Smart choices made cheesy

Surely you've noticed the bright green "Smart Choices Made Easy" stamp on dozens of brand-name foods and bevs.

I started seeing them in the early 00s. Then, they were few and far between, rightly indicating vitamin and mineral-rich things for me to eat up in my belly.

Now, they're everywhere.

Seeing the stamp on Quaker "Breakfast Cookies" and diet carbonated drinks is like a smack in the face for those informed on nutrition. There's nothing naturally "healthy" about the sugary "granola" items or the pop, sweetened with fake sugar that is ultimately blamed for killing radioactive Sean Penn look-alikes.

The way to check if something is truly a "smart choice?" Examine the ingredients on the item's packaging. If there's less than, say, seven items listed, it's probably pretty good.

In gen, eating stuff the land makes is always better than the stuff people like your dad makes.

The smart choices stamp, designed with a white torso, from which its arms are outstretched in victory, is a marketing scheme. "I am eating well!" it seemingly proclaims, stupidly. I want to take that stamp, wrap it in a pita, and use it as a softball.

Don't eat schtuff because Aunt Tropicana or Cousin Nabisco tells you it's good. Nabisco never even graduated from community college and Aunt Tropicana is a suspected guest star on "The Hills" this season as Lauren's dog.

Bacon is the new black

What do cocoa and Babe have in common? You can eat them both in one delicious candy bar. That’s right, chocolate with bacon in it. I can’t make this up.

Recently an angel flew down from heaven and said unto me, “Ye shall eat of the pleasure that is this sweet-savory-someone-put-breakfast-in-my-candy delight.” And let me tell you, it’s so wrong it’s right. (I'm sorry, that rhyme is creepy.)

Think about it— what can’t bacon make better? I can think of nothing except maybe...Veggie burgers? No, still better with bacon. The constitution? No, still better with bacon. Underwear? No, still better with bacon. Iraq? No, still better with bacon. I give up. Ok, maybe the weight-bearing walls of a structural design.

But while our chocolate is allying with our salty breakfast meat, where else can this bacon trend go?

-Bacon Martini

-Bacon cookies
-Bacon first aid

Modified beverages

Please don't hate me for offering another Starbucks post, or for spending money at the sometimes-controversial coffee distributor.

I've visited the shop -- one half mile from my house, right on my way to work, so freaking convenient -- approximately twice a week for the last three weeks. My downfall? Iced lattes.

Ordering one this morning, I got a little embarrassed. Because I was blowing three bucks on something I could have made for a fourth of that price on my own? Yes. But also, because of how many adjectives my coffee drink got.

Iced, tall, skinny, vanilla. The quartet of words that prefaced the base noun -- latte. That's ridiculous. And indulgent. And too much fanfare for an actually mediocre morning beverage.

Am I wrong? Usually.

Give me corn tortillas or give me death.

Nothing fills me with rage more than a flour tortilla. I know many people like to eat various ingredients enclosed in a dry, newspaper-like substance.

But I would rather die than have my home turned into a quarters for flour tortillas to sleep. I would rather die than let flour tortillas raise our taxes. And I would surely die before letting flour tortillas have my freedom!

Have you tried corn tortillas instead? They're so delicious. And they don't taste awful like flour tortillas.

Gummi bears for breakfast

In the interest of keeping with my breakfast-themed missives, I write today about an unusual supplement to many of my day's first meals during the last month.

It's gummi bears.

Maybe it's because I can get a three-serving package for .99 at CVS, a store directly across the street from my workplace. Maybe because the teeny gelatin mammals satisfy my sweet tooth, which somehow, is more demanding in the day's early hours. Or maybe it's because I resent your glowing face.

No, I can't pinpoint why I'm drawn to gummi bears almost daily. And I can't help but think that the breakfast addition is better than some of my potential alternatives. Things like bananas, whose delicate skin inevitably reveals some unappetizing dark bruises after peeling or like demon candy, which is only sold in my brain and hard to gain access to in the mornings.

Moreover, gummi bears beat out its gelatin candy competition in the shapes of worms or the less animalistic rings. Indeed, if I'm going to eat an animal in confection form, I want the most ferocious of my options.

I also want to fill up my room with gummi bears like a ball pit.

lasagna: a near death experience

I nearly avoided a rumble at the grocery store last weekend. Having never made lasagna before, I knew I was in for a potentially bumpy ride. I researched the topic beforehand, but I ended up going to the store sans grocery list or recipe with nothing to follow but my heart.

After loading up my red plastic basket, I cruised on into the produce section for some zucchinis. OK, I know that "cukes" refers to cucumbers, but I've never seen that kind of casual hip-hop lingo used in a respected establishment like a grocery store.

As soon as I set my two faux zucchinis down on the self-check scanner, I realized my horrible mistake. I left my groceries at the register and frantically ran back for the zukes. The line of shoppers behind me flashed their concealed weapons, clearly wanting me dead.

I somehow made it home with only a few shallow shank jabs and all the right ingredients, as frightening as some of them might be. (ahem, ricotta cheese)

And for the record, how great is it that parmesan cheese never expires? It's better than Twinkies. Growing up as a kid, how many years did that green canister of Kraft Parmesan sit in your fridge? It's still there, right? Still good.

Also, does anyone want some leftover lasagna noodles?

Starbrunch

This morning I discovered Starbucks' breakfast sandwiches.

The coffee queen added the eggy treats to its menu months ago. As an infrequent visitor, I felt indifferent about the menu expansion despite my love of traditional breakfast breads stuffed with salty meats and chicken embryos.

And when the emo cashier with cheap highlights presented my order this morning, I was initally surprised that the cheesy concoction overtook my right hand. Its multigrain base was larger and more dense than traditional English muffins, and less informed on popular BBC sitcoms.

Sadly, its inflated size failed to correlate with better taste, but maybe that's because I ordered the most low calorie, low cholestoral and low fun breakwich on the list.

I remain ambivalent toward Starbucks breakfast sandwiches. On the other hand, the iced coffee that supplemented my mediocre egg patty proved a refreshing and delicious five dollar treat.

I've neither the desire nor the means to purchase Starbucks' beans every day. But do you know what I do have the desire and the means to do? Eat your family.

Po' boys, rich girls

In the search for the perfect sandwich, I visited Memphis, Tenn. this past weekend where I encountered spicy sausages and crusty breads. Joanna was unable to join me, representing New York at the Cutest Physically Handicapped Baby Contest in Blubbersburg.

Still, unlike Joanna, I know my meats. And I know the thick and veiny sausages I encountered in Memphis were among the most satisfying I will ever have the pleasure of enjoying for lunch. That's what she said. That is, the waitress who served me the fatty pig parts.

Maybe not more interestingly, the "sammiches" on the menu at the Memphis cafe I intruded were called Po' Boys which, according to my part-time Tennessee guide, mostly just means that there's enough bread involved to be used as a sleeping bag for two.

Indeed, there was. But it was delicious. And I realized that, for me, men and sandwiches are alike in that as long as they got character, I don't care if they're po'.

My meat ignorance, Part II

What is pastrami and why did I buy it? These questions will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I’m pretty new on the deli meat scene. Walking up to a deli counter and asking for a pre-determined weight of something is still a weird experience in my book. I decided it was time to veer from the safe and narrow turkey path. No, not to smoked turkey, but to…. pastrami?!

It looked like a real meat’s meat. Ya know? But it wins the award for meat that’s actual deliciousness is inversely proportional to how delicious it appears. It looks really delicious. Need I say more, math majors?

I still don’t really understand what it is. I decided it must be cut from the least delicious part of the animal. (the shoulder?) Dictionary.com says it’s “a brisket of beef that has been cured in a mixture of garlic, peppercorns, sugar, coriander seeds, etc., then smoked before cooking.” That sounds exactly how I like my women. And my meat.

But I guess in life we just don’t know what we want.

My meat ignorance, Part I

This will probably come as a shock, but there's a lot I don't know about meat.

I mean... I know where it comes from. And it's not the same place as babies. Well, at least not directly. But this volume of "My meat ignorance," the first part of an ongoing series, providing many "that's what she said" opportunities to my eager and mature audience, will focus on sausage.

Back when I lived in the Midwest, at breakfast time, sausage came in two forms: patty and finger-sized link. Here in NYC, sausage only seems to come in one form: dinosaur-serious-SERIOUS-you-can-definitely-tell-a-butcher-stuffed-indiscriminate-animal-parts-into-some-intestinal-tract-and-tied-it-off-like-a-balloon-animal.

This may be better sausage, more legit sausage, a more keepin' it real and true to da streets kind of sausage. But it scares the crap out of me! Maybe not all NY sausage is like this. After receiving these ginormo-links from the kitchen of a diner voted "BEST RESTAURANT IN QUEENS 1998," there's no way I'm making that mistake twice. I just can't handle that kind of sausage.

FOOD BLOG CONTEST TIME!!!

The food blog is hosting a contest to see who can bake the BEST cherry pie. The prize for the winner is a cherry pie. All contestants will receive a cherry pie.

Email: thisisacherrypiecontest@gmail.com for details.

WTF, water

I've been drinking Vitamin Water the last four days or so in an effort to abstain from carbonated bevs.

After all, even the "diet" ones that we drink happily, trading calories for brain-killing sweeteners, are not good for our small intestines. And these days you have to be under age 12 or over 300 pounds to drink full-sugar pop and still maintain a respectable level of integrity. (Because you don't know any better, or because you've lost the will to live.)

But I'm no fool. Vitamin Water is not a health food (26g of sugar per bottle = useless calories), and maybe worse, it tries too hard to be trendy.

Here is how:

1. Its "flavors" are all bright colors that are pretty! (but they in no way resemble anything in nature)

2. The bottles' text offers a faux-edge kind of funny. "For best results, stick it in the fridge," reads the all-lower case letter, super contemporary, black-rimmed-glasses-wearing-reader font.

But for all its artificial glam, Vitamin Water DOES keep its name-carrying promises. I'm getting 25 percent of my Vitamin B5 needs from my kiwi strawberry concoction this morn! I don't know what that means, but I really like it.

A friend called Vitamin Water an "overpriced yuppie drink," but I got mine for a dollar at Wal-Mart.