Bestill-er.

I am still a child when it comes to impulse purchases, and I sometimes suffer consequences. I'm better at avoiding sugar than I used to be, so cash register candy no longer makes it into my cart. But that's not the only issue. 

Sometimes an impulse buy does lead to a fun discovery. While I was not very taken by the Vlasic Pickle Balls, for example, a more vinegar-minded member of the household found them a tasty treat. So I got a point on the scorecard for that one. 

Last week at the supermarket I saw a bin of soda cans, featuring a brand of which I had not heard, a brand with outstanding, if not bumptious, promises to the consumer. 

Real old-fashioned soda with only 30 calories? The world's most "refreshing-est" soda? Classic flavors like root beer? And from Brooklyn, the land of my infancy? Hey, why not? There was a bin full of these cans, which usually means a discounted trial product -- or a clearance. Since I'd never heard of Stiller's before, I figured it was a discounted trial. 

Well, I was wrong on several counts. 

Let's start with the "refreshing-est" claim, which I grant you is an individual judgment and difficult to quantify. I didn't find it all that refreshing. It isn't sugary, since it has just a little sugar (organic cane sugar, mind you), and sugar can be heavy, so that was good. It actually has vitamins, which is nice, but electrolytes would probably be better for refreshment in warm conditions. I'm willing to let that go. Refreshment is a personal experience, and others may disagree. 

At the checkout I discovered it cost almost $3 a can, which is less of a personal experience and more of a painful one. If I pay an inflated price for a beverage, I expect it to be served at a tropic location in a tasteful glass with a little umbrella by an esteemed mixologist. Not in a can from a supermarket bin. 

The biggest disappointment was the flavor. The root beer was perfectly average for any store-brand diet root beer. The Shirley cola, a blend of cola and Shirley Temple, was just an okay cherry cola. 

Upon reading the fine print I found out that Ben Stiller is the Stiller of Stiller's. I have no problem with that. I think he and I disagree on many things, but we're both from New York City, we both like nonalcoholic drinks, and I've enjoyed some of his movies. But this soda is pretty meh, and way overpriced for the market. 

I promise that personalities did not enter into my review; I drank the root beer before I knew who made it. If it were great, especially if it was such a treat as to be worth $3 a can, I would have said so. 

Looking online, I find Stiller's is mainly sold in Target. That makes me think that it's targeted to viewers of The View, moms with moolah who will drop dough on pricey products they believe have superior quality. I fit none of those categories. But even to them I would caution that this product is not worth the money, and that stevia is a lousy sweetener -- on that last note I will nail my colors to the mast. Yecch. Products that contain stevia always taste like they passed their expiration date some time ago.

So those are my opinions of Stiller's. Had it cost a buck a can I would have had the same review, but I would have been less peevish about it. 

Stay tuned for our next entry, when another celebrity product gets the once over. Whose is it? What is it? WHY is it? Did I buy it on impulse or under duress? Find out soon!  

When life gives you lemons…

…smash them lemons, I say! And make iced tea!

My iced tea skills have improved over the years. I abandoned sun tea for fear of bacterial contamination, and traded orange pekoe for black. But fresh lemons instead of bottled lemon juice really seemed to put me in the big leagues.

The question today is: Which lemon abusing tool gets the most from your lemons? The extractor or the reamer? 

Yellow to make you think
lemony thoughts

You’d think the extractor would be better just because of the more technical sounding name:.exTRACTorrrr. But is it? Let’s put them to the test!

I shall juice two lemons with each—1 small, 1 large, as seen at the top of the page—into the measuring cup. That should even out any tiny deviations among the test subjects. Then we shall see which tool yields the most lemon juice.

First, the extractor, which uses a lever action to squash the lemon pulp flat. It is fast-acting and seems to leave nothing behind.   

The pulp remains in the peel and any seeds are generally left in there as well. 

After the large and the small lemons, we have just 

Slightly under a third of a cup. 

Now the reamer. 

This definitely takes more effort, requiring a twist action to get the most out of the fruit. The colander-like basket catches seeds and any large pieces of pulp. But the lemon half does not seem to be as crushed by the reamer as by the extractor. 

To my surprise, however, the reamer is the victor with slightly more than a third of cup of lemon juice produced! 

This may seem unlikely, but the difference can be explained by one small problem with the extractor that I did not take into account -- it has a bad habit of shooting juice out the side when you initially press the lemon. The only way to catch the loose juice is to hold the extractor's head in a bucket, and I'm not making tea or lemonade on an industrial scale. 

On the other hand, the extractor is faster, so if you were to want a lot of juice, that would be the better way to go. Maybe you want to become the next Nedick's or Orange Julius. Just make sure to get a food-grade bucket -- those Home Depot buckets just won't do the trick. 

Counter culture.

It seems like there are more and more small kitchen appliances on the market all the time, and less and less counter territory for them to occupy. I've blogged before about the preponderance of small appliances and the value of kitchen real estate. Appliances of this sort, in my experience, are ranked into one of four categories, and their category (and even rank within their category) are crucial to their survival:

1) Constant Companions 

2) Close Advisors 

3) Occasional Agents 

4) Whuh?

Constant Companions are always on deck, ready for action. In our house, we have five appliances on permanent display, and no one who knows us would be surprised that three of the five are coffee related: coffee grinder, coffeemaker, coffee pod machine (for Kcups, of course). The other two are used almost daily, those being the toaster oven and the microwave oven. Except in the cold months, I hate to use the big ol' oven if I can avoid it. 

Close Advisors are appliances whose location you always know, because while they don't rate permanent residence, they are used a lot. For me those include the slow cookers (Fat Man and Little Boy) and not much else. Some people have really gotten into the Instant Pot, and I can understand its appeal as it has many functions that take the place of other appliances--pressure cooker, slow cooker, steamer, fryer, rice cooker, and such. I don't know that it does any of them as well as the originals. I do know that Instant Pot recipes always look more complicated than slow cooker recipes. ("Set pot to Sauté. Sauté onions for five minutes. Add spices. Add chicken. Set vent to Sealing. Avoid death-dealing steam as you do a quick pressure release." Etc. Etc. Versus "Throw everything in the crock and set to Low for five hours to six days.")

Occasional Agents usually make appearances for special events, like the stand mixer for birthdays or the food processor for particular recipes. I don't always know where they are, but I can find them without too much trouble. Some Agents are other people's Constant Companions, which says something about them. If a blender has Favored Nation Status on your counter and no one in the house likes smoothies, maybe your rum consumption is a wee bit high. 

The Whuh?, of course, are the things you used for a while and gave up on but figured you'd get back to. Sometimes these appliances, sold to make jobs easier, involve so much cleaning that the net work benefit is canceled. But mostly, you get tired of the novelty quickly. Things like the pasta machine or the George Foreman Grill or the espresso pot or the or the electric grill or the sausage maker or the sandwich press or... You know what they are. You'll see them again at the yard sale. 

In thinking about this topic today, I realized that among our Close Advisors are the backup coffeemaker, the backup coffee grinder, and the tiny coffeemaker for rare times when one person wants more coffee than the pod machine will dispense when needed. That does not even count the Melita cones to make coffee if the power goes out. I'm starting to think we have a drinking problem around here -- a coffee drinking problem. 

Is Coke on coke?

I saw a picture of this online, and assumed it was just some more AI nonsense. Surely no one would think to make a soft drink using a cookie flavor, right? That's just...

And here we are. (Please ignore the yellow dog toy in the photo -- all our dogs have ignored it already.)

Yep, Oreo Coca-Cola is a real thing, and man does it sound like a bad idea. But it gets worse! As part of their Besties promotion, for a limited time we have Oreo flavored Coke AND Coke flavored Oreos. What brave new world blah blah blah. 

So the gang at Mondelēz is all in on this with Coke. There's a sweepstakes involved, a trip for your best friend and you to go to London, because -- well, I don't know why London. Because they like Coke and Oreos there, too? (Since when did Oreos become best friends with Coke? What happened to Oreos and Milk? Did they have a fight? How much sugar can you consume in one snack, anyway? Why not throw in a Milky Way too? I have questions.)

I mentioned all this to my wife, and while she thought the Coke Oreos might be okay, the Oreo Coke would probably be poor. So we did a taste test on the soda to find out. 

Our verdict: You can just barely make out a hints of chocolate and Oreo creme in the soda. I was impressed the flavor was there at all. Aside from that, it just makes a sweet drink a little sweeter. There seems to be an odd aftertaste in the Zero version that I've not noticed before in Coke Zero. So, a novelty act, and not one that improves the product. 

Will we try the Coke Oreos? I don't know. There's just the two of us here right now, not counting the dog, and a box of dicey cookies is a big investment for two adults, calorically speaking. You can bet you'll hear about it in this space if we do. Have you tried either of these products? 

And what mashups would YOU like to see? Coke and Entenmann's Coffee Cake? RC and Cap'n Crunch? Pepsi and King Oscar Sardines? Let your taste bud imagination roam free. Although maybe Pepsi and King Oscar is only found in A Fridge Too Far. 

Yoo-Hoo or boo-hoo?

One of the interesting things about shopping at Tractor Supply is that they have candy you don't see elsewhere. Your average gas station has to make room for the 98,000 varieties of Reese's, so they don't have space for Big Hunk Bar or Mallo Cup. Or this.  

As an adult who remembers Yoo-Hoo chocolate drinks fondly, I felt compelled to purchase this candy bar. I'm not sure Yoo-Hoo is well known outside the northeast, where it originated in 1928 (in New Jersey, to be specific). Yogi Berra was a pitchman for it for decades. In the eighties it was still considered a regional favorite.

Yoo-Hoo is not exactly chocolate milk, as its unusual composition allows it to stay fresh at room temperature, and its more watery consistency puts some folks off. But there's no denying it has a very particular type of chocolate flavor that most people enjoy. 

It that way it is like Hershey milk chocolate, and for the same reason -- bizarre American inventiveness. Milton Hershey was already rich from his caramel business when he decided to get in on the ground floor of the milk chocolate craze that was sweeping Europe. He went to Switzerland to learn the secret -- making milk chocolate is a lot more complicated than you'd think -- but the Swiss wouldn't tell him. So Milton just invented his own process, resulting in that unique sour-milk tang that sets Hershey's apart from all the other milk chocolate to this day. 

Similarly, juice bottler Natale Olivieri set out to make a chocolate beverage and just worked it out on his own, using canning methods to make a shelf-stable chocolate drink. Thus, nothing else tastes quite like a Yoo-Hoo.

Or does it? Does this Yoo-Hoo branded chocolate bar have the same taste? That is what I set out to discover. 

And the answer is -- not really. I kind of thought it did, and then maybe it didn't, so I bought a bottle of Yoo-Hoo to compare it directly. I have to say no; it's similar but not the same as the unusual Yoo-Hoo flavor. 

Here's why:  

Yes, the Easter candy giant Palmer of Reading, Pennsylvania, manufactures the Yoo-Hoo chocolate bar under license. Palmer chocolate is the sort that you give to kids, because they don't know enough to be discriminating in the least. It's fine -- but it's not great. And I think they failed to really capture the Yoo-Hoo taste. So while there's nothing wrong with it -- hey, even so-so chocolate is still chocolate -- I fear it does not live up to its label. But it’s still a break from the 98,000 Reese’s varieties.

So that's my report for today. It's been a while since I did one of these, taking a caloric hit for the team to help you spend your candy allowance wisely. You're welcome! 

Grilled.

The spot of heat wave we had here and about the country last week has dissipated, and the early summer weather is now quite delightful. I'm sure the panic mavens that were forecasting a world afire last week will moderate their statements now, and be more rational next time. Ha! he jokes. 

Our idiot governor issued the usual birdbrained take, her office calling the heat "record-setting." It was not, in any significant way. Even if one does not stretch back to the many hot summers of the past, when the temperatures often hit triple digits in New York City, just in 2016 we had the so-called Heat Dome descend on the United States that gave us days of miserable heat. We did not even come close to that kind of heat.

Maybe last week had supposedly the hottest June days in recorded history? I doubt it with every fiber of my being.   

New York remains the dimwitted Me Too! kid brother of California; whatever boneheaded thing its worshipped brother does, New York wants to do the same. We all know what this is really about. Hochul is one of those softheaded geniuses who want us to give up our gas stoves and gas cars to save the planet. She'll never personally give up anything, of course. She can't explain how we're supposed to get ten times the electrical power we have now to charge up all the electric cars and stoves without burning fossil fuels or splitting atoms. Solar is a joke, especially in places like New York where the snow covers the panels when you most need the juice, and wind is an ecological and barely viable generator of electricity. 

Don't ask questions. Just tremble in terror and vote for her again. 

As it turns out, I think it's propane that she really wants to give the old heave-ho to. Why? Because then no one will ever see her party playmate Chuck Schumer do anything this stupid again: 

Our senior senator, ladies and gentlemen, "cooking" a raw hamburger patty with cheese already on it on Father's Day. One of the most powerful men in the country, playing at being "just plain folks" with a gas grill. I guess the Global Warming was so bad, he figured the sun would cook the burgers all on its own. I wonder if someone drew the grill marks on the wienies.

The biggest wienie in the picture is him. 

Better to get rid of all the peasants' grills than let something that humiliating get out again. Burn the grills! Save the Earth! Save Schumer's face! Save their phony baloney jobs! 

🌞🌞🌞

If you are in a hot spot this summer, allow me to recommend a recipe my family used to keep hydrated on the hottest days of summer. My dad, who stopped working outside despite heat or cold, would cool off with this beverage my mom made. We never had Gatorade in the house -- we had something better. 

Mom probably got the recipe from Welch's.

🍇Juice of 4 lemons

🍇2 cups Welch's grape juice concentrate (no sugar added)

🍇3/4 cup sugar

🍇Water to fill to 2 quarts (4 cups+)

Drink that nice and cold with a towel soaked in cold water on the back of your neck. Makes a new man of you. 

I'm not dissing Gatorade, which has been a real lifesaver in our family when people have gotten overheated or woozy from illness. But how does it match up against the Grape-Aid? 

Well, two quarts of standard Gatorade has 1,013 calories, versus 904 for the grape juice, sugar, water, and lemon juice punch. The Welch's is a little lower in carbs and higher in potassium, which helps the fact that it's lower in sodium than Gatorade (both important electrolytes). It's got vitamin C out the bazooty, which Gatorade does not have. It's also less expensive than Gatorade, but not by a huge amount.

If you don't mind squeezing a few lemons, try the Welch's. I think it tastes better than Gatorade. It would probably make a fine cocktail with some vodka, if that's how you want to go. Put a little cocktail umbrella in it and thumb your nose at Global Warming, Climate Chaos, Kathy Hochul, Chuck Schumer, and all the other foolishness. Cheers!

The nogged truth.

Well, this little meme is making the rounds, and for good reason. 

I finally dug myself out from under a pile of work Friday and got to the supermarket Saturday. No, they were not playing carols over the PA system yet -- I seem to get there during Greatest Hits of the '80s Hour most of the time -- but the dairy aisle was a different story. Put on your crash helmet, kiddo, 'cause this will shake your noggin:

Wall of Mandatory Cheer

Half a cooler full of egg nog, on October 14. 

I have nothing against egg nog. I like it. I used to buy a quart every yuletide for olde tyme's sayke, but then I looked at the calorie count. I don't like it enough to undo months of avoiding sugar for one glass of egg nog. Eight ounces has about 340 calories. That's about the same as a vanilla milkshake, and I'd much rather have the milkshake if I'm going to splurge.

I'm quite impressed, though, at the choices. Some have booze, some don't, but just the fact that there are ten choices in this photo alone boggles my mind. When I was a kid there'd be one choice -- your local dairy would put out an egg nog, plus maybe a larger dairy like Borden, and you wouldn't see it until a week before Thanksgiving. It'd be gone by January 5. If you wanted liquor, you had to add it yourself. 

Anyway, it's just another sign that the Xmas Blob as we celebrate it is creeping up over Halloween, having completely swallowed Thanksgiving. It's one thing to live like the reformed Scrooge, to "honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." It's another to whip out the egg nog halfway through October. 

But all is not lost! We certainly still have displays with SPOOKtacular Halloween deals, and things like this: 

Yes, Campbell's Pepperidge Farm label made a deal with Dunkin' Donuts to make pumpkin-spice-doughnut-flavored graham-cracker Goldfish. My wife wanted to try them, so I had to relax the standards a little for the duration. Besides, graham crackers are health food, right? 

Verdict: Really good. Sweet but not too sweet, like Dunkin's non-iced doughnuts. And very fall-forward. 

Back off, egg nog! There are still leaves on the trees!  

Soda Italiano!

I bought this in the supermarket -- it was in the Italian foods aisle. But I'm not really sure it belonged there. 

Tuscanini! A name synonymous with fine soft drinks! Or is it? 

The bottle does say it's a product of Italy, and never having had any colas manufactured in Europe, I figured, why not? It comes in a classy glass bottle, so it's probably really high class. At any rate, how bad could it be? 

It got me thinking about the origin of cola nuts as a beverage flavor. Apparently the kola nut, of African origin, has long been used to flavor water, and I can believe that even though Wikipedia ties it to the slave trade. It was praised even then for its powers of refreshment -- its caffeine content compares favorably to that of the coffee nut.

Kola nuts had been hanging around for a while before being used to make a soft drink, Coca-Cola, in 1886, then Pepsi two years later. America thus did as much for the kola nut as probably the entire Ottoman Empire ever did for the coffee bean. Yay us! 

But back to the Italian soda. Is it any good? 

It's -- okay. It reminded me of C&C.

When I was a kid and my mom wanted to try to save some money, she might buy a cheaper off-brand cola. This never worked, because Dad was a dedicated Pepsi man. Most colas were not that good, and none of them had a rich and distinctive flavor the way Coke, Pepsi, or even Royal Crown did. One that came close was C&C, a regional brand that was founded in Belfast, Ireland, believe it or not, in 1865.  The company moved to the United States in 1955, is based in Cranbury, New Jersey, and its products can still be found in stores around the New York City / Northern New Jersey area. I'm glad to see that the company has come out with all kinds of crazy flavors like Orange Pineapple, Cotton Candy, and Red Candy Apple. It's the only way to compete with the big guys, who can't move quickly when it comes to new products. 

But back to Tuscanini. I noticed that the bottle explicitly said that their cola was kosher, which is not something soda brands usually do. Coca-Cola did not become certified kosher until 1935. While Pepsi Cola has always been kosher, Pepsi does not always go to the trouble of getting certification overseas -- and apparently not all modern Pepsi products would meet those standards. (No, there's no pork or crab in Gatorade, smart aleck.) This would make Tuscanini more appealing to the large and growing Orthodox Jewish community in my area of the lower Hudson Valley. 

On further investigation, it appears that all products sold under the Tuscanini name in the United States are distributed through a kosher foods company called Kayco, based in Bayonne. A quick look at the US Patent and Trademark Office database confirms that the trademark "Tuscanini" is owned by Kenover Marketing, which merged with Kedem and B&W to form Kayco. While I believe these products do come from Italy as advertised, they may be from a variety of manufactures nowhere near Tuscany.   

None of that matters much to us in the non-kosher community if the products are good. The odd angle is that we have a brand called Tuscanini that one can buy with assurance if one needs foods that are kosher. I guess it is a small world after all. 

Fizz.

You're hot, tired, and thirsty. How about a nice cold beer?

Nah, no drinking beer at work.

Okay, how about a sodie pop to give you some delicious soft-drink refreshment? 

Nah, the sugar is fattening. 

Maybe some fruit juice?

Nah, that's all loaded with sugar too, even if it's natural.

Iced coffee, then, or iced tea?

Caffeine. Insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, nausea, increased heart rate, headache, anxiety, and chest pain.

Well, all right, how about some diet soda? 

Nah, the artificial sweeteners are said to cause gas, bloating, diarrhea, stroke, heart disease, and I'm still thinking about cancer even though that was fifty years ago and pretty much disproved. And death! Maybe death! 

OKAY OKAY! Here! Have some seltzer! It's cold! It's fizzy! It has NOTHING ELSE IN IT! It couldn't possibly harm you! 

That's what you think! 

🦷🦷🦷

Yes, it's true -- according to an Italian report last April in the journal Nutrients ("Damage from Carbonated Soft Drinks on Enamel: A Systematic Review"), "An abuse of carbonated acid substances leads to an increase in the possibility of dental erosion with consequent structural disintegration and reduction of the physical and mechanical properties of the enamel. There is thus greater bacterial adhesion on rougher surfaces, determined by the erosive process, and therefore a greater risk of caries." You read that right -- drinking seltzer water or club soda that contains nothing else at all is bad for you, because the minuscule amount of carbolic acid in fizzy drinks will rot the teeth out of your head. You've heard of meth mouth? Meet soda smile.

But really, how dangerous is it? As the old saying goes, the poison is in the dose. How many carbonated drinks a day is considered abuse? The report does not say. It just scares us with some pictures of damaged teeth and tells us to drink water and eat fruit (which, just sayin', is loaded with sugar).  

Now, of all people, the American Dental Association dropped a flag on this one, God bless 'em. Yes, they say, "any drink with carbonation—including sparkling water—has a higher acid level" than water, but "sparkling water is generally fine for your teeth". Why? "In a study using teeth that were removed as a part of treatment and donated for research, researchers tested to see whether sparkling water would attack tooth enamel more aggressively than regular lab water. The result? The two forms of water were about the same in their effects on tooth enamel. This finding suggests that, even though sparkling water is slightly more acidic than ordinary water, it's all just water to your teeth."

The ADA still maintains that fluoridated water is where it's at for teeth health, but standard oral care ought to prevent any damage from carbolic acid in sugarless drinks (although they do add that sodas with natural citrus flavors will likely have a stronger level of acid). 

So, it's the usual hullabaloo-- small studies question the safety of an innocent pleasure, meta study combines results to set off a panic. Study authors never get money or notoriety for proving that something is harmless, unless they are so deep in the pocket of an industry that they're covered in lint, in which case they may be completely insane ("smoking prevents asthma!"). 

Today's medical journals are part of the campaign to make everyday life miserable. We must have schools that don't teach, jobs that don't pay, appliances that don't work, chemicals that are so safe they do nothing. Go suck water out of the tap, plebe. 

Well, the hell with it. Seltzer is only dangerous if you shoot it in your face, and I'm standing by that opinion. 

Banana peels are a danger to the same segment of the population, by the way. Just a little caution.

Wake-up juice.

Scandinavians and other northern types love their coffee. Charts of the top coffee-consuming nations vary from year to year, but among the top coffee drinkers you will always find Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, and Canada. Why? Because A) it's cold and they want to drink something hot and B) there's no sun for six months out of the year and they need caffeine to stay awake. 

 

A long time ago I visited Norway, one of the nations in my ancestral mishmash, and I remember that people sucked down coffee like they would die without it, and also that the coffee was really good. My wife, having heard such tales, and being a coffee hound herself, got me a couple of bags of Norway's finest coffee for Christmas. Here's one: 

 

Kjeldsberg is a coffee roaster in Trondheim, Norway, and I don't think there's any more Norwegian-sounding city than Trondheim. You could say it all day. Trondheim Trondheim Trondheim. Anyway, Rasmus Kjeldsberg started the company in 1856, correctly predicting that coffee was going to be a big business. That makes Kjeldsberg older than venerable American brands like Maxwell House (1892), Chock Full o' Nuts (1926), Martinson's (1898), Chase & Sanborn (1874), and Hills Bros. (1900), but not quite Folgers (1854). However, most U.S. brands have been bought and sold by big companies over the years*, and the quality of the coffee has not stayed top-notch, dare I say. Kjeldsberg is, I believe, still its own business, and business is good.

I don't consider myself a coffee snob, but I have to say that the Kjeldsberg kids know what they're doing. The two varieties I tried were delicious--full-bodied without being acidic and nasty, rich without tasting burned. Honest injun, it was better than any major American brand I know. It even surprised my wife, who expected some kind of thick Eurotrash goop that could only be forced down with cigarettes and baguettes. Well done, my Norske friends!

Many moons ago, when the idea of quality coffee was sweeping the nation (and we could always use some more sweeping), the head of a small company at which I was employed came back from the Frankfurt Book Fair. We were in the business of importing foreign books and Americanizing them for the US trade. While in Germany she had been in a discussion with some of the shifty foreigners about coffee, and they were comparing the coffee found in Italy, Germany, and other nations. 

"What do you think of American coffee?" she asked. 

After a moment, one of the fellows said, "It, too, is a beverage."

She thought that was hilarious. I admire the remark as well -- it so perfectly combines the desire to appear polite with the desire to look down upon others that perhaps no other continent can do as the Europeans do. 

Oh, well. I'll give them credit for the joe. We'll take everything else on a case-by-case basis.

⛾⛾⛾⛾⛾

* For example, Chock Full o' Nuts, Chase and Sanborn, and Hills Bros. are currently owned by Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA, the American branch of Italian giant Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group; Maxwell House is owned by conglomerate Kraft Heinz; and Folgers is owned by J.M. Smucker Company, having broken free from America-hating Procter & Gamble in 2008, where it had been since 1963.

Slumber cola.

I reviewed Starlight Coke back in April, and now it appears Coca-Cola is going to spring a bizarre, inscrutable soda on us at least once a season. Thus the Dreamworld Limited Edition that I picked up this week. 

What's it supposed to taste like, we wonder. Cherry Coke tastes like cherry, Vanilla Coke tastes like vanilla, and Starlight Coke tasted like exploding hydrogen. (Not really.) So what does Dreamworld Coke taste like? Making an important speech in your birthday suit? Falling? Handing your mom a cigar while Dr. Freud takes notes? 

According to Coke's site, "Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Dreamworld makes the most fascinating parts of our imagination real. This limited edition sparkling beverage from Coca-Cola Creations explores the realms of the surreal, the imaginary, and the otherworldly. Experience the familiar Coca-Cola Zero Sugar taste now with a surprising and unexpected flavor from a dream world." 

Okee doke! Here we go! And…

Tastes like Coke mixed with fruit. It's not too far off that Diet Coke Twisted Mango they were selling a few years ago, which I liked and no one else seemed to. Maybe with some guava and papaya as well. Maybe if you chewed some Mike & Ike Tropical Typhoon candies while drinking a Coke Zero you'd get the same flavor. It's not bad, but it doesn't say Dreamworld to me, unless your dream is a cheap Caribbean vacation in a country where they have to fence off the resort. 

I admire Coke for shooting the moon when it comes to naming these things. Starlight and Dreamworld both evoke a sort of floaty, ethereal, peaceful feeling, although the first is more glorious and the second more weird. 

If someone were to tailor a beverage to my personal dreamworld, it would have to taste like hotel continental breakfasts, business vending machines, and whatever could be gleaned from a train station stand, because my dreams are always about work, city streets, commuting, and hotels. I have no idea why. Once in a while in a dream I will decide I am going to drive somewhere distant, like northern Canada, and only after going along a highway for a while do I realize I will not be able to get home by bedtime as planned. Try stuffing all that into a bottle, Coke. 

Who says you can't find good help?

 

Fizz.

I wrote last April about Coca-Cola's weird Starlight Coke, which was like cotton candy cola. Now I have an equally bizarre item from the competition, Pepsi. I give you Nitro Pepsi. 

Available in vanilla (shown) and
non-vanilla

I thought that this was another product with amped-up caffeine, like Coca-Cola Energy or Diet Coke XTRA (they leave off the E for Energy!). But no, nitro is referring to actual nitrogen, or as the label says, it is "nitrogen-infused cola." So I thought I'd see what it was about.

I should have read the back of the label. I didn't know there were instructions!

You see, there's a second lid beneath the lid of this soda, and popping it open seems to nitrogenate the soda, making for a thick head of tiny bubbles. You pour it into a glass, and you get a very rich, foamy consistency in your otherwise typical Pepsi. Or, like me, you drink out of the can and get a mouthful of bubbles and wonder what the cryin' hell this is supposed to be, because you didn't look at the can for instructions. I'd never seen a can of soda with instructions, but I have now. 

It should have been obvious to me, though, because I believe these are the same cans that Guinness used when they started selling their famous stout in cans. They'd invented of means of simulating that rich stout foam from the tap in your very home, and it was abundantly clever. It looks like Pepsi is in on the game. 

So my review: If you like the taste of Pepsi, you may find this an enjoyable experience. But I don't suppose there will be a Diet Pepsi Nitro; I think you need the sugars in order to help generate the foam. Nitro Pepsi actually has more calories and it does have more caffeine than a regular 12-ounce can of Pepsi -- a 12-oz can of Pepsi has 150 calories and 38 mg of caffeine; a 13.65-oz can of Nitro Pepsi has 230 calories and 73 mg of caffeine. Budget accordingly. 

The kids are all tight.

A few days ago Ann Althouse linked to a New York Magazine story about young professionals getting their drink on in a most serious fashion -- the martini. It's behind a paywall, but we get the gist from a Brooklyn bar owner: 

I watch these kids hammering martinis and I’m like, good Lord.... I think it is a perfect pressure valve for everything people are feeling. Everywhere you look you see war, you hear ‘keep your mask on,’ or ‘don’t keep your mask on’ — people are tired of toeing lines. They’re just like, 'Give me something that transgresses the bounds'.

As Althouse wrote, "Is 'wellness' dead? Ironic if all these precautions in the name of health led to a higher and higher tolerance for alcohol."

This isn't the first time the martini has made one of its many comebacks. In the 1990s, when I worked in the magazine biz, the martini and the cigar bar were suddenly all the rage. It tied in with the widespread fin de siècle zeitgeist of the decade. Even the Trump-owned Hyatt Grand Central had a cigar bar, and Trump himself famously neither drinks nor smokes. It wasn't long before the anti-smokers got their feet back under them and the cigar bars and shops faded or became displaced. The death of the Nat Sherman store down the street near Bryant Park in 2020 was a blow to the recreational smoker. 

Anyway, the martini got another boost following 9/11, when pressure valves also seemed desirable. Personally I can mark that era's end to 2005, when I was at a large business meeting to announce that the great company I was working for (yay!) had just been acquired by an evil company I had once fled (boo!). As we exited, the reception area was full of waiters with martinis for celebration. I dodged through them and fled to the safety of my desk. There was nothing to celebrate. Further, the evil company was so damned square that if they were pushing martinis, the drink's days in the sun were over. 

Which brings us to now. I find it interesting that young folks would want a pricey drink that is essentially solid booze. It's great if you want to get drunk fast, sure. The thing is, even experienced drinkers know to treat the martini with respect, not slam them back like some girly Bailey's shot. I suspect that most of these kids wind up even worse than Nora Charles did in her first scenes in 1934's Thin Man, after she tried to catch up with the six martinis Nick had already consumed. 

The difference is that, being in an old movie, Nora just woke up the next day feeling ill with vague memories of the night before. She didn't throw up all over everything, drunk-dial all her friends, throw up again in the taxi, start a fistfight with the driver, wake up with some ugly stranger, and feel completely wiped out and full of shame all the next day.

Brooklyn cab drivers, take warning! Put plastic sheeting all over the backseat of your cars.

Space soda!

What does space taste like?

Seems like a strange question, does it not? And yet, Coca-Cola claims to have answered it with its limited edition Starlight Coca-Cola from its Coca-Cola Creations laboratory.

I bought the Zero version. My curiosity got the better of me, which shows you that I'm a sucker. For $5.99 a ten-pack of 7.5-oz. cans, you'd better believe I am. I took the hit so you don't have to. Don't say I never do anything for you. 

So, what does space taste like?

Coke says, "Inspired by space, Starlight was created with the vision that -- in a world of infinite possibilities -- somewhere in our universe, another kind of Coca-Cola, another way of connecting with each other, might exist." Okay, that's a big turd of nothing. I'm personally so sick of phrases like connecting with others that I am at the point where I would like to go to a marketing department and start connecting with others' noses with my fist. 

And the flavor? "Inspired by the infinite possibilities of space, Coca‑Cola Starlight fuses signature Coca‑Cola taste with unexpected touches, including a reddish hue and cooling taste sensation evoking the feeling of a journey to space." So, like Coke but with red dye 40.

According to Dennis Lee at food blog The Takeout, "Coca-Cola Starlight Tastes Like One Big Marketing Ploy: What do you think outer space tastes like? Coca-Cola is hoping you'll pay to find out." Yep.

Food Network reviews it positively (although mocking the marketing somewhat), saying, "if you go by this beverage, space tastes kind of like minty cotton candy sprinkled with vanilla, and has a sort of red tint. It’s pleasantly sweet and candy-like and just a bit fruity, which is excellent if that’s what you are going for. It might not be if you don’t really lean towards sweets, but in that case, you probably aren’t picking up a can of Coca-Cola anyway."

I'm drinking a can right now, and I'm not getting the minty. Definitely cotton candy. This could easily have been sold as Cotton Candy Coke without the happy Age of Aquarius-type centaur crap. It's about the color of Dr Pepper, though, so to cotton candy it up they would have had to done a more serious dye job.  

It's okay, but not that interesting. The main thing it does is make me think of one of my least-favorite ELO songs, "Starlight," from the album Out of the Blue.

According to the site Jeff Lynne Songs, Lynne conceived of the song while watching the night sky over Switzerland. Tierney Smith called it an "uncharacteristically dull ballad," and I agree. I hope that if Coca-Cola Creations takes another song title from Out of the Blue, they go with "Wild West Hero" or "Birmingham Blues" or "Across the Border." "Mr. Blue Sky" has seen quite a revival in recent years; that could work. "The Jungle" might be more their speed, with its brotherhood of animals feel. But “jungle” is a pejorative now, and Jungle Coke would undoubtedly be “problematic.” Across the Border Coke might imply tequila, but it could be okay.

For my money, "Starlight," like the soda, is a lot of sweet and not much fizz. Don’t bother with the soda unless you really dig cotton candy, minty or otherwise.

Explosive chocolate.

We know what you want in your hot chocolate -- C-4! And that's why Frankford Candy has given us the HOT CHOCOLATE BOMBS!

I didn't buy these, but I would be darned if I didn't try one. Frankford Candy, located in the great city of Philadelphia, does a lot of co-branded candies (partners include Trolls, Cocoa Pebbles, Disney, and Marvel), including Dunkin' Donuts hot chocolate bombs. This was just sold under their own name, though, and given to me as a present.

The second-biggest selling point with these hot chocolate explosives is the quality of the chocolate, which we are informed is genuine Belgian milk chocolate. The main selling point, of course, is that it EXPLODES when combined with hot milk. The non-selling point is that the tiny marshmallows released in the ensuing carnage are made in China. Of all the things for them to get made in China, they got the marshmallows?  

Let's get to business. The bombs are very light for their size, and wrapped in foil.  

You put the bomb in a big cup and pour the milk over it. And... Nothing! 

Actually I think I didn't get the milk hot enough. However, when I tapped the bomb with a spoon... BOOM!

Well. All right, not that much of a boom. Anyhoo, then you just stir and stir and stir some more, and the chocolate dissolves into the hot milk and the tiny oblong marshmallows float on top.

Or not. Because the milk wasn't hot enough, a lot of the chocolate remained clumped up at the bottom. As you can imagine, I found it a true hardship to eat the delicious chocolate off a spoon. I managed to snag enough of the Chinese marshmallows to get a taste for them, and they tasted like typical American marshmallows. They want to melt fast, though, even in inadequately heated milk, so you have to get to them quickly.

On the whole, I enjoyed the bomb, and look forward to trying the Salted Caramel and Peppermint flavored ones. But I won't bother wearing my explosive ordnance disposal suit next time.

The Peep of doom?

Easter is nearly here -- tomorrow is Palm Sunday -- and so the Peeps are everywhere. Not that I have a problem with that. Longtime readers will know I've reviewed all sorts of Peeps products on this blog, even weird combo items like the Peeps Oreos. 

I would say that they have overrun the Easter aisle a little, but it's their main time of the year -- it would be like complaining that there are too many candy canes at Christmas. 

Look at this! Giant Peeps! Chocolate-dipped Peeps! Decorate-Your-Own Peeps! Hot cinnamon and birthday cake Peeps! Fruit punch and chocolate pudding Peeps! It's a Peep-for-all! 

And yet none of that makes me fear we have gone too close to the edge. But PEPSI x PEEPS? Is this a sign of the aPEEPcalypse? Oh, yes -- this may indeed be the last Peep.

From the press release: 

Fans can submit photos of themselves enjoying the spring with PEEPS® Marshmallow Chicks and Bunnies by tagging @PEPSI, #HangingWithMyPEEPS and #PepsiSweepstakes on Twitter and Instagram for the chance to win a coveted limited-edition three-pack of PEPSI x PEEPS®.

"After what has been a very difficult year, many consumers are looking for new things to smile about.  So, to celebrate the start of springtime, Pepsi collaborated with PEEPS® to develop a limited batch of its first-ever marshmallow cola.  This PEPSI x PEEPS® collaboration will be available in three bright colors through a distinctive mini-can design and will most certainly have fans buzzing all season long," said Todd Kaplan, VP Marketing – Pepsi. "We know our consumers love our limited product drops, and we believe that PEPSI x PEEPS® will deliver an iconic and delicious pairing that has the potential to become a fan favorite." 

Yes, you read that right -- Pepsi is putting out a marshmallow soda in conjunction with Peeps. 

Would I try this? Are you crazy? Of course I would try this! I would be letting the Internet down if I didn't post a review! But I'm a little confused as to whether this product is going to be available in stores or just through the sweeps-- uh, PEEPstakes. 

I'll let you know if I find it. A nice cold glass of marshmallow soda might be just what the doctor ordered, even if it is somehow another sign of the Armageddon. In which case, we will know that this Peeps soda was a fridge too far.

Heavy metal classics.

This could also be called "What's on Fred's Phone?" Here are the latest pictures I took, which I suppose is a pretty dumb way to compose a blog entry. Welp, here we go!

📷📷📷

Friday morning was the foggiest I can recall around here. The weather center issued a heavy fog / black ice warning, which is a nice way to start the day. Here is the shot I took, which I think is worthy of hanging in MOMA (MOM's Art collection on the fridge):

Frederick Key, Fog and More Fog (2021)

Fortunately the black ice was not too bad here, and I got to play light saber with my flashlight.

whoom.... whoom

Now, I promised heavy metal classics, and here's one:

It's upside down, but by gum that's an old-fashioned metal garbage can. You hardly ever see these around anymore, since they have have no wheels and have to be carried. But Home Depot does sell the classic galvanized steel one, a 31-gallon model by Behrens, for $25. They can be racoon-proofed with a bungee cord, as long as your racoons are not especially smart or determined. Anyway, I'm glad to see the metal trash can tradition being kept alive. It's almost like finding a rotary phone.

Speaking of old stuff....

So RC Cola, the distant #3 behind Coke and Pepsi, is bringing back the old "Me and My RC" slogan that was in use in the mid-seventies, complete with groovy font. I wonder why. I suppose it was successful, more so than the "Decide for Yourself" campaign of the eighties. but a forty-five-year-old slogan doesn't seem like it would hit that youth demographic sought by beverage manufacturers. I have nothing against RC, but I wonder what they're thinking. Maybe they figure they can snag the old-timers while Coke and Pepsi fight for the Millennials. It's as if in 1975 they revived this campaign, except it would have been only thirty years old at the time, not forty-five.

But I think most of us feel that 1945 feels culturally a lot further from 1975 than 1975 feels from 2021. 

Finally, we have one more chunk of heavy metal, the base for a steampunk automobile.  

Nah, this is part of that annoying cable project they started a couple of weeks ago. The flatbed trailer brought a backhoe to the party, and the wheel was one of several that held a cable sleeve to run underground to allow the cable to be slipped along the curb. It was a pretty big project. They've moved on to running cables along telephone lines now. Since I took the photo the flatbed is gone, but the stupid reel is still sitting there, just off the road. If they don't come back for it by February, I'm selling it for scrap.

 📷📷📷

And that's what was on my camera app. Be here next time when you get to see five shots of my index finger!

A little soda.

We take a needed break from heavy topics today to bring you the smallest possible beverage you can try.

Isn't that cute? It's one of a limited edition Coca-Cola flavored Tic Tacs that I impulse-bought in the store. I'm not much of an impulsive person; only if it costs less than ten bucks.

So yes, Tic Tac is making these Coke-flavored candies, and aren't they just darling? I have always liked the taste of Coke, and growing up in a Pepsi family, the struggle was real. These days I usually eschew the classic sugary sodas, preferring to spend my calories on eats rather than drinks. But here's a little 2-calorie treat that has the great taste of Coke!

Or does it...?

It starts off with the usual Tic Tac sugar taste, then you get a hint of cherry. As you go you start to get the traditional Coke taste. It's a little strange that, without the fizz, it actually comes across more like flat cola syrup, used for stomach ailments. My mom relied on that stuff, and it is effective for mild upset stomach. (When she a tot they would get it from the drugstore soda fountain.) So yes, the Tic Tac tastes like Coke, with a bit of that vanilla flavor that sets Coke apart from the others of its class.

But never mind what it tastes like. It's irresistibly small. Look at that logo!

People love tiny things. Kids, of course, but everyone else too. Dollhouses, model trains, and so on. Who is not wowed by the guy who makes carvings from pencil lead?

My wife loves Ann Reardon, food scientist and expert baker, especially when she bakes her miniature cakes -- they are real and they are tiny. You can see some of her videos here.

I find tiny crafts fascinating, but I don't find watching videos of these things relaxing, as some do. I keep imagining myself in the moment, working on a minuscule project, hands shaking, and whoops! Broke it! Or ACHOO! Where the hell is it now? Or worse, taking a calming breath and inhaling it. Oh, great, the miniature model of Mount Rushmore I carved is now stuck in my left sinus.

Anyway: Tiny crafts good; Me at them bad; Coke Tic Tacs pretty good, but a little weird. And that's good enough for a Saturday!

Fizzy, freaky.

A couple of months back I reviewed the unusual children's seltzer offered by my nearest supermarket, a 7.5-ounce can in bubble gum flavor. Which I did find to have a good taste of bubble gum and to be appropriately refreshing. I don't know if the kiddies really like it, but then, I think they encounter more things that taste like bubble gum than actual bubble gum these days.

Anyway, following that post, I had a request from an anonymous reader to get some of said seltzer up on eBay, because Anonymous wished to purchase some and the brand, Nature's Promise, is a house brand for Giant and Stop & Shop supermarkets in the northeast, where I assume my unnamed friend does not live. Unfortunately I don't have an eBay account, nor do I know how to properly ship fizzy drinks. I imagined a box full of water by the time it got anywhere, the cans having exploded en route. The best I could do was see if any of the national brands had something comparable, and I did find something. Sorta.

Polar Seltzer is a fine brand of beverages, mostly seltzer but lots of good standard sodas as well, like ginger ale and cream soda. They make a lot of flavored seltzer, including flavor blends that are quite nice (strawberry watermelon, cranberry lime, blueberry lemonade, etc.). I had read that they made some specially for kids, and according to Bustle, at least one of them -- Unicorn Kisses -- had a bubble gum taste. So I thought I'd have a closer look.

They make six of these kiddie seltzers, with weird names from mythology like Pixie Lights and Minotaur Mayhem. I could not find those two, however. The ones you see above were the flavors at my local Shoprite. Two of them were in Halloween dressing last week, but they are available all year long. I was most keen to try the Unicorn one because of my recommendation, but I wanted to see what was going on with the others. The names -- Mermaid Songs, Dragon Whispers, Yeti Mischief, and the forenamed -- tell you nothing about their flavors. It's guessin' time!

I can usually tell what Polar seltzers are supposed to be immediately, which is a credit to them; flavored seltzers have no juice and no calories, so the makers have to construct the flavor with virtually no ingredients. In the case of the four kiddie seltzers, though, I -- like the Bustle writers and the reviewers at Mass Live -- had a hard time pegging just what they were supposed to be. It doesn't mean they were bad though, not necessarily. Here are my thoughts, which I wrote down before thoroughly reading the reviews linked:

Yeti Mischief -- started a little citrusy, but with a strong berry or perhaps raspberry finish. Bustle's tasters called it "limey and piney" but they are wrong. Mass Live also went the lemon-lime route, missing the berry flavor. But it is so freaking obvious. Man, no wonder people can't find Bigfoot.

Dragon Whispers -- more aggressively berry-flavored, but definitely has a grapeishness to it. Bustle went the citrus route on this one as well, falling into the trap! But Mass Live, who liked this one the most, called it -- berries and grape. The reviewer did think that the purple dragon on the can may have influenced the detection of grape. I think that's wrong, but I will say that the other reviews of these products seem to make these the Rorschach test of sodas.

Mermaid Songs -- also grapey, but something guava or papaya about it. A light taste, hard to pin down. Bustle consulted a Bon Appetit writer who probably nailed it best: Swedish Fish. I give the Mass Live guy points for trying: "foamy sea spray mixed with orange Starburst."

Unicorn Kisses -- tasted like sour gum, not bubble gum, to me; after a couple of cans the best I could come up with was: Jolly Rancher with the fruit part removed. If you took out all the flavors that make different color Jolly Ranchers taste different, what you'd be left with is this. Definitely my least favorite of the four I tried, although Bustle was more forgiving. Their reviewer also got the Rancher vibe but found it to be like a watermelon one, which I can imagine but barely, with a strawberry bubble gum aftertaste, which I think is too generous. Mass Live said it is an "an airy whirlpool of bubblegum cotton candy flavors" which I agree with if by "airy whirlpool" you mean "underflavored mess with no cotton candy flavors."

So I'm sorry, Anonymous; in my opinion, the one supposedly the most bubblegummy was the one I liked least, and one I wouldn't recommend. I hope you had better luck finding your beverage.

Perhaps my groundbreaking essay from September will encourage Canada Dry or Schweppes to make a Bubble Gum Seltzer. Wouldn't that be refreshing!