Recipe: Perfect Roasted Almonds

Perfect Roasted Almonds

Ingredients:

• One bag of raw, unblanched almonds (approx 250g).

Directions

1. Preheat conventional oven to 325°F.
2. Spread almonds evenly on a baking pan. You don’t want the pile of almonds in the pan to be more than one almond deep.
3. Roast almonds in oven for one hour.
4. Remove almonds and let them cool.
5. Eat almonds.

These directions should provide you with deliciously roasted almonds that you can add as a flavor accent to brownies and such, or just to eat as a great, healthy snack!

Enjoy Your Bananas While You Can

It looks like bananas may become extinct in a few years. The fungus Fusarium oxysporum wiped out the previous species of bananas (the Gros Michel) in the 1950s. Now it’s back, having evolved to be able to take on the previously resistant “back-up” species of banana — the Cavendish — that replaced the superior Gros Michel banana after it was wiped out.

This newly evolved form of the fungus has already wiped out banana plantations in several Pacific Rim nations, and may soon reach plantations in Latin America. Efforts are underway to breed a new strain of resistant banana, but because the bananas we eat are seedless, it’s difficult to introduce genetic variation into the breed.  All Cavendish bananas we eat are clones, making them genetically identical and, thus, all equally susceptible to the same diseases.

So, enjoy your bananas while you can.

A Word of Advice

Expired Kraft Dinner does not taste as good as you might think.

The Secret of the McRib

Every once in a while, the McRib sandwich appears at McDonalds for a few weeks only to disappear again, often for years at a time.  Why does this sandwich come and go so sporadically?  I think I may have discovered the answer.

Earlier today, my buddy at work relayed a conversation he had with an acquaintance of his who happened to be a farmer.  Evidently, the reason the McRib appears only once-in-a-while, and for such a short time, is that every now and then the price of pork goes really low.  When this happens, McDonalds buys a whole bunch and turns them into delicious McRibs.  This, in turn, leads to a rise in pork prices which reduces the profitability of the McRib sandwich.  McDonalds stops buying pork, and the McRib sandwich disappears.

A month ago the McRib sandwich appeared at local McDonalds restaurants (t has since disappeared).  This has apparently coincided with an overpopulation in western Canadian sow herds (excess supply = low prices).

Interesting…

Old Dutch Mexican Chili Chips

OLD DUTCH HAS BROUGHT BACK MEXICAN CHILI CHIPS!!!!

The hunt begins…

A Word of Advice

Two-day-old donuts.

Don’t.

Tostitos and Cheese

Every once in a while I get a craving for tortillas and cheese dip. Tostitos puts out a delicious salsa con queso, regularly found in just about any grocery store. However, they also sell something called “cheezy dip”, which comes in small containers and it usually sold in convenience stores. The other day I bought some of this “cheezy dip”, thinking it was the same as their salsa con queso.

Big mistake.

After the first taste of the “cheese dip” I immediately realized something was wrong. This was not the deliciously cheezy treat I had been expecting. Upon inspecting the container of said dip, I made a horrifying discovery: Tostitos brand “cheese dip” is just cheese-flavored margarine! That’s right, margarine. Good ol’ hydrogenated vegetable oil appeared second on the list of ingredients, right after water.  Next in line was maltodextrin (a starch), then another kind of starch, then salt, followed by “natural flavors” (i.e. various spices), and then cheddar cheese.  More ingredients followed, but I just wanted to highlight how far down the line cheese actually was.

Contrast this to their salsa con queso where monterey jack cheese is third in the ingredient list, right after water and milk.

This “cheesy dip” sold by Frito-Lay North America, Inc. is nothing more than a disgusting salsabomination. Yes, I made up a new word to describe this stuff; it’s that bad.

Do not buy Tostitos “cheezy dip” unless you like eating mal-flavored (another new word?) margarine.  Yuk.

Would you like some cheese with your coffee?

Don’t you love it when you make a nice cup of coffee in the morning — with freshly ground, hazelnut cream flavored beans — and you pour in some cream, stir it around, and watch in horror as little curds float to the surface? It was bad enough the store only had half-and-half cream when I bought the carton; now I get shafted again by having it go bad three days before the ‘best before’ date!

Argh!

Mars Attacks

The last two times a Shrek movie has come out in theaters, Mars, Inc. released “ogre-sized” M&Ms. Now, a common problem with peanut M&Ms is their chocolate to peanut ratio. There was always too much peanut and too little chocolate. With the time-limited arrival of these “ogre-sized” M&Ms, this imbalance was rectified (in fact, the ratio went a little to far to the other end of the flavor spectrum, but I digress…) by the temporary increase in size of the chocolate coating.

Recently, however, during the time between Shreks two and three, M&M started using smaller peanuts in their candy. Now, I’m not complaining –these smaller peanuts tasted better and provided a better peanut-chocolate balance — but I noticed something odd after the release of the third Shrek movie. The “ogre-sized” peanut M&Ms this time around were nothing like their previous incarnations! The thickness of the chocolate coating remained the same, but the peanut inside was larger! In fact, I am almost certain the peanuts were no more than 15% larger than their size prior to the M&M Peanut Shrinkage event of a few months back! And not only was the amount of peanut increased instead of the amount of chocolate, the peanuts themselves tasted terrible.

I am very displeased with this bait-and-switch tactic used by Mars, Inc. to destroy my enjoyment of their tasty treat. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think I was that dumb just because, for a brief moment, I thought M&Ms were printing capital Es on their candy during this past Easter (yes, that’s a true story — I was a complete moron for a few seconds there)? Well, I did notice. And I’m mad.

Argh! Why are my favorite foods always the first to be taken away? Frankenberry cereal, Booberry cereal, Old Dutch Mexican Chili Chips, Mexican Chili Nuts & Bolts, Choclairs, Old Dutch “Double Dutch” Mesquite BBQ Chips… What’s next?

Really Nuts

I bought a bag of Hershey’s “Really Nuts” Milk Chocolate Cocoa Almonds a few weeks ago. They had an interesting matte color to them which, to me, suggested a delicious American Hershey chocolate flavor. I figured these would be really good so I stuck them in the fridge, waiting for just the right time to eat them. About a month or two later, that day came. This afternoon I developed a craving for almonds. This craving merged with my 24/7 craving for chocolate, so I liberated the chocolate almonds from the fridge.

Sadly, I wished I had done an “American style” liberation of the chocolate almonds instead, i.e. bomb the crap out of them and completely destroy their ability to function as a bag of chocolaty snacks. To prevent you, dear reader, from following in my footsteps and making the same mistake I did, let me describe to you the experience I endured while trying out this strange new “treat”.

When I popped the first chocolate-covered almond in my mouth, my mouth was met with the bitter taste of raw cocoa powder. Yes, that darker-Hershey-esque flavor I was expecting turned out to be a layer of pure cocoa powder. Pure. Cocoa. Powder. Mmm-mmm. When I’m sitting at home watching a good movie, there’s nothing that satisfies my sweet tooth like dipping a spoon in a container of cocoa powder and filling my mouth with its dry, bitter goodness. No, there was no powdered sugar mixed in. No sweetness at all.

Detecting this invasion into my mouth, my salivary glands secreted an enzymatic compound which mercifully stripped the layerof cocoa powder from the chocolate covered almond, leaving the sweet, sweet chocolate exposed. The milk chocolate wasn’t as good as I was expecting it to be, but it was okay. I could probably eat a bar of it. And so I continued on my merry way, dissolving the chocolate in my mouth, anticipating the delicious roasted almond which was yet to come.

But, oh no! This foul beast within my maw had another trick up its sleeve. Sensing its impending destruction, it sought to waylay my attempts to devour it and presented to me a coating of salt encasing the almond. This was not like the small amount of salt that Spanish peanuts give to the chocolatey syrup in a delicious banana split sundae. No, no. This was more powerful indeed. This was almost reaching BBQ seasoning levels. Imagine my surprise when the milk chocolate being enjoyed by yours truly was blasted with an infusion of salt.

Like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, the promise of a delicious roasted almond was all that kept my from spitting the blasted thing out of my mouth. And spit the demon-candy from my mouth I wish I had, for the nutty treat at the center was as fictitious as that treasure of Irish legend. The chocolate-covered almond unleashed one final desperate attack. I could almost hear it quote Melville’s Moby Dick with these dying words:

“To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee”

The black-hearted center of this wretched candy was an itensely dry and bitter tasting almond. So dry was it that its very consumption necessitated a drink of water to reverse its effects.

I thought to myself “Maybe I just had a bad one?”, but repeated samplings proved to me that each and every chocolat-covered almond in the bag was a little taste of pure evil.

This new product from The Hershey Company is aptly named. I would have to be “really nuts” to ever buy this crap again.