Tag: food

ICED TEA

Have I mentioned Honest Tea? I loved the name and the packaging when a Yale School of Management professor first showed it to me — a little side business for him and a young marketing whiz — though, truthfully, I hated the tea. But this was because he had me sample it out of his briefcase in a hallway at room temperature (and on New Year’s Eve, no less). It turns out that Honest Tea is better served cold over ice or hot in a cup, surprise, surprise, and that I have become a small investor. It is not my expectation it will be a big seller on New Year’s Eve, but you’d be amazed all the places that write it up, and how many people seem to like its seven “barely-sweetened” varieties. (Moroccan Mint, First Nation, and Gold Rush — when I crave cinnamon — are my favorites. But Kashmiri Chai — well, it surprises me, Jerry — it surprises me!) So here’s what I find kind of exciting. A couple of months ago I got the Pioneer Market at Columbus and 74th to order a case of each variety for me. Obligingly, they found a supplier (not then easy to do, getting easier) and ordered the cases. But through a miscommunication, I didn’t get to the store to pick it up, so they put it on the shelves instead. By the time I did get there, a little had been sold and I bought a little — but not remotely all the rest. So last night I’m back in the store and the display of Honest Tea is wider than before and filled with bottles. Do you hear what I’m saying? Someone besides me has been buying the product! They like it! I may not die broke after all! (I’m not saying you’ll like it. But I think you’ll like the labels.) And if it doesn’t work out, there will always be the puns. For starters: Stupida Tea.

Not only will you find Honest Tea labels on-line, you’ll find part-time $10-an-hour job openings. Perfect for that personable college kid who’s hitting you up for money he should be earning himself.

DIET CHOCOLATE SODA

I hate to plug a competitor, but have you tried Arizona Chocolate Fudge Float Lite Soda Pop? Move over, Yoohoo! And it’s got “40% Less Calories than ordinary soda.” Which leads me to . . .

A BRIEF ENGLISH LESSON

It’s 40% fewer calories, not less! Less is for things you can’t count — less air, less hair, less fat, less famine, less rigor, less vigor, less discord, less punditry, less pedantry. Fewer is for things you can — fewer calories, fewer airplanes, fewer hairs, fewer fat cats, fewer pundits, fewer pedants. Less sand, fewer rocks! Less money, fewer mutual fund choices!

OK, Tomorrow: What To Do If Your 401(k) Offers Rotten Mutual Fund Choices

Why does this delight me so? For those of us lucky enough to have the basics, life is a game — that’s why.

I refer here to the menu at Captain Crab (which actually has a slightly different name — the Crab House, I think — but that’s what I call it) on the 79th Street Causeway in Miami. It has other locations as well. (Indeed, if memory serves it is a tiny public company.)

So here’s the deal. They’ve got this great salad bar. Yes, there’s lettuce and even tuna salad and all that — no one cares. What they really have are freshly shucked clams and oysters (and peelable shrimp and mussels and this awesome ceviche and crabs). Now, where I come from, that’s a salad bar!

I am an old hand at this, shunning tables “by the water” (water, water everywhere) for a table near the salad bar. And I well know that it’s $16.95 if you have the salad bar as your entrée, or $7.99 if you have it with an entrée.

Imagine my surprise, therefore — and the new ka-CHING set of calculations it promptly set off in my head — when we were seated the other night and informed of the new prices (new to me, anyway): $17.99 if you have it as an entrée, $5.95 with an entrée.

Now, the truth is, I scrimped and saved so long getting compound interest to work for rather than against me, it doesn’t much matter what the salad bar costs. And we actually had the jumbo stone crabs, which cost about a million dollars. (Ah, but would I have had them had I been paying? Well, maybe not.) Still, all I could think of for the first half of the dinner — forget impeachment, forget auto insurance reform — was what they were really saying with this new menu.

What they were saying, nestled among all the more expensive entrées, like the stone crabs, was that if you wanted the salad bar as an entrée for $17.99, they would in effect pay you $1.09 if you’d be willing to accept a free entrée of fish and chips to take home to the cat. (I don’t have a cat. I don’t like cats. But you get my point.) That’s right. At $10.95, the fish-and-chip entrée (which itself comes with a big salad) appears to be the cheapest thing on the menu. Add the all-you-can-eat-and-they-give-you-two-big-refillable-dinner-plates-to-load-up-on-it salad bar for $5.95 and your total comes to: $16.90. Or else you could pay an extra $1.09 and skip the fish and chips.

Now it may be that this is fiendishly clever . . . let people think they’re beating the system, and they’ll keep coming. And by the time you’re done with drinks and desert and coffee, etc., you still are not exactly eating on the cheap, anyway. This is not Wendy’s, after all. (Have you tried Wendy’s Veggie Pita? It’s a giant juicy $1.99 slice of happiness.) So maybe a true gamesman at headquarters did this purposely, to appeal to the segment of our dining public that thinks as I do — the twisted segment.

Or maybe they figure a few people will actually eat the fish and chips, thereby cutting down on their consumption of the much more costly freshly shucked oysters and the awesome ceviche. (This is obviously not a trap I would ever fall into. I would sooner buy a cat.)

Or maybe it was just one of those things.

In any event, it’s the current state of affairs at the Crab House; it applies almost as well to the $11.95 seafood-pasta entrées; and I felt you should know about it. Why does this delight me so? For those of us lucky enough to have the basics, life is a game — that’s why.

You may have read my recent exposition on green gummi bears. My basic thesis was that since almost no one likes the green ones, how come they make ’em?

From Russell Turpin: “My faith is shaken. You eat gummi bears? I thought only children under the age of twelve eat gummi bears. Especially ones who are also inclined to eat crickets and to show off their pet mouse by putting its head in their mouth. (I knew one twelve-year old girl who did this with her mouse, undoubtedly to wash out the taste of gummi bears, and I only wish I could send a picture of this then-proud feat to her now twenty-something self.)”

A.T.: Actually, I personally have eaten only about four gummi bears. But I have adult friends who – I share Russell’s astonishment – do.

From Drew Natenshon: “As far as I know, the original gummi bears – my favorites – come from the Black Forest in Germany, and their green ones taste kind of good, especially compared to the Care Bear gummi bears which I think are disgusting and too soft. I hope this helps.”

A.T.: It helps a great deal. Thanks!

From Craig Furnas: “The green Gummi Bears can’t help being green. They are Irish. Which leads me to tell you a joke I wrote and sold to Playboy. Yes, it’s true. They sent me $100 for it. And I made it up myself, I didn’t hear it.

“I subscribed to Playboy for a year in hopes of seeing the joke on the jokes page, but I never did during the year, upon which I did not renew my subscription. Maybe it’s been printed since; I don’t know. But they did pay me for it. Here it is:

“Q: What do you get when you cross a German with an Irishman?

[Craig assures me HE is German/Irish, which he feels gives him leave to poke fun this way. Those of you who buy that line may scroll down for the answer. The rest of you: flee!]

“A: Someone too drunk to follow orders.

“badooom boom.”

Tomorrow: Some good luck for the holidays

Let’s be honest. Does anyone like the green Gummi Bears? Or, for that matter, the green jelly beans or Lifesaver-brand lifesavers? OK, I know my audience well enough to know that a few of you probably do like them – a little. Or will say you do because you’re … well, you don’t want me to get away with anything. But even among those folks, truly: Have they ever in their lives said, “Oh! Save me a green one!” … or, “Why don’t they put more GREEN ones in here?” … or, “You bum! You took the last green one!”

I have lived a long time. I have never heard any of these statements. (And if you were being honest with me, you would admit it: You never have, either.)

Even the yellow and orange ones win no popularity contests – it is the red ones people go for most enthusiastically, and the white vanilla ones (which it turns out are actually pineapple) – which leads one to wonder: What’s the deal? Surely the Gummi Bear people know this. Why don’t they nix the greenies? Or, at least, radically alter the mix? (Or reformulate the green ones as kiwi, which would actually taste quite good?)

Could it be a nutrition thing? Balanced diets and all that? I doubt it. Lime-juice-dyed corn syrup can’t be all that different nutritionally from cherry-juice-dyed corn syrup.

Could it be cost? Could red Gummi Bears possibly be more expensive to breed than green and yellow ones? Get real.

I called the Gummi Bear people. Or tried to. It seems there are no Gummi Bear people, as such. As the woman I reached at Promotion in Motion, Inc. explained, “Anyone can make Gummi Bears.” Just not the Care Bear brand Gummi Bears that Promotion in Motion makes under license to the Care Bear people. So different Gummi Bear makers may have different philosophies. Is there an association of Gummi Bear manufacturers?

No, says Mike Rosenberg, the affable president of Promotion in Motion. In Mike I had a man who makes literally billions of gummis each year – perhaps 15% to 20% of the U.S. gummi market – and who claims that his own children, aged 6 and 7, love the green ones. (The nearly-two-year-old doesn’t eat them yet.) I am skeptical of this. Perhaps they are merely pretending to win his approval.

Gummi, Mike explains, is German for rubber. Gummi Bears seem to have originated in Germany. But not, he believes, with the German outfit that claims to have invented them. Carbon-dating (well, or something) shows the existence of gummis predating the existence of that boastful company.

I researched a couple of seemingly identical Promotion in Motion, Inc. 3.5-ounce boxes of Care Bear brand Gummi Bears and discovered the distribution to be as follows:

Note that Box 2 appeared to have two more bears than Box 1 – 48 versus 46 – and that it was really the luck of the draw. Wherein may lie much of the plan for and success of the Gummi Bear. It’s a gummi gamble. You don’t know just what you’ll get. You could get lucky!

No gain without pain, so they stick the green ones in there to make the red ones seem all the more desirable. As crestfallen as you are to grab a green one, well, that’s how much your heart warms with the special friendship of good fortune when … it’s red!

(Pink was not something I expected. Upon experimentation, pink appears to be strawberry, while red is cherry. Why not black licorice? It must be that black is not a pretty, kid-friendly color.)

Mike Rosenberg disclaims any such plan. Six flavors, six nozzles filling molds, some blending, heating, cooling, a shiny non-stick agent like beeswax, mixed in a drum … on average, each flavor gets equal weight.

Which is why there are so many leftover green Gummi Bears in the world.

And here’s another thing. What about those salt shaker/pepper shaker twin paks? What kind of ratio is that? Is there a family in America that has ever run out of the salt at more or less the same time as the pepper? Quite clearly not: We are all left with nearly full peppers, vainly searching the supermarket shelves for a salt-salt twin pak to even the score. (Not to say, of course, that I approve of this very non-bulk form of purchasing to begin with. But we all slip occasionally.)

Ratios are wrong, supplies are out of kilter. But this is America, and sooner or later someone will come up with a way to profit from these inefficiencies. I sense a new kind of green-gummi-bear-pepper composite paving our roads one day or caulking our seams. In every crisis lies opportunity.

Coffee, I wrote, must never be served in a clear glass cup. It will taste richer and more robust when served in an opaque cup or mug (white is best). “It’s just simple physics.“

It was a joke. I was kidding. (Sorry!) I know about as much about physics as I know about … well, the nearly infinite number of things I know almost nothing about (though I do think the coffee LOOKS darker/richer in an opaque mug, and hence I am tricked into thinking it is).

But I loved your responses.

Dennis Pierson: I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve got to know why the opacity of the container affects coffee. I believe you said in your column that it was a basic law of physics. Okay, so science was not my strong suit – but I can’t figure out what difference it would make. I know I run the risk of appearing really stupid if you were simply being facetious (of course, it would not be the first time … or even the second) but I guess I trust you more than I fear being naive (talk about the lamb being led to slaughter). Please answer this so I can have peace of mind while running. It’s practically all I’ve thought about on my recent jogs.

Marc A. Armstrong: Nonsense. Black coffee will taste hotter longer in whatever container is the better insulator, and glass is a better insulator than porcelain. It’s simple physics.

Darcy Horrocks: Eh? Pish and, indeed, tosh! As a gentleman, I must take issue with your bald assertion. Shape can affect taste (ask any sommelier or anyone who’s drunk from glasses blown to match the wine) but colour/transparency can only affect mood. American coffee tastes watery because it’s brewed that way: find an Italian deli and ask for a Ristretto(ree-STRAY-toh): same coffee, incredible flavour. Or worse, go to Italy. But be prepared never to be able to drink Starbucks again! (This email to be taken terribly terribly seriously indeed.)

Robert G. Doucette: Regarding your observation on the physics of coffee served in glass cups: HUH? It has been a few years since I spent my days as an active physicist, but I don’t recall how the optical properties of the coffee cup affects the taste of the coffee. Now, there may be some chemistry involved, certainly some psychology, but probably not physics. On the other hand, the material of the coffee cup could affect the thermodynamics of the coffee. Ceramics are better insulators than glass. The temperature of the coffee and the texture of the mug would be different than expected. So the total experience of the coffee may be different.

Bill Nagler: If coffee tastes watery in a glass mug because light passing through the mug pushes the coffee molecules apart, why does coffee taste better in a white mug than in a black one? Theoretically, a white mug will keep the coffee molecules farther apart than a black mug. Or is it that the coffee molecules are held too close together in a black mug? Or does the color of the mug significantly effect [sic] the epithelium of the lips and tongue?

Joe Robinson: The best coffee is served in Latin American countries. And it’s not the type of coffee, but the way it is prepared and served. When I was in Honduras on business last year, the waiter would come around with two stainless steel pitchers (no, not regular and decaf!). He would first ask “cafe?”, at which time he would fill your cup half way with a really strong, dark brew from one pitcher. Then he would ask “con leche?”, and if you said “si” he would fill the rest of your cup with hot milk from the other pitcher. Very few people drink the coffee black. In Panama, coffee is prepared and served in a similar fashion. I haven’t had a good cup of coffee since I’ve been back in the States!

Christina O’Sullivan: That paragraph on Strong Coffee was a “Eureka.” You know, the Sad Thing is that I live in Seattle, and with hundreds of espresso joints abound, you would THINK some of the better places in town would know better. The very very best place in Seattle does use white opaque mugs. The place I frequent has glass mugs, but I take my mochas to go by and large.

Charlie McDannald: Amen! I thought it was just me, but even Starbucks (who should know better) at most Barnes & Noble stores does this. Also, the coffee should be in a short, wide mug, rather than a tall drink glass.

Thanks, one and all.

As if 4.3% unemployment, satellite TV and Viagra were not enough, now come Lay’s WOW potato chips from Procter & Gamble – fat-free and half the calories of regular potato chips, which I remember only vaguely from 1973 when I last ate one. (Many health nuts don’t even eat nuts, let alone chips.) Yes, there have been all those warnings about unpleasant side effects. But I’ve tried them anyway and – wow! They’re just like real potato chips. (Well, the “ruffles” are the best, and most like the Potato Frills of childhood.)

And what of the rest of the menu?

Toss a well-marinated ostrich steak on the barbie (2 grams of fat per 3-ounce serving versus 3 grams for turkey and 16 grams for hamburger), top it off with one of Fanny’s fat-free cheesecakes or her low-fat carrot cake – is this a great country, or what?

Ying Wu, from Cleveland: “Since you mentioned fortune cookies in the context of Chinese food, I just wanted to point out that they belong to the category of things that I call non-Chinese Chinese food. Other members of this category include baby corn and beef broccoli. As a native of Shanghai, I’d never seen or heard of fortune cookies before I came to this country (and that was more than 10 years ago). Baby corn and broccoli are only a recent addition to the Chinese diet. They are imported; and people have grown to like them because the Americans like them (according to some of my friends who still reside in Shanghai). This is only my opinion. Other Chinese you encounter may have different notions about what constitutes Chinese food. After all, it’s a big country with many regional foods.”

There is something to say here about French fries as well, but I am obviously in over my head.

Brooks Hilliard: “Isn’t it a logical extension of what you said to the person who wondered if he should take out a home equity loan to buy stocks [I said: no] that I should pay off my mortgage in full before I begin to invest? If not, why not? Does it depend on the rate of my mortgage? When I first read your column, I assumed it meant second mortgages . . . but why only second mortgages/equity lines . . . why not first mortgages too?”

Well, yes and no. Clearly, my one-word answer begged that question (so thank you for asking it), but I was just so dazzled by the notion of — me! — answering a question in one word . . . well, you can be sure it will never happen again. (What’s that line about asking for the time and getting a lecture on how to build a clock?)

Partly you are right. It does depend on the mortgage rate (the rate on a second mortgage, which is what he was asking about, is almost invariable higher than on the first) and on his tax bracket and, of course, how you will do in the stock market — an unknowable. My emphatic No was in part from my sense that anyone asking this question is probably an unsophisticated investor, a little guy, and very likely tempted by all the hoo-hah that has everybody and his shoeshine boy boasting double-digit returns in the stock market.

(If you don’t catch the reference to the shoeshine boy — from an era before we would have said shoeshine person, by the way, no disrespect intended — that’s another reason to be cautious, or to read more about the history of the market before borrowing money to jump in.)

I’m not predicting crashes, but I know it is always dangerous to invest on margin — and borrowing against your house to buy more stocks is not that much different from borrowing against your stocks to do so.

There’s also the issue of diversification. If you waited 30 years until you owned your home outright to invest in the market, that would be a mistake. A steady program of investing a few hundred or thousand dollars a month in the market is a crucial part of anyone’s financial future — and the sooner you start, the better. So you probably wouldn’t want 100% of your net worth in your home, which is what would happen if you waited to invest until the mortgage was paid off.

(By contrast, it wouldn’t be terrible to have 100% of your net worth in the stock market, given all that can mean — i.e., a mix of U.S. and overseas, and at least some conservative high-dividend-paying stocks once you begin to accumulate some real money and responsibilities — although that’s clearly not right for most people either.)

It’s just that there’s a world of difference between having a steady program of periodic investments in the market, through good times and bad, on the one hand . . . and, on the other hand, suddenly borrowing a large lump sum against your house to invest in the market not far from its all-time record highs.

Tomorrow: The 10 Principles of Gift Recycling

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Enough with the stock market. You don’t know where the stock market is going any better than anybody else. What about the fat-free, sugar-free cheesecake?”

Well, of course.

I just wanted to wait to write about this until I had an opportunity to consume one, which I did Saturday, and then wait a little while to determine whether there were any near-term side effects or repercussions. (The only one I found: When you eat an entire cheesecake, you tend to jut out a little the rest of the day.)

I am not saying this is the world’s greatest cheesecake, although it may be the world’s greatest no-fat, no-sugar cheesecake. And I’m not saying much about the crust, because in order to come in under the fat and sugar wire, it has no crust. This cheesecake is all cheese (or non-cheese), no crust, and I have a feeling it is extruded rather than baked. For the sake of convention, it is shaped to be round and flat, like a cheesecake, but it could actually be extruded into more or less any mold. Fat-free cheesecake baseballs, fat-free cheesecake engine blocks — you name it.

I speak here of Fanny’s cheesecakes, which I discovered in a sort of double-take as I passed the frozen food display at The Pantry. Were my eyes playing tricks? Did I see that day-glo sticker right? SUGAR-FREE, FAT-FREE cheesecake? Next to seedless watermelon, a discovery of a previous summer, this was the most exciting thing I think I’d ever seen at The Pantry. (I was equally excited when they installed a cash machine until I noticed the $3-per-use charge.)

Naturally, I bought one. TASTING IS BELIEVING read the legend on the package. YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT’S FAT FREE. Just keep it in the freezer until the night before, then thaw in the refrigerator overnight.

I was already enjoying the notion of this thing even before I ate it. The package reads: “Our 4 oz portion of cheesecake has 0 grams of fat and 151 calories versus regular cheesecake which has 40 grams of fat and 400 calories.”

And then the clincher:

Remember, “My Fanny Has No Fat.”

I jazzed up my cheesecake by putting half-frozen grapes on top (if you don’t keep a cup of lightly sugared grapes in your freezer, you’re missing one of life’s least expensive, least self-destructive pleasures) . . . fasted for a while (anything tastes better when you’re hungry) . . . ate it . . . and . . . well, it was pretty good. Then, like any good journalist, I got on the phone to Fanny.

It turns out not only that Fanny has no fat — she has no flesh or bones, either. Like Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Ellen Tracy, she doesn’t exist. Never has. “Are you a public company?” I asked Fanny’s ventriloquist. Hey, I’m not sure McDonald existed, either — wasn’t that a Kroc? — but you could have done worse than to buy his stock anyway. Same with old Starbuck.

No sugar, no fat, no public shareholders. Damn! But then I got lucky. They have a website: www.fannysfatfree.com. Free two-day shipping. Carrot cake. Need I say more?