Homemade Dog Treats

Have you ever given your dog those dried chicken strips for a treat? Dogs go crazy for those things. My dog Zim (seen here flapping his lips by hanging out the sunroof of the car) would do just about anything for a bit of dehydrated chicken.

There are two big problems with store-bought dried chicken treats, though: they're mad expensive and - far more importantly - lax production standards in China, where so many of the treats are made, result in products that can potentially kill your dog. I stopped buying imported animal treats several years ago when word first started circulating about the problem, and it hasn't gotten any better since.

Luckily, there is a huge supply of dog treats available to you at an extremely reasonable cost of time and treasure, and you need look no further than local supermarkets.

The answer is right there in the poultry section. The raw materials are inexpensive, dehydrate quickly with little risk of spoilage, have an insanely long shelf life at room temperature once they've been processed, and are not only low in fat but provide your dog with calcium. And they're crunchy as hell, which seems to be really important to dogs - if you've ever seen the way a teething puppy crackles an empty water bottle, you know how much dogs love stuff that crunches between their jaws.

I'm talking about chicken feet, or "chicken paws," as I've seen them hilariously packaged. They start out being low in moisture, consisting mostly of skin, tendons, and bone, so they dry well and keep a long time. While most everyone knows that you're not supposed to give dogs cooked chicken bones because of the danger that they'll splinter, that doesn't apply to raw bones, which help provide dogs with essential nutrients which their canine guts are especially keen at extracting. These treats aren't cooked, they're dried, so they're safe. And of course, they're not made in some anonymous Chinese industrial plant so you know exactly what your dog is eating.

The first step is to acquire a few pounds of chicken feet. Most of your suburban white-bread supermarkets will not carry them, so seek them out at more urban or ethnic locations. Asian markets are ideal, and usually the least expensive. When I make these (which is at least once every couple of months since I always give some away to friends with dogs) I try to get two heavy packages of them, five pounds or so.

Chicken feet are rather cool and prehistoric-looking with big nails and scaly reptilian skin. And there's usually tendons sticking out of the cut ends. If you hold the chicken foot in one hand and pull on the tendons with the other, the toes will curl like some kind of gruesomely beckoning marionette. [My grandmother once told me that when she was a girl, she would take one of the feet of a freshly-killed chicken and do exactly that with it, chasing her squeamish and screaming older sister around the house with the monstrous gripping claw.]

Anyway,  once you get the packages home, open them up and give them a rinse. If you have a child around, show them how those tendons work - the kid will be fascinated and horrified and probably want to try it themselves, and you should let them as long as you have them wash their hands when they're done, because it's fun.

Okay, so that part about kids and tendons is optional, but rinsing shouldn't be. Rinse them off and then pat them dry. Then, using kitchen shears, cut off the toenails. If you cut straight through the toe at the base of the nail, you'll go right through a joint and it's easy. If you cut through bone, it's still easy, it just gives a bit more resistance. I take the nails off, even though I just told you a few paragraphs ago that raw chicken bones are okay, because they're sharp. Most of the nails are like needles, and they don't get any blunter when they're dehydrated. So just to be safe, I remove them.

Next, I arrange them in single layers on the trays of my dehydrator. It's okay if they touch, but you don't want them packed tightly against each other because they need room for air to circulate around. Use as many dehydrator trays as you need, put the cover on, plug it in, and let it do its magic. I rotate the trays bottom to top once or twice a day.

After three days, open up the dehydrator and check them out. They should be totally dry to the touch and rather stiff. If they feel at all pliable and leathery, they're not ready.

It usually takes three or four days for them to all dry out. You'll have a large enough supply for at least two months, feeding your dog one of these treats twice a day or so, and trust me he'll love them.

When you buy dehydrated chicken feet ready-to-eat online or at retail stores, they can cost as much as $45 a pound (they're often put up five or six to a package and that package costs up to 10 dollars!) I buy the feet for $1.29 a pound around here, so for six or seven dollars I make a bag full of them that would retail for about $75.

PS: If you're really lucky, you can find duck feet as well as chicken. They're a little meatier and more substantial than chicken feet, but you process them the same way. Usually they run about 20 - 25 cents a pound more expensive than chicken feet; you'll have to decide for yourself if that's worth it.


Where to find a dehydrator:

You can get one at many Walmarts or hardware stores, in the canning section. You can spend a couple hundred dollars on these things, believe it or not, but you can also order one inexpensively on Amazon. Or you can do what I did and pick one up at a church rummage sale or estate sale. Many people buy one, use it a couple of times, and then get rid of it. I've bought three or four of them secondhand like that, all the same make, and put the trays together to make one bigass dehydrator for making dog treats, jerky, dried herbs, and so on.

Fishy Delights 51: Look's Atlantic Premium Smoked Sardine Fillets

Man, I loves me some canned sardines, as you can probably tell by looking at how many different brands I've reviewed over the years. I often take a can to work for lunch - they're easy to eat, wicked good for you, and they have a side benefit of making my office smell fishy until the trash is emptied (I derive amusement from the annoyance of the next shift.)

These smoked sardine fillets are a bit of a departure for me, since I usually go for the smaller cans of "whole" fish. And, as you might expect, not only the flavor but the texture of these little morsels are very different than whole canned sardines.

I've had many smoked sardines before. It's very common for a label to note that the fish are "lightly smoked." Sometimes - as with the Galleon brand sardines I recently reviewed - the smoke flavor is of the utmost subtlety, almost a whisper. Other times the smoke flavor is more distinct, though still gentle. Not, however, with these fillets. The smoke flavor is strong and assertive (though not as strong as with, say, Blind Robin smoked herring,) and the fish tends to fall apart and be a bit on the dry side. I think that this is because the fish are simply packed in the cans with a bit of salt - no added water or oil - and the resulting liquid in the can is released from the fishies when they cook during processing.

Like all the sardines I eat, I enjoyed these just the way they were, straight out of the can. But if you were to flake the fish with a fork and mix it well with some cream cheese and some finely chopped capers, and then season it with a bit of salt, some good hot Hungarian or Spanish paprika, and just the slightest dash of allspice, you'd have a pretty damn good cracker spread.

In New England, you can usually find Look's products at Ocean State Job Lot stores.

Lay's Potato Chips - FLAVOR DEATHMATCH

There are four customer-submitted potato chip flavors being marketed right now by Frito-Lay. The winner via popular "voting" will be chosen to join the official Lay's Potato Chip flavor line. The official name of this contest is "Lay's Do Us A Flavor Choose Your Chip Contest," but "Flavor Deathmatch" sounds a lot more exciting.

Anyway, we've tried all four flavors and here's what we think of them:

Kettle Cooked Wasabi Ginger - this one was the hardest of the four for me to find...either it's so popular that stores can't keep it on the shelves, or so few people want them that supermarkets won't reorder them. Based on the flavor, I really can't decide.

I expected a strong horseradish/mustard/ginger kick from these chips, but they're a lot more gentle than I thought they'd be. I didn't get a lot of ginger flavor (a note or two in the background) and the horseradish was limited to only a hint of the true power of The Root, with the strongest flavor element being vinegar. I think these will really appeal to people who like salt-and-vinegar flavored chips...as long as they don't mind a [small] bit of horseradish kick. The kettle cooking  is a plus; the hearty crunch is a great accompaniment.

Wavy Mango Salsa - Fruity and slightly spicy, Lay's has come up with a rather odd interpretation of mango salsa for these chips. "Mango" is way down the list of ingredients in the "Mango Salsa Seasonings" on the label list (third from last!) and it comes through as kind of a vague fermenty citrus flavor, almost like overripe pineapple than mango.  Red bell peppers, onion powder, and paprika round out the salsa taste. I can't imagine this flavor winning the challenge. On it's own, it's kind of disgusting. But it's a wavy chip, and that means it's made for dipping! Maybe Lay's intends this flavor to get obliterated by heavily-seasoned dips. Oh well. I'll never know, because I'll never care.

Cheddar Bacon Mac & Cheese - A flavor bulls-eye, and why wouldn't it be? Powdered cheese flavoring has been turning fingers orange for at least 50 years, it would be almost impossible for them to screw it up. Now, most "bacon" flavored stuff is pure garbage, relying on smoke and salt to try to fool your taste buds into thinking it doesn't suck. And I'm sure that one of the components of the "Natural Bacon Type Flavor" listed on the label is smoke, because once you notice it, it becomes almost the only thing you can taste. But there is a "meaty" quality to the chip flavor that powdered chemicals alone can not explain. Oh, wait, maybe it's the bacon fat!  Yes, Frito-Lay doses the formula with real bacon fat for that authentic pigmeat experience. In the end, though, it probably doesn't matter: long before the end of the bag, I had eaten a lifetime's supply and the chips were tasting more like Cheetos rubbed around an ashtray than Bacon Mac & Cheese.  Sadly, this flavor will probably be the winner, because there are countless people who have been mesmerized by the Internet Bacon Meme

Cappuccino - Right off the bat, I was impressed by the Cappuccino variety. If you like coffee, your mouth is going to water as soon as you open the bag, because a sweet and gentle coffee aroma will wrap your face in a comfy caffeinated quilt that beckons your taste buds.

And they only get better from there. Cappuccino chips have a lot of complex things going on in their flavor profile. Coffee, cream, cinnamon, and a buttery richness that made me check the ingredients panel (sure enough, butter is on the list.) While the taste can't ever be said to be truly "cappuccino," they have the same kind of umami appeal that salty caramel has - I swear, the human mouth is hard-wired to instantly love anything that is simultaneously salty and sweet.

I liked them best of the four, but I have to qualify that by saying that these aren't the kind of chips you pile up on a plate to keep your burger company. They're a true snacking chip, meant to be eaten all by themselves (or maybe with a simple, unadorned sour cream dip) later in the evening while you're stretched out in your recliner watching Law & Order.

Review: Great Midwest Apple Cinnamon Cheddar Cheese

In theory, this should be a delicious cheddar cheese. Apples and cheddar just go together so well, as many old New Englanders will tell you as they enjoy a piece of apple pie topped with a thick slice of Vermont cheddar cheese.

Unfortunately, theory and practice don't quite meet up in Great Midwest's Apple Cinnamon Cheddar. It's a little weird-tasting, like there's something not quite right about the combination of cheese, apple, and sweet spices. The apple tasted artificial, and the of cheese they used is very mild, almost as bland as boring old American cheese and a bit on the squishy side like a processed Jack. If only Great Midwest had chosen a good, aged, hard, sharp cheddar instead this could possibly have been great.

Wanna give it a try for yourself? Right now, Great Midwest is offering a 75-cent coupon for any of their cheeses on their website.  Links:

Get the coupon here - This coupon expires on 1/31/2013

Visit Great Midwest's website here.

Great Midwest cheese can be found at Price Chopper stores.

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ALDI Deutsche Küche Paprika Potato Chips

Good ol' ALDI and their Deutsche Küche line of imported German treats. If it weren't for them, I never would have found these Paprika Potato Chips.

Quite an interesting flavor, actually, and not purely paprika - onion, garlic, tomato, cheese, and yeast powders are all used along with the paprika to create a blend in which no one individual taste (other than the paprika of course) comes through.

Deutsche Küche Paprika Potato Chips are another one of those limited-time-only items at ALDI and may not be available at your local store at this very moment. As you know, though, ALDI cycles their specialty items on and off the shelves, so if you can't find them now, you may be able to in a few weeks (or, you can always ask your local store manager if she can bring them in for you.)

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Review: Farmer's Pride Pickled Bologna

Late last week, I got a heads-up from Steve Wood, who writes Connecticut Museum Quest, a top-notch Connecticut blog that is about so much more than just museums. He alerted me to a new product at Ocean State Job Lot: Farmer's Pride Snack Bologna (which just so happened to be featured in OSJL's "internet coupon" selection.)

Holy shit, pickled bologna! How could I resist?

Lynnafred found the jars at our local Ocean State. She picked one up - it was the size of a largish peanut butter jar - and peered at the "bologna" within: they were in the form of huge, fat Vienna sausages (and according to the ingredient panel, they're composed of pretty much the same stuff.) The jars were plastic and sealed with soft plastic lids, and as Lynnafred looked through the brine at the bologna she said, "Eww. These are grey. Are they supposed to look like that?" After looking at a dozen other jars, and finding all of them containing somewhat greyish weiners sealed within, we concluded that the answer was probably Yes, they are supposed to look like that. The coupon said that there was a limit of 12 jars per family, but we curbed our enthusiasm and held ourselves to the purchase of a single jar which, at $1.20, seemed to be a fair price.

Let me start the actual review by saying that I can not believe that Farmer's Pride pickled bologna is a regularly-produced consumer good. Every single component of this product screams "DISPOSE OF CHEAP SHIT!!"  The jars are flimsy plastic, the lids seem to be made of the same quality plastic as imported dollar-store toys from China, the labels look like they were run off on a laser printer. Most of the jars at the store had sticky label residue clinging to the non-labeled areas, telling me that these snacks were probably rejected by the company which originally contracted them, leading the manufacturer to hastily peel the original label and rebrand them for the "remainder market" (i.e. dollar stores and job lot joints like OSJL.) And then, of course, there is the actual bologna itself:

That is one nasty-ass piece of tubesteak right there. Check out the gradations of coloring, from a kind of brownish-grey at the ends to rather pinkish in the middle. I swear I used no filtering or image manipulation to change those colors - that is exactly how they come out of the jar. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture the true beauty of the grey lines that run from tip to tip on the wieners, especially where the meat was in contact with the sides of the jar. These things are truly ghastly to look at.

At least when we cut into the wiener we found that the grey color doesn't go all the way through - once you get a little way into the surface, everything kind of turns pink again. I guess that means that they're okay to eat. Honestly, eyeballs are all we have to go by for safety, because there are absolutely no olfactory cues here. No scent of spices, no aroma of meat - nothing at all except the pungency of strong vinegar stabbing at our nostrils like fleets of aromatic daggers. The manufacturer (Monogram Meat Snacks LLC, USDA EST 795) could not possibly have made the brine any more unpleasantly sharp.

And the wieners are just as unpleasant to eat as they are to look at. The texture is firm and smooth, but there is little flavor beyond the powerful vinegar brine, which is so acidic that it actually produces a burning sensation in the mouth and throat. And - worst of all to me - the meat leaves a disgusting tallowy film coating the mouth and tongue. These things are grossly misnamed - they should be called "Farmer's Shame."

As with so many other oddball snacks we've tried over the years, Farmer's Pride Snack Bologna proved to be pretty popular with the dogs, though I didn't dare give them all they wanted due to the acidity of the pickle (the last thing I want to do is spend an afternoon scrubbing dog puke out of the dining room rug.)

So there you have it. Cheap, shitty, only marginally edible, and obviously close to the end of its shelf life - Look for 'em at a dollar store near you - and pass them up in favor of almost anything else you find.




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State Fair Food at the Big E: Big E Cream Puffs

Sixth in a series about State Fair Food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

For many people who attend the Big E, the signature food of the fair is not a donut-padded bacon cheeseburger or a batter-dipped deep fried monstrosity. It's a cream puff.

First introduced at the fair in 2002, the Big E Cream Puff was intended to be the "signature dessert" of the 17-day event, and it achieved that goal almost immediately - they were a huge hit that first year and have remained enormously popular ever since (the bakery sells more than 60,000 thousand of them during the run of the fair.) And it's easy to see why - the pastry is melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the cream filling isn't some cheap-ass lard-and-sugar bastardization, it's real 42% butterfat cream, sweetened and whipped to within a few minutes of turning into butter. It's decadent and gorgeous and velvety smooth, and I buy one a year, which my wife Maryanne and I share.

I think that the quality of the ingredients is only one of the factors involved in the cream puffs' popularity. The Big built a state-of-the-art bakery into the west side of The New England Center building where the cream puffs and their companion pastries, The Big Eclair, are made from scratch. That bakery is fronted on three sides by big glass windows that allow patrons of the fair to watch the pastries being made from beginning to end. It attracts quite a crowd, of both onlookers and buyers.

And it doesn't seem to matter what time of day you get there to buy your cream puff fix - there seems always to be a line (although, to be fair, the folks behind the counter at the bakery are friendly and efficient and the line moves fairly quickly.)

Cream puffs are $3.75 each and are available individually to eat right there at one of the surrounding picnic tables and benches, or you can get a bunch of them boxed to take home.

Review: Alexian Duck Liver Mousse with Cognac

I'm a big fan of liver pâtés, so I was mighty pleased to see a few Alexian products in my local Big Y. You see, when you like pâté but live in a decidedly blue-collar town, your choices are limited to a few canned products in the potted-meat-and-vienna-sausage aisle of the local supermarket, or you make it yourself.

Alexian is well-known for the high quality of their stuff as well as the high ethical standards they set for themselves. I'll talk more about that later - first I want to tell you about how delicious this duck liver mousse is.

As with so many stunning and delicious foods, the ingredients are simple: duck liver, pork, mushrooms, spices, and cognac. The mousse has a wonderfully meaty and slightly livery flavor, deepened by the mushroom's umami and the hint of cognac that is quite detectable throughout. It melts in your mouth like butter, and it's just as smooth and creamy. Quite decadent-tasting, in fact. You could make a truly impressive appetizer by simply taking the mousse as is and packing it into a little stoneware terrine before putting it out with crackers for your guests.

Although I chose the duck liver mousse to review, all of Alexian's products are similarly awesome. They take pride in using the best ingredients with no artificial flavors or colors, no preservatives, and no fillers. And Alexian strives to do good as well. They've made a conscious effort to reduce the packaging they use for their products, and they made a big deal out of refusing to use foie gras in their pâtés and mousses. (Personally, I think this whole "no fois gras" thing is pretty silly, especially since I've seen how geese at "foie gras farms" eagerly line up for their "force feeding." But Alexian has their convictions, and they stick to them, and I grant them a grudging admiration for that.)

In my neck of the woods, Alexian's traditional-style terrines, pâtés, and mousses are available at Big Y. Check out their website here, where you will find a store locator to help you find them near you.

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Review: J&D's Bacon Croutons

Almost two years ago, I swore I was never going to buy and review another fake-bacon-flavored product because every one of them I'd ever tried tasted more like shit than bacon. And yet, here I am again, this time with a package of J&D's Bacon Croutons.

You are probably familiar with J&D's; they're the folks who to took a cheap, smoke-flavored seasoned salt and made a fortune thanks to the genius marketing tactic of calling it "Bacon Salt" instead of the more honest "Ashtray Full of Autolyzed Yeast Salt." Then they capitalized on their success by marketing Bacon Lip Balm (which felt and tasted like campfire-tainted Vaseline), Bacon Microwave Popcorn (which tasted like smoke and baby puke), Jones Bacon Soda (probably the most vomitous Jones Soda flavor since Brussels Sprouts), and Baconnaise (an allegedly bacon-flavored mayo which no one can ever pay me enough money to put in my mouth.)

Well, they make these Bacon Croutons too, and in a fit of insanity, I bought a bag.

True to the J&D's credo there is no actual bacon in their Bacon Croutons, only the smoke flavoring, salt, spices like paprika, and of course autolyzed yeast which they rely on to remind your tastebuds of what bacon doesn't taste like.

At first bite, these croutons are not that offensive. The texture and crunch is perfect, and although they're a little salty, it's not overwhelming. The smoke, though, is very aggressive and - as is typical with everything I've ever tried by J&D's - bottom-of-the-barrel cheap-tasting. (For chrissake, J&D's, you're a real company, not two buddies mixing up crap in your garage. I'm pretty sure you can afford to develop a better-quality smoke flavoring process.) Anyway, the smokiness gets nastier and less-tolerable the more you munch, until about three croutons in none of us could stand to take another bite.

Too bad, because the taste of bacon is really awesome in salad. I just wish that there was some other way than shitty ashtray-croutons to add bacon flavor to my bowl of crunchy greens. Wouldn't it be great if it were possible to buy REAL pre-made bacon that you could just chop up and add to the salad bowl at the same time you were cutting up tomatoes and lettuce and cucumber? Or - and this is even better - if someone made real bacon that was already pre-cooked and crumbled so you could sprinkle it on stuff? Wow, that would be a dream come true! WHAT??? THESE PRODUCTS ALREADY EXIST? WELL HOLY SHIT WHY WOULD ANYONE BUY THESE SHITTY CROUTONS THEN???

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Review: Carr's Salt & Cracked Pepper Flatbreads

Hey, remember a few years ago when flatbread crackers were all the rage until everyone realized that no matter what kind of seeds or salts or herbs you baked into them, they just tasted like fancy matzoh?

Carr's wants you to relive those glory days with their new Flatbreads Seasoned with Salt & Cracked Pepper, which - despite being quite liberally loaded with ground and NOT CRACKED black pepper - are spectacularly ordinary. And while the seasoning does add a small touch of peppery zing, it can't compete against the powerful Cardboard Flavor Jitsu of flatbread.

So, while they are perfectly adequate for moving pâté or cheese from the appetizer dish to your gob, there are so many other, more flavorful and better options in the cracker aisle that flatbreads just fall, you know...flat.

Review: Covered Bridge Sea Salt and Black Pepper Potato Chips

That's the West Dummerston VT covered bridge in the background.

Of all the potato chip flavors I've tried over the years, my favorite variety is (sea) salt and black pepper. The problem is finding one that's just salt and pepper. Most brands load up their salt-and-pepper chips with other, unwelcome flavors and ingredients like dextrose, garlic powder, whey, and other unnecessary ingredients. I don't understand how a chip maker can take such a simple concept - make potato chips, season with salt and pepper, sell them - and screw it up so badly by spraying on all the rest of that shit.

Anyway, Covered Bridge Sea Salt and Black Pepper potato chips are one of the chips that get it right. The ingredients are simple and straightforward: Potatoes, Oil (for frying), sea salt, black pepper.  They're kettle cooked using russet potatoes grown within just a few miles of the chip factory in Hartland, New Brunswick. The russets give the chips a beautiful deep golden color, and the black pepper gives 'em a good peppery kick.

Lucky Canadians can find Covered Bridge chips all across The Great White North, but down here in the States they're easiest to find in Upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and - I kid you not - California. I'm looking forward to trying some of their other varieties, and I would absolutely recommend that you try them out if you find them near you.

Link:

Covered Bridge Chips has a website. Who doesn't these days, eh?

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Cracker Jack Prizes SUCK.

Photo by Time Passages Nostalgia

Once upon a time, Cracker Jack prizes were real, actual miniature toys. Originally, they were made of cast potmetal, like the ones at right: a little replica wood-burning stove, a battleship, an airplane, an ice skate, a replica carved pipe, and I guess that blue thing is probably a thimble. 

Photo by Time Passages Nostalgia

As time went on, the prizes got somewhat chintzier, like these plastic ones from the 1960's. But they were still actual miniature toys, real toys that had some kind of play value.

The Cracker Jack company, though, wasn't finished getting cheap and stingy with the prizes. Even as they were raising prices and making packages smaller (as if no one ever notices that, right??) the prizes kept getting crappier through the 1980's until finally the best a kid could hope for was a booklet of dye-transfer temporary tatoos. Remember those? You'd wet your arm (probably with your own spit, admit it, you know you did) and press the tattoo down to transfer the inks to your skin.  Compared to the tiny compasses, plastic charms, and other little toys that they replaced, those tatoos were junk. But let me tell you, compared to the absolute shit that Cracker Jack calls a "SURPRISE," the tatoos were gold coins.

You get down to the bottom of the package of Cracker Jack, and this is what your find: a little paper packet that looks like it might be four pages wide. And it's tiny. Like the size of a big postage stamp. You know it's going to suck, because it's way to thin to be anything decent made of paper, like a five-dollar bill or something.  And to add insult to injury, they print "GUESS WHAT'S INSIDE?" on the front. Really, Cracker Jack? You want me to guess?  You really want me to guess?  Okay: Is it something shitty with no goddamn fun value at all? OF COURSE IT IS! What do I win for guessing right? Oh yeah: I win something shitty with no goddamn fun value at all!

I opened it anyway and look what I got. Cracker Jack calls it a "pencil topper." It's got two little pencil-sized slits in it so when you slip it over the end of a yellow pencil you can pretend it's being humped by bees. 

WOW, FUN, HUH?

Review: Nabisco Newtons Blueberry Brown Sugar Fruit Thins

Photo from Sunshine's now-defunct website.

Once upon a time, there was a product by Sunshine called Golden Fruit. You might remember them: they had a layer of raisin or cranberry  filling between two crispy cookie-like thin biscuits. Still available in the UK, where they are called "Garibaldi biscuits," production in the US was halted in 1996 when Sunshine was acquired by Keebler.

Golden Raisin Biscuits were one of my favorite cookies back in the day, and I still miss them. I've found close approximations, such as the excellent ALDI Fit & Active Fruit Crisps, but it looks like there will never be Golden Raisin Biscuits again. And that's a shame because there are a large number of people out there who also miss them and occasionally search for them.

Now, the purpose for that long and windy backstory is this: Because I miss Golden Raisin Biscuits, I keep an eye open for products that seem like they'd be similar. That's how I found the aforementioned ALDI Fruit Crisps. And that is also how I found Nabisco  Newtons Fruit Thins.

The illustration on the front of the bag certainly looked promising. Although it wasn't really detailed enough for me to get a great look, they carried Nabisco's Newton brand (known for fruit filled cookies) and they looked thin and crispy like Raisin Biscuits. So I gambled a couple of bucks and tried a bag.

What a disappointment.

First of all, they're pretty sparse on the fruit. There's a scattering of lame dried berries mixed in with the cracker-like cookie. And not just dried - the damn things are totally desiccated little bits, like sucked-out flies plucked from a spider's web. Good thing there's "natural flavor" baked in (according to the ingredient panel) because I'd be hard-pressed to identify a blueberry flavor here without it.

Did you ever go to a petting zoo when you were a kid? Do you remember the crackers you could buy at the zoo to feed the animals? That what these mealy bastards tasted like. Bland, grainy discs of Soylent Newton with the added insult of being topped with whole flax seeds. Gahh, these things are nasty.

(Not everyone agrees with me, of course. Other varieties were reviewed by Marvo at The Impulsive Buy, and he really loved the Apple Cinnamon Oat and Lemon Crisp flavors. I'll never really know what they're like, though, since I hated the blueberry ones so much I'm not going to bother with the others.)

Review: Banquet Pepperoni Stuffed Breadsticks

Here we go again, with another cheap, microwave-ready frozen snack from ConAgra's Banquet brand. This time, it's Pepperoni Stuffed Breadsticks with Marinara Dipping Sauce.

Before cooking.

Right out of the package, the frozen breadsticks look almost like real pepperoni wrapped in dough. Pay close attention to the product, though, and you'll see that the "reduced fat pepperoni stick" is actually an extrusion of red paste. 

The ingredients panel on the box horrifyingly reveals that the "reduced fat pepperoni" is in fact made of dough, "meat blend" made of beef and pork, textured vegetable protein, "restricted melt cheese," "substitute mozzarella cheese," and a Monsanto inventory's worth of various chemicals.

After cooking.

It's quite a stretch for Banquet to call it a "stick" at all, since after cooking the pepperoni-dough core of the breadsticks melts and spreads and bonds with the plain bread dough exterior. The overall effect is soft, chewy and doughy, like a nicely-baked soft breadstick but without any real type of crust.

The marinara dipping sauce that comes with the breadsticks is fairly standard stuff, strongly flavored with oregano and seasoned with crushed garlic, onion, and other Italian-style herbs. While certainly not ground-breaking or very exciting, it is completely authentic-tasting.

Just like with the previously-reviewed Beef & Cheese Quesadillas from Banquet, the Pepperoni Stuffed Breadsticks are - despite their Frankensteinian origins - totally delicious.  I would absolutely buy them again.

Review: Banquet Beef & Cheese Quesadillas

So, there are a couple of cheap new additions to the Banquet section at the local Save-A-Lot, and both of them were looking pretty irresistible the other day. Today, we're taking a look at Banquet's Beef and Cheese Quesadillas.

The package shows two plump quesadillas bursting with beef and cheese, toasted all light and crispy with a cup of sauce for dipping.  The actual package contents aren't presented nearly so well:

The difference between carefully-styled package art and actual contents is an old story, and one on which I'm not going to dwell. As nice at would be to just once find the actual food match the box illustration, ain't never going to happen.

Anyway. The quesadillas are not at all light and crispy. They're thick, heavy, doughy, and chewy. The insides are thinly spread with a mixture that has little business even being called "food," let alone anything as specific as "beef" and "cheese." The ingredients include "substitute cheddar cheese," "cheddar cheese type flavor," "mozzarella type cheese powder," "substitute mozzarella cheese," and "hamburger [ground beef, salt, spice, hydrolyzed corn protein, natural grill flavor, flavorings]." This recipe is from the laboratory, not the kitchen.

The "zesty taco dipping sauce" is just boring and reminded me more of an unsweetened ketchup sauce than anything else.

And yet, for all the seemingly industrial-grade components used to put this horrible anti-food together, I  have to say....

...they're delicious.

I feel dirty and ashamed for saying that. But it's true, and they're only a buck.

Review: Herr's Deep Dish Pizza Cheese Curls

Looks like we're on a roll with the Herr's cheese curls - seeing as I bought a number of varieties last week, I figured I might as well make a series out of the reviews.

Deep Dish Pizza curls are truly worthy of inclusion in the series. Like the Jalapeno Poppers flavor, they capture the essence of the food they are imitating, and do it in a crazy simple way: coating the surface with different blends of powdered cheeses and spices.

Thanks to noticeable notes of romano cheese and oregano,  the curls have a very authentic taste. Herr's even manages to fool our tastebuds into thinking there might be some kind of tomato involved in the charade, but I checked the ingredients panel and found that there were no tomato-based ingredients (like tomato powder, for example) used - although maybe that came under the umbrella heading of "spices" or "flavors."

Regardless of tomato inclusion status, Herr's Deep Dish Pizza cheese curls accomplish what they set out to do: Delivering a crunchy and addicting pizza flavor while simultaneously coloring your fingers orange.

Review: Herr's Jalapeno Poppers Cheese Curls

Have you ever tried to eat just a single cheese curl? It can't be done. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that the basic unit of cheese curl measurement isn't the single curl, but rather the handful.

And so it is, I guess, with reviews of cheese curls - specifically, Herr's cheese curls. You see, I found this huge variety of Herr's curls over at Ocean State Job Lot one afternoon, and I could not make up my mind which one or two to buy. So I just said "the hell with it," and bought a bag of every flavor they had. Yesterday I reviewed the authentically-flavored but parchingly over-salted Nacho Cheese; today we take a handful of the Jalapeno Poppers variety.

As I pointed out before, all cheese curls share a common structure - the differences between flavors are usually larger than the differences between brands (not always, though - I'm sure you've tasted really cheap curls that leave your mouth feeling greasy.)  While Herr's Nacho Cheese flavor was totally dominated by the saltiness, Herr's Jalapeno Poppers curls are dominated by awesomeness.

As soon as you open the bag, you know you are in for jalapenal delight. You can actually smell the roasted jalapeno pepper aroma.  Taking a bite just confims it: Full-bodied pepper flavor, a mild fire on the tongue that builds steadily as you dig into the bag, and delicious cheese backing up the whole thing. These cheese curls fully deliver on the flavor experience of eating jalapeno poppers.

Well played, Herr's.  Well played indeed.

Review: Herr's Nacho Cheese Curls

How do I review a bag of cheese curls? Every cheese curl ever made has the same basic crispy, puffy, cheesy structure.

Herr's Nacho Cheese Curls are:

1. Crunchy
2. Melt-in-your-mouth
3. Taste exactly like nacho cheese
4. Are pretty damn salty

Also...

One of the cheese curls on the label looks just like a boner.

Review: Jack Link Teriyaki Beef Steak

Up in Maine, there's a chain of job lot stores called Marden's. They are old-school job lotters, buying up stray pallets of merchandise, bankruptcies, close-outs, salvage lots, and so on. That's what makes them so awesome - they approach the odd lot market the way these kinds of stores did fifty years ago, so they manage not to have the same old manufactured-for-the-dollar-market stuff that everyone else has. No, Marden's carries the true odd lot stuff that only comes from purchasing a boxcar full of merchandise originally destined for a bankrupt department store. I love the place, and I never go to Maine without making it a point to spend some time rummaging through the shelves at whatever Marden's is closest to my destination.

By now, you're wondering what any of this has to do with a blog post that is supposed to be a review of Jack Link Teriyaki Beef Steak. Well, I was up on the south coast of Maine last Friday, and the Marden's in Biddeford had these Jack Link Teriyaki Beef Steaks on sale, two for a dollar.  

So I sprung for a couple of Beef Steaks. As much as I love beef jerky, these "steak" things are never as good as jerky, and I knew this experiment was not going to end well.

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I unwrapped it and found that the only way to really tell where the plastic coating ended and the Beef Steak began was by the lurid red color of the...um, what should I call this stuff? Meat?

Got to admit, it wasn't a nasty tube of grease the way some cheap meat meat snacks are. It smelled like pretty authentic teriyaki beef. It even kind of tasted like authentic teriyaki beef. But the texture totally lost me. It was amazingly like a Twizzler, except salty and loaded with uneven lumps of what Jack Link assures me  originated somewhere on the body of a cow.

It was a cheap snack and luckily we were on our way to Portland when we stopped, so I was able to wash the cheap teriyaki flavor out of my mouth with a dozen oysters and an IPA at J's.

Pop Tarts Wildlicious Flavors

Screen cap of Kellogg's Pop Tart ad

Pop Tarts has been heavily promoting the newest additions to their lineup, the "Wildllicious" flavors, which include Wild! Fruit Fusion, Wild! Strawberry, Wild! Berry, and Wild! Grape. Wild! Fruit Fusion seems to be sort of "fruit punch"-like flavor; the others are pretty much as advertised, with recognizable strawberry, raspberry, and grape flavors.

The "Wild!" part comes from the brilliantly colored frosting combinations with which the Pop Tarts are topped, not from any use of undomesticated fruit. And the actual flavors of the fillings aren't any more intense or concentrated than the standard, non-Wild! versions. So, if you enjoy Pop Tarts and want something a little more fun to chomp on, by all means go for it. Just don't expect any amazing surprises.