Is Little Debbie a good Hostess?

A discovery I made recently has the potential to ruin whatever health gains I may have been making in my unfortunately not regular enough visits to the local olympic swiming pool: the vending machine in my building at work has cinnamon streusel cake. You may not have known this about me, but I have strong and far reaching food tastes and opinions, and one of the is that Hostess makes super excellent breakfast baked goods. Another is that cinnamon is a flavor not to be trifled with; it does get jealous of chocolate and peanut butter. Hell hath no fury like a spice scorned.

My dad has been involved in the grocery business in some fashion for basically my whole life, and most of his -- he is the leprechaun from Lucky Charms. I'm joking of course, as that would be absurd. My mom's side of the family is my Irish side. As a result, though, he would periodically bring home retail products -- almost always "day old," which is groceryspeak for "old" -- some of which were sometimes strange and obscure, like weird cookies shaped like windmills or clogs, or lemon turnovers that come in that weird wrapper that can't quite decide if it's paper or plastic. It's the same stuff that breakfast burritos, the you know the kind that everyone seems to own but nobody really ever eats. Sometimes, though, my siblings and I would hit the individually packaged jackpot when he'd score something like Teddy Grahams, Koala Yummies or some other bear shaped cookie. Or, those glorious, glorious Hostess cakes.

Honey buns and the aforementioned delicate sweetness that is cinnamon streusel cake were the top choices in my mind. Like preservative laden versions of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, they were unmatched by their peers. Sure, Ho-Hos and Ding Dongs are vaguely inappropriately named delights and the confections that made my lunches the envy of the middle school (and it's a wonder I didn't weigh like 300 pounds) but they weren't an excuse to let you eat cakes that taste like candy for breakfast.

The hitch, though, is that for some reason the vending machine versions of these products tend to taste more decadent than the ones in stores. Maybe they benefit from aging, like a fine cheese, or maybe they have gone away from trans fats and the vending machine versions don't turn over fast enough for the inventory to have caught up. Or maybe the stores I shop at are just too high brow for such simple pleasures. All I know is that I have looked forward to coming into work everyday this week for y reakfast that will probably take 5 years off my otherwise impressive life expectancy.

I am just like you, only giant

Charlotte, NC -- Do you like the dateline? I think I will try it out when I travel. I am in Charlotte for a wedding of a person I don't know, but that's not really relevant to the post. Free food for a weekend is pretty excellent, though. So far only one sporadic reader friend of mine got married and invited me; the rest of you disgusting, unmarriable people need to get it into gear, because who doesn't like free stuff? I will invite you to my wedding when (if) it ever happens. I even promise to write about it and give you free advertising! With a dateline! Spread the word to your friends, and that many more people will hear about how your aunt is loud and the open bar was great.

The prompt for me to write today, though, was that I decided to join Sam's Club this morning, but that was back in Augusta. That place is a strange experience. You can spend a lot of money on junk you don't need and that you might get sick of before you reasonably consume it all. I bought a box of granola bars and it comes with thirty (30) packs of them, for $7. The normal one at the grocery store comes with six (6), for like $2.50. My tastes could change before I eat the last one. I also bought Honey Nut Cheerios, even though I have mixed feelings about cereal. It was like half price, so I am ok-er with it.

More interesting was the sort of shoppers you see there. You see old people who are thrifty to comic absurdity, a lot of moms with 3 teenage boys (or fat girls) who need an endless supply of cokes and mallomars (I actually didn't see any mallomars, but I think it's a funny word), and restauranteurs (hopefully bbqers, another class whose ranks I have recently joined). It kind of blows me away that small restaurants can go get their cooking supplies from the same place that soccer moms get their diet cokes and old people get their oddly large tins of metamucil. For some reason, I thought that there was some secret cabal of restaurant stuff that provides plates and ketchup to cafes and steakhouses with all their needs, painfully unavailable to us mere mortals. Between that and Hell's Kitchen, it doesn't seem like there is any reason I could not open a pretty kickass restaurant myself. I think it would be a gastropub. Maybe even in Charlotte?

I like the Irish. Not Notre Dame.

It was in high school when I first started to think about what islands of white people my family came from way back when. Of course, like everyone else in the southeast, Britain and Ireland were the primary culprits. I was prompted to look into it because there were a lot of people in my high school whose parents were born in India but they had never seen the place and still managed to feel and act more Indian than American. Don't get me a wrong, there were a lot of awesome Indian people too, but there were some who would only hang with other Indian folks, which strikes me as, well, I don't want to say racist, but a little bit racist.

This coming week is, of course, the holiday for people who like to pretend they're Irish. I have never been to Ireland and my last name is English, but there are Irish people in my family tree and begorrah, I love it. The Irish are a jolly people, and I like being a part of that. There are primarily three things that Irish people are known for, and they're all fantastic. Indian people might have better food, but they sure don't have better booze.

1. Booze (Biotálle). Distillation came to Ireland from the Mediterranean by way of missionaries, according to wikipedia. How great is that? Missionaries! There's a saying that the Irish discovered whiskey and the Scottish perfected it. You know what I have to say about that? Ireland is independent and Scotland is still run from London. Eat that. Also, everyone loves Guinness. Americans learned to make their liquors when the Irish and Scottish came over and settled the South in the early colonial days. Good for them.
2. Blessings (Beannachtaí). Everyone knows the "May the road always rise to meet you..." blessing. You may not have known is that there are like a thousand just like it, poetic and fun and cheery. For a people so historically miserable (not quite Polish or Jewish miserable, but certainly more so than the Canadians), most of what you see is very positive, like charming brogues, pots of gold and leprechauns, and excellent smelling soap. I suspect #1 has a hand in this attitude. My favorite is: May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.
   
3. Blarney (An Bhlárna). It is a town, castle, rock and gift originating in County Cork. You might think it's just mumbo jumbo, but this community has been able to convince Americans to come to their town and spend good money in order bend over backwards to kiss a rock. If that isn't evidence of the gift of Blarney, I don't know what is. There is also a disproportionate presence of Irish writers in the English language, and I'd like to think that there's something in the blood, and I just have to activate that component of it by drinking Bushmills.

Sure, there are terrorists and domestic violence too, but all that has largely been drowned out by the Muslims blowing people up in more dramatic fashion. And their accents aren't nearly as fun. Can you imagine a Saudi breakfast cereal? Magically delicious, insha'allah. Anyway, everyone have a happy SPD on the 17th, eat some corned beef and cabbage and say sláinte as you think about your favorite blogger. The Wonkette.

The evil citrus

I don't understand grapefruit. It looks like a giant orange on the outside, which is a pretty good start. It even looks pretty nice on the inside, but it's all deception; not unlike a beautiful woman who turns out to have syphilis. Take a bite into what looks like a delicious fruity meal (at least compared to its citrus brethren) and you are shocked and amazed by how frighteningly terrible this actually is. What other fruit to people make a habit of adding sugar to in order to enjoy? Grossberries?

Now, as a Floridian, I have sworn an oath to protect and defend citrus. However, now that I am officially a Georgia resident I can finally speak out publicly. This doesn't change my opinions of the others; oranges, limes, tangerines and lemons are all still pretty great, although lemons are a little boring. Limes are, as always, underrated.

On a recent visit, my dad purchased grapefruit juice, because he was afraid the other items in my refrigerator were being unruly. Grapefruit juice is like the fridge warden. I decided this morning that I might give it a try with my breakfast because I neglected to purchase orange juice, the heavenly citrus juice, yesterday at the grocery store. It is an unforgivable oversight, really. But I couldn't do it. I've said this before and I'll probably say it many, many times in the future: grapefruit juice tastes like bile. It evokes in me the same reaction you get when you burp a little too hard and get some throw up in the back of your mouth. Not my idea of a good experience.

There is good news, though: I do still have limeade. While it's a little bit sugary for a juice, it's still citrusy and satisfied my need for an acidic morning. My throat is frequently dry when I wake up, and orange juice is that cure for that. Among other things. Like scurvy.

I only have so many shrimps

I can't remember if I wrote this already. I hope I didn't. I've been thinking about it a while and with all the drama of starting work and finishing with school I can't remember and I am far too lazy to go too far back and check. If it is a repeat, yell at me and I'll get you another post, lickety-split. Or in two shakes of a lammy's tail, whichever is faster.

I like to eat things that have other things in them. Like pastas with chicken or seafood, cereals with marshmallows or shrimp and garlic sauce, that staple of Chinese restaurants that have pictures for menus. It's a pretty convenient menu system, when you think about it, and I still think it's a little bit funny that they always have pictures of spareribs on them. Spareribs just aren't the sort of thing that I think of as Chinese food. Even though I'm told that there is not that much that is "Chinese" about it. Funny how Americans can remake the food culture of a country with a billion people into their own. We are such an awesome people, I wish I were something else so I could choose to become American.

When I eat those things, though, I like to have a relatively even distribution of the things that are in the thing. I try to spread out the things throughout the meal because I hate having the
the last bite of any meal not have a bite of the special ingredient. The Chicken Alfredo is called that because of the chicken, the shrimp and garlic sauce has the same deal, and where do you think all the luck in the Lucky Charms come from? If I wanted bites of Alfredo, I would have ordered it without the chicken. If I wanted to eat Lucky Charms without the marshmallows, I would crumble pieces of my cork bulletin board off into a bowl of milk. And I don't want that.

Also, eating two shrimp in one bite is completely unacceptable. That would be a completely irresponsible decision. Occasionally a bite with no shrimp or chicken may be required, but so long as there are pieces left for later bites. Mostly, I think people who want to eat all their shrimp right away are sociopaths. Those are the kinds of people who, like the foolish grasshopper, eat all of their food in the spring. I, like the wise ant, store a little bit for the winter so I can enjoy shrimp throughout the entire meal. And it was delicious.

Part of a complete breakfast

I used to be skeptical of cereal. I mean that in more recent times; before that I used to think that cereal could do no wrong. Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Froot Loops, you name it. If there would have been a civil suit between Sonny the Cocoa Puffs bird and some other non-cereal related cartoon character when I was 8, I probably would have sided with Sonny because he was involved with such a delicious cereal, even if part of the evidence provided by the other cartoon was a tape recording of "I'm cuckoo for tortious interference!" That is, assuming that's what the lawsuit was about and the other cartoon character was not a Ninja Turtle. I'm pretty sure they would have trumped everybody when I was 8.

That all changed, though, when I started buying my own food. Cereal is expensive, particularly the ones I mentioned. And if you have big bowls, they don't last for very long. It's also so easy to skip breakfast, so paying $5 a box for chocolate favored grains that are mostly air anyway is an easy excuse. It's a shame, really, because all we keep hearing about is how important breakfast is. I'm really a little surprised that the FDA or whoever else is responsible for PSAs hasn't tried this sort of ad campaign with Law & Order. That would reach a lot of people. The Saturday morning angle is nice, but that's only half the puzzle. The kids are key, yes, but half the time you tell an adult that you want something that has a childish name and they screw it up. Like, for example, my dad made reference to "MyTube" the other day. He meant Facebook. Adults need to be bombarded with terminology, and Law & Order is the way to do it. Dun dun.

But I've had a cereal renaissance lately. It started when I just got tired of not eating breakfast. I also found that Crispix, probably one of my Top 5 cereals is considerably cheaper than Lucky Charms, which is a natural top choice since I share a cultural heritage with that particular cereal. Crispix also seems like it's a good choice health-wise, since the it's ingredients are boring things like corn and rice and the sugar content isn't measured in pounds. Although at this point I don't really know exactly how to determine if a given food is all that good for you anymore, since one of my friends is a doctor and occasionally laughs at me for suggesting that something might be good for you. The reaction was akin to somebody suggesting to me that they did their own calculations for the buildings in their house by the statics formula F=ma^2. (Which is fundamentally false.)

At any rate, I'm going to keep eating Crispix as long as it's cheap enough to not offend my sensibilities. Also, Shrek is on the front of the box and he's almost as good as Sonny.