Arizona Arnold Palmer Lite Half & Half
Submitted by Philip Drotleff
The first sip of this golf-themed beverage is actually quite a refreshing experience. The down-home southern goodness of iced tea mingles with the summery tartness of lemonade and creates an unbeatable flavor combination. Not since chocolate and peanut butter were introduced has there been a partnership that just feels so right.
As I savor the head rush that accompanies the first sip, I can almost feel the mid-afternoon sun on my face as I leisurely drink Arnold Palmer Lite Half & Half on a veranda overlooking a beautifully groomed lawn in some idyllic southern estate where people do not worry about money. My beautiful new wife and I have matching sweaters knotted around our necks. We play tennis most days, and on weekends I play golf with my equally rich and good-looking friends. We trade stock tips and advice on getting over jet lag or interacting with hired help.
The freezing rain beating on the window wakes me from my daydream. I am slumped in a chair in a dark room surrounded with the crumpled foil wrappers of about thirty chocolate Chanukah coins. I pick up my can of Arizona Arnold Palmer Lite Half & Half only to find it empty. It takes all the strength I can muster just to walk to the bathroom and brush my teeth before going to bed. Too tired to even weep, I fall asleep alone between cold, indifferent sheets. The next day I buy three more cans, accompanied by some candy bars and a bottle of cheap vodka.
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Trader Joe’s Mildly Spiced Vegetable Burritos
Submitted by Carly Fisher
Wandering the yuppie-packed aisles of Trader Joe’s can be an intimidating experience when you only have $150 to your name and so many tempting items at your fingertips. Tarte d’Alsace, Chicken Serenada, and Reduced Guilt Filet of Sole call my name, but it is only one that wins my affection: I turn to you, Trader Joe’s Mildly Spiced Vegetable Burrito.
The true zeitgeist of the recession, these burritos appeal to my innate sense of desperation. At around $2.50 for two burritos, you get a real bang for your buck—leaving plenty of spare change for the standard purchase of $3 Chuck Shaw. As advertised, the burritos are mildly spiced, which adds a slight punch of color to an otherwise unfulfilling and loveless life. Don’t fool yourself into believing these burritos are meant for sharing (couples don’t buy microwave burritos), so come hungry!
It would probably be in your best interest to use an oven to heat up the burritos to avoid the watery mess of corn, black beans, and tomatoes. But really, who does that? Instead: open the bottle of wine, heat up the burritos to an acceptable temperature, and then start writing. You have a whole lot of soul searching to do and only 300 calories to fuel those tears until your unemployment runs out, so time to get crackin’!
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Ralph and Charlie’s Carrot Everyday Beverage
Submitted by M.R. Easton
Last Saturday, I walked into a bodega thirsty and in possession of my senses, and by God, I walked out with a losing five-dollar scratch ticket and a bottle of agricultural waste.
I’d gone in looking for a sports drink, but a bottle of Ralph and Charlie’s carrot juice called to me from the refrigerated case. It was named for two guys, like Ben and Jerry’s. It was made here in Brooklyn. And the morphology was vaguely Nantuckety Nectarish, a predator mimicking its prey.
I bought it, and, on impulse, a scratch ticket too. “Is it a good one?” I asked. “Inshallah.” God did not will it, but paying five dollars for a small piece of cardboard was not my worst purchase that day.
Out on the sidewalk, I unscrewed the wide mouth cap and drank deeply. It had an unpleasant texture, and none of the rich, dirty taste of fresh carrot juice. In fact, it had almost no flavor at all beyond an odd, sweet sourness. Ralph and Charlie had found a way to capture the very worst part of vegetable juice, the feel of cellulose clinging to your teeth, without any of the flavor. (Or nutrition: “Not a significant source of cholesterol, sodium, protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium and iron.”)
I now noticed the absence of the word juice from the bottle. On the front the contents were described twice, though with industry-insider vagueness, as an “everyday beverage.” The back was more specific, but still opaque: it was a “vegetable and pomace beverage,” and a “carrot drink.”
A suspicion formed.
Perhaps, as in the best works of suspense, you solved the mystery just moments before it is revealed: it turns out that pomace is what is left when you squeeze the juice out of something. Not only is it not juice, it is the opposite of juice.
Google-image “pomace”; you will see loose wet piles, scattered pellets, and handfuls of dark roughage. The accompanying text explains that when not discarded outright, pomace is used as compost, cattle feed, or biofuel. It is generally not people food.
There are exceptions: you can ferment grape pomace into a weak wine that Romans once gave to slaves. It’s illegal to sell this wine in the EU, although you can distill it to make grappa, a perfectly respectable product. You can use the pulp and skins of olives to make low-grade olive oil. But you have to use a lot of chemicals, and the vigilant EU pomace-keepers won’t let you call it olive oil.
And if it’s carrot pomace, well, apparently you can put it in a bottle spangled with pictures of fluffy white clouds and crisp orange carrots, and sell it to idiots as an “everyday beverage.” But it must be a different idiot every day. Thirsty as I was, I couldn’t even finish the bottle, let alone commit to making it part of my daily routine.
Ralph and Charlie’s website helpfully notes: “A healthy lifestyle starts with a glass of carrot juice every day.” That may be true, but they are not allowed to call their product carrot juice on the bottle. But it would probably be less market-savvy, and less true, to state, “A healthy lifestyle starts with a glass of carrot pomace every day.” Or even: “A healthy lifestyle starts with a glass of everyday beverage, every day.”
The website continues in the third person: “‘This package is unique and straight-forward: you know what you are buying once you see the product,’ says the marketer.”
But the marketer’s brief comment only highlights what he hopes to hide. You most likely do not know what you are buying, unless you were already pomace-curious and have done your homework. And, perhaps freed from the stringent laws governing the bottle’s label, the website never drops the P-word.
To be fair, Ralph and Charlie have found a way to keep waste out of the landfill, while creating an affordable, all-natural juice-like product. Not all of their drinks are pomace-based, and perhaps the other flavors are better. But for their carrot-flavored everyday beverage, Ralph and Charlie have gone after the wrong market segment. Instead of targeting for the finicky human market, they should have gone for livestock, compost heaps, and the coveted 18-34 millimeter biofuel-pellet-making machines.
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Neurogasm
Submitted by Jonathan Holley
There’s nothing wrong with the humdrum: some people are content with plain turkey sandwiches, rusty tap water, and vapid humping; but if you’re the kind of werewolf who lives for scorching curries and intense rail-making, a 14.5 ounce serving of Neurogasm “nutritional supplement” might just be your optimum drink accessory. It’s a lightly carbonated fruit concoction that’s surprisingly un-disgusting for something bottled in what appears to be a sex toy for rhinos. Each bottle “provides playful energy,” “supports healthy circulation,” and critically, “helps support the pleasure response.” 35 Calories.
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Big Gay Ice Cream Choinkwich
Submitted by Shakira Andrea Sison
If you’ve ever wanted to attend Mass at a Catholic Church naked and eating a hotdog on Good Friday, then the indulgent treat of your fantasies is now a slobbering reality. The Choinkwich not only pairs the delectable flavors of smoked pork fat with chocolate and cream, it is also served from a truck that colorfully advertises activities that already destroyed civilization even before you began to contemplate sacrilege during Lent.
The Choinkwich is a chocolate ice cream sandwich made with… love (of the equal kind). A crispy, caramelized strip of bacon is nestled between layers of chocolate cartwheel cookie and chocolate soft serve ice cream. If you’re lucky it is served to you by the very cute and charming innovator of everything Big Gay Ice Cream, Doug Quint, who is also happens to be professional bassoon player! Now if that isn’t all kinds of sinful and creamy, then just spit me out and dip me in Nutella, another staple Doug uses to line cones at this infamous food truck that also recently opened its first store in the East Village in Manhattan.
The popular treat craved by bacon-chocolate junkies is such a mysterious presence that it is a secret. It does not appear on any menus or specials posted each day. One searching for the mix of salt, smoke, meat, frozen milk and cocoa must learn to ask for it on the sly. And if one is so unfortunate as reach the front of the line after a thirty minute wait and end up with no Choinkwich, there is always the equally seductive mix of vanilla, dulce de leche, rock salt and chocolate dip, very aptly named for the images it conjures once it meets thy puckering gay lips: The Salty Pimp.
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Tostitos Hint of Jalapeño
Submitted by Joe McGonegal
I can’t believe what I’m biting into—pure white corn, natural oil, a dash of salt. And now, layered on top, a smear of green, salty goodness: jalapeño powder. I lay you, powder down, one by one on my tongue and revel in this light and healthy treat.
Half a bag later, the wife still not home from work, I get that sinking feeling again, one I haven’t known since my schoolboy years. Unfamiliar at first, it comes back like an old nagging injury.
It’s the heartburn I used to get, eating seven-ounce bags of Cool Ranch on the stadium steps.
Congratulations, Tostitos, you had me at “whole grains.” But you’re a whore with angel wings, aren’t you, Doritos dressed in church clothes.
After years of putting on superior airs as I served you to dinner guests and friends, thinking you the refined, grown-up chip, I’ve been duped. I started on the Tortilla Chips during a health kick years ago and didn’t look back. Sure, I matured like everyone else into the Restaurant Style Blue Corn chips and flirted with the Dipping Strips!™ at game time. Then came the sly rhetoric of flavors. Witchcraft. The writing was on the grease-smeared bag. I was just too daft to read beyond “Hint of Lime” and “Hint of Jalapeño.”
But point, set, match: I’m basically eating Doritos again. I turn to your “nutritional” information to fact-check what’s already clear. 140 calories, 60 from fat. Identical to every other salty treat that’s led me down the rabbit hole.
Oh Tostitos, we were good once—could’ve been great. Maybe it’s time to try pretzels again.
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Trident Vitality Rejuve Gum
Submitted by Gregory Collins
An over-the-top, industrially and graphically designed silver box with a flip-up lid. Cigarettes for women? European chocolates? A lost prop from a Bourne movie? You just don’t know. Way too much Helvetica. You scour the fine print and discover it is gum. Impressive. You did not see that coming. You open it. Flashy foil and clear plastic inner packaging puts you in an absurdly Dyson state of mind. Health. Simplicity. Understated affluence. The mint sprig on the packaging has a drop shadow so you start salivating like a Pavlovian St. Bernard thinking a mojito explosion is imminent. Then, you bite down. Your senses gridlock. Massive confusion. Everything is watermelon. The juice is watermelon. Your tongue is watermelon. Your minty fresh exhalation is watermelon. You take it out of your mouth, hoping for visual clues. But there are none. There is only watermelon.
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Amy’s Organic Lentil Soup
Submitted by Amy Jennings
If you’ve read the Old Testament, perhaps to increase your chances of finishing the New York Times’ Sunday Puzzle, you may remember that Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup. If I were illogical, I’d say that soup must have been Amy’s Organic.
Heat some up on your lunch break and let its sophisticated bouquet ensconce your cubicle, transporting you to Prehistoric Cyprus whence the lentil came. Be sure to turn the dial on your cubicle time machine to just past the Aceramic1 Neolithic Era, because you’ll be wanting a whole bowlful of this stuff.
As the genetically unmodified aroma of lentils permeates the air, piquing the noses of coworkers feeding on composites of refined grain and trans fat, things could take a turn for the judgmental. Simply point out that the lentil is the least pretentious, by weight, of any legume and return to Cyprus for an afternoon of spindling and animal husbandry. Or let the soup take you to the 17th-Century BC and share a can with Esau. While you’re at it, ask him for a 4-letter word for the land of his descendants.
1 Non-pottery producing.
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Assorted Mini Jelly Fruit Slices Kosher L’Pesach
Submitted by Laura Rubenstein
Early spring in New England is a somewhat dithering affair. The sky is a pale gray blue, rubbery and oxygen-less, like the lips of the recently drowned. Along the horizon, where the heavens skirt along the curvature of the earth, a faint stripe of neon cerulean pulses: the promise of the seasons to come. But woe! While the days of Salvation and Hope may be nigh, they are not quite nigh enough. It is easy to forget that the monotony of these dreary days serves as a harbinger of the divine, signaling the imminent arrival of something Biblical. I speak not of the feast days of St. Julian of Anazarbus, St. Megingaud or St. Patrick, not of the April return of one J. Christ bearing Peeps. I speak of Passover.
Here is another way you can tell Passover is coming: when a box of Assorted Mini Jelly Fruit Slices Kosher L’Pesach shows up on the shelf of your local food emporium.
Assorted Mini Jelly Fruit Slices Kosher L’Pesach come in four colors, all equally unnatural and mildly toxic looking. Were I to construct a Venn diagram of a strawberry and a tube of cadmium pigment, the red Jelly Fruit Slic[e] Kosher L’Pesach would be firmly entrenched in the center, like Moses in his Nile-bound basket. So nauseatingly sugary are these vile candies of affliction that merely calling them to being in my mind’s eye causes a pronounced ache in my bicuspids. In the interest of journalistic integrity, I force myself to sample a slice of “lemon.” My teeth leave track marks in the gelatin (a texture similar to the form I imagine candied asp might take). I examine the two distinct impressions made by my central incisors; I am both repulsed and intrigued by how my Assorted Mini Jelly Fruit Slic[e] Kosher L’Pesach now resembles a fossilized relic dug up from the shadowy earth beneath a Sphinx. Unable and unwilling to sample another flavor, I throw the box Assorted Mini Jelly Fruit Slices Kosher L’Pesach into the garbage. Because they are a holy candy, I counterbalance my disposal of them with a selfless wish for mankind. I squeeze my eyes tight and pray to Pharoah that the box of Assorted Mini Jelly Fruit Slices Kosher L’Pesach eventually makes its way into the hands of more appreciative audiences: the peripatetic alcohol who lives in the apartment below mine; the colony of hardy squirrels who inhabit the dumpster behind my building; or Osiris, god of the Underworld.
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Pringles Xtreme Screamin’ Dill Pickle
Submitted by Matt Craine
I have recently been feeling that my taste buds are not being tested on a regular basis. At least not regularly enough to develop any kind of trending results or future projection of taste bud performance, let alone any sort of chart or graph. As such, I was tickled to find a food-like product that promised to do just that: Pringles Xtreme Screamin’ Dill Pickle.
While the entire line of four Pringles Xtreme Potato Crisps demands that you “Test Your Taste Buds,” I decided to refer to the handy infographs on the cans which presents a thermometeresque gauge of what I can only assume to be heat. When compared to the graphic located on the Ragin’ Cajun, Blastin’ Buffalo Wing, and Sizzlin’ Sweet BBQ cans, which are clearly marked by varying sizes of flames to correspond to the relative hotness of the powder-coating of the crisps, the prospective snacker is met with a conundrum upon viewing the corresponding graphic on the Screamin’ Dill Pickle can. Rather than a red fluid representing heat being at varying levels on the various crisps’ cans, the Screamin’ Dill Pickle can provides the snacker with a green thermometeresque design with symbols not easily recognized or related to any known scale of measurement. One is then led to the conclusion that this indicates the crisps’ level of pickle-ness. This presents a half-full meter, which, some might say, does not equate to a pickle-ness that could be called “screamin’” but I decided to test the old buds anyway.
I did so for several reasons—primarily, I wanted to develop my own sense of pickle-ness measurement, and starting in the middle seemed to be the best strategy. Secondarily, since Screamin’ Dill Pickle sounds like a Mississippi Delta Roots Blues guitarist/singer. Additionally, the can presents dill pickle spears flying out towards the snacker that one must assume are, in fact, screamin’ as they fly and finally because the entire Xtreme line promises that the crisps “…aren’t for the faint of heart” and if the snacker chooses to “brave one bite…[they’ll] be hooked on the aggressive taste that won’t quit.”
They were somewhere between OK and not that good. They didn’t taste like dill pickles, let alone screamin’ ones. More like Pringles brined in dill pickle juice that somehow retained their shape and crispness. To be fair, I did try eating them using many of the suggested methods from Pringles commercials: biting from one crisp, shoving anywhere from one to ten in my mouth at once, flipping them like coins into my mouth, and, of course, the ubiquitous “duck-billing” method. I found the taste to indeed be aggressive; I found the taste to indeed not quit. However I do not feel that they adequately tested my taste buds, or get me hooked, or gave me any eye-opening sense of how future pickle-ness could be measured, without the aid of experts and a green thermometeresque device.
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