Liquid Thanksgiving, anyone?

Yes, there has been that bug in our house lately, but fortunately I'm referring to the Jones Soda Holiday Pack 2006. This was a belated Christmas gift from Dr. Gary Stager, purveyor of insane gifts for friends. As I operate a food blog, this is probably one of the finest things ever sent to me.

As there is safety in numbers, I decided to open it up for a taste test at a work event. Not many people were brave, barely anything had been sampled. I had a short sip of each soda, and here's some initial thoughts (as much as you can get in a sip)

Turkey and Gravy Soda: not a good color, a mystifying taste (as expected)
Pea Soda: Pea green and pasty tasting (should have Linda Blair on the label)
Sweet Potato Soda: bright orange and pretty good as far as food flavored beverages go (mmm)
Dinner Roll Soda: Light Beer colored and a big let down (bland)
Antacid Soda: bright pink and way too sharp a taste (accurately so)

Overall there is this bizarre sweetener in each drink that leaves such an aftertaste it's nearly impossible to separate it from the bouquet of liquid Thanksgiving aromas. In my opinion, my favorite was Sweet Potato Soda, least favorite Pea Soda.

If you google search for Jones Holiday Soda Pack 2006, there are some great entries including a very long video of some guy trying every one of them. If you have a chance to get one of these later this year, give it hell. If you've already sampled this or another holiday pack, please share your experience here!

Snacks for the Drive Home

For many lucky commuters who get to drive more than a half hour at a time to and from work, you've probably experienced some hunger on the road. Since I drive (on average) an hour each way, I have learned to plan my food accordingly.

When packing my food bag for the day, aside from breakfast, lunch, and afternoon healthy snack (yogurt type thing), I usually have a "transportable fruit". This is the quick healthy snack that you can eat with one hand while driving at high speeds. Granted, you are not supposed to eat and drive (and talk on a cell phone, or take a picture of eating and driving like I did here), but for those days when it's past 6pm, you're not eating dinner till after 8p, and when that one eyed raccoon missing his back half on the side of the road is lookin mighty fine then transportable fruit is the answer!

Transportable fruit are things you can eat with one hand, without really looking at it. Perfect examples are apples, plums, or dried fruit - it needs to be a clean and fairly dry experience. Pears, peaches, strawberries, and other drippy fruits are only for the experienced... or great if you have a paper towel to dry your elbow off and someone to hold the wheel while you do it.

Here are a few cautions for those of you in the transportable fruit club...
1) make sure you peel the damn stickers off the fruit before you get in the car. It's fun eating stickers in the dark, fumbling for the interior lights, trying to figure out how much of the sticker you actually ate. Plus, when you toss them to the floor mat, they usually stay there for several years, or stick to passengers' shoes.
2) eyeball the fruit for possible bruises. Nothing is worse than biting into a bruise or a mealy spot at 65 mph and not having enough hands to safely deal with it. Then your trust is broken and you have to eat the remaining part of the fruit with the light on.
3) grapes seem like an awesome idea until you get the nasty grape, or the fuzzy grape, again while driving fast in the dark. It's best to de-bone the grapes and bring just a bag of loose ones that pass the visual test.

What is your favorite transportable fruit?

When Chocolate Meets Dinner

My father just returned from a trip to Germany, bearing a medley of quirky snack foods. One item I found to be particularly interesting was a white chocolate bar flavored with curry, coconut and banana.

The first taste instantly reminded me of Thai curry. I imagine this is what it would taste like if you put yellow curry in an ice cube tray and left it in the fridge for a while. While at first, I found this flavor off-putting, it definitely started to grow on me. Always fun to try something new...

The Kit Kat Trio... Why Mess With a Good Thing?

One of my top 10 favorite candy bars has always been Kit Kat. It’s risen and fallen in the standings, but manages to stay in there against some of the biggies and newcomers trying to be different. So even though I’m supposed to be watching what I eat, this blog posting goes against the 15 pounds I’m trying to lose. But heck, I’m doing it for YOU, faithful readers. Ahem.

There are three types of Kit Kats out there, standard Milk Chocolate (classic, if you will), plus White Chocolate and Dark Chocolate. As all three happened to be available in a large candy bowl 20 feet from my desk, my FunFoodFight senses were tingling for a go at it. Here’s what I think in preferential order (best to worst).

Milk Chocolate Kit Kat – why mess with a good thing? The milk chocolate provides a soft chocolatey sea for the wafer to float in, the taste of each main ingredient weighing in equivalently. Perfect ratio of taste and texture, great size and shape for eating. Oh Blessed Kit Kat.

White Chocolate Kit Kat – I was extremely dubious about this one, as I recall the white chocolate peanut butter cups (meh). Upon first bite, though, that same even texture/taste has been achieved, this time with a sweet “crème” taste with the wafer. I think it’s a good close 2nd to the Milk Chocolate Kit Kat, especially if you want something sweet after a meal that isn’t chocolatey tasting.

Dark Chocolate Kit Kat – Boy was I bummed out about this experience. Ironically, my chocolate preferences lead with Dark, then White, then Milk which is the opposite in the case of this taste test. With high hopes I went chomping away, my first reaction being “ack”. It is like a Special Dark with something pulpy and crunchy inside that isn’t supposed to be there. The chocolate is very bitter tasting, and does not play at all well with the wafer – it shoves the wafer aside trying to be top dog. No thank you. The aftertaste lingers, and in that chasm you yearn for your Kit Kat chocolate wafer Yin Yang... and find none.

Determining Your Gastronomic Limits

I am not kind to my stomach. Even when I know the two-hours-from-now Brian will be cursing the present time I-could-go-for-a-snack Brian, I continue to punish my digestive system. Think: a large ice cream sundae after a smorgasbord of sub par sushi.

Yesterday at the Topsfield Fair in Topsfield, MA, I confirmed the above. After walking by a literally endless array of food vendors, I carefully chose a sure-miss lunch: jambalaya. Everyone knows that if there's one place north of the Mason Dixon line where you should get fine Cajun cuisine, it's a 200-year-old agricultural fair in rural Massachusetts.

To drown my sorrows in what was clearly a poor choice, I decided to treat myself to something that harkens back to Dawn's old post: Boardwalk Food - A Summer Must. I got fried twinkies. For a meager $5, I watched as the man from the funnel cake cart grab two chilled twinkies on sticks, dip them in batter, deep fry them, shake on some powdered sugar, cover them with whipped cream, and drizzle on a brown substance approximating chocolate.

I have to admit, I was only able to eat one of them. Even so, my stomach was cursing me for much of the day.

While I could lie and say that I've learned my lesson, I'm positive this is far from the last time something like this will happen.

My Ultimate Snack Food - Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies are food royalty in my life, they rule my sweet tooth world. As most people who like cookies go, you've probably had a ton of different types of chocolate chip cookies. There are only two real kinds - crispy and chewy (a.k.a. soft baked).

Chewy is just an abomination - unless you're personally standing there watching cookies come out of the oven, a cookie should not be flexible. Any chewy chocolate chip cookie is pumped full of chemicals to make it bendable, and tastes like it.

I'll focus on the positive - Crispy! There are many good crispy chocolate chip cookies out there, from mom and pop operations to mass market. Here's my take on the top few manufacturers out there in different categories:

Top National Brand - Pepperidge Farm Nantucket Chocolate Chunk Cookie, large and crispy, loaded with dark chocolate chunks. They carry several other styles of chunk cookies, all good as well. This is the best TRAVEL cookie - car trip, picnics, camping and more. They're even stored in seperate stacks inside the bag for easy sharing as well as for protection from busting up. The bonus is that in hot weather, you leave the bag in the sun and the chips get gooey, simulating fresh out-of-the-oven cookies. I can't tell you how many summers I spent as a teenager at the Jersey Shore reading Weekly World News and munching on gooey Pepperidge Farm cookies.

Top Local Brand (Northeast US) - Peggy Lawton Choco Chip Cookies, a best kept secret of New England. This is the cookie you find most in sub shops, grocery stores, schools, and roach coaches. It's the working man's cookie. They are shrink wrapped (it's an art form learning to open them up) in a set of 3, and come in several kinds such as sugar (mmm), peanut butter, oatmeal, and more. The link above is for a chowhound.com posting about the brand, as Peggy Lawton doesn't have a website that I can locate (old school!). The Choco-Chip cookies are this amazingly perfect dry and crisp cookie with almost a "salt" feeling, the chocolate chips rounding out the "sweet". It has the same draw for me as a chocolate covered pretzel. You definitely can not eat just one. It's all or nothing for Peggy Lawton.

Top Boutique Brand - David's Cookies, I discovered this brand through a cafeteria in our building at work. They get them through a foodservice company, and bake them fresh - handing out free samples on Fridays. Or I can buy them at 3 for a dollar, which I manage to do on average of once a week. They have captured the holy grail of Chocolate Chip Cookie Texture. The outside is firm and crunchy, but the inside is slightly chewy and the chips are borderline gooey. The taste follows suit as perfect. I can't vouch for David's offerings of pre-made cookies, but all I can say is I'm ready to buy a bucket of dough from these guys.

And one final note... I'm a No Nuts girl. Macadamia nuts are OK on occasion since they are exotic, but that's it! People manage to ruin a good chocolate chip cookie with the palatable taste of aptly named WALNUT MEATS. No thanks! Blech.

Mac and Cheese Fritters

All I can say about Mac and Cheese Fritters is that if they were around when I was in college, I would have been at least 400 pounds.

I don't know how they do it, but they fry up a ball of macaroni and cheese. The outside is crunchy (not greasy) like a mozzarella stick. The inside is divinely loaded with macaroni and cheese in perfect condition. It's like a Comfort Food Munchkin.

This little delight was found at the Biltmore Bar & Grille, a quaint pub in Newton Upper Falls (MA) where we recently had a private work party. If you're in the Metro Boston area and want to know pleasure on a plate, stop on in.