of leading to adulthood obesity. It was a few weeks ago, during my most recent attempt at losing my lifelong cheese gut, that I discovered Laughing Cow Light. It's a smooth, creamy cheese spread that comes in individually wrapped wedges, a pack of eight resembling a winning Trivial Pursuit pie. A single Laughing Cow wedge adds a sophisticated and explosively delicious tang to damn near everything. Toast, crumpets, Gardenburgers, sandwiches, wraps, celery, a spoon: divine, all. The "Classic Swiss" flavor proves most versatile and approachable, while "French Onion" and "Garlic and Herb" tease the palate with hearty strength and confidence. With every creamy bite, my inner fat kid giggles with glee while my outer adult, reflecting on the cheese's mere 35 calories per wedge, nods in approval. - - - - Homemade Mint Ice Cream Submitted by Benjamin Straus Wanting to make ice cream for myself and friends, I bought an ice-cream machine. I made hazelnut, chocolate-chip, and cake-batter ice cream. The hazelnut flavor tasted amazing, with that distinctive, rich, somehow creamy nutty flavor mixed with rich milk chocolate. The cake batter tasted just like the package cakes at kids' birthday parties, with chocolaty frosting and heavy sugary hail-shaped sprinkles. I loved mint-chocolate-chip ice cream as a kid, it was my favorite flavor, and I thought, How hard could it be to make? I didn't want to use peppermint, because I didn't want the ice cream to taste like candy canes. So, using my immense brain, I decided to pick up spearmint leaf at the supermarket and use that. While cooking the milk, I dropped in the chopped-up leaves, letting them sit in a strainer. I thought they would enhance the milk like tea leaves. I added the eggs and sugar, cooked off the salmonella, and cooled the mixture before tossing it into the ice-cream machine. I woke up the next morning hardly able to contain my excitement. I was ready to taste a piece of my lost childhood. And my lost childhood tasted like when you drop ice cream into a pile of dead leaves and then pick it up and eat it. - - - - Chinese Nitro Reproduction Sweet Potatoes Submitted by Aaron Gilbreath When Mother Nature designed the sweet potato, she could not have envisioned it processed as a poor man's Twinkie, sold for pocket change in a red plastic vacuum pack next to squid strips and Pocky. I grew up with the sugar tuber like everyone else, but until my recent trip to a Phoenix Asian market I remained oblivious to its overseas popularity. Golden, orange, white, purple, frozen, fried, mashed, dried, dehydrated, powdered, random-cut, sold as paste, preserves, and little dried sticks I wandered crowded aisles amazed by the variety. But my eyes bulged when I found how technology and China's exploding economy had turned this one leafy plant's energy reserve into a convenient, fun-sized, gelatinous confection. The package simply said "Sweet Potato," and the smiling Buddhist monk on the label suggested wholesomeness, yet when I asked the cashiers if they'd tried it before, they just stared. I silently hoped that, on their side of the cultural divide, silence wasn't the same as laughing at the idiot. I laid my money down and returned to my car, where the foil-lined bag released its injected nitrogen ghost. Produced by the fractional distillation of liquid air and as an industrial byproduct, nitrogen preserves packaged foods' freshness by delaying rancidity. Which is funny, since the word "fresh" never came to mind. Logs of Ipomoea batatas, if that is indeed what they were, rolled into my hand. Dusted with flour yet gummy as caulk, these treats more closely resembled misshapen mini-loaves of unbaked bread than the original tuber's tapered spears. While credit must be given for an attempt at formal replication, the snack yams were merely various wads, lumps, and tubules of yellow mass, though, in a less generous mood, I'd call them the spilled organs of a bleached fetal pig removed from formaldehyde. Sure, they were sweet − potateoey even − but the masticated starches coated my tongue, plastering narrow gaps between my teeth. And the taro-flour dust shellacked my fingertips, leaving dark gummy beads of the sort kindergartners carry from repeated nose-pickings. Chewing these refined, leached carcasses, I couldn't help but reflect on humanity's need to destroy Nature only to reconstruct her in inferior imitations. Shaped by machines into little finless rockets, separated from their skins, packaged sweet potatoes are the gustatory equivalent of a wave pool, what mountain-meadow-scented fabric softener is to the High Sierra. These potatoes are mere psyllium husk, bran separated from germ separated from stalk and sold back to us as a second, value-added item, some nutritive germ to be shaken into degermed, enriched, whitened wheat cereal. Studying the nitro-potato's striations and pitiful pallor, one can hear the dystopian philosophy of a cyborg god: "Why allow sweet raw material to wallow as a side dish when underpaid Shandong-province drones in facemasks can brush off the dirt and turn starch into a new Hostess empire?" I say, "Dear God: you must first create a more lifelike potato." - - - - Egg-on-a-stick Submitted by Betsy Finesilver Food-on-a-stick is a good idea. As a kid, I loved food that was served on sticks, like corn dogs and Popsicles. As an adult, I see more advantages than just the excitement of holding a stick stuck into something edible. Food-on-a-stick has the benefit of utility. For example, I recently visited the Illinois State Fair, where one can participate in all sorts of amazing rural adventures, such as milking a cow. However, these adventures make your hands dirty. Thankfully, the majority of food at the Illinois State Fair is available on a stick, and therefore you do not even need to worry about washing your hands before eating. At the Illinois State Fair, I received two free eggs-on-sticks when I purchased a salad. This was by far the food-on-a-stick I was most interested in trying. Had they offered me a free hard-boiled egg sans stick, I probably would have said, "Eh, no thanks." But hard-boiled-egg-on-a-stick sounded so intriguing I couldn't say no. Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed. Eating the egg-on-a-stick was very pleasant. In fact, in some ways, the egg-on-a-stick was superior to an egg-not-on-a-stick. Namely, the ability to rotate the egg via the stick enabled me to salt the outside of the egg evenly without resorting to rolling the egg in salt I'd sprinkled on a plate. In the end, the friend I shared my eggs-on-sticks with reviewed this food in a very accurate way. "You know," he said, "egg-on-a-stick doesn't really taste any different than egg-not-on-a-stick." Technically, he's right. Whether a hard-boiled egg is on a stick or not, the white part will be rubbery and slimy, while the mustard-colored yoke will be crumbly. Yet the refreshing addition of the stick made eating the egg a much more exciting experience. What will be next? Chicken-on-a-stick? I can only hope so. Or maybe chicken-on-a-stick came first. - - - - GT's SynergyGuava Goddess Submitted by Zoe Toffaleti When I took my childhood friend to my favorite café, I can't say I wasn't surprised that she grabbed a nice bottle of pink-dyed fermented mushroom juice. I was a bit surprised, however, when she opened it and informed me with a look of astonished disgust that it smelled like rubbing alcohol with traces of vinegar that had been used to dye Easter eggs. "That's fermented mushroom juice. I thought you knew," I said. "I never touch the stuff." Nevertheless, with two books to read and three essays to write in the next two days, I figured I could probably use some of the superfood that purportedly rejuvenates, restores, revitalizes, replenishes, and regenerates your digestion, metabolism, immune system, liver, cell integrity, and body alkalinity. Oh, and it also may have cured breast cancer. So I took the abandoned bottle and mixed it, half and half, with my ginger ale. It tasted a bit like ginger ale mixed with vinegar that had been used to dye Easter eggs. But I drank the whole thing, because no way in hell was I going to waste that ginger aleit had cost me $1.62. It continued to taste like ginger ale mixed with vinegar, but it was a nice pink color, and when I burped it tasted like guavas. But I certainly don't feel regenerated. Just a little repulsed. - - - - Mayonnaisey Bagel (With Fruit and Nuts) Submitted by Bonnie Scott Last night, my ex-girlfriend asked me if I would please come over to her house while she's at work this week and clean her cat's ears, because I'm the only person who knows how to do it. Our cat. He was our cat. I guess I have responsibilities to him. This afternoon, I go over to her house and take with me an iced coffee and a bagel from the Whole Foods across the street. In the store, I'm excited. I'm thinking about this 75-cent bagel and this 50-cent (because I bring my own cup) coffee and how it's a great value. A "meal deal." I even pick one of those healthier bagels, with fruit and nuts and whatever in it, in order to increase this stupendous value I'm getting. I'm excited. I forgo the purchase of butter or cream cheese, thinking I'm about to walk into a house that has butter in it. I do not need to pay for condiments. Value, added value. So I'm in the house and I clean the cat's ears and then I'm in the kitchen with the bagel. I think of toasting the bagel, in the lovely toaster oven I bought for my ex-girlfriend. I think of a warm, crunchy bagel with melted butter on it. Then I think that I shouldn't be interacting with the house so intimately. I shouldn't be spending so much time with it, "using" it. I'm a guest here now. Guests aren't so familiar with their hosts' kitchens. So, no toasting. I go raw. Then I'm slicing this bagel with the same knife I'd always used to slice bagels before I was only a guest here. I'm terrified of the familiarity of it. I know without looking in the drawer exactly which knife I want. I use this knife as if I own it and then realize too late what I'm doing and the knife is screaming, "Who touched me?" There's a thing in the Bible like this, about a bleeding woman who touches the cloak of Jesus and is healed but then won't confess to having done it. I try to erase my using of the knife, wash it and dry it and replace it in the drawer where I found it, the point facing in the same direction it was facing before. "Who touched me?" Oh, no. Not me. You can't blame me for this. Lastly, there's the issue of the butter. I won't eat a dry bagelwhat's the point? So I take the tub of butter out of the refrigerator. It has plenty in it. But you couldn't say it's full or even half full. Let's say there's a decent hunk in there, and I may have even been the one who bought this tub of butter, before I was evicted from this house, but there isn't enough to make me feel safe buttering both halves of the bagel. I worry that my ex-girlfriend will notice the missing butter, that she may even demand that I buy her more butter. If I take enough for both halves, she'll certainly know I've overstepped my boundaries as a guest in her home. So I take enough for oneless, even, than I think I would normally use. But what to do about the other half? I don't want her hydrogenated peanut butter. I don't want jam. It has to be something with fat in it. So I'm looking in the door of the fridge, and I notice the nice, big jar of mayonnaise. She has plenty of mayo. I guess she wouldn't notice if I took enough mayonnaise to spread on half the bagel. So I take it. And I spread it. And then I'm standing in the living room. Standing, not sitting, so as not to mess up the blanket my ex-girlfriend has covering her couch. Talking to the cat and eating this cold, mayonnaisey bagel (with fruit and nuts) and thinking that I really don't know what my station in life is anymore, and I don't know what the future holds, and I certainly compromise too much. And the taste? The taste is not entirely unpleasant. - - - - Chontaduros Submitted by Yesi Mills They don't export chontaduros, so you'll probably never have one. You'll have to take my word for it. The chontaduro grows wild on palm trees on Colombia's Pacific coast, home to the largest crops of cocaine in the world, along with tremendous poverty and violence. Around 10 years ago, these factors drove many of the coast's residents to look for new homes in more hospitable places, in a trend referred to as desplazamiento, or displacement. Most of them came to the cities in search of work, bringing with them the chontaduro, as well as its juice and oil. The chontaduro is a mix between a squash and a nut. Its shiny skin ranges from bright shiny orange to red. In Bogotá, they're sold in giant rolling carts. You can buy them raw with the peels, precooked with the peels, or cooked and peeled (the most expensive). Your vendor will offer you salt or honey as a condiment. I've heard that in Cali they serve them with lime and mayonnaise at bars, although I never saw it while I was there. They can rarely be found in supermarkets or even in green markets (plazas). The first time I ate one was the day after I spent the night with the woman I would live with for the next year. An Afro-Colombian with white hair tucked under a leather cap stood standing next to a red cart stacked high with chontaduros. He turned toward us, perhaps sensing that I was already sold on trying the waxy orange heart-shaped fruits. "Do you want to try one?" he asked me. A glutton like me? I don't think I even answered. I lifted my hand toward the old man's cutting board. He picked up a peeled chontaduro and placed it in the palm of my hand. I munched on it, trying to savor it and decide whether or not I liked it. Before I could evaluate it, I had nothing more in my mouth than the slippery pit. I didn't know how to describe it, whether I could eat a hundred or never eat one again, only that it was distinct from any other food I had eaten. The woman I would live with told me that sometimes the chontaduro vendors sang to women. She explained to me that in Bogotá they say that the chontaduro improves sexual prowess. Most of the chontaduro consumers here don't even like the flavor. The women who line up to buy its juice bring it to their husbands. She slapped me on the back and said, "You don't need it for that." My adopted Aunt Isabela also told me that the success of the chontaduro in the capital proved the ingenuity of the Afro-Colombians. "Twenty years ago, you couldn't get a chontaduro outside of the coast. When they came here with no money, they figured out the best way to sell them: right into the bed." - - - - Arlin's Mac 'n' Cheese Bites Submitted by Becky Adnot They serve these at a bar that I go to with my friends after class, an unassuming joint nestled in the charming red brick in Cincinnati's Gaslight District. You can get a pitcher of Miller Lite there for six bucks and a grilled cheese for $2.75, from a lady bartender who makes you feel that she's doing you a favor by taking your order and who then barks at you when your food is ready in a way that makes you feel pretty guilty, like you've kept your mother waiting to serve you after she's cooked you dinner. Especially if your mother was a butch, angry type who served different varieties of burgers and fried cheese for dinner. Anyway, it's a little taste of home. I moved to Cincinnati to go to grad school and to be with my boyfriend, who was born in this part of the country and is accordingly immune to what I like to think of as my uniquely Floridian tastes. "I miss seafood," I moaned. "I miss the beach. I'm becoming an ugly, pasty Midwestern girl." I threw myself onto the couch and wept, ignoring his gentle reminder that I am from north central Florida, that I actually only used to make the two-hour drive to the coast exactly twice each summer. To distract me, he took me to Arlin's and fed me an order of Mac 'n' Cheese Bites, to which, after seriously considering the mozzarella sticksthe theme of the menu at Arlin's seemed to run along the lines of YOU WILL EAT CHEESE AND LIKE ITI sulkily agreed. He shushed me soothingly when I tried to argue that the copy on the menu"Can't even describe these; just try 'em!"was a rhetorically weak command, and poured me a plastic cup of Miller Lite. The Mac 'n' Cheese Bites were triangular clusters of macaroni and cheese that had been battered and deep-fried, the resulting product nestled in a bed of limp lettuce leaves arranged in a red plastic basket that was lined with an obligatory sheet of wax paper, transparent in its mission to soak up the grease emitted from the basket's contents. I decided to, momentarily, put aside my reservations about the Midwest; I pulled one of the Mac 'n' Cheese Bites from its lettuce nest and took a bite. They tasted like mac and cheese that had gone where no mac and cheese had ever gone before. They were crispy on the outside and wonderfully gooey and cheesy on the inside, congealed clumps of macaroni fried to artery-clogging perfection. They tasted like I was going to eat cheese and like it. I took another bite and offered the basket to my boyfriend, who was suddenly looking a lot more attractive. Our hands touched as I reached into the basket for another. The Mac 'n' Cheese Bites tasted good. They tasted like I was going to like the Midwest. They tasted like I was falling madly, irreversibly in love. - - - - Kiwi Berries Submitted by Jeremy Griffin I'd like to think that the kiwi berry was the result of a cross-pollination accident between a kiwi and some sweet New Zealand berry. I hope it happened on its own in nature's strange glory, by adventurous bees or brisk spring winds. A more likely scenario is that the kiwi berry is the result of bored and overpaid New Zealand genetic-fruit scientists tampering with God's plan. The grape-sized lime-green fruits have all the punch and vigor of a kiwi fruit wrapped in the convenience of a berry. Gone is the coarsely haired rind and in its place is an edible skin not unlike that of a muscadine. The interior is reminiscent of the color and texture of a kiwi, only with tinier black seeds around a tinier white starburst. The taste is far less tart, thoughsomewhere between a fig and a blackberry. I imagine the mutation process providing many failed attempts before the current result. Surely somewhere there's a laboratory filled with nightmarish atrocities of fruits misshapen and foul. Like the scene in Alien Resurrection with all the horrifying failed Ripley clones, the kiwi berry, too, must have had several botched representationseach with a more grotesque and testicular appearance than the last. The kiwi berry might only be a gateway experiment, though, only a step in a process that will eventually lead to the discovery of some sort of über-fruit, which will no doubt look like a peach but taste like a cheeseburger. - - - - Wrap-itz Omega-3, Calcium,* Submitted by Bree Barton One day, I realized I was sick and tired of eating boring tortillas. When I grilled a quesadilla or made a healthy lunchtime wrap, I didn't want it to be average; I wanted it to be exceptional and exotic. I wantedno, neededa tortilla for the new era, an era of cultural pluralism and identities that are ultimately flexible. Tia Rosa was dead to me. It was the package that first caught my eye, a colorful conflation of graphics, text, and so many exclamation marks I felt instantly enthusiastic! There, behind the overwrought plastic, was a tortilla unlike all the rest. In fact, it wasn't a tortilla at all; it was a Wrap-itz Omega-3, Calcium, and Fiber White Wheat Wrap by ¡Tam-x-íco's! Overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, I bought a package. Tammy Young, founder of ¡Tam-x-íco's!, is evidently in the throes of a midlife crisis. Like many other middle-aged women, she's suffering from a major identity meltdown. But, unlike other frustrated forty-somethings, who express their rage by inflicting injury on husbands, luxury cars, expensive wardrobes, and small children, Ms. Young has turned her fury onto her tortillas. The result? Tammy's tortillas are confused. It's their confusion that makes Wrap-itz Omega-3, Calcium, and Fiber White Wheat Wraps by ¡Tam-x-íco's! so endearing. They are obviously bearing the brunt of many impossible questions. Are they white? Are they wheat? How the hell can they be both? Just as I find comfort in Tammy's tortillas, I find inspiration in ¡Tam-x-íco's! Tammy. She continues to reinvent herself. Someday, Tammy's legacy will reach across the nations, beyond drug lords and child prostitutes and border patrols and mariachi bands, past the great gulf and the Rio Grande, until the very name of Tammy is forever joined with the great country of M-x-íco itself. On that glorious day, Tammy will perform pure linguistic fusion, uniting her identity with that of Mexico in perfectly punctuated, admirably accented harmony. * As much as an 8-ounce glass of skim milk. - - - - Barbecue-Flavored Mealworms Submitted by Darrin DuFord Have you ever been to a zoo where you are encouraged to peek into the monkey cages and then, at lunchtime, the cafeteria serves you flame-grilled monkeyburgers? That's the kind of perversely confident "we're at the top of the food chain" outlook that the Montreal Insectarium exercises once a year at their annual insect tasting. I figured that, since I've kissed lipstick made of crushed-up cochineal bugs (like it or not, most lipsticks are made from them), over the years I've been priming myself for a dish of honey-roasted crickets or caterpillar ceviche. But how do I pull off a wine pairing without looking like an unrefined slob? Fortunately, the insectarium spared me such dinner-table anxiety, because they canceled this year's tasting. I had to settle for a box of dried, barbecue-flavored mealworms from the gift shop. Such a setback was like expecting roast suckling pig and ending up with a bag of fried pork rinds, although the literature inside the box promised that its contents occupied a loftier place on the gastronomic totem pole: "Mealworms are the stars of our insect tastings and can be prepared in lots of different ways. They are generally used to replace nuts, raisins or chocolate chips in many recipes." Before I threw them into cookie batter, I felt I should sample a few straight from the box. They were weightless and resembled Cheetos that forgot to puff up. So wispy were the mealworms that I needed three or four in my mouth at a time to actually feel like I was chewing on something, and that's when I met with a fiery saltiness followed by a surprisingly luxurious finish of tobacco. Perhaps an up-and-coming competitor to Nicorette? - - - - Generic-Brand Nicotine Polacrilex Lozenges Submitted by Whitney Collins I spend a lot of my precious time telling people what not to tell me. Don't tell me Kentucky's not South. Don't tell me we're out of beer again. Don't tell me a dog that's lost its hind legs and has to use an ass-cart to wheel around the park isn't embarrassed. And please, people, don't go telling me that generic-brand nicotine lozenges aren't food. Because they are. You could easily congeal them in a nice tomato aspic. You could pour a few hundred in a Ziploc, add some raisins, and whammo: trail mix. Why, you could even wrap them in bacon and pass these delicious little fuckers off as diver scallops. When I quit smoking seven years ago, I got on the Nicorette and never looked back. Sure, I spent three or four years of my REM sleep dreaming about Camel Lights and Marlboro Mediums and 35-foot-long menthol Capris, but I never took a puff in my waking hours. No, I just chewed from the moment I got up until the moment I fell asleep, sometimes even waking with my beloved matted in my hair. That was until I developed a bad case of TMJ, and what felt like a peptic ulcer, and also got knocked up. Then, for 10 solid months, I was nicotine-free. It was cute for a while. But don't tell me that a new baby won't make you think about smoking. Crack? Maybe. Weed? Likely. Parliaments? Definitely. And that's how I met the lozenge. Tired of having enough jaw power to chew my femur free from a grizzly trap, I went to Walgreens with a screaming baby on my hip, passed by the gum, and grabbed a box of generic lozenges. Genius on my part. Warning: The first few you try will taste slimy, mossy. Like an Altoid plucked from the bottom of a horse trough. But after a day or two you'll go back to Walgreens and ask if they sell these things in an I.V. drip. Whatever you do, do not buy the name-brand version. Commit is awful. Nothing more than an aspartame disk with a few flecks of junior-varsity nicotine. The generic is a true smoker's delight: like a pig-in-a-blanket. Except, instead of a biscuit, the blanket's an R-rated peppermint. And, instead of a cocktail wiener, the pig's a cigarette butt. Dee-lish! - - - - Popcorn-Soda Combo Submitted by Mandy Durham To keep my energy up after returning from maternity leave, I decided to start keeping healthy snacks at work. I bought a giant box of 94 percent fat-free Orville Redenbacher's butter-flavored microwave popcorn and brought it today. I decided I would eat a bag around 3:30, after I went to pump my boobs. I was really looking forward to eating the popcorn. At 3:15 I pumped and then I went to the break room to use the microwave. Directly over the microwave, someone had posted an article entitled "Microwave Popcorn Linked to Lung Disease." There was a picture of a shelf lined with Orville Redenbacher popcorn. I decided not to read the article. I popped the popcorn and ate part of it, but then I felt very thirsty and I think my lungs felt itchy. I wanted a cold A&W root beer. I went back down to the break room with a dollar bill to get the root beer. The machine would not take my dollar, even though it was very flat and crisp. I tried at least eight times. I went across the hall to ask the computer-services guys if they had change. Daryl gave me three quarters and Rick gave me one. I tried to give them my dollar bill, but they wouldn't take it. It was kind of awkward. I went back across the hall, but when I put my quarters in the machine they just came right back out the slot at the bottom. I only tried three times, because it seemed apparent that the machine was broken. I felt pretty pissed. I went back across the hall to give the quarters back to Daryl and Rick and told them the soda machine wouldn't take my money. Daryl asked me if I liked Dr. Pepper, which I do, not as much as root beer, though, so I said yes. He reached under his desk and handed me a can of Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper. I noticed the can said "Limited Edition." It was warm, because it had been under Daryl's desk. I said thanks and opened it and took a drink. It was gross. I was not surprised. - - - - The Half-Dill Pickle Submitted by Michael Dickerson Has there been a food trend in the past 10 years lamer than the "half-dill" pickle? Partially cured, comprehensively flawed, it is an abject failure in both concept and execution. Served primarily at upwardly mobile sandwich shops hellbent on becoming bistros, the half-dill betrays the pretensions of its purveyors with all the subtlety and manufactured ambiance of icicle lights at midday. Leaving aside the inherent cowardice of such an enterpriseits unwillingness to commit, its existential flip-flopperylet me address the thing itself. Cucumbers are delicious. As are pickles. One fresh and full with the bloom of youth, the other seasoned and spry with the spice of a life well lived. The half-dill, on the other hand, is a man without a country. Neither bracing nor briny, its flavor exists only in an indefinite quantum statewith a finish more elusive than Sasquatchand, ultimately, satisfies nobody. Taxonomically speaking, it is more abomination than appetizer. A cuke divided against itself cannot stand. Even when compromise works well and everyone leaves the negotiating table having been fed, no one is fully satisfied and all have a bad taste in their mouths. The taste is similar to that of the half-dill pickle. - - - - Mache (Lamb's Lettuce) Submitted by Marco Kaye For far too long, arugula held a bitter stranglehold over our salad bars. Then frisée entered and quickly exited our lives as the latest trend in roughage. Now there's a newcomer, with a name that rhymes with squash. It's mache, also called lamb's lettuce. Mache attempted a debut five years ago, on NPR, but the green hasn't caught on until now. The reasons for this are twofold. First, many of us were blindsided by the watercress takeover of '05 to '06 (which was met with a resounding "I guess just dump them into the microgreens" attitude). Second, mache-cultivation techniques have improved a lot. As each successive movement in art is a reaction against the previous mode, mache represents a collective shift away from the tart greens that populate those mesclun mixes. It tastes sweet and just slightly nutty. The tiny green leaves are attached seven or eight on a stem. It looks like several children's mittens tied together. And it's just as delicate and airy. It plates beautifully as well, the way a discarded child's mitten creates a forlorn oasis of humanity in a city street. I first tried mache with crab, cornichons, and preserved lemon. Obviously, I was not in my house. I didn't know it that night, but I had a feeling. I'd been waiting for a new lettuce. Could mache be it? The next week, my girlfriend found bags of the stuff at Trader Joe's. We tried it with chicken, capers, olives, and carrots. The chicken crushed the small, childlike "hands" of the mache, but it was still a successful salad. Mache has found its place in the sun. I predict it will go mainstream within the year. To those who have been waiting for the next hot salad green, put down your heads of Boston lettuce and gracefully pick up some mache. - - - - Phillips Pasteurized Crab Meat, Handpicked, Claw Submitted by K. Kraft After several consecutive late nights of drinking, I'm fairly fatigued and my heart is in my stomach. She's really been confusing me as of late. She loves me, but fears that I'm going to move away in a year and break her heart, and for this we should end our relationship now. I talked her off the ledge, but I feel like we're coasting in a sort of purgatory. We've known each other only two months and have moved the relationship along too rapidly. I think she's rebounding. Today is a Sunday. Sundays, I use Phillips Crab Claw Meat effectively as a vehicle for Old Bay, breadcrumbs, whiskey, and other crab-cake filler. It's good. I once attempted to eat an entire one-pound can of Phillips Pasteurized Crab without any accoutrements. By itself, the crab-claw meat exhibits a sharply diminishing marginal utility. Sex with her is great; we've always had strong chemistry. She's beautiful and super-fun when we've been drinking. Naturally, the kids complicate matters. - - - - Sugarless Tropical Twist Submitted by Sam de Silva While browsing through old journal entries, I came across this snippet from Monday, September 26, 2005: The expectations of my family are more suffocating than I thought they would be. On a brighter note, Tropical Twist Trident gum now comes in an "E-Z close" pack ... It's the little things. Seriously. This stuff is superb. - - - - The Hot Brown Submitted by Kristen D. Erickson The Hot Brown, Louisville's culinary claim to fame, was first created at the Brown Hotel in 1926. And anyone who has had a chance to sample this Southern not-so-delicate delicacy is no doubt still clutching his or her stomach in anguish. It starts with toast. Thick toast. And then about a pound of turkey piled high. Next, the Mornay sauce, which is part cheese, part roux, and all thick and gooey. In an attempt to health this thing up, tomatoes are added. This is all put under the broiler until browned, and then it is served hot with bacon on top. At first, you enjoy it. The cheese sauce, glistening, bubbling, calls to you. The bacon? How can you resist its tasty goodness? You dive right in, making sure to get a bit of everything in one bite. But this is not a sprintit is a marathonand, about halfway through this ginormous monstrosity, you hit a wall. A wall of cheese. You will crash. It will not be pretty. - - - - Penne à la Vodka Submitted by Larissa Williams You know how it is when you meet your roommate's mother. At first, you're like, "It's so great to finally meet you! You two could be sisters! You're so much like your daughter!" etc. But then you're all, "I forgot that I really don't like your daughter, and having two of you around is about as fun as eating glass." And then the shards of glass criticize your hair and the new curtains you put up in your bedroom. So your roommate's mother throws a dinner party at your house. She knocks on your bedroom door and asks you to come out and "be social for a change" and maybe "put on something a little less casual." So then you join a contingent of your roommate's friends and relatives for some bullshit pre-meal board game, but what you really want is to take the pot of boiling water and tumbling penne noodles off the stove and douse the next person who says "Ooh, I rolled doubles!" Instead, you hang sulkily in the kitchen and watch cup after cup of your own (expensive!) vodka get dumped into some sloppy red paste bubbling away on the burner and think, "Does all that alcohol really burn off, or will this evening devolve into a belligerent charades matchup?" Then you sit down at the table, and there is a sprig of thyme deftly balanced atop each person's pasta heap. (The pasta is served in bowls bought in real-life Italia, your roommate's mother crows.) But the thyme is from the garden out front, and all those herbs have the lingering midpalate tang of cat pee. You eat your first mouthful of penne à la vodka, a mob of noodles and sauced sauce, all the while trying to surreptitiously leave the table and turn down the thermostat from its (un)comfortable home at eighty-fucky-five degrees. With their eyes rimmed gooey black with makeup and their fondness for unnerving heat, your roommate and co. must be descended from ring-tailed lemurs. After dinner, some light reading. Your roommate's mom does the aforementioned reading aloud to a room of rapt guests, who have "never heard of this David Sedaris. What a funny guy! Too bad about the gay thing." You silently reflect upon this hell of your own making. Her mother leaves in three days. You have enough leftover penne à la vodka for a week: they've filled the fridge with portions individually wrapped in tinfoil with the date written out in script"August Thirteenth Two Thousand and Seven," in purple marker, for Christ's sake. "But only eat one at a time, dear. You don't want to get too sexy around the hips." - - - - My Son James's Favorite Snacks Submitted by Lisa Domby "This place doesn't have a name. It's in the old Johnny's Sporting Goods, but they don't sell crickets here anymore." Takis Fuego (rolled corn chips, fire flavor): "These things taste way crunchier and way spicier and way awesomer than Doritos. The guacamole ones smell good, but they don't taste good." Paleton Patolin paleta de malvavisco (chocolate-covered marshmallow with gummy eyes and mouth): "This thing looks like a weird clown, but it tastes pretty good." Duvalin Avellana/Vainilla dulce con leche descremada (hazelnut and vanilla skimmed-milk candy): "Mom, what do you think is in this stuff? It feels like melted chocolate." Paleta de vainilla (vanilla popsicle): "This thing has a good flavor, but why did they put three raisins on the top of it? They should be chocolate chips. Or I thought they would be vanilla beans. Can you bite the top off? But don't take too much, because the other stuff is good." Jarritos Toronja (grapefruit soda): "This isn't made out of real grapefruit, because I hate grapefruit, but I love this." Hall's Chela Limón (beer-and-lime-flavored cough drops): "They don't have this flavor at CVS. That's why I like to get them here." Babidinos Paletadinos sabor tamarindo enchilada (tamarind lollipop): "This is my favorite thing to get. This thing is really chewy and spicy. You can't eat the whole thing, because it's too spicy, but you can save it in the refrigerator for a really long time. If you don't put it in the refrigerator, ants will get on it." - - - - Green Figs Submitted by Audrey Harris Their price varies based on the weather and how vulnerable you look at the time you stop by the Pakistani fruit stand at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 14th Street. This rainy morning, with no umbrella and only a twenty in my wallet, a basket set me back $3.99. With bright yellow-green skin and stubby stems, they look like pert baby-alien heads. Their brains are soft and strawberry-hued and pornographically sweet. Recipe for green-fig tartlets: Cut store-bought phyllo dough into rounds with a cookie cutter. Sprinkle with sugar. Top each round with a green-fig half, pulp side up. Smear a little goat cheese on the fruit. Roast for 15 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Top each fig with a roasted, salted almond from the handy bag in your pantry. - - - - Dwight Yoakam's Chicken Fries Submitted by Jonathan Holley A product of the Bakersfield Biscuits Brand, Dwight Yoakam's Chicken Lickin's Chicken Fries come approximately 12 to a box, which costs just a dollar. These are similar to the chicken fries available at Burger King, but of inferior quality. The bright red, orange, and yellow packaging of Dwight Yoakam's chicken purports that they are "inspected for wholesomeness" by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The packaging is evasive regarding the results of said inspection. Were these fries deemed wholesome? It seems impossible. In my 1997 analysis of the chickenesque, I famously hypothesized that Nabisco's Chicken in a Biskit crackers would forever maintain position as lowest rung on the chicken continuum. Today, Dwight Yoakam offers irrefutable counterevidence and collapses my former worldview. - - - - Naked Submitted by John Zackel The Walk of Shame, as it used to be called back in the 20th century, is typically defined as one's walk home after a sexy night spent at a lover's. The "walk" part of it is pretty self-explanatory, but the "shame" part comes in because you don't take a shower in the morning. Your breath, as Vonnegut so nicely put it, smells like mustard gas, and you don't have any deodorant, and your hair looks like one part Flock of Seagulls and one part wet dog. During this Walk of Shame, your chance of encountering a distant relative, a TV news reporter filming stock footage of homeless people, or, more likely, every person you've ever known, increases inversely with your attractiveness at any given moment. "Hey, So-and-So," someone might say from across the street, waving you over. "You look like shit!" You quickly try to smooth out your hair. "Thanks, Father Thomas," you might answer. He'll sniff the air as you approach. "Have you been having relations before marriage, So-and-So?" "No, Father Thomas," you'll answer, crossing your fingers behind your back. "I have to say, So-and-So," he'll say, "you smell like booty." "No, sir!" you'll pipe up. "It's just this Naked All Natural Antioxidant Juice Smoothie I have with me." And you'll hold up the Naked All Natural Antioxidant 100% Juice Smoothie you purchased for a whopping $4 (!) at the gas station across the street from your lover's house. "Well, I'll be a monkey's grandson! That Juice smells like a [slang term for a horribly vulgar sexual act, named after a city in Ohio]!" You'll nod aggressively, unscrew the plastic cap, and take a swig of antioxidant goodness. You'll make a satisfied sound, then hold the plastic recyclable bottle up to the light of day. "Just juice!" you'll shout. Father Thomas, or whomever you might be talking to, will gladly accept your fervor, pat you on the back, and ask you why your generation is so accepting of homosexuals. Before you offer an informed, convincing explanation of why Father Thomas is a bit of a hypocrite (if you know what I mean), you'll take another swig from Naked All Natural Antioxidant 100% Juice Smoothie and decide right then and there: Healthy Never Tasted So Good. - - - - Dongpo Rou Submitted by Benjamin Gaulke This pork dish, literally "Dongpo's meat," is named after the great 11th-century Song-dynasty poet Su Dongpo, who, as a bureaucrat and engineering genius, was responsible for the construction of a causeway across the West Lake, in Hangzhou. Supposedly, he fed the workers his eponymous delicacy in order to give them strength and energy. The other, probably apocryphal, genesis story of this dish is that Su one day was bored and decided to stew some pork. He then got distracted by a game of chess and left the pork in the pot for too long. He returned to find the meat incredibly tender and succulent. This was a benign disaster matched only by Louis Pasteur's failure to cover the petri dish where he subsequently discovered penicillin. Every Chinese person I have ever eaten Dongpo rou with has insisted that it is very healthy and good for me. Considering that it is a solid cube of pork and more than 50 percent fat, I completely disagree. Dongpo rou is the most disgusting and delicious food I have ever eaten. Timid Americans often refuse it, which means more for me. I have pounded down three of these 3-inch cubic, greasy delights in a row. A friend of mine claims that Dongpo rou tastes like brownies. If so, it is the perfect combination of meat and dessert. I marvel at the sophisticated origin of such a seemingly philistine dish; it would be like discovering that Einstein invented the Hot Pocket. Su Dongpo was a truly great man. - - - - Listerine Whitening Quick Dissolving Strips Submitted by Micki E. Grover From the company that single-handedly taught America that your mouth ain't clean till it tingles like hellfire comes the best new candy in years! Listerine has taken the modern obsession with vanity and given it the stick-to-your-gums charm of a Butterfinger. Imagine a Listerine-flavored Jelly Belly that whitens, too. The strip is as delicious as it is functional, and, by placing on it a four-week maximum-usage restriction, Listerine has cultivated the "get it while you can" hype of short-lived edible oddities like the McRib or the Cadbury Creme Egg. Only one element in Listerine's marketing campaign confuses me, and that is the claim that the strips dissolve within 5 to 10 minutes. I'm still finding sweet, sweet morsels from yesterday's strips; why not take a hint from your friends in the gum business and call them "longer-lasting"? Listerine, you silly fools, people want more for their dollar, not less. Great for getting paper-white chompers on the go, freshening your breath after your midday hummus break, or just swallowing directly, Listerine Whitening Quick Dissolving Strips are the only thing I have to look forward to during the slow afternoon hours at work. I just hope nobody calls. I can't swallow my saliva when I have these things in my mouth. - - - - Odwalla Strawberry C Monster Fruit Smoothie Submitted by Jacob Barron In their quest to supply lonely office workers with a weapon to combat the threat of weather-weary immune systems, the Odwalla juice company seems to have forgotten to remove the stems from any of the strawberries before juicing them. - - - - Kasugai Muscat Gummy Candy Submitted by Scott Sand The package states, "Its translucent color so alluring and taste and aroma so gentle and mellow offer admiring feelings of a graceful lady." I don't even know what that means exactly; I'm just glad the candies inside the package are wrapped individually, the only thing preventing me from devouring the whole bag in two big handfuls. The package also says "Muscat 100%," then something in Japanese. I don't know what they mean by that, either. The third ingredient, after sugar and corn syrup, is concentrated Muscat juice, but they also contain artificial Muscat flavor. I wish I could read Japanese. At least I can read the English, like "contains milk ingredient," which is in a bold font. Too bad for the lactose intolerant, because these rule. - - - - 4C Sugar-Free Totally Light 2Go Submitted by Max Zaenglein The idea is to rip open the tiny packet and pour this fine powder into your water bottle, giving your water flavors that regular water can only dream about. Having only recently discovered that a pomegranate is a fruit and not something one treats with medication, I was curious, to say the least. It tasted like a liquefied Fruit Roll-Up, and left a sticky coat on my teeth I had experienced only once before, by eating 50 or so packs of Nerds candy. Although I was disgusted, my curiosity was again piqued: what did this stuff taste like before it made contact with water? Not fully brave enough to pour it directly onto my tongue, I took a quick sniff at the now almost empty packet. The remaining powder shot up my nose and I can only assume that it exploded, because I had to close my eyes to prevent them from shooting out of my skull. The taste is nasty, but snorting it is fuckin' awesome, if you can handle the ride. - - - - Luna Bars Submitted by Nicholas Markman For my 21st birthday, the Clif Bar company sent me the recently introduced Luna bar, "the whole nutrition bar for women." That's what it said right above my printed name. I understand mistakes. Maybe if my name were Alex or Pat or Sam I could have shrugged it off. But my name isn't Alex, Pat, or Sam. It's Nicholas, and I have never known a female Nicholas. Did I really need to be singled out like that? Couldn't they address the bar to "Current Resident"? My birthday was teetering on disaster. How did I get on this list, anyway? Did I accidentally buy women's deodorant while using my Safeway Club Card? Is it because I used to shave my legs before swim meets? Was it the drag performance I did at 4-H camp? Regardless, I am considering sending a long and irate letter to the CEO of the Clif Bar company. That aside, the Luna bar was delicious. I would recommend Luna bars to anyone looking for a meal that delivers quick calorie intake and hormonal balance. - - - - Kellogg's Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops Submitted by Isaac Marion I've always been a big fan of Corn Pops, or, as they're now called, Pops, having modernized by dropping that old-fashioned "corn" from the name, and changing their tag line to "Big Yellow Taste!" I have no idea what "yellow" is supposed to taste like, but Pops taste pretty good. So, I was delighted and curious when I saw Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops at my local Safeway. I took home a box and immediately poured a bowl. What's this? The Pops aren't in their usual puffed-corn-kernel shape; they're all perfectly round spheres. This can't be a good sign. I take a bite, and, instead of the soft, gently pliant crunch that I'm expecting, the spheres shatter between my teeth like little balls of peanut-buttery pumice. Apparently, the addition of the chocolate-peanut-butter flavoring necessitated a complete change in the basic composition of the cereal, because what I was eating were not Pops at all; they were slightly larger-than-average Cocoa Puffs, or maybe even bits of Cap'n Crunchthe ultracrunchy polar opposite of sweet, gentle Pops! The antithesis! And I have the scarred gums to prove it. How does Kellogg get away with a switch-up like this? Why would they call this cereal Pops when it is so clearly not Pops? Now I'm waiting nervously for the day I open a bottle of "New, Improved Taste!" Pepsi only to find it filled with Lil' Smokies. - - - - Celestial Seasonings Submitted by Janis Butler Holm I brew five or six cups of this drink every day, each one sweetened with a packet of Splenda. Though I can't really identify the rooibos, the sweet orange-mango flavoring makes my taste buds sing. One of the websites devoted to rooibos claims that this South African tea is good for asthma, colic, eczema, hay fever, headaches, hypertension, insomnia, irritability, and nervous tension. Mercy! Rooibos, the site goes on to say, has "significant amounts" of polyphenol antioxidants, which makes it a good choice if you're worried about cancer, stroke, or heart disease. Another website says that rooibos contains the following beneficial flavonoids: aspalathin, chrysoeriol, isoorientin, isoquercitrin, isovitexin, luteolin, orientin, quercetin, rutin, and vitexin. Isn't that nice? And recent studies suggest that rooibos may reduce brain damage from age-related diseases. While it can't make you smarter, it may help you stay smart longer. Of course, black teas and green teas offer equally impressive health benefitsbut rooibos doesn't contain caffeine. You can drink it all day without overstimulation. (No flying around the ceiling when it's close to your bedtime.) And it doesn't have the acidity/bitterness of other herbal teas. (Are you paying attention, Celestial Seasonings?) But, whatever you do, don't spill this drink. Though it looks red in your cup, Celestial Seasonings rooibos (I can't speak for other brands) will dye your clothes yellow when you slop it down your front. It's a bright, happy yellow, but it won't make you glad. - - - - Golden Flake Crisp & Crunchy Cheese Curls Submitted by Jackie May As a recent transplant from the Midwest to the South, I'm doing my best to assimilate. I walk by the towers of shrink-wrapped hog jowls at Wal-Mart without shrieking or taking pictures on my camera phone, I've said "y'all" once or twice, and if a waitress asks me, "What kind of Coke?," I don't hit her. And, when faced with a vending machine that offered both Cheetos and Golden Flake Crisp & Crunchy Cheese Curls, I went for the Golden Flake. Golden Flake Cheese Curls would appeal to both extremes of the cultural spectrumat one end, New York Times food writers, say, or Harold Bloom; on the other, people raised by beavers. These curls taste classy and authentic. They taste like food assembled entirely from recognizable ingredients, like cornmeal batter cunningly infused with actual cheese and fried in oil by cheerful people wearing hairnets. They don't turn your fingers orange. For those of us in the middle of the cultural spectrum, for whom a bag of Cheetos contains neither the shame of downward mobility nor the nightmare glitter of an incomprehensible new world, Golden Flake Crisp & Crunchy Cheese Curls just taste really weird and wrong. They make me want to hop a flight to Minneapolis. - - - - Surprise Zombie Sundae Submitted by Megan Baker At the Omega Restaurant & Pancake House of Downers Grove, Illinois, after grubbing up such entrées as GRILLED CALF'S LIVER, NORWEGIAN SARDINE PLATE, and HOBO BANQUET, you may find your taste buds overwhelmed. You may lean back in your seafoam-green seat, pat your stomach, take a deep breath of secondhand-smoke-filled air, and say, "Hey, you know what? After munching on that week-old bread basket featuring sesame-seed rolls, wheat buns, croissants, Italian-looking breadsticks, saltines, and a banana-nut muffin and downing those POPPERS (JALAPEÑO) , I think my tummy is about to bust." That's what the TUMMY BUSTER is for. It's only the "Largest and Most Beautiful Sundae You Have Ever Seen." But you're up for something wilder. Something unexpected. Something ... from the crypt. Something by the name of SURPRISE ZOMBIE. It's the "World's Largest Ice Cream Soda." It's $8.95. It's obscene. Your waitress, Lezlee, must enlist the help of a co-worker to both prepare and carry the monster to your table, cursing you all the while, you little shit, you who have the nerve to order 60 ounces of ice cream at 1 in the morning, just to see what's so surprising about an ice-cream soda, other than the fact that it's associated with a resurrected corpse. Surprise! It tastes terrible. Like a good ice-cream soda that has died and returned as a mutant dessert, perhaps. Once you pick out the eight or so drink umbrellas (surprise!it's a tropical zombie), random clusters of maraschino cherries, and stale Oreos, you meet a foamy mass of whipped cream that is not so much sweet as it is sudsy. By the time your spoon has scraped through the froth, a glacial ceiling has crystallized atop the float. You must chip, chip away if you ever wish to explore the murkiness that lies beneath. What will your excavation reveal? Surprise! Zero flavors of ice cream that go with root beer. From the depths of the cloudy beige waters, you pull strawberry, mint-chocolate-chip, butter-pecan, coffee, cookie-dough, and rainbow-sherbet scoops. If you dare to taste the dessert-creature, you will find that each and every bite tastes like chilled Wite-Out. But you don't care at this point. It's Lezlee's brains you're drooling for now. - - - - Chipsters Submitted by Steve DiPietro In the late '70s, there was a snack food like no other. I still don't know if it was corn- or potato-based. All I know is that it was the greatest-tasting snack in the world. Salty and somehow tangy, every single bite was pure bliss. My mom would bring home a couple of bags from every trip to Stop & Shop, but they would be gone in a day. There was never a half-empty bag in the cupboard. If it was opened, it was finished in one sitting. The perfect food had been created. Life was good. It didn't last long. Soon, my Chipsters disappeared from the shelves, and not only from Stop & Shop. Star Market, DeMoulas, and even the First National Food Store stopped carrying them. Inexplicably, the only place that carried them was Moe Black's, a hardware store four towns over. My joyous intake was thus drastically reduced, as my mom didn't share my addiction and didn't see the need to, as she put it, drive halfway across the universe for chips. What she wasn't understanding was that these weren't chips. These were Chipsters, an entirely different breed. Luckily, my dad would make a trip to the hardware store every couple of months. I would scurry off to the basement, away from my siblings, to slowly savor my lost love, wondering what kind of world could make such a great snack treat and then make it so hard to obtain. I was about to find out that the world could be even more cruel than I'd first imaginedthe hardware store, like so many stores before it, gave in to the forces of evil and stopped carrying Chipsters. Twenty years later, I found them again. I was in a small convenience store in Italy. I saw a picture of what looked like my beloved Chipster on a box labeled "Cipsters." My friend told me that, in Italian, the C is pronounced as a ch sound. That was all I needed to know. I threw a handful of lire at the clerk, ripped open the box, and was transported back to my childhood. Language barriers, the Atlantic Ocean, and even time itself couldn't keep me from my destiny. The world was once again a good place. I stocked up on several boxes and savored them for the rest of our trip through Europe. It was a short-lived reunion, but one that I cherished. Six years later, I got married. Naturally, our honeymoon was in Italy. I plan on moving there soonwhether my lady comes with me or not. - - - - All-You-Can-Eat Crab Legs Submitted by Briana Newton Until recently, I had never planned on eating crab legs. I had long ago stopped eating meat, and only ate seafood that didn't resemble any sea creature in particular. Things like tuna salad or clam chowder were acceptable. But crab legs were far too lifelike. I was scared off by their witch-finger appearance, disgusted by the thought of tearing into them with my bare hands and those awful metal shell-cracking tools. And then one night my sister and I were at one of those casino all-you-can-eat buffets. While waiting to be seated, I thought about the mashed potatoes and the salad bar, and hoped for some mac and cheese. But none of the people returning to their tables from the buffet seemed to share my enthusiasm for side dishes. Instead, I watched one person after another pass by with urgency in their step and a protective hand over the massive tangle of crab legs on their plate. I wondered if I was missing out. My sister felt the same way. We decided to try them. After we'd been given a table, we ventured to the buffet, which was actually a whole separate room of food. On the far wall, a mob had formed around two steaming kiosks overflowing with crab legs. Empty plates clutched to their chests, the other diners impatiently waited for their turn to help themselves to the bounty. Occasionally, someone would load a plate too fully, earning dirty looks that said, "Now there won't be enough for me and I'll have to punch you." I stood around, unapologetically staring at everyone, while my sister went in for the kill. She returned with one sad little serving (half a crab) for us to try. But first we had to get the requisite plastic cup of melted butter, which was dispensed from a 10-gallon steel drum with a spout on the end. Getting the meat out of the crab leg was a challenge. I pulled, I cracked the shells, I made exaggerated harrumphing sounds to prove just how hard I was trying. In the end, I freed a sizable red-and-white section from a leg. And then the rest of the dinner became a sort of competition: Who could yank out the biggest intact piece of meat? In the end, I left the table with tiny crab chunks wedged under my fingernails, butter running down the backs of my arms to my elbow, and an uneasy camaraderie with the rest of the buffet patrons. It tasted OK, but it was probably the only dinner I've ever had that left me with a sense of accomplishment. Also, I discovered the tendon inside the leg that, when pulled, makes the claw open and close. Neat! - - - - Poi Submitted by Nathan Adkisson I was recently on the island of Kauai for a vacation with some distant, middle-aged relatives. We decided it would be a good idea to go to a luau, becausewell, why not? We were tourists. At the luau, we saw some good fire dancing, heard a mediocre cover of "Tiny Bubbles," and were served roasted pork with something called poi, "a traditional Hawaiian condiment that has been part of the natives' diet for several millennia," we were told. I took issue with this statement. Poi is wallpaper glue. I believe that fact precludes it from being hailed as some kind of historical local delicacy. Just how gullible do they think we are? As soon as they put the bowls of the thick paste on the table, I thought I was back in the orthodontist's office getting my braces removed, the taste of the adhesive thick on my tongue. I read in a pamphlet at the table that poi is made from the "corm of the kalo plant (known widely as taro)." I have a few things to say about that. I have supreme confidence that there is no such thing as a kalo, and even if there is, why would it be known as taro instead? And "corm"? It's like they didn't even try to come up with a word that would fool us. Perhaps if they'd thrown in some apostrophes and some double vowels it might have worked. Coo'rm, perhaps, or maybe ka'irmi. Instead, we were all able to see right through the ruse. I am positive that poi is in fact rubber cement containing a recently introduced food coloring known as Gray No. 5. I may have been a tourist, but I know authenticity when I eat it. - - - - Yogurt With Granola and Fruit Submitted by Eric Karjala I had been living in a marriage of convenience to cereal and its low cost and satisfying taste. I found it presumptuous when a cereal billed itself as "part of a complete breakfast," because it implied that I had the time and resources to procure a bran muffin and a Carmen Miranda hat's worth of fruit every time I was hungry. For me, cereal alone could constitute an entire lunch or dinner. The problem was that it's hard to feel like an adult when you're scooping up soggy mouthfuls of flakes from where they bob like driftwood in a sea of backwashed milk. This is probably because cereal is for babies. Some roommates recently turned me on to plain yogurt and its special versatility. Plain yogurt is kind of like the "fruit on the bottom" yogurt I'm used to, except on the bottom of plain yogurt there is only more yogurt. It is far more elegant to add in the fruit yourself. Aggregate fruits like raspberries or strawberries offer a compelling counterpoint to yogurt's natural sourness. True customizing comes with your choice of granola. Grocery stores specializing in natural and organic products offer a wide selection of granola, sold in bulk at reasonable prices. Maple granola, pumpkin granola, cranberry granola, vanilla granolaI don't care which you choose; you're the hero of this story. Dump your granola and berries into a bowl half-filled with yogurt and then stir until you've got an even distribution of fruit and a doughlike consistency. The resulting taste is as decadent as gelato, yet more healthful and fulfilling. More importantly, nobody looks at you askance when you eat your treat of yogurt and granola. You're no baby: you're a health-conscious adult with a fondness for expediency and a penchant for constrained variety. These are the things I kept telling myself, but the other day I looked down at my overflowing bowl of yogurt and granola and blackberries and saw nothing but a wet mound of self-deception. It was time to admit to myself that I was basically eating cereal, only with less viscosity. Not regular cereal, no: cereal in slow-motion. Still, this should buy me another two years before I have to learn how to cook. - - - - Gatorade A.M. Submitted by Chris Olwell The bottle says Gatorade A.M. helps put back the fluids and energy you lose during a full night's sleep, to which I reply: "It's about time." Finally, someone has engineered an athletic drink for people like me, Athletes of Sleeppeople for whom it is less physically taxing to be awake than asleep. I had to try it. So recently, after a thoroughly exhausting night of sleeping, I woke up with orange-strawberry. I quickly regained all the energy I lost by sleeping so hard. Sleeping like I do drains fluids from the human body at an astonishing rate. But after drinking 20 ounces of Gatorade A.M., I had fluids to spare. I peed three times in three hours! Four times in four hours! I, and the scientists of the world, remain confounded by the fact that any one of those pees would've filled two 20-ounce Gatorade bottles. Easily. Plus, Gatorade A.M. also works in the afternoon and early evening if that's when you wake up. A-fucking-mazing. - - - - Bimbo Conchas Submitted by Bradley Smith I'm a simple 33-year-old. I weigh 297 pounds. I am an obvious expert on all things sweet. Hailing from Ohio, I am also worldly. I recently drove with my wife and daughter on a whirlwind tour of Texas: 63 hours, 3,300 miles. With a 5-year-old. Thank God for portable DVD players. Texarkana, Midland, San Antonio, Houston, Galveston. Upon refueling near the junction of I-10 and some other God-awful Texas state highway, I found them: Bimbo-brand conchas. The English portion of the label explained that they were fine pastry. There were other terms I have since sent to SETI for examination: "Ahora mas grandes y ricas!" I dismissed these as complete gibberish and, breathless, ripped open the plastic two-pack. Why? Ever had a hamburger bun with cinnamon "icing" stripes spanning the 4-inch expanse of crust? This bun wasn't even sliced! And I'm not wasting a delicious pure-beef patty on one of these. Come on. Get real. My daughter's face crinkled. After my first bite, I just looked at the concha. Two weeks later, I still haven't eaten the second portion. - - - - Carnival Flavor Skittles Submitted by Benjamin Strauss I loved carnivals as a kid, the loudness, the excitement. Skittles has taken my favorite carnival foods and made them easier to eat. Who wants the fun of twirling cotton candy around your fingers and stuffing clouds into your mouth when you can pop a pill that tastes nothing like it? Who wants a caramel apple that tastes like caramel or apple? Who wants a slushy that contains cool refreshing ice that creeps down your throat? Not Skittles. Skittles also doesn't want you to have fun whipping around your licorice whip before you eat it. To Skittles, a carnival would be better as a capsule. To me, that's the shape of a desolate future. - - - - Jelly Belly's Ant Bully Sweet Rocks Mix Submitted by Neil Graf My girlfriend works in an optometrist's office in a strip mall. The shop is right next to a video store. Video stores receive tons of promotional swag, and last year the store received a boatload of these 1.6-ounce boxes of gourmet jellybeans. So many that they were unable to sell or give them all away. I'm not sure how The Ant Bully did in the rental market, but it's an animated movie that features the big-chin voice of Bruce Campbell. Long story short, the video guy gave my girlfriend about 10 boxes of these things. That's a whole pound of Jelly Bellysnot bad for free. According to the manufacturer's text, "the 20-flavor mix features classics like Very Cherry, Watermelon and more as well as four new flavors inspired by the movie: Alka Root, Lawn Clippings, Caterpillar and of course, Ant Hill!" Yeah, about that last one, Ant Hillit's a fucking dirt-flavored jellybean. I kept waiting for the crunch of little rocks on my teeth, but it never comes. It just tastes like dirt. Even if you mix it with another bean, even a handful of them, the dirt shines through. I'm embarrassed at the way I kept eating them, and complaining, and eating more. I favored them over more traditional Jelly Belly fare. Now that I reflect on these events, I think I wanted to be face down in dirty sugar. On the plus side, the Lawn Clippings beans taste amazing. - - - - Pine Sap for the Savage Soul Submitted by Kendra Langdon Juskus When I was 9 years old, there were big pine trees in my backyard, and my friends and I would rush around beneath them in the imaginary Costa Rican heat, fighting fabricated jungle maladies among fictitious rainforest tribes. We gathered white, frothy sap from the trunks of the trees and folded into it different blends of dirt, pebbles, and leaves. Then we fed our concoctions to the imaginary tribal elders who humbly volunteered to risk their lives for the advancement of science and the good of their clan's health. Some of them died for the cause, necessitating elaborate funeral proceedings and much dressing up. But others survived, their throats and gullets coated with bitter white sludge and their ailments markedly improved. These were our victories. Their sticky smiles spurred us on to make viscous sap soup by the plastic bowlful, dishing it out graciously to the jungle masses anxiously awaiting our deliverance, and helping mankind, generally. - - - - T.G.I. Friday's Jack Daniel's Glazed Ribs Submitted by Ter McDermott This may be a Jack London story line, I'm not positive, but here's the gist of it: There's an Eskimo who kills a polar bear by feeding it what is basically razor wire wrapped in some meat. The bear wolfs it down whole, and as it's digesting the meat, the metal slowly unravels and starts tearing viciously, slowly, at the bear's guts. The Eskimo follows the subsequent blood trail until he comes across the dead bear, its insides fully laid waste, all ignominious and red, upon the snow. The story went something like that. All right. Now envision that story with my wife and me playing the role of the polar bear, T.G.I. Friday's playing the part of the Eskimo hunter, and their Jack Daniel's Glazed Ribs as the seemingly delicious meat that tears apart our guts. Postscript: We split those ribs. Surely it would have destroyed us altogether had we ingested an entire portion each. - - - - Emerald Cove Spicy Nori Snacks Submitted by Jake Ruiter The label's idyllic scene of a tropical ocean cove is a dead giveaway that these treats come to us from the first place you think of when you think of authentic Japanese seaweed snacks: Asheville, North Carolina. Their texture is not unlike that of a Communion wafer. But the flavor, by Jove, is immense, and indubitably spicy. For a moment, there's the sense that you're traveling out on some rusty-bottomed trawler with the alcoholic fishermen of Asheville, chugging rotgut until one of you (maybe you. Why not you? You're a smart person) strikes upon the idea of dredging up kelp and Irish moss to add to the chum bucket and then drinking the mixture by the mugful for nutrition's sake. - - - - O'Coco's Organic Baked Chocolate Crisps Submitted by Melissa Sampson Last Monday, exactly twenty-six 0.7-ounce bags of O'Coco's Organic Baked Chocolate Crisps were bestowed upon me by two obnoxiously cheery sample-passer-outers who wandered into my store from off the street. "Only 90 calories! Just 2 grams of fat!" they chirped, while rapidly shoveling little pink-and-orange bags onto the counter. They took my picture in front of the pile before waving and prancing out the door, leaving me in a confused daze and with a shitload of organic chocolate crisps. I shoved the twenty-six little packages into a shopping bag and put them in the break room for anyone brave enough to try some. A few hours later, with lunch all too far away, that brave person was me. I mean, chocolate is delicious, and organic stuff is good for the environment and all that jazz, and these are certified USDA organic. Combining these elements and adding a delightful crunch has got to create a halfway decent snack, right? These flat, oblong-shaped crisps have a texture that could be described as Wheat Thinlike but more bubbly. They're sprinkled with what appears to be sugar, but sugar isn't listed as an ingredient. The ingredient that most resembles sugar is salt. So I'm fairly certain they're sprinkled with salt. Brown, organic salt. When you bite one, the texture seems less like a Wheat Thin and more like a crunchy piece of cardboard. They taste like cardboard sprinkled with cocoa powder and brown organic salt. "Perhaps this choco-cardboard is an acquired taste," I thought as I tried another. I eventually finished all six or so crisps in the little bag, but they didn't get better. The reactions of my co-workers have been varied, ranging from "These really suck" to "These kinda suck." - - - - Amish Friendship Cake Submitted by Mele Stemmermann I have befriended a retired seventyish man named Charles. If you are female and a buddy of Charlie's, he gives you gifts of food. Each time I see him I am given gobs of homemade peanut-butter fudge wrapped in red foil or "fun size" candies from his warm, linty pockets. Once, he even gave me some frozen venison steaks, which are still in my freezer, just in case the Dust Bowl days return. And, a few months ago, I was gifted with something he mumbled was Amish friendship cake. I polished it off in two days flat. Upon further questioning, he followed up, the next week, with a huge jar of sickly pink "starter" juice, which he said I'd need to make my own Amish friendship cake. This cake is produced by steeping canned fruit in this sweet, yeasty concoction for about a month. You have to "feed" it sugar and more fruit every 10 days or so. Being a former baker looking for a minor challenge on that front, I took on the monthlong investment with some excitementwatching a glass jar full of semi-rotting fruit bubble and foam on my counter was not to be missed. It stank like fresh barf and jail hooch, but I remained cautiously optimistic. Now I have three cakes that no one at my house or job wants to eat. They tasted fine at first, but five minutes in, my stomach started roiling and spitting in protest. Somehow old Charles was able to coax digestible food from his starter, but mine just made me feel ill. Why the hell did I waste all that time and flour and emotional investment on something best left to the Amish? My cats will eat well this week, if they like rotting fruitcake. - - - - Parle-G Biscuits Submitted by Sneha Goud There are always some kids who seem smarter than the rest. Ever wonder how they got to be that way? If you had to think real hard for the answer, then probably you've never eaten Parle-G. That's from the website for Parle-G biscuits. My dad buys a package of them every few months from the Indian grocery store. He'll eat a few when he gets home, after ripping away their insufficient paper wrapper, which is no substitute for a sturdy American box. Then they sit in the back of the cupboard for a few more months until someone throws them away. The grinning, genderless toddler on the front always looks so unaware of his fate. Parle-G biscuits taste like sawdust. The crumbs get stuck in your teeth. I have no idea how to pronounce the name, probably because I didn't eat enough of them as a kid. - - - - Salsa Golf Submitted by J. Ryan Stradal I can't get a straight answer on this and I can't read Spanish very well yet, but I believe that Salsa Golf is one-third ketchup, one-third mayonnaise, and one-third something that's possibly more off-putting than a mixture of the first two ingredients. Without looking, I'm guessing either high-fructose corn syrup or a byproduct of beef production. That's what has earned the impressive-sounding name "Golf Sauce" in South America. For the budget traveler, Salsa Golf is damn near impossible to avoid. It occupies a space in Argentina's cheaper restaurants right alongside ketchup and mustard as the most misunderstood and mysterious of the triptych, sort of like the Holy Ghost if the triune God were a condiment rack. People in Buenos Aires seem to love it. In fact, the Argentines claim to have invented it. However spurious a claim that may be, I cannot imagine any nation-state rising to dispute it. The stuff is heinous. It's the condiment equivalent of flat 7UP, a vague gustatory souvenir of its once-proud components, a product less than the sum of its parts. Yet for weeks I have been intrigued by it. It's like a downtown roller rink: I never use it anymore, but I'm glad it's there, gratifying the perverse tastes of the easily thrilled. Be careful where you ask for Golf Sauce. It's not to be found in finer restaurants. I once asked for Golf Sauce in a white-tablecloth establishment and was met with a tired sneer. "Oh, that," my waiter said, and returned with a handful of ketchup and mayonnaise packets. "If you must have it, mix these together, they're the same thing." He was so wrong. - - - - Burned Frittata Submitted by Meg Gregory I was trying to make a wholesome and tasty dinner that allowed me to mix ingredients in a bowl, pour them into a white, oval ceramic dish, toss the dish in the oven, and forget about it while I did the dishes before eating like the Italians supposedly do: leisurely and luxuriously. A frittata. Yes, that sounded perfect for a crisp, windy spring evening. Eggs, part-skim ricotta, scallions, orzo, artichoke hearts, red bell pepper, Italian parsley (so inexplicably underrated!), a touch of crème fraîche, salt and pepper. Done. Bake for 25, broil for 5. It was the broiling that did it in. When I opened the oven door, billows of menacing smoke parted to reveal a black-topped frittata. As it cooled on the counter, the overcooked proteins pushed water up through the black surface. A kind food scientist might say, "Syneresis!" and then feed me some bullshit about mistakes and learning opportunities. But I hadn't invited any scientists. Deflated but hungry, I scooped some up and tucked in. - - - - Orbit Mint Mojito Gum Submitted by Mary Turner Having bought it by accident at a gas station and being too far down the highway to consider returning to swap it out, I unwrapped the gum and tried a piece. It does taste like a mojito, if instead of rum one used dog-ear medicine, and if instead of lime one swirled a green Dum-Dum around in the glass and left it to sit by the side of a highway. It tastes enough like a mojito that if I were nauseated from drinking too many mojitos and my friend gave me a piece of this gum, I would punch her in the tits. Hard. - - - - Swanson's Hungry-Man Meals Submitted by Mike Petrucelli I don't think there's much that's new about these, judging by a quick look at the box. A bright yellow flag trumpets: "Over 1 lb. of food!" Not "More potatoes than ever before!" or "Now double meat!" or "A bigger brownie-looking thing." Just "food." More than a pound of it. Is that the best they could do? Would Jerry Bruckheimer crow about "Over 37 minutes of fire"? Would Hugh Hefner be content with "Over 20 sets of boobs"? I worry that uninspired marketing will erode the excitement and joy of eating conveniently packaged microwavable processed foods to the level of joyless face-stuffing. - - - - Vlasic Lime-Flavored Kosher Dill Spears Submitted by Lydia Williams In general, I am suspicious of cucumber variations. In particular, I am suspicious of the Vlasic jar, which features a cartoon stork smoking a pickle. Nevertheless, I love all things lime. Even now, I am chewing strawberry-lime gum. So I bought a jar of the lime pickles, and then I invited my picky Korean friend over for a pimento-cheese sandwich on toasted wheat. When she arrived, I offered up a dill spear, all innocence, and told her to try it. One sour look from her and I'd dump the whole jar. But she loved it, so we ate pickles and pimento until our lips puckered. - - - - Sweetened Papaya Spears Submitted by Mike Brenot The Don Post werewolf mask I played with in childhood tastes better than this. As I chew, the mouth feel strikes me as fluffier than its hefty weight suggests. By "sweetened," they must mean that an enormous amount of low-grade corn syrup was used, then somehow leached out. Needless to say, this product of Austin, Texas, won't be joining the other dried tropical fruits in my cupboard. Its place, instead, is next to a box of comb honey from the mid '90s. - - - - Soymilk Submitted by Kathleen Hawk I couldn't believe it when I read an article in one of Martha Stewart's magazines that said that "experts say" that if you like soymilk, you'd better get your calcium elsewhere. And besides, they added, why not just drink milk, since it's so good for you? The article's many expert opinions were clearly obtained from the Dairy Council. I envisioned all these guys with rubber shoes covered with grass and cow poop, pointing to a big udder and wiggling their eyebrows at me. I love soymilk. Every time I pull the carton out of the fridge, I warble, "You know how I feel about yooou." It's a phrase I found on my ex-boyfriend's answering machine, left by some starstruck girl who hadn't yet gotten over being tied up in my bed while I was out of town. I've never been able to say it to a guy with a straight face, but it seems the right thing for the blue half-gallon container with "MORE OMEGA-3s" plastered across it in big red letters. I love those omega-3s. So I wrote Martha a letter to say how disappointed I was that she'd published a badly researched article. My soymilk says clearly that it's been enriched with as much calcium as milk, and along with those omega-3s it has a lot of vitamins, too. Not to mention all those phytoestrogens, which I credit with keeping my boobs bouncy and full long into my 50s. So what gives, Martha? I got a letter back from some administrative lackey, telling me, "Your comment has been forwarded to the editorial staff." And I waited for a letter from Martha. Or someone. Finally, weeks later, I wrote again. Martha, I said, I supported you through all the years when people didn't understand how wonderful and smart you were to make a big business out of teaching people to make their lives more gracious. I'm a woman. I get the charm of milk-glass cake plates, grapevine baskets, and walls painted to look like they're a hundred years old. And good for you, making all that money. I even supported you through that nasty insider-trading scandal, because there must be a million rich people who do that sort of thing. If I had a private financial adviser, and he called me to tell me "Quick, you need to sell this stock," I'd do it. Who wouldn't? But this is over the line. You misled people into thinking that sucking off cow udders is better than drinking the juice of little ground soybeans, all the while paying your big mortgage with the advertising loot from the Dairy Council. Did I mention they're advertisers? I mean, it's a matter of choice. But, hell, Martha, you lied. Maybe not you, but the journalist working for the editors that you hire. While you take home the cash. You know, it's not the grab-and-run '90s anymore. I would have thought your stint in prison might have made you more thoughtful about these things. She never wrote back. Not one word. Her loss. I splash soymilk in my coffee, anticipating that sweet and creamy taste rolling across my tongue, thinking about my boobs and Martha's, and how in this small way my life is more gracious than hers. - - - - Swiss Chalet's Spice It Up Special Submitted by Phil Wolters Was it shocking when Swiss Chalet announced a spicier alternative to its traditional rotisserie chicken? You bet it was. I had grown up on the traditional chicken, had eaten it for years and years, and never, ever anticipated that it could be changed, that it could be improved, y'know? But there it was, staring me in the face: a new and improved version of my lifelong favorite. Would its spicy kick bring me into a new world of taste that I'd been missing all my life? Or would the New Coke effect take hold? The anticipation built. Oh, how it built! I had promised a friend that I would never eat at the Swiss Chalet in our hometown again. She had worked there for a summer and had been terrorized by the management to such an extent that she one day erupted, her quiet resentment exploding into a fountain of rage, leaving in its wake a broken fridge door and some hurt feelings. To make a girl who had worked patiently in food service for most of her life go off like that, those Swiss Chalet people must have been pretty damn antagonizing. So you can see the dilemma. And, as you can probably guess, I went anyway. It tasted like betrayal and heartache. I skipped the bill. - - - - Shepherds-Who-Want-You-to-Be-Healthy Pie Submitted by Katelyn Sack In Raynaud's phenomenon, fingers and toes turn white as if dead or deadly cold, and sensation and mobility decrease or disappear altogether. My sense of touch departed as I was crossing the street in front of the medical-school library, where I had been researching my mother's maladies. My dear sick mother lost her fingerprints to Raynaud's, and the texture of mine began to change that day. It had to be stopped. Warm water and massage are your first thoughts for treatment, followed by sun and hot foot powder. These are merely quick fixes. What you need is shepherds-who-want-you-to-be-healthy pie. Brown ground beef over medium heat and blend in cinnamon, nutmeg, honey, dried bilberries (for their capillary-buoying anthocyanosides), rosemary (for diosmin), parsley (for apigenin), thyme, and sage. Pile the meat into a casserole dish, then add greens, then mashed potatoes. On top, sprinkle patches of celery seed, buckwheat, and wheat germ. Lastly, add olives and more honey everywhere. Cook pie until apartment and mashed potatoes are toasty. Serve hot to your dear sick mother, who notes that there appear to be twigs sticking out of her dinner, and that the cold is making her Raynaud's act up. Crank the heat and crack a window to speed global warming. - - - - Popsicle's Long Lasting Slow Melt Pops Submitted by Mike Balzer Could someone just tell me what bees use to saw their wood? The suspense is fucking killing me. - - - - Ohio State University "Deli Style" Roast-Beef Sandwich Submitted by Chad Rutan This attempt at a sandwich was given to me secondhand by a visiting speaker who had specially requested it and then decided for some reason not to eat it. The Ohio State University "deli style" roast-beef sandwich comes with not only the tattered remains of what used to be romaine lettuce but also a slice of tomato that borders on being a variety of red Jell-O. At the right angle, the "deli style" roast beef gives off a disturbing iridescence. All this mashed between slices of a decent wheat bread. I cannot complain about the bread. - - - - Chocolate-Dipped Altoids Submitted by Rebecca Bowen Half the fun of Altoids is tossing them in the glove box, forgetting about them, and reuniting with the candy two months later while checking for a map and flashlights, only to remember you've never used the glove box appropriately. But whatever, you have Altoids! You're so happy, you give them away to just about anyone. Chocolate-dipped Altoids do not work in this scenario. You will open your glove box to find twice the sadness: not only did you fail at storing practical, life-saving items in your car, but there's also melted chocolate all over the fucking place, which is impossible to remove without coming out of there looking like you've got shit all over your hands. And if you try to offer what's left of them to anyone, let's say to the person you're asking for directions because you don't have a goddamn map, you'll probably get pegged as a fecal perv and stay lost forever. - - - - The 4-Alarm Spicy Chicken Sandwich From Wendy's Submitted by Peter Scott Bartsch Apparently, Wendy entered into a partnership, or perhaps just a one-time joint venture, with Satan and Ra, the sun god. This sandwich's ingredients must have been harvested in hell (presumably by Satan's minions, whose very fingertips shoot flames) and then sent directly to Ra's headquarters, where he plunged the ingredients into the center of the sun for final processing. From there, the blistering ingredients were probably transferred to the Wendy's distribution center in Wichita, where they went out for delivery to various Wendy's establishments. Upon arrival at my local Wendy's, the ingredients were assembled, by a kitchen worker named Todd or Becky or Ramón, while completely submerged in a vat of boiling hot sauce and tequila. The final product was then dried under a 1,500-degree heat lamp, promptly wrapped in foil paper, and handed to me with my vanilla Frosty and an insidious grin. I cried a little, and couldn't taste anything for a long time. - - - - Doritos X-13D Submitted by Mark Parker The best thing about Doritos X-13D is the way your vegetarian girlfriend tries one before she looks at the package and sees that these chips contain beef tallow. - - - - Amazing Candicraft Delicious Ink N' Paper Submitted by Elizabeth Gumport We write checks to people we owe money to. We write notes to our friends in class. We write letters to people whom we should have stopped loving a long time ago. We are always writing to someone. The Amazing Candicraft Delicious Ink N' Paper, however, urges otherwise. The letters written on the thin wafer of sugar are letters that long to be dissolved. To write with this strawberry-flavored gel is to write words knowing they will not last, that they are to be savored instead of saved. "Eat your words!" the stuff insists. When you do, they taste bitter, as you always suspected they might. - - - - My Brother's Entry for the LongShot Submitted by Joseph Love When he was about 10, my brother put milk in a Popsicle tray. How bad could his beer be? He canned the stuff in antique Mobil 1 cans, the tops soldered with a coat hanger and a car battery. Though submissions weren't to be canned, I kept quiet. The can he set aside for me had been spray-painted with a stencil to say "Joe's Brew." "How do you open it?" I asked. He stabbed two holes in the top with a screwdriver, Hawaiian Punchstyle. Once, when I was mountain-biking in Indiana, a friend asked me, "Man, do these woods smell like semen to you?" I sniffed. Those woods, mushroom cellars, and my brother's beer all smell like semen. Maybe his wife, irritated, shook the can, because thick bubbles began to creep slowly through the holes. They advanced like snails made of foam. We took the can to the sink. After five minutes, we had something that looked like a giant head of black broccoli dripping into the drain. I scraped the foam into the sink and drank. It tasted like the grease trap that hangs under charcoal grills. Charcoal, of course, was the dominant flavor, with a follow-up of beef and pork. There were hints of chicken and burnt kabob vegetables, especially sugary onions. The tannins were well-developed, though unexpected, and I could have done without the ashy aftertaste. Also, swallowing was a bit difficult, not something I'd expected from a liquid. "Um, what kind of hops did you use?" I asked. "Is beer a hops?" he asked. "Not ... um, no." "Well, I just poured a 24-pack of Miller High Life into a bucket of molasses. Anyway, I hops it wins." When he played T-ball, he'd wrap his bat in aluminum foil and step up to the plate shouting, "Let's play FutureBall!" Once, I admired his creativity. Now, it seemed to be giving me the gout. - - - - Baby Mum-Mum Rice Rusks Submitted by Bridget Brier Nothing makes you feel more like an animal than having a child. Cleaning up your son one morning, you will nonchalantly pick a wet, partially ingested Cheerio from his chin and eat it. You will be mildly horrified by your action, so, to assuage feelings of confusion and shame, you silently praise your resourcefulness. You waste nothing. Because this happens again and again, you care more about the quality of your child's food. (You also care about his well-being, of course.) Most of the food marketed for babies is someone's sick idea of an introduction into the world of edibles. You make your own baby food. But you get curious when it comes to the packaged snacks for your budding gastronome. Gerber Veggie Puffs? They contain food coloring and preservatives. How about Baby Mum-Mums? They seem wholesome enough. With five ingredients (rice, sugar, skim-milk powder, salt, and calcium lactate), they're not exactly health food, but they'll break the monotony a little. They arrive two to a package, which really just suggests that there's one for you, too. While you give one to your 10-month-old to distract him from the books, which he's been pulling off the shelf for the last hour, you ponder what to do with your portion. You nibble. It's sweet, with a little crunch, and ever so airy. It tastes like a Rice Krispie. You dip yours in peanut butter and think about what to make for dinner. - - - - Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans Submitted by Joel Gunz Safeway has it on sale this month: 10 cans for $10. I consider simply getting five for $5 or even one for $1. They'll let you do that at Safeway. Instead, I put the Tofutti Cuties back in the freezer and load up on the full 10. In the pot, Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans retains the shape of the cana monolith of beans and rust-colored gravy that looks suspiciously like dog fooduntil I demolish it with my spoon. I am reminded of The Electric Company's cartoon parody of the giant black slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey. An hour later I come down with a fierce gas attack. One down, nine to go. - - - - Confectionery Lane Spiced Jelly Beans Submitted by Steve Thorngate When people insist that Christmas is a Christian holiday, what they really mean is that some of those who celebrate the six-week holy feast of reciprocal generosity take a short break to remember an unrelated story about a baby. Easter is culturally somewhat less absurd, its consumerist trappings limited mostly to pastel baskets, stuffed bunnies, and obscene quantities of cheap and delicious candy. Protestants tend to conceive of Lentwhich culminates in Easter Sundayin positive terms: instead of denouncing bad habits, we pick up good ones. Last Lent, I picked up a fantastic Confectionery Lane Spiced Jelly Bean habit. Starting on Ash Wednesday, the drugstore across from my office devoted the better part of an aisle to Easter candy. Inexplicably, half of this shelf space was taken up by a huge inventory of Confectionery Lane Spiced Jelly Beans. Because I was always the only kid who preferred the spiced beans to the fruit-flavored variety, my ingrained sense of duty seems to have interpreted the store's bounty as an obligation to personally buy and eat the majority of these off-brand, nutritionally vacant treasures. I'm very into healthful, sustainable, delicious food; I'm also very into the church. Here is a typical lunch during the church seasons of Advent, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost: Mixed greens (w/o dressing) And here's a typical lunch during Lent: Mixed greens (w/o dressing) I'm feeling jumpy, bloated, and more than a little penitent. My teeth hurt. I await the joy, renewal, and changing retail priorities of the Easter season. - - - - Dannon la Crème Submitted by Emily Benjamin You know those la Crème commercials where the woman savors her yogurt like a Nebraska housewife in her wasted prime would savor the immaculate placenta from the Holy Grail? That's pretty much how I, too, eat la Crème. Provided a few crème-colored candles offer the only available light, I lay my world-worn self down and curl up at roughly 135 degrees in that holy intersection of the arm, seat, and back of the couch, my left arm draped across my stomach like some overstuffed patrician's. Then I let my spoon circle along the inside edge of the cup to cloak it in the perfect amount of crème. I lick clean what has clung to its bottom and draw the rest into my mouth with trifling suction, punctuating my bites with a light smack of the lips. After each spoonful, there's an involuntary fluttering of the eyelids and a sigh. I am ready, now, for Dannon to strike between my legs with his indurate acidophallus. Lord knows I am ready. - - - - General Foods International Suisse Mocha Submitted by Sara Sligar Suisse Mocha comes in a small tin whose color I always think of as red, although only about 10 percent of the surface area is actually red. The rest is covered with pictures of European-looking chocolate beverages and an "International Recipe" that involves the phrases "flavor destination" and "indulgent recipe." I will translate this quintessentially European text into American for you: "Mix with hot water." Over winter break, aided by my mother and her MasterCard, I procured several tins of this magic stuff, intending to carry them back to my dorm room once school resumed. And carry them back I did. Traveling from the wild plains of the Midwest on the wild planes of American Airlines, I spirited my bounty back to New England. Ecstatically, I cleaned a mug. Breathlessly, I heated water. Filled with incandescent hope, I drank. And it was magnificent. Nothing can equal the delicious blend of coffee and hot chocolate that is Suisse Mocha. Staring out my window at the winter-stripped tree branches and the icy ground, I mentally relocated myself to a chic Parisian café. My life was suddenly amazing. Colors were brighter. Sounds were stronger. Every day since then has been an unstoppable dream. One day, a couple weeks ago, I went to the hot-chocolate machine in the dining hall and saw the other spigot, which spurts out a coffee drink that I have heard colloquially referred to as "the most disgusting sludge ever." The less refined have called it "shit." Curious, I looked closer, to see what terrible beverage could have elicited such a response from my peers, who, in my experience, seem willing to imbibe essentially any liquid created. The label said: "General Foods International Suisse Mocha." According to Wikipedia, mocha is "an American invention" that is "mostly unknown in Italy and other continental European countries." - - - - Rally's Pepper Jack Double Bacon Cheeseburgers Submitted by Oliver Miller Rally's is always running these types of specials. There was one where you could get five fish-and-cheese sandwiches for, like, 53 cents each. I just don't trust these deals. - - - - Nestlé Treasures: Revive Cappuccino Truffle Submitted by Marie Hicks After voiding blood for several months, I was put on a strict elimination diet. This eliminated anything I might want to eat. The printout of "safe" foods I was given read more like a list of punishments than dietary guidelines. When I made it past the first week without cracking, I silently considered rewarding myself with a trip off a multistory building. The second week was easier. By the third, however, living healthfully while surrendering the ability to eat 94 percent of the foodstuffs in your average grocery store (or 86 percent in your average organic-supermarket conglomerate) had lost its shine. On a 1 a.m. candy run, I studied all the offerings in the candy aisle with an intensity that made the night-crew contractors ripping up floor tiles seem slightly ill at ease. Among the selections I took to the U-Scan-It cash register was a new offering from Nestlé called the Revive Cappuccino Truffle. I've always been partial to Nestlé for my inexpensive-chocolate needs, and I could definitely taste the cappuccino flavor. But the revivification promised by the label didn't materialize; I didn't feel any rush from the caffeine, if there was any. Overall, it was OK but probably not worth getting my colon all bloody again for. - - - - Giant Caper Submitted by Kate Taylor It came to me cool on a bed of pink smoked fish, part of my lox plate for breakfast at a local café. Oblong and grapey with a sure, healthy stem, the giant caper instantly won my heart. Oh! Caper! I see you have a robust and more manageable side. Quelle surprise. Perhaps I should have cut it upmaybe distribute some slices of caper on the cream cheese, for example. But its skin made me think of a beautiful little dinosaur, and I was occupied waving it around in my boyfriend's face saying, "Giant caper, giant caper! G.C.!" as he tried to dodge it, saying "gross" and "stop." I ate the whole thing at once. The feeling in my mouth was like a tidal wave of saliva rushing, not forth, but back, to the depths of my spit glands. It's possible that saliva really was pouring into my mouth to counter the immense saltiness of the caper, but it ended up being like that feeling where you touch water so hot you think it's cold. I coughed once, loudly, and my eyes filled with tears. Cinnamon roll, grits, coffee, water: a bit of each was taken. Two G.C.'s remained on my plate, looking somewhat obscene. I tucked them beneath a spare piece of spring mix. - - - - Sugar Daddies Submitted by Leigh Duffy I love these caramel pops. When I was little, I would eat these on long family trips to pull my baby teeth out. Worked every timealthough, if I had one tooth I initially planned on losing, the thick, unforgiving caramel would inevitably rip out two others as well. It was a satisfying pain, made tasty by the delectable combination of sugary sweetness and blood pooling in my mouth. For this reason, I recommend Sugar Daddies to all families with young children. - - - - Iced Cherry Clover Valley Toaster Pastries Submitted by C.A. Briskey Twenty-nine years ago, my mother was a globetrotting, platform-shoes-, tube-top-, bell-bottom-pants-wearing foxy lady with a feathered roach clip in her hair. She would hop onto the back of my dad's Harley, close her eyes, and wait to see where the day would take them. Now, my mother has succumbed to a type of agoraphobia that hits middle-aged ladies, preventing them from traveling more than 10 minutes away from their house. Common side effects of this disease include buying one's entire wardrobe through catalogs, including clogs that make one's foot look like Kunta Kinte's after he attempted to leave the plantation and was punished by having the front of his foot lopped off; having your reluctant husband cut your hair; and purchasing all of your groceries at the local Dollar General. My sister and I have watched this disorder take its toll on our mother over the years. However, the woes are not hers alone. We, too, have suffered. When we enter our parents' home to scavenge the cabinets for food, we are met with brand-name wannabes. But we have to eat, so we rip into the packages and begin stuffing our greedy faces. Usually, this is followed by a pause and a moment where my eyes lock with my sister's and we experience some kind of inherent ESP. When we ate a cherry Clover Valley Toaster Pastry (not to be confused with a cherry Pop-Tart), the message sent was so clear, my mother even sensed it: The filling in Iced Cherry Clover Valley Toaster Pastries is cherry ChapStick. - - - - Café de Costa Rica (Costa Rican Coffee) Submitted by Rory Douglas A journalism professor once warned me to never start an article with a questionmost people will probably answer "no" and quit reading, he said. So: Have you ever wanted to travel to Costa Rica to discover the flavor of exotic, Spanish-speaking coffee grown in the rich volcanic soils of a Central American country? Don't. It tastes just like the rich volcanic soils of a Central American country. And the baggage handlers will steal your laptop and digital camera from your luggage on your way back to the Estados Unidos, gringo. - - - - Herbal Supplements Submitted by Katelyn Sack Herbal supplements may be defined as food if food is any entity that (1) you put in your mouth to (2) get down your throat so that (3) it may provide your body with nourishment, enjoyment, and/or relief from the gnawing sensations of hunger and inadequacy that plague mankind whenever he has the misfortune to stumble outside the gardens of paradise. You may discover herbal supplements after failed attempts to spike your dear sick mother's soup with turmeric and ginger for their anti-inflammatory properties, or perhaps upon her nauseated rejection of your ingenious, bone-bracing recipe for hot chai malk. Herbal supplements provide a way to dose your own chronically ill but gastronomically discriminating family members with the ethnobotanical remedies of the centuries. Fenugreek and cinnamon for hypoglycemia; cranberry for UTIs; feverfew for migraines; hawthorn for a weak vascular system; roots, seeds, and berries you would never get them to eat otherwise all become suddenly contained, standardized, and accessible. Cinnamon is my personal favorite, because it tastes like the smell of pavement right after rain. What is a wet, gray pavement but the record of a worn-out road, erased? What is an herb but the rain rising up, toward the clouds it will never again rejoin? Clearly, cinnamon will save your soul. Buy them wholesale from whatever organic supplier will let you claim a business discount because you teach children's piano on Tuesday nights. Promptly discover that your mother suffers from a heretofore-undiagnosed thyroid malady among her myriad maladies and will be unable to swallow numerous pills with every meal. Ascertain that the universe is mocking you. With fenugreek-enlarged breasts and St. John's-wort-augmented moods, what do you care? - - - - Dark Chocolate M&M's Submitted by David MacFadden-Elliott M&M's have already been enlarged, miniaturized, filled with peanuts, filled with almonds, flavored with mint, caramel, peanut butter, and white chocolate, and given a dye job to match the color scheme of a blockbuster film. Given these previous efforts, the dark-chocolate version is hardly remarkable. In fact, it's initially indiscernible from its milk-chocolate predecessor. The excitement begins when these little nuggets are exposed to heat. While the drab dark chocolate was melting in my mouth, an M&M waiting in my hand popped. Yes, after a minute of being cooked in my palm, the damn thing hatched. Unless I'm wrong and have missed out on a significant portion of my childhood, this is a new and noteworthy feature. You have to be patient for the payoff. During the course of my experiments, it took anywhere from 38 to 112 seconds for the M&M's to explode, and some didn't fire at all. But when you find one that will, and your hand is warm and dry, you will feel like the most powerful human alive. - - - - "Freshly Squeezed" Lemonade Submitted by Whitey Eckerson I became suspicious when the heavyset teenage girl reached for the powder. She was standing with her back to my wife and me, next to the trapezoidal clear-plastic tank, the one in which the liquid perpetually runs down the sides. That tank's function I have never understood. Maybe it's mixing the lemonade. Paradoxically, these tanks occur only in places that serve such poor lemonade it doesn't matter whether it gets mixed or not: it's a choice between sugary or watery insipidity. The girl added the powder to the "freshly squeezed" lemonade, so advertised throughout the shop on 8½-by-11-inch laminated sheets of paper. A dollar and 75 cents for 20 ounces. That's $.0875 per ounce for some murky tap water and a tablespoon of expired Crystal Light. Only in the parallel universe of Old Town Sacramento would this beverage ever be considered "freshly squeezed" lemonade: only in a place where you can take a historic steamboat ride on a vessel that contains no steam, where you can purchase a 10-inch gelatinous black rat as candy, where a proper stage for an Old West stunt show is a 20-foot-by-20-foot concrete slab between a Hollywood-kitsch store and a "fan shop," which sells only magnificently huge Sacramento Kings jerseys that Goliath himself would trip over. All this takes place 40 feet from I-80. One should never be able to see a Clydesdale pulling a wagon and a Super Duty F-450 doing 90 in the same gaze. Also, I did not like the lemonade. The taste was bad, the aftertaste was worse, and the drink had a faulty lid. - - - - Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch Submitted by D. Paul One day during my lunch break I noticed a large sign in the lawn of the nearby Taco Bell: "SAVE YOUR RECEIPT FOR A CHANCE TO WIN $1,000!" Now, as a college graduate who is enduring the humiliation of working for $8 an hour icing cakes and whose car is in a constant state of disrepair, whose boyfriend flirts with prettier, skinnier girls, whose parents are ashamed, whose apartment is a filthy hole of beer cans and liquor bottles, whose checking account hovers near the red, whose student-loan payments are past due, whose only comfort is the 30 minutes during the day when she can drive to the local park to cry, I find the mere prospect of $1,000 to be enough to inspire hope and a sense of overall well-being. In the drive-through line, the menu read to me like one of those somewhat witty church signs that say, "Free Trip To Heaven, Details Inside." My eyes fixed upon a half-moon-shaped spectacle called the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. The menu asked me what I'd like to drink, and I asked, "Is water free?" Back at the park, I peeled the greasy paper wrapper away to reveal my Cheesy Gordita Crunch. It's a taco embraced by cheese embraced by a tortilla. I took a bite, and sour cream, grease, and lettuce fell onto my lap. The flavors and textures melded together in my mouth, and, indeed, in my soul. For a moment, I became a Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Then I remembered why I went to Taco Bell in the first place$1,000! I pulled my receipt from under some napkins, brushed off some fallen meat, cleared my palate with some free water, and called a phone number printed on the receipt. I took a brief customer-satisfaction survey (everything was perfectjust perfect). Then, a recorded voice thanked me for my time and informed me that, unfortunately, I was not that week's winner of $1,000. I shrugged, finished my Cheesy Gordita Crunch, which suddenly wasn't so great anymore, and returned to work. - - - - Archer Farms Chili-Lime Tortilla Chips Submitted by Mike Gagnier If you're old enough to remember taco-flavored Doritos, you no doubt remember them as far and away the best flavor of Doritos ever. You probably remember the day you found out that they were discontinuing them. You may remember the short-lived "return" of Taco Doritos with a really lame imitation of the original flavor. Even after that debacle, maybe you still kept the faith, waiting for the day your chip would return. When I recently bit into an Archer Farms Chili-Lime Tortilla Chip, I realized immediately that the taste is exactly like that of the old Taco Doritos. If you remember them, I don't need to say any more. If you're too young to remember them, you owe it to yourself to check them out. The one qualm I have is that the package refers to them as "Authentic-Style." Maybe I'm nitpicking, but aren't the chips either authentic or not? If they were produced in an inauthentic manner, but made to resemble "authentic" tortilla chips, then are they not, by definition, inauthentic? Your best bet is to somehow find a miraculously preserved taco-flavored-Doritos (original version) bag into which these chips can be poured. That way, you can focus on what matters. - - - - Flapjack Shot Submitted by Jacy Wojcik A hearty mixture of Jack Daniel's whiskey and maple syrup. It tastes like when my grandpa used to make us pancakes when he was drunk. Only now I'm the one getting drunk. And there aren't any pancakes. - - - - Bagel Bites Submitted by Dave Allen Only two things in this world deserve fist pumps: Arsenio Hall and Bagel Bites. Bagel Bites are so good-sounding that sometimes I sing their name in a high-pitched voice like a singer in an '80s hair band. It gets me amped up to wait 20 minutes for them to cook because I don't have a microwave. Speaking of microwaves, can I buy a box of Bagel Bites that doesn't come with that weird metallic microwave tray? Like I said, I don't have a microwave. Is there an "oven edition" or "the old-fashioned way" option? I'd like to cut down on waste, and perhaps with the savings on packaging costs the powers that be could do me a solid and let an extra Bagel Bite fall off the conveyor belt and into a box every once in a while, you know what I'm sayin'? Also, I'd like a "wilderness edition" for when I'm roughing it in nature and only have a campfire to cook on, and a "barbecue edition" for when I crave that grilled look. When I was a young kid, I would have loved a "magnifying-glass edition" that I could sit and cook all day outside in the afternoon sun. When I remembered at 10 p.m. last night that I still had those nine shrink-wrapped frost-covered Supreme Bagel Bites in the freezer, I actually spoke out loud and congratulated myself for being so smart as to purchase two boxes instead of just one, under the reasoning that "Oh, yeah, you'll get to it eventually." In this case, eventually meant two nights later. Bagel Bites are so bad for you that on the box itself the phrases "Delicious Bagel Bites" and "Real Cheese" have registered-trademark symbols next to them. It's the equivalent of putting quote marks around the words. Cooking a box of Bagel Bites once set off my carbon-monoxide detector in my apartment. I had to wake up the landlord at midnight and get a second opinion about whether I was going to die by Bagel Bite that night. I survived, darn it. Would have been a lot of insurance money otherwise! I researched it and carbon-monoxide detectors usually go off when using a wood-burning stove indoors. So a box of Bagel Bites is basically equivalent to a Duraflame firelog. It can burn slowly for hours, giving off a modest amount of heat. Bagel Bites are so deceptively tiny that you can fit all nine of them on one of the small plates in the cupboard. So handy when you are watching Extra or Live With Regis and Kelly. No big heavy dinner plate to fumble with. And because it fits on the smaller plate, it's technically a snack, not dinner. That thought helps relieve some of the guilt of knowing that you are slowly poisoning yourself with bad afternoon TV and cancer-causing Frankenfoods. I had a friend once who hid his house key in a hollowed-out, charred-black, burnt-up doorstop of a Bagel Bite. It looked just like a charcoal briquette next to his porch. Only with a hint of pepperoni. All in all, I'm mostly ashamed I ever purchase them, but I love the wild ride they take me on. - - - - Delta Air Lines Biscoff Submitted by Jack Pendarvis The Biscoff is a snack cookie offered on Delta flights. It is a flattish object that looks kind of like an oval and kind of like a rectangle. Each Biscoff is embossed with the Delta Air Lines logo. There are two Biscoffs in a package. The wrapper says you can get SkyMiles by eating Biscoffs, but I accidentally tore off and misplaced the part of the wrapper that tells you how. From its name, I assume it's designed to be dunked in coffee, which is just what I did with it on my recent flight to Los Angeles. Success! The Biscoff held the coffee nicely without becoming soggy. It was a delicious cookie! The Biscoff seems to have a touch of cinnamon. It reminded me of a more assertive graham cracker. A graham cracker that bites back! But it's not really a graham cracker. I think I'm giving you the wrong impression. On the way back from Los Angeles I ate the Biscoff dry, without coffee, and found it just as delightful. Satisfying texture that says, "You're not the boss of me!" coupled with a rather subtle flavor. I have a deep-rooted fear of flying, but Biscoffs will help me get back on the plane! - - - - McDonald's Fortune Cookie Submitted by David Ottosson "Today is your lucky day. Receive free 0.5 cl beverage." Of course today is my lucky day: I'm receiving a free 0.5 cl beverage. That's just lazy fortunetelling on McDonald's part. They knew I was going to have a great day because they already knew I had a free soda coming. Sometimes McDonald's doesn't get it at all. - - - - AdeS Light Banana-Flavored Soy Drink Submitted by Ann Evans Soymilk. You either love it or you hate it. Fake-banana flavor. You either love it or you hate it. Soymilk and fake-banana flavor together. You either love it or you just drank a liter of it even though you were full anyway and now you are sprawled diagonally across your bed with a little banana-flavored soy dribble dripping from the corner of your mouth while your laptop is propped up against your knees but is closer to your crotch than to your stomach because your stomach hurts. - - - - Diet Lipton Green Tea Submitted by Alex Novak Ice-cold, this tea is strangely refreshing andat 20 ouncesquite filling. Of course, so is water. But this tea is the color of Chardonnay and tastes like second-time-around tea bags, NutraSweet, and gummi bears. It's a perfect example of a time and a place for everything: - - - - Reduced Fat Jif Submitted by Alan Hayes The most prominent wording on my peanut butter's label seems forthright at first: "REDUCED FAT JIF." "CRUNCHY." Nowhere does it say reduced-fat peanut butter. Just Jif. As it turns out, the closest thing to a claim of being actual peanut butter that's made here is to the left of the label, where it says, "Peanut Butter Spread. 60% Peanuts." I equate this to "Orange Juice Drink," a statement that implies that what you're drinking is not actually orange juice but a drink that is in some ways similar to orange juice. In this case, I'm being told that Jif is not peanut butter per se but some sort of similarly textured spread. The most damning claim on the label, though, the one that really makes me curious as to what exactly I am putting copious amounts of into my body on a weekly basis, is "25% LESS FAT THAN PEANUT BUTTER." One can't help but notice that it doesn't say "25% less fat than regular peanut butter" but instead suggests that this product is entirely different than and separate from the peanut-butter family. All of these facts inspire in me a great number of questions as to what composes the brown paste holding together the peanut chunks. However, despite the fact that consuming a great deal of "Jif" on a weekly basis may be responsible for the seemingly permanent eye infection I have developed (who knows?), I will not stop eating it. After all, it is delicious, and it has 25% less fat than peanut butter. Also, one of the ingredients is "rapeseed." - - - - Bubble Yum: Submitted by Angela Colford I didn't expect chocolate-flavored bubblegum to taste good. I knew better than that. I wasn't surprised by the sensation of eating a never-ending Tootsie Roll. I was only slightly alarmed by the odd shininess that the gum acquired after a few minutes of chewing. I was even prepared for the cocoa-powder-meets-inner-tube texture. The only thing about this chewing experience that seemed extraordinary to me was that, though the flavor's brand was purported to be Hershey's, the chocolate flavor waxing my tongue was oddly Nestlé-esque. Also, it cost 95 cents for a five-piece pack, which is just too expensive for something so fucking gross. - - - - Jelly Belly Sport Beans Submitted by Miriam Grubin You've just run your third mile, and you're feeling like you need electrolyte replacement and a boost of energy. Most likely, you will reach for something in the Gatorade family of beverages. Are you making the right choice? Studies (performed by the Milk Council) have shown that chocolate milk is as adequate a "sport beverage" as those brightly colored sports drinks with which most of us are familiar. If chocolate milk sounds too refreshing and hydrating to you, why not try Jelly Belly Sport Beans, jellybeans with an "energizing" quality provided by carbohydrates, electrolytes, and vitamins B and C? Well, because, with a grainy texture wholly unreminiscent of jellybeans and a flavor that can only be described as puzzling, these beans will leave you wishing you'd packed some Nesquik. - - - - Monster Energy Drink Submitted by William VanDenBerg On the way to class I saw a bearded man handing out large black beverages from the back of a truck. Feeling particularly sporty, I took one. Drinking the syrupy green liquid abruptly took me back to when I was 16, watching the film Pearl Harbor with my girlfriend. The same sense of futility and utter disgust with the human race sang through my body. I choked down half the can, feeling an odd mixture of nostalgia and self-hatred. Several minutes later, I burped silently. It tasted suspiciously meaty, like eating large quantities of lightly carbonated pork chops. - - - - Buffalo Burger Submitted by Margaret Girouard One night during the summer I was 11, my family had a barbecue at Aunt Joan's house. We are of hearty Irish stock, and now that I am older I enjoy being able to drink whiskey and argue about politics with gusto at family parties, but as a child my heritage meant that I was odd for being the quiet brunette in a room full of loquacious redheads. Though I was not as notoriously picky as my sister (who survived on a diet of ramen and pickles through most of elementary school), a steady diet of meat and potatoes made me, until college, unwilling to eat almost anything that wasn't beige. So, on that night long ago, when my ears pricked up to the conversation streaming over my head regarding the menu for that evening, I pulled my nose out of my book and declared emphatically that I would not eat a buffalo burger, even if the meat did come from a local bison farm. My family assured me that I could have a regular hamburger, and I settled back comfortably, naively believing that my loved ones were trustworthy. Even to a less discerning child, the difference would have been obvious from the start. On my plate I found not a round, half-inch patty of meat snug in its bun but a slab of something closely resembling meatloaf soaking through two pathetically small pieces of bread. The bread was unable to curb the flow of bloody juice that was quickly seeping into the potato salad. Instead of brownish-gray beef with a hint of pink in the middle, the meat on my plate might have matched a paint sample labeled "Earth Brick" or "Mud Pie" or, perhaps most evocatively, "Difficult Shit." I was suspicious, yet I trusted. I trusted. When I bit it, I knew. Instead of the familiar thick meaty crumble of a burger made from cow, the buffalo burger was denser, heavier, yet spongy, with a disturbing excess of juice. I immediately put it down, and my family looked at me expectantly, wondering if I would notice a difference at all, if I'd enjoyed it. Would I declare that they were right, that it is good to try new things? No, family. It was not to be. I cried and ate nothing. It wasn't even so much the burger, which could have been worse, I guess. It was the betrayal. - - - - Sun Sweet Mediterranean Dried Apricots Submitted by Emily Kamm I like my dried apricots like I like my men: thin, tart, and rather difficult to chew. Sun Maid California Dried Apricots meet my exacting standards. But in an allergy-medicine-induced haze, I bought Sun Sweet Mediterranean Dried Apricots instead. My hopes for an iron-and-fiber-rich snack were crushedthese dried apricots were overly plump and tasted as if they had suddenly adapted a far more sedentary and sugar-loving lifestyle that tainted their excessive flesh with sucrose. Sun Sweet's Mediterranean Dried Apricots would do well to get off the couch, put down the cannolis, and borrow some healthier recipes from their West Coast brethren. - - - - Domino's New Brooklyn Style Pizza Submitted by Chris Crowe The first thing I noticed about the pizza was that it had about three times as much grease sitting on top as a regular hand-tossed; "Just the way we like it," the video had said. My friend Tommy informed me that there were only six slices to this pizza, as opposed to the ordinary eight. That meant that each slice was 133 percent bigger than usual. I held mine folded, like a taco, and a river of grease ran down the middle and onto my mouth. The pepperoni was too big, and I had to play around with it to keep from dropping it onto the table. I wiped the grease from my chin and decided that this pizza had finally provided the type of satisfaction I had been pining for, the slick fulfillment other pizzas could only mimic. I needed a glass of water. - - - - Mad Croc Energy Gum Submitted by Michael Winand Hypothesis: Ingesting two pieces of Mad Croc Energy Gum results in the same caffeinated boost as an 8-ounce energy drink. 10:00 a.m.: Subject begins chewing gum and immediately recognizes a distinct flavor similar to that of a handful of pennies. 10:02 a.m.: Nothing has changed. 10:04 a.m.: Subject has sudden urge to remake the Gary Busey film Eye of the Tiger using a cast of actual tigers. 10:06 a.m.: The idea is abandoned after the subject estimates the number of accidental deaths that would assuredly occur during filming. 10:07 a.m.: Subject spits out the gum after the flavor shifts from "pocket change" to "pocket change wrapped in Band-Aids." Conclusion: The subject could have received an equivalent energy boost from sucking on a few AA bateries. The taste would have also been similar. - - - - Junky Tuesday Submitted by Seema Reza During the course of my son Ali's life, I've learned about trans fats and pesticides and things my mother did wrong. So I eat fresh organic berries and drink pomegranate juice and don't buy sugary cereals. One afternoon, though, I picked Ali up from kindergarten, swung my station wagon into a spot at the mainstream grocery store, slid my pregnant body out from the tight space behind the wheel, and, as I opened his door, announced, "It's Junky Tuesday." As we approached the store, the glass door swung open with reverence. We skirted the produce section and targeted the snack-food aisle. I chose spicy Cheetos. He chose Doritos. We agreed on Funyuns. Into the cart went a box of Swiss cake rolls, a tub of mini glazed donuts, and a six-pack of ginger beer. At home, we turned on the Food Network (a compromise between General Hospital and The Magic School Bus) and spilled one of the ginger beers on the futon. When we were a third of the way through the Cheetos and Doritos and halfway through the Funyuns and had eaten a couple of donuts and split one package of the cake rolls, we couldn't eat anymore. I heaved myself up and vomited a bit, and Ali retired to his bathroom with a long book. We'll do it again sometime. - - - - Hot Chai Malk Submitted by Katelyn Sack Suppose your dear mother were ill, her body racked with nutritional deficiencies not in proportion to her diet: bones randomly cracking, ligaments ripping. You stroke her on the cheek and buy unsulfured blackstrap molasses, because sugar is in fact a vegetablethey just siphon off all the healthy stuff before marketing the powdered waste product as pure joy. One tablespoon of unsulfured blackstrap molasses contains approximately 20 percent of your daily value (hereafter "DV") of calcium, 20 percent DV iron, 20 percent DV Vitamin A, and 10 percent DV potassium. These goodies represent some of the most common nutritional deficiencies in middle-aged American women, and a few of the many that my mother suffers from, despite a robust diet of coffee and brownies. This black gold tastes like crap if you try to eat a spoonful straight, but that same tablespoon of molasses can be carefully tucked into a slowly heated pot of milk. The product is widely known in my apartment as "malk." If properly stirred with the constant patience and love you only wish you could show other things in your life, malk develops a consistency similar to that of custard before it sets. It still tastes like crap, though. If you drop in a chai tea bag for a few minutes, along with the blackstrap spoonful, stirring constantly, you will end up with hot chai malk. Your dear sick mother will sip at it politely before reminding you that the nausea she frequently experiences prevents her from humoring all of your gastronomic experiments. Then she'll suggest that maybe the cat is hungry. Hot chai malk is the best in the land. The milk and molasses in one mug of malk offer over 50 percent DV calcium, plus a good plug of iron and other healthy stuff without which you'd forever remain a scraggly tar. However, the heat probably breaks down the riboflavin in the milk. And the tannins in the black tea probably block you from totally absorbing the heavy metals, but tannins can only do so much, whereas hot chai malk makes you and your stomach invincible. Don't listen to your mother. - - - - Gung Ten (Jumping Shrimp) Submitted by Adam Holofcener If you're ever traveling in northern Thailand and get a hankering for some spicy stuff that'll gross you out, gung ten is the dish for you. It's raw shrimp the size of your pinkie nail on a bed of chili pepper about 20 times spicier than prik nam pla (spicy fish sauce). Half a bottle of whiskey is poured on top right before it's served; this means that anyone who doesn't know exactly what gung ten is lifts the dish's lid and ends up with shrimp dancing into his or her lap. It's a cruel circus, basically, and quite a thing to see. The shrimp look like they have a nice golden tan, but really they're just melting from the inside out after ingesting 30 times their weight in Thai whiskey. Once everyone stops laughing, the server puts the lid back on the bowl and shakes it until most of the shrimp are dead. You won't be able to eat more than three bites of this, but you're in Thailand, so it probably cost about as much as a pack of fruit snacks. - - - - Jones Soda Co. Carbonated Candy Submitted by Clark Wells Chalkily reminiscent of Flintstones vitamins, but without the alleged healthy stuff and fun Fred/Barney/Wilma/Dino shapes, the sensation this carbonated candy gave my mouth led me to believe that it's about as carbonated as cardboard. The label suggests tossing some into your favorite Jones soda, and that would indeed be a good way to get rid of them. Otherwise, I guess your beagle could eat them. Mine did, and seemed OK about it. - - - - Oscar Mayer Fast Franks Submitted by Emily Shetler Here's how to make a hot dog: Put some cold water in a smallish potit doesn't have to be much water, just enough to cover an average-size frank. Put the wiener in the water. Turn on the stove. Put the flame on high. Now here's the tricky part: heat the water until it boils. It should take about three minutes, give or take a minute, depending on the pot. In those three minutes, you can get the bun, ketchup, mustard, and relish from the refrigerator. You'll probably even have enough time to split open the bun. (Again, this part can get a bit dicey: most buns are precut, but since some bun-cutting machines occasionally make mistakes by cutting only one-quarter of the way through the roll, or all the way through, and thereby making some rolls unusable, you might have to search around a little for a functional bun.) After you've arranged the bun on a plate, if you've been quick enough, maybe pour yourself a glass of milk. Whatever you do during those three minutes, have no fear: once the water is boiling, you are in business. The hot dog is, effectively, done. You may want to take the hot dog out of the pot with a fork, as the water is hot and will burn your fingers if you touch the meat directly. If that sounds like too much work for you, I don't blame you one bit. Don't forget that you can always use Oscar Mayer Fast Franks, available in regular and all-beef. Each package contains three individually wrapped wieners. All you do is pop one in the microwave for 30 seconds on high. When the microwave beeps, just take the Fast Frank out of there and eat it. This leaves you less time to put the ketchup on the counter, but you've spared yourself the grueling process of boiling that frank. I know what you're wondering: yes, if you can believe it, each package includes the bun. Yes, you could make six Fast Franks in the time it used to take you to make one hot dog. And, yes, if you have two microwaves and a partner, you could make 12 of these guys in that amount of time. That's a good thing, right? - - - - Tootsie Pop Submitted by Danielle Leduc During a family road trip to Disneyland, piled in our tent-trailer, we made a quick candy stop at a corner store before arriving at the campground in Anaheim. Oh, the choices in America! Being Canadian, our childhoods were deprived of such exotic treats as Mambo bars; those were saved for special occasions and border crossings. Despite that, I decided to go for a Tootsie Pop. For the rest of the day, I licked. And I counted. When the dishes were done in our little sink and it was time to brush my teeth, I had licked 364 times. Carefully, I wrapped the partially dissolved Pop back in its original waxy wrap and nestled between my two brothers on our side of the trailer. In the morning, the Tootsie Pop was still in place, ready to resume the count. When I peeled back the sticky wrapper, though, I was not greeted with the appetizing Pop I'd put to rest the night before. Shiny, conniving ants covered every centimeter of my treat, of my progress. And did I let them stop me? Did I give up? Yes, of course I did. - - - - Eggplant Parmesan Submitted by Ian Candy I never start cooking until I'm already hungry, so when the recipe says, "Sprinkle slices with kosher salt and let the bitter juices weep from the eggplant for about an hour," I ignore it and just start slicing the eggplant up as quickly as I can. I beat two eggs with a fork in a Tupperware container, because all the bowls are dirty, then throw some breadcrumbs onto a plate and start smearing the egg and crumbs onto the eggplant slices until I've got a nice yolky paste all over my hands. At that point, I pour some oil into a pan and start frying it all up. I try to use tongs to turn the pieces over, but it just knocks most of the breading off the eggplant. The pan's not deep enough, so the oil keeps splattering all over the stove and burning me on the arm. I've got about nine batches' worth to fry, and by the third batch enough breading has fallen into the oil that it starts to burn and the kitchen fills up with a weird smell. My roommate is in the living room watching the football game with some of his friends. After a while, he starts complaining. I tell him I'm frying eggplant and he shuts up until the smoke detector starts going off. I take the battery out and fry the last few pieces up. I dump half a jar of Prego into the baking pan, toss in the eggplant, and cover it with Parmesan cheese. The rest of the sauce goes in next, topped off with some shredded mozzarella. I toss the pan into the oven at 400 degrees and go into the living room to watch the game, but my eyes are burning from the oil and I can't really keep them open. I try to flush them out with some cold water from the sink, then go back into the living room. It's the fourth quarter and the game is starting to get close when I realize I forgot to set the oven timer. The cheese is perfectly golden brown on top, like a casserole, and the sauce is bubbling up from underneath. I let it cool for a few minutes on top of the stove and then spoon some onto a plate and take it to the living room. "You know, I'm going to smell like burnt food for the rest of the week thanks to you," my roommate says, and I want to tell him to go fuck himself, but instead I take a bite of the eggplant. It is the most delicious thing I've ever tasted in my life. - - - - Convenience Store Cheese Burger Dog Submitted by Renee Gentry At first glance, it appears to be an oversized breakfast sausage, spinning on the grill rollers along with the hot dogs and Polish sausages. Grab a hot bun out of the drawer, top it with a squirt of mustard, and you've got yourself a mighty tasty breakfast for a mere buck. Hot, greasy breakast sausage, marbled perfectly with just the right amount of pork fat. Crispy on the outside, hot and juicy on the inside. After weeks of enjoying this economical breakfast, I accidentally glanced at the receipt. "Cheese Burger Dog." Cheese Burger Dog? I've been stuffing myself with cheese burgers, all the while convinced I was eating a tasty Jimmy Dean breakfast delight? How could this be? I squeezed that little sausage and inspected the goo. It was no pork sausage. It was quite possible that those little chunks of pork fat were, in reality, oozy American cheese. It was hamburger meat, shaped like a hot dog, with built-in cheese bits. Now when I pass the corner store, I save my buck and keep driving. I also gag a little. - - - - Croatian Crackers With Pâté (Podravka) Submitted by Zainah Usman If cotton were spun into a biscuit, and that biscuit began to ooze, and the ooze smelled like a desk drawer, then you'd have Podravka, the Croatian cracker with liver pâté. Thanks, Croatia! - - - - Morningstar Farms Veggie Breakfast Bacon Strips Submitted by Steve DiPietro "Enjoy the authentic smoky flavor and satisfying crisp of bacon with your favorite breakfast or in a BLT," instructs the printing on the box. Seems pretty straightfoward. But you need to read between the lines here. What the box is really telling you is to never, under any circumstances, eat this product alone. Always have it with real food, so that you don't discover the affront to nature that is the Veggie Bacon Strip. Prompted by a vegetarian co-worker, I took a bite of what looked like a child's rendering of bacon. After catching the pieces that it broke into when I bit down, I foolishly threw them into my mouth. Now, I'll give the mad scientists at Morningstar Farms a little credit: it tasted vaguely like bacon. It tasted like what an android that is trying to fit in with us humans would imagine bacon would taste like. When hidden inside a BLT, it might even work. Eaten alone in a dark editing bay, it did not work. Was my co-worker actually an android? How many more of them were there? Is this how their infiltration would be exposed? By me, here in this room, eating what feels like petrified carpet cushioning with a hint of bacon flavor? Did his eyeball just take a picture of me? It did. Why did I trust a vegetarian? Morningstar Farms also makes a Veggie Breakfast Sausage, both in link form and as a patty. - - - - Suzanne's Ricemellow Cream Submitted by Alexis St. James According to Suzanne's website, Ricemellow is available in industrial quantities. Nothing could make me happier. - - - - Eye-Popping Apple Jacks Submitted by Jeff Alford Last year, I stockpiled 10 boxes of Haunted Mansion Cocoa Krispies in an attempt to make up for their impending absence. Those were good times, last year. I wouldn't let anyone touch those Cocoa Krispies. But these, these "Eye-Popping" Apple Jacks, they're just lazy. We can all imagine how hard it is to squeeze out a little marshmallow circle from whatever machine they're birthed from and call it an eyeball. Why not try some truly spooky marshmallows, Kellogg's? Maybe some bats, some witches, a ghost or two? You want to really scare us? Do a marshmallow of a man in his 20s, yelling at his housemate for stealing his Halloween cereal. Do one of a man reunited every October with the childhood he never had. Next Halloween, this could be special. - - - - McDonald's Caramel Dip Submitted by Dana Madonna I leave my cube at lunchtime most days and actively seek developmental regression in the form of nonsensible food choices. I do this to compensate for the youth that I feel is slipping away with every hour I spend cultivating tendinitis, wearing jeans on Casual Fridays, and attending meetings during which I doodle hearts on my legal pad. On one seasonably cold day, I drive over to McDonald's for something sweet and innocent in a calculated way. I find Apple Dippers With Low Fat Caramel Dip, which seem to accompany the Happy Meals but are also sold separately. The apples come in a bag that displays more information than I feel comfortable with. The toddler-appropriate pieces are peeled and slimy. The Low Fat(!) Caramel Dip is what gets me, though. My first slim apple half-moon gets a perfunctory dabbing and is basically wasted. After that one, I completely submerge each piece, making every sweet-tart slice more delicious than the one that preceded it. I polish the apples off and am left with a Canaanitic miracle: the bottom of the small plastic container is still coated with a generous layer of brownish goo. In defiance of my burning throat, I spend the next four minutes swiping and swabbing my pinkie finger around the perimeter of the container. The aftertaste is like a tiny liquid state fair, and I go to the Monthly Associate Birthday Celebration that afternoon feeling like a striped-tent vendor, wishing for a ride on the Scrambler. - - - - Good Friends Cereal
Submitted by Phuong-Cac Nguyen I was born with shy, often unproductive bowel movements, so I've reluctantly learned I need more fiber than most people to get my kids comfortable for a dip in the pool. Hence, I discovered Kashi's Good Friends cereal, yet another exciting permutation in their line of healthy concoctions. The box is at once daunting and reassuring. Two old people stare into space and point zombie grins toward me, a bowl of the magic stuff nestled under their chins. Their smiles say, "Yes, we crap regularly, and aren't we just delighted with ourselves! And dear sweet Jesus, aren't we so lucky! The last days of our lives couldn't be any better!" I got the "fiber-lovers value pack" version, which is a nice way for Kashi to put it. People seeing us "fiber lovers" buying this are likely to say to themselves, "Wow, well, look at them, they love fiber, they would marry it!" Everyone knows nothing beats love, even if it's for fiber. It's nice to have a passion. This is incredibly pleasant messaging. At home, sighing and feeling sad, I turn the box so my new Good Friends can look out the window and I can eat in peace. - - - - Fried Coke Submitted by Nicole Pasini How does one fry a liquid? I was never able to find outthe teenager manning the pink-and-white-striped trailer at the state fair told me it was "top secret." I couldn't even sneak around to the side window to peek in, because he pulled mine out of the display case, where it had been sitting for an indeterminate period of time. My girlfriend read an article about a man in Texas who fries Coke by mixing the soda with batter and frying strips of it, creating a Coke-infused fried dough. Arizona Fried Coke is more like a corn dog where the dog has gone bad to the point of turning sweet and plasmatic. My assumption is that they freeze the Coke before frying it. My first, and last, bite resulted in long, sticky strings of syrup trailing down my face. And it made my teeth hurt. - - - - Stonewall's Hot Pastrami Style Jerquee Submitted by Dan Gasperut The PBS station in Chicago plays cooking shows all day on Saturdays. It's really your only choice when you get five channels and two of them are in Spanish. Since it's PBS, the video is all grainy and everyone's wardrobe looks like leftovers from the set of Family Ties; you can't tell if you're watching a 10-year-old rerun of Barbecue University or a new episode of Simply Ming. Anyway, one Saturday, one of the cooks said that the secret to good cooking was empathy. It makes sensewe prepare food for others to make them happy. We're offering them a physical manifestation of our love and asking them to validate our effort by returning that affection. So what does it mean when my roommate microwaves flavored soy flour and offers me the flaccid, rubbery fake meat, saying, "Taste it, it's great, it's just as good as the land animals you eat but I don't"? I guess it means she has no empathy. Also, it means my apartment is going to smell like a wet dog for about 40 minutes. - - - - Snickers Duo Submitted by Chris Hicks I was so excited when they released these here in the U.K. Finally, I thought, a Snickers that's big enough to share but easy to divide. No more tendrils of snarled caramel. No more lost peanuts. I will peel the wrapper in the middle, revealing two neat halves, and that will be the end of the division. Any friend would gladly accept such an offer. But I was wrong. It seems that, at 4 a.m., in a petrol-station forecourt, the potential friends I'm shouting at are not put off by the unhygienic implications of a hand-broken king-size Snickers: they're put off by my desperation. And my sobbing. So, Mars, fuck you. I felt better casually tearing off a hunk of a kingdom than offering half of an unwanted meal for two. - - - - Yerba Mate Submitted by Marti Davidson Sichel In olden days, people drank this warm concoction (made from a member of the holly family) out of gourds while passing down mythological tales to their friends and family. It was tradition, and it was lovely. In more recent times, while browsing a natural-foods store on Oahu, I was enticed to drink this tea-like substance by a nice girl who bore a strong resemblance to Frida Kahlo. After I admitted that doctor's orders had taken me off of caffeine, she told me that it was completely void of said offending compound. "Frida" brought the giant chilled cup to the table; I was immediately struck by the abundance of detritus on its pearl-like surface. I added some raw sugar to the cup and drew a long, slow pull of sweet, almost-tea-but-not-quite goodness. "It's almost like tea, but not quite," I told my husband. Bless this heavy-browed goddess of the natural-foods café for showing me this lighted path through the dark jungle of a tea-less life! A new tradition can now be born. Upon my return to the mainland, my curiosity piqued, I looked up "yerba mate" on Wikipedia. "Mate products are sometimes marketed as 'caffeine-free' ... based on a claim that the primary active xanthine in mate is 'mateine', erroneously said to be a stereoisomer of caffeine ... 'Mateine' is an official synonym of caffeine." Damn you, Eyebrows. - - - - Naked Power-C Submitted by Megan Mayhew Bergman It has a pound of fruit per every bottle. I think you have to allow yourself three full minutes of self-awe when you finish drinking this, because, holy shit, you've just had a pound of fruit. When was the last time you had a pound of fruit in one sitting? Fondue doesn't count. Neither does strawberry Nesquik. - - - - The In-N-Out Burger Submitted by Ben Pawlowski I'm visiting Las Vegas to find an apartment. Up until now, I have never made it west of central Missouri. "Hello," a voice says to me via intercom. "How are you?" "What?" I respond. "How are you?" "I'm, um, fine." I have never received such courteousness from a drive-thru intercom before. "Do you want to eat in your car?" the voice inquires. "Do I want to eat in my car?" I've eaten in my car before. I will probably eat in my car again. But this question strikes me as a rather personal one. "No. No, thank you. I don't want to ... um ... no. Thanks." Following the drive-thru road, I can see inside the restaurant. Cute 17-year-olds wear paper hats and slice potatoes, ring up large pink lemonades, and stop to look you in the eye and ask if you want ketchup with that. In my rental PT Cruiser (not my choice), looking through those windows, I breathe in an overwhelming wave of industriousness, that "we're not old enough to vote but at least we're getting paid" spirit, which I don't think I ever really had. Everyone here is friendly and polite and smiles with their eyes. The entire experience is, if not uplifting, at least strangely comforting. They have good burgers there. But the fries are kinda mushy. - - - - Oven-Baked Brownie Squares Submitted by Clinton Larson A box of miniature brownies arriving with a Sunday-football pizza order might at first seem to threaten the level of machismo needed to properly immerse oneself in such a sport. This is, after all, the gridiron. The dirtiest, sweatiest, head-butt'nest display of manpower this side of European soccer. Traditional wisdom would say that if brownies or any other confections are going to be involved, they should be as big as your face and covered with rock candy. However, when they're free, and when your and your buddy's dogs, the three of which weigh a combined 17 pounds, rush to the door ahead of you to vibrate chaotically and send tiny shouts at the delivery person standing outside your townhouse complex, which is known as French Creek, the adjustment needed is fairly minimal. And, actually, the brownies ended up being quite manly. They felt like they were constructed from balsa, and each bite recalled the wood bridge you made in high school, attractive and sleek until weight was applied and it collapsed into sawdust and splinters and you lost the class contest to the guy who based his design on the Imperial cruiser from Return of the Jedi. The powdered sugar on top of the brownies looked like it was applied in a good-luck over-the-shoulder throw, and the fudge dipping sauce tasted like syrup and wood glue and defeat. Of the 10 brownies that came, we ate eight, between two shots of whiskey. - - - - Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringles Submitted by Jesse Adelman When I bite down on a thin piece of metala paper clip, pen nib, knife blade, or tinfoil scrapit feels like tiny magnetic ants are burrowing into my jaw through my gums. The sensation is uncomfortable but also appealing and compulsive, like picking scabs, or biting my cuticles, which I like to keep red and angry. Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringles fulfilled my needs in this area while also being extremely salty and, OK, delicious. The actual fat reduction (36 percent, to 7 grams of fat for 16 crisps) is negligible given the wild difference in consistency between these and original Pringles, whose dried-potato-flake composition enables one to experience the pleasure of chewing while meeting little actual resistancelike the elliptical machines at the gym, but for your face. When you bite a Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringle, it will shatter into tiny rigid fragments, all of which must be chewed themselves, ad infinitum. Each brittle trace of Pringle will feel like a tiny magnet ant burrowing into your jaw through your gums. The new Pringles slogan is "Pleasure. Every Single Pringle." This is true and more. I poured the crumbs of my Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringles onto their shallow lid and sucked them down after I ate a Cinnamon Raisin South Beach Diet Bar with a beer. I eat lunch at home. - - - - White Castle Chocolate Shakes Submitted by Steve Jents I'm not sure if I was in ninth or 10th grade. My brother, in an incredible show of support to my parents, picked me up from my job as a line cook at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. After my brother, his friends, and I bowled three games and shared a liter of Jack Daniel's, a 2-1 vote was cast for me to hop behind the wheel of my parents' 1978 Oldsmobile 98 Regency. (My brother held the dissenting opinion.) I had neither driver's license nor learner's permit, and I fucking white-knuckled that thing down the road, at about 27 miles per hour, I thinkthe light for the speedometer didn't work. We hadn't even turned onto the highway yet when I heard "Steeeeeeeeve, dudetake us to White Castle!" Being a young man new to the school of whiskey-induced inebriation, I was unable to recall just how in the hell one would get there. My brother and Red Dog, who sat shotgun, guided me to the drive-thru like navigators in a rally car. Twenty minutes later, safely in my parents' driveway, I was finally able to begin drinking my chocolate shake. Perhaps it was the adrenaline that comes from driving underage drunks home from a bowling alley when you yourself haven't been behind the wheel before. Perhaps it was the Marlboro Red my brother let me take a couple of drags from on the way home. But I'll be goddamned if White Castle's chocolate shakes aren't the best in the business. - - - - Brain Burrito Submitted by Alex MacInnis On the board at the burrito stand across from the high school, the choices get more hardcore as you move down the list. We'd been working our way down, a burrito a day after school, seeing who would stop where. I didn't enjoy the tongue burrito, but Dave ate one, too, and said he wasn't stopping. I was pretty bummed to hear that. The next day, we ordered two brain burritos. A couple of guys we knew came over to watch. I tried to eat around the brain and get big mouthfuls of the beans, but you can't really eat only one side of a burrito. We were standing in the parking lot, and I wasn't gonna ask for a plate and fork. They give you a tub of salsa, but I'd already used all of that. There's no taste at allit's like food that was left on a grave overnight for an ancestor and then you actually go back and try to eat it in the morning and it tastes drained. It's just like eating a burrito of gray fat. Every bite, you ask yourself, "What on earth am I eating?!" and your brain races to inform you: "It's BRAIN, IDIOT! It's BRAIN!" Each of us was only eating as fast as the other guy, and these were pretty big burritos. They probably hadn't sold much brain the last couple of days and were trying to use it up. Once we hit about the two-thirds mark, we just agreed to stop without talking about it much. It felt lame to waste all that brain, though. - - - - Trix Cereal Submitted by Micah Nilsson I bought these for my nephew so he wouldn't have to eat my hippie-childhood-influenced breakfasts on our family camping trip. The first few mornings, everyone accepted Bob's Red Mill Wholegrain Pancakes, so the Trix remained unopened until an evening poker game, when we tore into the box to use the cereal as ante. I grew up eating granola (brown and tan), Grape-Nuts (brown), and, on wild mornings, Raisin Bran (brown and dark brown), so nothing in my childhood could have prepared me for the technicolor exuberance and willful denial of actual fruit-flavoring possibilities that is Trix. Looking into the bag inside that box was like looking into a thousand Latin American bodegas with a few Delhi buses and an entire Asian-supermarket snack aisle thrown in for good measure. I put the box down, alarmed and unnerved, but soon was drawn back in by the games and puzzles on the box itself. Games! On breakfast-item packaging! Who knew? Unprepared, my taste buds were as an Amish in Vegas, so confused and excited were they. I could taste the colors, but not in that fun acid-trip sort of way. For a while I enjoyed the novelty of it, how the red ones tasted different than the turquoise and pink ones, each one distinct and yet totally unconstrained by any similarity to any flavor of the natural world. Then I began to realize that these things are vile. A pan-chromatic stain upon morning itself. Also, they contain preservatives I have been advised not to feed my dog. My nephew didn't eat them all, so they came back home with us, haunting our cabinet like a gaudy phantasm of the day's most important meal. I don't like to waste any food, but I was afraid to subject my compost to this prismatic incursion. At least I can recycle the box. - - - - Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Crunch Submitted by Vijith Assar I'm happy to report that Post Cereals appears to have finally decided to get with the times and update their firstborn. This is Grape-Nuts for the Golden Grahams generation, a necessary evil in the health-food industry now that the Saturday-morning tots who thought that Cookie Crisp was a good idea have grown up and come upon modest amounts of disposable income. Hundreds of the angry little acorn-gravel bastards still attack the roof of your mouth with every spoonful, but the overall flavor is noticeably sweeter, and there's even the occasional raisinjust rare enough that I'd always be surprised upon encountering one, but nonetheless a welcome cushion of momentary respite from the whole-grain riot. It's certainly an improvement on the original, if that means anything, but I still have misgivings about any edible substance named after two simple foods that manages to taste like neither. - - - - Caribou Coffee Granola Bar Submitted by Will Hindmarch With my Kroger card, it was two boxes for $4. I'm a sucker for that old trick. I might buy and eat two copies of Tim Allen's The Shaggy Dog if it were on a two-for-cheap special with my Kroger cardI'd put them in a Ziploc bag, smash them into chips, and eat them with hummus. The coffee smell, once I'd opened one of the boxes and then a bar, was palpable. I could've grabbed that first fume of joe and run it through my hair like soap. That smell is the main reason I'd think about buying another box. Otherwise, the Caribou Coffee Granola Bar just tastes like another granola bar with a chocolate skirt. They taste fine. - - - - Powerblast Energy Powder Submitted by Jake Hayden If you've ever wondered what it feels like to be empowered with 16,670 percent of your daily value of riboflavin, the answer is that it feels pretty normal. And your pee smells like orange Flintstones vitamins mixed in a mortar with the dirty husk shavings of a carrot. - - - - Rockstar Energy Drink Original Submitted by Whitey Eckerson Not long ago, I decided to buy one of those crazy energy soft drinks that tired people like. I'd never tried any of them, primarily because I'm very sensitive to caffeine. That's no small confession for a bookish 25-year-old American. Everyone at Starbucks, employees and patrons alike, look on with contempt when I order my "small decaf, please." I turn to the lady behind me and say, "I'm very sensitive to caffeine." If particularly embarrassed, I might accidentally tell my too-much-caffeine story. "I once drank one of those miniature coffees when I was out to dinner with my wife, and I wasn't able to go to bed till, like, 4 in the morning." It's a brief story. After the customary appearance of Mr. Silence and his partner Dr. Awkward, I turn slowly back to the cash register and pay the $1.28 total with my debit card. I wound up choosing Rockstar Original because it's the only brand of energy drink I recognized. I used to work with a guy at a pizzeria in Salt Lake City who drank one every morning before we opened. He always called it "fuckin' Rockstar." Determined, I cracked open the oblong can and took a swig right there in front of the refrigerator wall in the supermarket without even paying for it first. The next thing I knew, I was at the cash register, breathing very, very hard through gnashing teeth. Spit flew forth from my mouth in little missile-streaks onto the black conveyor belt. After paying with my debit card, I began laughing uncontrollably, actually saying, "HA HA HA HA HA." There was no mirror handy, but I'm sure my eyes were bulging. Gradually, my head lightened and I blacked out. My doctor told me it could have been a mild heart attack. Now when I order my decaf, I turn to the lady behind me and say coolly, "Heart trouble." She gives me a sympathetic look. "Heart trouble," I say again, a little quieter. - - - - Go-Tarts Submitted by Cynthia Kopkowski Apparently, Pop-Tarts weren't convenient enough. Now Kellogg's offers us Go-Tarts: "Everything you love about Pop-Tartsnow in a bar!" Nothing I love about Pop-Tarts remains. Gone is the sweet, unbroken expanse of icing that stretched before your gaping mouth like the Oklahoma plains after a dusting of creamed high-fructose corn syrup. Gone is the pleasing texture of the larger flat pocket, which impishly tickled your tongue as you took a bite. In their place, there's a chalky tube that shatters on contact into a great many crumbs. You're left holding the wrapper, remembering the way things were before some focus group of porky 11-year-olds mandated this product's creation and a bunch of suits over at the Kellogg's HQ rushed to satisfy their demands. I'll stick with the old ways. - - - - Pepsi Jazz!: Black Cherry and Vanilla Submitted by Mary Holt "JAZZ!" it shouts from its plastic casing. My hand is urged forward by my music-school past. Images of speakeasies and flappers dance gayly through my head. Outside, I eagerly twist off the cap and drink deeply. Confusion fills my brain as I stare accusingly at the bottlethis doesn't taste like jazz! It tastes like a combination of sugar-free bubblegum and acid. - - - - Jell-O No-Bake Cheesecake Submitted by Cory Scott My family and I are frequent campers. Recently, we went backpacking in the Sierra Nevada, where a mosquito somehow bit the inside of my nose. At the end of our trip, I found the Jell-O No-Bake Cheesecake. Although I was wary of the packaging's proclamation that raw cheesecake was a good thing, I took a perfectly good pot and coated the bottom with the included crumbs. I then mixed powdered milk, water, and the powdered cheesecake mix, which smelled like protein powder. After I poured this mixture on top of the crumbs, I realized a flaw in our cheesecake-related plan. We had no fridge. In my elevation-sick state, I cursed myself not for bringing something that required refrigeration, but, instead, for not bringing the fridge. Looking around, I spotted a lingering snowdrift, and decided to bury the quickly congealing proto-cheesecake under about a foot of snow. Some hours later, when we dug it out, we were amazed to find that it was actually semisolid. The cherry topping slid out of its package like slugs, though, and my comrades, who until this point had been happily anticipating this moment, became eager for me to take the first bite. It hit my tongue like pudding, and before I had swallowed that spoonful I was getting another. - - - - Similac Alimentum Advance Submitted by Whitney Collins Last Sunday morning, on the verge of both a drive-thru divorce and trading our infant son on eBay for a red paper clip, my husband and I invested in a foul-smelling product known as Similac Alimentum Advance, a formula made specifically for babies who, for reasons of severe protein sensitivity, begin to make Linda Blair look like Laura Ingalls. Never mind that it costs more than what was going to be our child's liberal-arts education, or that it smells like 42-day-old tofu with a dash of diaper, or that I ran four red lights and gave a cop the finger while screeching toward Rite Aid. This beverage is "Buddha in a Bottle." Immediately after his first 5-ounce feeding, George's screams subsided and he slipped into an open-eyed state of nirvana, farted twice, and gave a harmonious coo. Then he slept for four hours straight, during which time my husband and I were so overcome with glee we didn't even worry about checking the baby's pulse. Today is Wednesday, and, $30 later (yes, dear readers, the price is that exorbitant), the Collins family is auditioning for Hallmark, Pillsbury, and Disney World commercials. We're that disgustingly happy. Oh, did I mention that the proteins in Similac Alimentum Advance are pre-digested? I don't know who does that at the factory, or what it entails, but we don't give a crap. (Except for George. He's giving lots and lots of them.) - - - - Plump Venison Steak Submitted by Brian Vastag "Beware the scrawny deer!" was the cry heard in central Northeastern Wisconsin during the autumns of my youth. Each hunting season, that plaintive cry echoed off the gunmetal skies and across the fallow fields into the ears of every sportsman and -boy. "Beware the scrawny deer!" For the scrawniness of a deerbuck or doe, makes no differencebespeaks the dreaded chronic wasting disease, which is to deer what scrapie is to sheep, what mad cow is to cattle, what Creutzfeldt-Jakob is to people. It's a prion disease. So when Uncle Harold announced venison for dinner, I paused, disquieted. An accomplished sportsman, Uncle Harold had felled many a mighty ungulate: towering elk in Montana, giant caribou in Alaska. Scrawny deer in the heartland? Could I take the chance that someday hence my own grotesque and kinky brain proteins would topple me into unremitting madness diagnosable only by slicing my brain into translucent strips for easy microscopy? The technician, examining the damage, would stifle a sob, wipe her brow with a gloved hand, and shudder. "Wasted deer," she would mouth. The steaming pile of meat arrived. Uncle Harold forked a steak onto my plateelegantly marbled and bordered by a thick lining of fat, this venison must have been sliced from a strapping brute. And, so far, I'm fine. - - - - Orbit Lemon-Lime Submitted by Lauren Spohrer It tastes like that summer you worked at Smoothie King and instead of mixing a little bit of bleach with water you filled the mop cart with bleach and slopped it around the store at - - - - Ginseng Root Drink Submitted by Alli Shaloum I went into my local Korean grocery store for a bag of Funyuns. As I stepped up to the counter to make my purchase, I saw two neat rows of small glass bottles of Ginseng Root Drink gleaming in the neon. Immediately, I reached for one. "Oh, you wouldn't like that," warned the teenage cashier. "Oh, yeah? Why's that?" "It's not like anything you've tasted before." And he closed his eyes to seal the deal. Now, at this point I probably should have just walked away. The bottle looked like it contained some formaldehyde-preserved alien: the ginseng root floated with its little tentacles in the syrup. "Only Koreans drink it." His blatant ethnic self-promotion and superiority only sweetened the deal. Oh, how he taunted me. I'm a self-loathing Jew from Long IslandI had everything to prove and nothing to lose. "OK then. I'll take it!" I paid him an extra $2 and dreamed of overcoming the obstacles between our peoples. Hell, I'd even eat the root if I had to. "Should I drink it cold?" "Yup, and good luck." I promised him I'd come back with a report. Of course, it's still in the back of my fridge, untapped. - - - - Hot Roast-Beef Sandwich Submitted by Nick Bredie Where does "sandwich" end and "melee with bread" begin? The open-face hot roast-beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy is what those of us in the philosophy business might call a sorites paradox, or paradoxical heap. It's kind of like trying to figure out where the valley ends and the mountain begins. This is why the best hot roast-beef sandwiches are made in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Town 'N' Country Restaurant (its billboard reads "Best in Food"), of Warrenton, Virginia, is a personal favorite. The Pepperidge Farm peeks out from under the beef, crying out to be folded over and made a proper sandwich. But one quickly finds that the gravy has overcome what little integrity the bread began with. Does this disqualify this collation from sandwichhood? And if so, why bother with the bread in the first place, since the potatoes already serve as gravy-mop? Once the first near-liquid forkful enters your mouth, though, you stop trying to figure any of this out. - - - - Bananas and Cheese Submitted by Brian Sutorius When I was too young to be dropped off at school so my mom could catch up on her soaps, she compromised with me by letting me catch up on my Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for a half hour right before lunchtime. The venerable Fred Rogers played with puppets well into an age where he was eligible for AARP benefits, and also had a traffic light installed in his house. Needless to say, everything he told me should have been taken with a grain of salt, especially before lunchtime. One day, Mr. McFeely ("Speedy delivery!") brought Fred a blank gray box from the neighborhood grocer, known to all of us as Chef Brockett. Inside that box was one banana, one slice of pre-wrapped American cheese, and a note reading "Wrap cheese around peeled banana and eat right away. Yours, C.B." This being a happier time, Fred gave no second thought to the sparse instructions before enjoying his snack. I immediately told my mother to nix the scheduled peanut butter and jelly. There's nothing special about this quick concoction (a "C.B."cheese banana, yes, but also Chef Brockett!), but it doesn't taste half bad. I've tried it with Swiss and jack cheeses in addition to the classic American, and they all play nicely off the banana's spongy texture and unique flavor. I'm sure there are health benefits galore, along with the added bonus of disgusted looks from your lunchtime companions. - - - - Diet Pepsi Jazz Strawberries and Cream Submitted by Arianna Stern Walking into my local record store, I saw a cooler filled with melted ice and glass pop bottles. A sign atop it read: Diet Pepsi JAZZ Before taking the plunge, I asked the nearest available clerk if the fruit-flavored beverage was any good. "Well, that's subjective," she replied. Subjective indeed. Jazz is neither enjoyable nor particularly offensive. It's the sort of drink you ingest when there's nothing else available, making Jazz the drinkable equivalent of E! True Hollywood Story. It tastes like Strawberries and Cream Creme Savers melted into Diet Pepsi, with a little extra (diet) strawberry syrup to up the strawberry-to-cream ratio. As I closed my mouth around its skinny glass neck, the clerk took a photo of me drinking. - - - - Ben & Jerry's Black and Tan Ice Cream Submitted by Nadine Darling Poking through pints in the ice-cream freezer of my local Shaw's, I spotted Ben & Jerry's Black and Tan Ice Cream. Ice creams based on alcoholic drinks are as prevalent now as movies that used Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" as background music for their trailers were in the late '80s, and I for one say it's about fucking time. Like most Americans, I don't have a moment to spare. I need to cram all of my various addictions into one artery-clogging, liver-pummeling, mood-swing-elevating experience, and it must be portable enough to eat while weeping on the back porch in my underwear. I have no problem with Ben and Jerry, two pleasant dairy-loving old men in Vermont who, apparently, can't get enough of each other. They very nicely straddle the fence between highfalutin, green-tea-foisting companies like Häagen-Dazs and the more ghetto-fabulous store brands. The reason why Ben & Jerry's remains viable year after year is because their philosophies are bland and inoffensive: Ice cream is fun! Hormones are bad! Naming frozen novelties after filthy hippies is profitable! But I found Black and Tannamed for the combination of pale ale and stout, and not, I assume, for the regiment of brutal British soldiers recruited to serve in Ireland after World War Ito be somewhat disappointing. For one, it contains no actual hooch. So, even though I ate all of it, I was left without the inflated sense of self that comes from true alcohol. I lacked the confidence to, say, bark through the fence at the neighbor's Doberman, or call up friends from junior high and demand to know why they're jealous of me. All things considered, I wouldn't buy Ben & Jerry's Black and Tan again. Or maybe I would, what the hell do I know? - - - - Lightning Bugs Submitted by Anna T. Hirsh This fascinating candy adventure has two parts: a receptacle containing little gummy nubbins made to look like giant larvae, and what the packaging refers to as "Electronic Tongs." The instructions urge, "Grab a bug! Light it up!," which is exactly what I did yesterday. After carefully removing the plastic covering, I was met with what I can only explain as the aroma that occurs when someone eats a huge bag of gummy worms and then vomits them up. Undeterred and semi-hopeful that these candy insects might actually carry an electrical current, I closed my tweezers around a yellow niblet, and it was suddenly glowing a fantastic radioactive red! But the glow came from a small laser-pointerish red light in the tip of the tongs. I was disappointed. I wanted my candy itself to glow, and then I wanted to eat it. I felt cheated. But I popped the bug in my mouth and was treated to a surprisingly soft, jaw-achingly sweet candy sensation that tasted exactly like fruit-scented carpet deodorizer (I would guess). I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. When I returned, all my lightning bugs were gone and the door to my boyfriend's office was just closing. "Those were great!" he told me later. He won't give back the tweezers. - - - - Kashi GOLEAN Crunch! Submitted by Jessica Benner My mom bought a giant box of this stuff for me at Costco. I think the message is pretty clear when your mom gives you something that actually has the command "GO LEAN!" written on it. That aside, let's look at the claim the people over at Kashi are making: "The combination of high protein from soy and whey, plus high fiber from grains, allows one to actually 'go lean'preserve muscle while burning fat." Does trying really hard not to cry also burn fat? What about furiously concentrating on your "happy place"? Because those are the things I have to do while eating this cereal. That's how bad it is. - - - - Tilla-Moos Submitted by Whitey Eckerson I've laid out two pairs of tweezers and a pair of toenail scissors on the table in front of me. Tilla-Moos come individually wrapped in an air-tight vacuum, and there's little room for error. It's less pleasing to eat a damaged miniature cheese brick. Suddenly, my wife taps me on the shoulder and says, "Phone for you." "Message, message, take a message!" I cry. My fingers are greasy with cheese sweat and regular sweat. I apprehend the cheese brick. Just then my stomach taps me on the arm and says, "Dude, another one? What's the deal? How about a pear or some hot water and lemon?" I warm the serrated edges of the packaging by massaging them between my thumb and forefinger. Shallow breaths in through the mouth, out through the nose. I make the initial cut with the toenail scissors and set them back on the table with shaking hands. Taking a tweezer in each hand, I carefully work the initial cut toward the exact center of the edge of the brick. Veins appear all over my head. I take a flap of plastic between my teeth and rip and tear at it like a lunatic and pretty much eat the cheese right through the packaging. I recommend Tilla-Moos to people who like heist films. - - - - Air France Bloody Mary Submitted by Kevin Roe Do not attempt to reproduce this drink at home; it should only be prepared by attractive Air France employees. 1. Pour one (1) mini-bottle of liquor into smallest Dixie cup available. The drink is traditionally prepared with Scotch, but anything you've got handy will do. 2. Take sip of Parmalat ultra-pasteurized tomato juice. Look sternly at cup. 3. Pick up one (1) ice cube with surgical tweezers and balance it on the meniscus of the drink, being careful not to break surface tension. 4. Lightly dust passenger with celery salt, then present him with boat-oar-sized swizzle stick. 5. Serve, splashing half of contents politely onto necktie or blouse as gender dictates. Best consumed in multiples of three. Pairings: Crackers; Dramamine, Xanax. - - - - Pschitt Soda Submitted by Edward Doucette At a sidewalk café on the Isle sur la Sorgues, in the summer of 2004, my son asked the waiter for a Sprite. The man responded with an odd sound"Sprissssschit?" I figured that was Provençal for Sprite, so I nodded in agreement. When our drinks arrived, though, my son was given a Pschitt soda. It looked like Sprite, tasted like Sprite, and smelled like Sprite, but there was no getting around the fact that it was still Pschitt. For my son, this was one of the highlights of the entire trip. - - - - Face Submitted by Paul Crutcher In the modern world, most of our meat is so far removed from the animal that we only rarely contemplate the connection. This comfortable detachment is impossible with face. And in China, where I am, people eat it. Rabbit face looks strikingly similar to those pictures of people in front of a powerful fan, cheeks flapping, eyes askew. It's almost indistinguishable from duck or chicken face in that, once you're past the "I am eating a face" part, the experience is much like the familiar inane fight with the gristly bits of meat on a leg bone. Fish face differs because it's often served attached to the fish. You contemplate the face after a good-natured Chinese friend has deftly decapitated it and dropped it into your bowl. You're told that it's a delicacy, and famous in this or that region. Then you're left fidgeting with your chopsticks for tiny speckles of fish meat, trying to talk your way out of consuming the eyes. - - - - Live Whitebait Submitted by Ned Rust When I was 11, my parents hoodwinked a new family at our church into having us at their Martha's Vineyard beach house. After dinner one evening, our two families had gathered on a nearby salt-pond dock to watch my father make a spectacle of himself with his latest fishing toy, a nylon cast net. On just his second throw, he managed an impressive haul of silvery birthday-candle-sized fish. He stood there beaming at his wriggling catch and, after answering some questions from the group, declared that many people considered these little fishwhich he knew even without a field guide to be whitebaitto be a delicacy. I put forth some naked skepticism. He said their bones were too small to hinder digestion, that they were entirely nontoxic, that they carried no human-adaptive pathogens and, withal, would be entirely safe to eat, even raw. I said if that was the case, then he should bring some back to the house and eat them. He stated he wouldn't need to go home to the house to eat them, that he'd eat them right therethat not only could they be eaten raw but that the Portuguese would, when they could, eat them live. Pretty soon, my ever helpful sister had counted to three and my father and I had each popped a wriggling, still-coated-in-its-natural-slime tidal-pool minnow into our mouths. Through the parasite-sized creature's slicker-than-mucus slime, I could feel every bony facet of its tiny little plankton-scooping jaws opening and shutting, its exquisitely tiny gill slits working like ruptured bellows, its mostly limp, shock-addled lateral musculature flicking once, twice, three times. I pinned it against the roof of my mouth, I breathed through my nose, and, after an eternity of panic-stretched seconds, I managed to work up enough saliva to swallow. And, surprisingly enough, it went down with just a hint of marsh-scented aftertaste, and I stood there looking at my father less with hate than with expectation of some sort of reward. Maybe a high-five at least. But my compensation was this: He put his hand to his mouth and spat an entirely unchewed fish out into his palm. Everybody laughed except my mother. As the color left my face, she asked my dad if the Portuguese really did eat them, or if they should make me throw up. - - - - Fried Oreos Submitted by Nicole Pasini The concept of fried Oreos fills most people with shock and disgust. My friend's initial reaction was to say, "Who would eat fried Oreos?" That's what I think she said, at least; I had already brushed past the woman in the mermaid costume at the casino entrance, so I couldn't really hear her. There was a sort of grease fog hovering over the slot machinesthink of a particularly tense scene at the London docks in a Sherlock Holmes novel. It was like that, but with a more distinct smell. Mermaids Casino manages to be simultaneously redolent of burnt funnel cake and loose change. While I joined the food counter's disturbingly long line, my friend started playing nickel slotsThis handle is really greasy! The cashier/fry cook was also coated in a light patina of grease, but took my order in an efficient manner, reaching for my $1.50 with the one hand and battering up my treats with the other. After fishing my three Oreos out of the fryer, she dumped about a cup of powdered sugar on them. I situated myself at a turquoise high-top and wondered if I should flag down my friend and get her to buy me a beer, or whatever one might drink with fried Oreos (Irish coffee?), but decided against it. In my haste, I also decided against retrieving some napkins. Even so, the Oreos were a true delicacyinside each greasy, spongy crust, the Oreo itself straddled the line between solid and liquid. The mountains of powdered sugar added a little grit. I ate all three before my friend peeled herself away from the slots and asked for a bite. My face was coated in powdered sugar and grease, and my nice vacation clothes were ruined. - - - - Fried Pizza Submitted by Ryan Seagrist The Scottish eat like shit. They are truly our brethren in terms of healthhighest rates of cancer, heart disease, and multiple sclerosis in Europe. Scottish women have the lowest life expectancy of any EU member nation. It goes on and on. What may be the reason? Could it be environmental concerns? Well, no, it's not. Lifestyle? Maybe. Perhaps it's due to the fact that THE SCOTTISH WOULD FUCKING BREAD WATER AND FRY IT IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO DO SO. I was living there for years, married into it, but there were some things I just would not do. I didn't wear a kilt at my weddingat the time, it was just too damn fashionable. But I had to try the fried pizza. You get it warm and oozing, steaming hot and perfect. Then you drop it into a deep fryer until it gets as hard as a piece of plywood, pour salt and vinegar over the top, and try to keep it down for as long as you can. Until the realization hits. The guilt and horror overtakes you. Then it passes, and you try to get over it. - - - - Reduced Sugar Cinnamon Toast Crunch Submitted by Kyle Garvey Sure to delight the same guilty, gullible white women who loved whole grains in their kids' cereals, General Mills has played the nutrition card again. This time, the target is sugara dietary hazard admittedly more unanimously hated than whatever whole grain aims to defeatand the first battleground is Cinnamon Toast Crunch, one of the greatest cereals ever. I've always loved CTC: the ideal sogginess it achieves so quickly, its oversize flakes perfect for stacking on a spoon, the way the cinnamon seems to melt into the milk. It was heavenly. Well, I guess sugar made all the difference, because now it tastes terrible. - - - - Kool-Aid Jammers: Submitted by Julieanne Smolinski Adult crash dieters everywhere can thank the childhood obesity epidemic for the fact that low-calorie foods now come with cartoon mascots. The Kool-Aid Jammers package assured me that, despite having all the flavor of Robitussin and all the nutritional value of envelope glue, these "juice" boxes have "all the FUN of [regular] Kool-Aid" (and only 10 calories a pop). There to prove it was Kool-Aid Man himself, looking as rotund as ever but somehow lacking in his usual wall-destroying vigor. After drinking these, Kool-Aid Man would be lucky to burst through the cobwebs growing on his Nordic Track. At least Diet Red Bull has 100 percent of your daily recommended dose of niacin. - - - - Chocolate Calcium Chews Submitted by Tracy Byrnes I rejected milk from the age of 2 months, and I stopped consuming yogurt as soon as I could read the words "live and active cultures." Twenty-four years later, I went for a walk. By that time, my bones were effectively shale. I shouldn't have been surprised when my attempt to step up onto a curb resulted in ankle twistage so spectacular that three metatarsals snapped. Mom says it's my own damn fault. My career as a waitress was over, and depression set in as I clicked on link after link promising "Easy, work-from-home income!" only to find that I'd need to buy some program with the precious $49.95 I had just dropped several times over on gimp equipment. I was being mocked by the establishment and sucked dry by the medical empire. I had to do something to save myself. That's when I found Trader Joe's Chocolate Calcium Soft Chews: hope in a gold wrapper. These delightful little pellets are your ally against frailty. They are so much more fun than a pill, and so much tastier than the chalky discs some people go for. You can easily find yourself downing anywhere from eight to 40 of them in a day. Each individually wrapped chew is 50 percent of your daily recommended intake, so if you like these even a quarter of the amount that I do, you'll be covered. Having just hit the 3,000 percent mark, my vision is getting a little cloudy. But I'm feeling strong. - - - - Gu Energy Gel Submitted by Sarah Wyatt What with losing my job, my boyfriend, and my general understanding of purposive existence, my year had been rockier than a pint of Ben and Jerry's finest. I, like the eponymous Monkey, veered from sweet banana-slimness to downright Chunky. Shortly after my total bodily mass began to exceed that of a small tank, I signed up for a marathon. I duly tortured myself and totally fucked up the lower region of my left shin, but I ran it. You can imagine my delight when I spotted the Gu tents at mile 22. Having only eaten enough to haul my ass over 20 miles, I was eternally grateful for caloric substance long before I'd even ripped open the package and gulped it like it was ambrosia sent from the running gods. For months afterward I regarded the Gu as this special substance whose magic should only be evoked around mile 22, despite the fact that their wrappers litter Central Park running paths on weekends like used condoms in Bronx schoolyards. Apparently, though, one's senses get a wee bit dulled after 22 miles. At a party recently, after pawing through the host's liquor cabinet and contemplating a run to the store for my midnightly half-box of Ding Dongs slathered with Marshmallow Fluff, I came upon an unused sack of the miraculous Gu under my host's bed. In my drunken state, thinking of the run I was supposed to go on in the morning, I decided it was worth eating. Instant and lasting agony ensued. I found myself unable to rid my mouth of a thick, foamy, vaguely salty film. It tasted like a used French Vanilla Glade Plug-In coated in fresh semen and melted Creamsicle. I didn't just miss the run. I called in to work, too. - - - - TrueBlue Blueberry Cocktail Submitted by Austin Webb I applaud the continued juicing of the planet's fruits and vegetables. Sure, "as much juice as a full serving of blueberries" could be read as an empty boast (Why not just eat blueberries?!). And, OK, its "Best New Blueberry Beverage: 2005" title (as judged by the North American Blueberry Council) smells of Big Blueberry cronyism. But who feels comfortable with a full serving (that's half a cup) of blueberries in their shoulder bag, anyway? And, when you think about it, what's so funny about a Blueberry Council? And who's paying $4 for a bottle of POM? Not me. This drink is refreshing and pleasantly suggests blueberry crumble. - - - - Buffalo Chicken Calzone Submitted by Joseph McGonegal The woman's gone for a monthan around-the-world trip. Shanghai, Dubayy, Athens, Madrid. Wants to see the world. Wants to try new things. Wants change. I say, Why change, baby? Haven't you tasted heaven around the cornerthe Checkmate Café's Buffalo Chicken Calzone? You can have your dumplings and your gyros and your arepas and your couscoushave them all on one delicious submarine sandwich for all I care. It can't add up to the Check's Buff Chix Calz (as they put it on the receipt). It's you whom I'll address now, BCCyou haven't left me. Two halves meant for sharing, perhaps, both the size of my willing heart; I'll eat you in the car this afternoon. I can't wait to get home, and I've always got extra Frank's RedHot in the glovebox. Maybe save the other half for Letterman. But at least this half is for me, right here, right now. Biting into the glazed cheese topping, teeth perfectly aligned with the three knife slits the cook has hurriedly finned into your spine, I greet the glory of being a man. I can afford you, all $7 of youit doesn't pinch the wallet a bit. I can appreciate you, sweat trickling down my forehead, the purging of all the tension that waiting for you for days has created. And I can forget, with each bite of your two full chicken breasts, marinated, deep-fried, then baked, all the half-assed attempts at perfection I've paid for in the past: the "cooks" who've smothered you in nauseating batter and butter, the homespun attempts of brothers who've overcooked the meat or undercooked the dough. Like everything delectable around which I have centered my life, you were created by someone who hardly even knew your name, sandwiched in between orders placed by those who don't even recognize that "buffalo chicken" is listed as a "topping" and that the calzone menu offers "any additional toppings" for an "additional $1.50." You were rung up by someone who had to figure all that out. Today I am 30. The DJ plays two Aerosmith songs I have requested while I recline and digest you. And yet, moments ago, while biting into this masterpiece of white-bread America, this bastardization of everything our Italian-American heritage has stood for to reach the bacchanalian bliss of upstateness, I was reminded of my mortality. The Buffalo Chicken Calzone is no country for old men. Higher triglyceride counts, excess sodium intake, gas, heartburn, and, yes, I'll say hemorrhoidsall weigh on the mind of the 30-something with every other bite. But I can't help myself. If this is self-destructive, so be it. If the woman catches me, when she returns, driving by pizzerias that aren't on the way home to ask if they do "make-your-own" calzones, I'll probably tell her about us. If I have to cut out all the other foods that, in combination with you, would put me on Oprah in 20 years as the diabetic 400-pounder who still believes in his dreams, so be it. And if I die with buffalo chicken on my breath, and calzone crust in my lap, pulled over in a parking spot a block from home because I just couldn't wait any longer, I'll not have died in vain. - - - - Solea Polenta Corn Chips: Tuscan Barbecue Flavor Submitted by Rachel Trousdale Solea's Tuscan Barbecue Polenta Corn Chips are well named. The redundancy of "polenta corn" counteracts the baffling "Tuscan barbecue," suggesting a daring but ultimately comforting fusion of Florence and Texas. Tangy, smoky, exciting, and yet unlikely to provoke indigestion. Alas, all of the flavor of these chips resides in their adjectives. If I had eaten one without reading the packaging, I would have thought: Bland Fritos. - - - - Kashi GOLEAN Creamy Hot CerealTruly Vanilla Submitted by Cody James Oatmeal, to me, is humanity's stand-in for cattle feed. I take no particular pleasure in eating it. Never has a spoonful of oatmeal caused my eyes to roll back in epicurean bliss. All I require is that it not cause offense during its mercifully brief stay in my mouth, since it's further along in my digestive tract where its true purpose will be served. "I'm tired of this oatmeal," says my wife, referring to the Quaker Supreme oatmeal I've been perfectly happy with for many months. "Fine," I reply, implying she should choose the one she wants. Moments later, the Kashi lands in the cart with an ominous, hollow sound. Any number of films have depicted the protagonist being presented with a bowl of pale, watery goop meant to keep them technically alive. At this point, our hero is typically incarcerated, e.g., on a dank island prison for a crime he did not commit, in a bamboo cage in the stinking Vietnamese jungle, or on a hovercraft in the apocalyptic near-future, when machines rule. Things are bad for our hero, we're meant to conclude. The people at Kashi apparently have seen such grim depictions and decided it would be a good idea to replicate this chalky white nutri-paste and bring it to you, the consumer, under the pretense of organic, tree-hugger healthfulness. If I'm ever wrongly imprisoned and Kashi GOLEAN Creamy is on the daily menu, I can only hope that my fastidious avoidance of it will either emaciate me enough to slip between the bars or earn me the comparative luxury of death by starvation. - - - - Orbit Sweet Mint Gum Submitted by Lilly Schneider Sweet mint? Sweet mint? As opposed to what? Bitter mint? Salty mint? Kentucky fried mint? I only picked up the package because it was such a fetching shade ofwell, mint green. It reminded me of the '50s, and of cuteness, two things I very much desire to experience firsthand, and that I know, deep down, I never will. My genes come purely from generations of stew-slurping, babushka-wearing Eastern Europeans; I will always be hairy and never, ever will I be cute. The gum package was difficult to open. Possibly because I was driving at the time; possibly because my European ancestors cursed me with unattractively thick fingers. I managed to pull out a small rectangle of gum, unwrap it, and pop it in. It was minty. It was sweet. And it lost its flavor after 10 minutes. Short but sweet. If my European ancestors had heard my clever wordplay, they would have worked harder to quicken their metabolisms for my future well-being. - - - - Catalan Nachos Submitted by Allison Moon While I was staying in a small village in the Spanish Pyrenees and pining for my hometown of Los Angeles, the Mexican restaurant nestled in the town square looked as comforting as a hug from Grandma. My companion and I ordered nachos as a starter and, in return, received a large terra-cotta bowl of melted cheese, a few slices of jalapeño, and four thin corn chips. We looked to the other couples gathered in the restaurant: all were enjoying their nachos by spooling the cheese on their forks like spaghetti and eating it by itself. My fellow Angeleno and I shared a weary look and dug in. We slept without touching that night. And the night after that. - - - - Jack Link's Jalapeño Beef Jerky Submitted by Matt Glarner My dog Milo will eat anything. To wit: The other night, my wife and I heard a crunching sound from beneath our coffee table. "What's he eating?" my wife asked. "Oh, probably rawhide," I tossed off. After investigating, I added, "Wait ... no ... that's a piece of cat shit." Sunday, I left Milo (and a fresh bag of jerky) in the car unattended for a few moments. Usually, in that situation, any animal, vegetable, or soft nonmetallic mineral left inside the car with Milo winds up in Milo's stomach. After sampling the acrid, almost chemically spicy Jack Link's Jalapeño Beef Jerky, I completely understand Milo's decision to leave my forgotten bag alone. Jack Link's Jalapeño Beef Jerky combines an alien hardness with an absurd level of heat, making for a unique, two-pronged sensory assault. At first chew, the jerky splinters into hundreds of razor-tipped shards, each immediately burrowing into the soft palate. Then the second wave hits, turning those fresh wounds into entry points for the "jalapeño" flavoring. It hurts. And it keeps hurting. I learned what Milo instinctively knew: Jack Link is a sadist of the highest order. - - - - Kombucha Submitted by Aireanne Hjelle I don't really like food at all. If some industrious Big Tobacco scientist created a nicotine-caffeine-chocolate-saline-vitamin drip, I would be the first person to get a central line installed. So I was really only being polite when I asked what you were drinking. "It's tea that's fermented, and it has amino acids and probiotics." You kept talking, but I stopped listening. "It kind of tastes like vinegar. Look at all the systems it improves!" I had a hard time finding that on the bottle, so I just took a drink. Roommate, it tasted more like vinegar than "kind of." I handed it back to you. Five minutes later, I took another drink. Two minutes after that, I finished the bottle, letting the mucuslike "culture" slide down my throat. The next day, I bought two bottles and drank one at work. That afternoon, I really felt bad about that. - - - - Jimmy Dean Flapsticks Submitted by Peggy DeMouthe I love shopping at the Grocery Outlet because it's different every visit. One Tuesday evening Aisle 3 might be stocked with dishpans and animal crackers; the following Saturday it will be all malt liquor and underpants. The Grocery Outlet is where all the foods nearing their "sell by" date are sent, where holiday candy from last season's holiday goes on sale, and where strange regional brands drift ashore. It's also where test-market products go, after the test. Thus, last March, I was looking around the frozen-food aisle for Christmas treats. Between the French-Toast Fingers and the Holiday Party Puffs, there was an irresistible package: Jimmy Dean's Flapsticks"Sausage and Pancakes on a Stick!" Out of the package, the Flapstick looks exactly like a corndog. Same sturdy stick, same smooth brown outer coating. One's brain expects: crunchy! corny! hot dog! However, it's really a link of sausage enrobed in pancake batter, so the actual experience is: doughy! weird! ow! because the fatty sausage on the inside heats up faster and hotter than the dough on the outside. One is supposed to dip the Flapstick into maple syrup, and this facilitates the pancake's abandonment of any tenuous hold it had on the sausage. One ends up with a sausage on a stick and a pancake in the lap. - - - - New Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream Submitted by Katie Desobry During puberty, the other girls were starting to wear Teen Spirit. It didn't make sense. The smell of coconuts should not come out of armpits. This deodorant does not have a real-world application. It does not provide long-lasting protection from odor. When a normal, active teenage girl rubs a very strong fruit scent under her arms and goes about her activities, it is guaranteed that within hours she will begin to stink of rotten fruit. Like moldy strawberries. Like rancid coconut milk. Like assberries. I could always pick out the girls who wore Teen Spirit Berry Blossom. I can smell them from 10 feet out. Those girls are also big huggers. They would hug me and I would almost fall over from the intense, overly fake smell of the rotting berry blossoms from the assberry vine. I always wanted to push them off and say, "You smell of assberries! Go clean yourself! This is not natural! Berries don't belong in there!" When I opened up my bottle of Dr. Pepper's new blend of raspberry and vanilla, I was met with the smell of the underarm of a seventh-grade girl straight from gym class. I thought it was impossible to turn that smell into a soft drink, so I tasted it. I haven't ever actually tasted a teenage girl covered in Rotten Assberry Teen Spirit, but this is what I always imagined it would taste like if someone carbonated one and put her in a bottle. - - - - Polish-Style Smoked Bacon, Submitted by Ned Rust I was at first quite pleased about the gift subscription to the Bacon-of-the-Month Club that a dearand deep-pocketedfriend gave me for my birthday last year. I am a lifelong bacon fanatic, and the fact that such a club existed filled my head with notions of a larger bacon community that I might tap into in the way the Harley-Davidson-motorcycle people tap into their community. Plus, it meant 12 free pounds of bacon. Everything started out fine. An early shipment included one of my all-time favorites, Grandfather's Dry-Cured, a fantastic example of the sublime things that can be done with the adipose lining of a pig's abdominal cavity. But before the third month was up, I received something in the mail labeled simply "Polish-Style Bacon," from a farm somewhere near Philadelphia. It arrived in a thick-plastic, vacuum-sealed brick, and was bright pink, even in the fat. I opened the package and inadvertently filled the kitchen with the distinctive odor of kielbasa. I was entirely at a loss. Would cooking change the effect? Could it possibly smell like kielbasa raw but somehow become baconish through cooking? The short answer is no. Imagine bouillon made from the water of a Bronx Zoo hot-dog cart and you've essentially got the idea. - - - - Keebler Reduced Fat Club Crackers Submitted by Chris Kratsch Having prepared some soup, and having no saltine crackers, I got a box of Keebler Reduced Fat Club Crackers from the pantry. I broke several of them into my bowl and tasted. These crackers are almost good enough for soup purposes, but not quite. Almost bland enough, almost salty enough, almost dry enough. But not quite. I placed the box in front of me on the kitchen table so I could read it while eating my soup. The message "33% Less Fat Than Original Club Crackers" is emblazoned on it in several places. Right above the federally mandated "Nutrition Facts" are details about this reduced-fat cracker, as compared to its all-fat counterpart. I quote: "Compare Reduced Fat Club Crackers with 2.5 grams of Fat Per Serving to Original Club Crackers with 3 grams of Fat Per Serving." I have always had a problem with claims that something is some percentage less than something else. What number does that percentage relate to? The original number or the smaller number? I know that 33% is one-third. I know that one-third of three is one, and that one-third of 2.5 is 0.83. I also know that 3 minus 2.5 is 0.5. I know that 0.5 is one-third (33%) of 1.5. Lastly, I know that 0.5 is neither 1 nor 0.83, and that 1.5 is neither 2.5 nor 3. My calculations indicate that there is no way that Keebler Reduced Fat Club Crackers can be "33% Less Fat Than Original Club Crackers." It is possible that I have Asperger's syndrome, though. - - - - Blinks! Submitted by Tara Shaman Touted as "The First Cereal You Can Eat Like a Chip," this breakfast in a bag comes in five varieties: Crunchy Fruit Curls, Cinnamon Toast Puffs, Honey Oat Crisps, Honey Wheat Waves, and Maple Waffle Bites. I'd imagine that sooner or later we'll see other sweetness-ingredient-shape combos as wellSaccharine Fiber Wafers, Fructose Carbo Chunks. Flavorful foam is huge. In a total rush, I plucked a package of the honeycomb-looking styropuffs (Maple Waffle Bites, I should say) from a gas-station impulse rack. The sugary bliss pictured on the crinkly package somehow made me feel less crappy. In the decadent privacy of my car, I tore into them and breathed softlythey looked light, delicate, almost fluffy. I basically inhaled the rather large package (really only 2 ounces!). Then I vowed to dedicate at least a few bucks and moments to trying additional varieties. Unfortunately, they're not very available around here. At the next opportunity I had (again stopping at a gas station, where I seem to end up for groceries after frantically cruising the strips of already-closed-for-the-night actual food stores), I picked up a bag of Honey Wheat Waves. These I Blinked while en route to an out-of-town dog show and found vaguely dissatisfying. Reminiscent of syrup yet bland like dead grass. So I went back, after more searching, to the familiar Maple Waffle. In seeking it and its counterparts, I'd fed my car roughly $40 of my food budget. If I ever get to a real grocery store, I'll try to snag an entire case. Can't wait to Blink again! - - - - Pulparindo Submitted by Scott Sand Recently, a friend offered me Pulparindo. This hot and salted Mexican candy consists of sweet-and-sour tamarind pulp, sugar, chili powder, and salt. Pulparindo pieces come individually wrapped as small, flat brownish rectangles, with a white salted underside that made me wonder whether it had been exposed to something. The sugar cuts the bite of the chili powder. The consistency is that of gum dropped briefly in sand. I enjoyed the sensation, but didn't want a second. The next morning, I tossed one in my bag and ate it at home, alone and, for some reason, ashamed. - - - - Ikea Salty Black-Licorice Fish Submitted by Sam Kean To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl, I re-enacted the meltdown at Reactor 4 inside my mouth. Two days after eating a single (1) salty jellied licorice fish, I still had trouble tasting food. Surprisingly, it wasn't the licorice flavoring that undid me. More anise would have been a relief. (Jägermeister would have been a relief.) It was the salt saturation. The thing was basically a flexible black salt lick, the candy counterpart to the white rings nailed on trees to be gnawed by deer. It was also worse than that: salt licks aren't gooey. They don't cling to your mouth. By the time I scraped the last gill from between my teeth, my taste buds had been seared shut, the tongue equivalent of being in "the hole" for a month and then being hit with a spotlight. This took place during the middle of my night class. For the last session, our eccentric librarian teacher had brought "treats" from Ikea (the candy is big in Scandinavia) and dared us with the fish. Because no one else stepped up, I took threeeach the length of a pack of gum, with the consistency of a Gummi worm and the black soul of a demonand finished one. As far as I know, this tied the International Federation of Competitive Eating (I.F.O.C.E.) world record. I spent the rest of the class engraving the smooth, conveyor-belt-riding side of my uneaten treats with scars and dopey eyes. Two days later, I had dinner with a girl I'd been pursuing partly because she, too, was vegetarian. Perhaps that's why Nicole was nonplussed to have to point out the bacon in my appetizer. In a dead-man's float among my half-eaten white beans and sauce were postage-stamp-sized flaccid squares that, to me, had tasted just like the wine: salty. The date ended without a kiss. - - - - Planters Unsalted Mixed Nuts Submitted by Rachel Kuck Apparently, "Now More Cashews!" is code for "Now Only Two Walnuts And Three Pecans!" - - - - Coke BlāK Submitted by Kevin Lauderdale To begin with, there's a little line over the a. Is that a pronunciation guide? Is that like the line over the o in "Shōgun"? Is this "Coke Blake"? Or is it a long a like in "Baaaaad-aaaaass"? It tastes like a weak coffee-ice-cream float. Oddly enough, I didn't find that the addition of coffee produced any more of a buzz than a regular Coke. This is probably due to the fact that each bottle is only 8 ouncesthe size of a regular cup of coffee, as opposed to the usual 12-ounce or 20-ounce container of cola. Found in the refrigerated section, Coke BlāK should definitely be served cold. Cold coffee is still better than warm Cokehence the success of coffee ice cream, and the total nonexistence of the instructions "Add Coke and microwave." - - - - Scrapple Submitted by George Ross Parman Scrapple has its origins among the Pennsylvania Dutch, who count among their American culinary contributions marshmallow cream. The mass consumption of Amish food is made possible only because the bulk of it is homemade and individually wrapped in plastic, or displayed in a deli case and wrapped in butcher paper. This is to say that any nutritional information is not prominently displayed. And I doubt that the Amish know, or care. Scrapple is like a hastily devoured slice of pizza, piping hot and dripping with grease: it tastes good, so who cares about the heartburn? With the exception that some people find scrapple to be enormously disgusting, inedible, and probably composed of pig offal. Scrapple is made out of pork. It is salty, and I always detect a blast of pepper, which seems to kill any other spices that may be added. A generous amount of cornmeal is mixed in with the meat. The result is gray, of the same semisolid nature as the inside of a fresh, raw sausage. Because scrapple is served in a rectangular portion that resembles a slice of bread, I have always imagined that the uncooked finished product is called a loaf. As in, "We need a dozen eggs and a loaf of scrapple." Scrapple is fried until a crispy, deep-brown protective layer is formed. It is a deeper brown than fried chicken. It is the brown of a piece of toast that is seconds away from being discarded, the perilous brown that entails waving a broom at the smoke detector and instructing others to open the front and back doors. On penetrating the fried layer, one finds the now gray-white interior to emit a generous puff of steam. The first bite is chewya combination of the cornmeal and the fryingand peppery. I always eat scrapple with the yolk from a fried egg, on toast. - - - - Theraflu Hot Toddy Submitted by Lily Valentine I don't often get sick, but when I do, I have a strategy. I'll ignore illness when it comes into my body, going out of my way to indulge in risky behaviors like not sleeping, starvation, and making snow angels naked. I like my coughs, colds, and influenzas to get nice and comfortable in my steaming little 98.6-degree internal jungle. Then, when they've finally settled in, I nuke the shit out of them. My arsenal is made up of four or five medicines taken in tandem shortly before I go to bed. Theraflu makes up the vanguard, flanked by NyQuil and Benadryl. I'll usually bring up the rear with some Robitussin and drop a couple of Aleves into the melee just to kill off any stragglers. My T cells, in jungle camo with faces stained with mud, materialize from the mist and wage war on the invading virus. The battle usually takes 16 hours, during which I am blissfully unconscious, sleeping off the overdose of medications. The last time I was sick was different. I don't know what it was, because I don't have health insurance, but I was losing the capacity for coherent thought at a surprisingly rapid rate. And so, as I was taking my first sips of the warm and lemony Theraflu, I hastily dumped two shots of brandy into the steaming liquid and used the mixture as a deliciously warm and heartily sour chaser for the other medications. What happened next is a little fuzzyit reminded me of cold winter days, wandering around the Dickens Faire drunk off my ass, trying to affect a Cockney accent. My housemate found me in the morning, unconscious on the kitchen floor with a smile on my face. - - - - Tropicana FruitWise Fruit Bars Submitted by Benjamin Cappel Why be forced to eat seven or eight pieces of chewy fruit leather, Tropicana asks us, when you can consume the same quantity of ultra-concentrated fruit goo in the form of a single angry little bar about the size of an iPod Nano? These are fetid, rust-colored bricks of what look to be the filter scrapings from some industrial juice extractor. They come in orange citrus, cherry berry, and strawberry, all of which can double for Fix-A-Flat in a pinch. - - - - Captain D's Cracklin' Submitted by Brian Harvey I'm originally from the North, so it wasn't until I moved to Nashville in the mid-'90s that I learned that Long John Silver had a rivalCaptain D, who commanded his own fleet of freestanding galleys just south of the Mason-Dixon. Upon intial examination, the two establishments seemed to offer the same deep-fried options: chicken, shrimp, fish, and variations on the hush puppy. But then I made a discovery so haunting I could almost hear the grizzled voice of Ol' Captain D himself: "Harrrr, me classic two- and three-piece platters have made a fortuneif only there was a way for me to market me leftover grease from the deep fryers!" Yes, this seafarer had the gall to box up and dish out the little bits of battered fat that line the mesh baskets after the meat has been removed. My wife, when we first met, loved the stuff. I now live back in Long John Silver's waters, so I had to go online to see if cracklin' was still being served. No such luck. It would appear that the captain was just too far ahead of his time. I like to imagine that a band of men led by C. Everett Koop and Jared from Subway overtook his vessel. In Boston Tea Party fashion, they boarded the ship and overturned hundreds of barrels of cracklin' into the Cumberland River, which would actually explain a lot. - - - - Pop Rocks and Dr. Pepper Submitted by Kelli Ford Do not eat Pop Rocks while drinking Dr. Pepper. Every third-grade nothing sitting idly in the swings alone, toes pointed inward in a cloud of rising dust, knows this. I, on the other hand, turned 30 exactly 11 months and 15 days ago. This past year I got a tattoo on my arm of a Zen master who also happens to be a panda bear. The year before that, I got a nose ring; a year before that, a divorce. My students call me by my first name. There's no need for pretense in my life. When I stopped in Safeway to pick up a pack of cigarettes, an $8 bottle of wine, and two cans of 49-cent turkey-and-cheese cat food, I grabbed a packet of Pop Rocks from the short rack and a cold bottle of the Dr. from the drink shelf and handed the sad-eyed fat boy my ID. Then I went home, had a glass of wine and a cigarette, and began to feel a little nervous. The rocks rattled in the packet. The Dr. Pepper collected water droplets. Well, I found a coaster, finished that glass of wine, and ripped open the packet. I poured every last Rock into my mouth and, without another thought, I unscrewed the cap and drank. And then I waited. I suppose I'm still waiting. - - - - Deer Heart Submitted by Benjamin Gaulke I was an incredibly scrawny 90-pound pip-squeak in middle school. I was the runt of my Boy Scout troop, the one who could never successfully perform the fireman's carry, which you needed to do to advance in rank. I also lived in an incredibly rednecky area of eastern Pennsylvania, where the first day of deer-hunting season was a holiday from school. At a scout meeting, I saw Mr. Mayernick, one of our scoutmasters, eating out of a bloody ziplock bag. "What is that?" I asked. "Deer heart. Want some?" said Mr. Mayernick. My ancestors used to club deer to death with thigh bones and then engage in ferocious displays of strength before fighting over who got to eat the heart. The apeman who won the fight had his pick of the apewomen. A million years later, here I was. Of course I had to say yes. Deer heart, my friends, is worse than you could possibly imagine. It had a Jell-O-like quality, but it was also impossibly tough, like tendon. The cube felt too large to swallow whole, so I tried to chew it. Big mistake. Each bite released squirts of indescribable putrescence. Deer heart was murdering me. I swallowed it whole, instead of spitting it on the floor, only because I was in a church. - - - - Beverly Submitted by Kari Anne Roy I have met Beverly only once. It was in the World of Coca-Cola museum, in Atlanta. She was in the tasting room, hiding in plain sight, while I got my $9 admission's worth of free samples. Beverly looks innocuous. The push-button dispenser says, blandly, "Italy: Beverly," and then, underneath, "Bitter Aperitif." So you think, Cool, maybe this will wash away that China: Mandarin Orange funk I just choked down. And thenthis should totally tip you off that something bad is about to happenas you reach your hand out to push the button on the dispenser, the World of Coke staff takes a step toward you in disturbing unison. They pretend they're not looking at you, but you can so totally tell that they are. You push the button, you toss it back, and then it hitsit's as if you'd crushed a thousand Imodium AD caplets, made them into a paste, and painted your tongue with it. The bitterness seeps into parts of your throat where taste buds should not exist, but somehow do. The museum staff falls all over themselves laughing at you, and then they get a mop. - - - - Fruit by the Foot Submitted by Michaelanne Petrella The new Fruit by the Foot variety pack has three kinds in one boxstrawberry, berry tie-dye, and "color by the foot." Each piece has a serrated "squiggly fun" line down the center, allowing you to pull the fruit (fruit? i guess it's fruit) in half and eat each side at different times. Color by the foot is a bad name for a flavorit sounds like I'm eating foot-flavored crayonsso they put an asterisk next to it on the box that tells you it's "naturally rainbow punch flavored." I've never had rainbow punch, but I'm guessing that it consists of cherries, bananas, star fruits, raisins, peanuts, and onions. It looks trash-colored and makes my teeth hurt. I ate four boxes in two days. - - - - Pringles Prints Submitted by Chris Blunk Trivia questions are printed directly onto each Pringles Print in surprisingly sharp blue letters. My arteries welcome the saturated fat, and my head feels smarter knowing the highest recorded jump by a guinea pig (8 inches). Every now and then, a chip fact makes your own eating habits feel downright practical. The largest birthday cake ever weighed over 16,000 lbs. The world's largest apple pie weighed over 34,000 lbs. How much harm can a few chips do? The possibilities of Pringles Prints are staggering. Why stop at trivia? Why not serialize an entire novel across several containers, a chapter per cylinder, each chip a sentence? Provide some good cliffhangers at the bottom of the stack and I foresee an increase in literacy as well as obesity. But that's OK, because any unfortunate side effects can be researched in the Pringles Medical Journal series (barbecue-flavored). - - - - Andy Capp's Hot Fries Submitted by Bennett Hipps This is a bold and unusual licensing choice by the Goodmark Foods Company. Andy Capp is not exactly the most well-known comics character out there, nor is he normally associated with "fries" within the panels of his comic strip. Maybe Funky Winkerbean would have been better for the fries. But that's not important. The package states that these "Hot Fries" are "Oven Baked Corn and Potato Snacks." (Oven-baked? Then how can they be "fries"?) The snack pieces are definitely the size and shape of the fast-food french fries they are meant to represent, but the orange color makes me wonder if I got a mislabeled bag of Andy Capp's Cheddar Fries (which the back of the package encourages me to try). I suppose orange is also the color of "hot," but it's still a bit unsettling to think that someone could put Hot Fries on a plate and laugh as a Cheddar Fries fan gets a painful, burning surprise. My first Hot Fry tastes a bit like the hot-pepper flakes you sometimes put on pizza (I don't), but without much heatjust enough to make me think, "Yeah, I see what you're saying, Andy. They are kind of spicy." Maybe they were intended to be eaten two at a time. The picture on the back has Mr. Capp holding two fries in his hand as he crunches (more fries, presumably) in his mouth so loudly that the word "CRUNCH" actually appears above Andy's couch (which is shaking from the volume of the crunching sound). Two Hot Fries is not enough to materialize onomatopoeic words out of thin air, but it is enough to turn up the heat quite a bit in my mouth. This must be the intended result. I can truly agree that these are "hot" fries. - - - - Pizza Hut's New Cheesy Bites Pizza Submitted by Margaret Higginson Sometimes you do things even though your better instincts tell you not to: drink the beer you've had in the back of your fridge for years; sleep with someone who calls you "Barbara"; watch an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond; eat the new bastardized pizza from Pizza Hut. It wasn't that I wanted to eat the new Cheesy Bites Pizza. The ads made me angry, and who can eat when they're angry? But my friends ordered a couple during the Super Bowl, and, despite my loud and virulent opposition (not to mention my better instincts), I was curious. Would the bites indeed deliver cheese? Would they taste of "the flavor of garlic butter"? Would Jessica Simpson herself deliver them and pop the bites directly into my mouth? No, yes, and no. The bites did not deliver cheese so much as they delivered confusion. Is it undercooked dough, or congealed cheese? I ate four "bites" and I couldn't figure it out, which may have been because the "bites" tasted less like cheese and more like garlic-butter flavor. And Ms. Simpson had a "previous engagement," so she was unable to deliver our "pizzas." I've learned my lesson: Never again will I eat a food that's advertised with a poorly rewritten, remixed Nancy Sinatra song. Unless my friends pay for it. Again. - - - - Vigo-Alessi Imported Risotto alla Milanese Made With REAL ITALIAN ARBORIO RICE Submitted by Nicole Ritzer Originally, I picked this up to avoid a 30-minute session above a steaming pot of smelly cream. The packet traveled gently from the 13-cent bin into my basket and bore a trompe l'oeil I naively interpreted as factif it looked Italian, and contained Italian-looking words, it could only taste Italian. This was my first packaged meal in years, and my taste buds were teeming with excitement as I began to boil the REAL ITALIAN ARBORIO RICE. "Made with Saffron!" the packet exclaimed. "Par Avion!" Once the seasoning was dumped in, my pure-white Real Italian Arborio Rice turned the color of Yellow No. 3. I clung to hopeits smell was relatively normal, and, if I concentrated hard enough, I could will myself into enjoying it. What a mistake that was. - - - - Herbal Colgate Submitted by Ellia Bisker Manufactured in South Africa, yet available at many a friendly neighborhood dollar store right here in the States, this refreshing dentifrice has a number printed on the back of the tube for those occasions when one might have a "query" and wish to call Durban to discuss it. Not only does it boast this thrilling hint of the exotic, it tastes delicious. Really, it suggests a whole new paradigm of clean-mouth feel, sort of licoricey and not too sweet. "Mint, sage, chamomile, and myrrh," proclaims the packagingyes, it's made of myrrh, that mysterious substance brought by one of the Magi to baby Jesus, apparently for the purpose of instilling good oral hygiene habits at an early age. It hardly needs to be pointed out that this is quite an endorsement. - - - - Whole Grain Milling Company's 8 Grain Hot Cereal Submitted by Rachel Henderson The Whole Grain Milling Company, based someplace in greater Minnesota, is responsible for the most unbelievable and delicious yellow corn tortilla chips ever to feed mankind. Free of hydrogenated oils, 100 percent organic, non-genetically-modified, and made with the mysterious "hi lysine" corn, these chips actually have a protein content and therefore can be reasonably considered (by the more liberally considerate) a meal. With or without salsa or cheese. However, you're a grownup now, and chips (even hi-lysine chips) and beer can no longer be considered breakfast. Clearly for this reason and this reason alone, our guardian angels at the Whole Grain Milling Company have bestowed upon us the 8 Grain Hot Cereal. 8 Grains: Oats, barley, wheat, millet, flax seed, hi-lysine corn meal, sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds. I don't know if all of those are actually grains. Or if they're the actual ingredients. Doesn't matter. In less than five minutes, cook this stuff up, mix in some homemade applesauce, or raisins and maple syrup, and you've got yourself a respectable meal. - - - - Brazilian Nutmeat Submitted by E.C. Bachner I had savored the world's most delicious and spectacular foodsglistening mangosteens, rambutans, litchis piled on plates in Arabia like the genitals of dead gods, cheeseburgers from the Tastee Diner in Cambridge that tasted of everything America had ever wished to be, and really frigging great pizza. I turned to raw food because my face was wrecked and I had failed in all of my dreams and, honestly, I just wanted to be thinner, but also, I have always been convinced that nothing vegan could really ever be as gross as such comestibles as Dinty Moore Beef Stew or a Subway sub with double tuna. I invited Dave to take me to the raw-food restaurant, because I wanted to impress upon him that my face was wrecked, I had failed in all of my dreams, and he had swallowed the sweetest years of my life. The place was eerily quiet. And the people eating there weren't thin. Dave ordered the "generous portion of our smoky, winter-spiced nutmeat topped with a sweet cherry glaze and served over fresh spinach." I happily tucked into my sea-vegetable salad and stevia drink, and Dave got this look on his face somewhere between the look he gets when he's had too much coffee liqueur or smashed his hand into the car door and the way he looks at his last traveler's check. He looked like every bone in his face hurt. "This has to be poop," he whispered. And he left. - - - - Wrigley's Lemon Burst Eclipse Chewing Gum Submitted by Briana Newton Word Jumble fans might find it interesting that the letters in the words LEMON BURST can be rearranged to spell the name RON STUMBLE. And he sounds exactly like the kind of misguided, unwholesome, Willy Wonka-type character who would think this flavor was a good idea in the first place. The packaging assures the gum is "surprisingly fresh." Surprising? Yes. Fresh? Not especially. When I took my first chomp, the taste was delightful and not unlike that of a lemon Skittle. Then, as promised, SURPRISE!, and suddenly my tongue was confronted with a totally new taste sensation: panic. Panic tastes kind of like cough syrup, vodka, lemon Pledge, and cold air. It's a uniquely upsetting flavor. Twenty seconds passed before the panic taste was gone. And with it went my feeling that I'd made a terrible mistake. As I chewed contentedly, I settled into the idea that the whole dreadful experience was worth it. Then, like a fool, I tried another piece. - - - - Subway's New Touch-Screen Sandwich-Ordering Human Interface Submitted by William R. Etling I cannot speak for the Subway Corporation, but I imagine that the use of touch-screen consoles with pictorial representations of condiments, bread, and meat is a logistical no-brainer. Such a device simplifies ordering, overcomes staff language barriers, and probably only costs the company about four years of sandwich profit from conception to the certainly unending maintenance. My e-Subway experience began thus: I gently tapped "Touch screen to begin." I vigorously tapped "wheat." I gently tapped "6 inch." I vigorously tapped "turkey"and so on. Of course, I still had to pay for my food. The process was simple. I handed the cashier my order slip and money, and he handed me my change and a freshly printed receipt. I then waited for the human staff to make my sandwich. All in all, I enjoyed the experience. Having not paid any attention as they made my custom sandwich, I was later surprised to find that it had mustard rather than mayonnaise, and olives instead of lettuce. I'm sure these minor labeling glitches in the sandwich/human interface will eventually be worked out. - - - - Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Pieces Submitted by Scott Grams Traditionally, the bottom of a pretzel bag contains a half inch of rock salt that should never be ingested straight. An attempt to do so once sent me racing to the sink to spray the dishwashing hose directly down my throat. Snyder's of Hanover have found a way to market shards of their famous sourdough hard pretzels so that the "bottom-of-the-bag effect" can be enjoyed from the moment the bag's opened. Pretzel Pieces look like raw pretzel ore that has been mined from deep inside the earth. These incongruous pretzel chunks are generously coated with a variety of flavor dusts, ranging from Buttermilk Ranch to Honey BBQ to Mustard & Onion. The flavor dust is colored in the traditional way: Buttermilk Ranch is a soft blue, Honey BBQ is a burnt orange, and Mustard & Onion is a canary yellow. The pieces are no larger than acorns and should be eaten one at a time. These are the discarded, cracked remains of good pretzels gone bad. They are also more exciting, and more dangerous. Holding one up to the light, you see what they've gone through. Broken. Fissured. Left behind. And then resurrected by Snyder's of Hanover, covered in flavor dust, and given a new lease on life. In the process, they have become the uncut gemstones of the pretzel world. - - - - HOOAH! Chocolate Crisp Energy Bar Submitted By Tony Antoniadis From the red-white-and-blue foil wrapper: "The U.S. military needed an energy bar for the toughest customer in the world: the American soldier. No bar on the market was up to the challenge. So the military created the HOOAH! bar. It's mission: deliver SteadyEnergy and alertness." Followed by a lesson about the language of war: "The battle cry 'HOOAH!' is a cornerstone of military culture. It communicates energy, affirmation, can-do spirit, teamwork, and fearlessness. Soldiers shout it as they jump out of helicopters, storm beaches, and freefall behind enemy lines. It means anything and everything except for no." I plucked this jewel out of a wire-mesh discount candy bin at a Walgreens in Bensonhurst. A clerk in a teal vest scanned the bar at the register. She looked at me as if to say, "Hooah!" Later, waiting for the subway, I read from the same wrapper that the energy bar's proceeds go to research that aims to improve soldier diet and quality of life. Ruggedly fondling the bar in my pocket, I imagined my dollar revitalizing soldiers with heavy hearts in Iraq. I was surprised by its girth. It was thick and brown and nutty, lumpy with dates and raisins, along with the usual tasty gobs of scientific etceteras. My HOOAH! was pretty goodthink of a Twix on serious steroidsand, as a bonus, it represented everything in the world except for notions of refusal, disbelief, and disagreement. This is likely why I bought it in the first place. - - - - Orange Juice With Vanilla Submitted by Rebecca Blakley My boyfriend invented this a while ago and, ever since, has walked a little more like a cowboy. He says it makes the orange juice taste "smooth." Whenever we have guests over, he hurriedly assembles a batch and then presses a glass upon each person in turn, saying things like, "Try it, it's awesome," or, "You'll want the recipe," or, "Can you taste the smoothness?" Most people quietly finish the portion assigned them. No one has ever asked for a second glass. I, however, am not nervous about voicing my dissent. "Stop doing this to all of our orange juice!" I tell him. After a recent day of disturbingly long discussion, my boyfriend finally agreed, with the infuriating air of an often-kicked puppy, to leave the orange juice un-vanilla-ed. Since then, he has begun sneaking into the kitchen and doing it while I sleep. - - - - Lunchables Taco Kit Submitted by Casey Cichowicz My fiancée makes me lunch every morning. I love her, and I love tacos. So, I was very pleased to find the new Lunchables Taco Kit in my bag. I was a little perplexed at first by the lack of directions. How do you make beef tacos at your desk, from prepared foods? It seems nearly impossiblewhat with the frying of the beef, the slicing up of all the tomatoes and avocados, and so on. The bag of "Seasoned Ground Beef in Taco Sauce" (a pasty brown squishy thing that was not immediately appealing) said not to heat it in that bag, which is exactly what I would have done. It didn't say, however, what I should do. Heat it in a microwave-safe bowl? No, this is why we're eating Lunchables in the first place, so we have no dishes, no preparation. So I squirted the cold brown goo into each tiny taco shell, added some "Kraft Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product" and a little of the included taco sauce, and put the whole thing in the microwave. Forty seconds is apparently way too long. After it cooled down and I was able to extract it from the plastic tray, it tasted surprisingly better than I expected, though the three tiny taco bites made for a very small meal. Luckily, the "Secret Flavored Gummies" (whose bitter flavor was, in fact, rather mysterious) offset that. I topped the whole meal off with the included "Adventure Quencher" and headed off to Au Bon Pain for some lunch. - - - - Bulk Turkey Ends Submitted by Dan Clem Ever wonder what happens to the ends of the smoked, baked, and roasted deli meats? Me too. Well, apparently they're now being put aside, gathered, repackaged, and sold for less than half price at some supermarkets (e.g., Shaw's in East Boston). The upside of "bulk turkey ends," aside from the outstanding price (about $3 a pound), is you get thick pieces of peppered or Southwest-style turkey heavily coated with those spicesnot just encircled with some stupid, skinny streak of flavor that peels off and gets caught in your teeth, as is the case with typical slices. The ends are so flavorful, in fact, you may find mustard and other condiments unnecessary. You also get three or four different kinds of turkey in a typical package of ends, making it a kind of "turkey-end sampler." You may need to look around a bit to find where they're stashing this stuff. Or ask. I found them in a refrigerated bin under the shelves of bacon, prepackaged bologna, and chilled pickles. - - - - Wild Cat Malt Liquor Submitted by Jason Kane You buy a 40-ounce Wild Cat because it is the cheapest thing to drink at the Stateline Drive-Thru, at a mere $1.49. It's also sort of fun to drink from a paper bag once in a while. The first sip is deliciousrich and almost woody, but in a good way. Not like licking furniture at all. The second sip is less deliciousyou wonder: Does it taste the way the high-school biology lab smelled? The third sip is once again delicious, because you imagine that you have overreacted to the second sip, perhaps under the watchful eyes of your snickering friends. The fourth sip reveals nothing new; your friends have moved on to ridicule American Idol contestants, and now you're left with a hundred or more sips, depending on your enthusiasm, and the beer is slowly warming. By now, your headache has undoubtedly begun. Faint at first, almost like an emerging sixth sense; you tilt your head. Is it telepathy? TK? Is this dull, loosely disoriented ache the hidden powers of the human brain being released? No. Wild Cat contains so much formaldehyde that it could almost be used as a pesticide. What party would be complete without the threat of renal failure? - - - - Purple-Corn Drink Submitted by Sarah Jacobson Cultivated in South America for thousands of years, purple corn is a highly nutritious super food. Purple-corn drink is not. Doubtless, the ocean between grape and grape drink (or orange and orange drink, for that matter) is similar. I tasted purple-corn drink on a recent trip to my parents. I was picking at some leftover chicken from a Peruvian rotisserie-chicken place that my folks frequent. My father, a gleam in his eye, said, "Would you like some purple-corn drink?" I knew well enough that this was a challenge. The gauntlet thrown, I coolly replied, "Of course." With a penchant for shopping at ethnic groceries and a desire to taste the strangest of products, my father is known to bring home bizarre foods. At one point in my youth, he brought home a milky-looking noncarbonated soft drink from Japan called Calpis. I imagine it's what mop water tastes like. Purple-corn drink looks just like grape Kool-Aid. Purple-corn drink doesn't taste like corn. You might ask, Well, what does it taste like? The answer is simple: grape drink (again, not to be confused with grape) blended with holiday spices. - - - - Truskakowe Mini Delicje Submitted by Tony Arturi A Truskakowe Mini Delicje is composed of two pieces fused together, one brown and apparently chocolate-flavored, one pinkish, spongy, and apparently strawberry-flavored. The chocolate tasted of fresh paving tar, the strawberry of scented shampoo. The shampoo taste was strong enough to send me back to the packaging to make sure I hadn't ingested a small decorative soap stamped into the form of a cookie. Ship the citizens of Poland a load of Fudge Shoppe Deluxe Grahams (preferably chilled) and they'll never eat another one of these foul biscuits. - - - - Almond Butter Submitted by Erik Bertelsen I really enjoy almonds, and I've always been an ardent fan of peanut butter, so you'd think at some point I would have found out about almond butter. But indeed I spent most of my life without this knowledge. Then, some months ago, I saw it on a shelf at Trader Joe's, sitting coyly next to the peanut butter. My first thought was that I had found some exotic new condiment, common perhaps only in Egypt or Malta, served with tea like those "bad dates" that killed the monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In fact, that's inaccurate. Still, there's a nice element of surprise when you bite into itit tastes like almonds! - - - - Kellogg's S'mores Pop-Tarts Submitted by Marshall Norton Jr. She shoved me under her bed and told me not to move. Her father had gotten home earlier than expected. As the minutes passed, I inventoried the various pieces of dirty laundry and discarded plates under her bed with me. A little later, her face appeared, upside-down. "They're leaving soon. I'll come back when they're gone. Here, have some," she said, offering me a piece of the Pop-Tart she'd brought up on a plate. I thought it best not to ask about the other plates for the moment. - - - - German Chimichangas Submitted by Courtney Tenz Living in Germany for the last six months has given me a hankering for Mexican food. I told my high-school students about this and they lovingly invited me out to the local Mexican restaurant. I wanted to like the restaurant, I really did. They had strangely flavored tortilla chips, and little ramekins of guacamole. I ordered a "vegetarian chimichanga." For all you Germans out there: A chimichanga is not frozen vegetablesmostly broccoliwrapped in phyllo dough. I don't think broccoli can grow in Mexico. Tortillas are expensive herefive euros for a package of five. But if you're gonna make Mexican food, you have to have tortillas. And beans. Heat it up a bit. Mexican food shouldn't taste like everything else in Germany, where the favorite spices are salt and butter. The ability to eat "chips and dip" from the sombrero of a foot-tall statue in a restaurant with a striped poncho on the wall for decoration doesn't make the food there Mexican. Even if it is the only place in town with Corona. - - - - Nagai Brand Roasted Seaweed Laver Submitted by Timothy Buck I once loved a Thai prostitute. Her name was Deuen, which means "the moon." The Moon had a tattoo and it loved techno and trance and little orange meth pills. It got the pills from the Wa State Army. The Moon ate roasted seaweed laver for lunch and it said it did not love me. The soldiers came to the Moon's village. Do you know what? Japanese people rarely die. That's why I eat Nagai brand roasted seaweed laver. - - - - Connecticut Mountain Laurel Submitted by Rich Piepho Legally, you're not allowed to eat this because it's our state flower. But come on, I don't see any flowers on there, do you? Anyway, it tastes horrible. - - - - Jewel Brand Burritos, Red Hot Beef Variety Submitted by Ben Pawlowski My brother and I, upon opening the freezer for the third round of a late-afternoon BurritoFest, came to the unfortunate and disheartening realization that we were burritoless. And so we strapped on our parkas and galoshes and sashayed our way down to the local Jewel, placing our bets as to how much currency we would have to forgo per burrito. Eighty-nine cents, said he. One dollar and nine cents, said I. "Where is the burrito aisle?" we pondered. Hot-dog rolls. Pickles. Cat food. Popcorn. Deodorant. "Where the fuck is the burrito aisle?" we pondered, a little bit louder this time. Then, across from the sour cream and chocolate milk, we saw them, glistening in the sun. We tittered gleefully and sprinted up to the freezer. They were four for a motherfucking dollar. We fell to our knees and began to paw the ice chest. It felt unfitting to not pay for the full dollar's worth of burritos myself. We floated home and could barely contain ourselves as forks punctured the vaguely leathery surface of steamy, misleadingly named red-hot beefy burritos. If I had to put a price tag on steaming-hot mediocrity, it would be four for a motherfucking dollar. - - - - Passionfruit Mint Tic Tacs Submitted by Christian McCrea Some background: The Ferrero Corporation exists with a perfectly equilateral triangle of deliciousness: Tic Tac (and Tic Tac Silvers), Rocher, and Nutella. The harsh gift of free-market commerce has meant that cinnamon-flavored Tic Tacs, for which I would enter into armed combat, do not make their way to my native Australia. Lime Mints are merely a dream that fevers the wistful and torments the insane. In what can only be described as gross miscalculation, Ferrero have decided to introduce passionfruit-mint-flavored Tic Tacs in their stead, packaged with a subtle orange tinge. Being a strong believer in the Tic Tac Supremacy Spectrum (Cinnamon > Orange > The Rest, where ">" signifies "is way more crazy-delicious than"), I was obsessively curious. The sweet tart tang of summery passionfruit combined with the erotic thrill of candied menthol would surely open up new vistas in freshness. The immediate smell was contrary to the fabric of society, an acrid and sulfuric bouquet that, thankfully, prepared me for the sheer awfulness of the taste. A wash of detergent bleeds from this benighted pill with each suck, violating the memories of your last good fruit salad and your last good Tic Tac with equal fervor. The aftertaste takes the form of a thin, grimy film, like the desperate end of menthol cigarettes, and I was not rid of it for some days. One and a half calories of pain. - - - - Goya Arroz Amarillo Submitted by Rachel Goodman Goya Arroz Amarillo has been a staple of cost-conscious American gourmanderie since the first agave-toting Mexican stumbled into the Piggly Wiggly clutching a can of frijoles and demanding a gently spiced and vibrantly colored companion starch. Interestingly, Arroz Amarillo is named not after Amarillo, Texas, dusty panhandle home of the American Quarter Horse Museum, but instead derives its moniker from the Spanish language, in which "amarillo," a bastardization of "armadillo," idiomatically represents the color yellow. Arroz Amarillo also contains chicken flavor, but chicken flavor is usually fake, right? Let me look. Right there, in the parentheses after "chicken flavor," it does say "chicken fat." And then "chicken meat." But, you know, those are just in the parentheses. It must be trace amounts. However, I guess chicken fat is listed a second time outside the parentheses. And so is chicken meat. Well. Humph. And what's with "silica (to prevent caking)"? Isn't that the stuff in the "Do Not Eat" packets? Stillthat riotous yellow! That amarillo tang, unexpected and delightful amid the soft calm of the arroz! Goya Arroz Amarilloking of questionably vegetarian cheap eats! - - - - Zatarain's Ready-to-Serve Red Beans & Rice Submitted by Justin Theriault Zatarain's Ready-To-Serve Red Beans & Rice reminds me of the day when I, in my infinite laziness, had prepared Zatarain's regular ol' red beans and rice, which is a painstaking 20-minute ordeal of boiling water and pouring ingredients into a pot. I ate a few tasty spoonfuls, and then ended up leaving the rest cooling on the stove for three days because I received an emergency call to bail my stoner friend out of prison in Topeka. When I returned, there was a beanish rice mass still waiting for me, rapidly browning and hardening in the pot. I say "beanish" because one of my roommates saw fit to poach most, but not all, of the beans from the rice. I'm guessing he did this shortly after I left, because there was no way he would have touched the gelatinous-yet-somehow-crunchy mixture that I found in the pot upon my return. The first thought echoing through my head was not "Hey, that looks delicious," or "Well, it may still be edible." It was more like "Jeez, that's gonna be a bitch to clean." Inevitably, hunger and curiosity took over, so I scooped the remnants into a bowl and popped it in the microwave for a quick minute. This served the dual purpose of killing off the less hearty bacteria and turning the cold, goopy-yet-stale mixture into a warmer, goopy-yet-stale mixture with (somehow) less flavor, which I subsequently and unfortunately ate. It did not kill me. It did not make me stronger. It did, however, make me really think about exactly how lazy I am. The ready-to-serve version of this product tasted exactly like that: burnt, mealy, mostly bean-free, and old, but with less sauce and even less flavor. This product is a stain on Zatarain's spicy name. - - - - Chevda (a reprise) Submitted by Emma Stephens I was introduced to chevda in Kenya, although I think it may be East Indian in origin. It looks like rejected bits from a potato-chip factory and a bunch of other kinds of factories I've never heard of mixed with a healthy dose of curry spices, peanuts, sugar (I think), and some other mysterious contents (leaves?). It also has the curious property, in the extra-spicy version, of seeming totally mild when you pop a handful in your mouth and then burning uncontrollably about halfway down your gullet. I don't think it's too strong to say that it might be the next wasabi peas. - - - - Manzanilla Submitted by Scott Votel Two calming words: chamomile liqueur. Two unsettling words: memory erasure. - - - - Starburst Baja California Fruit Chews Submitted by Matthew Russell LIMÓNJosé Limón did for modern dance what the sweet potato did for Alabama Thanksgivings. Starburst Limón Chews did for modern dance what the 1981 Luc Besson film L'Avant Dernier did for Alabama Thanksgivings. Also, they make your teeth gritty. AZTEC PUNCHAztecs lived in a sun-drenched land of plenty. The people of Tenochtitlán and Yautepec flourished for years in this paradise. However, their throats became dry from time to time. At holiday gatherings and high-school proms, they would serve punch. The flavor of this party beverage has been re-created, note for note, and Starburst has been chosen as the vehicle. It doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. - - - - Andouillette Submitted by David Young This culinary atrocity was new to me, though not to millions of French people, who apparently relish the chopped-up leavings of every animal that has passed through the processing plant after all of its nominally edible parts have been shipped off to Chez René and wherever else fine Continental cuisine is served. Andouillette is not to be confused with andouille, the paprika-and-pork staple of Cajun cookin'. Instead, imagine the lingering aroma of someone else's sturdy animal-protein-at-every-meal morning dump in an unventilated studio-apartment bathroom, distilled and concentrated into something you are expected to enjoy with a nice glass of Burgundy. When you mention this item to anyone in France, they reply, with a barely concealed smirk, "Yes. Very special." If you point to something on a French menu and somebody uses the term "special" to describe it, order the steak and frites and forgo the experience of being served poo. - - - - "Hot Choice" Tombstone Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza Submitted by Robert Moor Visiting my old alma mater last week, I was drawn like a gluttonous moth to a vending machine reading "Tombstone Pizza." Yes, pizza from a vending machine. I stood, perplexed, imagining the birth of warm pizza from this cold mechanical womb. An undergrad strolled by and chuckled, obviously familiar with this pitiable sight. "Have you tried it?" I asked. "It sucks. No one even bothers," she responded. With that, of course, my mind was set. I would do what no one else had the heart to doI would venture into the future. After some deliberation, I opted for the pepperoni pizza, choosing it over other, less traditional choices such as chicken fingers, barbecue chicken pizza, or a warm Oreo brownie. I fed it my three dollars (!) and eagerly watched the baking process on a small digital screen. The result? One minute later, the machine spit out a small cardboard package, which it warned would be "Very Hot." Inside was a hot (not very hot) "pizza" about the size of a video iPod. Approximately 75 percent of this tawdry square was composed of dough, which was thick, salty, and tasted something like baked Silly Putty. The bright-red pepperonis were tiny, faintly reminiscent of Bacos ("MADE WITH PORK, CHICKEN, AND BEEF," the package proudly proclaimed), and actually more numerous than the shreds of cheese by a ratio of 2-to-1. Needless to say, I devoured it in a matter of seconds. After one bite, I understood the undergrad's grave warning. Never eat pizza from a machine. It's like making love to a Terminator: almost satisfying, but slightly creepy, and there's always the possibility that it will collapse your chest cavity with one fatal blow. Thank you, Tombstone, but I'll take my pizza the way it was meant to be prepared: baked lovingly by burnt-out hippies and their disgruntled, overweight, mustachioed Italian managers. Or underpaid illegal immigrants. Whichever. - - - - Licorice Altoids Submitted by Sean Boyles Scientists at Callard & Bowser have discovered how to condense the extract of 7 million licorice roots into a piece of chalk about the size of a Flintstone vitamin. Altoids in general are known for their strength, so this was expected. What was not expectedand perhaps I'm showing my ignorancewas the effect this would have on my tongue. It does taste like licorice, but is there lye in these things? Is the idea to see whether you can get enough saliva up to dissolve the Altoid before the Altoid dissolves enough tissue from the mouth that it can escape? I've never received a chemical burn from a black Twizzler or a stick of Black Jack gum. I ate Atomic Fireballs a lot in my youth and Wonka's Sour Mega Warheads are a part of my regular candy regimen. But Licorice Altoids have me worried and sweating, looking for a glass of water. These things bite like Everclear, only sweeter. I can't stop eating them. - - - - Dagoba's New Moon Organic Submitted by Litsa Dremousis Dagoba's New Moon Organic Chocolate Bar with 74% Cocoa has a wonderfully smooth texture and glides down your throat like a child down a well. It's delicious at room temperature, chilled, or with a side dish of peanut butter. However, unless you're Joan Baez, its packaging will make you break things. "New Moon"? Oooh, if only I had my pan flute! The back label gives definitions for "theobroma" ("food of the gods") and "dagoba" ("temple of the gods") in Greek and English and then states that "Chocolate is sacred. There is an art to the alchemy of flavor infusion, an art we explore with mystery and integrity." I don't want chocolate to be sacred. And "74% Cocoa"? What the hell's that about? Like, "We were going to make this thing three-quarters cocoa but didn't want to go crazy." Dagoba's New Moon Organic Chocolate Bar is the dessert equivalent of the date who respectfully kisses you goodnight when you really want to gyrate against the wall. - - - - Peanut Butter Submitted by Elliot Polinsky A twin pack, each jar labeled "Not intended for individual sale." My X-Acto knife has other ideas. Arriving home, I revel in my deviant purchasing. First spoonful: delicious. Second spoonful: less so. Third spoonful: the subpar nature of my jar becomes clear. Somehow, lonely peanut butter is bitter. I regret my haste, and resolve to respect the rule of law. - - - - Sparks Submitted by Christopher Bateman One Saturday morning, body aching from a night of intoxication, I stepped out of my bedroom to find my roommate and two friends in my apartment. They were consuming Sparks, in a general state of excitement. It was obvious the stuff had worked upon them, giving their eyes an alarming, focused glaze. One of my friends made berserk gestures as he exhorted me to join them. I put back two tallboys. At first, I felt a little giddy, like I was riding a small swing, or a pony. Thirty minutes later, I thought my head was in a microwave. I heard noises of young rattlesnakes. My eyes were abuzz and I was sure my vision was somehow crackling. These symptoms subsided after I induced vomiting and lay hyperventilating for 20 minutes. In short, I can neither recommend nor warn against Sparks until I have tested it more rigorously. - - - - Cheetos X-Burguer Sabor Submitted by Dave Schonenberg Here in Brazil, a new variation on the Cheeto has arrived: the X-Burguer. Incapable of pronouncing the English word "cheese" in Portuguese, Brazilians have simply replaced it with the letter X, which is pronounced like the English contraction "she's." As for "burger," they've adopted "burguer," which is pronounced like the English "boogie" (as the letter r often comes silently in Brazilian Portuguese). A bag of "she's boogie"-flavored Cheetos comes with three different forms: tan buns, maroon beef patties, and yellow cheese slices. When combined into a burguer and consumed, the flavor begins like that of a normal Cheeto, with the cheesiness soaking up the moisture of the tongue. Then, thanks to the spicier beef-patty-shaped element, the taste changes to that of the older, discontinued American versions of hot Cheetos, whose official name escapes me at this time. - - - - Betty Crocker's Warm Delights Submitted by Stefan Jones A celestial alignment between a 40-cents-off coupon and a "10 items for $10" sale convinced me to pick up a couple of Betty Crocker's "Warm Delights" gimmicky DIY snack products. These are single-serving microwavable cake mixes. They come in a sturdy black plastic bowl. You add water, stir, and stick the resulting bowl of glop in your microwave. After a minute or so you get a stiff little puddle of warm cakelike substance you squirt with topping, set aside to cool, and then eat. The Fudgy Chocolate Chip Cookie, after all that preparation, is a soggy cookie, no crisper than a pancake, that you have to eat with a fork. A cookie you have to go through the trouble of making. You have to wonder why Betty let this one out the door. - - - - Tijuana Mama Submitted by Michael Horne The Tijuana Mama (a pickled sausage) can be found at the better convenience stores across America. On the wrapper it says "300% Hotter." Than what? It doesn't say. (Turns out to be her sister product the Big Mama Pickled Sausage.) As with Vietnamese fish sauce, when you first smell it you think, "Nothing can taste as bad as this smells!" But it does! However, once you have acquired a taste, there is nothing like it in the world. On a long road trip, the Tijuana Mama will carry you many a long and lonesome mile. - - - - Those Weird Chocolates Submitted by Fran Piper The box is on the break-room table, invitingly open. Unless you speak Czech, and can decipher Cyrillic, the picture is all you have to go ona chocolate broken open to show a deep-purple filling. Grab one and take a cautious bite. The flavor develops rapidly through several stages. It starts with a rich, strong blackberry flavor. Just as you're thinking, "Mmm, this is really rather good," you taste a sharply acid overtone, like the outside of a sour candy. You are adjusting to this, and are actually in the act of swallowing, when a frightening metallic flavor overwhelms the rest. Try not to choke or hyperventilate. When you have recovered your breath, take the other half of the chocolate back to your desk and hide it behind a stack of foldersit may be needed later for analysis. Tell yourself that you probably haven't been poisoned, since several people have already been at the box and you would have heard of any sudden deaths in the office. Try to get on with some work. About three minutes later, your mouth and throat abruptly become numb. Return to the kitchen and inspect the first-aid cabinet (dismayingly, no emetics) and the procedures for a medical emergency. Feel relieved when, after a tense few minutes, sensation starts to return. Spend the rest of the day monitoring yourself for side effects. Do not eat the other half of the chocolate. - - - - McCormick Lemon Extract Submitted by Ned Rust In 1985, there was an episode of Family Ties in which the Keatons were visited by an alcoholic relative played by Tom Hanks. I believe he was the uncle of Michael J. Fox's character, Alex Keatonbut whether he was Mr. or Mrs. Keaton's sibling, I'm not certain. I think probably he was the mother's brother because she always struck me as a secret tippler herselflaughing at things even the studio audience failed to find funny, and wandering into the scene a few moments after everybody else, like she'd ducked into a broom closet along the way. At any rate, in this particular Tom Hanks episodethe focus of which was his booze problemhe ended up drinking, or at least joking about drinking, a bottle of vanilla extract. The stuff is 30 proof and, in theory, if one were to consume several 2-ounce bottles of it, one could achieve a satisfactory buzz. It was a theory that was not easily overlooked by an introverted boy of 15 who had recently discovered the extroverted joys of inebriation but whowithout a car, a fake ID, or much in the way of disposable incomehad to be pretty creative in terms of procurement. And so when French Team captain Lisa Weingarten's parents went out of town one weekend and seven of us arrived with nothing but three cans of Budweiser and no idea where her parents had hidden the key to the liquor cabinet, it wasn't long before I found myself standing on a kitchen stool and going through the cabinets next to the stove. And there, on the top shelf, probably shy of only a quarter teaspoon that had been dumped in a cake batter sometime in the late '70s, was a 2.5-ounce bottle of McCormick lemon extract. Vanilla essence is a pretty stable and soluble compound and can easily exist in a concentratedextract-worthyform at just 15 percent alcohol. But lemon concentrate is a compound with an altogether different chemical profile. To exist in a long-lasting liquid form at the degree of concentration that has become standard to bakers and confectioners, you need an almost pure solution of ethyl alcohol: We're talking 95-98 percent. I almost couldn't believe it. "194 proof!" I yelled to my friends and, before long, I was at the business end of what I interpreted to be an almost Tom Hanks degree of admiration. A shot glass was found and the next thing I knew I was on the back deck spraying lemon-scented puke through my inadequate fingers with a force that would have done a sneezing elephant proud. But that was nothing new. I'd puked in front of this same group of friends before and it wasn't like they weren't already holding open the kitchen door even before I took the shot. What was new were the throat-scorching, lemon-scented hiccups I endured for the next 48 hours. It was as if I'd drunk a shot of lemon-scented Ajax. Truly among the most unpleasant illnesses I've ever endured. It wasn't long after that that I went out and got myself a damn good fake ID. - - - - Coke and Milk Submitted by Joel Gunz Shirley drank this when she was depressed. Or was it Laverne? Pour one part Coke into half a glass of milk. Stir lightly and watch the puffy white cumulus clouds of milk deliquesce into a beige ready-to-drink nimbus. Enjoy. I haven't thought of Coke and milk for years, and then my friend Aimee got to talking about that movie Best in Show, which has the guy who played Lenny from Laverne & Shirley in it, which made me think, "I should pour myself an ice-cold glass of Coke and milk." I remember liking the concoction, and being at an age when I took pleasure in eating (or drinking) foods that other people thought were weird. I think the age was 13. It tasted like cream soda, except that the "cream" was 2 percent milk, and the "soda" was Coke. Sort of a motherly hug of milk followed by a fatherly smack of Classic (before they called it that) Coke. - - - - Health-Tech Energy Strips Submitted by Jonathan Holley Health-Tech "Energy Strips" are an evolutionary advancement in the breath-freshener-on-water-soluble-membrane market dominated by Listerine's "Fresh Breath Strips." For $2.99, you get 24 pale-orange slips packed inside a convenient plastic dispenser. As a strip dissolves on your tongue, it delivers doses of caffeine, tuarine, propylene glycol, ethoxylated monoglyceride, and the intriguingly named "neotame." Suggested serving size: three strips. The promise of "instant energy" without the ridiculous preparation time required for coffee or the outmoded "swallowing" action demanded by caffeine tablets is appealing on an intellectual level, but, as with communism, the good intentions behind Health-Tech Energy Strips fail to translate into a viable real-world solution. Their "smooth mint" flavor is disgusting, like orange peels boiled in tea and left to simmer in a hot car, and, though you might be prepared to "let your body rip with a strip," most people will be disconcerted by the wave of nausea that kicks in 10 minutes after ingestion. Still, the failure of Health-Tech Energy Strips should be viewed in kind reflection, like a test rocket blowing up on a launch pad or an orangutan smashed to death with ball-peen hammers for scientific purposes. Sure, they make you jittery and paranoid, but it's a safe bet that Health-Tech Inc. is hard at work on Energy Strips 2.0, which might make you want to vomit only a little, or maybe even not at all. - - - - Burger King Chicken Fries Submitted by Jennie Pierson The idea of the Chicken Fry made me wildly optimistic. Why must we limit the shape of processed chicken foods to amorphous blobs? Burger King's genius crack marketing team and award-winning line cooks answered that question with the kind of reckless abandon usually reserved for fusion cuisine and astronaut food. "Replace potato with chicken, replace potato with chicken" was the mantra that echoed through the boardroom and filled VPs and office temps alike with glee. This should have been a noble and worthy endeavor. This should have changed the face of appetizer-as-meal. I was disappointed. Literally expecting french-fry-shaped chicken (i.e., small spears that I could easily grab and eat two or even three of at a time), I instead received a sort of mozzarella-stick-shaped "tender," along with a side of their new buffalo dipping sauce, which tasted like congealed butter. The Chicken Fry was bigger and less tasty than I thought. The Chicken Fry was no fun. The Chicken Fry reeked of shrunken sweaters and broken homes. I was tempted to erase it from my mind altogether. However, mainly because I think I'm being funny, I will still occasionally screech out "CHICCCKKKENN FFFRRRIIEESSSS" in a Gene Simmons-shouting-out-"Hello, New Jersey!!" kind of way. Thereby keeping the memory alive. - - - - Seaside Combo From the Grocery Submitted by Jennifer Wyatt The last time I picked up lunch from the grocery store two blocks from my work, I chose a trough of falafel balls to eat at my desk. The 2-ounce plastic cup of tahini sauce that came with the balls looked a lot like paste, so I thought this made it a crossover food: part sustenance, part office supply. That night, I spent some time wondering why I do these things to myself, and if I should go back into therapy. Today I went again, and noticed the grocery also has a little sushi morgue. I chose the Seaside Combo. When I opened the container, the smell reminded me less of the seaside than of a parking lot, with seagulls in it. And hoboes. The parking lot could be in Japan, though. I'll give them that. - - - - Headcheese That a Friend Feeds You Without Warning While Visiting the Hofbräuhaus in Munich After You've Drunk God Only Knows How Many Submitted by Steve Callahan Ah, the Hofbräuhaus. Long wooden tables, utilitarian in design (natch). Tourists from all walks of life (let's be real, there are no natives here) jammed together like Japanese commuters. All of us feeding a common need for revelry, beer, pretzels of a size colossal enough to spin Atkins in his grave, more beer, "authentic" music (it must be authentic because they're wearing lederhosen, right?), more beer, and more beer. Waitresses with upper-body strength not seen since Tor Johnson's prime carrying more and more gargantuan mugs of the glorious beer, beer, beer. A murky miasma of cigarette smoke permeating everything. And, apparently, at some point in the evening Bob fed me headcheese. For years I've stared at the headcheese at the deli of my local supermarket, curious but disgusted. Staring at it and daring myself to finally, this time, buy it and try it. It must be good or else they wouldn't sell it, right? I finally ate it that night at the Hofbräuhaus and can't remember any of it. I'm still alive, so that says something, right? - - - - 7UP PlusMixed Berry Submitted by David Harms Because I'm suspicious of any soft drink claiming to be a source of calcium, it took me several trips to the convenience store in my building (which mysteriously remains open despite closing at 2 each afternoon and devoting an entire magazine rack to its extensive inventory of back issues of Popular Mechanics) before the promise of 5 percent (!) real fruit juice and only 10 calories per can proved too much to resist. Despite the combination of sweet fruitiness with the effervescence and bittersweet of a diet beverage, however, 7UP PlusMixed Berry was missing something. Only later, upon noticing the absence of a crushing headache, did I realize our old friend aspartame had not been invited to this party. - - - - Gatorade Fierce Melon Submitted by Noah Starr The convenience store near my apartment in Queens usually stocks only one flavor of Gatorade at a time. I have no idea where this brilliant merchandising scheme came from, but I do know that it makes me nothing but mad. On Sunday, they had an entire shelf of Gatorade's new Fierce Melon flavor. Since I had no other choice, I grabbed a bottle. It tasted exactly like the drinkable medicines I hated as a kid, but was actually somehow less refreshing. My new mantra is: Any drink named after an entire group of things is nothing but trouble. "Melon" flavor doesn't exist in nature. "Melon" is a category. Here are just some of the melons that I have had in the past: watermelon, honeydew melon, casaba melon, and, of course, cantaloupe. Any of these melons would make a delicious Gatorade flavorthis drink tasted like none of them. I wonder exactly which melon the scientists at the Gatorade labs were trying to replicate? If they were going for something like poison melon, I congratulate them on a job well done. - - - - Doppelkeks Submitted by Matthew Michel Doppelkeks are the generic manifestation of their more expensive brand-name father, Prinzenrolle. It is a cookie sandwich, with the diameter of a minidisc (I think) and a filling made of a chocolate paste. I will tell people they (Doppelkeks) are the reason I have moved to Germany. They will ask me what I mean by Doppelkeks, and I will then mention Prinzenrolle. The outer cookies are nothing special, almost a cracker, light brown with many depressed holes. Small arcs travel the circumference, bumps similar to those around a circle-sun in a child's drawing. They are difficult to separate, the two cookies, in the Oreo fashion. When in want of cereal, I have crumbled two into a cup of milk, only to discover the cookies become mushy on contact with liquid. I will, nonetheless, try this again from time to time. - - - - Post-Katrina Twinkies Submitted by Benjamin Morris The power was still out, so we threw on the grill a couple of burgers that were just about to go bad along with some canned sprouts and butter beans. Here's a hint: with enough salt and pepper, anything can be awesome. After dinner, on the porch, Jonny asks if I want dessert, which I take to mean another room-temp. Blue Moon. Sure, I say, because there ain't all that much to do after curfew ("dark" here in Hattiesburg) except have another beer and watch the cops go by. And then, like a fist-sized shaft of light from the silenced street lamp above us, a Twinkie plops down on my plate. Folks, I don't know if you're the kind, but let me tell you: There is no greater experience than the vanilla and crème and lemonyes, is that a hint of lemon?state of grace that is a Twinkie, especially under circumstances such as these. I mean, really. There is a reason they stock bomb shelters with these things. Perhaps the only thing more poised to send you hurtling straight into the blissosphere is your friendly after-dinner mint: a Kamel Red Light smuggled in from Pensacola because there are no more smokes in Mississippi, which, hey, will you look at that? - - - - Cajeta Elegancita Submitted by Gregory Plemmons Who's that sassy fuchsia-colored mamacita down at the vending-machine corner of E6 and D7? Why, it's Cajeta Elegancita, Hershey's latest foray into Latino-Land, heartily endorsed and autographed on the wrapper by Mexican singing sensation (and J. Lo look-alike) Thalia. In my late-afternoon hypoglycemic stupor, my high-school-Spanish-vocab. recall flounders a bit: elegancita, that's easy enoughahh, "a little elegance." Cajeta, cajeta. Box? Treasure chest? The quarters go in, she flings herself down, and I'm tearing the wrapper off now, baby, biting right into a familiar Kit Kat strata of chocolate and wafer as well as ... what's that ... flavor? That distinctive medley of gym socks and butt crack? Cajeta, cajeta. Goats' milk? Caramel? It's all coming back now: caja is "chest," you idiot. I spit you out, C. Elegancita. I spit you out, like the puta you are. - - - - April and December Submitted by Keir Neuringer Years ago I was hiking around Slovakia with a friend. On the outskirts of an anonymous village, we met an old Slovak who offered us his farm as a campground. He took us inside his house and poured us each a glass of Zlaty Bazant ("golden pheasant"), a fine pilsner. After a round, the farmer became even more generous, and brought us a plate piled with two different kinds of meat, one of them a homemade sausage that was gnarled, pale purple, and speckled with red-and-gray flecks. The other meat looked like simple processed turkey, the "hickory smoked" variety, which I lived on as a teenager. Now, however, I was a vegetarian. Too embarrassed to refuse the old farmer's hospitality, I reached reluctantly for the turkey, supposing it was the lesser, more easily digestible of two evils. As I brought my fork down on the plate, I imagined the rubbery slicejust this side of opaquereminding me with every bite that the processed muscle tissue of a bird was about to make an irrevocable entrance into my digestive tract. But before fork touched meat the farmer's wife walked in, instantly took the plate away, and said to her husband, "These city boys won't eat that!" What I had thought was turkey was, in fact, pure congealed pork fat. Later on, after a sublimely tasty plate of tangy, thick-sliced sausagesthe kind that crunch and squirt fat in your mouthand fresh, floury white bread that gloated, "The farmer's wife made me," with each crusty, butter-slathered bite, the farmer gave us a tour of his place. He encouraged us to reconsider sloninacongealed pork fatgesturing to his knees and saying that it was the daily portions of the stuff that had kept him strong all his years. He then introduced us to what had to be the happiest looking pig I will ever see in my life. He said, "This is our pig, December. We're going to eat him in December." Apparently, we had just feasted on December's brother, April. - - - - Primal Strips Vegan Jerky, Hot & Spicy Shiitake, 4 oz. Submitted by John L. Sullivan If normal food had a badass juvenile-delinquent cousin who rode a motorcycle and spit and swore and made all of the normal foods' mothers keep the kids in the house looking out the window until he went away, that menacing food would be beef jerky. Vegan jerky, on the other hand, will never be confused with beef jerky. Vegan jerky is unthreatening and clean and careful and always minds his manners. On Halloween, vegan jerky goes out trick-or-treating dressed as beef jerky and hopes that everyone thinks it looks cool and scary. I purchased a bag of Primal Strips Vegan Jerky (Hot & Spicy Shiitake) at my local 7-Eleven. The pimply squeaky kid at the register with the Clay Aiken T-shirt and tiny seashell necklace told me it was really, really good. I walked out of the store and squinted into the bright sunlight, the bag small and weak and pathetic in my hand. A guy in wraparound sunglasses and a leather vest roared by on a big rumbling Harley. Arms wrapped tight around him, the long blond girl on the seat behind him was smiling and saying something into his ear as they blasted by. His hair was blowing and his head was leaned back into her face a little. His thick arms stretched up to the handlebars. I'm sure he saw the vegan jerky in my hand. I sneered down at the vegan jerky. It didn't argue. It knew. I flipped the unopened bag into the trash and went back into 7-Eleven to buy some beef jerky and Marlboros and maybe a scratch ticket. - - - - Panda Assorted Filled Licorice Submitted by Zach Arnold I am the only licorice enthusiast I know. I hear that the Finns are big on licorice, but I live in Pennsylvania, and when I offer my uniformly non-Finnish friends a bit of the black stuff, I am generally met with unqualified revulsion. It is perhaps in hopes of enticing my licorice-hating friends, and the rest of the coveted 18-to-24 demographic, that Panda (a Finnish company, mind you) has unveiled its Assorted Filled Licorice. These bite-size chunks of mild black licorice are filled with a chalky, cloyingly sweet paste that allegedly comes in three different flavors. I have been unable to distinguish between these flavors, although I can smell the banana aspect from time to time. No, mostly it's just a headlong rush of vaguely fruity sweetness, with the occasional hint of licoricenot enough licorice to satisfy my cravings, but probably enough to make my friends gag anyway. Way to alienate both camps, Panda Licorice. Next time I'll stick with Gustafs Platinum Select (available salty or sweet). Oh, and the convenient resealable bag ("specifically developed" to maintain "the product's freshness and unique consistency") is unbelievably difficult to close properly. Then again, I won't be too broken up if these things spoil and I have to throw them out. - - - - Wintermint Submitted by Paige Reid Every Sunday, my mother would manage the over-35 team at the local soccer club. The men on her team were no spring chickens, not by any stretch of the imagination, and by the end of the game, they would be lying collapsed on the ground, complaining of cramp and sore muscles. Out would come the Deep Heat, and soon there would be an odorous cloud hanging around the band of injured soccer players. My uncle lives in America and, every so often, he flies to Australia with care packages. Living in Australia means that I get blistering summers, toast with Vegemite, and a woeful selection at the candy aisle. My brother and I ripped open the bag of sugar-based goodies and divided them up equally, without sparing a thought for my parents. We took Butterfingers and Reese's Pieces and other exotic candies that made us laugh and hate Australia furiously. Soon there was nothing left but a column of thin, round candies in a clear packet with very little writing. Suspicious, we asked our uncle what they tasted like. The man himself, tired and jet-lagged, muttered something about them tasting like sugar. I put one in my mouth. It was like running my tongue up a 43-year-old soccer player's thigh. Damn you, Wintermint. Damn you. - - - - Crunch Wrap Supreme Submitted by Sam Hollander In 1992 I watched Shaquille O'Neal duck to enter a doorway, crouch to use a shower, and drive a clown-size car with his knees at his chin, waving arms extended through the windows and smiling head out the sunroof. The message was that everyday objects were not made for Shaq. That is, all everyday objects except the new Double-Decker Taco, washed down with a free-refill Shaq souvenir cup of Pepsi. The genius of the Double-Decker Taco was in the synthesis of crunchy and doughy tortilla elements and the separation of filling elements. Items that had previously been unceremoniously cast together like ingredients in a stew (beany meat, or meaty bean) each received their own share of spotlight on opposite sides of a taco shell. Just as you would never stir together the components of a bowl of fresh homemade oatmeal, instead choosing to enjoy hot cereal, cool cream, sweet brown sugar, and rich salty butter in each bite, the Double-Decker Taco performed an intricate tango wherein each piece shined alone and yet combined to become a taco greater than the sum of its parts. It is now some 13 years later. Shaq has made marketing mistakesShaq-Fu, Kazaam, saying that he was like the Pythagorean theorem because he has no solutionbut Taco Bell patrons will maintain that endorsing the Double-Decker Taco was not one of them. Still on the menu, the Double-Decker Taco serves as a reminder to patrons that silly-looking items may be, in fact, genius. It is with this in mind that I ordered the new Crunch Wrap Supreme. Good Lord, I was not disappointed. The Crunch Wrap Supreme is the new Double-Decker Taco. Please don't go away, Crunch Wrap Supreme. Don't get phased out like Pintos & Cheese. Do not go gently into that good night like the Healthy Menu. Persevere! Like lesser items before you have: the Chalupa, the Gordita, the Quesadilla ... persevere! I've only just met you and already I see you trying to skulk away. Shaq, say something! - - - - Quince Submitted by Joel R. McConvey I went for a round one on purpose, because I was kind of afraid of the lumpy, bubonic look the rest of them had. Misshapen fruit is almost never good. The fur was probably the thing I found most irresistible about it, because the only other fuzzy fruit I've eaten is the peach, and I dig that sensation, like you're eating cheap pleather or a small mammal. But peaches are often hard, and it ruins it. This thing is hard, but since I had no idea what it was when I saw it, I wasn't expecting the juice-down-the-chin gush that pictures of sexy people eating peaches always promise you. I thought I'd have to go back to the store to figure out what it was called, as there was no sticker on mine, and there'd been no sign up when I bought it. I knew that it cost $2.95 for one. That kind of monopolized my first impression. But when I did an Internet search for ""green fuit" pear lumpy" the third item down said "Quince." I half knew it was like a pear when I was buying it, because it was beside the rest of the pears, but it was still disappointing, like when you're a kid and you learn your exotic coin collection is just a bunch of pocket change from Antigua. I felt better when I read how Taoists use it to make incense. I learned it's related to the medlar and loquat, and that the Portuguese call it "marmelo." The page also said it was rarely eaten raw, but I said fuck it. It has the texture of really dense fiberglass insulation and tastes like the smell of cat pee mixed with aspartame. Cook it, if you're going to blow the $2.95. - - - - Meals Ready to Eat Submitted by J.L. Teagle I live in southern Louisiana. The lack of water (coming through the pipes to my house, not the lack of water in general) and electricity necessitated getting a couple of boxes of these rations. My sons found M&M's; there were tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce, too (a nice, homely touch for us in the South); and the vegetarian meals were a nice surprise. As far as bagged food goes, they weren't too bad at all. They're hot (and it's 90 degrees here), but when you don't have anything other than granola bars to eat, it doesn't really matter. - - - - Crest Whitening Expressions Vanilla Mint Toothpaste Submitted by Anina Ertel I've always felt that the average mint toothpaste is too strong. Often, I can brush my teeth for only 20 or so terror-filled seconds before I get the sensation that my nose hairs are burning off. If it weren't for children's toothpaste, I probably wouldn't have any teeth left. But after 23 years, the bubblegum thing has gotten old. It usually tastes like fake bubblegum, and I'm pretty sure real bubblegum is a fake flavor. Crest is lying to you, toothere's barely a hint of mint. It's all vanilla. You could make little rosettes on a birthday cake with this and no one would notice. I've yet to find another human being who will go near this paste more than once. My boyfriend won't even kiss me after I brush; he claims "it's just not right." So try it, and if you like it, maybe you can be my new boyfriend. - - - - Tostitos Restaurant Style Submitted by Ian Collins The first corn chip since Zesty Cheese Doritos to be rightfully called a delicacy, the Hint of Lime makes me believe that the time may come when tortilla chips are more than just shovels for industrial-grade salsa. These may mark the beginning of a new era of mass-marketed subtlety. I imagine "Dusting of Mustard Pretzels" and feel faint. - - - - Coddle Submitted by Alex Johnston Coddle is a form of stew, made in Ireland, with sausages, bacon, onions, potatoes, pepper, and water. You take a saucepan two-thirds full of cold water and add as many sausages as you like, as many slices of back bacon as you like, as many onions as your appetite can handle, and as many peeled floury potatoes as your heart desires. Then you put it on the heat. When it boils, turn down the heat and simmer it for half an hour to ensure that all the pork products cook through. The culinary-minded will have noticed that at no point do any of the meat products go through the normal processes of browning, searing, crisping, etc., that transform sausage and bacon from mere oversalted lumps of pig into splendid delicacies. No, they are simmered in plain cold water with only potato, onion, pepper, and their own salt for flavoring. No wonder, then, that the sausages come out looking like boiled human penises, while the bacon is flaccid and greasy. Coddle is a really shit meal, the food equivalent of a wet Wednesday afternoon in Bray, which is a small and not very exciting seaside town about 15 miles south of Dublin that's chiefly notable for having a mildly pleasant view of the Irish Sea. It is proof that even traditional cookery with top-grade organic ingredients is perfectly capable of producing something that tastes absolutely fucking disgusting. - - - - The Egg O! Croissant Submitted by Andrew Gulledge I divest myself daily of the $5.06 it takes to procure this unhealthy abomination. For dessert: an ice-cold potion of Alka-Seltzer, served in a styrofoam cup. The resulting speedball effect is too touching to describe. - - - - Marshmallow Mania Pebbles Submitted by Victoria Prewitt The box was accompanied by an unexplainable dollar-off coupon88 cents for a box of cereal! How dare I even think of eating something else? And this is the pebbly delight I have been waiting my whole life for, since Rice Krispie treats have been discontinued at my storesugary deliciousness laced in pounds of marshmallow craze. Oh and if you act now you can get a free membership to the Batman Training Academy! Sweet! - - - - Fennel Seeds Submitted by Ned Rust Generally speaking, I'm more an anise man than a fennel man. It's always seemed to me that if you're in the mood for a good, licorice-flavored mouthful of seeds, you might as well go to the source and not be forced to pick your teeth over a spice so innocuous it's often used to lend texture to low-quality Italian sausages. Nevertheless, I like to exercise my palate, and I do make a point of sampling away from my preferences from time to time. And so, when I saw the sale on Spice Trader fennel seedsa 1.5-ounce jar for just $1.69, formerly $5.95I decided not to worry that I'd never heard of the brand. In fact, since I was a little peckish (I often am when shopping), I resolved to pop open the jar and chew a couple mouthfuls on the drive home. Little did I suspect, however, that I would not just be chewing butmore aptlyspitting out the car window and cursing like a sailor who's just chomped down on a rancid piece of whatever it is sailors generally eat. For it became quickly clear that Spice Trader fennel seeds are not only inferior to anise seeds but inferior to any putatively savory substance I'd ever put in my mouth ... except maybe fenugreek. God, I hate fenugreek. They say it's an anti-flatulent, but I always ask, What good is it saving yourself a fart if you've essentially got to put something that tastes like one in your mouth? At any rate, as you may know, fennel seeds typically have a banausic, mildly buttery head with black-jellybean overtones; these, however, delivered a wallop of turpentine with hints of over-ripe corn and, frankly, mildew. I examined the plastic jar more closely when I got home. The label said "Best if purchased by 02/06," but this, rather than reassuring me, set off all kinds of alarm bells. The date was only a matter of months away and it's not exactly a trade secret that most seeds of the carrot familyunless frozen or dry-sealed under positive pressureare fairly perishable and will lose flavor or, worse, rot in well under two years. And, judging by the dust I now noticed on the jar's lid, these seeds had been sitting on a shelf or in a stockroom since the late '90s. A quick trip to the library for an Internet search did little to set my mind at ease. As far as I can tell, the Spice Trader Herbs Import Corporation is no longer in business and I am left with only this piece of advice for bargain shoppers in Aisle 7 (flour, baking supplies, spices): if it looks too cheap to be true, it probably is. Well, thatand check for dust. - - - - Manzanita Sol Submitted by Kevin Hayes One of the benefits of living in a "transitional" neighborhood is that it gives one access to products most white people will never see, let alone taste. Manzanita Sol, an apple-flavored soda ("CONTAINS NO FRUIT JUICE") from Pepsi that is available at my local bodega, is one of these products. Unfortunately, Manzanita Sol proves the notion that every strength (access to products intended for foreign taste buds) can quickly turn into a weakness (consuming said products). How does it taste? Here's how: an orange : orange soda :: an apple : Manzanita Sol That is not a compliment. - - - - Wok 2 Yip Satay Vegetables Submitted by Steffan Thomas I live in Skewen, Wales (the biggest village in Europe!). Skewen has a bizarre concentration of take-away restaurants, mainly Indian or Chinese. A survey done for my geography class at age 14 spelled this out in stark figuresthese establishments outnumber other forms of shop by 2 to 1. There is no logical reason for this. Skewen is not a lovely place; it's an ex-mining village, renowned for the poverty and violence of its inhabitants. Any U.S.-style calls of "Give me your poor, huddled masses, etc." from Skewen should have met with blank rejection from the unshod and trod-upon peasants of Bangalore and Hunan. Despite this, my hometown is filled with these establishments, all competing in taste and price, and thus I had a blessed childhood of exotic and inexpensive food, never more than 10 minutes from my door. For years, I feasted upon chicken tikka and barbecue (or honey) spare ribs, with prawn crackers, poppadoms, and raita, and was able to lord it over schoolfriends who lacked a masculine tolerance for the (admittedly mild) heat of my food. Despite this abundance, I foolishly became, and remain, a vegetarian. My blessed life came to an abrupt end. The complex and delightful dishes of my youth were replaced by compost bin with black-bean sauce and arse dahl. I didn't complain, as my sacrifice was enhanced by this hardship. But then, with no fanfare, or any announcement at all, Wok 2 Yip came into my life. It moved into the space previously occupied by the massively unsuccessful Burger Bros, whose terrible name and subpar American-style cuisine led to their downfall. The premises always seemed oddly sterile and soulless compared to the other take-aways, and this somehow made you feel like a fraud. Wok 2 Yip continued this trend, and seemed doomed to failure. But then again, a new establishment is always worth a try. There, you order satay vegetables and sit down with a papergratis, naturally. A furious-looking chef behind the receptionist works away. When I first tasted his work, it tasted like (and continues to taste like) the only thing Satan could have tempted Jesus to eat in his desert fasting era. This combination of various vegetables, cream, peanut, and chili is the best thing in the world. The softest kick, followed by the softest kiss. It is heartbreaking. I usually combine that with the pineapple rice. - - - - White Chocolate Key Lime Almond Joy Submitted by Emily Lawton Last week, my colleague and I joked about what a terrible idea this particular confection was. But hey, they must do focus groups and taste tests, so how bad could it really be? It smells like a Malibu Barbie that's been drinking gin-and-tonics all day. It's white and lumpy, and (except for the almonds) quite soggy, yet grainy, and the coconut sounds crunchy when you're chewing it but isn't. The only remarkable things about the flavor were overpowering sweetness and the disconcerting aftertaste of lime. Late into the afternoon it lingered, through multiple cups of coffee and a mouthwash rinselime, unconquerable. - - - - Lay's Dill Pickle Potato Chips / Submitted by Tabitha Steager First, a confession. I am a Canadian who has spent most of my life in California, so I cannot claim to know much of anything about Canadian food and culture. When I recently moved back to my motherland, I too thought that the Great White North would be much the same as the States, only colder and with people who run around saying "eh" all the time. But it is not so. Take for instance Lay's dill-pickle-flavored potato chips. My first thought upon spying that bright-yellow-and-white bag with pickle-colored highlights was one of disgust and horror. Who could possibly want to eat dill-pickle-flavored potato chips? Well, Canadians, apparently. "Irresistibly Canadian!" the package proclaimed. Despite my disgust, that Lay's bag called to me each time I visited the store. Finally, in an effort to determine if I was a real Canadian or not, I gave in and bought a bag. "It's a Dill-icious flavour Canadians love!" the bag screamed. I kid you not. It really did say "Dill-icious." Thin and lightly colored, with a slight greasy shine, as Lay's potato chips should be, these croustilles looked pretty American at first. I sniffed inside the bag and got a whiff of vinegar and dill. Not pickle, really, but definitely dill. I was tempted to hold my nose and just pop one in, but that would have negated the whole exercise. At first bite, this chip tasted just like a salt-and-vinegar potato chip. Acidic and salty, it stung the tongue in a pleasing way. Then the next flavorI guess it's supposed to be dill picklecame forward, making its way through the salt and vinegar. It was difficult (dill-ficult?) to place this flavor at first. It was not dill pickle, definitely (dill-finitely?) not. I ate another one, and then several at a time. By now my tongue was starting to feel a bit numb, as salt-and-vinegar chips are wont to do. But I'd placed the flavor. These were not dill-pickle-flavored but rye-bread-dipped-in-vinegar-flavored. And I love them. Maybe it's the "can't eat just one" aspect of the Lay's potato-chip brandor maybe I really am a true Canadian, after all. - - - - The Herbal Tea Shop's William Pear Tea Submitted by Laura Kenins My mother gets gift baskets of obscure food items every Christmas from a well-meaning friend and her well-meaning sister-in-law. I'm not sure which of them gave her this tea. Pears in tea intrigued me, initially. Most herbal teas are made from fruits like apples or strawberries that I can easily associate with sachets or bowls of potpourri in the closets and bathrooms of old ladies, but pears I mostly associate with fruit. I've never seen pear-scented air freshener. However, this tastes a great deal like apple tea, apple-chamomile tea, strawberry-apple tea, and strawberry-lavender tea. I looked at the ingredients: there are no pears, only things like sarsaparilla root, chicory, rosehips, and apple. Now I remember why I stopped drinking herbal tea in middle school and started drinking real tea. Maybe this Christmas my aunt will give us a jar of Mennonite pickled garlic cloves again instead. - - - - A Taste of Thai: Coconut Ginger Noodles Submitted by Rayo Casablanca Have you ever seen written Thai? Not the transliterated shit, but the actual curlicue script, abugida. It looks like the stuff that teenage girls scrawl all over their journal covers. Like the font that Midwestern housewives use to make lost-cat and yard-sale signs. The font that just yells, "I'm so wild and crazy it's insane!" I think it's called Curlz MT. These noodles taste like a Midwestern housewife would, all cheery (the coconut) and apoplectic (the ginger and something called kaffir lime) at the same time. But it's also hearty, sits with you for a while as if it's staying the night. Clinger, I guess. - - - - Steak Fantastic Pizza Submitted by Megan Kerns I recently received an e-mail from Dominos.com advertising their new pizza "Steak Fantastic." I wondered for a split second if I'd try it, then I realized that if I'm on an e-mail list for Domino's Pizza I was obligated to give it a go. I ordered it tonight and it arrived with my Chicken Kickers (boneless chicken "wings" in spicy sauce) in time for a Stargate SG-1 marathon on Sci-Fi Friday night. I split the Chicken Kickers with my husband and yelled at him not to hog the dip. It was like a Philly cheesesteak, minus the peppers and plus the pizza sauce. I wasn't told there would be mushrooms and onions on it, along with fajita-like steak (that was surprisingly grilled-tasting), but the meat was tender and worked perfectly with the earthy button mushrooms and caramelized red onions. I got it on thin crust, which was almost too flimsy for the girth of the Steak Fantastic, but was perfect for precariously folding in half and dipping in leftover Ranch sauce. - - - - Totino's Pizza Rolls Submitted by Patrick Ackerman Being a student of the science of food marketing (and an exceptional one at that), I have been systematically broken down into some sort of a machine that absorbs an assload of sensory information about food products and packaging whenever I am in a supermarket, convenience store, supercenter, or hypermarket. One day, my frozen-aisle frolics led me to a brightly colored package in the snack section. "Totino's Pizza Rolls" it said, begging the question: Who is Totino? Moreover, why did he feel the need to rip the bills off of ducks' faces, stuff them with cheese and sauce, deep-fry them, and subsequently freeze them? I was just joking about the duck bills, so enjoy, vegetarians! But vegans, you better stay very, very far away. And in a world with Totino's Pizza Rolls, macrobiotics may as well just leave the effing planet. So, as I was saying, this packaging is nuts. It depicts several of the little bundles literally exploding out of the center of the box. In small print next to this far-out hippie imagery are the words "Serving Suggestion." How 'bout some more 'shrooms, Captain Wacky? Long story short: Imagine an egg roll stuffed with pizza sauce and cheese, then consider the fact that very little Asian cuisine contains dairy. You can now claim this unassuming snack as the very height of haute fusion cuisine. Gastronomical! - - - - Doritos, NOW BETTER TASTING Submitted by Jason Kronstat Doritos have been a lunchtime staple for almost 20 years, and for good reason: They are cheesy and delicious. They remained delicious through several unnecessary attempts to make them "cheesier." Doritos were beloved by most, and of those who did abstain, none did so due to lack of cheese. Still, Frito-Lay pressed on with a relentless drive to make Doritos cheesier, and they have finally overdone it. Decision makers at Frito-Lay suffer from cheese dysmorphic disorder, rendering them unable to recognize the high level of cheesiness in their own product. They live by the cry "Ever cheesier!," numb to the increasing amounts of cheese-flavored powder applied to their chip. With new Doritos Nacho Cheesier, they are clearly servicing their own pathology and not the cheese-satiated market they pretend to serve. The new Doritos bag actually apologizes for past lack of cheesiness: The slogan "NOW BETTER TASTING!," more appropriate for a children's medicine than for America's No. 1 cheese tortilla, is plastered across the package. The "Nacho Cheesier!" label is also discomfiting, having the same visceral effect as an emaciated person complaining about fat ankles. The taste of the chip is, unsurprisingly, much, much too cheesy. Doritos' many changes over the last decade were a cry for help, a cry we ignored so long as they still tasted a little like the chip we fell in love with. Finally, they've gone round the bend, never to return. There is a lesson here. It's not too late for Smartfood, or Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, or even Cheetos. By intervening now, we can save the just-cheesy-enough snacks from following the same sad and self-destructive path. - - - - Mint Chocolate Chip Tofutti Cuties Submitted by Yukiko Takeuchi Much to my detriment, I didn't figure out I was lactose-intolerant until college. I could have avoided a lot of white-knuckle moments if I had known earlier, but you know what they say about candy and nuts, so I'm unloading that weight. Getting out of the dairy game means I no longer have to play intestinal Russian roulette, but I grew up with the stuff, so there is a hole in my dietary life. Soymilk, cheese, sour creamthey're edible, but you'd never mistake them for the real thing. When I saw the Mint Chocolate Chip Tofutti Cuties (mini mint chocolate-chip frozen sandwiches), I forced myself to keep my hopes low. First, there's the name, and, second, I loved mint chocolate-chip ice cream back in the day and, generally, am not allowed to be that happy. It turns out they're everything I wanted them to be and everything they should be: white (not green), refreshing, "cream"-y, and just the right size to keep from dripping at the end. I haven't had ice cream this millennium, so I can't be sure it's not just succeeding by comparison to its lusterless brethren, but I truly believe this is a product behind which the lactose-tolerant and -intolerant alike can unite. - - - - Dixon's Central Plain Pork Skins Submitted by Bennett R. Hipps This is a food substance so devoid of nutritional value, so lacking in the weight of vitamins and other essential nutrients, that the package actually floated down from its perch and gently glided to rest at the bottom of the vending machine. I also bought some Chili Cheese Fritos. Thump. Straight to the bottom. And now I taste a pork rind. Not too bad. The flavor and consistency are not unlike a piece of styrofoam (or a rice cake) dragged through the gunk at the bottom of the Christmas-ham pan and dried in the sun. I made the mistake of looking at one of my pork-rind pieces, and now the styrofoam/rice-cake illusion is shot to hell. Now I can only think of these things as exactly what they are: fried skin. They are cellular and translucent, like the lampshade in Texas Chainsaw Massacre made from human skin. Frankly, they don't make me think of ham or pork chops or any such thing. Rather, I picture a dangerously bad sunburn. Some of them can still be eaten, but only if taken from the bag to my mouth discreetly, out of sight. The ones that have curled up into almost Cheeto shape are the most welcome, as they look the least like flayed skin. The flatter, wider pieces look like test samples from a dermatology clinic that have so baffled the doctors that they've resorted to selling them as food rather than trying to study them any more. I would still be in favor of trying the barbecue kind someday. - - - - Caramel Apple Fig Newtons Submitted by Justin Porter Stephens Unfortunately, like many highly touted minor league pitching prospects called up for a late-season start, the Caramel Apple Newtons did not live up to the hype. They turned out to be more like Todd Van Poppel rather than a young, Baltimore Oriole-d Mike Mussina. The fine folks at Nabisco had messed up the caramel-to-apple ratio. (Apparently, their mathematical skills are inferior to those of their famous namesakeor was it Isaac N. who was named for the famous sandwich cake? Neither.) One can vaguely taste the "apple" if the edges are eaten and the overpowering center is avoided, but otherwise it's Caramel City, where nobody interesting lives and the garbage men are on strike all the time. Not half a sleeve was eaten before the Newtons were relieved of their position. After the game, they were promptly sent to the cabinet, spending the rest of their career bouncing around different levels of the organization, never to make it back to the big leagues again. - - - - Malta Goya Submitted by Kevin Lauderdale Malta Goya would make the perfect gateway drink between cola and beer. Like all maltas, this nonalcoholic soft drink looks like beer and sort of smells like beer, but, as the label clearly indicates, is actually a nonalcoholic mixture of high-fructose corn syrup, two kinds of barley and hops, and water. This has the tang of beer, but that tang isn't so strong that it actually tastes like beer. It tastes like a good piece of really fresh dark bread soaked in Coke. Supposedly, maltas are very popular in South America, where I bet they taste even better. - - - - Nerds Rope Submitted by Jessica Suarez This is how everyone has always eaten Nerds: the box is held in one hand and shaken into the other. The Nerds are then appraised on a three-point scalecolor, shape, and claritybefore palm is drawn to mouth. Nerds Rope eliminates this excruciating fermata between touch and taste by sticking all the Nerds onto a gummi worm. The rope remains stick-straight and easy to grip, the ideal jogging snack. Nerds Ropes also tend to shed three to four Nerds onto the floor with each bite. This is also an improvement. Friends or family members that tend to slip away unnoticed will, given a Nerds Rope, leave a trail. And toddlers no longer need to be watched at all times; they won't get far. - - - - Cheetos Cheezy Pizza Flavored Snacks Submitted by Rob Geisen Besides being theoretically delicious, the Cheetos Cheezy Pizza Flavored Snack also acts as one hell of a time saver. If you feel like eating Cheetos and you feel like eating pizza but only have time to eat one thing, there's no need to choose. Eat the Cheezy Pizza Cheetos. Problem solved. It's also worth noting that Frito-Lay has helpfully spelled "Cheezy" with the outrageously popular letter z, instead of the wishy-washy and ridiculously outdated letter s, which makes this snack totally easier to relate to. - - - - Breyers Twix Ice Cream Submitted by Ellie Kemper My initial experience with the new Breyers Twix Ice Cream was really, really terrible. I was sick, and when I'm sick I eat ice cream, and so I had bought this big thing of Twix Ice Cream and I was secretly happy, like you are when you're sick, because you know that all you have to do is sleep. But when I started eating my new Breyers Twix Ice Cream I realized that it wasn't really "Twix" so much as "Vanilla." I considered taking it back to Fairway, but I was too sick to do that. So I went to sleep, angrily (I think I started to cry, actually), and then I eventually got betterthe rest of the story isn't interesting. Here's where it gets interesting again. A couple of days ago, fit as a fiddle, I happened to swing by my old haunt (I swing by this old haunt about three times a weekit's my grocery store) and found myself insurprise!the old ice-cream aisle, where I probably find myself about twice a week, because I eat so much ice cream. Especially latelyI was recently dumped! I pulled out a Pints Plus of the new Breyers Twix (they only make it in the pint-and-a-half version at Fairway) and took it home. This new carton was exactly the same as my previous one: 99 percent vanilla with a few stale cookie pieces that were probably accidentally dropped in there by the Breyers factory elves on their break. Crumbs from their snacktime! What saddens me the most, I think, is that not all varieties of the Breyers new "Ice Cream That's Loaded" series are bad. Why is the Twix one so lacking? It is really, really barren. Which is one thing we have in common, and why I will always be drawn to it. - - - - Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich Submitted By Jonathan Lewallen I have seen the new commercial for this product, featuring people who I'm sure are normally level-headed during their day-to-day activities but who, after eating the Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich, are compelled to dunk their heads in fish tanks, or shoot fire extinguishers into their mouths, or attempt to drink from an overturned water cooler, for the sandwich has transformed them into a veritable Cacus, the half-man half-beast who breathed fire and nailed the heads of men to the doors of his cave before being killed by Heracles. To those people, and to the good people at Wendy's, I can only say this: it's not that hot. True, the Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich does have a bit of a kick to it. It is not without its flavor or its charm. It is a reasonably healthy alternative, if it's considered an alternative to eating three Wendy's Big Bacon Classics in a week. It even comes with a slice of tomato and a shred of lettuce, and I'm pretty sure I once found some mayonnaise in there. If the mood were just right, I'm sure it could even be considered delicious. But again I must say: it's not that hot. But perhaps I am alone in thinking this, and perhaps my palate is made of asbestos. I don't think it is, though, because once I ate a sushi roll made with wasabi root, and for 20 minutes I felt like I was on my deathbed. But if I am wrong, then a series of questions arises. 1. If the chicken sandwich is that hot, why can't you order an entire water cooler with it? 2. What about a fish tank? 3. What about a fire extinguisher? 4. Or are they implying that drinking (eating?) a Wendy's Frosty Dairy Dessert is like shooting a fire extinguisher into your mouth? So while I'm happy to "cheer" the sandwich, I must "jeer" the commercial for it. Because it's not that hot. - - - - Dry Brown Curds Snack Submitted by Suebob Davis I found this at our local Middle Eastern market. It looks a bit like black fruit leather and claims to be made of yogurt. So far, so good. I ate a piece only about one-eighth of an inch square. Once the initial shock and pain of my salivary glands shriveling up passed, I stood in my kitchen, almost paralyzed. The stuff was so sticky, and I could feel a piece stuck to my molar, but I was actually afraid to touch it with my tongue or move it, lest the sour flavor blast start again. This may have a use, but I am not sure what it would be. If Middle Easterners can actually eat this with joy and happiness, they are much better and stronger than I. - - - - Olobombo Freeze-Dried Peach Pits Submitted by Erika James Olobombo hard and grizzled peach pits (freeze-dried to preserve freshness) are the perfect alternative for any vegetarian who misses the splintering sensation of bones as they fragment in the mouth. - - - - Snack Muc's Hap Gung Cuttlefish Flavour Snack Submitted by Angela Genusa Cuttlefish are thought to be the wisest invertebrates on the planet. Their intelligence and charisma often make it hard for scientists to think of them objectively as research animals instead of as pets. Cuttlefish can change their color and texture in a second, use body patterns to communicate, and will beg for food. They jet water at scientists and use ink decoys. Hap Gung contains only "imitation" cuttlefish flavor. "Hap" means "together" in Korean, or "coordination or harmony" in Vietnamese; "Gung" means "grandfather" in Chinese, "palace" in Korean, and "work, practice, accomplishment, cultivation"or "ginger"in Vietnamese. So "Hap Gung" could be translated as "grandfather bites," "ginger bites," "harmony cultivated," or, probably, "ginger harmony." The strange words "oan" and "Tu'ti" on the package seem to translate to something like "Ghost ... Toot! Toot!" - - - - Jean Berteau, Côtes du Rhône 2000, France Submitted by Tavia Stewart I mean, the guy in the liquor store said This Was The Stuff. Quote, end quote. The Stuff. The Stuff? Who is this Jean Berteau? Granted it was in the $3.99 sale rack next to the plastic bin of beef jerky. But I am no wine snob; I have consumed plenty of liquor-store-sale-barrel wine in my past, plenty of two-buck chuck. This, though, was something altogether different. Something I could only compare to rotting flower-vase water, to fishbowl liquid after the fish have all gone and died while you were on vacation for weeks in a foreign country, maybe even months. So I will have to dump The Stuff out, and pour myself a vodka with old margarita mix. - - - - Breast Milk, Andrea Watson Variety Submitted by Andrea Watson The milk is yellow and watery and not at all visually appealing. Breast milk does not taste like cow's milk, although this reviewer's expertise lies solely in skim milk, the flavor of which she forgets when under such pressure to recall the exact taste of milk for comparison purposes (answer: "milky"). It could be called sweet. It does not satisfy thirst. It is easily forgettable. It is like milk only in that it is closer to that end of the spectrum than it is to cola. It is bland but familiar. After settling, it forms a creamy cap that is most likely without butter-producing properties. The idea of spreading breast butter on bread is intriguing; however, the market for such might be so limited as to discourage production. - - - - Pimpjuice Submitted by Tony Antoniadis I found it in the fridge of a small Brooklyn health-food store. "Let It Loose," the little can urged, and at that moment I knew I wasn't purchasing a regular energy drinkthe kind marketed to geeks who like to climb Big Bear or rearrange their furniture alphabetically. I swaggered out of the health-food store, setting off the pewter dolphin wind chimes. Imagine my surprise when, after I took my first gulp, I encountered an unmistakable taste I hadn't experienced since my adolescence: grape-flavored Nerds! - - - - Frozen Apple-Cinnamon Eggo Waffles Submitted by Lauren Greenberg Take the frozen apple-cinnamon waffle straight from the buttery-yellow box in the freezer and place it directly into your mouth. No toaster necessary. It was my older brother who started the frozen-waffle-consumption trend. When Mom wouldn't let us take a snack from the pantry, he pretended he was getting ice for his Diet Rite (not recommended with frozen apple-cinnamon waffles) and, instead, slipped a waffle from the box and gnawed on it while watching Thundercats. This treat is still the perfect afternoon snack, highly recommended if you can't control a toaster or live with my mom or someone like her. - - - - Gwaltney's Smithfield Ham (Uncooked, Bone-In) Submitted by Ned Rust Salt is hardly an unwelcome guest in our household. My 2-year-old daughter, left untended, is wont to spill shakers on tabletopsor even on the kitchen floorand lick up the contents. Just yesterday, at the Landmark Diner, I busted her with the restaurant shaker's head fully inside her mouth, injecting her saliva through the holes and drinking out the briny effluent. And one of the first eyebrow-raising behaviors I discovered in my dear spouse is her habit of preparing salt bindles when we go to the movies. While I order the popcorn at the counter, she goes off to the salting station, unfolds a napkin, empties an ounce or so into it, folds it back up, and brings it into the theater. And so, when our ham haunch arrivedthe old-school kind, ordered over the Internet, brined to within an inch of being reclassified as a mineral and dangled for a year in a dimly lit Blue Ridge barnwith instructions to soak in a water bath as long as a day, and with at least one water change, we figured this was probably unnecessary caution and went with the suggested minimum eight-hour soak. I should have known we were in trouble when I noticed the white pencil-point-sized nodules of salt still deep within the haunch. I tasted a piece of the dark pink meat and my lips puckered like a coke fiend's sphincter. I warned them all it might be too salty, but this was not a crowd to take such a warning seriously. So we all sat down at the table and had at it and pretty soon both kids were crying and Ruth, eyes watering, had brought her napkin to her mouth to remove a half-chewed bolus. Maybe add a little extra soaking time. - - - - Colored Animal Crackers Submitted by Sasha Richardson I love me some animal crackers, but I found out the hard way that I don't like the artificially (is there any other way?) colored ones. First of all, there are not a whole lot of colorsfour, to be exact: green, turquoise blue, pinkish red, and natural (which isn't even a color at all, since that's the way the crackers are supposed to look without added dye). I was really hoping for the entire rainbow. Second, and this is a good thing, the colors don't change the flavor of the crackers at all, which is why I wasn't the least bit alarmed when I put the first turquoise cracker in my mouth. Third, I did, however, become alarmed when I went to the bathroom the day after trying the colored animal crackers. I know that green poop is at least somewhat natural, and common for babies, but clearly-not-from-nature solid turquoise-blue poop is really frightening, especially when it comes from your own body. I racked my brain for the next 15 minutes trying to figure out why my poop was the exact same hue as my turquoise iMac computer before I realized that it had to be the crackers. Scary. I've never eaten them since, and I never will. Unless I'm trying to freak out my doctor. - - - - Asian Pear Submitted by Hilary Hammell Sometimes you get duped into living in a guy's attic in Portland under the false pretenses that his ex-girlfriend is newly sober and no longer lives with him, when in fact she (a) is still a raging alcoholic, (b) is still his girlfriend, and (c) two weeks into your under-the-table $100-a-month "lease," moves back into the house and uses the kitchen for "secret" late-night boozing. But now you sleep on an air mattress in an attic walk-in closet formerly inhabited by a cat jungle gym and one of those evil squashed-faced cats named Monty, and you often wake late at night to Monty's take-back-the-closet bids (read: scratching the shit out of your face). On one such occasion you walk downstairs to the kitchen where Anginette is sipping gin from an Orangina bottle. You think, if you were drinking clear alcohol surreptitiously, how hard would it be to choose (a) an opaque cup or (b) a bottle meant to hold a clear beverage? Like Sprite? Or Perrier? Come on. So you try to ignore her and she tries to chat with you, one of those drunks who does the worst job ever at pretending not to be drunk. I mean, even if she could use appropriate syntax and actual words, the fact that she's not wearing pants and has on only a turquoise man-style tank top with the words "Whale ... Splashdance!" on it might be a giveaway. So you turn away, open the fridge, in pursuit of a light snack and an excuse not to look at Anginette's junk. What's this? This bowl of luscious, perfectly round apple-type things that are not green or red but instead a light matte-finish brown? You hold one in your palm and fondle it, feel its rough texture, like a Bosc pear. Could it be some kind of superawesome apple-pear hybrid? To a more simplistic thinker, sure. (In the same way that a mango is just a peach with elephantitis crossed with a softball.) Anginette tells you in her smokers' hack/Rhode Island accent/drunk slur that "issa asianpaya." You bite into it, and all of a sudden the woman with the cracking-at-the-corners orange lipstick and this kitchen and this house and the city of Portland all disappear. You are lost in a taste sensation as all-encompassing as a first kiss with your seventh-grade crush, yet as subtle as a backhanded compliment. This thing is a pear, but without the drippiness and the fall-apart texture. It's as convenient as an apple and as tender as a pear, with the satisfying crunch of a cucumber. But there I go, mixing metaphors and using inaccurate similes. Fuck that. Let me lay it on ya. The Asian pear is the King of Fruits. The Champagne of Snacks. If I could pick one phrase to describe it, it'd be: Taste ... Splashdance. - - - - Old Faithful Bar Submitted by Laura Silver The packaging around the bumpy mass is red, white, and bluewith stripes albeit no stars. The candy's name bursts from a treeline of pines in a well-manicured plume. There are other clues, too: "Original Creme Center. Net wt. 1 oz." It's made in Boise, Idaho, which explains the lumpy, potatoesque feel of the contents. To artists, it's a Klimt in thick satin. Sentimental outdoorsy Jews who've been to Alaska see it as petit Golem with a tentative erection above pigeoned feet, finding its way through the Lower 48. Seafaring folk imagine an underwater surveillance craft with mysterious holds and stubborn bubbles in a rickety paint job. Three-quarters of an inch at its peak, the cluster is a slab of ancient mountain range with smooth sides that appear to have been groomed by human fingers. The respect for geology is unmistakable. A second bite reveals the beginning of the creme center. It's white, gooey, overly sweet, and unpredictable, so there's no hope of eating around it. Whole roasted peanuts abound and become increasingly difficult to separate from the molten core. I want some demarcation: a landmark or an orienteering map that shows how to avoid the perceived treasure. Onward, through the rolling hills. - - - - Red Bull Energy Drink Submitted by Jessica Handler Think orange-flavored baby aspirin. Think Sprite. Now watch me chug the whole can. Want to race to the clock tower by the dorm? - - - - Cape Cod Jalapeño and Aged Cheddar Potato Chips Submitted by Christopher Burns If you live in the Northeastern part of the country, as I do, you know that for us spicy food is not really considered a source of regional pride. In the rare event when a brave New Englander voluntarily ingests any substance hotter than white bread, he usually does so in a restaurant containing "Mexican" or "Indian" in the title, or some other such classification that tells him: "Don't worry. This food is not from around here. You are sampling the native cuisine of a mysterious region far, far away." This comforts him, and, as he wipes the sweat from his brow, he smiles and takes comfort in the knowledge that, when he is done with his meal, he will return to his world of bland food and liberal ideology, safe for now from all outside influences. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered these chips. I was in Ohio, of all places, when the "Cape Cod" printed in large blue letters caught my eye, and made me yearn once more for the simple pleasures of clam chowder and state-sanctioned gay marriage. Brand loyalty left over from my childhood drew me to the Cape Cod chips, but a Midwest-induced thirst for adventure forced me to pass on the original variety. That was when I picked up the green bag, the familiar lighthouse on the front complemented by a wheel of cheese and what appears to be an absurdly large jalapeño pepper (the length of the pepper and the diameter of the cheese are inexplicably equal). Taking this as proof of the New Englander's complete ignorance in the ways of the spicy pepper, I decided to try the chips, unsure of what to expect. My first reaction was one of complete shock. Not only were the chips very spicy, they were also extremely tasty! They actually tasted like jalapeños! It was clear right away that this was no attempt by the good people of Hyannis, Massachusetts, to create just another overly spicy but completely tasteless snack food. In order to get this perfect an end product, they must have gone to great lengths to accurately reproduce the taste and spice level of a jalapeño in chip form, and I applaud their efforts. The cheese is an afterthought, adding a hint of sweetness that is welcome but largely unnoticed. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I finished the bag as quickly as my Irish Catholic taste buds would allow. But how could such a snack come from the land of lobster and tax inflation? For now, I choose to ignore such questions and instead revel in the delicious incongruity. - - - - Worldwide Sports Nutrition Rapid Recovery Submitted by Sean Hannah As a rule, the more syllables contained within a food item's name, the less foodlike it will taste. For the Worldwide Sports Nutrition Rapid Recovery Grape Rejuvenation Post Workout Drink, this does not bode well. Also comes in Fruit Punch. - - - - Tasti DeLite: The Ice Cream That Never Will Be, Submitted By Kristen Elde On a given day, Apple Pie, Almond Joy, Angel Food Cake, Banana, Banana Fudge, Banana Pudding, Bananas Foster, Black Cherry, Black Raspberry, Blackberry, Black Forest Cake, Boysenberry, Blueberry Cheesecake, Butterscotch, Butterscotch Fudge, Butter Praline, Butterfinger, Butterfinger Mania, Creamy Coconut, Coconut Candy, Chocolate Mounds, Chocolate Macaroon, Chocolate, Chocoleche, Chocolate Pudding, Chocolate Mousse, Chunki, Candied Apple, Chocolate Marshmallow, Coffee 'N Cream, Coffee Cake, Coffee Espresso, Cookies 'N Crème, Cremesicle, Crème Brûlée, Cherry Upside-Down Cake, Dulce de Leche, Dutch Chocolate, Double Dutch Chocolate, Doubleberry, Egg Nog Cheesecake, English Toffee Fudge, Fluffer Nutter, Fluffer Nutter Fudge, French Custard, French Vanilla, German Chocolate Cake, Hazelnut Amaretto, Hazelnut Amaretto Fudge, Kahlua 'N Creame, or one of 50 additional selections is offered at various locations throughout New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Maryland, and Illinois. Notably, they all taste like peanut butter. - - - - Orbit CitrusMint Gum Submitted by Shannon Chilcoate Who knew that citrus and mint together could be so refreshing? Probably the people who have already switched to the new "less intense" Citrus Listerine, but that's really beside the point, given that I have stuck with Coolmint. Nonetheless, I highly recommend this gum to anyone who enjoys the way orange Tic Tacs taste for the first 30 seconds, before the coating dissolves and you are stuck with the weird aftertaste of the white core. Also, the packaging is a sunny tangerine color that brings to mind happy summer memories, like running through sprinklers. Or, better yet, a Slip 'n Slide! But only if you had a lawn with no rocks. Those hurt. - - - - Smucker's Uncrustables Submitted by James Sepsey Ogden Nash once said, "Progress may have been all right once, but it has gone on too long." Mr. Nash, if only you were alive today, standing in your grocer's freezer section, contemplating progress from a modern perspective. For if you were, I would stand in this same grocer's freezer section with you, take your hand, and show you that progress has not been as futile as you once imagined. I would take your hand and place it here, gently into the cool freezer, so that the two of us touch the same icy-cold box, a box within which the zenith of progress and ingenuity awaits us, like a nervous cheetah pacing his cage at the zoo. And you would say, "You who have taken my hand, whom I hardly know, what is this very progressive thing that the two of us touch, with the tenderness of lovers?" And I would say, blushing, "Smucker's Uncrustables, sir. Sandwiches. Peanut butter and jelly. Strawberry. Grape. Even grilled cheese. This is the object of our desire." Resisting, you would pull your hand away. "But they're round! They have no crust!" And I would say, "They are! They do not!" Again our hands would intertwine, our mad lust rekindled. And the two of us would, as one, go to take a bite. But we'd have to pause. We'd have to because, well, as you can imagine, Smucker's Uncrustables are frozen, sir. A 10-minute defrosting awaits us. But during this brief delirium you'd write a poem. It would go: They come in Grape, You would look into my eyes and ask, "Has it been 10 minutes?" I would bashfully nod and hand you an Uncrustable. You would take it, with force, and pull me to your side. I would shut my eyes and whisper: "Hold me, Mr. Nash. In the modern sense of the word." And you would. You would hold me forever, like witchcraft through the ages. - - - - Little Debbie Nutty BarsConvenience Pack Submitted by Jaan Bernberg E9 is what I wantedE6 is what I got. What dropped into the vend compartment was a shabby white package with meager red-and-brown graphics, which included a grinning redheaded girl donning a summer hat. Despite a presentation that sat far below the status quo of mass-produced confectionery fat-kid treats, I was willing to give them a try. Strands of chocolate-covered packaging littered my desk and stuck to my arm as I took my first bite. What I was met with was a flaky-chocolate-salty-sweetness both diabetic-coma-inducing and delicious. How Little Debbie continues to smile with a full set of what appear to be cavity-free teeth is a mystery. How my portly childself escaped into puberty (and a less bloblike form) without ever falling into the clutches of Little Debbie and her terrible bars is a miracle. Thank you, Deb (can I call you Deb?), for sparing me thenit makes our meeting today that much sweeter. - - - - Canned Salmon Submitted by Ellia Bisker For starters, these salmon aren't farmed, they're wild, caught in the deep Alaskan seas, so the whole mercury/PCB thing isn't a problem. Also, the skin and bones are left in, which sounds like a bad thing but is really a good thing; the skin provides you with healthy omega-3s and the bones are full of calcium. About those bones: You don't have to worry about them! When the fish gets canned, they flash-heat it and the bones get so soft you can just mash them up with a fork and forget about them. Yeah! And since this stuff is already cooked, if you're feeling malnutritioned or just lazy, you can eat it right out of the can, no frills. That's right: no frills. You heard me. It's even OK for pregnant ladies to eat! Are you listening, pregnant ladies? This is your fish! - - - - Anderson Valley Brewing Company Submitted by David Bill Smooth, slightly sweet, and ridiculously creamy, this would be the perfect beer for sharing with your 12-year-old son on a warm summer afternoon (were it not for the multitude of legal and ethical issues). Not so much a traditional ale as a tasty soda that cannot be consumed on the road. This is a beverage that pushes the boundaries of safe role-play; each sip delivers another frisson along with innocence lost. Not recommended for the devout. - - - - Tiny Toasts Submitted by Stefanie Freele What is it about the word "toast" that sounds so ungratifying? Is it the finality of the dryness? The ending of the bread's life cycle? I suppose a crouton could come next, really just a smaller, squarer version of the tiny toast. But being a crouton would be like being a one-hit band from '78 still wearing the same garb and playing at seedy places that attract the same 1978 groupies. They'd wear the same garb too. Why would you want to be a crouton? So many other aspirations, so many goals to attain. I'd like to see the Andes, for instance. - - - - 7-Eleven's StirCrazy Submitted by Kevin Hayes There's something vaguely space-age-y about 7-Eleven's new frozen dairy dessert StirCrazy. It's the first soft-serve ice-cream-like product that can be kept in the freezer case. This means that science has created "ice cream" that remains soft at temperatures below freezing (without any sort of agitation). This means that people who used to work for NASA dehydrating ice-cream sandwiches and turning tangerines into Tang are now working for 7-Eleven. This doesn't mean anything, really, but it does remind me that I'll never live in a city on Mars. I figured there was some scary, new lab-invented additive in this stuff to keep it unnaturally soft, but a quick scan of the ingredients revealed only scary, familiar lab-invented additives (though the sheer number of them was impressive). Intrigued, I bought the cookies-and-cream flavor (other option: cookie dough). Ingeniously, the crushed Oreos are separated from the vanilla "ice cream" by a thin layer of frozen chocolate. Less ingeniously, the cup is just a little too small to easily stir everything up without losing some of those precious cookie bits and/or inadequately distributing them. This is a problem because the "ice cream" is so blindingly sweet that you need the cookies to temper it. That's rightthe cookies serve as a de-sweetening agent, and if you misappropriate them, you'll wind up eating the bottom layer of disturbingly sweet cookieless "ice cream" only because you have a deep-seated psychological need to finish every morsel of food put in front of you. - - - - Liberte Brand Six Grains Stirred Yogourt: Submitted by Molly Jane Quinn Sitting stoically on the shelf next to those lesser yogurt brands (I'm looking at you Dannon and Columbo) was a small container emblazoned with a crest of grains, a lone berry, and a banner that proclaimed: "Raspberry!" It helped that "yogurt" was spelled "yogourt." I felt glamorous; toting my yogourt out of the rundown mom-and-pop store around the corner from my office allowed me to fantasize for a brief moment that I was not returning to a cubicle to fact-check peppy articles for a family magazine but rather strolling to meet my amour for a Parisian picnic. Considering I have neither an amour nor a picnic, this was a compelling reason to purchase. And then I peeled back the silver foil top and saw the chunks floating in the pale pink yogourt. I didn't realize that "raspberries and grains" meant actual raspberry yogourt mixed with grains. Buckwheat, rice, barley, wheat, rye, and oats, to be exact. That's a lot of grain. A lot of really grainy yogourt. But I have to say, Liberte, after my gag reflex calmed down, you won me over. I'll never go back to the soft stuff after mouthfuls of this deliciously mild raspberry yogourt, interspersed with soft nuggets of grainy goodness. It's slightly chewy, slightly gooey, and way better than laboriously stirring in granola, which I can now definitively say is for suckers. Finally, I'd like to suggest that after you enjoy this refreshing snack you check out the Liberte website. Their well-meaning (and charmingly translated) homepage, urging us to recycle our Liberte containers (using lids they will send to you for free!) as receptacles for "dry fruits in kid's lunch, paper clip at work, or paint for artist," will make you want to toast your Liberte container in praise of these sweet naive French-Canadians in their berets and billowy white tunics churning out Six Grains Stirred Yogourt, saving the Earth one shallow American fact checker at a time. - - - - Butterfinger Crisp Candy Bar Submitted by Will Hindmarch The guy at the store said it was good. He said it was "like a Butterfinger humped a Kit-Kat." Not untrue. By taste alone, we can glean a fair bit about this candy's parentage. It's inherited its mother's body typelarge, but with layers of light wafers cushioned by sugary cremefrom which we can discern it comes from the Big-Kat line of Kat cousins. Knowing that reduces the impact of the bar's complexion, which would normally seem to be inherited solely from the Butterfinger side. Sure, the size of the Butterfinger Crisp makes it look more like a Butterfinger, but when you get to know it you find that the Crisp acts, and even tastes, more like a Kat. The candy's name implies a bit about the relationship between the parent bars. Despite the candy's texture and flavor traits, its mannerisms and voice, coming so clearly from the Kats on its mother's side, it uses its father's name. Hell, it's even been titled in the surname-first tradition of the Butterfingers, eschewing the maternal name for the faddish, bland "Crisp." Why not just call it "Butterfinger Madeline" or "Butterfinger Jack" if you wanted it to sound like every other candy bar in kindergarten? If ever it would have been appropriate for a candy bar to be given a hyphenate name, this would have been the one. Imagine: Butterfinger-Kat Crisp. It might have sounded pretentious, it might have raised an eyebrow when some glitterati read it off the platinum card, but at least it would have been honest about who it was and where it came from. Butterfinger-Kat Mirumoto would probably be asking too much, though, I suppose. - - - - Din Tai Fung Juicy Buns in Arcadia, California, Just Down the Block From the Santa Anita Racetrack, and Yes, They're Worth the Hour Wait and All the Taiwanese Folks Glaring at You and Cutting in Front of You in Line Submitted by Theodore Ross Inscrutable Chinese dumpling chefs roll the dumplings by the thousands while you loiter at the door clutching your numbered ticket. Each one is a miniature fat-guy dough purse the size of Uma Thurman's prosthetic thumbs in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This is the Blade Runner of dumplings. In a future where Wolfgang Puck is sacrificed to the restaurant gods for his frozen-pizza hubris and trumped-up accent, laws will be altered and regulations issued that require all food to change its name to juicy bun. Section 3505.15 of the Gastronomic Revised Code: Big Macs henceforth to be known as McJuicyBuns. Foie gras shall be Force-Fed Goose Juicy Buns à la Française. Whoppers will be recognized as just slightly ahead of the gustatory curve. - - - - Pepsi X Energy Drink Submitted by Mike Jones Fifteen minutes after consuming an entire 500 ml bottle of the stuff, I noticed that the skin on the inside of my upper and lower lips had shriveled. When I ran my tongue across them they felt very strange. I was trying to read up on Pepsi X when I noticed two more things. One was that my eyes were rattling along the words but nothing was registering. Two was that I was clenching my jaw really, really tightly. When my girlfriend arrived home from work, she took one look at me and asked if I had been sweating a lot. When I told her that no, I didn't think I had been sweating a lot, she then asked if I was feeling all right. I told her that I felt pretty good and that I had drunk a Pepsi X. She fixed a disappointed look on me that asked "Why?" That look pretty much sums up Pepsi X. - - - - Edy's Slow-Churned Light Ice Cream Submitted by Matt Zils Recently, in the freezer aisle at my local "Soviet Safeway" (never any bread, always long lines), what to my wondering eyes should appear? Yay, for it shall be called Slow-Churned Light Ice Cream. It should be noted that such a discovery is especially heartening when one lives in the hatefully humid blast furnace of Washington, D.C., during the summer months. Choking back a burst of expectant salivation, I opened the freezer to get a better look. I almost wet myself upon seeing the label: "1/2 the fat, 1/3 the calories!" "Praise Jesus," I thought to myself, "now I can eat twice as much!" That night I forwent my usual sophisticated meal of mac 'n' cheese and just sat in my boxers eating heavenly spoonfuls of Slow-Churned directly from the carton. - - - - Blue Diamond BOLD Wasabi & Soy Sauce Almonds Submitted by Carly Bourne As someone who enjoys almonds, and as someone who really enjoys those wasabi-covered pea snacks found at Asian food stores and Trader Joe's (if you are lucky enough to live near one), I was really, very, far too excited when a can of these showed up at a BBQ one afternoon. I started with a small handful, wary of what Americanized wasabi stuff would really taste like, but one handful quickly became two, three, and four until I was in danger of eating the entire can of almonds. I gave the can to my boyfriend and told him not to let me have any more. Then I waited patiently for him to look the other way while I took the can back and ate the rest in a quick binge. I do have a warning about these things, though. After eating a few (or a lot) you will notice a fine green dust on your fingertips, much the way the orange powder paints your hands after eating Cheetos. Whatever you do, under absolutely no circumstances should you lick your fingertips when this occurs. You will be tempted, and it will seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do since that delightful seasoning tasted so good when coating the almonds, but you must resist. Instead, get up, find a napkin, wash your hands, and whatever you do don't touch any part of your face, especially near your eyes. If you do not heed these warnings, your sinuses will pretty much feel like they are exploding and your eyes will burn so ferociously that you will curse loudly and go into amazing spasms that will cause all other BBQ attendees to stop in their tracks and stare at your epileptic-like fit. Or so I've heard. - - - - SoyNut Butter Submitted by Leah Strauss Somebody stole the letter A and yesterday's apostrophes. Or maybe the people doodling in their cubicle at the marketing department for SoyNut Butter have just spent a little too much time in the chatroom. How else do you explain the slogan "I.M. Healthy" that wraps its letter arms around the pseudo-peanut-butter jar? Chatroom Yoda says, "2 much time computer u on 4." Personally, the fitness of a nut spread is not something I am qualified to verify. It waddles into the land of subjectivity. If a jellyfish sheepishly rolled the eyes it doesn't have upward toward you and said, "I am healthy," then thundered, "Eat me, biotch!," you'd be left to take it at its word and down the sucker. The jellyfish may very well be in top form for a cnidarian, but the chances of you being an expert and in possession of a pocket stethoscope are rather slim. The jellyfish never said it was healthy for you, just that it assays itself as primed for Jazzercise, headband or no. While "I.M. Healthy" may well be an empirically irrefutable claim, there is one assertion, placed as a side thought at the base of the jar, that is worth questioning. SoyNut Butter demands recognition as "jelly's new partner." There is a certain gravity to this ostensibly inoffensive jest. First of all, jelly knows where its loyalty lies. Secondly, peanut butter may be creamy and delightful, but push the wrong buttons and an ancient rage awakens. - - - - Onion Sprouts Submitted by Heather Taylor I thought you would be a good idea. I like your other varietiesalfalfa, bean, broccoli, even fennelgreek. And I don't even know what fennelgreek is. But I know what onions are. I like onions sometimes. They're good on hamburgers and fried with mushrooms. What are stir-fries or curries or hamburger hash without the joy of the bulbous onion? But onion sproutsyou are a category all to yourself. You look like you would be good, your springy green lushness overflowing the bounds of your small plastic holding pen. Your price is the same as any other package of sprouts on offer, which makes the purchase that much more tempting. Now I have to buy you. Count the last few pennies in my wallet and give them to the spotty teenager who doesn't care if I am about to find enlightenment in your presence. I mean, he tries to pack you under a bag of flour. What was he thinking? You could have been crushed. So, with your box safely stowed in its own plastic Safeway bag, I take you home, fully prepared to honor my hunger with your goodness. I load you on my sandwicha boring bologna accompanied by an uneven tomato slice and plain-Jane cheese. I think even the thin layer of mustard coating the insides of my sliced white cannot compare to you. Now I have learned. Oh. Have. I. Learned. I cannot breathe without remembering you, my mouth's insides burnt by your touch. It's a burn that was less inspired by hints of onion than by the incarnate of all evil factors of onion packed in the cutest form ever. You are still on my plate. You have even scattered yourself about the countertop, fridge, and floor. You have a life of your own and are 10 times the price of a normal onion. You are the devil. I still smell of you. Oh how I curse the day I saw you. - - - - Vietnamese Coffee Submitted by Sachin Hingoo This amazing shit is just espresso with a hearty dollop of condensed milk on top (soon to be on the bottom), but let me tell you, it is so much more than the sum of its parts. Creamy going down, with that bitter taste that makes your stomach lining be all "fuck that." It's the perfect balance, even though I can't imagine that the Vietnamese were the first to think of this. When you get to the end, be prepared for an earth-shattering blast of SWEET! Yes, the term "earth-shattering" is bandied about a little too willy-nilly these days, but this amazing shit will literally shatter your earth. Not least because this is your third one and there has to be a better way of getting off the junk. And what the hell are you doing with that stir stick? Put it down! Drink exactly as is, poured by the sour-looking non-Vietnamese girl at the coffee shop who overcharges you by 50 cents and then gives you cut-eye when you tell her so. Jesus, don't you know anything? - - - - Reed's All Natural Jamaican Style Ginger Beer Submitted by Kristin Palla Pay no mind that it's bottled in L.A. Jamaican Style tastes like it was carefully brewed using a 100-year-old recipe in Ocho Rios under a smogless sky, inches from reefs filled with fish that cost $400 in a pet store. It's $4.95 not including tax for a four-pack at my local food co-op, but I can't help myself. I justify a three-packs-a-month habit with "Well, I don't buy cigarettes." And when I sit out on my deck on a nice day with a ginger beer in my hand, it doesn't matter that there's no alcohol in it. - - - - Trader Joe's Mango Corn Chips Submitted by Nissa Cannon I have to begin this by telling everyone two things: Thing 1: I have an unhealthy obsession with Trader Joe's. So unhealthy, in fact, that, while spending a year living in Italy, hardly a day passed without me mentioning it. Thing 2: I love mangoes. Born in Hawaii, I think eating fresh fruit may be my calling in life, and I was once given the title Mango Princess. (But that's another story for another timeone involving too much angst and ire to fit in a food review.) So when, scanning the shelves of new Trader Joe's foods, I saw the mango corn chips, I knew what I had to do. How could I not buy them? It was my civic duty, and I'll be damned if a little matter of the actual taste (as I could imagine it) of a mango chip was going to stand in my way. Think really hard about what a mango corn chip might taste like. Imagine it on your tongue, chew it, swirl it like a wine. (Never mind that chip crumbs aren't prone to swirling.) Got it in your head? Good. That's exactly what it did taste like. If you, like me, feel a compulsion to buy these chips, doubts or no, I recommend eating them with Trader Joe's Mango Salsa. Then it's just like eating normal chips. - - - - Miller High Life "Tall Boy" Submitted by Danny Gasperut At $3.99 a six-pack, is there a cheaper way to time-travel? No, friends, I don't mean the charming alcohol-induced euphoria that makes tomorrow become today and makes mistakes disappear. I mean the kind triggered by the low punch of a screwdriver piercing the golden finish on the champagne of beers, instantly taking you back to a simpler time. A time when your roommate didn't make out with all your friends and you weren't home alone with her cat, shotgunning 16-ounce beers on your porchalonefantasizing about a crudely drawn lady in a sombrero riding sidesaddle on a crescent moon. - - - - Whole Kitchen "Taste of Quality" Butter Chicken (Organic White-Meat Chicken Drenched in a Traditional Indian-Inspired Tomato Butter Sauce Submitted by Diana Wurn Dear Whole Kitchen, I am not sure what you mean by the "taste of quality." Many things with quality are not especially tasty; one of them is your frozen dinner in the orange box with the pretty picture of a creamy butter sauce. I am confused, and not just because it took longer to type the description of your entrée than it did to heat the thing in the microwave. I wondered what you had to hide with that elaborate title and such a tempting picture of the food on your packaging. I became suspicious. When I opened your box, I found that your sauce was not the beautiful orange shown in the photograph. No, it was not. It was the color of rain- and mud-soaked fall leaves mashed into a gory pulp collecting on a sidewalk somewhere in Brooklyn. When your entrée was finished cooking, my apartment took on the strange smell of burnt, yet quality, rubber. I've tasted your quality, Wholey. You tasted like public-high-school-cafeteria chili over white rice. I had to throw most of your entrée away and eat leftover chocolate-chip cookies for dinner. Don't be embarrassed. I know your headquarters are in Texas, so it's probably hard to make delicious frozen Indian food. I just thought you should know. - - - - Dove Ice Cream Miniatures Submitted by Catherine Nichols "Why a Dove Bar?" is a question that answers itself. There is the rich chocolate shell over full-fat vanilla ice cream. But why a Dove Miniature? These things are each about the size of a baby carrot. When do you ever want a Dove ice-cream bar but only one and a half bites of it? Breakfast. The people at Dove may not know this, but if tension causes you to grind your teeth at night, and you wake up with an aching jaw, a tiny lump of cold Dove Bar is exactly the antipasto breakfast needs. - - - - Clif Bars Submitted by Sharon Bancroft You're chewy! You're gooey! You are available in a variety of delicious flavors for enlightened adults. You are individually wrapped and do not require refrigeration. Your texture, reminiscent of a really beefy Rice Krispie Treat, provides a great activity for tense jaw muscles. You come in boxes that can be stacked neatly in the pantry, organized by flavor, color, or maybe even date of purchase. Best of all, you are full of things that human bodies need: iron, protein, the vitamin B complex, calcium, etc. All of this from a low-fat, vegan, gluten-free product that even those of us who grew up as anxious first children with persistent migraines can consume in good conscience. Thank you, Clif Bar, for bringing my compulsive pursuit of perfection one meal closer to fruition. - - - - Bob Evans SnackWiches Submitted by Marvin Astorga Small as a sausage biscuit already is, sometimes you don't want all of it. Sometimes you wish you could shrink it to a size that fits comfortably in your mouth so you can chew it once and be done with it. Or nibble at it daintily as if you were a caricature of Marie Antoinette, taking in food like an extra-careful bird, gingerly and unnecessarily dabbing at your mouth with embroidered gossamer napkins (heirlooms) after each microscopic bite. Whatever the case, this problem is solved by Bob Evans SnackWiches, compact versions of sausage biscuits for the working lazy and incorrigible microwavable-treat addicts (like children). Like any self-respecting aristocrats, my roommate and I bought them at Costco. My reason for purchasing them was their dollhouse novelty; my roommate, conversely, was under the impression they were regular people-sized, despite the fact that the box front depicted a dinner plate holding about eight of them. We had an argument about truth, representation, and the merits of either with regard to breakfast sandwiches. "How big do you think a dinner plate could possibly be?" I clamored. His responses, like the sandwiches, were small and unsatisfactory. The SnackWiches themselves are not all that bad if what you're looking for is that lardy, overpeppered zip of a sausage biscuit (let's not forget rubbery). But the real delight is that the sandwiches come individually wrapped in connected plastic pockets that end up looking like a square of giant bubble wrap, only with sausage biscuits in each bubble. Who is responsible for this baffling scale-shiftery? And what about this compound wordery? Bob Evans SnackWiches will leave you with more questions than answers, though the questions are superficial and easily forgettable, especially if you're inebriated, and the answers probably point back to someone's esoteric personal neurosis that you don't want anything to do with. Do you? - - - - New Chili's Menu Items: Quesadilla Explosion! Salad Submitted by Gregory Plemmons Chili's has changed the menu items again. Where have you gone, Fried Chicken Salad? The purgatorial Island of Misfit Salads and Starter Items? Will the marquee outside announce your return someday, like so many other B-grade entrées that never seem to die off completely? (McRib / Frisco Burger / Back Porch Griller ... Is Back!) In the interim, must we continue to suffer cheap Outback/P.F. Chang knockoffs of knockoffs? Awesome Blossoms: your crunchless cotyledons leave us disheartenedly emulsified. New low-carb option Lettuce Wraps: your limpid Bibb vessels cannot withstand more than a nonheaping tablespoon of "Asian"-spiced chicken, and the sauce: the chicken ratio is all wrong. Southwestern Egg Rolls: new nadir in fusion cuisine. Oh, Fried Chicken Salad, in your recent absence, there were only two comparable stand-ins: the Boneless Buffalo Chicken Salad or the Quesadilla Explosion! Salad. Unfortunately, I chose the latter. Topped with the paltry shrapnel of flavorless winter tomatoes (damn those Florida hurricanes!) and processed shredded cheese, and thoroughly doused in citrus-balsamic dressing, the aerial view does somewhat resemble Car Bomb at the Mercado, faintly Pollockesque, yet the quesadilla points (thankfully chipotle-less) are mysteriously equidistantly poised at the platter's edge like a compass. Where are we going? Not back to Chili's until Fried Chicken Salad returns. This newcomer's seemingly sassy heterogeneity and raucous-sounding title alarmingly betray insipidly homogeneous flavor. Still, it was almost worth $7.49 to hear our befuddled and/or high server exclaim: "So who had the Explosion?" - - - - Hershey's Take 5 Candy Bar Submitted by Jonathan Shipley I was jazzed about the new Hershey's Take 5 candy bar, literally, because I really like the Dave Brubeck Quartet and Paul Desmond's tune "Take Five," which is essential listening for any jazz fan, what with Desmond's loping saxophone melody and Brubeck's heavy chording. It's as smooth as milk chocolate, that tune is, but without the synthetic aftertaste. I bit into the Hershey's Take 5 candy bar expecting a regular improv-jazz groove right there in my mouth. What I got was pretzels (1), caramel (2), peanuts (3), peanut butter (4), and milk chocolate (5). That's Hershey's Take 5. Get it? Five things right there inside the candy bar. And that's not even true, because what about thiamin mononitrate? And partially hydrogenated vegetable oil? And dyglycerides? It's more like Take 43, and that's not a good candy bar, jazz fans, and it wouldn't make a good tune, either. I mean, come on, who's going to sit there late at night, their woman in their arms ready for romance right there by their turntable, and say, "You know what would get us in the mood, baby? Brubeck's 'Take 43.'" - - - - Locatelli Brand Pecorino Romano Cheese Submitted by Stephanie Palumbo This is the best kind of cheese that exists, except for maybe really good mozzarella. I like to eat it on pasta and pizza, and, honestly, it goes with almost anything. Also, I sometimes buy it in a big chunk and cut it into thin slices. If this cheese were in a movie, it would be the character that rises to overcome great odds and succeed in the end, whereas Parmesan would be lying by the wayside. This cheese is on my Amazon.com Wish List. - - - - Whole Foods Market's 365 Everyday Value Submitted by Erin Martin Kratt Three hundred sixty-five, no lie. You'll want to eat a whole box of these delicious little bits EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY. A bagel lover's dream, these tiny sourdough crackers are covered with every seed popular to the bird-feeder crowd, plus little dried bits of garlicky goodness. The best part is, when you finish a box in a sitting (which you will, guaranteed), all the leftover seeds in the bottom of the bag make a satisfying denouement to an otherwise empty, slightly shameful meal. Mmmmm, crunchy. My husband fears I am turning into a squirrel. - - - - House of Bazzini Prime Time Snack Mix Submitted by Tony Antoniadis This isn't just a snack mix, people. This is a nylon rope ladder heroically cast from the rescue copter known as late afternoonthe snack will get you to a stalled lunch, no problem. It's got peanuts, cashews, pretzels, and cheddar thingsstandard fare for a legitimate trail mixyet everything's been richly glazed with honey, sugar, and salt. More like lacquered, actually. The effect is one of physical renewal and genuine satisfaction, but, like anything exciting, it can't truly be explained with language. I don't know. Imagine a hot shower on the inside of your body for two hours. Wow, it's that intense. They list sugar on the ingredients list five times. I assume they do this just in case the eater takes on the frantically euphoric mind state of a grasshopper, where things like processing information become problematic, yet trying to chew the inside of one's mouth does not. That's what happens to me, at least. I can practically skip lunch if I want. But I don't want to do that, and I won't do that. I tell my boss I'm going to lunch, but what I do on my lunch hour is my business, capiche? - - - - McDonald's OJ/Coffee Combo Submitted by Cathy Hannan I was somewhere in America's Heartland this weekend and stopped at McDonald's for breakfast. I know eating there is lame, but trust me, Ferrarri's, the only other thing open, didn't look safe. I ordered a biscuit-crap thing, orange juice, and coffee. The zit-faced teen shoved the tray at me. There was one cup. "Wait," I said, "where's the orange juice?" "In the cup," she said. "Well, then, where's the coffee?" Clearly, she was dealing with a retard. She sighed. "In the cup," she said. I took the top off. There was a lukewarm, translucently caramel-colored liquid inside. Yes, she had given me a cup filled with half coffee/half OJ. Is this some taste sensation sweeping the nation? I have seen no ad for "I'm lovin' it OJ/coffee combo," but since she was so convincing in making it seem like it was a normal thing to order, I tasted it. I mean, the first time someone offered me a beet-and-goat-cheese salad I thought yuck, and now, well, it's one of my favorite things. But the OJ and coffee? It really sucked. - - - - SkyFlakes Crackers Submitted by Veronica Montes If you are not Filipino (and it is likely that you are, indeed, not), then SkyFlakes Crackersa product of the Philippines easily available in your local Asian marketare new to you. Unless, of course, you have spent ample amounts of time gallivanting with Filipinos, in which case you are already intimate with SkyFlakes Crackers and do not need me to tell you that they taste as if they are handmade by the cherubim and baked in heaven's own oven. But first let me discuss the tin. SkyFlakes Crackers are packed in a square metal tin with a round cut-out top that you must pry open with a butter knife or other similar tool. Crafty, ruffled-hair types who wear vintage clothing will be drawn to the tin because of its kitschy red, white, blue, and yellow motif and its zippy 1950s-style font. They will immediately sense the tin's potential as a conversational centerpiece, photographic subject, and/or future receptacle for items such as calculators, pens, erasers, and paper clips. They will be amused by the exterior copy, part of which reads, "SkyFlakes Crackers in milk are favorite snacks of the youngsters." It will remind them of Japanese stationery that says things like "Moon glows be my friend and flowers love. Thank you!" There is another packaging style, but it is typical cardboard packaging that is not remarkable. Within the tin, the crackers are wrapped in packs of three, each of which is perforated so as to make them easy to snap off into three smaller crackers, making a total of nine. Isn't that something? They are unsalted, flaky, and crisp yet somehow tender. I think this is owed entirely to the use of vegetable shortening and coconut oil. Whatever the case, the result is more than any eater of snacks can legitimately demand in a cracker. You should buy some. - - - - South Boston Chinese Food Submitted by Jonelle Seitz If you are in South Boston, do not attempt to order in Chinese food. Even if you're dying of hunger and have the flu and there's a nor'easter going on outside that already broke your umbrella earlier today, you must either venture to Chinatown or forgo the only appetizing idea you've had all day and settle for snacks from the Dunkin Donuts on the corner. No, no, you mustn'tnot China Garden, not Emerald Garden, and no, definitely not South Boston Chinese Restaurant. Yes, I know you're thinking of a nice hot plastic container of hot and sour soup that would nourish your weak body, clear your stuffy head, and make your faux-wood-paneled apartment in Andrew Square fragrant and cozy. But I tell you, don't do it! No! No! I told youyes, you see, I tried to warn you. Don't ask me what you are supposed to do with those dinner rolls that came with your soupyou could stab them with your chopsticks if you had been given any. Oh no!is that crab rangoon? Yes, I could have told you they're not supposed to be all puffy and soft like sopaipillas. Well, now you know. You should've taken my word for it. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to divert my full attention to licking the sugar off my Munchkins. - - - - Pickled Shark Submitted by Tim Wild I ate this at a "Welcome to Iceland" dinner, along with some strips of smoked puffin and a sizable slice of whale, neither of which was anywhere near disagreeable enough to prevent me eating them again. When I gently asked where they'd got the whale from, the chef told me it had been killed years before the ban and that they just took the occasional piece out of the freezer, and then he burst into derisive laughter. If you ever want to annoy environmentalists, Iceland is an excellent place to start. My hosts informed me that this pickled shark foodstuff was invented by early Icelandic settlers. Lacking refrigeration, they used to dig a big hole in the ground, piss on the shark fillets, and then bury them, to dig up months later when things got desperate. This turned out to be a hilarious lie, but after eating it, I took some convincing. I also thought the traditional accompaniment of Brennivín schnapps smelled vile, until I used it to wash down the shark. The most popular and profitable restaurant in Iceland is a hot-dog stand. - - - - Mountain Dew: Code Red Submitted by Dale Beran Like its name suggests, I recommend this for emergencies, contingency plans, terrorist strikes, and powerful feelings of revenge and panic. As you may know, it is the most delicious of all the Mountain Dews. Though I love it, I cannot drink it, because, mysteriously, it gives me the most vicious stomachaches I have ever experienced. Its soft bubbles become teeth in my viscera. I have only tasted it once since the summer it premiered. Consider the occasion: Kameisha Honeydew, the worst of my sixth-graders. In the second semester she shot a laser pointer straight into my right eye. I saw the pale light dance into my sight like a little vision, like an assassination attempt. It exploded into a wondrous spider web. While I was gripping my right eye, my left eye found her concealing the device in her coat. She was hanging in the doorway, just dismissed, on her way home. As she left she said something. It was an immense scream. It sounded something like this: "AaahaaaahHAHAHAHA HA!" I called her mother. "Wait two weeks," her mother told me, "for her medication to kick in." I saw little effect. She started eating incredible amounts of sugar. Each day would bring a new bag filled with candy, Sourpatch Kids, Jolly Ranchers, Twizzler Pull and Peels, all wrapped in plastic she would shed around her seat. In the back of the class, she would pour out Pepsi to her friends. Their paper cups would unite in a toast. "I'll bust you so hard I'll knock your breaks off," I overheard Kameisha promising one of her friends or enemies. "What does that mean, Kameisha?" I asked, my right eye struggling to focus, blurring in and out. "You know, their breaks," Kameisha smiled, "their legs. They can't break and run, I'll hit them so hard." She peeled the SpongeBob off a SpongeBob SquarePants lollipop and put it in her mouth. Just this week she penned these simple but powerful lines for her spring poem assignment: The fruit are so delicious. By the end of that inspired day, she had cracked open the gumball she had been gnawing on. It was the size of her tiny fist. Where did they make them so big? How did she ever get there? Red dye was smeared all over her face. She looked like a technicolor vampire. Then, as I was beginning my lecture, I saw her do the most extraordinary thing. She removed a Mountain Dew: Code Red from her desk. She poured her Mountain Dew: Code Red into the crack she had made in her gumball and began to sip it like it was champagne. This sickening scene wavered as my right eye blurred. I winked my right eye, then my left eye. Sometimes that fixed it. After class, I had all her items on my desk. "Kameisha, this is disgusting." "Do you want one, Mr. Dale? Do you want a gumball?" She dropped a gumball on my desk. It was slightly smaller than hers, the size of an eye. It was blue, the color of my eye. It rolled around uncertainly. I picked it up and bit a big piece out of it and began to chew until the juice grew in my mouth. Kameisha poured me a dram into its insides. I took the sip. "This is really good," I said. My stomach began to purr, enraged. She smiled, pleased. I winked back. - - - - Everlast Nutrition Chocolate Mint Energy Bar Submitted by Rachel Axler Doesn't Everlast make sports equipment? Well, it's the same logo, but with a little "Nutrition" underneath, trumpeting their foray into the world of food. It tastes like boxing gloves. - - - - Kellogg's Disney Princess Fruit Snacks Submitted by Alana Marie Dease Kellogg's Disney Princess Fruit Snacks do not actually taste like princesses. They also don't taste like artificially flavored strawberry, grape, orange, and cherry. I don't know which is worse. What do they taste like? I spent a lot of time thinking about this while sucking on them. My husband said, "Can't you be like a wine taster and spit them out?" Sage advice, but no goit's one of the enigmas of the food/snack world. Just like no one knows how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop and no one can eat just one potato chip, it's impossible to put a fruit snack in your mouth and not eat it. And after eating all 10 pouches of them over the course of three days (read: 89 princesses and princess-y shapes, minus 1 Cinderella I dropped and 2 glass slippers my husband ate), this is what I've decided: They taste very sugary and vaguely familiar. Not quite like strawberry, not quite like grape, not quite like that fruit I was just about to eat but decided to forgo in favor of something less troublesome (the skins!) and less dangerous (the seeds!). Come to think of it, they taste like pure corn syrup, with a hint of red #40. Leave it to Disney to put sugar and fun in one easy-to-open package. - - - - Breakfast in a Can Submitted by Ori Fienberg Britain's food scene has become so pervasively and popularly multinational that many Brits think their nation invented the curry. Recently, a popular food magazine even featured London as a hub for good eats. But in order to really appreciate London's change we must delve into its sordid roots. Brits have the standards: mutton sog, fish 'n' chips, blood pudding, bangers and mash, toad in a hole, fried Mars bars, and, in the northern regions, haggis and head cheese, but these all pale in comparison to a product available in every Tesco, Waitrose, and 24-hour convenience store: Breakfast in a Can. This is the quintessential British breakfast. The mushy fried tomato, the mushy canned mushrooms (always canned, never fresh, as if by some uncodified law), the mushy baked beans, sausage, and even a strangely mushy egg, over easy, all in one convenient container. When I first saw it in the supermarket I absolutely had to buy it. I thought perhaps I'd save it for a time of desperation, or a special occasion. But eventually this waiting, and some apprehension over what I might unleash by opening it, turned it into a talisman and a shrine. An object to be both feared and revered. When it came time to leave London, the Breakfast in a Can was the last thing I took out of the cupboard, and even then I considered packing it to bring home, to show off to my friends, like a bizarre convenience-store hunting trophy. Instead, I took the Breakfast in a Can out of the cupboard and put it into a box of nonperishable food goods to donate to the food bank. Perhaps someone will be able to enjoy it now. But I suspect it is the same for all those who live in Britain. Probably each family has a Breakfast in a Can in their cupboard, firmly respected, but never eaten. - - - - Korean Shrimp Frites with MSG Submitted by Ava Dakota Kim Imagine this: You stroll into Koreatown at 32nd and Broadway and proceed to the HanAhReum Market, and there it is, looming down on you: the 5-pound bag, bigger than your kitty litter. It's fire-engine red with a red shrimp on the outside that looks like it's been radioactively cooked to a crisp. Maybe their intention is to strike fear into the heart of the average consumer, creating a dangerous allure. Whatever it is, the buyer is an adventurous soul. At first, the frites taste conspicuously fishy and woefully engineered, as if a shipload of shrimp were dropped in the vat by accident. They're wheat-powdery, messy, salty, and, well, a kid in a moving vehicle's queasy junk-food nightmare. But after a couple bites, the MSG kicks in, and it's all smooth sailing from there. Every bite melts flakily in your mouth and you just can't get enough. MSG used to scare me, but I've been tricking myself psychosomatically; now I like to think that the MSG might be a natural ingredient contained within the shrimp powder haphazardly sprayed like DDT across the innards of the shiny silver bag. Who's to know whether shrimp naturally produce MSG (just like tuna naturally produce mercury, according to the government)? Maybe shrimp just want to make themselves taste good because they're naturally altruistic beings. - - - - Red Baron's Stuffed Pizza Slices: Sausage and Pepperoni Submitted by Agnes Borden After five minutes, only my burps seem to want to recall Red Baron's Sausage and Pepperoni Stuffed Pizza Slice. A wholly unnecessary experience, noted only for its too-thick crust that's drier than my elbows midwinter and those tasty little sausages that are clearly a collage of meats. Not a terrible late-night snack, but for more bang for your buck, I'd recommend anything that doesn't impersonate real foodlike candy. Oh, Red #5, how much do I love thee? - - - - Osem Brand Soup Nuts Submitted by Lisa Namdar Kaufman Before getting married, I would never have gone near a soup nut, and, for months after marrying, I resisted my husband's seductive offers of adding extra starch, fat, and sodium to my otherwise healthful bowl of homemade soup. And besides, wheat was on the list of no-noes from my acupuncturist, who could tell when I had succumbed by looking at my tongue. But little by little I broke down and began adding the soup nuts to my soup. And now I eat them all day long as a means of procrastinating from actually getting any work done. And I've stopped seeing my acupuncturist.- - - - Fuze Healthy Infusions: Tropical Punch Submitted by Kevin Lauderdale Wait a minute! Only 1 percent juice?! I wish it had said that in bigger print on the front. The images of pineapples, oranges, and mangoes misled me. Granted, I did read the ingredients list before I bought it and saw that filtered water was the first ingredient. But pineapple-juice concentrate was the second. Now, ingredients are listed in percentage order, with the first ingredient being the thing that there is the most of in a drink, the second being the thing there is the second most of, etc. But there are 14 ingredients on the ingredients list, and if pineapple is second (the other juices are purple carrot and mangono orange) and there is still only a total of 1 percent juice, then this is 99 percent water, right? I know that an "infusion" has just a little bit of something in it, but, man! This really does taste like something that's 99 percent water and 1 percent other stuff. - - - - Hubba Bubba SOUR Green Apple Bubble Tape Submitted by Adriane Quinlan It's easy to imagine the white-smocked scientist, quaking in anticipation as the last drop falls from his glinting pipette: "This," he shouts pridefully, "this tastes nothing like an apple!" The lesson here seems lifted from the canon: this is a flavor that seeks not to imitate Eve's first mistake when dealing with apples but, like the serpent itself, to shock. Shock-me-down! Sour-me-up! ... But six feet later there's nothing to say. Still, I'd like to buy five rolls and loop them end to end through my intestinal tract, feeding nothing to the women who ask about the neon-green taper hissing in my mouth like a second tongue. - - - - Coca-Cola with Lime Submitted by Kevin Plumb Whenever I hear Nilsson's "Coconut," my ears perk up, just like the people in the Coca-Cola marketing division wanted them to. But when I realized that this song by a very talented singer-songwriter was being used to shill yet another flavored-cola drink in a commercial that then proceeds to intentionally mangle the lyrics, well, the reader will just have to forgive my bias against the product. As a professional, I will try to assess the product as fairly and objectively as I can. It tastes like cleaning fluid. Honestly. On my mother's grave, I swear, you might as well just give me a glass of Pine-Sol for all the epicurean enjoyment this citrus-flavored swill is going to provide me. Drano! That's it! Just take some Drano, swish it around in a glassful of sweat, drink the entire concoction, and you just might be able to get the taste of this product out of your mouth. You'd think Coca-Cola would learn by now. Stop fucking with your product. All I or anyone else on the planet wants from you is Coke and the Complete Lack of Presence of Anything Else. Oh, and no more picking on singer-songwriters with a three-and-a-half-octave vocal range. Just because they're dead doesn't mean you can rewrite their lyrics. - - - - Homemade Banana-Cream-Flavor Jell-O Pudding Pops Submitted by Ellia Bisker If you're excited by the news that Jell-O Pudding Pops can once again be found in stores, yet frustrated by your own grocery's failure to supply them, here is what not to do: purchase a box of banana-cream-flavor instant Jell-O pudding, mix it with skim milk, pour into a plastic ice-pop mold, and freeze. Your first hint that this is not going to be an adventure in deliciousness will be when the milk first hits the powder in the mixing bowl, for the scent that wafts upward will be penetrating and highly artificial. When you taste the pudding liquid in the bowl, you will note that while it isn't unpleasant itself, exactly, it is evocative of something unpleasant that you can't quite put your finger on. Several hours later, when you eagerly slide a freshly frozen pudding popsicle out of its plastic mold and into your mouth, it will hit you: this flavor is exactly what they use to disguise the taste of children's antibiotics. And even though the cloying sweetness doesn't give way to the bitter tang of penicillin the way you keep expecting it to, that doesn't make it any better. Neither does the realization that they also use this precise artificial banana flavor in the deworming medicine you had to wrestle into your cat six months ago. The texture, however, is really what prevents this frozen treat from being delightful. Frozen as it is into a dense, solid lump that is exactly the opposite of refreshingis, in fact, almost satisfyingly heartyonce bitten into, the pudding pop separates into creamy chunks and coats the inside of your mouth like snot. Don't do this to yourself! Bill Cosby would not approve. Just wait for your supermarket to carry the real thing. - - - - Cherry NyQuil Submitted by Michael Depp I'll be honest: I didn't really need it last night. A slight sniffle, owing largely to the cat's insistence on being stroked from head to tail, which caused his fur to collect at the base of his spine and then blow in all directions like dandelion spores (enough of which found their way to my nostrils). It did not truly merit an amply poured plastic-cap-ful of this cheery red alternative to the formidable Green Dragon. But flimsy pretenses aside, this was pure 1960s psychotropia from the moment it slid down my throat with melted-lollipop viscosity. Flash forward 25 minutes and the dreams were flipping across the screen of my unconscious mind like clicks on a Dadaist View-Master. Click: I'm back in high school and my mother is pulling me out of classes four months before graduation so she can spend my scholarship money on her funeral bill. Click: I'm watching Santa Clausno, wait! I am Santa Clausflying to Thailand in bright summer daylight. It's a stealth trip, so the sleigh is enshrouded in a haze of butterflies, which all shrivel and die once we land on the beach. Click: The reindeer free themselves and scatter, and Santa (me) is left wearing only rags, watching the tide ebb from a creaky wooden deck chair. Click: A kindly local girl approaches, begs me to follow her to her father's gift shop, where she bestows upon me the gift of a new red suit and a stack of old newspapers she's been saving for me. I am moved to tears, at once watching Santa cry and feeling Santa's tears as my own making bright cherry Rorschach blotches on my new red suit. - - - - Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger Submitted by Mike Singer Let me preface this review by clarifying that "Six Dollar Burger" is not meant to be taken literally. It's a trope. It's like "million-dollar baby." You're not supposed to believe that the baby is actually worth one million dollars. The baby is worth thousands less than that. But with this new (or at least new to me) Carl's Jr. burger, it comes close to reality. This thing is worth upwards of $4.80. The reason this burger is worth nearly four dollars and 72 cents more than other fast-food sandwiches is because it is composed of pure angus beef. A boy named Angus once said in a movie of the same name, "I'm still here, asshole! I'll always be here." And on the soundtrack of this movie there was a cool Ash song called "Kung Fu." And if you were to take that song and replace the lyrics "my teenage lobotomy" with "Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger," one of the lines sung would go, "I haven't been the same since Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger." Indeed, Ash. Indeed. So, I am certain that if you are a vegetarian and you eat one of these Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burgers, then you will no longer be a vegetarian, if for no other reason than the fact that you would have just consumed some beef. Chomp! - - - - Extra Bubblemint Gum Submitted by L. Alsop Oddly enough, the flavors of bubblegum and mint form a refreshingly sweet combination here. I like the soft pink color and the absence of Dentyne's excessive, mouth-scalding mintiness or Bubblicious's saccharine sweetness. As an added bonus, I've realized that blowing bubbles with this gum, coupled with a stubborn insistence on hip-hop radio stations in the car, is the best way to end relationships with older menno hurt feelings! - - - - Red Delicious Apples Submitted by Brad Gregory Perhaps in our country's past, the Red Delicious apple, the apple archetype, was in fact delicious. However, in a nod to the idea that evolution works both ways, improvement and decline, the red apple today stinks. They're invariably mealy, smooshy, yucky. Seems I read that this is why McDonald's, a company that craves consistency, instead uses green apples in their new salads, because even they don't want something consistently terrible. That's saying something if McDonald's won't buy you and sell you. - - - - Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper Submitted by Pat Roath Aside from its having far too many syllables for a soft drink, my skepticism toward the new Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper began when someone informed me that "it probably won't make you vomit." To my chagrin, I subsequently found that this was not true. Now, I'm no soda drinker, but I do believe it's a bad sign when the stuff comes up involuntarily. Is it cherry? Is it vanilla? Is it diet? I, unfortunately, could not keep it down long enough to say. More than the flavor, however, it's the carbonation that gets you. I'm not exactly sure how to describe the accompanying sensation other than to say "it gets you." That should be Dr. Pepper's newest ad slogan: "Try NEW Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepperit gets you!" - - - - Reese's Pieces Peanuts & Peanut Butter With Nuts! Submitted by Eric Black Why, Reese's Pieces Peanuts & Peanut Butter With Nuts!, why am I ignoring my instincts and jumping into a relationship with you? You're not really interested in me; you just want to see if you can get me to buy you. See where you say "Limited Edition" in your upper left corner? You're just playing on my fear of scarcity. There's really nothing limited about you at all, but here I am, falling for your cheap candy-aisle come-on, because I'm suddenly terrified the rest of my life will seem like a long, grim march toward death if I can never have peanuts and peanut butter together in a crunchy candy shell. As in all doomed relationships, you're even telling me up front to keep away. "With nuts!" you say, in a bright blue explosion right there on your wrapper. You know, all my ex-girlfriends told me on the first date they were crazy, but I convinced myself it would somehow work out. Maybe this time I'll heed the warning. You also tell me you contain partially defatted peanuts and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Is your love partial too, then? If you've got one foot out the door, I don't know how this will work. But here I am, opening your wrapper. I smell a faint perfume of vanilla and corn syrup, and for a moment I think maybe this will be satisfying. Maybe you really are what I need. I eat one. Then a second, and a third. I'm sorry, but I can't do this. You taste awful, like what I should have known a partially defatted peanut would taste like. Your resinous glaze is leaving a waxy coat on my tongue. And you're burning my throat. I'm throwing you out. Oh, but I'm not. No, I'm having more of you, and by the handful now. Yes, there's a fleeting moment of pleasure in each bite, and I want to drink as much of it in as I can before your acrid taste overwhelms me. That's right, I want to enjoy you before you ruin the experience. And now I'm finishing with you. Just leave me alone. I don't want to talk about it. - - - - Early 2005 Recommendations Submitted by West Salvia Shanghai Kitchen60 Vegetable Spring Rolls In late January, energy is hard to come by. Then these delightful rolls pin you on your favorite seat and you're like, "Winter is totally rad. I should go to an unbearably cold mountainous location and make a snowman." But it's all a pipe dream because you've just dropped an immobilizing bit of teriyaki in your roll. Foster Farms14 Chili Cheese Flavor Corn Dogs Best served drunk with BBQ sauce. Airhead Extreme RollBlue Raspberry Let us be honest here: You really like Airheads. Someone is like, "Hello, friend, would you care to sample this Airhead in my pocket? It's a White Mystery." And you're like, "Solid. I'm instantly back in 1993 playing Little League and going on family camping trips." I discovered the Extreme Roll at a gas station in Bakersfield. If you eat more than three, you may experience a somewhat Levi-Straussian proleptic paradigm of the quest. - - - - The Kiwano Submitted by Ryutaro Murai It started innocently enough. "Fruit bowls are the new flower arranging," she said, and for a while, it was so. Bananas, pears, the occasional peach, all in a decorative red-lacquered bamboo bowl. They'd pretty up the house, give the living room a nice smell, and make it easier to eat healthy. Then it started going wrong. Pineapple, coconut, and kumquats led to carambola, guava, and rambutan. Then it happened: the kiwano. A native of Africa, Cucumis metuliferus, the "Horned Melon," is a relative of the cucumber and looks like hell. Mottled orange and yellow skin covered with spines. Oh Lord, not cute little nubs like a jackfruit or a litchi, but honest-to-God hardened blood-thorns. If science tells us fruit is tasty so we'll eat it and propagate the seeds, then nature must hate the kiwano. "Stay away," it yells. This little bastard is not going down without a fight. Man's ingenuity triumphs. Rock beats scissors and knife beats spines, but it's all folly. The inside is worse than the outside, all radioactive green with evil-looking seeds floating in translucent pips of staggering maleficence. Too stubborn or stupid to be undone, man navigates a grapefruit spoon through the Gigeresque chambers to extract the evil and serve it over orange sherbet. Tasty, yes, but now it's inside me. - - - - The Breakfast Burger from Carl's Jr. Submitted by James Zaininger For centuries skeptics and naysayers the world over have insisted upon the existence of an axiom or set of mathematical principles that would impose actual physical limitations upon the ingredients a human being could possibly place between a sesame-seed bun and sell to the general public for $3.59. But, yet again, the envelope has been pushed. Ladies and gentlemen, behold! The Breakfast Burger from Carl's Jr is here. Developed by the same forward-thinking visionaries and scientists who, 20-odd years ago, had the courage to rise up and shout, "Yes! You can put an onion ring and barbecue sauce on a hamburger," this tasty morsel will revolutionize the way you think of breakfast. The fearlessly audacious Breakfast Burger shatters just about every fundamental dietary, social, and ethical standard known to man. But take warning, not a single animal species has been spared in the preparation of this corpulent feast, and it is not recommended for emotionally sensitive patrons, children under the age of 7, or people with a history of heart disease in their families; your grandma's Egg McMuffin this is not. Best described as robust, stout, and earthy, this strapping full-bodied sandwich is fare fit for a lumberjack. Although it can be somewhat gamy, this grubfest is so chock-full of nourishing, wholesome goodness that I can think of no better way to greet the morn. Now you can finally know what a buttery fried egg, crisp bacon, golden hash-brown nuggets, melted cheese, and a charbroiled all-beef patty would taste like in the same bite. The Breakfast Burger from Carl's Jr. is more than just a shrine to fat (46 g), cholesterol (275 mg), and sodium (1570 mg); it is a testament to the human spirit: from the courageous men and women who dreamed up its glorious creation to the gallant, lionhearted souls who dare ingest it. Also available in an Atkins-friendly version: The Lettuce-Wrapped Breakfast Burger. - - - - Ocean Spray Cran-Tangerine Juice Drink Submitted by Lincoln Michel What genius thought this combination up? Seriously, I want to know, because he was a fucking genius. We humans have been drinking various cran-combo drinks for decades but never were we offered cran-tangerine. Apple? Check. Cherry? Of course. Raspberry? Grape? Mixed grape? Yes, yes, yes. Hell, even strawberry, but tangerine? Never, not in our wildest dreams (even the one where our landlord is a werewolf). We never even knew what we were missing. It seems to me that a combination this obvious and important might actually have happened by accident. Like penicillin, the answer may have been right below our noses for centuries, but it took dumb luck for us to realize. Perhaps in the sealed concrete Ocean Spray laboratories, a white-coated scientist was walking through the rows and rows of giant blue vats chewing on his favorite fruit, a tangerine. He was suddenly distracted, an escaped lab rat perhaps, and being irrationally frightened by rodents, he screams and accidentally flings the fruit across the room, where it falls into a petri dish of cranberry juice. The rest is supermarket history. - - - - Tylenol Extra Strength Cool Caplets Submitted by Alexander Zalben Tylenol has finally attempted to edge into the lucrative candy-flavored-painkiller market (previously dominated by Advil), with their new Extra Strength Cool Caplets. At first glance, they look like any other Tylenol caplets, but pop them in your mouth and you'll immediately notice the difference. A mint flavor slowly settles in the back of your mouth and throat, and proceeds to live there for the next 10 minutes. This turns from surprising and pleasing, to vaguely annoying, to kind of sticky and Olean-esque. However, I prefer mint over candy any day of the week, and the idea of getting pain relief while eliminating the need to chew gum is a pretty attractive prospect. Bonus Feature: The box is colored red and blue, which, as one friend pointed out, makes it look like you're buying Spider-Man-flavored Tylenol. This fulfills a lifelong dream of mine to eat Peter Parker. - - - - Starbucks' "Chantico" Drinking Chocolate Submitted by Jenny Haynes 'Round these parts, we've just taken to calling it "Liquid Denzel." - - - - Pizza Hut's Dippin' Strips Pizza Submitted by Lauren Spohrer The biggest problem with this new pizza is the shape. A rectangle is such a lazy way to create strips! With Dippin' Strips, the perimeter of the pizza is great, but the middle strips have no crust, creating a saucy wasteland. You can't get to the middle section without plunging your fingers in there and making the full-fingered commitment you make with Buffalo wings or ribs. The shape is such an issue, I left the middle section in the box. Why don't they try an asterisk? As for the three dipping sauces, ranch is best. The garlic sauce is nothing like its forefather, Papa John's garlic sauce. It doesn't taste like garlic and is thick like a yogurt. I honestly don't know why anyone would want to dip a strip in marinara sauce. Not only is it already on the pizza but it's destroyed the middle of this particular pizza. Pizza Hut allows you to substitute the marinara for a blue-cheese sauce, which I recommend. One high point is the thickness: this pizza crust is thicker than Chicago Style Deep Dish, greasy and delicious. Until Pizza Hut takes this idea back to the drawing board, your $10 is better spent on a fine pint of Chimay Belgian Ale. - - - - Ballpark Franks (24 pack) Submitted by Edward Kirkpatrick That Michael Jordan sure knows his beef, pork, and turkey byproducts. Mmmm. - - - - Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Colors Submitted by Jonathan Shipley It should be called Pepperidge Farm Fish Colors, shouldn't it? "Goldfish" would denote the fish crackers in the snack bag are gold in color, but now, with these new Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Colors, we have all sorts of fish hues, like green, purple, orange, and red. Therefore, we're really not eating merely goldfish anymore. We're eating the following: Green: Green Terror Cichlid. The scientific name is Aequidens rivulatus. They're neotropical and can grow up to 10 inches in length. The cheddar-flavored ones in the Pepperidge Farm bag only go up to about π inches, though. Purple: Royal Gramma. This beautiful little reef-fish cracker is found only in Caribbean reefs. This fish is very shy and secretive, so you really have to dig into the bag if you want to get your hands on one. The yellow and purple coloration of this species appears darker underwater, helping the fish to blend in with its surroundings. I dunked some of the purple snack crackers in milk to see what would happen and it just turned my milk purple. Orange: Orange Peacock. Don't be fooled. There aren't any birds in the Pepperidge Farm snack bag, only fish, but the Orange Peacock might throw you. Since they're found only in Lake Malawi in Africa, it's amazing Pepperidge Farm can stock their snack bags with them. Even if they do, how can they sell them for only a couple of bucks? A bargain, to be sure. Red: Rosy Barb. From India comes the Rosy Barb cheddar-flavored snack cracker. In the wild they are peaceful yet assertive. In the Pepperidge Farm bag they seem to group together, a kind of Rosy Barb clique. They taste like all the other colored fish, though, so I don't know why they all huddled up as if they were better than everyone else. I guess that's a Barbus conchonius for you! The snack crackers taste like all the other Pepperidge Farm cheddar-flavored fish-shaped snack crackers, so there's nothing new there. The only thing that's new is that you get to eat an Aequidens rivulatus. And believe me, once I did, I was that much better for it. - - - - Skittles Bubble Gum Submitted by Kendrick Channing It blows, or it would, if these dish-detergent-flavored tablets of dubious chicle worked as advertised. You would have far better luck coaxing a sphere out of chewed-up crayon and oatmeal. (We did a series of double-blind trials. Look out for our paper next month.) - - - - Deer Park Natural Spring Water Submitted by Bernd Sauermann Try it. You'll like it. It tastes like nothing. Not even a hint of deer feces. - - - - Whole Foods' Dark Mocha Ice Blended Submitted by Summer Burton The Whole Foods next door debuted this drink a few months ago. I noticed it on the sign and scoped out the scene for a few weeks before I gave it a try. It felt strange to say it out loud to the woman in the tiny hat. Even though there are only four words, their arrangement makes the phrase feel like a novella. I want to be done after I ask for a Dark Mocha but it just keeps going and my pauses are gaping. However, once it's been said and the woman in the tiny hat has openly laughed at my miserable delivery, she is on her way. Vanilla frappé powder, two shots of espresso, soy milk, a small shot of dark-chocolate syrup, and a couple squirts of a fancy, squirtable chocolateprobably Ghirardelli. Do I want whipped cream? I do. She squirts more chocolate on top of that, just to seem like she's doing me some kind of extraordinary favor. I guess she is. The drink costs $3.48. Now the plastic volcano of delicious is mine. It's rich. It tastes nothing like an adult coffee drink; it tastes like being 6 and scraping your fingernails across a huge hunk of chocolate in the bulk section. It's also creamy and not grainy, none of that granita bullshit. It looks amazing, like a scientific diagram of earth and its layers, on a tiny scale. I've realized, thanks to the Dark Mocha Ice Blended, that there is something romantic about a healthy-looking young woman indulging in a drink like this. The women in running shorts and the men with suitcases all pause for a barely discernible moment, as they raise bottled water to their lips. What they're seeing, whether they realize it or not, is that my Dark Mocha Ice Blended and I are sharing a secret. It's only now that I've had it alone for a few months that I am ready to share it with you. - - - - Double Fudge Yoohoo Submitted by Sida Xiong The time-honored tradition of shaking the chocolate sludge off the bottom of the Yoohoo bottle is made doubly better by Double Fudge Yoohoo. Indeed, this Yoohoo is twice as dark, twice as thick, and the equivalent of Samuel L. Jackson to regular Yoohoo's Pootie Tang, or so it would seem. I have to regretfully inform the consumer that, while Double Fudge Yoohoo is an inspired chocolate flavor idea, it will have to go the way of celery Jell-O. Halfway through the bottle, your mouth is rocking on a sensation of drinking pudding, but nearing the last third, suddenly your glycemic level is going out of control. With your teeth aching and your eyes nervously twitching, you flash back to Uma Thurman's OD scene in Pulp Fiction. Not wanting to be turned into a pillar of sugar, I dunked the last third of Double Fudge Yoohoo in the appropriate receptacle. Good riddance, to diabetes that is. - - - - Hot Chevda Submitted by Bill Ayres A distress purchase from the corner shop, Hot Chevda is what happens When Spiced Indian Snacks Attack. In a "Big Value" 750-gram bag, it could be mistaken for Bombay Mix, but instead of nuts and noodles, the primary constituent of Hot Chevda is puffed rice. It's also studded with cloves (yes, cloves) and lightly dusted with sugar. Bangalore's take on Rice Krispies, perhaps? Initially, it's lightly crunchy with a good curry flavor and sweet aftertaste. Better have some more. A bit of heat coming in now, might have just chewed up a clove, too. Just a bit more and a wave of chili heat hits like a daisy-cutter landing on your tongue. Jesus wept; this is so hot it feels as if your sinuses are going to implode. Eyes are watering like a maced delinquent. Intermittent cashews provide fleeting relief, but Hot Chevda is, undeniably, the spiciest snack I've ever served. I can only guess that the puffing of the rice provides an increased surface area for flavoring to adhere to, or something. Definitely a talking point and one to lay on when consenting, snacking adults visit. But serve this stuff at a child's birthday party and there will be tears and/or vomit before bedtime. - - - - Silver Hills Organic Sprouted Grain: Submitted by L. Suzanne Stockman Peculiar-sounding breads generally bring to mind those with food allergies, or someone who carries a hemp satchel and is also troubled by food allergies. As a Wonder Bread kid, I never imagined voluntarily ingesting something like Silver Hills Flourless Flax and Spelt Breads. Flourless bread! That's an oxymoron, right? But no! This stuff is totally bready, with exceptional bread qualities. Each 7-pound loaf bursts with near-miracle fiber, supporting healthy cholesterol and digestion, while giving you the gold medal in regularity. But what makes these breads truly unique is a spongy yet resilient body packed with wall-to-wall crannies, producing extremely durable toasting breads. Possibly, the best ever. So, you can slather your slice with cream cheese, marmalade, or Nutella without fear you'll end up with a godforsaken, mushy disaster. Plus, the abundant nuts and seeds give the bread a mild popcorn aftertaste. And, if that weren't enough, their names guarantee amusement. Spelt. See, it rhythms with smelt! Or, Flax. Stretch the "a" like this: Flaaaaaaaax. It's fun, right? Do that on a really long car trip, from the back seat. What do you care? You're regular! - - - - Amy's Kitchen Bean & Rice BurritoNon Dairy Submitted by Daniel Gasperut Amy, you know you don't have to stick around just for me. I only started eating you so I could impress that vegetarian girl, or at least get her to not cringe when she saw my freezer. And at only three times the cost of a normal frozen burrito, you'd think I'd have slipped my brand loyalty to you into her pile with the records I was trying to get rid of. But while she is long gone, Amy, you remain. I suppose that's a testament to our relationship. Some say you're using me, that just because you stick "Organic" on your packaging I'll buy it whatever the price. Not so! I rebut, I wouldn't buy the Bean & Rice BurritoNon Dairy. That would be ridiculous. No cheese in a microwave burrito? What's in therechildren's dreams? Well, so maybe I picked you up too fast, maybe I was drunk, maybe I was sleepy, the freezer section too cold, labels too illegible ... I don't know, but what I do know is this: if you are searching for a cheeseless organic burrito to steal and crush the cheese-hope-filled hole she left in your soul, these are your best bet. Also, they're kosher! - - - - Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer Submitted by Ryan Young Is there any better beer? Well, yes, probably pretty much any of them (except Hamm's, maybe). But is there any better beer at 30 cents a can? Probably not. To get the 30-cents-per-can price you might have to shop at the San Leandro Albertson's, but I'll bet wherever you shop it is the best cheap beer. It's been around since, like, 1860, and they used to put actual blue ribbons on the cans. And did I mention they can be had for almost a quarter per can? How can you beat that? You can't, my friend. - - - - Goya Jamaican Style Ginger Beer Submitted by Dong Remember when you were 5 and Bambi's mother gets shot offscreen? Right, well, for reasons best known only to themselves, Jamaicans have made a soda out of that, and Mexicans have taken it upon themselves to bottle it. The dominant ingredient in Goya's whimsically named "Jamaican Ginger Beer" is neither ginger nor beerit's capsicum. Sound familiar? It does if you read the bit between "keep away from children" and "keep away from face" on the side of a canister of pepper spray. No kidding, go check it out if you need to. How it can be legally called "ginger beer" rather than "keep-away-from-face beer" in a country that won't let toys shoot soft plastic missiles is beyond me, but you won't drink this stuff twice unless the agent interrogating you doesn't like your first answer. - - - - CornNuts Submitted by Kristen Elde I'm eating them right now. I'm taking in monosodium glutamate and some partially hydrogenated soybean oiltouchébut what else? Thirteen percent of the DV for fiber, that's what. And 4 grams of protein, too. I hear that's one-eleventh what my 118-pound, 27-year-old woman's body needs to thrive. Whole-grain breads? Brown rice? Dried apricots? I don't want to. CornNutsrambunctious in Ranch, Barbeque, Nacho Cheese, Chili Picante, and Salsa Jalisco flavors, less so in ho-hum Originalare my answer, although the BBQ ones lose me in packaging. (Puzzlingly, they await consumption behind an incensed ear of corn, his husk-hand curled into an I'll-get-you fist with the words "Corn Gone Wrong" printed beneath. Corn gone wrong? Corn off the hook, maybe, but not wrong.) Bread gets stale, rice hard, dried apricots, while tasty, can be stringy. CornNuts, crunchy like barnacles, age well, for which many, many preservatives are to thank. That I sometimes forget I'm not eating soft teeth is interesting, and hardly a deterrent. - - - - Ritter Sport Mini Variety Pack
Submitted by Sam Isaiah Saltz I have the usual Jewy hesitations about all things German, but the good menschen at Ritter have me rethinking the fatherland with their mini "Sport" chocolates. I recommend the variety pack. It contains seven varieties of individually wrapped little chocolate storm troopers. Flavor highlights include Joghurt (similar to yogurt, but sweeter and spelled with a "J") and Hasselnuss (Gesundheit!). The real winner, though, is the Knusperflakes, which is like an über-tasty Nestlé's Crunch Bar but with crisp Nordic cornflakes instead of puffed rice. While the company website refuses to specify which sport Ritter has in mind (alpine skiing? invading Poland?), it does state quite prominently that they "welcome strategic alliances if they are of mutual benefit." I say, "Ritter Sport, willkommen to my mouth!" - - - - Ice Breakers Liquid Ice Mints Submitted by Steve DiPietro Now, I understand the mint business is a very competitive one. If you want to stay on top, you always have to be reinventing, and the folks at Hershey's have done just that. With Ice Breakers Liquid Ice, Hershey's has proven that they should never venture outside the realm of chocolate ever again. The presentation is good: a clear case with what looks like 30 little fish eggs inside, but that's where the good times end. Shortly after popping one of these miniature balls of death inside your mouth, the gelatin casing breaks open squirting its contents onto your tongue. There's a nanosecond of nostalgia taking you back to the days of Chewels liquid-center gum until the taste hits you. What I can only assume is supposed to be spearmint flavor instantly fades, leaving you with a mouthful of Tab. You also have the deflated egg sac still in your mouth, which lasts almost as long as the horrible flavor. If all liquid iceor "water" to us laypeopletasted like this, then the world would have died of dehydration long ago. Utterly disgusting. - - - - Dunkin' Donuts Cinnamon Sticks Submitted by Donika Miller Controlled graincrop production marked one of the greatest scientific watersheds in human history. Our innovative spirit further enkindled us to grind and mix grains into pastes for tasty flatbreads. From there, progress in microbiology and chemistry gave way to rising breads and cakes. The rising grain products boast some truly indulgent pastries, such as cookies, croissants, and Danish. Among these are Dunkin' Donuts' new Cinnamon Sticks, which are being advertised through gratuitous shots of steaming, flaky cinnamon dough, and drawn-out montages of slippery icing drizzling loop-upon-loop along a never-ending shaft. It's enough to inspire you to buy one on the way to work with a carpool friend. A friend who opts for the reliability of a jelly donut. The Cinnamon Stick is lumbering in size and weight, with a stiff brown outer shell, shellacked in a clear substance the consistency of Post-It-note glue. Except this leaves a residue on your fingers. The first bite makes you think you made a mistake. It couldn't possibly be this dense, this realistically cardboard in form and taste. Maybe you're hung-over. Have a sip of coffee to clear your palate. Your jelly-donut lip-smacking friend asks about the Cinnamon Stick and accepts your offer of a bite. Agreed that it's not seriously intended for consumption as is. You optimistically suggest that it's meant to be dunked in coffee. A dunking stick, you've had those before. So you dip it in your coffee-with-cream. You try, he tries, and it's the same, but soggy this time. By now most of the frosting loops have chipped off and are littering your friend's car. As a variable, he offers his black coffee. So you each dip, sample, fail to explain it away, and by now you're just not in the mood for it anymore. There's still one-third of a stick left after six bites, and the car arrives at your office. Undeterred, he suggests you microwave it and report the results when served warm. Here you reach your limit. "This is food, damn it," you snap, "not a science experiment!" And you dash from the car yoked by your laptop, wondering about de-evolution. - - - - Ezekiel 4:9 Cinnamon Raisin Sprouted Grain Cereal Submitted by Bethany Round atest thou this certified organic six-grain granola and ye shall know the effects of 100 percent flourless protein cereal. Ye shall be a vessel for the spirit, taking the form of cinnamon, raisin, almond, and golden flax. That same spirit will serve as almighty roughage for thine lower intestines. Drinkest plenty of fluids to prevent a cursed protein blockage. Pour onto thine yogurt for a divinely crunchy breakfast, or toss with chocolate chips and peanuts to make nourishing GORP for blessed hikes into wooded areas or canoe trips. A reading from the holy side panel of the box reveals the almighty pitch phrase: "This Biblical Cereal is Truly the Staff of Life." Scripturlicious! - - - - Dagoba New Moon Organic Chocolate Bar Submitted by Gail Bartley Put down that wan excuse for a cheap buzz you call Hershey's and try some real God-fearing chocolate. Produced in the tiny, forgettable town of Central Point, Oregon (a place, prior to the birth of Dagoba, for which there seemed to be no point at all), the New Moon sees your froggy Valrhona and calls. Dagoba offers an entire bath-salts-inspired line of barsLime, Lavender, Mint-Rosemary, even Milk, but don't bother. The New Moon is where the rubber meets the road. So what accounts for this lunar magic? Sure, it's a free-trade product and made in small, hand-stirred batches, but if that's all there was to it, Great Britain's competing Green & Black bar wouldn't taste like East End dirt. Weighing in at a compact 2 ounces, the New Moon is neatly scored in tenths to prolong the dance (as if you could). Wrapped in gold foil like the winning ticket to Wonkaland, the New Moon is simply, darkly, bitterly divine. - - - -</ |