Things I’ve Eaten

So, I am in a meeting with a bunch of people at work and someone says, “Oh, I hear you have a new employee starting on Monday” and then proceeds to ask for a new project to be done within a week when 3-6 months is a more realistic timeframe for the work involved. I’m like “WTF!” and my head explodes and I am filled with rage and think I am going to black out and then I remember I have a bunch of Genesee Bock Beer at home that will make all the pain go away. And not just because of alcohol’s usual sweet answer to all of life’s problems, but because the can is so adorably cute there’s no way you could be angry while pounding a bunch of them.

Even the meanest drunk can’t stay angry with that cute little goat and flowers on the can!

The beer is a dark amber and at $7.99 for a 12-pack it is surprisingly good.  Not knowing what makes beer bock, I used the interwebs to check it out on The Wikipedia. Turns out Bock means goat in German, Roman Catholic monks drank it, and Martin Luther allegedly drank it during the Diet of Worms. I have no idea what the hell that is, but it sounds awesome and makes me want to read Judy Blume books.

So, a lot of the stuff in my crazy box of Japanese food is pretty scary. I wanted to go with something that might be a little familiar, easing from the very familiar Kit Kats to whatever Shark Fin Slurry might await.

I picked these becayse they seemed to be highly processed, which for some reason I thought would minimize scariness. Then I opened one and was like WTF?

I really have no idea what the heck these are. The pictures on the packages sort of look like a bowl of ramen or rice… and the flavor is herby and vaguely earthy… It reminds me of some not entirely bad snack food you’d buy from hippie-packed co-op. But the consistency throws me for a loop. It’s like a cross between a puffy Cheeto and pork rind in a disturbingly tubular shape. I have a slight suspicion it could be a tentacle rind.

In any event, they were good!

So, I’m in the mood for some chocolatey covered wafers and think, “Wow, a Kit Kat bar would really hit the spot.” Lucky for me, there’s a bunch of Kit Kats in my crazy box of Japanese cuisine. But then I reach for one and am like “WTF? These Kit Kats is crazy!”

The Japanese are pushing the boundaries of flavors that can be captured and delivered in Kit Kat form. To start, I grabbed one of these bad boys:

Due to my inability to resize my microscopic graphics appropriately, I’ll let you know that these are lemon flavored Kit Kats. I was reassured to discover that Kit Kat means the same thing in Japan as it does here, because a bag with a bunch of Japanese characters and a lemon on it could just as well have been some sort of nanite-infused furniture polish.

These were delicious. Instead of the usual chocolate shell, the Kit Kats have a somewhat waxy yellow coating, similar to those weird pellets you see in the bulk section of the supermarket. Overall, the flavor reminded me of lemon cooler cookies, or a lemon wafer cookie similar to those peanut butter ones, but which may not actually exist. In fact, there’s a good chance I’m just imagining that I’ve eaten cookies like that before. Regardless, lemon Kit Kats good!

Next up, was another sure thing: Strawberry Kit Kats.

OK, for some reason my blog is messing with my sweetass image files. Take my word for it that the packaging is very attractive and properly conveys the strawberry flavor explosion hidden within.  As before, the usual chocolate is replaced with a pink waxy candy coating. It reminded me a bit of Strawberry Quick, and even though I am not a fan of that, I found the Strawberry Kit Kat good. Not Lemon Kit Kat good, but still pretty decent.

I was on a roll now, so figured I’d push on — the flavored Kit Kats hadn’t done me wrong yet. Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard lesson that not everything is good in Kit Kat form.

Now the images are just annoying me. The whole blog interface has changed and everything is wacky. Curse you interwebs!

Anywho, I was saving this box for a while because I figured it was going to be so good all other Kit Kats would pale in comparison. But somehow, Kit Kat Fruit Parfait just did not do the trick. Maybe it’s not the Kit Kat. Maybe it’s me. I tend to get excited by things like “Mango Guava Orange Juice” becaues it sounds tropical and awesome, overlooking the fact that I really don’t seem to like a lot of tropical fruits.

As you can see from the picture, or would if it was actually a legible size, it appears that fruit parfait consists of blueberries, oranges, bananas, and melons. Honestly, those are things I tend to like. The presentation is also prety cool. The now familiar waxy shell is striped and seems to have strawberry seeds in it to add the illusion of real fruit flavor versus something out of a test tube. But something about this just turned me off.  I could swear I detected a coconut flavor, even though there are no coconuts on the packaging. Ultimately, disappointing.

Well, Japan, you’ve opened my eyes — and my tastebuds — to the vast Kit Kat possibilities that lie beyond chocolate covered wafer crisps. Bravo!

So, after about 3 months of hemming and hawing, I settle on a GPS system and order it from Amazon. A couple of days later, there’s a package at my door with amazon.jp emblazoned on it. WTF? Did I actually order straight from Japan?

Imagine my surprise when I open the box and find it packed with bizarro Japanese foodstuffs. My friends Liz and Lloyd are living in Tokyo and hooked me up big time!

Contrary to popular belief, I did in fact eat during 2007. Based on my semi-decade posting speed, it will probably take me until 2035 to report on everything in the box.  However, I have been documenting my consumption as I’ve gone along with photos and notes. Posts are coming soon, along with reports on the other foodstuffs that many of you have generously forwarded my way. Thanks everyone!

So, I get stranded in Atlanta on the way back from a business trip. Despite not having a problem with my flight getting in 45 minutes late, AirTran couldn’t be bothered to delay my connecting flight 10 minutes.

I felt bad for myself, but I really felt for the two good ole boys behind me who were on their way to a professional Slots tournament in Vegas. Their connecting flight was at the gate, about 30 feet from where we debarked, and the Gatestapo wouldn’t let them board. After waiting in line with about 25 other pissed off people, we got shipped off to a Quality Inn. Of course, we had to wait another 20 minutes for the hotel shuttle van to pick us up.

Now, nobody had eaten and it was getting late. But, AirTran gave us food vouchers. Sweet! Except that they were only usable at the airport. Ass!

The van driver wisely realized that everyone could use a drink, except for the stressed out woman who was supposed to be in Colorado presenting a seminar the next day and who wasn’t amused by the younger good ole boy’s continual suggestions of hitting a club or “titty bar.” So the driver pulled into a gas station to give us a chance to buy beer.

Georgia is weird. You can’t buy Foties or single beers. But somehow it’s OK to saw a 12-pack in half and sell it as 2 six packs.

On the way to the hotel, the van driver kindly mentioned to the good ole boys that they’d probably be happier at the Mexican restaurant down the road than they would be at the club around the corner from the hotel, as the club wasn’t “mixed,” which he then also kindly mentioned meant that white people didn’t go there. There was a Waffle House a few blocks away (and apparently on the other side of an 8 lane highway), but other than that we were hosed on food.

If I was smart I would have ordered some delivery food and expensed it, but I just nursed the beer I scammed off the Texans and watched one of the 4 24-hour televangelist channels available on the hotel’s cable TV until Colbert came on. Then I read the HBO schedule guide that some mean traveller had left in the room to taunt people with unavailable viewing options and went to bed.

Since my flight wasn’t until late in the afternoon, I slept in. I leisurely awoke, relieved myself in the wobbly toilet that threatened to tear itself out of the wall and showered in the vaguely brownish stall. All the while, thinking of the promised continental breakfast that was destined to be delicious.

I could practically taste the fatty butter-slathered croissant as I made my way to the hotel lobby.

Much to my dismay, I had slept in a bit too late — there were only 30 minutes left and all that was left was Breakfast Dregs. Dammit! I ate frosted flakes from a Styrofoam bowl with a plastic spoon, ate a banana and drank burnt coffee.

I checked out of my room and wandered around the lobby as I waited for the airport van. I finally noticed the vending machine. Since I was full of frosted flakes, I didn’t pay much attention. But then, just as I was leaving, I saw a familiar friend in the corner of my eye.

I was like, “WTF! It’s the flaming Cheeto guy!”

Then I was like, “WTF! Those aren’t Cheetos!”

Yep, it turns out that crazy stuff happens in the Confederacy. Instead of Cheetos, the flaming Cheeto guy was shilling for something called Chester’s Fries. However, I was relieved to see that the fries were Flamin’ Hot!

There was no way I was going back north without a bag. I pumped my quarters into the vending machine, snagged the snacks, and stuffed them into my carry on bag.

If you have sharp eyes, you’ll see that the bag clearly states that they are best eaten by March 14th (I’m assuming this year). Although I purchased them well before the deadline, I actually just ate them, so I may not have had the ideal Chester’s Fries experience. Still, they were enjoyable enough.

If you took regular french fries and sucked all the water out, puffed them with air, and doused them with hot sauces, you might get something resembling Chester’s Fries.

Growing up, we had Andy Capp fries, which were essentially the same as Chester’s Fries. I guess southern dandies identify with edgy cheetahs, and Yankees identify with surly British drunks on the dole. Weird, I would have figured it would be the other way around. Oh, snap!

Ultimately, the fries were delicious and wicked hot, but not as satisfying as the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. With the Cheetos, I felt like I made a significant accomplishment after finishing even a small bag. Although Chester’s Fries are yummy, they are so airy that I feel like I could eat a garbage bag full and I wouldn’t feel my snack hunger was satisfied (although my mouth and taste buds might be completely numb).

I was so hungry… I ate at Arby’s.

So you may read this post and be like, “WTF? He’s not talking about something he’s eaten.”

True, but as someone who eats things, I’ve found that the Food Network’s Good Eats to be an informative and entertaining show and figure it’s worth recommending.

The host, Alton Brown, is sort of like a Bill Nye the Science Guy, but for food. He gets into the science behind why ingredients work together, has recipes that even I can follow, and presents the info with humorous segments. Tonight’s episode focused on honey and featured vomiting bumblebee hand puppets. What’s not to like?

Plus, I learned that Alexander the Great was embalmed with honey, which may actually be cooler than my intentions of having my body encased in lucite.

So, I get all these emails that postings are being added to my blogs, and I’m like WTF is up with all this crazy activity? After clearing off a hundred or so trackback postings that some porner’s bots added, I came across desperate please to get off my ass and add some posts. I agree. The people deserve to know which foods to consume and which to avoid. I’ve just been really lazy.

Some exciting commissioned (i.e., food that was given to me) reports will be coming soon, but in the meantime I figured I’d share this little tidbit. BTW, anyone remember Tidbits(Not to be confused with Timbits, the donut holes)? They were cheese crackers from Nabisco that were shaped kind of like elongated flattened Good’n'Plenty candies. You can still find them in trail- and snack-mixish things, but I don’t think you can buy a dedicated box of Tidbits.

Anyway, so I cleared off all the porn postings and was really hungry. And we had a bunch of leftovers that were about to go bad, so pretty much they had to be consumed in this one meal or be thrown out. I don’t roll that way.

As I looked over my taco remnants and pizza I started thinking about how fast food �restaurants contribute to the biggening of America by jamming products into other ones. For example, you can’t just have a pizza, you need a pizza embedded within a pizza. Or Taco Bell has all these crazy chalupa stuffed in a taco, wrapped in a fajita things. I’m still waiting for KFC to come out with a deep fried Cornish game hen sewn into a duck’s bladder, forced down a chicken’s throat, and stuffed up a turkey’s ass.

BTW, it turns out my laptop has a Euro key, which I think is pretty cool for all of the international dealings I continually work on, so I purposefully left that typo in the preceding paragraph.

Back to the meal. Not being able to throw away my food in good conscience, I felt left with no other option — combine. But what is the best approach? Wrap the turgid hard-shelled taco in a flexible pizza slice? Or insert a pizza slice inside the taco shell with the meat? Fortunately, there was enough food on hand to test both techniques.

It’s worth pointing out that when this adventure began several days earlier, those were supposed to be beef tacos. Man I was looking forward to them. Then I got the hamburger out of the fridge. It was a few days past the Sell Date, but it seemed to be in the acceptable range. However, the meat was grey and I definitely remember it being red when I bought it. It smelled OK at first, but then as I started to cook it seemed to have just a hint of poisonous rot stench. If we were in ancient Rome and Romans had been to Mexico, a rotten hamburg taco would probably be considered a delicacy. But, feeling bound by modern American conventions, we ditched the meat and fell back on some chicken strips. So this isn’t just a Pizzaco/Tacizza, it’s a Chicken Pizzaco/Tacizza.

Anywho, the first attempt was the pizza inside the taco. Results follow:

The shell stayed crunchy but was made slightly more pliant by the grease leached out of the pizza slice. Delicious!

Next, the pizza outside the taco. Results follow:

This was a bit more savory, as the grease and cheese are right at the forefront. The shell retained enough crunchiness to make every bite an exciting exploration of textures. However, eating was more difficult as the pizza was a bit to large for the shell and the weird angle I had to use to hold everything in caused a river of grease to course down my elbow and drip all over.

Overall, a winner!

My friend gave me two cans of Jones Soda Co.�s limited edition Halloween sodas well over a month ago so that I could blog about them. I looked at the calendar today and was like, �WTF, it�s Halloween already!� Time is of the essence.

There are 4 flavors for this Halloween: Strawberry S�Lime, Candy Corn, Caramel Apple, and Scary Berry Lemonade. The cans are about 3 inches tall and have scary faces on them. They fit nicely into a coat pocket, which I found very convenient. The two that I have are Strawberry S�Lime and Candy Corn.

I started with the Strawberry S�Lime. I was a bit surprised to find out it was pinkish red, even though it�s strawberry flavored. I always think of slime as being green, so I thought maybe Jones was going to mess with us and forego the typical strawberry color. I�m also curious to see what they could have done by adding some thickening agent to the soda to create a more slime-like carbonated beverage.

Ultimately, the soda was quite delicious, although I was hard pressed to detect any lime in the mix. If anything, it tasted like strawberry cotton candy to me. I�m beginning to wonder if my tastebuds that detect lime are fried, as I also thought that the lime Pepsi and Coke that I was too lazy to write about were weak on the lime.

After a quick break, I ate a fortune cookie to cleanse my palette. After learning that many a false step is made by standing still and that �Duo-shao qian� will ask �How much?� in Chinese, I was ready to both drink my next soda and get into trouble in a Hong Kong massage parlor.

Now, I�ll be up front. I am not a fan of the candy corn. Ever since I was a kid, I�ve somehow equated candy corn as being the candy equivalent of a headache. I�m not sure why or what that means, but that�s what I got into my brain at a young age. Since one of the main ingredients in candy corn is corn syrup, I do give the candy props for name accuracy.

In any case, I really had to pump myself up to try this soda. Just before I went to try it, I saw that somebody had brought in cookies with candy corn on top. I grabbed one to use as a reference point.

The can is black and cool looking, so I like the presentation. And I was pleasantly surprised when I cracked the tab. A spew of yellowish green liquid spewed onto my hand. Nice!

I poured the soda into a cup and was very impressed with the color. It is unnaturally yellow, with just the faintest tinge of green, looking a lot like really concentrated urine. Which I guess is natural, in the sense that urine is part of a natural biological process, but unnatural in the sense that it�s an atypical soda color. The picture really doesn’t capture the ill color correctly.

But looks aren�t everything. I steeled myself and took a sip. It smells and tastes pretty much like watered down maple syrup, but in some way felt it was somehow missing an essence of maple that I couldn�t put my finger on. My wife took a sip and thought it tasted chemically. After comparing notes, we concluded that it tastes like watered down FAKE maple syrup.

Now for the comparison. I took a bite of the cookie. Blarf! Candy corn tastes exactly as I remember it. I washed it down with some soda and detected a distinctly different flavor. So, I�d say that the soda isn�t exactly an accurate representation of candy corn flavor, but it is as sickeningly sweet.

There was no way that I can possibly finish my cup of soda, so I tried pawning it off on whoever would drink it. One of my friend�s immediate reactions: “It tastes like Aunt Jemima.” Out of 6 testers, only 1 liked it outright, while another rated it “not bad.”

One nice aspect of the Candy Corn soda is that when you tip the cup, the yellow coloring lingers just a bit too long on the side before sliding down. I think that’s called “legs” in winetasting. So, Candy Corn soda has nice legs, and the effect adds to the unsettling feeling that there’s something just not right about the soda. Bravo!

Due to the mixed results, I’m rating this a Meh overall. At the end of the day, Strawberry S�Lime is a taste winner, Candy Corn is something to inflict upon people you want to torture (or friends who really like fake maple syrup).

Ultimately, the sodas are amusing, disgusting novelties, which is appropriate for the season. The can artwork is nice. Because of the small can size, I recommend getting a couple of six packs, shaking the cans up really good, and handing them out on Halloween. You know kids will be psyched to get soda, so they�ll crack into them right away and get a fountain of nastiness in the face. Everyone wins!

So, Halloween is coming up and we wanted to do a test run of some caramel apple kits to see how easy they are to use and whether you can stick things to the caramel.

We wanted to avoid using the type of caramel that you have to melt in a cup or mix up, so we settled on the Caramel Apple Wrap kit from Concord. You can just nuke the things and get results in under 30 seconds. For a person on the go like me, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear.

I’ll go on the record right now as never having been a fan of caramel apples. Or candied apples for that matter. I have no beef against caramel or candy — I’ve been known to roll a Rollo to my pal — but I don’t like the gooey apple form factor. However, in the interest of helping others, I decided to take one for the team and test the wraps.

My wife got Granny Smith apples for her test. I thought I had gotten Concord apples, so I was psyched since Concord made the wrap kit — I already had a leg up. Then I realized I’d never actually heard of Concord apples and it turns out that they don’t actually exist because what I had bought were, in fact, Cortland apples and I had probably been thinking of Concord grapes. Things were already off to a bad start.

The wraps are pretty much just a big circle of caramel between two pieces of wax paper. It looks sort of like caramel Bologna, which I have to say would be a lot more enjoyable to eat in a sandwich than real Bologna.

I peeled my wrap off the paper and slapped it on my Concord Cortland apple. I proudly showed it to my wife, who just laughed at my handiwork.

I was like, “WTF is wrong with my apple?”

I figured that the caramel would magically drape itself over the apple when you nuke it. Well, apparently there were instructions that explain you have to stretch and manipulate the caramel slice to completely encase your apple.

What a gyp. A person on the go like me doesn’t have time to read. These things should come with an instructional video, or at least an audio book. Strike One, Concord Caramel Apple Wrap.

So, I remove and reapply my wrap, stretching and eventually deforming it. Then it’s time for the stick. STRIKE TWO!

I was really looking forward to a popsicle stick that had one sharpened end that you could jab into the apple’s crown with a satisfying dramatic flourish. Instead, you get a regular round-on-both-ends sticks.

Now I know, there’s probably some pointy caramel apple stick tragedy that haunts the carnival and holiday food industry. I can easily imagine some one-eyed kid or someone who impaled his voice box making the junior high school talk circuit to warn kids about the dangers of novelty fruit snacks and horseplay.

I sympathize, but really, why does someone always have to ruin it for those of us that know how to handle potentially deadly things that are given to children? I’m still bitter about all the Battlestar Galactica and Micronaut toys that had their projectile shooting action disabled. And sorry if it makes me a monster, but you totally know Boba Fett’s missile was originally supposed to shoot out of his backpack.

Anyway, the rounded stick went in a lot easier than I figured and it was time to nuke. The recommended time was 15-25 seconds at medium-high power. I obviously wanted to go for the max, but my wife wanted a happy medium and did 20 seconds. Man, did she screw me.

After getting the apple out, it was time to see how well mini M&Ms would stick, as that’s actually what the whole point of this test was about. The results follow:

As you can see, my apple blows. I went for the roll method of applying the M&Ms. The short nuking time, combined with my substandard wrapping skills, created a fruit novelty that was short on sticky surface area — and it shows.

My wife nuked her apple for the full 25 seconds and went for the straight plunge method of applying mini M&Ms. As you can see her results were vastly better:

Now came the real test — time to eat. I had problems right from the get-go. Fortunately, I was eating near the sink as there was pretty much a constant rain of mini M&Ms falling off my apple. When all was finished, I’d lost 24 mini M&Ms. Only one fell off my wife’s apple.

Taste-wise, I have to say the apples were pretty good. I pushed through my disdain for sticky fruit snacks and found that the flavor was pretty good and the caramel wasn’t too overwhelming.

We decided to sample each other’s results. In the interest of health safety, my wife cut a slice from her apple… and the knife broke! STRIKE THREE!!!!

Shrapnel aside, I found the tartness of the Granny Smith apple created a nice contrast with the sweetness of the caramel and created an altogether richer flavor experience. But Granny Smith apples tend to make me feel sick after I eat a decent amount, so I’d have to pass.

As it was, I felt kind of nauseous after eating most of the M&M-coated portions of my apple. I don’t think that it was the fault of the Concord Caramel Apple Wrap product, but more likely my body reacting to the foreignness of having a fruit product in it.

Ultimately, I’ll give a positive rank to Concord Caramel Apple Wrap, although they are not for me. And adding M&Ms to the mix is way too freaking much.