The Curious Shopper

Immediately after impulsively buying these fair food corn snacks I discovered that Lay’s has once again blessed us with new potato chip flavors. I’m just freaking hoarding WW points over here to get these snacks all tasted and reviewed for you all, my lovelies. Apparently Lay’s has re-branded their Do Us A Flavor competition as Taste of America, and there are many more Tastes of America but my store doesn’t carry them, sorry. I’m an optimist though, so I’m calling this post “Part 1!” Gotta catch ’em all!

I would like to report a crime.

A post shared by Lauren Brown (@laurbrown1) on Aug 3, 2018 at 5:26pm PDT

Ketchup

Over the past few days I have spent more time contemplating the existence of ketchup-flavored potato chips than an adult person should ever willfully admit to. Why is my initial reaction to these chips one of fear and disgust? One of the most popular all-time potato chip flavors is basically just barbecue sauce, right? Is ketchup THAT much of a difference? And have we not, as a nation, appropriated all of the world’s fried potato products as vehicles for ketchup? Why not potato chips? Why did Canada beat us to this? Why is a Canadian chip a “Taste of America?” Are there also mustard chips? Anyways, the first bite I was like “I do NOT like this” and then tonight at the grocery store I stood in front of the display for more than a few seconds contemplating buying a second bag. Let’s not speak or think of this again.

Bacon Jalapeno Poppers

Sorry I didn’t get a photo of these. These ones are of the ridged persuasion. They are pretty good. (1) The bacon flavor is truly bacon-y rather than just liquid smoke-y, and (2) I appreciate a potato chip that can achieve a jalapeno flavor without inflicting flaming mouth hellfire and this pulls it off exquisitely. Five star chip.

New England Lobster Roll

These chips are just absolute freaking charlatans. I defy Frito Lay to hold a blind taste test with these chips alongside sour cream and onion chips and find a SINGLE PERSON who can tell the difference. Why do they even taste like sour cream and onion – sour cream and onion are two very strong flavors that are never present in a lobster roll outside of perhaps the potato chips you are sometimes served alongside the lobster roll. I will say that they were a hit with my wife, a person who absolutely hates lobster but loves sour cream and onion chips.

I came across these three items in the same weekend. These are all described as “corn puffs” or “corn snacks,” so naturally I immediately became suspicious that this is just Big Cereal realizing that U.S. breakfast cereal consumption is way down and they need to repackage their products as fun snackies named after fair foods in order to trick us into eating it. Well joke’s on you Big Cereal because you don’t need to trick me into eating dumb garbage like this I will gladly do it willingly and then blog about it.

Trader Joes Churro Bites

This just seemed wrong from the get-go, like obviously corn has absolutely no business anywhere near a churro which is made from a light fluffy waffle-y batter. And then while most traditional churros are naked and waiting for some kind of delicious sauce, the hallmark of the Americanized, fair food churro is obviously the sandy cinnamon sugar coating. I have no clue which of these two scenarios these Churro Bites are trying to achieve, but it has manifested as a hardened cinnamon shellack. I mean really, Joe. They taste… not good. Totally flavorless in the interior, basically a cinnamon glazed packing peanut. They also bear the dubious distinction of being terrible but also addictive (on account of the coating). I cannot recommend these Churro Bites to anyone, put down the bag and get a tub of those twisty things that are up on the shelves over the freezers; they are the same on the outside but taste good on the inside.

Herr’s Sweet ‘n’ Crunchy Funnel Cake Flavored Snack Balls and Cotton Candy Flavored Snack Balls.

I’ll review the funnel cake snack balls and cotton candy snack balls together, because they are essentially the same thing.  I gotta tell you guys, we moved to the burbs and we’re shopping at these neighborhood Massachusetts supermarkets now and I don’t know who Herr’s is or what snack balls are but these things were just on a shelf like they’re a normal thing people would buy on the reg. I’m still getting used to all of this. I was hedging a bit and expected these to taste like either cereal OR dessert cheesy poofs, and to be gross. Well, they are kind of good! They taste weirdly familiar, but it’s not cereal or cheesy poofs – it’s more like sugar wafer cookies, and who doesn’t love those things? Nice job, Herr’s. Do churros next.

In honor of March’s meaningless holiday, Pi Day, today I will be reviewing the absolute insanity that is JC’s Pie Bites.

My JC’s Pie Bites experience occurred in three equally memoral parts, and they will be reviewed accordingly:

Part I: The Valentine’s Day Massacre

I first discovered Pie Bites on February’s meaningless holiday, Valentine’s Day, where I, a 36-year-old woman, continued my annual tradition of rushing to the grocery store after work to grab flowers, candy and a card. Ladies, FYI, when you do this on Valentine’s Day after work, you get to stand in a Line of Shame with literally dozens of middle-aged men who are doing the same, helped by a single cashier because it is 7PM on a Tuesday. It is one of my favorite things to do all year. They stare at their toes, literally oozing guilt, but I don’t know why. If they planned ahead and took care of this in advance, the flowers would die!

I meet every slightly confused look with a gentle smile that says “It’s ok, dude. Don’t worry about it. If she were in your shoes, she’d be doing this right now too. The flowers would die! I know that you totally didn’t forget about this up until about 20 minutes ago. Ignore the cashier’s judging stare, she doesn’t understand.”

So this year, while standing in the Line of Shame, I saw a display for these curious things called Pie Bites. My wife loves sweets, so I tossed three bags into my basket, one of each flavor, along with my card, flowers, a heart-shaped box of truly terrible chocolates, and the world’s dryest and most flavorless sheet cake, iced to look like long stem roses, sitting in a white flower box.

So, the pie bites. There were three flavors:

Chocolate Cherry Pistachio Coated Truffles

As the name would imply, these are chocolate truffles, coated in soft crumbs. Other than the fact that some of the crumbs were neon green, there was nothing suggestive of pistacios in the entire situation. They were not particualrly good truffles, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out where pie was at all involved. I suppose chocolate pies exist, as do cherry pies. Once again, the pistachos. Where are they, and why were they even supposed to be here in the first place? Moving on to the next bag….

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Coated Truffles

Indistinguishable from the truffles above. AGAIN, WHAT THE FIZ-FUCK DO THESE THINGS HAVE TO DO WITH PIE?!

Strawberry Cream

Man, these things were not good either. In contrast to the chocolate truffles above they were a white chocolatey/strawberry truffle, coated in what was essentially the soft crumb that you’d find on a strawberry shortcake ice cream pop. Ah yes, the strawberry shortcake ice cream pop: a tasty dessert, designed to resemble another tasty dessert. BUT NEITHER OF THESE TASTY DESSERTS ARE PIES.

————–

In case you couldn’t tell, after sampling each of these pie bites plus the terrible chocolates plus the dry sheet cake plus the candy my wife bought me I was WIRED and I was INCREDULOUS. I was all, “Hey JC, what’s good? Do you even know what a pie is, bro?”

I was particularly perturbed with JC and his (I later learned JC is possibly a her) obvious lack of honesty because over Thanksgiving, my wife and I created what I feel ACTUALLY WERE Pie Bites during the process of assembling a Piecaken. If you are not aware, a Piecaken is a layer cake-like dessert assembled by stacking pies and/or cakes.

Piecaken update

A post shared by @laurbrown1 on Nov 24, 2016 at 9:18am PST

We made an epic Piecaken, inspired by this one and crafted entirely out of sub-desserts from Joanne Chang’s Flour Cookbook: her Super Pumpkiny Pumpkin Pie, her Southern Pecan Pie, her Nutmeg Spice Cake with Rum Merengue Buttercream, and her apple Pop Tart filling. It took us three days, and it was mega delicious.

Piecaken…final post. Happy Thanksgiving!

A post shared by @laurbrown1 on Nov 24, 2016 at 5:51pm PST

For the assembly, after baking each individual component, we cut uniformly-sized smaller discs from their centers. This left behind a tasty outer ring of what is obviously the best part of any slice of pie, the back half. We then sliced these rings into small pieces that we called, you guessed it, PIE BITES. You see, JC, the name “pie bites” makes sense here because they are bite-sized pieces of PIE.

The piecaken was too, too much and we wound up giving it away to my wife’s students. But those pie bites? Man, they were tasty and we snacked on them out of the freezer for weeks. Eat your heart out, JC. Eat your heart out.

Part II: Pie Bites Redemption

A few weeks later, in a completely different section of the grocery store, we stumbled upon ANOTHER JC’s Pie Bites display.

This time, the flavors were completely different:

Key Lime Coated Truffles, Banana Cream Coated Truffles and Coconut Cream Coated Truffles.

W

T

F

THESE ARE ACTUAL KINDS OF PIE.

JC is quite obviously trolling me and/or trying to kill me.

You know what was even worse?

THESE ONES WERE GOOD. Instead of a soft mealy crumble, these truffles, deliciously flavored like three classic and venerable all-American pies, were coated in crunchy bits that actually tasted like pie crust. Magnificent.

ARRRFHFGGFHGGHGLHGZHZG.

These were so good we went back to the store and bought more, I kid you not. I’m eating one right now.

Part III: The Pie Bites Strike Back

I did not realize this was post was going to have a Part 3, until I just went to do some background research/name checking on these goddamn Pie Bites and I typed JC’s Pie Bites into the old Google box and was taken to the JC’s Pie Bites website where, I shit you not:

ALL EVIDENCE OF CHOCOLATE CHERRY PISTACIO, DARK CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY, STRAWBERRY CREAM, KEY LIME AND COCONUT CREAM COATED TRUFFLES HAVE BEEN SCRUBBED FROM EXISTENCE.

There is no record of these Pie Bites anywhere on the site. And so, I apologize for the lack of photos in Part I but I didn’t take any of my own and there were none to steal from the website.

I had to do Advanced Googling just to remember the names of these things. It’s like whitehouse.gov on January 21. According to JC’s most recent executive order, as of tonight, there are but four flavors of Pie Bites, and those four flavors are:

Caramel Turtle
Chocolate Silk
Milk Chocolate Cookie
S’mores

Are you fucking kidding me with this JC? We were finally getting somewhere! I will give you Caramel Turtle and Chocolate Silk, but S’MORES and MILK CHOCOLATE COOKIES ARE THEIR OWN INDEPENDENTLY OWNED AND OPERATING DESSERT PRODUCTS. THEY ARE NOT PIES, THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH PIES, AND…

…wait, did that say “Pie Pops?” What are “Pie Pops?” <<click>>

So ok, let’s recap what we have learned so far: Pie bites are miniature pie pops which are fucked up panna cottas coated with crumbs and jabbed on to a stick? Ok. EARTH TO JC, PANNA COTTA IS NOT PIE, AND…

…oh god. I don’t even want to know what “nudies” are. But I clicked anyways. They are Pie Pops, but without the crumbs, meaning they are fucked up panna cottas jabbed on to a stick, meaning they are ICE CREAM CUSTARD POPS.

I’m done.

Yes, “ask jc” is in fact an FAQ, and let me tell you just to save you some time, that none of the questions are “what the fuck does any of this have to do with pie?

The answer is NOTHING.

I posted a photo of the peppermint goat cheese on Facebook/Instagram and I won’t ignore that 3 or 4 of my dear readers astutely noted that alongside the peppermint goat cheese there was pumpkin goat cheese. So, yes, I purchased the pumpkin goat cheese and the review will follow below but I first need to make a special announcement about pumpkin spice.

This would probably be a more appropriate post for September or October, but as I alluded to in my last post there is about to be a new pumpkin in charge and who knows if we’ll even make it that far. I’m just going to get this out now:

I, the Curious Shopper, am wholly and completely uncurious about pumpkin spice products, and am generally reluctant to blog about this disturbing trend in seasonal foods. This is not to say it could never happen – I’ve certainly posted on pumpkin pie flavored potato chips and pumpkin spice Holidrizzle popcorn in the past. But in the time since I have made a serious decision: if I start purchasing and tasting and blogging about strange pumpkin spice products for no other reason that they are strange pumpkin spice products, it will simply never end. And it will slowly destroy me, both emotionally and financially.

First, the mental cost: I have already wasted an embarrassing amount of time either standing the grocery store or reading Buzzfeed posts, internally debating whether certain pumpkin spice products were truly strange to begin with. For example, contrary to what every Trader Joe’s hater out there would have you believe, it is impossible for seasonal pumpkin spiced bakery items to be odd or strange or even a problem. Gourds are seasonal produce, and pumpkin is a valid baked good flavor! Chocolate, vanilla, lemon, strawberry, pumpkin…nothing is weird about any of these things showing up in a dessert.

Here is another rule of thumb that is sure to be controversial in the blogosphere: if it isn’t weird to put butternut squash in it, it isn’t weird to put pumpkin in it. Pumpkin fettucine, pumpkin lasagna and pumpkin ravioli are not weird. Pumpkin soup is not weird. Stop adding them to your “20 photos that prove pumpkins have truly gone to far” listicles.

But even if I hard-stop filtered out all of the cakes, pastas, cookies, candies, breads, bagels, muffins, etc., I would still likely go broke trying to purchase all of the genuinely strange pumpkin spice products. The idea of a “slippery slope” is a logical fallacy everywhere in the universe EXCEPT for the realm of pumpkin spice products. When dealing with pumpkin spice products, the slippery slope is, in fact, a logical certainty.

Let me explain:

Sweet, innocuous pumpkin spice lattes led to pumpkin spice non-dairy creamer, which we then decided would be fine to drink straight up, without coffee, bringing us pumpkin spice soy-, almond- coconut- and cow milks, which then led to pumpkin spice yogurt. These are all seemingly acceptable things, as a corollary to the baked good rule above. However, pumpkin spice yogurt then beget pumpkin spice hummus, begetting pumpkin spice salsa. Pumpkin spice salsa clearly requires pumpkin spice tortilla chips, which beget pumpkin spice Pringles, which beget pumpkin spice Triscuits, which, naturally, brings us to pumpkin spice goat cheese.

Pumpkin spiced dog treats, you ask? Why they were brought to you by pumpkin spice chicken sausage. It’s likely that all of the pumpkin spiced meats, jerkys, dry-rubs, what have you, originated from pumpkin spice butter (a direct sibling of the yogurt).

The disease has spread to drug stores, where pumpkin spice soda beget pumpkin spice seltzer, which inevitably brought us pumpkin spice gum.

None of these things need to exist. I also don’t need to taste them, because I am pretty freaking sure they taste like cloves and cinnamon. Guess what? Cloves and cinnamon taste good with fucking everything, a phenomenon discovered somewhere on the Indian subcontinent approximately four thousand fucking years ago. I just don’t have any curiosity about the practice of adding cloves and cinnamon to random foodstuffs, and any post about it would be so boring.

Here is an example of some pumpkin flavored non-desserts I have tried:

Pumpkin Triscuits – these were really tasty. They tasted like Triscuits but with cloves and cinnamon.

Pumpkin goat cheese – this was really tasty. It tasted like goat cheese but with cloves and cinnamon.

So while I will always eagerly take any suggestions or donations for things to try from all of my beloved blog readers, I hope you will all understand that it is exceedingly unlikely that there will ever be any more pumpkin spice posts in the future.

Forgive me, it has been a while. The Year 2016, in addition to rapturing away all of our  favorite artists in exchange for a plague of frogs that most surely is a harbinger of the
impending nuclear apocalypse, was utterly devoid of new and exciting snacks. Well, either that or none of the new and exciting snacks have been able to penetrate my coastal elitist bubble.

I mean, some snacks snuck through. I have a blank blog post, drafted from the frontlines of the War on Christmas: “PETITION TO MAKE LIMITED-EDITION CHEETOS SWEETOS PERMANENT DURING THESE DIFFICULT GEOPOLITICAL TIMES” but I could never get past the title. My heart wasn’t in it. The whole world was such a bummer, and if I can’t find anything fun or clever to say about a snack that is essentially Cinnamon Toast Crunch-Funyun hybrid, which I realize sounds awful but hear me out it’s actually the most delicious thing I have ever tasted…

…maybe I shouldn’t be blogging at all.

The magic, the inspiration, the curiosity, they were gone.

Nothing mattered.

Until yesterday, when I discovered motherfucking PEPPERMINT GOAT CHEESE.

Holy fucking shit. What the fuck even is this? Ahh this is so horrible.

I have to try it.

Peppermint flavored goat cheese has given me life and The Curious Shopper is back in business.

And then my heart abruptly sank when I picked up this ridiculous pink cheese and noticed that it was speckled with white spots.

“Oh no. The peppermint-flavored goat cheese has gone moldy. I am too late. My blog is truly doomed, and 2017 is already shaping up to be worse than last.”

“Cheer up, Chuck!”

To my astonishment Peppermint Patty appeared, right there in the middle of the Stop & Shop deli section. For some reason she insisted on calling me Chuck, I just went with it.

“Read the label more closely, Chuck. Those aren’t mold spots – they’re white chocolate chunks!”

“Good grief!”

It’s not clear to me which of the two – mold or white chocolate chunks – is more unsettling to find your goat cheese, but this is the world we live in now and we might as well get used to it.

Now, I can say quite honestly that this is the strangest thing I have ever purchased and tried for this blog, but on top of that there is an extra wrinkle of excitement/terror for me here because peppermint and I do not have a very good track record.

To illustrate, below are some representative peppermint- flavored things, ranked according to how I feel about them:

Can you make sense of this? I can’t. Where was peppermint goat cheese going to fall on this bizarre spectrum? And oh god, goat cheese is so good with wine. Mint is so bad with wine. HOW IS THIS GOING TO TASTE WITH WINE? Gah, so many questions!

I was so overwhelmed with these thoughts swirling through my head that at the point of tasting I did something somewhat unprecedented for this blog: I asked my wife to take down some bullet point notes, just so I didn’t forget anything. I am looking her notes over now and honestly, they are much more thorough than I expected or asked for. There is no summary I can write that is better than this, so here it is, unedited:

• what is the point of it
• what would you put it on
• is it a dessert? an appetizer?
• google “can cats eat peppermint”
• omg it’s sort of like peppermint stick ice cream
• what kind of a fucking crazy person came up with this shit
• Ez ate it!
• it’s good with a cookie
• it’s a dessert cheese
• expected this to be horrible but it’s actually good
• Ez wants more
• it’s not even bad (with red wine). it’s not good.
• what is this?!
• it tastes like cheesecake
• i can’t believe this is good
• the mint is not evenly distributed
• just hit a mint pocket

The only two things I feel the need to elaborate on are:

1) Vehicle selection: we just got back from a trip so it is slim pickings in our pantry, and it took a while to figure out how the hell to even eat this stuff. The two things could find that seemed possibly appropriate for this tasting were pretzels and animal crackers. It was good with the animal crackers but not with the pretzels. In particular, the parts that were more heavily minted when combined with a very salty pretzel bite gave a very unpleasant, unnerving taste sensation.

2) The white chocolate bits were weird and completely unnecessary and the bites without them tasted better. I can accept that they are there, but I refuse to ever normalize them.

At this point, I was convinced that what I was eating was basically a ruse. A charlatan cheese. It was not peppermint flavored goat cheese. The flavor profile was more like that of a
peppermint flavored cream cheese or cheesecake, two things that I can accept, conceptually, as normal foods.

Thankfully I had a secret weapon to settle this question – my wife, who I’m sure you can tell by now has gone above and beyond in service of this blog post, absolutely HATES goat cheese. I think she hates goat cheese more than I hate York Peppermint Patties, if that is even possible. So what better person to test my hypothesis on than her? I was so convinced that I had been possibly cheated, and that this peppermint goat cheese tasted like peppermint but did not taste like goat cheese, that I somehow managed to get her to eat it.

She almost threw up. So goat-y, was how she described it. So, so goat-y. No matter how much we try to mask its funky, gamy musk with peppermint extract and red dye No. 5, at the end of the day goat cheese is still goat cheese. It’s an important lesson for all of us.

The final assessment, if you are keeping score is:

Flavor: Pretty good, like peppermint ice cream or cheesecake
Goat-y? Yes.
Good on a cookie? Yes.
Good on a pretzel? No.
Did Ez like it? Ez loved it.*
Does it do that weird flavor thing that toothpaste does with wine? No.
What about those white chocolate chunks? NOT MY WHITE CHOCOLATE CHUNKS.

Ok, that wasn’t so hard. This year, I will make it a goal to try to check in here at least once in each of the months we have remaining on this planet. So one down, here’s hoping there will be 11 more to go!

*Our Google search did reveal that cats love peppermint. However, an important disclaimer is that Ezra transformed from his former svelte self to a massive chunkster last year, and he is on strict vet’s orders not to eat any more cheese. I made an exception for this, the most exceptional of cheeses. With that in mind, it is entirely possible that his crazed excitement to eat this weird peppermint cheese was just excitement to be getting any cheese at all.

It’s been a while since anything new graced the shelves that was worth blogging about (I’m looking at you, craptastic recent Lays flavors).

Finally, we have something new and weird: I’ve tried all four dessert hummuses. (Dessert hummusses? Dessert hummi?)

First off a quick pro tip. You may, like me, consider buying a dessert hummus for several weeks but not do so because you have no idea how to eat it. I have tried all of the suggestions on the lid (cinnamon pitas, fruit, vegetables, pretzels, graham crackers, spoon) and the only answer is pretzels. More specifically, the squarey kind of pretzels. Good for dipping.

Here is the rundown:

Brownie Batter: I feel kind of sorry for Brownie Batter dessert hummus because it tastes pretty decent, but it does not really do a good job of tasting like brownie batter. The problem is, you can’t just go around throwing claim to tasting like brownie batter. Our collective love for brownie batter is not something to be trifled with. So let’s get real and drop these delusions of garbanzo grandeur – this is chocolate hummus. It’s terrific chocolate hummus. But it’s chocolate hummus.

Orange Dreamsicle: This one is just weird. Does the name imply that it is supposed to taste like a creamsicle? It doesn’t, but would I really want it to? It is not good, but could it ever be better? Should it ever be better? Or should we just not even be trying to flavor a bean dip like an already strange combination of citrus and dairy that for some weird voodoo reason doesn’t curdle? Let’s all just back away from this one, slowly.

Snickerdoodle: I have to rewind and quickly share that when I first noticed dessert hummus the only two options on the shelf were Brownie Batter and Orange Dreamsicle. I tried them both, and I was unimpressed and I said “OK, did my civic duty. Nice try, ‘Delighted By.’ Thanks for playing.” And since that moment every week there has been a new freaking dessert hummus on the shelf! I just checked their website and there are only four listed, so I am assuming the coast is clear and it is safe to post now.

So Snickerdoodle was the first of the two new ones, and although I had resigned myself to the fact that dessert hummus was maybe not that good, I took a risk and went for it anyway.

THE SNICKERDOODLE DESSERT HUMMUS IS SO FUCKING GOOD.

Vanilla Bean: (appeared on the shelves the next week) SO IS THE VANILLA BEAN.

For starters, the most striking thing is that they both really actually do taste like cake batters. It makes sense when you think about it – cake batters pose far less of a textural challenge to a humble hummus than do brownie batter and orange creamsicles.

I think maybe Delighted By is marketing this stuff all ass-backwards. Why aren’t these ones named Coffee Cake Batter and Birthday Cake Batter? Little things like this drive me crazy. I need an explanation. I craft one in my head, imagining that the creator of dessert hummus must die a little inside every time they’ve given some random asshole (like me) a sample of their life’s work and heard “yeah pretty good I guess but it doesn’t reealllly taste like brownie batter. It tastes like chocolate hummus.” Yeah, that’s it – maybe the creator of dessert hummus is timidly holding back on a product name that would totally capitalize on the current cake batter fad, causing her products literally to fly off the shelves, because she is broken inside because of assholes like me. That’s the ticket.

And then I made the mistake of reading too far on the Delighted By Dessert Hummus website and my theory came crashing down.

An excerpt:

One year later, I went to Sedona AZ for a soul-searching weekend….I wanted to know what is my purpose?? I heard a message loud and clear that my purpose is to spread my glitter. In other words, be the Light that I am. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing necessarily, but that I simply show up – and bring my presence, my light, to the world. The night after hearing this simple but enlightening message, I was blissfully making my dessert hummus. I knew in that moment that this was how I was going to spread my glitter.

This type of person cannot be broken by the likes of me. Believe me. I’ve tried.

I will also add one final note that I am a little bit of a hummus skeptic, because it is one of those “healthy” foods that I don’t think is really all that healthy. At least not in the context in which it is usually eaten (by me). So I wondered, is dipping my pretzels in this sugar-laden Vanilla Bean hummus healthier than dipping my pretzels in actual vanilla cake batter? Is this dessert hummus really “packed with protein (their words)?” Well, no need to wonder – I’ve crunched the numbers, and I’ve got your macros right here!

Serving Size: 2 tbsp

Calories

• Dessert Hummus: 60
• Cake Batter: 79

Fat

• Dessert Hummus: 2 g
• Cake Batter: 3.3 g

Cholesterol

• Dessert Hummus: 0 mg
• Cake Batter: 20 mg

Sodium

• Dessert Hummus: 45 mg
• Cake Batter: 7 mg

Carbohydrates

• Dessert Hummus: 9 g
• Cake Batter: 11 g

Dietary Fiber

• Dessert Hummus: 0 g
• Cake Batter: 0 g

Sugars

• Dessert Hummus: 4 g
• Cake Batter: 6.5 g

Protein

• Dessert Hummus: 2 g
• Cake Batter 1 g

Vitamin A / Vitamin C / Calcium / Iron

• Dessert Hummus: 0% / 0% / 0% / 0%
• Cake Batter: 2% / 0% / 2% / 0%

I will concede that Dessert Hummus obviously wins, but I reserve my right to remain skeptical.

And as for “Packed with protein?” I’ll let the Countess close this one out.

As I mentioned previously, I recently found a food item I have been looking for for a long, long time. Oreo Churros. I read about them on Twitter at some point forever ago. It was a very exciting moment for me. I love Oreos. I love Oreo-flavored anything. I particularly like Oreos in softened form. Lastly, I love Churros. This item was a match made in heaven for me. I check the Wegmans freezer cases for them every week (never sure what section they might be found in) was so excited when I found them at Shaw’s (near the frozen cakes, in case anyone was wondering), and made a special trip back to the store a week later to buy them. So exciting!

I should learn never to get too excited. Things went downhill from there.

First of all, the three options for preparing these fuckers are conventional oven, toaster oven, and DEEP FRYING. Why in God’s name do people think anyone is going to deep fry anything they found in a freezer aisle? If I am going to go to the trouble of deep frying, I’d rather make it myself, for fuck’s sake. Your processed shit is gross. But it’s also supposed to be easy. That’s the tradeoff. On no planet is deep frying easy.

So now I’m in a funk where in the back of my mind, I know that clearly this food I am half-assedly preparing would be better if I DEEP FRIED it. Everything tastes good if you DEEP FRY it. But  I have a moral opposition to doing so. Fine. Toaster oven it is. I do, now, have a toaster oven. Having not had one for 10+ years, I know some others aren’t so lucky. Sucks to be you. Have fun keeping these delicate morsels from full-on vaporizing in your oven.

Pulling out the churros from the box, I see there is a packet enclosed. This packet contains Oreo crumbs and sugar. Great. More shit to do. Terrific.

When the baked churro bites emerge from the toaster oven I dutifully toss them in the Oreo detritus. The detritus is not sticking. I bet the detritus would stick if I DEEP FRIED the churros. I am drowning in self doubt. This is the most work I’ve put into a snack in months. It’s the most emotional involvement I have put into a snack in years.

I place the churros on two plates. I pour the unstuck Oreo sugar detritus on top. I present to my wife. “Smells delicious! Oooh, these are tasty!”

For the record, they smelled like burnt chocolate. I am pretty sure the “cream filling” was marshmallow fluff, which is good in it’s own right but should not be allowed anywhere near even the mention of Oreos. They didn’t taste bad, but they were for sure not worth the effort. Avoid.

It has been a rough few months.

Put simply, I ran out of foods to try. I had tried every weird thing in my normal triad of Wegmans/Trader Joes/Whole Foods and there was just nothing else to taste without demeaning the purpose of this blog.

I fell into a rut. I started reviewing Gilmore Girls, but it wasn’t the same. I have been sad about it.

Until recently. This all started when I got a bike. As it turns out, there is a bike path that runs directly from my house to my work. Six miles, the entire way alongside a scenic river lined with parks. You hate me, I know. Temper that hate, I still can’t bike to work on weekdays because I am a disgusting sweatmonster, but the Saturday bike to work (and Sunday bike wherever) is my new jam. More recently, I have learned that if I bike in the other direction, I’m a few minutes away from Russo’s, a local fresh produce market that has amazing rare ingredients for everything I want to cook like green papaya for Thai papaya salad and Maplebrook Farm burrata. But even more excitingly, last week I learned that on the way to work there is a Shaw’s, and there is a bridge from the bike path to the Shaw’s, and the Shaw’s has the Oreo Churros that I have been looking for at Wegmans FOR A YEAR.

We will get to the Oreo Churros later, but first I would like to discuss another item I found at Shaw’s, called Off the Eaten Path Cranberry Granola Kettle Corn. The nice/awful thing about riding a bike to a grocery store is that you feel healthy and active and empowered to buy all kinds of crap you should never buy. So I bought this. And many, many other things. More reviews to follow, but this particular snack spoke to me.

What is that you say?

Snacks for the curious? Don’t mind if I do.

I hope you can tell by the photo that this popcorn is completely shellacked in sugar. This isn’t “Holidrizzle,” it’s about a thousand times worse. Calling this “kettle corn” is like if  someone set a crème brulee in front of you and you were like “ah yes, a lightly sugar-dusted custard! Delicious!” It tastes good, but all candy-coated popcorn should taste good. I wouldn’t brag about it, Off the Beaten Path.

I frequently make what I like to call “Gourmet Chex Mix” which is basically multiple snack foods mixed together. Some cashews, some popcorn, some ricotta salata, some croutons….most of the ingredients vary but a constant is dried cranberries. So, as a result I know that dried cranberries plus popcorn (or anything else, really) tastes better and more cranberrylicious than the dried cranberry flakes on this popcorn. I am satisfied but unimpressed.