Or, Go to Dollar Tree for the Cheap Science Project Materials, Stay for the Blogging Material

I found this in the cooler at Dollar Tree. At first I was just going to take a picture because I was so charmed by the product name, but then I thought, no, I have to taste this because that’s what my people expect of me.

This product is a terrific example of turning drawbacks into benefit. This isn’t fake sour cream, it’s UNREAL!!!! Sourcreme (creme sounds fancy, no?)! And you get a whole pound of it! For a dollar!

BTW if you visit the website, you’ll find that the company also makes gelatin molds and industrial desserts, like what you get at hospitals and prisons (don’t quote me on the prisons thing, I’d hate to find out that I’d tipped somebody over to a life of crime by giving them the hope of getting dessert every night in the big house).

This is where I get a bit confused. I thought maybe Unreal!!!!! Sourcreme was a substitute for those who can’t or won’t consume dairy products, but as you can see it’s full of dairy. It is slightly lower in calories and saturated fat than the company’s real sour cream, but if you look up other brands’ fat free sour cream product (like Hood’s), they are all far lower in calories, have zero saturated fat and the first ingredient is skim milk, not water and partially hydrogenated soy bean oil.

I guess the benefit of this product is it’s cheaper? I can’t remember how much fat-free sour cream goes for at the grocery store, but I think you’d pay $1.00 for 8 ounces of the store brand regular sour cream on sale.

But you know what? Maybe it tastes terrific. Maybe it’s a slightly less caloric product at a fantastic price that tastes even better because of the goodness of soy beans.

It smelled like sour cream when I opened it but looked kind of like sour cream and shaving cream had a baby.

The taste? Well, it tasted like cold and waxy aftertaste and not fully incorporated starch. Maybe you could use it as a base for a strongly flavored recipe like french onion dip but no way am I putting this on my burrito.

Or, My Sister Moved to Okinawa and Now I’ve Decided to Become a Japanese Kit Kat Blogger

You will not believe all the loot my sister sent me from Japan, including four different kinds of Kit Kats. Believe it or not, that’s just a teensy tiny sample of the many varieties of Kit Kats that have been made in Japan at one time or another.

This is a box of limited edition wasabi flavored Kit Kats (Shizuoka Kanto edition).

You know, I think that this is much more inviting than saying “Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar”. That always just seemed pushy to me.

The inside of the box is very neatly arranged and satisfies my need for things to seem “fancy-like”.

Each tiny pack is just 69 calories. 69, dudes! Bill and Ted would approve and thus do I.

And look! If I wanted to pack these in my boys’ lunchboxes, I could write a message of love and encouragement on the back, just like one can on packaged Rice Krispie Treats, only since these treats come from Japan and are limited edition, the message would be far more meaningful and loving.

The color is slightly more green in person and the whole thing smells primarily of white chocolate. I thought I caught a few whiffs of wasabi, but I’m not sure if I really did or I just thought I did because I thought I should.

And the taste? Pretty much like a white chocolate Kit Kat (fairly okay white chocolate, not that super waxy stuff) with some elusive notes of wasabi. You could call it subtle or weak-ass, depending on your perspective. I can feel/taste a slight hint of wasabi on my tongues and the insides of my cheeks but there isn’t a ton of bite to it. My husband and 7 year old didn’t seem to notice much wasabi flavor at all.

If you’d like to try Wasabi Kit Kats for yourself, JBox has some for sale and NapaJapan seems to carry a wide variety as well. (Note: I’ve never purchased from these retailers or have any association with them, so I can’t vouch for them).

Or, my sheepish re-entry into the world of blogging

Zero credit for paying attention in science, 100 credit for giving it a go anyway.

I guess we should have enrolled him in that summer art program…

Or, I’m not above doing a meme if the situation is right

Not relevant to post, just wanted a bit of color.

Note: I am resurrecting this post because of a mention in the lovely Meemalee’s blog. It’s not exactly the same as her meme, but close enough.  Her post also reminded me of the very first post I remember reading on her blog, Jive Bunny (could be distressing to fans of Thumper).

So this morning, I’m reading my email and I see this 7 Link Challenge in the Problogger newsletter.  I don’t usually do a lot of memes, but I have plans for this weekend and I won’t be doing a Saturday Night Link Up so why not?

You can find the specifics for the challenge in the Problogger post linked above if you’d like to participate. If you do, send me the link so I can read it later on this weekend!

Your first post

I figured the name of my site needed some explanation before I started writing, so my first post was Here’s How the Story Begins where I talk about how the name came to me, how I happened to host a message board on this site for some time and how time changes how you view your online community.

I no longer host forums at this site. It was a difficult decision and one I might write about some time in the future but for now I think it’s best just to say it was for personal reasons. Don’t worry, not hiding any huge drama, but it’s hard to talk about your personal reasons for breaking off any sort of relationship in public without risking hurting other people’s feelings.

A Post You Enjoyed Writing the Most

I enjoyed writing 6 Things I Secretly Hope are Included in Life Coaching not just because I got to spend lots of time listening to 80s music but because I did have a some nervousness about starting the whole process and this helped me deal with that. It was a lot of fun imaging what could happen and it helped reassure me that no matter what happened, I would still be myself.

A Post Which Had a Great Discussion

Is Racism the New N-Word? is a much different kind of post than I usually write for this blog. Some of the comments were fantastic. I was blow away by Shereen’s and almost wish I could use it as a post in itself. When she said:

There is no blame, even if there is anger. You are not to blame. I am not to blame. But in order to change it, we have to acknowledge it, and work actively to dismantle it.

I felt like, yes, you said it so much better than I could have. There were also those with other perspectives and I thought about what they said for days and came to a deeper understanding that it was not just about making sure my own voice was heard, but allowing others to have their voices heard as well.

A Post on Somebody Else’s Blog You Wished You’d Written

This is hard, because there are so many hundreds of great posts I’ve read in the few years I’ve been involved in blogging. Honestly, though I’ve never read something and wish I’d been the one to write it. I guess it’s because it’s not like that subject is now completely and forever off-limits to me and well, I can write it, if I wanted to. I’d just write it differently.

I have been jealous at good ideas or ingenious ways of looking at things, but again, it’s more a feeling of awesome! I can build on that.

There have been posts I wished that somebody else with some talent would have written but I don’t suppose that’s in the spirit of #7 links.

Your Most Helpful Post

Besides the ones that are great appetite suppressants, I think My Ear Itches on the Inside was the most helpful, based on how many people have landed on it from Google. While I did not offer any solutions, I think I helped them feel less alone, which is the greatest help of all.

A Post With a Title You are Proud of

It’s a tossup between People Who Need Pupa are the Pluckiest People and I Said it Before and I’ll Say it Again, Spam is the King of Canned Meats.

A Post That You Wish More People Had Read

11 Reasons I Sometimes But Not Always Dislike Doing List Posts. No reason really, I was just looking at my posts with not a lot of views and this one has something like less than 1% of the views that Chicken in a Can does and since it was my other attempt at doing a Problogger inspired post, it seemed to fit.

Not that I’m saying that Problogger inspired posts are doomed to be kicked in the butt by some soggy ass chicken but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having second thoughts about hitting publish on this one.

I’d love to see your 7 Links challenge, so if you’ve done one or do one, go ahead and link it in comments for us all to enjoy.

Or, watch out Jolly Green Giant, you’ve got competition!

The first time I had mushy peas was in Dublin, Ireland as a side to a fish and chips dinner. Before I get into the peas, let me tell you something that is very odd and perhaps not quite right about the Irish.

The first time I went in to get fish and chips with my now husband, I’m reading the menu board, trying to decide what to get because it’s not just one kind of fish. Oh no, you’ve got your cod and haddock and pike and perch and some kinds come smoked as well as plain. It’s a little overwhelming, but it’s okay because pretty much everything is good.

But then, after you choose your fish and go to choose the sides they have “beans” on the menu. Beans. So, I ask my husband, “Honey, what kind of beans?”

“What kind of beans?” he says “Beans. Just beans. How many kinds of beans are there?”

Seriously, he said that.

And I’m like, well, there’s butter beans and lima beans and black beans and ranch beans and pinto beans and garbanzo beans and bbq baked beans and Boston baked beans and and beanie weenies and Jaysus, man, what kind of beans?

“Beans in tomato sauce! Why on earth would you have that many kinds of beans?”

“Why on earth would you only have one kind?”

While I admire their way with fried fish, I have to say after that I’ve approached Irish cuisine with a bit of caution. If you can just say “beans” and expect that everyone knows what you’re talking about because you’ve only got one kind, well, I just find it suspicious that’s all, particularly when combined with an overabundance of fish choices.

If you want to learn a heck of a lot about mushy peas , click on this Wikipedia link.  If you are an American, you should know that these are not like the mushy sweet or English peas that we have in a can. These are more peas like split peas and black eyed peas are peas.

The food coloring is there because apparently they have a very grey, unappetizing color when cooked. I suppose the manufacturers had the choice between cheerfully artificial and evoking a Dickensian poorhouse and chose to go fake. Can’t blame them really.

When you open the can, it smells a lot like pressure cooked lima beans but looks like pea baby food. My senses were so confused.

The taste? Kind of good if you like starchy and mealy. I do. I like to think of it as kind of like the Northern European version of poi. This might change if I ever try poi. It’s not bad at all, unless you’re one of those picky eater people, in which case you probably wouldn’t have tried it no matter what I said.

If you want to try your own, I found this at a rich-people Kroger in the International food aisle, but you can also order it and other delicacies like spotted dick and haggis flavored chips from Amazon.

Or, I’d have preferred a bit more artificial for the money

When I found these Crazy Apples at Schnucks, I knew I’d have to buy them as I’d never gotten around to trying Grapples, the grape flavored apple. I’d always meant to but they cost about $5 for a box of four and you only get one flavor!

These Crazy Apples, on the other hand, were on sale for the not-very-reasonable-but-somehow-justifiable price of 2 for $3 and I had my choice of three flavors: Bubble Gum, Tropical Blast and Pomegranate Grape.

There’s really nothing to be offended by in the ingredients, if you’d like to see a larger version of this photo and the rest, visit my Flickr. The website doesn’t say exactly how the apples are infused with the flavor, but it does say this:

That cracks me up. It’s like Dudes! Sometimes these companies are all like, hey y’all all our junk is natural but then it’s like you look and find out it’s not natural, it’s made of MEAT!

In any case it’s easy to say what you mean and mean what you say when you use totally non-ambigious words like natural.

Yup, it’s an apple. Even has the fuji label to prove it. This is the bubble gum flavored apple, the other two were both pink ladys. I’m not sure if that’s on purpose or coincidence.

In any case, I’m glad it’s not a golden delicious. That’s one double-lie of an apple, I tell you what.

Cut open, it looks and smells no different than an ordinary apple. There was a very faint whiff of bubble gum scent, but it mostly smelled and tasted like an apple. So it was delicious, but not wild or wacky and by no stretch of the imagination could I call this apple crazy.

The pomegranate grape had a stronger aroma and taste but even still it was more like first chewing some old school bubble gum, spitting it out, drinking some water, walking around a bit and then having some water. The tropical blast was between the two in intensity and kept giving me faint, elusive flashbacks to some sort of gum or candy of my childhood. If only it had been stronger, that crazy apple could have been my madeleine. But no, it was just a slightly off tasting fruit.

These weren’t nearly as bad as I thought they would be. In fact, they are pretty darn good because they taste like good apples and not those disgusting mealy “golden” “delicious”. My kids did go crazy and beg to try them after seeing the packaging and reading the labels, but since they already eat more fruit than an entire zoo full of monkeys, it’s not worth the premium for me to pay to try to get them to eat even more. Trust me, after a certain point, feeding kids fruit is not an entirely desirable goal.

Really, the question is, why are food scientists tinkering with the taste of apples, which almost everyone likes, when people come to this blog on a daily basis trying to find out why papaya tastes like vomit?

Or, now everybody can stop sending me links to Candwiches now that I have proved I know they exist

Before I start reviewing the Candwich, I should mention that I spoke with Mark Kirkland, the founder of Candwich on the phone in August of 2010. At the time, the Candwich was scheduled to be released shortly, but they experienced a number of production delays. The good news is that they were finally able to get the Candwich into production and it’s now available to buy on their website and at selected retailers in Utah.

I enjoyed my conversation with Mark and his passion about his product. One thing I found interesting was the potential for the Candwich to be used in humanitarian relief situations, both in the USA and abroad. It’s really easy for us with access to farmer’s markets and artisan brie and such to mock shelf stable food, but as somebody whose own mother was partially fed as a girl by stuff dumped out of airplanes after the Korean war, I have to say it most certainly has a place. Especially Spam.

Now, to the review!

Shown with a bottle of beer and a jar of peanut butter so that you get an idea of the size of the can. Also, to show that I do sometimes eat real food made out of ingredients.

Just a simple push-tab type top. Fairly easy to get open, the edges of the top and lip of the can were not unduly sharp. I think most kids over six or seven could open one of these on their own.

I’m afraid it’s not going to win any nutrition awards except possibly for being calorie dense. Which in some situations would be a very good thing indeed.

Shelf stable foods have such fun ingredients! Like fungal alpha amylase!

Everything is so neatly tucked inside!

Love that they included a knife and packet of desiccant!

No we’re getting to the good part! Unfortunately the candwich bread on its own is rather…confusing. It tastes and feels like a hot dog bun and a twinkie had a baby. At first, it tastes rather sweet and dry and crumbly perhaps a bit like stale Hawaiian bread, but then it dissolves into a sort of sharply chemical paste on the tongue.

I had a bit of a hard time opening the peanut butter neatly, but I am also somewhat inept at opening things. It tasted like a waxier version of standard peanut butter, with an odd aftertaste which was not entirely unpleasant to me as it brought back good memories of digging into the peanut butter from my Dad’s MREs back in the early 1980s.

The jelly tasted just like the regular Concord grape jelly that most people use on their PB&Js. There was a more than ample amount of both included, I squeezed it all out to show, but really it was far more than I’d prefer to use on a sandwich. YMMV.

Included this photo to demonstrate an important truth: Peanut butter belongs on one side, Jelly belongs on the other. Some people don’t want to hear it, but it’s the way that nature intended.

Hey, that doesn’t look half bad if you are open-minded enough to pay no mind to the commonly accepted wisdom that peanut butter and jelly belong on sliced sandwich bread and not a bun. You can’t just slap anything on a bun and call it an acceptable sandwich. Trust me, I’ve tried and have had many a PB&J on hamburger bun or hot dog wrapped in a slice of whole wheat thrown right back in my face.

But you know what’s weird? Even though all the ingredients on their own were cloying, foul, waxy and in all ways substandard, put together they weren’t half bad. It did have a very weird aftertaste that to me tasted disconcertingly like wax-dipped cloves, but I could see lots of people liking it as it tasted far better than:

• Yoplait Light
• Laughing cow light cheese wedges
• Diet Pepsi
• Anything made by Russel Stover and the Palmer corporation

So, while I can’t endorse this as a good choice for a lunch on the go, it wouldn’t be terrible to keep a few around in the car or pantry for some sort of emergency situation. Some people might actually enjoy them, I mean, after all, a lot of people like Crystal Lite even though it tastes like chemicals and sadness. However two caveats, they are a bit expensive ($12 for four, shipped) and this:

That’s quite a bit of trash to throw away for just one sandwich – on the other hand, the inside of the can is pristine, so it could be re-used for storing things or arts and crafts. It’s probably a bit less waste than most Lunchables.

What do you think of the Candwich? Have you tried one? Would you be willing?

(btw if you’d like, you can see larger versions of these photos on Flickr)

Or, you are going to have to go elsewhere if you want to read about my journey towards abundant awesomeness

My friend Tara of Two Hands and a Road Map was kind enough to allow me to guest post on her blog today. Go on and check it out and don’t forget the comments, unless you’ve had quite enough of the foul mouthed duo of Sean Platt and David Wright, in which case I understand you giving it a miss.

I know I said I wasn’t going to write a real post, but I can’t help but feel it’s my duty to give you this nugget of wisdom I learned today:

If your colleagues are a bunch of male humor writers and/or geeky and/or obsessed with Eminem do not, under any circumstances send them a link to anything you have written that contains the word penis, particularly if you have dabbled with experimenting with canned meat in the past.

 

Or, it’s a guest post from my friend old friend Tara of Two Hands and a Roadmap!

Long before Tracy hated her messageboard, I hated my roommate. Lucky for me, this was only for two months. Unlucky for me, the scars will last a lifetime.

I thought of this roommate today for two reasons: First, Tracy wrote a guest post for my blog, which will run tomorrow, in which she mentions inadvertently seeing a guy’s junk. You’ll see why this is relevant in a minute. Second, the roommate’s name was Tracy too.

I was attending Ohio University in the 1990s when I met her, so let’s call her “OU Tracy” to differentiate her from the Tracy who writes here. Funny how it sounds like “Oh, you ____ Tracy.” Oh, you whore. Oh, you drunken slut. Oh, you check bouncer who still owes me for our phone bill to this day, plus $20 in banking fees. Oh, you!

During the summer between my sophomore and junior years, I stayed at school and worked cleaning the campus dorm rooms. Finding an apartment for a few months was easy. I wanted a place to stay for cheap; another girl wanted someone to rent her place for the summer so she could go home without going broke.I paid her upfront, assuming the place was mine. Just mine. We were cool.

When I moved in after Memorial Day, though, I met OU Tracy. My roommate. (Why does someone not tell you that you’re going to have a roommate for the summer, when you’ve already made arrangements to rent from her? I still don’t get it.)

Looking back, I see so many things about that summer that were weird: The surprise roommate. The graduate student from India who introduced himself to me and almost immediately told me in halting English that he had a problem with thinking too much about sex with college girls, and hey, would I like to take a walk along the river with him sometime? Becoming friends with two students who seemed to make a hobby out of cheating on their boyfriends throughout the summer. None of these stories topped the one of OU Tracy, though, and The Night of the Naked Man.

It was really late on a Sunday. I woke from a dead sleep confused, not knowing what had jarred me awake. I figured it out quickly, though. Oh yes. It’s that strange naked man who is climbing onto my futon next to me.

Wait, what?

I’d never seen this guy before. My roommate met him at a bar, I guess, and brought him home for some recreation. He fell asleep, got up to go to the bathroom, and somehow wandered into my room instead of hers. In his defense, he probably hadn’t known OU Tracy long enough to even realize that he was with the wrong person until it was too late. Poor guy. Poor slutty guy.

So naturally I was all, “Hey! Get out of here, naked guy!” And he leaned forward, as if to be charming, and said something like, “Hey, baby. Don’t be like that.” Surreal. After arguing mildly with me for maybe 20 seconds, he ambled out of my room for friendlier territory. And he certainly found it. (Let’s face it: friendlier territory has rarely been plowed than my friend OU Tracy.)

The next morning I woke up and walked downstairs. The two of them were sprawled on the pull-out sofa, fast asleep. There was a pair of men’s underwear lying on the floor. (I’m assuming they were his, but I think we both know they could just as easily have belonged to Mr. Last Tuesday.) With one last furtive glance at the couple, I grabbed the briefs and left. With only the tiniest twinge of conscience, I dropped them in a dumpster on the way to work.

As far as revenge goes, it maybe isn’t quite as good as making a blog in his honor. (I Hate That Drunken Guy Who Banged My Broke-Ass Roommate doesn’t have much of a ring to it anyway.) Still, it was all I could think of at the time.

Creative commons photo courtesy of profstewartrk

You can read more of Tara’s hilarious writing at her humor blog, Two Hands and a Roadmap. Don’t miss If Keyser Sose Were a Substitute Teacher and Boundaries, Schmoundaries Just Let Me Watch TV.

Or, it’s Sunday Round-Up Time!

Don’t you hate it when you realize you’ve let yourself get too busy and almost missed out on something awesome? My new friend and colleague, Lori Taylor has been working on a terrific project called “Thinking Outrageously (In Less than 30 Days)” over at Pick the Brain. You can register at Pick the Brain for the daily motivation via emails that help you change your perception of yourself and empower you to tap into the power of being outrageously authentic.

I love the tagline:

Stop wasting time trying to change YOU (You don’t have to wait for pigs to fly to have everything you’ve ever wanted)

I’ve been reading through the posts this weekend and Lori knows her stuff. She’s been such an inspiration to me as I learn how to balance kids, work and staying true to myself.

By the way, if Pick the Brain sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve posted a ton of motivational posts there for their 90 Day Project which you can read here.

My friend Jerry Battiste has started a new blog called “The Starved Writer“. I’ve enjoyed reading his posts, especially for lines like this:

The oldest profession in the world is not prostitution, it is ghostwriting.

The constant barrage of emails notifying me of new comments on Nanny Goat’s in Panties’ “Catheters Make Me Squirmy” post and thus reminding me of my own epically squirmy experience with catheters has been a valuable reminder that one should always double check to make sure that one has not checked the email me all new comments box on blog posts relating to catheters, urethras, guinea worms, stoma fetishes or any and all assorted grossery one might come across and be compelled to comment on.

Which is why I haven’t even begun to comment on my friend Two Hands and a Roadmap’s post “So What Was the Lie” which is the most sordid tale of betrayal and filth and golf clubs since Tiger Woods.

So what have you read that was awesome this week?