Wendy's Natural-Cut Fries with Sea Salt

So, Wendy's is rolling out this "new style" of french fries which they're calling "Natural Cut Fries With Sea Salt."  Russet spuds, peels left on, shoestring cut (fairly standard "Boardwalk Fries" if you know what I mean) sprinkled with "sea salt" as if that's going to make a big flavor difference on a handful of greasy fried taters.

It shouldn't come as a big surprise that the new fries aren't any better - or even substantially different - than any other burger joint fries.  They're okay thirty seconds out of the fryer and they go downhill fast from there, at first getting kind of soggy in their own steam and then just getting tough and cold and nasty when the heat leaves.  Hey, even McDonald's fries - supposedly the industry leader - suck when they get cold.  Wendy's fries are going to continue to run a distant third in the Fast Food Wars, if only because they don't have to get cold all the way through before they suck.

I really don't understand what the hell Wendy's was thinking here.  What was so wrong with their fries the way they were?  I've never heard anyone ever complain about them, so it isn't like there was some huge public outcry to have a "new improved" fried potato on the menu.  Won't surprise me a bit if regular Wendy's customers raise hell about these new fries, though.

Free Coffee at Pride Gas Stations

This post is mostly going to be of interest to my home-turf readers in the Western Mass / Northern CT area.  Pride is a small (16 store) chain of locally-owned gas stations in Western Massachusetts and during the month of December, they're trying to drum up a little more business by offering free 16-ounce cups of coffee - no purchase required - at all of their stations.

Thursday night was one of those really trying nights.  I had come home from work to find the distribution blower in my pellet stove had stopped working and the house temp was in the low 50's  The service center that handles warranty work on my stove closes at 7 pm on Thursday, so I got right to work removing the old blower so I could swap it out for a new one.  By the time I got to the service center it was 15 minutes before closing, but I got the part I needed.  It was 7F/14C outside, I still had to stop at the hardware store for electrical connectors and foil tape to finish the repairs, and my car's gas tank was just about empty.

Pride to the rescue!  Cheapest gas in town and free hot fresh coffee.  Totally awesome.

Well, not totally to the rescue.  I still had to get home and install the blower.

Victory Toast!

Victory Toast!  A triumph of crispy, buttery, savory deliciousness the ingredients for which snatch value from the jaws of wastefulness!  VICTORY TOAST!!

Okay, so I admit that's pretty lame, but I couldn't think of anything really catchy this morning, so we're stuck with it.

Anyway, remember back in May, when I reviewed Kraft Spaghetti Classics - that nasty quasi-Italian crap-in-a-box which has remained unchanged for 50 years?  I still had a couple of boxes of it laying around the pantry and they needed to be used up. I boiled up the nasty grey non-semolina spaghetti for the dogs - both of them love pasta and sauce - but that still left me with strange Kraft "seasoning" and two pouches of Kraft Parmesan cheese.

So I made the best of it.  

Victory Toast

Sliced ciabatta bread

Butter

Kraft Spaghetti Classics Seasoning Pouch

Kraft Grated Parmesan Cheese

Lightly butter both sides of each slice of bread.  In a skillet over medium heat, grill one side of the bread just until it begins to turn golden brown - don't let it toast completely.  Turn the bread so the other side can grill, and sprinkle the lightly brown face-up side with Kraft Spaghetti Classics Seasoning to taste.  Then sprinkle it with Kraft Grated Parmesan Cheese.  When the skillet side of the bread is nicely browned, flip the toast over again and grill the cheese side briefly, just long enough to toast the cheese.  Kraft's pouched Parmesan cheese is so low in moisture you won;t have to worry about it scorching and burning as long as you're reasonably careful.  Serve hot and crispy!

Feel free to improve this recipe by substituting your favorite Italian seasoning blend and freshly grated Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese.

More Ridiculous Hanukkah Advertising

Stop & Shop says Happy Chanukah!  Celebrate by cooking a delicious fresh pork shoulder, on sale now for just 99 cents a pound!

Domo Toys At Taco Bell!

ど―も!

Taco Bell kids' meals currently include one of five toys featuring Domo-Kun.  How cool is that??  Personally, I'd go for the sticker dispenser.

Southgate Beef Stew

I bought this at Dollar Tree as one of those "what the hell" purchases.  Lynnafred and I were ther to buy some cheap holiday-themed paper dessert plates (which were out of stock) and on our way out Southgate Beef Stew caught my eye.  Despite her protests - "Damn it, Dad, you and your crappy dollar store food!" - the label promised beef stew with textured vegetable protein added, and the ingredients panel seemed pretty straightforward:  Water, beef, potatoes, carrots, TVP, modified food starch, tomato paste, dehydrated celery and onion, sugar, caramel powder, paprika, black pepper, celery seed.  Nothing really outrageous there.  My expectations were actually pretty low, so I wouldn't be very easy to disappoint, you know?

And therefore, I was pleasantly surprised by how decent Southgate Beef Stew is considering that it's a canned beef stew.  Big hearty chunks of potato and a fair quantity of beef.  Real beef in chunks of various size, and by "real" I mean that it isn't some sort of bastardized loaf product made of beef and TVP mixed up, cooked, and cut in blocks for the stew.  The TVP was there, but separately, in little hamburger-like crumbles of their own, not trying at all to convince you that it was anything but crumbly TVP bits.  The gravy was also good, too.  Only a little hint of grease, not too salty with a beefy flavor and a hint of tomato and carrot, just like you'd get if you made your own.

All told, it was a pretty solid and satisfying lunch and a good deal for a buck.

Info and Link:

The Southgate brand is one of a number of brands produced by Choice Food of America, a company which has gathered many small labels and their recipes under a single corporate umbrella.  They produce and pack their own product rather than contracting it out to other companies and they're proud enough of what they make to put their name and address prominently on each label. I'm obsessive about reading labels and you'd be surprised how many times I've had to search the fine print on some brands to get a mailing address - some companies make it as difficult as possible to find out who's responsible for getting that can or box onto the supermarket shelf.  I've emailed Choice Foods to find out more about them and the brands they market, and hope to be able to write more about them in the future.

David Glass Sells Out In Two Hours!

David Glass and his wife, Vivie - dessert makers par excellence - have opened a "pop-up bakery" in subleased space in South Windsor, CT.  Baking during the week to satisfy demand, "Vivie and David Glass' Delicious Desserts" is opening on Saturdays only from 9 am to 4:30 pm with tastings and retail sales.

Saturday December 4th was the first day of retail operation.  Maryanne and I had planned to be there at the opening, but a prior engagement meant that we didn't arrive until about noon.

400 Chapel Street in South Windsor is one of those small light-industrial condos that have cropped up here and there all over the Connecticut River Valley in recent years.  The facilities look almost like a strip mall, but there are fewer windows and barely enough parking for employees.  There was a steady of stream of cars into the entrance and although no signs were posted, one of the "storefronts" had a door standing open.  It had to be the place; there were a lot of folks milling around, but as many of them were leaving - emptyhanded - as were coming in.  I walked in to find a somewhat embarrassed man (not David Glass) explaining that the five hundred desserts the Glasses had prepared were sold out before 11 am and there was nothing left to purchase at the shop.  There was a sign on the door:

If there were any doubts that the Greater Hartford area appreciates and misses the Glasses' baked treats, Saturday should be sufficient to quell them.  Disappointed customers being turned away were told that next week, the Glasses plan to have "three times" as many desserts with them.

Unfortunately, we have another prior engagement next Saturday as well.  If any of you manage to score a Delicious Dessert by Vivie and David Glass, feel free to send me a gloating email detailing the exquisiteness of your tasty morsel.

Bacon Prices Continue to Go Insane

It was "sticker shock" at the supermarket this week, where bacon prices have continued to go through the roof.  Look at that:  $6.69 a pound for Oscar Mayer bacon at Stop & Shop, where even the generic no-name crap bacon (the "Guaranteed Value" brand") is now $2.99 a pound - a 50% increase from last year.

I first noticed bacon prices rising in August, but a summertime price bump isn't unusual.  August is when everyone's backyard tomatoes are in their full glory, and bacon prices often tick up a bit then as loads of people buy it to make the archetypal summer sandwich, the BLT.  This year, however, summer prices didn't drift back down.

According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, bacon prices have been climbing for seven straight months as of October (the last month for which there is data.)  As of right now, bacon prices are up an average of 33% over last year at this time.

There's a combination of factors at work here.  Remember the H1N1 Swine Flu scare last year?  That caused an overall reduction in hog herds.  Higher feed prices and overall recessionary conditions also helped make raising hogs a money-losing proposition for a lot of farmers.  And because pork bellies (the pigmeat from which we get bacon) is a traded commodity, market pressure from speculators has helped keep bacon prices higher than other pork cuts.

In this August article in the Birmingham [AL] News,  Business Editor Stan Diel said, "The good news for those who like bacon with their eggs in the morning is that it doesn't take nearly as long for farmers to raise new hogs, increasing supply, as it does to raise cattle. And with hogs once again profitable, farmers are raising more of them."  Unfortunately, since then bacon prices have still risen about 7% a month, and my own price surveys in the supermarkets haven't shown any downward trend.

In recent weeks, many of the supermarkets around me have started to run sales on bacon, which is taking some of the sting away.  But when you're starting at a regular price getting close to seven bucks a pound, even the sale prices are expensive compared to last year.

Steaz Organic Teaz

Anytime something is spelled wrong on a label, I get thinking.  I wonder why the hell people can't spell things normally, for starters. And I never think "Hey, that's really clever," no, I usually consider pluralizing with a z or spelling things with an initial K instead of  C to be an irritatingly cutesy (if not plain stupid) marketing gimmick for something that probably sucks.

Allow me to present Steaz Organic Iced Teaz.

Steaz bottled teas are usually pretty good, for the record. I'm not talking about Teaz® here, I'm talking about the plural of the word tea. I've had their regular black tea and it's been good, and the white tea is good enough that I don't ask myself why I didn't make my own damn tea, but as soon as they're slapping pictures of happy tea farmers on the can and adding fruit to it, something happens. It gets nasty.

Steaz Organic Fruit Teaz come in six varieties: Green tea with Blueberry Pomegranate Acai, Green Tea with Peach, Black Tea with Lemon, and White tea with Pomegranate and Lime, unsweetened Green Tea with Lemon, and Green Tea with Mint. I'll be reviewing the first four here, because that's all I could find.

Where do I even start? I'll start with Green Tea Peach. The flavor was certainly that of green tea, but Dave and I found only the barest hint of peach flavor to it. Dave actually described it as, "Like someone walked a peach by it." And that's fairly accurate. The peach flavor was there, but it was more of an "essence" than a real "flavor." My mother, on the other hand, thought that it was "very peachy." She also likes things more subtly flavored than Dave and I, so maybe we're just the wrong market for theze Teaz.

The Green Tea with Blueberry Pomegranate Acai wasn't much better.  There was the typical green tea astringency with a vague fruit flavor there, but the blueberry and pomegranate flavors just sort of muddied each other together without letting either of them be distinct enough to really enjoy.  Acai might have been in the mix, but it was indistinguishable.

Next up was the White Tea with Pomegranate and Lime. My friend Jess was over when I cracked this one open, and I let her take the first sip of it. She described it as "Gymbag Tea." This time, the White Tea's natural flavor was overpowered by a flavor reminiscent of dirt, artificial limes, and something kind of soapy. It was such a completely nasty tea that I ended up dumping  it out, and nothing of value was lost. Everyone in the house who tried it had the same expression on their face: ( ﾟдﾟ)

The best of the ones we found was the Black Tea with Lemon, but even this was flawed.  The lemon flavor was completely out of proportion with the tea, and it tasted more like a blend of lemonade and tea than a tea flavored with lemon.  Props for the tea not being heavily sweetened - there was just a touch of "evaporated cane juice" to take the sharp edges off the lemon and tea, but not enough to make a sickly-sweet Liptonesque concoction - but otherwise still not what I was expecting.


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David Glass Is Back!

Photo from www.davidglass.com

According to this story by Korky Vann at ctnow.com, David Glass is back - for now, at least - in a "pop-up" bakery in South Windsor.  Glass and his wife Vivie are calling the new shop "Vivie and David Glass' Delicious Desserts," and will be the only employees, baking during the week and opening to the public for tastings and sales on Saturdays through December 18.

This Saturday, December 4, will the first tasting and sale with the bakery open from 9 am to 4 pm.  The new location is at 400 Chapel Road in South Windsor.  For more information, click the link on the beginning of this post to go to the ctnow.com article.