Thanksgiving...Turkeys?

(Side note: My mom is out of the hospital and things have calmed down a bit over here. But we're not doing our Thanksgiving until Sunday so that she'll be more up for it and able to enjoy it more. Let the posting resume.)

OK, so I have the best friend ever. And for Thanksgiving, she wanted to make these little candy turkey things for her table. She was going for this:

Cute, right? Yeah, super cute. But when my friend tried to recreate this cuteness, she ended up with a slightly different version.

They're super cute in their own, unique way, right? Riiiiiiight.

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The McWhat?

The McRib is back. Personally, I couldn't care any less that it ever left in the first place. But there are apparently folks who are really into this thing. It quite possibly has become the most ridiculously over-hyped menu item of all time. It has this cult-like following that seem to hold the sandwich in a higher esteem than that of the Pope. (And with all of that child touching that's gone on in the Catholic church, that probably isn't that hard to do.) I'm going to see if I can knock it down off of its sanctimonious little high horse bun a little bit here.

Do you know what's IN a McRib? I mean, the term 'rib' would imply that it is some sort of pork. (I suppose it could be beef, but it's not the size of a brontosaurus burger, so I'm going to go with pig.) And apparently this thing has seventy ingredients. And while most of those ingredients compose the bun and the sauce, what you really need to be concerned with is the "pork patty". You know the one. It's some sort of congealed meat that is shaped to look like it has bones in it. There are no bones. That's the good news. The bad news is that there isn't exactly all that much "pork", either.

According to KSEE24 News, "The slab of "restructured meat product" consists of salt (980 mg, more than half your recommended daily intake) and pig innards, like tripe, heart, and scalded stomach." Mmmmm! Tripe, heart and stomach. Sounds like a band from 1974 that was modeled after Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Tripe, heart and stomach. So, they take all of that and blend it all up (kind of like a shake), form it into a patty with fake bones and then slap it on a bun with a little sauce, onions and pickles. Sound good? I hope not. And SF Gate is even reporting that Time magazine is reporting that the McRib contains something called "...azodicarbonamide: a flour-bleaching agent that is most commonly used in the manufacture of foamed plastics like in gym mats and the soles of shoes." Huh. I'm going to assume that whatever that stuff is can also be found in several other McDonald's products. There are an awful lot of menu items there whose taste could definitely be compared to that of a yoga mat.

Look, I realize that one can just just about every part of the pig except for the oink. But that doesn't mean that one should. And I also realize that one cannot come to expect a very high quality level of meat in fast food products. But I'd like to think that there is some regular meat. I don't think that one should have to be subjected to innards disguised as pork rib sammies. And apparently, I'm the only one who thinks that as this sandwich has become more popular than God. We are truly doomed.

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Darwini Missed One

I don't know how Darwin missed the guy in the video below. He (Darwin, that is) must have been on vacation when the moron in the video below decided that it would be a good idea to feed (yes, feed) a crocodile. In a swamp. By means of wading in and holding some sort of tasty treat above the crocodile's head. And somehow, the guy ends up in one piece at the end of it. I did not see that coming. Maybe this guy just got lucky and happened upon the world's oldest crocodile. Or maybe it was a depressed crocodile and just didn't have the gumption to chomp the guy into his lunch. Whatever it was, I'm just going to guess that the guy in the video won't make this his last attempt at feeding the wild crocodiles by hand. Thus, I'm pretty sure that it won't be long before I show you a video of this same guy after Darwin got wind of this. I always wonder just how stupid some people can be. And then I see stuff like this and I realize that the answer is very. Very stupid. (Oh, and if the video doesn't load, click here.)

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Coming Soon!

Need something to wash down that s*** sandwich that I discussed a couple of days ago? How about an apple flavored shot of horse semen? No? Are you sure? Because they're out there and, apparently, there are people who are paying to have this...experience? I don't know what to call this at all. Really. I'm running out of words to describe the idiotic.

According to the Dominion Post, "...Apple-infused horse semen shots...are part of the central Wellington pub's entry in the nationwide 14th annual Monteith's Beer & Wild Food Challenge". Wow. Challenge accepted, eh? Holy crap. How this made it onto the menu at the Green Man Pub after the "challenge" is beyond me. But apparently, people (mostly women) want to try it.

It is what it says that it is. It's horse jizz with the lovely taste of apples infused in it, presumably ruining the lovely taste of apples. And according to the article, "...the drink was proving most popular with women." Jesus. Ladies, you're not helping anything by drinking one of those. Not helping a thing. This just turns the whole thing into one big game of "Let's see what else she'll buy!" And I'm pretty sure that's how the world ended up with thousand dollar purses and fifteen hundred dollar shoes! And considering that 20 vials of the...stuff costs $300 dollars, this sort of stupidity isn't going to come cheap. (Pun SO not intended. I barely want to write about this, let alone brainstorm up witty little mannerisms.)

The chef at the Green Man Pub, a one Jason Varley, "...admits to trying the drink himself which he said was "ok", and "like custard"." No, it doesn't. I haven't tried, nor am I going to. But I can tell you right now that it does not taste "like custard". You know what does taste "like custard"? That's right. Custard! Not...this. Or...that. You know what I mean! It does not taste like custard! It doesn't taste like chicken, either, so don't even go there! If something has to taste "like" something else, why don't you just eat the something else? That's why I don't eat things that are made out of tofu. "It tastes like chicken, but it's really tofu." What's the point in that? Just eat some damn chicken. Same with this...stuff. If it tastes like custard, dear God, please have some custard instead.

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Don't Waste Your Waste

Ever just feel the need to tell someone to "eat s***"? Well, now you can do that and it's actually a possibility for them, thanks to some Japanese scientists who "...have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces." Oh, Japan. Is there anything that you can't do?

According to an article over at Yahoo! News, a one "Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement." That's right. There are proteins in your poop. It's really not so much "Who knew?" as much as it is "Who cares? But I'll tell you who cared. Tokyo Sewage, that's who. Well, they might not have cared about the protein part, but they were concerned about the poop part. They had too much sewage mud. So they went to a wacky Japanese scientist and asked him what he could do with it. I don't know that they were expecting to get lunch out of the deal, but that seems to be what has happened.

I'm going to just interject a thought right here. What's wrong with fertilizer? Isn't poop good fertilizer? Don't they have crops that need...boosting or whatever you want to call it? Why wasn't fertilizer this scientist's first thought? How come he went right to"I wonder if we could eat it?"

I guess the poop, er, sewage had a lot of bacteria in it because there was a lot of protein in it. That's when they "... extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak." OK, I think that someone is taking their liberties just a bit too far to start describing this stuff as "steak". Seriously? I'm thinking that if you're going to go with anything other than poo, you really can't just jump to "steak". They claim that "The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals." Hmm. Now, if I read that right, the sewage is where the protein was. So that means that almost two-thirds of this little treat comes from waste. I don't even want to KNOW where the carbohydrates come from, so don't bother asking. I am NOT researching THAT.

And get this: "The scientists hope to price it the same as actual meat, but at the moment the excrement steaks are ten to twenty times the price they should be thanks to the cost of research." Ten to TWENTY times MORE than REAL meat?! No thanks! I don't care how many greenhouse gases this would eliminate! I'm not paying twenty times more than I need to in order to eat a burger made out of poo! What say I pay twenty times less than that and get a meal with NO POO in it? OK?

This scientist claims to understand "...the psychological barriers that need to be surmounted knowing that your food is made from human feces." Wow. Psychological barriers. That might be the understatement of my lifetime. But do you know what they're hoping will persuade people to dive right in? They're hoping that "...people will be able to overlook that ugly detail in favor of perks like environmental responsibility, cost and the fact that the meat will have fewer calories."

Environmental responsibility? I recycle, for cryin' out loud! I feel as if I'm doing my part. I am not going above and beyond sorting out my cans and bottles by eating a s*** sandwich! Al Gore weighs four hundred pounds and I'll bet that he wouldn't eat one of those things either. And are they really going to throw the "fewer calories" at us? Seriously, this thing could make me drop twenty pounds each time I ate it and I still wouldn't touch it. You know why? Because it's made of human excrement, that is correct! And do you know what has even fewer calories than eating the Japanese s*** sandwich? NOT eating the Japanese s*** sandwich.

This is a terrible idea that needs to be filed away in the "They Mean Well" category. There are plenty of other examples out there of things that were made, but they just didn't turn out so well. The Yugo. A McPizza. Geometry. All had humble beginnings but just never really panned out. This needs to go in that category. Immediately.

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It's NOT Offensive!

With so much asininity going on all over the place today, I decided to flip a coin. Then I flipped it again. Then I flipped it again. Then I flipped it yet again. Finally, I got bored flipping the coin and decided I needed to pick a topic. I went with one of my favorite occurrences, one I love to despise. I went with a company pulling an ad because A group complained about something that doesn't even exist to complain about.

The gutless, spineless, wussy-ass company in the spotlight this time is General Mills and the commercial for the product that shouldn't even be in question is for Yoplait yogurt. According to the Huffington Post, a group called NEDA (the National Eating Disorders Association) believes that the commercial "...could trigger dangerous behavior in those suffering from eating disorders." Wow. That's a pretty powerful commercial. Or not. Let's see what the commercial entails.

According to the article (well, and the commercial), what we have is a young woman who appears

to be of regular weight standing in front of an open refrigerator. In front of her is a massive raspberry cheese cake with a huge slice taken out of it. The woman does what a lot of people (not just women) do when they're looking at a delicious freaking dessert like raspberry cheesecake. She starts to figure out how she could eat some. She thinks first about how it would be all right because she had been "good" that day. (I'm assuming that is referring to her eating habits and not some sort of willfull disobedience of the law.) Then she ponders whether eating celery sticks along with the slice of cheesecake would balance it out. (I'm pretty sure that works.) Then she comes up with the idea of jogging in place while she eats a large slice. (I'm pretty sure that would work too.) Then she wants to jog in place AND eat the cheesecake AND eat the celery sticks. She's just full of ideas, that lady is.

That's when a co-worker or some other mystery woman comes up behind her and exclaims, "Oh! Raspberry cheesecake!" And she reaches into the refrigerator and grabs a container of Raspberry Cheesecake Yoplait yogurt (which is delicious, by the way). The would-be-jogging woman notices that the yogurt woman looks like she has lost weight. Cut to a picture of the product and then back to the woman who has decided upon the Yoplait yogurt for herself instead of the cheesecake and is sitting happily at a table eating her yogurt. The end. Do you feel like developing an eating disorder now? No? Huh. I guess that's because NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS!!

HOW on earth is that supposed to trigger something in people with eating disorders?! Well, if you ask the president of the very annoying NEDA, a one Lynn Grefe, she will tell you "[For those with eating disorders], opening a refrigerator is like walking off a bridge. And to see this behavior in a commercial tells people with eating disorders, see, it's even on TV. It's ok and normal for my head to go through all these mental exercises." Oh, for Christ's sake.

Soooo....God, I don't even know where to begin. I guess the obvious. Does that apply to any depiction of an opening refrigerator on TV? Because if it does, half of the TV shows out there and half of the commercials out there are going to need to be cancelled. And don't forget about the movies! My GOD, the movies! And if this applies to food, of course it must apply to other things. For example, people who are violent. If they see violence being depicted somewhere, they must automatically think that it's OK. Same with drug users. Same with people who are knocked up. All just fine because, by using the NEDA logic (which I can't not recommend enough) if it's "even on TV" then "it's normal for my head to go through all of these mental exercises." Oh, there's something mental going on here, that's for sure. But I'm not so sure that it's exercises.

Why does this have to be about eating disorders? Why can't this be about eating healthy and being a reasonable weight? Isn't that what

Michelle Obama has been trying to drill into the soft, soft heads of the American public? We need to make better food choices? How is that commercial anything other than a woman trying to make a good food choice? She isn't saying that she wants to eat the entire cheesecake and then vomit it up in the company bathroom five minutes later! She isn't saying that she has starved herself for the past two months, eating nothing but dust and Chiclets because she feels fat. No, she's trying to figure out how she can justify eating something that probably isn't the best choice all the time. How is this commercial about anything other than selling yogurt and trying to make responsible eating decisions? I don't get it.

According to various sources on the Innerwebs, it is estimated that approximately 8,000,000 people have some sort of eating disorder in the United States. With a population of approximately 307,000,000, that amounts to about two and a half percent. But if those two and a half percent complain, by God, you had better do something about it, right? Wrong! There isn't any INTENT in this instance! There isn't even any SUBSTANCE in this instance! The VP of Corporate Communications for General Mills, a one Tom Forsythe, responded "We had no idea...The thought had never occurred to anyone, and no one raised the point. We aren't sure that everyone saw the ad that way, but if anyone did, that was not our intent and is cause for concern. We thought it best to take it down."


You thought best to take it down WHY? Because you're spineless? Of course that thought never occurred to anyone. Why would it?! It's a non-issue. No one raised the point because there wasn't a point to be raised! And while he's right that everyone did NOT see the ad that way, he's totally wrong when he says that "We thought best to take it down." NO! That's not best. That's not best AT ALL! ALL a company needs to do in this situation is simply say, "We're sorry you're 'offended'. That wasn't our intent. We don't see the commercial as 'offensive'. We're not taking it off the air because there is nothing wrong with it." That's it. For a long time I have said that the first company to actually take this sort of a stance on an issue like this will see a windfall of profits. I guarantee you that if that article was about how Yoplait was NOT pulling their ad because a bunch of tight asses thought it would do...something....(I'm still not clear on their actual complaint)...I guarantee you that people would take notice and would buy that product. I don't even eat yogurt that often, but if Yoplait had kept the ad on the air, I would have made sure than whenever I did eat yogurt that it was Yoplait. The non-offensive video is below. But be warned! You could develop some sort of eating disorder by watching a woman open a refrigerator and try to decide what to eat. Lord only knows what other conditions you could come down with after watching it and I won't be held responsible. It's your doing, really.

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It's A Circle

The government is telling us what to eat again. That's right. They have revamped the food pyramid and are now giving us advice in the shape of a plate. They call it MyPlate. I don't know if they're trying to be all hip and make it sound like MySpace, but just the name alone irritates me, so you can only imagine how I'm going to feel about their new guidelines overall.

I'm going to be referencing a very informative article over at the Washington Post and from which I will share fascinating aspects of this insanity.For instance, the entire tone of the program is that everyone is an idiot and needs something that is almost an exact representation of the concept of eating in order to understand something that really isn't that freaking complicated! For example, let's take what a one Robb MacKie, who is the head of the American Bakers Association, had to say about it. "It’s brilliant in its simplicity...It’s something the average American can look at and get a visual feel for how they can fill up a plate at a meal.” No, it's something that an American with a below average IQ could maybe get a feel for. And brilliant in simplicity? Seriously, if you think about it and it's so freaking simple, why is everyone so fat? Do you really think that it is complicated guidelines that are making so many people look like the Michelin Man? I don't think that's it at all. If the "average American" need this simplistic sort of guidance for something as instinctual as eating, then we're going to be doomed much sooner than I had originally anticipated.

But that guy wasn't the only one with that sort of a tone. Here are some thoughts from a one

Robert Post at the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion: "It’s grabbing the consumers’ attention that we are after this time, not making it so complicated that perhaps it is a turnoff....There is something really inviting about this familiar setting for meal time.” So,because it looks like a plate, people can relate it to their plates? When it was in the form of a pyramid, people just got so confused because they didn't eat off of pyramids and, therefore, they had NO idea what to do? Is that the argument? God, people are dumb.

Now, I'll admit that the revamped food pyramid was a piece of crap. Behold!

Yeah, I don't know what that is supposed to be, nor who thought it was a good idea. It's like kind of a pie chart and kind of a bar chart and kind of a graph chart all rolled into one unintelligible piece of crap. What was wrong with the original pyramid? Behold!

See, I don't see why they had to change that to the crazy one. What about it is so confusing to people? What weren't they getting? What's that? Ohhhh. You think it isn't that people weren't understanding it as much as they weren't caring about it? Huh. Interesting theory. But, that can't be right because the government went through all of the trouble to make us MyPlate so that we could healthy. It can't be because we don't care! If we didn't care, then we'd be surrounded by gazillions of fast food joints and kids would be fat. That's what would happen if people didn't care. Geez. That seems obvious. Now, where was I? Oh, right! Stupidity.

Of course, I'm assuming that the USDA has given some sort of a guideline on what size plate to use for this insanity. Because if you think about it, a 12-inch plate filled up with all of the food that MyPlate recommends is going to be a heck of a lot of food. They still haven't defined a serving. Naturally, that brings up the question of how high one can pile their plate. They've got the two dimensional thing down. Now what about the three dimensional aspect. Are towers of meatloaf ok? And of course, God forbid if anyone mentions the connection between food intake, exercise and weight. Madness, I tell you. Sheer madness.

Oh, and speaking of madness, I'd like you to just take one more glance at the MyPlate illustration. Now I'd like you to know that the Robert Post that I quoted above "...has spent two years developing the plate and the website". That's right. Two years to come up with a circle. Two years to come up with that? You have GOT to be kidding me. What in the hell were they doing doing those two years? How many shapes did they reject before finally deciding on the miraculous plate shape (ie, the circle) divided into four fairly equal sections?! This is what my tax dollars paid for? Two years of this crap? How much was this, exactly? Two million dollars?! If I had known that they were looking for someone to do this for two million dollars and they had two years to do it, I would have gladly done the work for half that amount and it would have taken me an hour. But that's only if I was drunk. If I wasn't drunk, I would have been able to crank that puppy out in five minutes. You know why? Because it's a CIRCLE, that's why! God, we're doomed.

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Run For The Border

I went to Taco Bell yesterday. My companion, who has been starving herself for a date on Monday, finally caved into her famishment and was in dire need of a taco salad. Thus, we went. And as I'm sitting in the drive-thru, looking at their offerings and waiting for the minion with the microphone to take my order, I noticed that they have a special going. And their wording of that particular special bothered me. Behold! Do you see the problem? Yes, I realize that the one burrito looks like it has tater tots in it and that's a little concerning, but that's not my main concern. (Also, I'm pretty sure that the Cinnamon Twists are merely sugar coated pork rinds.) No, it's the name of the thing. $5 Buck Box. Doesn't that read "Five Dollar Buck Box"? Why isn't it simply 5 Buck Box? Never mind that if you have five of a buck that you now have bucks (plural). It makes no sense. It makes even less sense than food that is under a dollar. If I ate red meat (and if I could narrow down what those tater tot lookin' things actually were), I might have ordered that just on principle so that I could say, "I'd like one Five Dollar Buck Box, please." Who do I take this up with? Where's that little dog? Would he know?

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A Feast For A Fatty

Well, well, well. I knew I would hear about Donna Simpson again and I figured that it would be pretty soon, but I just didn't think that it would be in this fashion. I figured the next I hear, she would have been dead as a door nail. But that wasn't the case. Yet. Ms. Simpson, as you may or may not care to remember, is on a quest to become the world's fattest woman. That's right. She wants to be super, duper fat. Her goal is to reach 1,000 pounds. And not only is she is well on her way, but she's a whole heck of a lot closer thanks to her Christmas feast which she enjoyed just the other day.

Ms. Simpson, all five feet, two inches of her, defended what she ate for Christmas dinner by telling The Daily Mail, "'I eat as much as I want, whenever I want but at this time of year I really go all out. Christmas should give you carte blanche to do whatever you want." Interesting philosophy you have there, Jabba. See, I don't think that there are any days where you get to do "whatever you want". Seems sort of like an anarchist's guide to denial. Let's see if she says anything else to solidify that theory. "Donna, who insists she is healthy, told the Sunday Mirror: 'People who feel guilty about eating are hilarious." Let's see...five foot, two inches...648 pounds...yeah, you sound real healthy there, cupcake. I guess it's your abundance of health that is the reason that you need a Rascal to get around since you can't walk under your own power. You're barely ambulatory and you can roll there and say that you're healthy? I think you're the one who's hilarious.

I also think that she's the one who is gluttonous. Shall we take a gander at her Christmas feast? I think we shall. (By the way, if you're wondering how she pays for all of this food, you're going to be sorry that you ever wondered anything remotely like that at all when I tell you that she "...makes a living from being fat, getting paid to make public appearances and keeping a website where people can pay to watch her eat." See? Sorry.)

Two 25lb turkeys
Two maple-glazed hams
15lbs of potatoes (10lbs roast, 5lbs mashed)
Five loaves of bread
Five pounds of herb stuffing
Four pints of gravy (that's half a gallon!)
Four pints of cranberry dressing
5 lbs of chopped carrots
5 lbs of sweet corn
5 lbs of butternut squash
1 tray of mixed green salad including salad dressing
And a 'salad' made of marshmallow, cream cheese, whipped cream and cookies.

Holy. Crap.

The Daily Mail estimates that the caloric intake of her gastronomic gluttony is about 30,000 calories. That's about 2 weeks worth of food there for a regular person, strictly speaking calorie-wise, of course. It's also right around the caloric intake of all of the animals during feeding time at the zoo. While I assume that her enabling boyfriend cooked all of this for her, my question is where did he cook it all? Did he get it all pre-made? He'd probably have to. I wonder if he rented a wheelbarrow or a forklift to get it all in the house.

The thing that bothers me about this situation, other than the fact that it's incredibly disgusting and beyond selfish, is that this woman (and I use that term loosely, as I'm pretty sure that any gender that she might have been born with is fairly obsolete and irrelevant at this point) has children. She has a 14-year old son and a 3-year old daughter. She's going to kill herself with her carte blanche on life and they are going to be without a mother. Real nice, there. Too bad that her philosophy couldn't have included being a responsible parent to her children.

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A Festivus For Anyone

I'm not really a proponent of giving inmates behind bars a bunch of privileges. I'm more in favor of hard labor. Chain gangs, to be precise. I think we could get a lot of stuff done with inmate labor. If nothing else, I'm at least in favor of having them crush up big rocks into little rocks, complete with that big heavy ball chained to one leg. It'd give a nice old-timey feel to incarceration! So, given my outlook on the coddling of inmates, you can imagine that I built up a full head of steam after reading that one inmate managed to get special meals because of his religious beliefs. And before you go off telling me that they're allowed special diets for religious reasons, let me tell you that his "religious belief" was Festivus. Wait. What now?

Correct. According to my local San Jose Mercury News, a one Malcolm Alarmo King (Alarmo? Really? Is he supposed to be some sort of superhero?), currently behind bars at the Theo Lacy Jail down there in Orange County, was not a big fan of salami. (I'm merely guessing that the meals were heavy on the salami, as that's the only basis that the article gives for what transpired next.) He had originally "...asked for kosher meals at the Theo Lacy jail to maintain his healthy physique." Yep. One must be in tip-top shape to prepare for all of the drug dealing that they do when they're not behind bars, don't you know?

But, alas! His kosher meals were not to be, for simply wanting to be healthy, as "...sheriff's officials reserve kosher meals for inmates with a religious need." Now, apparently, this sort of thing has to be OK'ed be a judge. The judge that was apparently involved in this instance was a one Judge Derek G. Johnson and he "...demanded a religious reason for King to receive the meals and defense attorney Fred Thiagarajah cited his client's devotion to Festivus". Oh, for cryin' out loud!

Just in case you were living under a rock during most of the 1990s, allow me to explain Festivus to you. It derives from the TV show "Seinfeld". According to Wikipedia, it was a holiday that Frank Costanza invented "...as an alternative holiday in response to the commercialization of Christmas." Sure. That seems reasonable.

Festivus doesn't have a tree. Instead, there is simply an unadorned aluminum pole (Frank found tinsel to be distracting). According to Frank, the aluminum provides a "Very high strength-to-weight ratio", an important factor to consider when choosing any holiday centerpiece. Some Festivus traditions include "Airing of Grievances," where one lashes out at others and the world about how one has been disappointed in the past year, and the "Feats of Strength" where "...the head of the household selects one person at the Festivus celebration and challenges that person to a wrestling match." My point with all of this being is that it sounds absolutely ridiculous. It also sounds just like something that would have been made up by someone.

Unfortunately, the judge didn't seem to see it that way. Nope. He saw celebrating Festivus as a perfectly legitimate claim and granted the inmates request. This went on for two months before "...the sheriff's food services staff, who interviews those needing special diets, realized Festivus sounded phony." Good Lord. It took the food services staff to figure this farce out?! I'm not trying to belittle anyone with this next question, but what is their highest level of achieved education as compared to that of the freaking judge who gave this thing the green light?!

What was that judge thinking? Even if he hadn't heard of the Seinfeld episode, wouldn't you think that if he heard "Festivus" that he might ask something to the effect of "What the hell are you talking about?" Apparently not. And that's why an inmate got kosher meals for two months that the taxpayers footed the bill for. Now...where do I air my grievances?

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What's Cookin' On Labor Day?

It's Labor Day and that means picnics and barbecues if you're into that sort of thing. And if you're not into that sort of thing, then it simply means that it's Monday. But as I thought of all of the great grub that can be had at your typical American Labor Day feast, it made me really glad that I don't live in other countries where the grub isn't what I would call quite so great. I'm sure these countries are fine places to visit, but I can't that I'd want to live there with some of these items on the menus.

Take Peru, for example. Every year, they hold a festival dedicated to the guinea pig. And when I say "dedicated", I mean dedicated. Dedicated as in that's what they're cooking and serving up. Behold!

It's called cuy. Pronounce that however you'd like whilst you're trying not to gag. Maybe I would find it to be a little more appetizing if it wasn't just dumped in the fryer all whole like that. I don't want my food to have a face that can look at me. Ever. Nor do I want my food to have a discernible tail. Behold!

Served at a wild game restaurant in Guangzhou, China, those would be cooked field rats. I have no idea what the sauce or the outer coating on them is or is supposed to be. I am curious as to what purpose the tail serves. Is it like a built in stick, so you can eat 'em like a state fair food? I don't get it. Nor do I want it. Other things I don't want on or in my food? One of those things would be more than two legs. Behold!

Those would be deep fried spiders being sold in Vietnam. According to The Daily Telegraph, "... The fist-sized arachnids are crunchy on the outside and taste like cold, gooey chicken on the inside." An excellent description, though I'm not sure that I know what cold, gooey chicken tastes like, nor do I know why I would want to. They are 10 for two dollars which is quite a bargain. Still seems a little bit steep for me, however. Then again, any price to eat a deep fried spider seems like it would be too much for me. And it also seems like it would be a steep price for me to pay for anything this grotesque that is packaged in a can. Say, like these silkworm pupae that come in a can in Korea. Behold!

OK, see, I was going to say something about the "foods" before this one that alluded to there possibly not being a lot to eat in those countries and so they make do on what they have. But this kind of kills that theory. You would have to go out of your way to have this. It's not like you could just find the critters out in the barn like you could those field mice. (OK, fine. Out in the field. You knew what I meant!) That's just gross. Even with the sparkly toothpicks, they're just gross. You know what else is gross that sparkly toothpicks likely wouldn't help to be more palatable? Fish mouths! Wait. Yes, you heard me. Fish mouths. Behold!

What kind of fish have teeth like those?! No fish that I am aware of! Certainly not anything that is fit for consumption. Do you eat those little teeth things as well? I guess if you're at the point where you're already eating fish mouths, a few teeth aren't going to bother you much. I guess it would kind of be like if you were eating a cookie full of wasps, their little wings wouldn't bother you much either. Behold!

That would be what is called a digger wasp rice cracker. It is also called Jibachi Senbei. Neither terminology is going to make it look any better to me. Apparently, how this atrocity came to be was when "A Japanese fan club for wasps has added the insects to rice crackers, saying the result adds a delicious scent to the traditional fare." I don't want bugs in my food simply for a "delicious scent". No, thanks. And who has a fan club where the thing that you're a fan of becomes your lunch? If it was a Hello Kitty fan club, would they have kitten cookies with real kittens? It frightens me to think of what the answer to that might actually be.

And finally, just for something completely whack-a-do that really makes me glad that any chicken I might consume on Labor Day will be prepared on a grill and not in the fashion in which a restaurant in China prepares their chickens. That is, the fashion in which they kill the chicken involves having a snake bite its neck. Behold!

Oh, what the hell is that? It's just like what it looks like it is. It's a snake biting the neck of a chicken so that the chicken can be served in a dish called (wait for it) Snake-bit Chicken. Catchy, no? No. Now, I don't know if this is prominent all over China, but it was the specialty fare for at least one restaurant last year. The restaurant "...defended the controversial practice...saying the resulting dish was healthy and kept the customers flooding in". How is that healthy? Couldn't a chicken that did NOT have to be bitten by a snake be just as healthy? I'm thinking it might be MORE healthy to have it done that way. You know, without all of the snake and without all of the biting. You know what else I think? I think I'm going to be very thankful for whatever is being grilled around here for Labor Day.

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Deep-Fried Fair Fat Goodness

It's time once again for the State Fair of Texas and that means loads of deep-fried goodness and deep-fried weirdness. Those two are often one and the same. The eight finalists for the Sixth Annual Big Tex Choice Awards have been announced. Let's see what we have to look forward to, shall we?

Up first is the Deep Fried S’mores Pop Tart. I'm not overly impressed with this one. It's just a S'mores flavored Pop Tart that has been battered and dropped in the fryer. OK, they serve it with some chocolate syrup and whipped cream when it's done, but how practical is that, really? You can't stab a Pop Tart with a fork, so I would imagine that the consumption process of this is going to be a little tricky. Then again, I've never had a Pop Tart that has been deep-fried, so maybe that does something to the chemical composition (of which the entire Pop Tart is comprised of).

In the category of ANTTA (Absolutely Nauseating To Think About), we have something dubbed Fernie’s Fried Club Salad: Take a big ol' spinach tortilla and put in some diced ham and diced chicken, shredded lettuce, carrot strips, cherry tomatoes and some bacon. Roll that sucker up and deep fry it like you would a chimichanga and throw some deep-fried croutons on top of it when you're done. Give the insane individual who wants to eat that a side of dressing and you're done. I have several issues with this. Who wants their lettuce deep fried? Or warm, for that matter? Not I. I'm also perplexed by the description given of this atrocity over there at About.com/Dallas, as they seem to imply that it is served on a stick. How does that work? Why would you want it to work like that? A stick? No stick. Get rid of the stick.

Who doesn't want lemonade when they're at a state fair? And who doesn't want that lemonade deep-fried? Wait? Deep-fried? That's right! Deep-fried! Deep-fried Lemonade! Simply take a lemon-flavored pastry (whatever that is supposed to mean) that has been made with lemonade and bake it and then fry it up. Glaze it with some lemonade, powdered sugar and lemon zest and you've got yourself...uh, something! You've definitely got yourself something there!

If there's one food that says "Texas" it's a Frito pie. And if there's one thing that says Texas State Fair, it's Deep-fried Frito Pie. Somehow, a one Nick Bert has managed to take chili and cheddar cheese, cover it around in Fritos, batter it and chuck it in the grease without the whole thing falling apart. Now that's some talent right there! He'd better do it right. Texans don't like folks messing with their Frito pies. I have to assume that it tastes better than it looks, there. Good thing they're not judged on presentation.

Abel Gonzales, Jr. is no stranger to deep frying things for the Texas State Fair. His deep-fried butter won the competition last year. He also had winners in previous years with his deep-fried cookie dough and his deep-fried peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwich. (Why add the banana? I have no idea. Deep-fried PB&J sounds fabulous all by itself.) This year he has concocted something called Deep-fried Chocolate, though I don't know why he calls it that. It is a brownie, stuffed with a piece of white chocolate and a cherry. Then that is dunked into chocolate cake batter before it hits the grease. He tops it all off with powdered sugar, cherry sauce and chocolate whipped cream. I still don't get why it isn't called a Deep-fried Brownie.

When I heard that there was something called Texas Fried Caviar, I couldn't imagine that would go over well. Texas doesn't seem like much of a caviar state to me. Turns out, Texas caviar is black-eyed peas. Now that makes sense! Simply take some black-eyed peas fried and add some "special spices" and some Old Bay seasoning (which is presumably different than the aforementioned special spices) and fry away! (I kind of think that a better name would have been Fried Texas Caviar. Everything else starts off with "fried", so why should this be any different? It's only going to confuse fair goers.)

I've saved the best two for last! The Deep-fried Margarita and the Deep-fried Beer! Bring 'em on! I think that I'd probably be more partial to the margarita, even though I am a big fan of beer. Take some sweet funnel cake batter and mix in either tequila or tequila flavored wine. Fry that baby up and dust it with some sort of lemon-lime mixture and served it in a salt-rimmed plastic glass. It sounds lovely. Although the deep-fried beer sounds just as lovely. It's basically a pretzel pocket with beer inside. Take one bite and the beer pours out, as it should. It's beer and pretzels all in one! What's not to love? You do have to be over 21 to purchase either one of these delectables, as they're not in the fryer long enough for the alcohol to burn out, as it shouldn't.

There you have it. Deep-fried goodness at the State Fair of Texas for 2010. It's a good thing that this dealio is only once a year. If people were to eat this kind of stuff all year 'round, the results would not be good. If one were to indulge in this kind of cuisine frequently it would be as a friend of mine said last night, "They might as well have chairs lined up with IVs filled with heated Crisco. Cut out the middleman." Well said, friend. Well said, indeed.

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