Hola? Is it Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos you’re looking for?

You don’t have to tell me how sad it is that I’m excited about Cool Ranch Dori­tos Locos Tacos. I already know.

But com­bin­ing this excite­ment with a Spanish-language ver­sion of Lionel Richie’s quin­tes­sen­tial 80s bal­lad “Hello”? Some­one at Taco Bell under­stands me bet­ter than I under­stand myself.

I made this anatom­i­cally incor­rect pic­ture in celebration:

Keebler makes cinnamon roll cookies now!?

Who’s respon­si­ble around here? Why wasn’t I told? The most impor­tant devel­op­ment of my cookie-consuming life  since Cookie Crisp cereal and I didn’t know about it until six months later!? I could have been eat­ing Cin­na­mon Roll Cook­ies THIS WHOLE TIME. Yes, I feel “Cin­na­mon Roll Cook­ies” deserves cap­i­tal­iza­tion, to say the very least.

I dropped by my par­ents house for din­ner Sun­day night (because free food is my favorite kind of food) when my mom whipped out a pack­age of these lit­tle babies over cof­fee. THAT SMELL! Oh sweet icing-frosted elf buns, that smell! You can decide for your­self if I meant the cook­ies or actual Kee­bler elf ass, but my point is these things smell as deli­cious as they taste, which is god­damn amaz­ing, in case you were won­der­ing. It’s almost enough to break my habit of rolling through the Burger King drive-thru just for Cinna-Minis. You do that too, right?

These lit­tle swirls of heaven are pull-apart moist and taste exactly like a cin­na­mon roll is sup­posed to. It helps that they look like actual cin­na­mon rolls, too. I always appre­ci­ate snack foods that go the extra mile and try to look like the real thing. (Wud­dup, Hot Fries?) It helps me for­get I’m eat­ing high fruc­tose corn syrup and mod­i­fied whey pro­teins. But if you want an even truer-to-life Cin­na­mon Roll Cookie expe­ri­ence (and who doesn’t?), Kee­bler pro­vides this help­ful tip :

Warm­ing Instruc­tions:

Place 2 cook­ies on a paper plate in the cen­ter of the microwave oven. Cover with a paper towel. Heat on high for max­i­mum power for 6–9 sec­onds. Cool briefly before han­dling. If cook­ies are over heated, frost­ing can become extremely hot and could cause burns.

You know shit tastes good when it’s dan­ger­ous to eat. Also, DIABEETUS.

P.S. Where the hell are the rest of the Kee­bler elves? Why does Ernie always get all the glory?

McDonald’s Big Mac with a side of synth and lasers.

Not since Big Mac Tonight  (who remem­bers that guy?) do I recall being this god­damn excited about a McDonald’s com­mer­cial. Just watch it and you’ll see what I mean:

I saw this lit­tle slice of throw­back awe­some­ness last night dur­ing the AFC Cham­pi­onship game and kept hop­ing it’d pop up again because it blew my frig­gin’ mind. It’s like the fast food ver­sion of the early 80’s HBO intro , except not quite as amaz­ing. 

I keep hop­ing that rad as balls, 80s-tastic #Big­Mac com­mer­cial will come back on. More com­mer­cials need lasers and synth.

— ShezCrafti (@shezcrafti) Jan­u­ary 21, 2013

That’s pretty weird, right? I mean, when’s the last time you saw a com­mer­cial you wanted to imme­di­ately watch again? I fully sup­port this abstract, artsy direc­tion McDonald’s seems to be going in lately with their Big Mac com­mer­cials (see also this one and this one ). I’m on a diet right now which means AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR BIG MAC ATTACKS , but I def­i­nitely do have time to stop and share my appre­ci­a­tion for totally rad, 80s-tastic com­mer­cials like this one.

The Chinese Takeout Meal Wheel, Or Why My Twitter Friends Are Awesome

It started as an inno­cent, totally not seri­ous tweet:

I need a wheel I can spin that will decide what to order from Wok To Go.

— ShezCrafti (@shezcrafti) Decem­ber 12, 2012

See, there’s this Chi­nese place up the street called Wok To Go I order from all the time. No, I mean, like   all the time . We’re talk­ing 3–4 times a week, maybe more. I’ve stopped keep­ing track because I don’t like to think about how many pieces of shrimp toast I con­sume on a weekly basis, and also because I’m tread­ing dan­ger­ously into #forever­alone ter­ri­tory here. It’s cheap, fast, easy, and makes me feel a lit­tle dirty after­ward like an Asian hooker . Me so hun­gry! Not to men­tion it’s the best god­damn Chi­nese food within 25 miles AND they deliver late, and since I often don’t eat din­ner until after nine, it’s my kind of place. I have no idea what my mom’s cell phone num­ber is with­out look­ing at my phone, yet I know that Wok To Go’s num­ber is 410–838-1085. By heart.

Any­way, I tend to get in these food ruts where I order the same thing all the time–lately it’s Shrimp & Beef Szechuan–and thought it’d be more fun to let fate decide my next take­out meal, so that’s where that tweet came from. (I know, my tweets are SO IMPORTANT.) But I never expected any­one to like, you know, actu­ally make a wheel for me. But some­one totally did.

Ben Rol­lier , if I could give you a for­tune cookie right now, it would sim­ply say, “You’re awe­some.” LOOK AT THIS AWESOME THING HE MADE , you guys:

Ben made this on his lunch break. His lunch break! Do you know what I did on my lunch break today? NOTHING! Well, noth­ing besides eat lunch. The beauty part is that because all Chi­nese take­out menus are the same (for real, it’s like a sci­en­tific fact or some­thing), Ben’s app should work with your local Chi­nese and/or sushi dive. So yeah, Ben you totally get a Gold (Throw­ing) Star from me.

This is seri­ously the best thing that’s ever hap­pened to me…um, today . It’s going to com­pletely rev­o­lu­tion­ize my Chi­nese take­out con­sump­tion habits. What’s it going to be tonight, Wok To Go Wheel?? Shu­mai Steamed Dumplings? OKAY!

The Pink Starburst Conspiracy Theory

This year I ever-so-carefully pri­or­i­tized  my stash of Hal­loween candy  such that trick-or-treaters received candy in the order of my least to most favorite, leav­ing me with a plen­ti­ful sup­ply of left­over Candy That I Actu­ally Enjoy Eat­ing. The down­side of that bril­liant plan, how­ever, is that I’m ashamed to admit over the past few days I’ve eaten through an entire bag of Starburst.

Go ahead and judge me . But at least I learned some­thing valu­able from the expe­ri­ence, albeit some­thing dark and sin­is­ter. I learned there is a mas­sive  PINK STARBURST CONSPIRACY afoot.

Look, we all know Pink Star­bursts are the bomb dig­gity and the rea­son we buy Star­bursts (unless you’re one of those com­mu­nist Red Star­burst peo­ple, in which case, you’re going to have to work a lit­tle harder at earn­ing my trust) but after tear­ing through an entire bag of Star­burst only to get about a 10% return on my invest­ment, this lat­est expe­ri­ence has left a bad taste in my mouth. Well, actu­ally it left a deli­cious, slightly sour fruity taste in my mouth, but shut up, you know what I mean.

Accord­ing to this fel­low Pink-Starburst-loving guy who actu­ally called the Star­burst Candy Helpline (side note: Holy shit there’s actu­ally some­thing called the Star­burst Candy Helpline??), Star­burst claims you have an even 25% chance of unwrap­ping each of its four fla­vors. Well I call bullshit.

Do you see this photo? DO YOU SEE IT? Out of an entire 10.58 ounce “Fun Size” bag, I got a measly five Pink Star­bursts. FIVE! This shit is unacceptable.

Do you know how it feels to be strung out on fruit chews, tear­ing your way through pack after worth­less pack of Reds, Oranges, and Yel­lows (and the dreaded Dou­ble Yel­low com­bi­na­tion) pray­ing for a glimpse of that flirty pink wrap­per? For a glimpse OF HOPE ? If you’re really lucky you’ll find not one but two of those lit­tle pink squares in your Fun Size pack. There is no greater feel­ing of victory.

And while I’m on the sub­ject, let’s talk about Pink Starburst’s fla­vor and how it tastes NOTHING like Straw­berry as it pur­ports to be. Seri­ously, what the hell is that fla­vor? I’m con­vinced it was chem­i­cally engi­neered to be an addic­tive but uniden­ti­fi­able com­bi­na­tion of trop­i­cal fruit fla­vors that seduce your tongue like a suc­cubus, each bite unleash­ing a drib­ble of melony-sweet juices that tease and tease and tease but never sat­isfy. The world’s sci­en­tists are spend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars on the Large Hadron Col­lider in pur­suit of the elu­sive God Par­ti­cle when I’m pretty sure all they have to do is reverse-engineer a Pink Star­burst to find it.

Halloween Candy Mountain

We’re only five days into Octo­ber, and already my stash of Hal­loween candy looks like this:

Mars was hav­ing a BOGO sale on the Dots, gum­mies, and bub­ble gum–you know, the sec­ond tier candy that peo­ple push out of the way to get to the Snick­ers and Reese’s. I also found some cool-looking Hal­loween ring pops and a cou­ple of bags of really gross-looking gum­mies.  I guess I went…a lit­tle crazy. Some of this stuff I’ll be sav­ing to review later on, and some of it prob­a­bly won’t sur­vive the weekend.

I should really stop lis­ten­ing to these guys.

P.S. — 27 Days ‘Til Halloween

The world has gone Pumpkin Spice crazy.

‘Tis the Pump­kin Spice sea­son. Between all those damn com­mer­cials for pump­kin spice cof­fee, those Pump­kin Spice Marsh­mal­lows I reviewed the other day, and the return of Pump­kin Spice Hershey’s Kisses, we are in the midst of a full-on Pump­kin Spice Pandemonium.

Some­how I’ve man­aged not to ever try these spicy, pumpkin-y Hershey’s Kisses before now. When I saw these in the store the other day I thought to myself , this is the year.

I still haven’t decided whether I like the taste or not. They’re not  bad , just dif­fer­ent. White choco­late and pump­kin spice is a weird com­bi­na­tion. On the other hand, orange-colored Her­shey Kisses = fun, so I’m not going to com­plain too much.

What’s your favorite sea­sonal pump­kin spice treat?

P.S. — 28 Days ‘Til Halloween

One for the mummy…

I’ve been all about mum­mies lately. I don’t really know why, but I am! Espe­cially cute mum­mies. I was inex­plic­a­bly drawn to this pack­age of Mike & Ike Mummy’s Mix at the gro­cery store the other day, I think mainly because of the cool-looking car­toon mummy on the pack­age. If there was a toy or fig­ure of some sort that looked like him, I would totally buy it. And then I remem­bered that last year my sis­ter had given me a set of LED mummy string lights, and these pho­tos were born.

The pack­ag­ing is cool, but the candy itself is noth­ing to write home about. They look and taste just like reg­u­lar Mike and Ikes, but with the addi­tion of two dif­fer­ent fla­vors. How un-fun. I was so under­whelmed I couldn’t even bring myself to write  a proper review of them. The mummy string lights were a nec­es­sary addi­tion so that I wouldn’t bore you to tears talk­ing about them.

I have to agree with Shawn over at Branded In The 80s that Mummy’s Mix is pretty fail. I fully sup­port his idea that these Mike and Ikes should be all white and come in mys­tery fla­vors. They could even go the extra mile and dot the all-white bod­ies with two lit­tle black eyes. That would take these from “meh” to ah-meh-zing . Are you lis­ten­ing, peo­ple who make Mike & Ike?? You need to step up your game.

Also, I dug this lit­tle wind-up guy out of my Hal­loween stash to star in this blog post. Just look at that face. It makes me inde­scrib­ably happy. As if it were pos­si­ble to love him any more than I already do, he also glows in the dark! I would have taken a pic­ture of his glow magic, but my phone takes crappy pic­tures on a  good  day and I wouldn’t want to short-change him like that–he deserves bet­ter. Trust me though, it’s a breath­tak­ing sight.

And lastly, I’ll leave you with my favorite groan-worthy mummy joke:

Q: What do you get if you cross a mummy with a CD?

A: A wrap song!

P.S. — 29 Days ‘Til Halloween

Jet-Puffed Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows

Here’s a sweet sea­sonal food prod­uct that until yes­ter­day I had never tried before: pump­kin spice-flavored marsh­mal­lows! (Try as I may, I can never bring myself to call marsh­mal­lows “mal­lows.” It just doesn’t have the same appeal.) Appar­ently these have been around since last year and were a huge hit on a lot of bak­ing and cook­ing sites, but since they’re new to me I decided to review them any­way. For shiggles.

Believe it or not, I received this pack­age of Kraft Jet-Puffed Pump­kin Spice Mal­lows as part of a Halloween-themed birth­day gift. The first thing I noticed was the very pumpkin-y scent, which I could smell through the bag before I even opened it.

In addi­tion to being fla­vored with pumpkin-spice and dusted with a sub­tle orangey-brown color, these marsh­mal­lows are pumpkin-shaped. That’s fun and exciting…right?

Once again I’m feel­ing the need to apol­o­gize for my phone’s crappy cam­era and my com­plete lack of pho­tog­ra­phy skill. So, yeah, sorry about that. On the plus side I dis­cov­ered that tak­ing pic­tures of pumpkin-shaped marsh­mal­lows is more fun than it should be.

I was a lit­tle wor­ried they wouldn’t taste good since the smell of pump­kin spice in these is so over-powering, but I was pleas­antly sur­prised. The pumpkin-y taste is, thank­fully, much more sub­tle than the smell. On the other hand, because these are just marsh­mal­lows, it’s also kind of a tease.  It’s a bit like hov­er­ing over a freshly-baked pump­kin pie and breath­ing in the fumes. But I’d much rather eat marsh­mal­lows that are faintly kissed with fake pump­kin fla­vor than marsh­mal­lows that taste over­whelm­ingly like fake pump­kin flavor–so these get a pass from me.

The All-Important Hot Choco­late Test

Because what good is a marsh­mal­low if it doesn’t taste good in hot choco­late? For this review I went the extra mile and brewed up a steam­ing cup of hot choco­late, which took all of a few sec­onds thanks to my Keurig–and yes, that totally qual­i­fies as “going the extra mile” for me–and plopped in a few Pump­kin Spice Mallows.

I let them sit a few moments so the marsh­mal­lows would start to dis­solve and get all melty in the choco­late before tak­ing a sip.

What did it taste like?

Happiness.

So the bot­tom line from me on Pump­kin Spice Mal­lows is this: pass­able as a stand­alone snack, AMAZING in a cup of hot chocolate.

P.S. — My Hal­loween to-do list now includes using Pump­kin Spice Mal­lows to make Pump­kin Spice Rice Krispy Treats .

Poll: Does candy corn suck?

Not that it’s much of a secret around here any­more, but it’s time for a seri­ous Hal­loween con­fes­sion:  I don’t like candy corn.  In fact, I loathe it.

(Image credit: some­one on the inter­net who is now my hero.)

Ever since I dared to express my unflat­ter­ing opin­ion of Candy Corn Oreos –and by exten­sion candy corn itself–I’ve incurred the wrath of the candy corn faith­ful.  (Well, okay, “wrath” might be a lit­tle strong. It’s more like gen­eral dis­ap­proval and a few snarky tweets .)

To fur­ther fan the flames of The Great Candy Corn Debate of 2012 ‚ I checked in with ShezCrafti.com correspondent-of-the-now Mick Dundee, who weighed in with the following:

In response to this  FIRESTORM OF CONTROVERSY , The Good­will Geek wrote  this mea­sured response  which sums up my feel­ings rather per­fectly, and I quote: “Candy Corn will go march­ing on, long after we are all dead… serv­ing as a tire­less, never-ending sym­bol for Hal­loween. But that does not mean it needs to go in my mouth.”

And so, dear read­ers, my poll for the month of Octo­ber is sim­ply this:

Please direct all pro-candy corn sen­ti­ments and let­ters of sup­port to Reis O’Brien .

Charms Fluffy Stuff Spider Web Cotton Candy

Two Halloween-related food posts in a row? INCONCEIVABLE!

I con­sid­ered sav­ing this review for my offi­cial Count­down to Hal­loween series of posts, which won’t begin until next Mon­day, but then I decided that this infor­ma­tion was too impor­tant not to share as soon as pos­si­ble. (Feel free to skip ahead to my ver­dict , which I’m con­sid­er­ing a pub­lic ser­vice announcement.)

This past week­end I was itch­ing to spend some of my birth­day money on cheap, dis­pos­able crap I don’t need but des­per­ately want, so nat­u­rally I hit up the toy store and candy store where I spot­ted  Charms Fluffy Stuff Spi­der Web Cot­ton Candy.

(Sorry, I didn’t have any excit­ing Halloween-appropriate back­drops to use in these pho­tos, but I did have these black plas­tic paper plate hold­ers which kind of remind me of spiderwebs–if spi­der­webs were black, per­fectly round, and dish­washer and microwave-safe.)

I gen­er­ally love cot­ton candy, even though it’s one of those “some­times foods” that the reha­bil­i­tated Cookie Mon­ster preaches about to mol­ly­cod­dled chil­dren nowa­days (a video which warms my heart to know has more dis­likes than likes) BECAUSE DIABEETUS. How­ever, I’ve never had sour apple-flavored cot­ton candy, let alone sour apple-flavored cot­ton candy that’s made to resem­ble spi­der webs, so that’s all the pur­chase incen­tive I needed.

And hey, it’s fat-free. That’s some­thing, I guess.

There was also this omi­nous warn­ing about not plac­ing the bag in direct sun­light, which I assume is there to pre­vent the con­tents from hatch­ing and unleash­ing a sce­nario like Arachno­pho­bia upon the world. Or it could just be to pre­vent the sugar from melting.

I’m used to cot­ton candy being on a stick. I quickly dis­cov­ered that one does not sim­ply shake cot­ton candy out of a bag:

Even­tu­ally it wig­gled out in two big clumps. I decided the clumps looked noth­ing like spi­der webs other than being white, which was kind of dis­ap­point­ing. I don’t really know what I expected, to be hon­est. Charms wisely declined to show an accom­pa­ny­ing photo of the prod­uct on the bag, pre­sum­ably because it can eas­ily be mis­taken for a con­gealed mass of cot­ton balls. I added a spi­der to make myself feel bet­ter about it.

Not a ter­ri­bly real­is­tic spi­der, I know, but then nei­ther is the con­cept of a sour apple-flavored cot­ton candy spi­der web. And if any kind of spi­der can weave such a web, I imag­ine it would be a flam­boy­antly gay one that went a lit­tle too crazy with the BeDaz­zler .

I attempted to treat the Fluffy Stuff as if it were fake, dec­o­ra­tive spi­der web­bing that you can stretch out and drape over fur­ni­ture and stuff, but all I accom­plished was get­ting sticky white shit all over my fingers.

By this point I was pretty dis­ap­pointed that Spi­der Web Cot­ton Candy was seem­ing more awe­some as a premise than as an actual prod­uct. It looks noth­ing like spi­der webs and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t make it behave like spi­der webs either. But I was still opti­mistic that it would taste good–it would HAVE to taste good, right?

Now, before I tell you how it tasted, I want you to under­stand some­thing: I love sour stuff. Per­haps not the Toxic Waste level of sour, but Sour Patch Kids, War­heads, and sim­i­lar can­dies are all things I enjoy. I’ve been known to lick the sour crys­tals off sour gummy worms. Whiskey Sours are my go-to bar drink at wed­ding recep­tions. But I sim­ply can­not endorse the fla­vor of Spi­der Web Cot­ton Candy–and believe me, I wanted to. I needed some­thing to believe in after such a dis­ap­point­ing hands-on experience.

The short version:

It tastes like ass.

Oh sure, it tastes like sour apple too. But also ass.

Ide­ally you should be able to enjoy cot­ton candy by the hand­ful, stuff­ing large fluffy pieces into your mouth that quickly dis­solve on the tongue and flood your taste buds with a burst of pleas­ant fla­vor. Spi­der Web Cot­ton Candy, how­ever, I could barely tol­er­ate even in tiny pieces. It’s almost so sour that it burns your tongue, espe­cially if you pinch off more than a small thimble-sized bite.

The prob­lem, I think, is that cot­ton candy just isn’t a good vehi­cle for such a bold fla­vor as Sour Apple. The del­i­cate, quick-to-melt nature of cot­ton candy, which is very dif­fer­ent from, say, gum­mies or hard candy, means your tongue is bom­barded with too much sour too quickly. But just to be sure it wasn’t just me, I also forced–yes, forced!–my boyfriend to try it.

We both made faces like this:

Never again.

Herr’s Chocolate Flavor-Drizzled Pumpkin Shaped Pretzels

Alter­nate title for this post: “Why I Shouldn’t Have Gone Inside Rite-Aid.”

This past week­end my boyfriend stopped at Rite-Aid to pick up some NyQuil (Side­bar: Since when did they start requir­ing you to pro­vide your birth date for cough med­i­cine pur­chases? Crazy!) for his cough and I made the mis­take of going inside to look at Hal­loween stuff instead of stay­ing in the car to fin­ish jam­ming to that AWOLNATION song .

Sit­u­ated inno­cently among an end cap of potato chips and plain old pret­zels I found these festive-looking bags of Herr’s Choco­late Flavor-Drizzled Pump­kin Shaped Pret­zels.

(Another alter­nate title idea for this post: “iPad Takes Shitty Pictures”)

Now, I don’t know who at Herr’s is in charge of nam­ing prod­ucts, but surely they could have come up with some­thing a lit­tle catch­ier and not quite as wordy as “Herr’s Choco­late Flavor-Drizzled Pump­kin Shaped Pret­zels.” Surely they could have elim­i­nated a word or two and still have given you all the infor­ma­tion you need to know. The way “Choco­late Flavor-Drizzled” is sep­a­rated out leads me to believe there could be other fla­vors of this prod­uct I’m unaware of–perhaps caramel or white choco­late? And why is “Flavor-Drizzled” hyphen­ated but “Pump­kin Shaped” is not? #ShitNobodyCaresAboutExceptMe

I love the haunted house-themed pack­ag­ing with the giant moon in the back­ground. It’s a sub­tle color scheme that lets the Pump­kin Shaped Pret­zels take cen­ter stage. On the back there’s also this silly Hal­loween mes­sage that sug­gests pret­zels dress up for Hal­loween just like kids. DAT HERR’S BE CRAY. I love it.

At first I was a lit­tle put off by the $3.49 price tag for what looks like such a small bag of pret­zels, but then my nat­ural instincts for seek­ing out deli­cious Hal­loween snack prod­ucts against all costs took over.

As it turns out, the size of the bag is deceitful.

There’s plenty of pret­zels inside:

Taste wise, these Pump­kin Pret­zels have the right mix of salty and sweet with a hint of choco­late fla­vor. Other than the fes­tive col­or­ing and shape, they don’t seem that much dif­fer­ent than your aver­age chocolate-covered pret­zels, but make no mistake–these things are addic­tive. The orange frost­ing has a but­tery taste on the tongue and the inner pret­zel core has a nice crunch. They’re not too sweet or overly salty; they’re just perfect.

As far as Hal­loween food prod­ucts go, Herr’s Choco­late Flavor-Drizzled Pump­kin Shaped Pret­zels (god damn that’s get­ting tire­some to type out) aren’t the most excit­ing or cre­ative of Hal­loween confections–like, say, Candy Corn Oreos or those green, gooey Cad­bury Scream Eggs. But they look great, taste deli­cious, and more than made my trip into that Rite-Aid worthwhile.

Sorry, but candy corn still sucks even if it’s inside an Oreo.

Why a tech blog would be cov­er­ing junk food is beyond me, but regard­less I saw this abom­i­na­tion over at Giz­modo where they’re treat­ing the mar­riage of golden Oreo cook­ies and candy corn fla­vor­ing like it’s the food of the gods.

“You’ve basi­cally got the best thing to hap­pen to milk com­bined with arguably one of the best aspects of Halloween.”

[via Giz­modo ]

Though I’m all for Halloween-ified food prod­ucts, I don’t share their enthu­si­asm over this par­tic­u­lar pair­ing. Candy corn is basi­cally the pars­ley of Hal­loween candy. It adds color, it’s fes­tive and it’s great to dec­o­rate with, but nobody actu­ally loves eat­ing it…right?

I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever seen any­one eat more than a hand­ful of candy corn. Hell, I can barely tol­er­ate a few pieces. I’m not sure what I dis­like more: the sick­en­ing, but­tery sweet­ness or its gross, waxy, chewy tex­ture. I buy a bag of candy corn every Hal­loween just to stick in a bowl because it looks pretty. And you know what? Every year, when Hal­loween is over, I throw the entire bowl of untouched candy corn in the trash.

But who knows, maybe Oreo is onto some­thing here. Maybe candy corn is more palat­able when dis­guised in the famil­iar­ity of America’s most pop­u­lar sand­wich cookie. I don’t really have a strong desire to find out, and since these are only avail­able at Tar­get, which is kind of out of my way, I prob­a­bly won’t know the answer any­time soon. Either way, candy corn still sucks.

Take it away, Lewis Black.

Everyone has that one McDonald’s menu item they miss. This is mine.

“Go for the burger that goes all out for flavor–Cheddar Melt: our 1/4 lb. all-beef patty topped with the bold taste of grilled onions and real ched­dar cheese sauce piled high on a toasted light rye bun. ”

For some peo­ple, its the McRib or the Arch Deluxe; maybe even the McDLT, which was really just a pack­ag­ing gim­mick. My Holy McGrail is the Ched­dar Melt, McDonald’s short-lived ver­sion of the clas­sic patty melt sandwich.

The Ched­dar Melt made its debut in 1998 and only lasted a short while, then later resur­faced in the 90s which is when it became my go-to McDonald’s sand­wich, even over the Quar­ter Pounder. Sup­pos­edly it also made a brief come­back in 2004, but I some­how com­pletely missed it. Like the myth­i­cal Asian Salad or Hol­i­day Pies, the Ched­dar Melt drifts in and out of the McMenu­verse accord­ing to some unknow­able ebb and flow of McMar­ket­ing space­time. (I’m really just try­ing to see how many McWords I can stuff in this post.)

The com­bi­na­tion of beef, melty cheese, fried onions and toasty rye is a mag­i­cal one. I don’t know why McDonald’s intro­duces awe­some things only to take them away, seem­ingly right at the point when they become famil­iar fix­tures of the McMenu.

You know what sucks? A food crav­ing you can never sat­isfy because the food prod­uct you are crav­ing doesn’t exist any­more. I got 99 first world prob­lems and this sand­wich is one.

I discovered the Japanese Snack aisle at Wegmans…this is not good.

Last year a  Weg­mans  store opened up in my town. Unless you live in the North East, you might not be famil­iar with the chain, but basi­cally it’s like a super-mega-ultra gro­cery store. Think of a depart­ment store, except all gro­ceries and pre­pared foods. It is a super­mar­ket to rule all other supermarkets.

Within the walls of this mam­moth struc­ture you can find every type of food imag­in­able, strate­gi­cally orga­nized into smaller store-like departments.There’s the organic food sec­tion, which is like a minia­ture Trader Joe’s ; the candy shoppe with its over­flow­ing of bins of bulk sweets; a huge, ridicu­lous pre­pared foods sec­tion, which is a restaurant-like smörgås­bord of cuisines from around the world; these are just a few exam­ples of Weg­mans’ greatness.

How­ever, I don’t typ­i­cally do my shop­ping there because, evi­dently, higher prices are the trade-off for so much awe­some­ness. Not to men­tion it’s on the other side of town and I’m lazy. So for me Weg­mans is more of an expe­ri­ence; a once-in-a-while type of treat that I’ll occa­sion­ally go out of my way for when I’m crav­ing some­thing I can only get from Wegmans–like the scrumptrules­cent shrimp in cream sauce from their Asian food bar.

This past week­end I dis­cov­ered some­thing I hadn’t really noticed before: the Inter­na­tional Foods aisle. I soon learned it is a dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous place for me because I walked out of there with more Japan­ese snacks than I could carry:

There aren’t many places you can buy Pocky and Koala’s March around here. They even had my favorite fla­vor of Pocky, Almond Crush. I couldn’t resist pick­ing up a few other treats that looked tempt­ing, like Mango-flavored Hi-Chew, Ojo But­ter Coconut Cook­ies (which are made by Kraft?), Kasugai Lychee Gum­mies, and Meiji Pucca Choco Pret­zels, which are adorably shaped like lit­tle fish. Why does food taste bet­ter when it’s cute?

All I can say is thank good­ness this store is such a has­sle for me to get to, oth­er­wise this could become a reg­u­lar habit.

Three Terrible-for-Me Things I’m Doing Today

I’m bit­ter about hav­ing to work on a Sat­ur­day, so I’m doing what I always do when life sucks: indulging in awe­some things that are ter­ri­ble for me.

#1 — Eat­ing this.

I’m typ­i­cally a diehard Ben & Jerry’s fan when it comes to ice cream (food of the freak­ing gods:  Late Night Snack and Half Baked ) but this week I dis­cov­ered  this amaz­ing fla­vor of Turkey Hill ice cream:

It’s vanilla ice cream swirled with but­ter­cream frost­ing and rainbow-colored cake pieces. If I had to describe its taste, it’s some­where between amaze­balls and uni­corn poop . It’s vanilla-y and cake-y as you’d expect, but those frost­ing swirls take it to another level.

There was this cereal I used to love as a kid called Sprin­kle Span­gles  that had these candy sprin­kles that would melt in my milk and I’d swirl them around and make all kinds of crazy col­ors. That’s what this ice cream looks and tastes like.  And the best part is it’s only like $3 for a whole half-gallon, ver­sus B&J’s ridiculously-overpriced pints (five dol­lars for 14 ounces of ice cream, Ben & Jerry? Really?).

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly rec­om­mend pick­ing some up.

#2 — Lis­ten­ing to this.

This isn’t so much ter­ri­ble for me as it is for my boyfriend who’s hav­ing to put up with it:

Clearly my musi­cal tastes are superior.

I found this absolute jewel of a com­pi­la­tion album on Spo­tify a few weeks ago. Don’t let the tacky album art (which reminds me of those awful “best of the decade” hits albums that never fea­ture the orig­i­nal artists) and gra­tu­itous use of lens flare fool you–there’s some great stuff on here: Grand­mas­ter Flash, Dazz Band, Shan­non, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Johnny O, and of course Freestyle with my per­sonal favorite, “Don’t Stop the Rock ” and lots more.

#3 — Spend­ing way too much money on this.

Last night I got a lit­tle hys­ter­i­cal after the debut of the open­ing intro sequence for Nickelodeon’s upcom­ing Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles reboot and came pretty close to weep­ing openly from the sheer awe­some­ness of it. Hear­ing the the new theme song, which mixes in famil­iar phrases from the clas­sic TMNT theme song we all know and love, got me right in the childhood.

It made me feel like this:

My nat­ural reac­tion was to buy every new Nick­elodeon TMNT action fig­ure that cur­rently exists–in doubles!

But I didn’t stop there . Today I went back and ordered all the vehi­cles, includ­ing the badass chunk of plas­tic you see above. I love that in this incar­na­tion of TMNT, the party wagon is named “The Shell­raiser” and is described as a “street to sewer assault vehi­cle.” How could I not buy that?

Here are the stock pics of every­thing in boxes:

And then I also pur­chased one each of the TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion fig­ures from Amazon.

Here’s the list of every­thing I picked up:

• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Leonardo (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Donatello (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Raphael (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Michae­lan­gelo (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Splin­ter (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure April O’Neil (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Shred­der (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Kraang (x2)
• Nick TMNT Basic Fig­ure Foot Sol­dier (x2)
• Nick TMNT Shellraiser
• Nick TMNT Ninja Stealth Bike
• Nick TMNT Dragon Chopper
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Leonardo
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Donatello
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Raphael
• TMNT Clas­sic Col­lec­tion Michaelangelo

I can’t wait for these things to arrive. I’m going to be the coolest thirty-year-old in the neighborhood.

Movie Montage Monday: I Want Candy

It’s Movie Mon­tage Mon­day ! And I’m using “Mon­day” loosely because I’m just barely sneak­ing today’s col­lec­tion of mon­tages in before mid­night. I ran into some–um–let’s call them tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties while pulling some of these clips together.

I’ve been on a major sugar kick lately, so today’s theme is all about candy. I’ve been sneak­ing Haribo Gummi Rasp­ber­ries , Caramel Creams , and Cad­bury Dairy Milk bars over the past few weeks in com­bi­na­tion with copi­ous amounts of Rock Star energy drink because I’ve been under a lot of stress. Basi­cally any day now my heart is going to explode.

Any­way, onto the montages!

Char­lie and the Choco­late Factory

Who can take tomor­row and dip it in a dream, sep­a­rate the sor­row and col­lect up all the cream? The Candy Man can. You know what else the candy man does? Creep me the hell out.

Chocolat

Choco­lat  makes me crave choco­late every time I watch it.

Garfield’s Hal­loween Adventure

Required view­ing for me every Hal­loween. They don’t make spe­cials like this anymore.

Marie Antoinette

And here’s the fab­u­lous candy, cham­pagne and shoes mon­tage from Marie Antoinette that inspired today’s theme, appro­pri­ately set to Bow Wow Wow:

Edit: I so wanted to include the brief but fan­tas­tic Honeyduke’s candy shop scene from Harry Pot­ter and the Pris­oner of Azk­a­ban , but upon fur­ther exam­i­na­tion I had to rule it out because it’s not tech­ni­cally a mon­tage. I have to adhere to my own silly rules, you know.

What the hell is Movie Mon­tage Monday?

Every Mon­day  I come up with a new theme and post a series of related movie mon­tages. There’s no real rea­son for it, I just really like mon­tages. Also it’s kind of a chal­lenge to myself to see how long I can keep it going. I’m bound to run out of themes even­tu­ally, right?

Hostess Going Out of Business (Or Why the Turtle Pudding Pies Comeback Won’t Happen)

Things are not going well for the pre-processing pur­vey­ors of Twinkies and Won­der Bread. Host­ess Brands is  hem­or­rhag­ing money , or as MassLive reports:

Host­ess Brands Inc. has warned states nation­wide that it may close its oper­a­tions and lay off all employ­ees this summer.

In Con­necti­cut, the com­pany has noti­fied the state that it may lay off all 187 work­ers and close its five loca­tions by July 6, includ­ing 57 employ­ees at the 23 Thomp­son Road oper­a­tion in East Windsor.

Host­ess, the maker of Twinkies and Won­der Bread, filed for Chap­ter 11 Bank­ruptcy Court pro­tec­tion from cred­i­tors in Jan­u­ary. It sent the WARN notices last week to all states where it has oper­a­tions, employ­ing 18,500 work­ers, com­pany spokesman Erik Halvor­son said.

The notices were “to alert employ­ees that a sale or wind down of the com­pany is pos­si­ble,” he said.

You know, we can blame a lot of things for why Host­ess is bankrupt–economic woes, hir­ing that annoy­ing Choco­late Rain guy  Tay Zon­day to sing about choco­late creme-filled Twinkies, Amer­i­cans who are more health con­scious, food prod­ucts that can poten­tially sur­vive a Nuclear Holo­caust …

But let’s get real–it’s because Host­ess stopped man­u­fac­tur­ing Tur­tle Pud­ding Pies .

And now that the com­pany is going under, we may never see the Tur­tle Pud­ding Pies come­back that I and mil­lions of other TMNT fans a hand­ful of other fat­ties have been dream­ing about for the past fif­teen years, which really is unfor­tu­nate con­sid­er­ing there’s going to be a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles film next year and a new Nick car­toon in a few months.

Host­ess, if you’re read­ing this, the time to act is now!

10 Unusual Wines that Geeks Would Love

With Valentine’s Day just around the cor­ner, any one of these wines would make an awe­some gift to present to that spe­cial geek in your life:

Wines for Gamers

Player 1  by 8-bit Vintners

“Player 1″ was cre­ated by an actual gamer, and comes from the wine­mak­ing region of Walla Walla, Wash­ing­ton.  Owner/gamer Mike James says, “My wine is for any­one who spent time try­ing to save a princess or fit odd shaped blocks together. We may have never met, but we have more in com­mon than we ever knew. So blow out that old Con­tra car­tridge, give the NES a good dust off, and pour your­self a glass.”  Sadly, 8-bit Vint­ners has closed up shop, but you can still pur­chase the wine on Ebay and other places (if you know where to look).

Boss Mon­ster by Woot Cellars

This 2007 zin­fan­del from Woot Cel­lars is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of every ter­ri­ble boss you’ve ever encoun­tered in a video game (though I think he looks vaguely rem­i­nis­cent of Phan­toon from Super Metroid).  “Boss Mon­ster” is a lim­ited edi­tion wine that is only some­times avail­able via Wine.Woot .  If you like wine and enjoy get­ting a good deal, you might want to sign up for Wine.Woot’s deal-a-day style offers.

Stun­lock , nOOb , & Gamer Win­dow  by GamerWine

Gamer­Wine is avail­able in three vari­eties with relat­able names: Stun­lock , a rich red; nOOB , a full-bodied Mer­lot; and Gamer Win­dow , a smooth Pinot Gri­gio.  Sug­gested pair­ings:  Hot Pock­ets, Pizza Rolls and Cheetos.

Wines for Fan­tasy Film Buffs

The Bot­tle of Wits by Alamo Drafthouse

“The Bot­tle of Wits” is a new line of sig­na­ture wines by Alamo Draft­house inspired by everyone’s favorite 80’s fan­tasy film, The Princess Bride, which cel­e­brates its 25th anniver­sary this year.  The line includes both red and white vari­eties: “As You Wish White,” a light, golden medium-bodied Cal­i­for­nia blend, and “Incon­ceiv­able Cab,” a 2009 vin­tage Cal­i­for­nia Caber­net.  The wine will go for sale online start­ing Feb­ru­ary 14, 2012.

Wines for Hor­ror Fans

Zom­bie Zin by Chateau Diana Winery

From Chateau Diana Win­ery in Healds­burg, Cal­i­for­nia comes “Zom­bie Zin­fan­del” that is blood-red in color and described as “hor­ridly rich in con­cen­trated fruit fla­vors with a fin­ish that never dies!” Clever.  And here I thought the only zom­bies with mohawks were from Tiris­fal Glades.

Return of the Liv­ing Red by Red­heads Studio

“Return of the Liv­ing Red” is a red wine from Red­heads Stu­dio (I see what they did there), which is a small win­ery in South Aus­tralia. The wine is dark gar­net in color, full-bodied, with fla­vors of cur­rants and black­ber­ries.  The grue­some (but awe­some) pack­ag­ing was designed by Mash .

Kil­li­b­in­bin by Broth­ers in Arms

This col­lec­tion of “killer” wines is by Broth­ers in Arms of the Met­alia vine­yard, also in South Aus­tralia (side note: why does Aus­tralia have all the cool wines?).  The labels were designed after vin­tage hor­ror movie posters to play up the “kill” part of the wine’s name.

Vam­pire, Drac­ula & True­blood by Vam­pire Vineyards

When it comes to vampire-themed wines, Vam­pire Vine­yards pretty much has the mar­ket cor­nered.  The vineyard’s full line includes Vam­pire, Drac­ula, True­blood, and Chateau du Vamm­pire.  There’s even red Vam­pire Vodka, and the com­pany is also branch­ing out into other vampire-themed bev­er­ages  like soda, cof­fee and energy drinks.  Thanks to the pop­u­lar­ity of Twi­light, True Blood, The Vam­pire Diaries, etc, it’s no sur­prise that this type of bla­tant pan­der­ing has also been very suc­cess­ful for the com­pany (just read their nau­se­at­ing  About Us page).

Wines for Techies

USB Port by Peltier Station

A zin­fan­del dessert wine, “USB Port” (get it?) has a rich, sweet fla­vor that bal­ances choco­late with ruby cherry and spice. Sounds deli­cious.  Just don’t try to plug it into your laptop.

 Edu­cated Guess by Roots Run Deep

This Napa Val­ley Caber­net Sauvi­gnon is the flag­ship wine of Roots Run Deep win­ery, who would like you to make an “edu­cated guess” about which wine to choose.  The very tech­ni­cal, smart-looking label depicts actual wine­mak­ing for­mula strings that chemists would use.