Archives for the 'Products' Category
Beer for Dogs (Pairs Well with ‘Beggin Strips’)
If you’re a pet owner, you know that beer isn’t something you want to share with your dog. (Apologies to Hosehead, pictured.) But that was before Holland’s kwispelbier (which in Dutch means tail-wagging beer), the healthy, beef-flavored, non-alcoholic brew for man’s best friend.
Kwispelbier just saw its debut in England–where it’s sold by retailer Pets at Home under the “Dog Beer” label.
Dogs are overjoyed. Just ask this pair of Weimaraners, happy kwispelbier slurpers they. Or some unemployed scientists.
Or you could ask jolly Helen Pearson.
Dog-owner Helen Pearson, 58, said she disagreed with [Dog Beer] because it encouraged people to drink alcohol.
The housewife, from Sherwood Avenue, Chaddesden, [England,] said: “If it’s that good for the dog’s health, you would be able to get it from a vet.
“There shouldn’t be bottles for dogs that look like that.”
Um, yeah. Anyways, there’s no word if Dog Beer is going to cross the pond just yet. An American competitor, Happy Tail Ale, is on “indefinite hiatus.” Still, if you act fast you might still be able to pick some up here.
Dunkin’ Donuts: Free Iced Coffee Nationwide on Thursday
Dunkin’ Donuts, where I started drinking coffee when I was 7 years old, and where I spent about 45% of my superovercaffeinated teenage years**, is giving the iced variety away on Thursday starting at 10 a.m. and running until 10 p.m.
Find the Dunkies nearest you here. Find the (sadly remodeled) Dunkies that virtually raised me here.
**Here’s the math: Four-five trips a day with friends. (We had our own booth.) Each trip lasted about two hours.
Highway Wrecks Spill Spoilt Dog Food, Gatorade (With Bonus Gatorade Coverage!)
In possibly the most noteworthy highway food spillage since a trucker lost his load of spoiled dog food on Route 222 in Maxatawny, Pa. last month, a trucker this morning wrecked and spilled a shipment of Gatorade all over U.S. 27 outside Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
Today’s wreck is, in turn, likely the most resoundingly negative Gatorade spillage since the Gatorade shower that may have led to the death of then-Long Beach State football coach George Allen in 1990.
(Photo via Gatorade-book author Darren Rovell’s “unauthorized” Gatorade blog.)
Readers, What Should $50 Get Me at Dean & DeLuca?
My parents got me a $50 Dean & DeLuca gift card for, um, Christmas. I know, I know. I still have money on similar Christmas cards from Borders and LL Bean, too. Seems they’re all burning the slowest of holes in my pocket.
My question is, dear reader, what the hell should I buy with my D&D card? Do you have a favorite food item there? Something you’ve always meant to try but never have?
Should I get a Wagyu burger, dabble instead in some exotic spice, or pick up a conversation piece like coffee oil? Go the decadent route? Or just hit their cafe? I’m at a loss.
Leave your suggestion about which edible that costs around $50 (give or take) I should pick up either in comments or by shooting me an email. I’ll buy the best suggestion, and let you know how it worked out.
UK BK Flirts with £85 Foie Burger
Best done in the voice of that movie voiceover guy…
In a land ruled by a queen… an upstart king tries to lure customers with a golden goose… against the wishes of a ninny prince… and PETA… and some other, lesser-known group of anti-humans…
This summer, it’s Burger King: Home of the Foie-pper Gras-pper .
Coming soon to a theater theatre near you.
Bad Meatloaf, Good Meatloaf
If there’s anything more certain to give me a quick bout of indigestion while having my Morning Joe than the AT&T commercial featuring d-bag fake rocker Meatloaf, I don’t know what it is. (Unless, of course, it’s Joe Scarborough’s fellow travelers Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist.)
Unprecedented overanalysis and misplaced acclaim for the Meatloaf ad here. Recent Gourmet mag meatloaf recipe–featuring bacon as both a filler and a garnish–here.
Speaking of Golden Arches, Simon Says ‘I’m an Idiot’
Is the Quarter Pounder really just a quarter pound of ground-up worms? No. And McDonald’s is launching a campaign to counter (admittedly amusing) falsehoods like that one.
Their See what we’re made of campaign includes a web-based Q&A:
Q: I’ve heard McDonald’s uses leftover parts of the cow in its beef. Is this true?
A: Absolutely not. McDonald’s uses well-known cuts of meat that you might buy at the grocery store, such as chuck and round.
You’d think this was a good thing, right? All those food nannies are always talking about how people have no idea where their food comes from, and they wish companies would disclose the information voluntarily.
But nooooo. It ain’t close to good enough for one whining food nanny.
…Michele Simon, an Oakland, Calif., public health lawyer and nutrition advocate believes McDonald’s is being disingenuous. If McDonald’s wants to be transparent about its menu items, it should stop fighting laws that would require them to post calorie counts and other information on their menu boards, e (sic) said.
“Who are they kidding?” said Simon, author of the 2006 book “Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back.” “Yes, maybe the beef is 100 percent beef, but that doesn’t make it good for you. I’m assuming they are selecting menu items that are the least disgusting when it comes to their ingredients.”
What in holy hell is she talking about? Seriously. She’s an author?
More here from the Boston Herald. McDonald’s invites you to see what they’re made of here.
Buy a jar of Por Kwan Pad Thai Crab Paste from Amazon (sales rank: #33,454) and push Simon’s book out of the #33,453 spot.
Big Changes in Big Beer
Miller, the Pepsi of beer, is introducing a line of craft-brewed Lite beers. People like em, too. Love em, even.
[W]hat does it mean when the nation’s second biggest brewer takes its most popular beer and does it up, craft-style?
It’s confusing, analysts say, but it makes sense for a company like Miller Brewing Co. as it woos today’s drinker, who wants more flavorful brews. It also makes sense from a money standpoint because craft beers are growing faster than the overall beer segment, and they command higher prices.
Miller, hoping to latch on to part of that growth, announced this week it’s introducing a trio of different styles of Miller Lite, which it hopes will lure new drinkers to the craft segment.
The Miller Lite Brewing Collection, which will be nationwide by September, features variations on the brewer’s biggest brand, Miller Lite: wheat, amber and blonde ale styles, all popular among craft brewers.
The craft lites are being sold as “Lite done right.” More here.
Meanwhile, Budweiser, the Coca-Cola of beer, is spinning off Michelob, the Fanta Grape of beer.
Faux Food Extravaganza
With food prices rising, you might decide it’s cheaper to opt instead for Food Replica Package No. 3 from Nasco. The package includes everything from roast beef to pre-cooked pork sausage, refried beans to beef stew, and pizza to cooked prunes. All for only $185.
More Nasco food replicas here, including a 1.5 oz. shot of whiskey for $12.75. Competition here.
Easter Treat: Ferrero Rondnoir
In case you’ve reached the age where the Easter Bunny no longer leaves special little treats around your home this time of year — or the Purim Bunny just never seems to show up — I recommend you try the the newish Ferrero Rondnoir this weekend.
A Ferrero rep sent me some, which she’d described in an email as “new dark chocolates that feature a dark chocolate cream surrounding a crisp wafer and topped with crunchy dark chocolate morsels.”
Since I’m a firm believer in there being no such thing as too much dark chocolate, I was happy to give them a whirl. (I’m happy to try pretty much any food someone’s willing to send me, though maybe not anything with chreese in it.)
The Rondnoir has a lot going on, but not too much. It’s definitely crispy on the outside — crunchy, even, thanks to the coating of the outer chocolate bits — and when you bite into it the three levels of cocoa-rich dark chocolate, each with a different consistency, play nicely off one another.
Candyblog has more — including the sad revelation that the Rondnoir contains no trans fats.
Find the Rondnoir seller nearest you here. Or just pick up a bunch from Amazon.
Maybe I’m Fickle, But I Yawn at Pickle Sickle
Yesterday was frozen-pickle critical-mass day, apparently, as both the Washington Post and NY Times featured the Pickle Sickle, the “bizarre tasting pickle craze from Texas you cant (sic-kle) get enough of!”.
I like pickled cucumbers (and onions and hot peppers) as much as the next person, and have downed my share of pickle juice, especially after a run (though never Pickle Juice Sport), but I fail to see what makes freezing pickle juice anything special. Beyond the fact kids might like it because they’ll find it kooky — in that blue ketchup sort of way — I’m not sure what the big deal is.
Though if the d-bag pickle haters at the Center for Science in the Public Interest ever come out against pickle juice or frozen pickles, you can be sure I’ll be amongst those lobbing fried pickles their way. And bacon-wrapped pickles, too. Plenty of those.
‘Major League Eating: The Game’
In what gaming and food fans like me will no doubt consider the best news in both since the debut of Burgertime in, um, 1982, Mastiff games is planning to release a competitive-eating game on May 12. Just in time for me to finish finals and spend my entire summer playing! From the punny press release:
…Major League Eating: The Game, will makes its debut as an exclusive on WiiWare™, Nintendo’s new downloadable game service for the Wii™ console, which launches May 12 in North America. The game will make extensive use of the Wii Remote™ to simulate the fast and furious action of a professional eating competition.
“Watching Major League Eating is like watching poetry in motion” says Bill Swartz, Head Woof at Mastiff. “Professional gurgitators have the grace of ballerinas yet the brute strength, mental focus, and intestinal fortitude to push their bodies and minds as hard as athletes in any other extreme endurance sport. Victory is sweet and defeat can be well, really, really messy. It’s an experience we’re proud to help bring into the home.”
The game features the world’s greatest gurgitory athletes competing across a variety of foods and venues. Built much like a classic fighting game and deeper than a Chicago style deep-dish pizza, MLE: The Game requires players to master a smorgasbord of offensive and defensive weapons including bites, burps, belches, mustard gas and jalapeño flames while cramming and chewing food at a world-class pace. It’s not for the faint of heart, the slow of reflex, or those with an overly strong aversion to a Technicolor reversal of fortune.
Ah, yes. The “reversal of fortune”, also known as booting or — in keeping with the “Major League” theme — hurling.
Screen capture via Slashfood, which has more on the game.
Play Burgertime online here. And isn’t it about time you picked up a Wii?
That’s One Pissed Off Sandwich
In addition to mac & cheese and a wrap, Burger King is set to bring the Angry Whopper, made “with spicy, crisp onions”.
The Miami Herald has more on that and other new BK products.
Baby Food + Stains + Popular Deman….zzzzzz
From the hard-hitting reporters of KJRH in Tulsa:
“You Vote, We Test” is back by popular demand.
Viewers asked Erin Christy to test spot stain removers.
We tested Tide To Go, Shout Wipes, the Clorox Bleach Pen and Oxi Clean Instant Stain Remover.
We smeared baby food and tested each product to see which would get the stain out.
While none of the products removed the stain completely, the Clorox Bleach pen is the clear winner. But it is bleach, so it’s only designed for whites.
It’s not clear from the KJRH website if the segment ever existed previously, nor what sort of popular demand existed to allegedly bring it back, nor if any “viewers” actually demanded the spot-stain test. Just sayin’. It does actually seem that Erin Christy is a real person.
As Breakfast Cereal Goes, So Goes the Nation
You’ve no doubt seen your grocery prices rise steadily in recent months. With producer costs increasing, they have little choice but to pass the costs on to consumers. But the smart companies aren’t just raising prices, they’re also finding ways to cut costs — and adding to their bottom line even in increasingly lean times — as BusinessWeek notes:
General Mills (GIS) in recent months reduced the number of pretzel shapes in its Chex and other snack mixes to 3, from 14. The company had pretzels in the shapes of the letters “H,” “O” and “T.” But research found (not surprisingly) consumers cared more about the variety of pretzel flavors than shapes. That move, combined with other manufacturing improvements, is saving the division more than $1 million a year.
In a similar vein, Minneapolis-based General Mills cut in half the number of pasta shapes it uses in Hamburger Helper, to 10. Food engineers and marketers even worked on the pasta bits so they nested together, enabling the company to shrink the box. That reduced the cost of raw materials by 10%.
And how is upping prices paired with cutting costs working? Pretty well, reports the Wall Street Journal:
General Mills said due to its hedging program, it is covered on all its energy and commodity needs for the fiscal year ending in May. The company, which like others in the industry has been raising prices on its products, said it hasn’t seen signs of a pushback from consumers. The company increased its expectations for fiscal 2008 earnings to $3.64 to $3.66 a share, including 19 cents of noncash contributions from tax items and other gains. The Minneapolis food company expects earnings, excluding these items, of $3.45 to $3.47 a share. The company had estimated earnings of $3.39 to $3.43 a share.
The Journal says “cost cuts continue to shore up profit margins [while] increased marketing is helping them keep customers despite price increases.” All this is helping food giants stave off a very realistic fear: a consumer rush to generic brands.
Egg-selent Egg-secution
The fantastic Serious Eats highlights a new Cadbury creme egg campaign featuring a suicidal creme egg.
Learn why the Cadbury egg is the “number one brand in the filled egg market” here. More history here.
For some reason, Cadbury Schweppes makes good disaster-themed commercials. Recall the John Cleese schweppervescence ad of about 15-20 years ago.
CVS Brand Cookies Do Not a Snack Make
Sunday night, about 11:30pm, my girlfriend and I were sitting around our pad in that not-quite-ready-for bed mode. Both of us had been reading for a good part of the day, and so we were a bit tired, but still up for watching another hour of garbage TV. And we both wanted a snack. But we didn’t have anything worth eating — unless you consider freezer-burnt Safeway vanilla ice cream edible — and were out of eggs, so oatmeal cookies were mostly out of the question.
So we decided to trek to the CVS up the street for some snacks. Why we sailed past the perfectly edible Chips Ahoy in favor of the CVS Gold Emblem Absolutely Divine Pecan Chocolate Brownie Cookies I’ll never know.
I’ll be the first to admit my expectations probably exceeded what they should have for a CVS-brand cookie. But the description was so promising:
Delight in the taste of creamy milk chocolate chunks and real pecans, made with real butter. Delicious!
Suffice to say they seemed to have never been subjected to any process resembling cooking; they tasted of old flour, rock salt, and corn syrup. (Note hip celebration of semicolon in previous sentence.) There was also no evidence — in spite of the chocolatey color — of any actual chocolate or nuts in the cookie.
I don’t know that either of us finished one cookie before the box was resting in the rubbish. Lesson learned.
