J. M. Branum on those spinach scare stories:

With regard to that fourth item, I suspect USDA has been a contributing villain. A recent proposal of theirs would redefine "grass-fed" beef to include the use of non-grass feedstock and doesn't insist on actual grazing on pasture lands, which makes me suspect that they come up with stuff like this on a regular basis. (Found here.)

And yes, you can still get spinach in a can, but it's kinda salty and definitely soggy and not all that helpful for beating up Bluto.

After this, I don't think anyone has the moral authority to mock pork rinds.

(Lots of neat stuff at menosblog.)

You don't think so? Look what's happened to its primary rival:

"From Hellmann's heart I stab at thee," declaims the West Coast man from Best Foods.

It appears the ol' American Express card is due for quite a workout:

Yes, even in Oklahoma City. I checked a few menus this weekend, and while $30-35 is more common, there are entrees at or above the $40 level. The industrial-strength delicacies, of course, run much more. (Lobster tail, of late, is around $75.)

Not that there's going to be any real backlash:

Of course, you're paying for expertise and atmosphere; I can grill up a sixteen-ounce ribeye for $11 and eat it at the breakfast bar, or I can go someplace nice and pay three or four times as much. As a practical matter, though, I'm not going to worry until the Wendy's Classic Double hits $5.

(Via Population Statistic.)

It's a matched pair: candy bra and G-string.

I don't think I'll ever be able to eat Necco wafers again.

And if you must wear that, you might not want to wear this with it. Cognitive dissonance, doncha know.

(Both via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

The Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Arizona (they're looking to franchise) offers the ultimate in Not Especially Healthy Cuisine: single, double, triple, even quadruple Bypass Burgers, served up with Flatliner Fries (real lard, so no trans fats!), soda or beer, and even, if you're so inclined, a pack of smokes. If you opt for at least the Triple (1½ pounds, plus trimmings), you can get full Wheelchair Service.

Maybe they'll come here some day, but to tell the truth, I'd love to see them announce a new location in the City of New York, just to see Mayor Bloomberg, um, soil himself.

If you, like me, suspect that the best part of the brownie is the very edge of it, here's a pan that produces, well, more edges. Not only is it a geometric delight, it reduces the dreaded Soggy In The Center Syndrome that affects too many of your (or at least my) baked goods.

I may actually need this contraption. And I figure it can't be much harder to clean than my existing pans.

(Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

Seattle-based Jones Soda Co., which, like most manufacturers of soft drinks, switched from cane sugar to high-fructose corn syrup for cost reasons, will switch back to the real stuff in 2007, with the complete product line, including its non-soda drinks, reformulated (re-reformulated?) by summer.

Jones CEO Peter van Stolk, on the change:

And you gotta believe a guy who can sell sodas in Green Bean Casserole and Turkey & Gravy flavors knows from "different taste," right?

My one regret, of course, is that Jones, all by itself, isn't big enough to persuade the government to abandon sugar-price supports.

(Via Girlhacker.)

Fred knows from comfort food:

Which is, of course, true. You can fry just about anything: okra, squash, ice cream, Snickers bars.

Refried beans, I should point out, are not actually fried twice, though I really ought to try that some day. My grandmother used to dish them up with sizzling fideo and follow with pan dulce.

I don't think she ever fried a pickle, though.

What's cooking chez Scott Chaffin, True American:

(Title explained here.)

The Tootsie Roll folks are issuing a "Limited Edition" "Inside-Outs" version of Junior Mints, perhaps inspired by the popular "Uh-Oh" variations on Nabisco's Oreo cookie. This mint has a chocolate center wrapped in some white stuff, which, says Candy Addict, tastes "somewhere between yogurt and white chocolate." Not really compelling, I suspect, except when you open up the box and people stare in disbelief.

Incidentally, of all the Bizarro World brand extensions of the Oreo, the only one that really grabs me is the chocolateless variant dubbed "Golden"; I suspect this is at least partly due to my disillusionment when Sunshine's Hydrox was discontinued a decade ago. What I really want (as does Gail) is a true inside-out Oreo, with two blobs of white stuff surrounding the standard chocolate cookie. Let's see a kid try to eat the middle of that first.

And another thing: They've been making Junior Mints since 1949. By now they should be offering some Senior Mints, shouldn't they?

One of my few instances of brand loyalty is this: I buy genuine Pop-Tarts® from Kellogg's, in blueberry. The unfrosted blueberry, which seems to be an endangered species of late.

So it does my heart good to see that some of the frosted ones are being recalled:

Turns out it's a case of mislabeling — they packaged some Hot Fudge Sundae tarts in the wrong boxes — but should just one person be persuaded to pass up that damn frosting, well, my work here is done.

Fortunately, I have a friend who has mastered this arcane art (and who reads my stuff), so I don't need another reference point, but just in case you find yourself having to do research, there's a fruitcake blog which contrasts and compares the major national brands.

While going back through the archives, I happened upon this discouraging disclosure:

This is one of those times I'm inclined to turnip my nose and count my blessings.

According to the old saw, if you care anything about either sausage or politics, you should not watch them being made.

And having survived a stint at Mickey D's back when the Big Mac was a novelty, I can tell you that you probably don't want to know what's in a McRib, either.

(Via Scribal Terror.)

Trini just burst in and offered me a Cookie of Death.

I am beginning to think I am the only person left who isn't allergic to peanuts. [Pause for Snickers.] Of course, this may be due to the fact that I used to go through Peter Pan Crunchy the way NASCAR drivers go through tires. (Never did like Skippy all that much — kinda soapy mouthfeel — and Jif was always too proprietary.)

Good cookie, by the way, and hey, it helps keep Trini alive.

Forty years ago, Oklahoma City had about 300,000 people and twenty-three cafeterias.

Today, there are 530,000 of us, and now, with the Luby's chain concentrating on Texas (though their Village location is still open for now) and Furr's rebranding as "family dining," we're down to one traditional cafeteria. (That would be the Boulevard in Midtown.)

In this morning's Oklahoman, in addition to the report of the last days of the Queen Ann, Steve Lackmeyer has an overview of Oklahoma City's days as Cafeteria Capital of the World. What's most interesting, I think, is how all of those local cafeterias were essentially descended from one: the Anna Maude, opened in the late 1920s in the Perrine Building (later Cravens, now Robinson Renaissance) downtown by Anna Maude Smith, who previously had been running food service for the downtown YWCA. Contemporary reports say that friends tried to dissuade her, and you have to wonder if maybe it was her idea to put her own name on the business that scared them off — or maybe it was the fact that she'd chosen to locate in the Perrine's basement. Not to worry: the Anna Maude was a success, and yes, there was an entry directly from Robinson Avenue, below street level.

The Queen Ann, incidentally, was named for Anna Maude Smith, and had been started by her nephew Bob Smith, who had been a partner in the original Anna Maude cafeteria. John Schroer, Jr. was the last owner of the Queen Ann, and his nephew Harrison still owns the Boulevard.

Charles Dodson, who once had a couple of cafeterias of his own, commented:

We still have a drive-in (the Winchester, on Western north of I-240), and I still own a typewriter. I guess this tells me where to have lunch.

I don't think of myself as being a caffeine freak, but in this regard I am obviously delusional in the extreme, given my consumption levels of iced tea and soda. The latter, perhaps, motivated a friend to send me a sampling of the wackier Jones Soda flavors, which fortunately don't contain any caffeine.

Despite my own limited interest in drinks based on ground-up beans, I have a certain sympathy for the deprived coffee drinker:

Tibet? Nope. Utah.

Lindsay Beyerstein features some stuff that I'm sure is considered yummy in some parts of the world, but which is not getting near my fridge under any circumstances. Among the offerings: chocolate-covered seaweed and chocolate-covered kimchi.

Not even Ms Beyerstein's mad photographic skillz can make this look appetizing.

Have you ever bought one of those humongous metal cans of Danish Butter Cookies? I have; I'm usually good for at least one can of Royal Dansk every year, maybe more.

And you know, it never occurred to me that these little treats actually might come from Indonesia.

These have been out at least a year in some markets, though apparently they're new here, and the checkout person at the supermarket didn't recognize them either: 100% Whole Grain Chips Ahoy! by Nabisco.

There was only one package on the shelf, alongside all the other Chips Ahoy! variants, and all of them were marked down forty-five cents a package, so I decided to give it a try. It's definitely different — the texture is decidedly grainier — but fairly decent overall, with a vaguely oatmeal-like mouthfeel. No way, though, am I going to try to pass these off as some sort of health food.

Burg serves, and the child fires back:

Vitamins? Is this just a general objection to Things Potentially Healthful, or do we have a case where something has been sneaked into the child's bowl the way you'd sneak something into the dog's dish?

On the other hand, "bumpy and stuff" doesn't sound especially appealing, whether it be oatmeal, "that other stuff," or anything in between, assuming there is anything in between.

Valentine's Day has never done a damned thing for me, and this little Oklahoma Gazette item won't help:

Oh, sure. Drive a steak through my heart, why don't you?

Forget all these honey-flavored breakfast cereals: Dave is holding out for steak-flavored Cheerios.

(Yes, he posted this before, and I mentioned it then. The question remains: will someone have to bundle up in the dead of night to pick up an emergency half-gallon of Worcestershire sauce?)

CT reports on a report about New York's pricey Kobe Club, and this (well, apart from the check) is the scary part:

"If Akira Kurosawa hired the Marquis de Sade as an interior decorator," says the reviewer. I'm generally in favor of edgy design, but not with this many edges.

Back in December I made some offhand remark about variations on the Oreo theme, including such wacky ideas as an Oreo with no discernible chocolate whatsoever, which I pronounced my favorite of the bunch.

This week, an edition I hadn't seen before turned up on the shelf at Albertson's, and I was sufficiently weirded-out to buy. It's the traditional Oreo, but it's organic.

Really. Here's the Ingredients list:

Of this list, only cocoa, soy lecithin and baking soda show up in standard-issue Oreos. The Nutrition Facts are almost identical — the organic version lists 13 grams of sugar and 75 mg of potassium (presumably from calcium phosphate), versus 14 grams of sugar and no potassium at all in the standard version.

Of course, what you want to know is "How does it taste?" To these jaded taste buds, it's slightly less sweet than the usual Oreo, and the cookie seems just a shade more resistant to breakage. I'd rate it a percentage point or two above its brandmates. Its price, unfortunately, is more than a percentage point or two higher: I paid $3.49 for an 8.5-ounce box, while its corporate cousins were going for $2.99 (in fact, on sale for $2.50 yesterday) for 18 ounces. And it's still an Oreo, which means you're not going to be able to pass it off as some kind of health food — but at least it's a whole lot less artificial. And that's an accomplishment of sorts: it's not often you can get something with more-or-less "natural" origins to come off as purely synthetic.

Assuming I'm reading the kosher certification correctly, this is a dairy product.

The Wheel of Food vaguely resembles that circular television icon, and it's intended for people who are going out to eat but haven't decided exactly where. To play, you enter your ZIP code, what you're looking for (lunch, dinner, pizza, maybe some others), and the wheel spins. I gave it "73112" and "lunch," and after a couple of revolutions, the wheel stopped on the Frullati Café and Bakery in Penn Square.

Which is in 73118, technically, but only slightly.

And, well, you can always spin again. There is, of course, a disclaimer:

Or at least my ZIP code.

(Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

During today's supermarket sweep, I hung around the peanut-butter zone for a few extra minutes to observe. Chained to a shelf was a clipboard with a list of the recalled Peter Pan products, not all of which I remembered as actually being stocked in this store. In attendance: Smucker's All Natural; Jif (which, I assume, is Smucker's Less Than All Natural); Skippy; the inevitable store brand.

Over a three-minute period, five shoppers came by. All of them read the clipboard; three bought no peanut butter at all, though two did pick up jars; two of them bought Jif.

This is, of course, extremely unscientific, and possibly even extremely uninteresting, but hey, it's bloggable.

(Disclosure: I am a Peter Pan fan; I bought a jar of Jif.)

Dave Thomas' original Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, 257 East Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio, will close this Friday after years of so-so sales.

Wendy's #1 opened in November 1969. The main problem, apparently, is that downtown Columbus closes at sunset, and the store does no business at night. Worse, there's very little parking, and there's no room to put in a drive-thru. (Wendy's #2, opened a year later, does have a drive-thru.)

There are plenty of Wendy's locations in and around Columbus, and all the staff of #1 will be offered jobs at other stores; the accumulated memorabilia will be relocated to Wendy's HQ in nearby Dublin. (Side note: The largest city in the US without a Wendy's is San Francisco. Go figure.)

Among other firsts:

• Colonel Sanders' original eatery is in Corbin, Kentucky, but the first official Kentucky Fried Chicken location was in Salt Lake City, where Sanders in 1952 persuaded restaurateur Leon "Pete" Harman to try out his recipe. It was torn down in 2004; Harman still had his name over the door.

• Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955, after buying the name from the McDonald brothers, who had started a small Southern California chain way back in 1939. It is now a museum. There is, however, a 1953 McDonald's still in operation in Downey, California.

• The first Burger King was built in Miami in 1954. There were no Whoppers, however, until 1957.

• Fast-food veteran Glen Bell opened an eatery in Downey, California in 1962, less than three miles from McDonald's. It was called Bell's Drive-In; eventually it became Taco Bell.

• Carl Karcher started out with a single cart, and in a couple of years had four hot-dog stands in Los Angeles. His first full-fledged drive-in restaurant opened in 1945 in Anaheim, California; in 1956 Karcher put up two smaller restaurants in Orange County and dubbed them "Carl's Jr."

• Karcher's firm, CKE Restaurants, acquired the Hardee's chain in 1997. Wilbur Hardee's first eatery was a walk-up in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, which opened in 1960.

• The first Arby's was opened by Leroy and Forrest Raffel in Boardman, Ohio in 1964. "Arby's" is simply a variant on "R.B.'s," though R.B., says the company, stands for "Raffel Brothers" and not "Roast Beef."
  

I definitely picked a lousy day to skip breakfast.

"Um, I'll have a bucket of Extra Crispy without so much rat in it, then."

Otherwise, this is neat: Edible Chess. One possible drawback: neither descriptive nor algebraic notation allows for nutrition information.

(Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

Even if McGehee were going to Tokyo, he probably wouldn't eat here.

(Via Troy Worman.)

Well, okay, if you insist: cocoa Peeps.

Although I'm inclined to accept Sereena X's caveat:

I hope that's enough.

New Coke did the Amazing El Foldo with such prodigious speed that you'd think the Coca-Cola Company would be reluctant to reposition any product line ever again.

Wrong-O, Buffalo Bob. (Hmmm. Seems like I've used this phrase before.) Tab (I refuse to render it as "TaB"), once a diet soda, is now, with minor changes, an "energy drink," and Lawren seems to like it:

I'm still reeling from the idea of carbonating Pixy Stix. But there's something weirdly appealing about the idea of pouring a stream of Belvedere ("a lovely marriage of velvet and freon," says Lileks) into a Tab. Maybe I'll work up the nerve to request this at one of my semiannual bar stops. Not that anyone will accuse me of being a young hipster or anything.

(Title explained here.)

Apparently this is the real life, in Britain anyway:

No word on whether Bohemian Raspberry will be offered Stateside.

(Via DollyMix.)

Esquire has a list of 60 Things Worth Shortening Your Life For, and five of them are burgers:

(Via Steph Mineart.)

Is nothing sacred?

One could argue, I suppose, that the FDA shouldn't be issuing its own definitions for products, but since they are, and since it's pretty likely that those definitions were influenced by the various manufacturers in the first place, can there possibly be any explanation for changing this definition, other than the desire by those manufacturers to charge the same amount for an inferior product?

One suggestion:

There's one possible hangup here: there are plenty of steps below "American Cheese," as Kraft well knows, having taken most of them.

Rocket Jones backs away from the meat counter:

And if that doesn't make you feel uncomfortable, this will. With apologies to the late Roger Miller:

(Disclosure: Actually written after dinner last night.)

Then again, there are times when it really helps:

This does not work. I ordered a small pizza once. They asked me if I'd like it cut into six slices; I requested four, inasmuch as I can't possibly eat six slices of pizza, even with immaterial toppings.

What we need next: Statistical analysis of what pieces you're likely to get when you order a three-piece chicken dinner.

(Via The Consumerist.)

George Carlin turned 70 this weekend, and I suspect his influence has only grown since he was DJing for Wonderful WINO Radio forty years ago.

Way back in the early 1980s, for instance, he anticipated this:

(Via Fillyjonk.)

Triticale, a whole grain if ever there was one, presents the Carnival of Macaroni and Cheese.

I just love the sound of that.

In their own little basket, surrounded by the ordinary 49-cents-a-pound stuff, sat a few bunches of "Organic Bananas," priced at 66 cents. They looked a little better, I thought, and I took home half a dozen of them. (I eat one a day, mostly to keep up my potassium levels without having to rely on Nasty Chemicals.) In place of the usual agribusiness sticker, these bore the mark of Garaycoa Farms, a producer in Ecuador; I'm guessing that Dole, which has an extensive organic-banana program, bought these from Garaycoa directly and shipped them Stateside.

It was worth the effort, I think; these do seem to be a smidgen more flavorful and a lot less irregular than the usual banana-republican product, and after two days in my fruit bowl, none of them have acquired the sort of leopard-like dotting I find on the cheaper stuff. I went back to the register tape, mostly to see how much this bundle weighed, and discovered that the clerk had rang it up at the 49-cent rate, saving me 40 cents and probably screwing with their automated inventory. If they have these next week, I'll get some more.

Sara Lee's Hillshire Farm brand — their Go Meat! Web site will scandalize any visiting vegans — has introduced a line called Deli Select, basically the same thing they sell at deli counters under Sara Lee's own name, but prepackaged. And in an effort to cut down the amount of packaging, the Deli Select products come in GladWare reusable plastic containers: there's only a small bag and a paper insert to toss. Of course, you can cut this down to a small bag by having the stuff sliced on premises, assuming your store offers this sort of service, but you're looking at $6.99 a pound, and you don't get any cute plastic box. (I paid $3 for the 10-ounce Deli Select packages.)

In recent months, I've been buying bulk tomatoes with vine segments still attached: yes, it does inflate the price, since I'm paying for the green bits that otherwise get thrown out, and at full tomato rates even, but for some reason they taste like actual tomatoes, which is something I can seldom say of the big, shiny, hard-as-billiard-balls spheres they sell as "slicers" these days.

Recently I noticed what I thought was an anomaly: pre-packaged tomatoes with vine segments still attached. The vendor is EuroFresh Farms, which despite its name (a tribute to their Dutch ancestors, they say) is located in northern Arizona. The price was right — $2.50 or so for a pound and a quarter — so I snapped up a box. They're actually quite good, and while I was concerned that smushing 10 of them into a rectangular enclosure might be bad for their tensile strength, no bruises or other defects were to be found. No pesticide residues, either. That's a lot of vine, though. I wonder what would happen if I just pitched it into the flower bed.

If you like your controversies durable and tasty, well, this was in the Oklahoman's food section over the weekend. The subject is Boston Cream Pie:

I had no idea the debate was so heated (350-375, depending on recipe).

At least once in your lifetime you should eat at a place which has a Lewis Grizzard special on the menu, especially if Alan Jackson used to wait tables there.

McGehee confessed to some misgivings about the recommendation, but here in the real world, I wouldn't pass up such a thing. (And we had a wonderful time; I swear he almost cracked a smile.)

Especially if this is the alternative:

This is the list of affected products. One thing perplexes me, and Julie R. Neidlinger picked up on it right away:

I note in passing that the company formerly known as Ralston Purina no longer makes breakfast cereal.

Peter Pan peanut butter is back in stock today, at least at the one store I checked, and while there's a big NEW on the label, it's pretty much the same old stuff. Then again, it's the same old stuff I liked, so I did buy a jar.

It wasn't exactly flying off the shelves, either, which points up this issue:

The model for regaining a lost market is Johnson & Johnson's handling of the poisoned-Tylenol scare twenty-five years ago. It will be harder for ConAgra, I think, since (1) there have been lots of lethal-foodstuffs stories of late and (2) unlike the case of the Tylenol capsules, which were tampered with by persons unknown, ConAgra is clearly to blame for lax procedures at the plant. (The new spread is temporarily being produced at a new facility while the old one is refurbished.)

Perhaps they should mention that it's not made in China.

GreenCanary wants to know:

Lucky Charms, almost uniquely among cereals, possesses an irreducible assitudinousness: it will taste like that whether you immerse it in milk, water, V8, Pennzoil or Fletcher's Castoria.

Still, the larger question bears investigation. I suspect that the practice was an invention of the cereal companies themselves, who, having noticed that their products had all the nutritional value and not quite all the flavor of drywall, decided to pitch the idea of a Complete Breakfast, which includes their product, a splash of milk, and maybe half a banana. It would be harder to make this case if people were in the habit of mixing their cereal with Tanqueray or Pabst.

Keep in mind, these are the folks who came up with a product called Grape-Nuts, which contains neither grape nor nuts.

I have, of course, no hope of finding my very own geek girl, but were there nuptials pending, I'd almost certainly endeavor to make room for spectacularly-techie confections like these on the day's agenda — knowing full well that she'd come up with a better one.

(Via Syaffolee, who awards bonus points for familiarity with flow cytometry.)

And Daniel thinks you'd like it:

And it's even defensible in Soonerland's benighted 3.2 form:

A lot of anti-Bud sentiment is perhaps sheer snobbery:

I've always suspected Mugabe was smuggling Coors out of Colorado and using it to bulk up Zimbabwe's water supply: like Brawndo, but without the electrolytes.

It's a long piece, so read it with a brewski by your side.

Unfortunately, I'm not supposed to help myself the way I used to. And this requires some mental reorganization: to me, "carbs" have always been those finicky devices that sit on top of the engine intake and mix air and fuel in some crude approximation of the proper stoichiometric ratio. But that's ancient history, and indeed my last four cars have had fuel injection — though the '84 Mercury had a rather half-assed approach, sticking a single injector in an otherwise-unchanged throttle body — so now I have to think of "carbs" in terms of not screwing with my blood-sugar levels.

Among things I hadn't noticed before was Braum's line of "CarbWatch" ice cream, which apparently has been out for three or four years. I bought a half-gallon of the chocolate-chip variety, which contains the Splenda brand of pseudosucrose, and it is indeed pretty much indistinguishable from the regular (labeled "Premium") product, though the nutrition label specifies a mere 2 g of sugars per serving instead of 15. (There's a whole 14 g of "sugar alcohol," reflecting the product's Splendaciousness, though I am given to understand that this stuff isn't actually digested but is sent directly down the, um, tubes.)

Still, it's good stuff, so long as I don't tilt any farther towards intolerance of lactose.

While it's still legal: the Food Pentagram.

Created by, and swiped from, Michele.

Tam proposes a little something called "Adventure Dining":

Suddenly I feel terrible, or at least wussy, about having made a pot of spaghetti last night.

And priced accordingly, I don't doubt:

This is, you should know, an ecological measure:

Disclosure: I've dined on squirrel exactly once. As I recall, it tasted absolutely nothing like chicken. Rabbit, maybe.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Last night at Nemo's:

Remind me to ask him if spotted owl tastes like chicken.

It's pretty much always been, right? Trini's had this urge for cashews for the longest time, and it's had to go unfulfilled, because every time someone brought home cashews they turned out to have been either in proximity to peanuts or actually processed in peanut oil, and Trini is the sort of person who has to leave the room if you so much as open a jar of Jif.

Meanwhile, I've been known to grumble about dried fruits, mostly about how much they cost and how little you can actually taste them.

To the rescue: Tierra Farm, a vendor of organic fruits and nuts based in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Trini's mom actually found their Web site, sent it along, and we browsed, salivated, browsed some more, and finally ordered about a cubic foot of various fruits and nuts. The prices looked reasonable; more important, the stuff tastes great. Shipping to the lower 48 is a flat $6.95 via UPS Ground — order was placed on the 16th, arrived today — and it's free if you go over $100. If we're not careful, we might.

Traditional English desserts are in serious decline, says Emalyse:

Of course, if they're not eating their meat — but never mind, you saw that coming.

Yet another reason to avoid flying is airport food — with one possible exception:

Which is just about all they do at this one stand:

And apparently it's called simply PB&J; it's near Gate A1 in the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.

I don't think I can ever criticize anyone for serving calamari (known to us non-foodie types as "squid") again after seeing this.

Perhaps surprisingly, it's not packed in a #2 can.

The drive-in restaurant, with carhops and everything, is generally considered to be a warm-climate phenomenon: it wouldn't seem to work quite so well in the Snow Belt. ("Put on the chains, honey, we're going out for extra-long chili cheese coneys!")

Maybe; maybe not. Sonic is coming to Savage, Minnesota:

Sonic fends off the polite Minnesota skepticism:

(Via Jalopnik.)

This morning Lileks made brief mention of Metrecal, a 1960s diet "food" in a metal can with a pull tab. It was available, he said, in five "mostly indistinguishable flavors":

Well, that and a dash of what is delicately called "artificial flavor". I remember downing a can of this in Vaguely Vanilla, and wondering if maybe they'd finally come out with Kaopectate for Kids.

Time explains its origins, circa 1960:

Kind of makes you wonder whether there's a connection between Slim-Fast and Ensure.

The late Allan Sherman, though, got the last word, set to a possibly-recognizable tune:

Make that two.

As Johnny Carson used to say, I did not know this:

I did find this reference, which doesn't address the health issues but which does give alternate nomenclature:

Of course, calling it "black tree fungus" cuts down on its perceived desirability, at least to me. Still, I will keep this in mind, since I'm at an age where I can't dodge surgeons indefinitely.

Coming soon: Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator. And yes, it's got electrolytes.

No word on whether it will be available at Costco or Carl's Jr.

(Via SpoutBlog.)

Because who wants cold cockles?

Trini came back from lunch with some odd-looking cylinders, which proved to be Hillside's Self-Heating Hot Cocoa. I didn't ask why, if it was hot, it needed self-heating.

I did, however, examine the system. The can is very large, considering it holds only 9 ounces of product, but there's something going on under the surface. The base of the can contains water and green dye; when you push the button on the base, the water is released, and it reacts with calcium oxide powder hidden in the can walls. You end up with calcium hydroxide and, this being an exothermic reaction, a whole lot of heat, which gets applied (at a safe distance) to the drinkable contents. (There are coffee and tea variants.)

After five to eight minutes, the stuff is supposed to be 70 degrees warmer than its environment, so I'm presuming I drank it at 140. Actually, I took a sip and said "Jeebus, this is hot!" Wait a moment, sip again, and hey, this stuff isn't half bad. And it's only two bucks a can at Wally World.

Been there, eaten that:

You certainly wouldn't get that sort of thing on the Continent. On World Tour '07 I usually went for a banana and either a slice of toast or a cruller, on the basis that these are hard to screw up. The only really memorable breakfasts I had involved meeting people far away from the hotel grounds: Andrea Harris in Florida, Bigwig in North Carolina, Tamara K. in Tennessee. (I met some other wonderful folks, but not for breakfast.)

The one exception was at my hotel in Shreveport, perhaps because it's illegal to serve boring food in Louisiana unless you're within three miles of an Interstate.

Carol Smaglinski reports in the Gazette:

Apparently the Dome is historic enough to merit a Wikipedia page. (Disclosure: I performed some exceedingly minor edits on that page; you know they're minor because it doesn't sound anything like me.)

Still: the Prohibition Room? Then again, construction on the Dome was begun in 1958; Oklahoma was still dry, and would remain so another year.

Two things about Nate's chili recipe that deserve some sort of mention here:

• No beans, though he's not doctrinaire about it, or anything really.

• Although it calls for 8 ounces of beer, "I poured 4 ounces out of this 12-oz. bottle, because I WAS PLANNING TO DRINK THE REST."
  

And, oh yes: onions.

I somehow doubt it would go over at a proper Burns supper, but what the hell: vegetarian haggis.

(Suggested by this Toronto Star piece. No sheep were harmed in the construction of this recipe. Warning: contains peanuts.)

Seldom do I treat myself to a fried egg, and when I do I'm not quite sure I want one in the shape of a gun, though the mere fact that some people would be utterly appalled by the whole idea strikes me as a major selling point.

"Scrambled? Hell, field-strip 'em!"

(Via Popgadget.)

I have no experience with puppies in liquid form, and I don't particularly want to acquire such; but I can't imagine that a bottle of Setterade™ could be much worse than this:

Neese's swears that it neither looks like liver nor tastes like pudding, which isn't quite as reassuring as I might have hoped. Still, the "1." above implies further integers, of which the scariest might be 4:

At least it's not home-cooked ox penis.

The beverage formerly known as Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda at one point had a memorable slogan: YOU LIKE IT ... IT LIKES YOU. [Linked item is a tad risqué.]

I mention this because, well, it was either that or Yakov Smirnoff in reverse: "In America, you eat tapeworm!"

(Via Belhoste.)

Og suggests Purina^® Bachelor Chow:

I note for reference that the Guaranteed Analysis covers eight components, three of which are described as "crude." Yep.

I've got to wash down some of these brand-spanking-new Space Food Sticks.

That's right, kids, they're back, so you can keep your crunchy granola sweets and such.

Megan McArdle reports that Manwich sauce (!) qualifies as vegan, and it's therefore possible to make a sloppy joe without any fleshy stuff at all:

I am surprised to report that I am not all that surprised: I find myself remembering that for one brief, shining moment we had a more-or-less serious vegetarian working for us at the shop, and one day she brought up some truly excellent egg rolls which she insisted didn't actually contain the shrimp they seemed to contain. Inasmuch as she was hardly ever wrong about anything, I believed her. Then again, being hardly ever wrong about anything made her overqualified and then some, and she moved on rather quickly.

The Jones Soda company is looking for a lolcat:

Come to think of it, I've never seen Ceiling Cat with a Pepsi.

(Via My So-Called Blog.)

But since I didn't, here's the official word:

Anyone got a bowl with sides that slant inwards? I see a Questionable Experiment suggesting itself.

Wisdom from Terry Teachout:

I try to hit at least one barbecue place every World Tour, and it's always good — and it's always different. My away-from-home benchmark, I suppose, is the Kansas City version, since I'm there at least once a year; I will, however, have to check out the offerings in southeast Missouri, Mr Teachout's boyhood home, next time I'm out that way. Clearly he understands the dynamic:

I expect, this summer, to be reacquainting myself with the Texas varieties.

Coming soon, if People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has anything to say about it:

This was hardly a unanimous decision for the group:

I admit I have some misgivings about decanting a T-bone from an Erlenmeyer flask, but it's probably still better than arugula.

(Via Daily Pundit.)

Or possibly even Crown Royal. Your Cola Wars update, from Hit Coffee:

Of late, Cadbury Schweppes owns both 7-Up and Dr Pepper. Much depends on your local bottler: Great Plains Coca-Cola sells Dr Pepper here, though not in every available variety. And once in a while I pick up an RC Cola, which brings me back to the good ol' days when I was Nehi to a grasshopper.

And be prepared to weep:

The current state of things: you could probably sell a bar made from feldspar and duck droppings so long as it has zero grams of trans fat.

Seriously. A local paint store once advertised "100% CARB FREE PAINT". Sold like hotcakes. With some form of syrup, I presume.

Dr. Weevil's secret to jazzing up ramen:

The disadvantage, of course, is that the improvements bring up the price of the meal, from "darn near nothing" to "not a whole lot," which may make a difference to the stereotypical Starving Student who subsists largely on ramen. Still, even real pho isn't that pricey, at least here in the Big Breezy, which has a substantial resident Vietnamese population.

It's hard to add anything to this:

Fat chance, say I. Says Rocket Jones:

It would take an awful lot of Cracker Jack^® and brewskis to wash that down.

I don't do a lot of grocery shopping at Target, mostly because the Target nearest to me is a couple of rungs short of Super-hood and therefore lacks a lot of grocery-store essentials, but I did have that 10-percent-off card, so while I was picking up stuff like furnace filters at a Target of greater Superness, I poked through the food aisles and turned up a curiosity: "New York Vanilla" ice cream, under their Market Pantry house brand.

One has to assume, given the price of real vanilla, that the flavoring is largely synthetic, but it's a darn good synthetic. The yellowish color hints at the presence of eggs, which I am given to understand are an essential component of true New York Vanilla, but if they're on the ingredient panel, they're concealed behind something science-y. Target HQ being in Minnesota, maybe this is New York Mills Vanilla. It's still pretty good.