Abba Zaba

I was in San Diego this weekend visiting my brother and checking out Comic Con (if you haven't done it yet, do it next year.)
I brought home 5 Abba Zabas.

The 4th of July

The 4th of July was a pretty fun day this year.

Started out slow: had a couple bowls of Basic 4 for breakfast. Again, the type of cereal that has some flavor to it, but also a decent amount of substance so I get some energy from it.

Met up with Cody and biked over to a daytime Japanther show/bbq/fundraiser in Fort Greene. The show was pretty awesome. It was pretty much just in the middle of a low-traffic, industrial-complex strewn street, right outside of a bike shop. Besides Japanther being (always) fulfilling, a bunch of the other acts were surprisingly pretty damn good as well.
Cody and I were under the assumption that this was a BYOBBQ so we came prepared. Myself with a pack of Nathan's and some buns and Cody with some tofu pups. When we got there, however, we were greeted with a grill practically filled with cooking hot dogs that were being given out, donations welcome. I mean filled, too. The grill was being manned by three (looked like teenaged) boys who were very friendly and totally gung ho about doing this grilling thing. The style, though, was quite interesting. It pretty much looked like they had dumped about 40 - 50 hot dogs across the grill and let them lay scattered about each other like a pile of tinder sticks. To their credit, this tactic seemed to be working splendidly. All of the dogs in that pile looked absolutely perfect: 50% - 75% crisp/burnt on the outside. I don't know how those dudes pulled off that style, but much respect to them for doing it and hustling/caring about the job they were doing.
There was also another table selling water, cookies and pb&j sandwiches. I nabbed a pretty good chocolate cookie for a buck but passed up on the curiously priced $3 pb&j sandwiches (competing against donation suggested fresh bbqeq hot dogs? come on...)

Cody and I went back to my apartment afterwards to hang out and watch TV for the rest of the night. Cody cooked up his tofu pups and we ate the whole pack. Ordered Dominoes. Got a thin crust green pepper and onion pizza. It was alright. A little cold. The cheesy bread was better. Sour Patch Kids were in the mix.
Later, got inspired and ate Andrew's Abba Zabba that I bought for him a while ago. Sorry dude, you had that sitting on your dresser for like 2 months...

Dunkies Iced Coffee

The SnackMaster isn’t afraid to start a contentious debate:
When it comes to iced coffee, Dunkin Donuts dominates.

In fact, I wouldn’t be drinking coffee at all if it weren’t for Dunkin Donuts iced coffee.

For me, it started as a 20 year old, working for a small house painting crew. Before that, I always loved the smell of ground coffee, but never enjoyed the bitter taste. Somewhere mid-summer of that year I tried Dunkies’ coffee coolattas. This seemed like a safe enough venture since it was really a lot like a Slush Puppy or an ice cream shake. Soon enough, I was housing large iced coffees every morning at work.

It is undeniable that the iced coffee is a summer staple. When you need a quick buzz, and it’s 90 something degrees out, this is where its at. What’s great about the iced coffee on a summer day is how quickly you can get that caffeine buzz going; slamming down an iced coffee in less than 5 minutes is not really a demanding task. Dunkies iced coffee is the perfect iced coffee for this task. It’s sweet and flavorful without being too dark. Even with just a little bit of sugar and a little bit of milk, a sweet, syrupy flavor will resonate while not taking away from the overall taste of coffee. The majority of the employees at Dunkin Donuts have the iced coffee mixture technique down. If they know what they’re doing, they’ll put the sugar into the cup first, pour a small splash of hot coffee to melt the sugar, swish it around, and then add milk/cream, cold coffee and ice. This ensures the equal distribution of the sugar throughout the entire drink as opposed to having a big sugar deposit sitting at the bottom of your drink. Dunkin Donuts is really the only place I’ve been to that has offered this incredibly important service. I consider this pretty much a norm when ordering iced coffee at Dunkies so much so that times where this has not been the case, I have left visibly upset and disgruntled. What may be as equally important as the sugar technique is Dunkin Donuts’ commitment to a real “large” iced coffee: 32 ounces. I have not found a “large size” bigger anywhere else; and, come on, this is America, bigger is definitely better when it comes to food portions. I’d rather have the option of not being able to finish something than the dilemma of wanting more.

The obvious competitor to mention is Starbucks. Maybe drinking hot coffee that tastes like mud is a preference to many, but you really can’t make a case for drinking cold mud. I really have no taste for Starbucks coffee in any incarnation so I can’t really, fairly, discuss it to any detail. Local coffee shops cannot be disparaged. I truly do enjoy some local coffee shops’ iced coffee for the chance to get some variation of flavor and a slightly stronger caffeination. However, I have never gotten the melted sugar technique performed for me at any local café that I’ve been to, not to mention their clear inferiority in “large” coffee sizes.

(The SnackMaster’s Disclaimer: I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. There is a Dunkin Donuts every 3 blocks in Boston. It is truly a staple of Boston. One could say I am biased, but I view these statements as hardcore fact nonetheless.)

Dinner Tonight

For dinner tonight I had a handful of Cool Ranch Doritos and a 50 cent Little Debbie's Fudge Brownie.
I am not an unhappy man.

Economy Candy

So in further pursuit of nostalgia, I decided to see if I could find any "penny" candy shops in NYC.
Doing some intense research (*cough*cough* google *cough*cough*) I came up with Economy Candy in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Like every retail store in Manhattan, space is always an issue. Walking in, the store feels a lot smaller than it really is. Similar to most New York bodegas, there are a lot of shelves and narrow aisles, cramming a lot into a small space. In reality, the store is fairly large, and cramming so much stuff into it meant that I knew I had found what I was looking for.
My gameplan was to go for variety; grab one of anything that called out to me. I left with a pretty good variety.

The highlight of the trip for me was the Jelly Belly dispensers. Tucked way into the back corner of the store were a block of probably 30 plus clear plastic dispensers, each containing their own individual flavor of Jelly Belly gourmet jelly beans. I went nuts on this and spent fifteen bucks on jelly beans by the pound. For me the clear choice was maxing out on some of the weirder flavors, sprinkling in tastes of choice fruit flavors.
The premium flavors: Peanut Butter, Bubble Gum, Banana, Buttered Popcorn, Orange Sherbert
The filler: Pink Lemonade (surprisingly not as good as I'd like), Kiwi, Cantaloupe, Pina Colada, Tangerine

After a few weeks, I'm still working on this bag. Of course this is a situation where the better flavors are going to get picked out first. The bubble gum was first to go, but I'm still finding one or two that I had overlooked every now and then. Banana is pretty much gone as well. Peanut Butter, while a premium brand, is not a flavor that I can eat a lot of at a time. This flavor is still in the mix. The majority of what remains is mostly the random tropical fruit flavors.

Other Candy purchased:

Homemade rock candy on a stick
Abba Zabba
Pop Rocks Dips
Candy Necklace
"Unicorn" Lollipop
Pixy Stix
Candy Buttons (You know, those strips of paper with small dots of candy that you're supposed to bite off of the paper and you always inevitably get a little bit of paper stuck onto the bottom of them? Yeah, don't hate, they're pretty weird-awesome.)


Anyone interested in making a SnackMaster field trip back to Economy Candy, hit me up. There was a lot that I passed up on the first time around that I'd love to revisit.

Also, random shout out:
Much respect to Dave and Russell for coming equipped to Gino's bachelor party week with the 100 count box of Airheads. Whatever would possess a man to grab this while shopping at BJ's for a week long food and BBQ fest can be called nothing less than brilliance.

Cereal Profiles, Entry 4

Cap’n Crunch

Most definitely one of the all time best sugar cereals out there. Cap’n Crunch’s reputation for cutting the roof of the eater’s mouth has not impeded myself, nor most of America, from enjoying it.

Cap’n Crunch holds a strange place in the realm of sugar cereals. Cap’n Crunch, the original brand, has no real bells and whistles. There are no fruity colors, just a bland consistent yellow. There are no extraneous pieces; i.e. fruit pieces, marshmallows, kiddie shapes, etc. The only thing that qualifies Cap’n Crunch as a CHILDREN’S cereal is the Cap’n himself. I believe this is where one of the distinctions between children’s cereal and sugar cereals may lie… but nonetheless, the only thing that qualifies Cap’n Crunch as a SUGAR cereal is that, well, it’s really sweet and sugary.
As far as mascots go, Cap’n was kind of run of the mill as well. He really didn’t have any long lasting feuds going on with other cartoon characters, nor “the kids” who ate his cereal. He was always kind of just there getting in random adventures, being the Cap’n and reminding us we should go pick up his cereal.

Here’s a break down of the current major brands.

The Original:
There’s not much to say about plain old Cap’n Crunch Cereal. Chances are you’ve already tried it. It’s a very simple formula. Tiny squares of crispy cereal with sugary goodness embedded in every layer and fibre of it. They are in fact so crunchy that, besides been well known for shredding the roof of your mouth as mentioned before, they were once advertised as never being able to lose their crunch. As a kid, I once let a bowl of Cap’n Crunch sit out all night soaking in water (I was old enough to know that I wasn’t going to go near a bowl of milk that sat out all night) just to see if the bits would indeed stay crunchy. Truth be told I don’t really remember how the test ended up, but I have vague recollections of it being a gross mess in the morning. It’s structural integrity held up on the inside while the outer layer did, in fact, begin to get soggy. You have to give Cap’n Crunch some credit for that.

Cap’n Crunch Berries:
This is a mixture of original Cap’n Crunch mixed with pieces of several different colors and flavors. The original Cap’n Crunch bits are, as one would expect, identical to the bits found in the standard Cap’n Crunch cereal box. The fruit pieces are different, being slightly larger and more round in shape. This cereal is for the truly experienced Cap’n Crunch eater. I started eating these long after I got bored of the original brand, and binged on them for a few months. The eating experience is pretty intense: the fruit flavors are kind of weird. While the flavors mix well with the original Cap’n Crunch flavor, they add a definite zing and punch to the flavor that overwhelms your mouth and ultimately destroys all memories of what eating the original Cap’n Crunch is like. The “fruit” flavor doesn’t really taste like any fruit. It is somewhat similar to the flavor of Trix Cereal, but much more intense. The more you eat it, the more it feels like you are chewing impossibly crunchy shreds, spoonfuls of sugar and a spoonful of very concentrated, highly condensed flavoring. It’s a good cereal to do a brief stint on, but it tends to wear on you. And it turns your milk pinkish purple.

Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch:
Effectively this is the same cereal as Reese’s Puffs cereal. I was disappointed to find that the creators of this Cap’n Crunch brand even abandoned the classic shape of bit, using the size and shape of the fruit bits found in Cap’n Crunch Berries. This makes it so that they visually look identical to Reese’s Puffs. However, it does maintain the quality of crunchiness that you expect of a Cap’n Crunch brand, while Reese’s Puffs are known for having a crunch of less character and integrity, falling into sogginess quickly. Strangely, these slight differences are enough to propel the peanut butter Crunches a few solid tiers above the eating experience of Reese’s Puffs. I tried these for the first time tonight, and I was surprised to find myself throwing back 3 – 4 bowls where I had expected to just try one for experiential measure.

I highly recommend you check out the wikipedia page on Cap’n Crunch for a list of some other combos that were tried out in the past. Some really weird stuff that I wish I could have tried. One last brand that I must mention that I did get to try was the limited run Christmas Crunch. This was the same formula of the Crunch Berries substituting the normal colored bits for red and green bits and changing the flavor slightly.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap'n_Crunch



The Snackmaster as (a very scary looking) Cap'n, sans moustache.

Twizzlers

Twizzlers are one of those treats that fit into their own snack group. Now I know that there are other products out there that you can argue fit into their own category, but for now I’d like to address just licorice. For the purposes of identifying with my own personal experiences, I will mainly discuss this category in the context of Twizzlers (since Twizzlers are truly the dominant brand, and my favorite).

Twizzlers mystify: you can never truly get full off of them and they are mild enough to never really truly upset your stomach to the point where you need to stop eating them. One must achieve a higher mental will to stop eating them (or, just boredom). Eating massive amounts of Twizzlers will not cause your body to send impulses of warning to stop eating. There will be no “Too Full” message sent. Nor will there be a “Too Much Sugar” message sent. The worst that can be expected is a weird queasy stomach feeling and a sense of oversaturation.

You can do fun things with Twizzlers too. Adventurous eaters will take a small bite off of each end of a single Twizzler and then dunk it into their drink to use as a straw. This is yet another Snackmaster nostalgic childhood memory. Strangely enough, I remember having the best luck with milk as a beverage for drinking out of Twizzler straws. The mild flavor of the Twizzler did not distort the mild flavor of the milk. Carbonated beverages, Coca-Cola in particular, are a definite no no. My child-like scientific mind deduced that something about the sugary tube of a Twizzler activated the carbonation of Coke, sending small fizzing streams into your mouth if you attempted a Coke-Twizzler straw combo. You know, some people get off on weird stuff like that, but I'm more a fan of enjoying products as they are intended to be enjoyed. You can go ahead and eat mentos and diet pepsi at the same time. I'm good.

The true Snackmaster way to eat Twizzlers is to go for the whole pound bag. I have, indeed, downed that whole bag within a couple hours. Now I’m no competition eater, and I know it can easily be done in faster time. But I’m talking about day to day living; routine snacking. A single pack of Twizzlers kind of is what it is. Taking on the whole pound is a standard, mundane test of worthiness.

The Drought...

The drought of Snackmaster posts has also been accompanied by a slight drought in snacking.
Last week I did very little snacking. Which is still a poor excuse for not blogging, but nonetheless...
Lunchtime snacking had been down to a minimum, and I was pretty busy at night leaving only time for dinner.

Good news: The Snackmaster photo-shoot bag of treats is nearly depleted! At the bottom of this once mighty sack remains only a handful of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, a bag of Tropical Skittles, a bag of Tangy Twister Mike and Ikes and some York Peppermint Patties. I have a feeling it might be some time before even these get eaten; they're all kinda either niche snacks or one-is-already-too-much snacks.

I want to talk about Drake's Funny Bones. I had a package of these the other day, perhaps the 4th or 5th time in my life that I've eaten them. Now first of all, Drake's is a pretty stand-up Hostess replacement as far as packaged pastry snacks go. I had remembered enjoying the Funny Bones in the past so I thought I was making a slam dunk when purchasing them a few days ago. For those who don't know, Funny Bones are the shape of a human finger, except maybe a little bit bigger (depending on the dude). They are essentially chocolate frosted chocolate cake pastries filled with "peanut butter".
Pretty much everything about them is solid with the exception of the "peanut butter". Here's where my memory had failed me. Instead of having a delicious candied peanut butter, like Peanut Butter Twix for instance, Drake's peanut butter is kind of muddy and the flavor is not quite on point. Add to that the fact that the peanut butter color itself is a dark brown, and you begin to grow skeptical. All criticism aside, Funny Bones are really not bad, there are just many more products out there that are better. Fortunately, there are 3 per package. In The Snackmaster's world, more is definitely better; especially when you are dealing with a mediocre product. And credit must be given to Drake's as well. All in all they are a decent company. The Yodels and Devil Dogs are pretty slammer. Drake's is also places where other competing brands are not. There has been many a gas station convenience store that I've walked into with an embarrassing selection of Hostess products, only to be redeemed by a healthy Drake's selection. It's times like these when diversity of taste and resiliency of snack character truly pay off.

lately...

The Snackmaster = The Slackmaster (praise "Bob")

I apologize.
Stay tuned next week for new updates...

April 21, 2009

Day two of deep fry experiment:

Things were not all that better today, although there was one resounding success.
The Twinkie.
This was the one that I had the most faith in, and I was not let down.
The Twinkie was good.
The Twinkie was perfect.
I believe I deep fried it for the exact amount of time that I should have. It came out an even golden brown on the top and just a little bit yellow on the bottom, where the cream holes are found. Biting into it is a quick light crisp followed by some soft inner sponge cake and finally a slightly melted, somewhat gooey cream filling. Warm cream filling.
I believe that Twinkies are such a successful deep fry item because the cake portion is just primed for deep frying. Add to that the fact that the cake is already quite buttery, and you end up with a large flavor.
There was no guilt involved in eating the Twinkie.

Being the lazy, overzealous shlub that I am, I did not even do the most minimal research into finding out how to successfully prepare some deep fry dishes that I had heard of.
The result of this was me throwing a straight out-of-package Snickers Bar and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup directly into the grease with no prep. Had I googled "deep fried snickers" before hand I would have come upon a recipe instructing me to first freeze the Snickers and then batter it.
Needless to say the chocolates just melted and were not transformed in any meaningful way in flavor or appearance.

One item that I was looking forward to the most was Peeps. I threw in one Peep and watched it slowly disintegrate. Goodbye Peep, I had such high hopes for you.

I did, however, deep fry some generic brand Apple Newtons. While I didn't particularly enjoy eating them, I do not view this as a failure. They did not lose their physical integrity and came out tasting like a little apple fritter, crispy and tasty.

April 20, 2009

Ok so I dropped the ball on getting the deep-fry experiment going this weekend.
But I got the ball rolling today.

I picked up the wok and a 96 fluid oz. jug of corn oil after work today.
I set myself to it as soon as I got home from work, already a bit hungry.
I dumped more than half of the oil into the wok, giving it a good couple inches of depth.
My intention was to start out with something that could possibly substitute for dinner.
I tossed 2 Eggo Blueberry Waffles in the heated oil.
Adding a little bit of maple syrup, I sat down and gave it a try.
Almost immediately I knew that this was a mistake. Eggos are like sponges.
Cheap sponges, but sponges nonetheless. They absorbed the oil.

Whereas I have stated in the past that I want to keep The Snackmaster a positive blog and only talk about pleasurable snacking experiences, I have to come clean on this experiment. Lay out both the good and the bad.

The waffles were a bad idea.

Chewing into them I enjoyed the standard Eggo Waffle + Maple syrup experience, but it quickly was overwhelmed with the magnitude of grease that each bite contained.
Chewing the waffle bite, you could kind of feel the grease sloshing around in your mouth.
Kind of like eating cereal with milk.
After this, I cut up a few soft corn tortillas into quarters and fryed them up to make restaurant style tortilla chips.
Those were pretty good, but I'm still struggling with my method of removing as much grease from the deep–fried item after cooking it.
Having just eaten those two waffles and a few chips, I knew that I was done for the night.
The amount of grease already consumed was enough for me start feeling gravity's pull.
I sat down and struggled through some very minor waves of nausea.
Tomorrow begins the real experimentation.

Right now I am sweating out the grease and chewing on some Jelly Belly classic variety pack Jelly Beans. These are kind of hitting the spot right now.
I think the grapefruit flavor is pretty clever.

Cereal Profiles, Entry 3

Blueberry Muffin Tops by Malt – O – Meal

First of all, I had never heard of Malt – O – Meal cereal company before. This acquisition was picked up on my Philly trip while browsing the cereal aisle. It was right next to the health cereal section and kind of above some cereal bars. This stock placement combined with the odd shape of the box made me confused at first. I wasn’t even sure it was a cereal. I decided to try it out nonetheless. It was an impulse buy, based on the fact that it was a “blueberry muffin” cereal. Beyond that I wasn’t even sure what I was in store for.

It turns out that this is very similar to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It is approximately the same size and approximately the same texture. The only textural difference is that Blueberry Muffin Tops lacks the sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon on the outside of each crisp. This means you don’t get that extra weird sugar crunch in between your teeth while you eat it, like you do with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. In my opinion, this is a good thing. That odd sensation always made me cringe a little and always felt like a drawback. As far as the taste goes, Blueberry Muffin Tops is pretty good. It has that generic “blueberry” flavor that you get with any “blueberry” snack product, but it is mild and evenly distributed. While I don’t personally partake in this, it could even be a good hand-in-box snack; sans-milk. These are quite delicious.



Jumbo Multi-Grain Krispies with a touch of honey by Kelloggs

This is a new variation of Rice Krispies, complete with Snack, Crackle, and Pop on the box cover. Whenever a new variation comes out on a classic cereal, I feel compelled to try it out.
Right off the bat I can say I don’t really expect eating this to resemble a Rice Krispies eating experience. Looking at them, you can tell they are bigger than standard Rice Krispies, as advertised, and I know just based off of that fact that the texture is going to be different. And it is. These Jumbo ones don’t have the exact same crisp to them that standard Rice Krispies have. You know that crisp where if you shovel too big of a spoonful into your mouth, chewing it makes the little Krispies feel like they are taking mini-bites out of your cheek? The sort of crisp that you sense comes from inside the little grains themselves. Indeed, while the Jumbo Multi-Grains are crispy, the insides are more puffy and less crispier than regular Rice Krispies. The flavor is pretty good; kind of generic but good nonetheless. It’s a little sweet, no real big wow though. You know with an established brand like Rice Krispies they really can’t go way out there with the flavor. But Jumbo Multi-Grain Krispies does not disappoint.
These remind me of some other sort of puffin cereal that I have had before that I kind of liked. I want to say Kix but I know it’s not that….

Weekend Action 4/10 - 4/12

This weekend saw some quality snacking.
I went up to Philly to visit my friend Eric on Saturday night. A favorite pastime of ours is to hit up the grocery mart, slowly strolling up and down each and every aisle, grabbing a few things here and there. The idea is to acclimate oneself with the range of options at the same time seriously considering what one might be in the mood for later that evening.
I grabbed a bag of Pixy Stix and was pleasantly surprised that they are as good as I remembered.
Eric's roommate, Jose, and I tried out some new Ben and Jerry's Ice cream. It was the John Lennon brand Ben and Jerry's called "Imagine Whirled Peace" and was a mixture of sweet cream ice cream, toffee, caramel and a few other things... It was pretty good.
I also got a regular size tin of Sara Lee Poundcake and a lone Cadbury Creme Egg.

The excitement of the night, however, came about when Eric brought out the wok filled with vegetable oil for some deep-frying. I had never actually seen this done and was excited about the possibilities... Unfortunately this didn't happen until late in the night/early morning, after I had already eaten a lot, so my natural creativity with this was stunted. While Eric fried up some fresh tortilla chips (which were outstanding), Cody threw out the idea of deep fried pound cake. We cut the pound cake into large bite size pieces and fried them up. They were absolutely incredible. This idea was nothing short of genius. The cake maintains it's integrity, softness and all, while gaining a superb crispy outer layer. This is like adding oil to butter fat.

I must say that I let myself down. The idea was thrown out there that I should toss the Cadbury Creme Egg in. I chickened out. In my defense I was just way too tired and waaay stuffed. I now regret the decision; I have been thinking about this possibility (if it can be done) for the past couple of days.
So, I've decided I have to try it. Hopefully in the coming days I will pick up a wok and some peanut/vegetable oil in order to make this happen. Of course if I am going to start this thing, I can't just stop at one Cadbury Creme Egg. I'm thinking I should definitely go for the deep-fried Twinkie. If anyone has any (reasonable) creative ideas that you think I should try, please feel free to post suggestions in the comments section of this blog. Hopefully I can make this happen this weekend and I'll post my findings on what works and what does not.

The Four Basic Snack Food Groups

The Four Basic Snack Food Groups:

(DISCLAIMER: These are just The Snackmaster’s ideas on how to divvy up the general snack groups. There are certainly items out there that defy these categories and even need to be placed in their own categories. This categorization is merely to get some of the most obvious fundamentals down. The Snackmaster also reserves the right to update or change this basic food group at a later date as he sees fit.)

1. Chocolate Products
2. Gummy Products/Chewy Fruity Products (Gummy Worms, Peach Rings, Fruit Snacks, etc.)
3. Pastries/Desserts/Cookies (Hostess Products)
4. Chips/Light Breaded snacks/Grain snacks (Wheat Thins, Potato Chips, Combos)

This may seem arbitrary, but placing specific products in a set group has it’s advantages when attempting to achieve some endurance in snacking. For instance, a hardcore snacking session requires a balance. You can’t just eat an entire bag of chips and then move on to a couple of candy bars. The wiser approach would be to eat a large portion of the chips and then a candy bar, then more chips, then maybe half a candy bar, then more chips. Number one, you don’t want to get bored of any one flavor too soon, and number two, this kind of bobbing and weaving actually suits the stomach. Too much of one specific snack in your stomach can leave it feeling sour or upset. Mixing fools it.
The truth is, every new day provides a different situation, and not all combos work all the time. However, there are some time-tested game plans that have proven successful for me in the past:

The Trifecta:
Start out with Chips category, intersperse regularly with Gummy Products, occasional low dosing of Pastries/Desserts or Chocolate Products always after Chips and Gummy. Repeat. (For whatever reason, milk as a beverage has often worked best with this method.)

The Marathon:
Chips back and forth with Gummy products. This is called the Marathon because the Gummy Products do not fill you up, but they break up the straight run monotony of Chips. This allows you to eat more Chips. It is important to know the right portion and pacing of each category and this is something that you have to test for yourself to find out what works for you. This combo works best on Saturday or Sunday mid afternoons when you woke up late, had a late breakfast and don’t really care when dinner happens.

The Potpourri Explosion:

All groups except for Chips. For when you REALLY just want everything and don’t feel like you should have to decide. It is important that you only eat a little bit of each one before moving on to the next. This is best with 5 – 10 different types of treats/candies. Chips have no place in this equation because they will pervert your experience of satisfaction. Chips are for casual eating, not focused reward consumption. This strategy is intensely personally rewarding, but because of the overload of senses, is not done often. Also, be prepared to have a lot of opened, unfinished snacks.
(Absolutely no soda with this.)

April 6, 2009

Lunchtime:

I took down another Hershey's Cookie's and Cream bar. Also had some FunYuns Onion Rings. Last night I ate a classic Hershey's Chocolate bar. Once again I have to give credit to the classics. There's something about the thinness/shape/size of a Hershey's Chocolate bar that is just perfect sometimes. I can't think of any other chocolate bar that is that thin. It helps you savor the smoothness and the flavor. Not to mention the parsed out, scored rectangles on the bar. For whatever reason being able to mathematically divide up the bar makes it seem like it lasts longer. It certainly doesn't because the chocolate is that thin.

Dinner:
A few assorted pieces of randomness:
Keebler's Fudge Shoppe Peanut Butter Cookies
More mo-fugging Peeps.
And I rocked a bag of Twizzlers.

Legends of The Snackmaster

I want to talk about a meal I had. I know the first thing you might be thinking is that "a meal" is out of the bounds of the theme of The Snackmaster. However, please read on without skepticism, for I feel that this story is very much in the spirit of The Snackmaster.

I went out to dinner with a group of friends for my buddy Cody’s birthday. We went to a small Vegetarian Dim Sum restaurant in Chinatown, as per his request. We arrived, about 16 deep, and sat tightly packed at 2 tables. Equipped with a mere two menus, we settled in and chatted, getting comfortable. Before I really knew what was going on, the waitress had taken the menus away and several of us were left muttering stuff like “what happenend?” Apparently someone had ordered SOMETHING, and I just trusted good faith that the waitress would figure out that we hadn’t all ordered. Then the food started coming out.
Plate after plate of food. With a lot of people in attendance, the first few plates slowly made their way around the table. I took a little bit of everything, respectfully, not knowing when the food would stop coming out of the kitchen. But it kept coming. As I began to notice that there was going to be a large quantity of various dishes, something inside of me clicked; something that I did not even realize had clicked until half way through the dinner. I wanted everything. Sure just a piece of everything, but everything nonetheless. I soon found myself creating a pace that made me feel like the more I ate the more intense my hunger became. Sort of like the perpetual motion machine in the form of my appetite. I remember being consumed with such a fury of eating that was so fierce I didn’t want to stop. We were so closely seated, and the tables were full of our own plates and the serving plates, that I felt like I was eating off of everything. Everything was everything. The food was done and everyone was ridiculously stuffed. Then the waitress came around and my friend Eric asked sincerely, “Is there more food coming out?” She said no. We made sure that there was, and the second round commenced.

I didn’t know what 95% of what I ate was. The only sure thing that I knew I ate was a few breaded and fried bananas covered in honey sauce. Also some veggie shark fins. Yeah I know, veggie shark fins. There was a lot of dumpling stuff, and I remember the green ones being the best. Oh yeah there was also some spring rolls or egg rolls, but beyond that I have no clue what I ate. I just know I ate a lot of it.

April 2, 2009

So I haven't done a daily update in a while.
Here's a few quickies:

Today got a bag of Peanut M+M's and remembered how good some of the simpler, more classic candies can be. I'm not a big fan of regular M+M's. I don't frequently eat any of the M+M products with the exception of the new Peanut Butter M+M's. For some reaon these Peanut M+M's hit the spot today. They were simple, predictable and not too weighty on the stomach.

The other day for lunch I explored a new Oreo's product: Cakesters. These come in a three pack. The Oreo Cakesters can best be described as a mini Whoopee Pie. However, they do retain some Oreo cookie flavor. They are roughly a little larger in size than an Oreo's cookie. The outer sandwich pieces are a soft, oily Oreo cookie flavored material. The inside cream is much fluffier than standard Oreo's filling and tastes a bit more like the Hostess Cupcakes cream filling.
All in all these are pretty damn good. Credit to Oreo's for throwing 3 in a package rather than the boring and predictable 2-pack.
I have to warn you though, these are very filling and you can kind of tell when you put them in your mouth that you might not be able to make it all the way through to the third Cakester.

Cereal Profiles, Entry 2 : Lucky Charms

Lucky Charms:

For some, the be all and end all for sugar cereals. For me, Lucky Charms was the first focused obsession in the realm of sugar cereals.

There was so much to think about. At first, the “marshmallows” were sensation overload. Luckily they mixed in the oat bits. Then they started to frost the oat bits. More sugar. Thank god. Then, the more I ate Lucky Charms, the more I realized there were too many oat bits.

Eating Lucky Charms then became a game, or perhaps a strategy. I had to eat all of the oat bits first so that I had pure spoonfuls of marshmallow bits at the end. Of course there were times when The Snackmaster bought a brand new box and poured out the entire contents and sorted my business out.

That’s all the wonderfulness of Lucky Charms, without even speaking about the magic that surrounds it. To put it bluntly, it epitomizes the children’s sugar cereal genre. We all know “Lucky the Leprechaun”. Lord knows we all loved watching the commercials of him fighting with the kids to get his magic pot of Lucky Charms. You can’t tell me you weren’t captivated by the arrival of a new shape. As many as 10 different shapes. Only Lucky Charms brought you that much diversity.

There is nothing wholesome about Lucky Charms. You know you’re not getting a balanced breakfast. You know you’re eating it cause you want to jump right into snacking in the morning. The milk doesn’t count. You know the milk doesn’t substantiate enough nutrition in the morning. Lucky Charms had the more interesting back of boxes to read too. You know you never had to look at a montage of photos of wheat or baskets of grains while reading flowery language about how the manufacturers made their cereal from the healthiest ingredients. You read the back of Lucky Charms’ boxes to play some kiddy puzzle or maze, or read an entertaining comic about the trouble Lucky has been getting in lately.

You have a box of Lucky Charms in your hand, you have the total package.

Weekend Action 3/27 - 3/29/

A lot of knick-knacking this weekend. No hardcore snacking sessions went down; just little bits and pieces here and there. I continued to make a dent in one of three large bags of Cool Ranch Doritos that I have currently. Opened a box of Lucky Charms for the first time in a while. Had to defend my bag of Cheddar Cheese and Cracker Combos from my cat all week long. It’s the only human food that I know of that she will stalk faithfully. My cat has good taste.

Here’s a list of snacks in my world this weekend (Friday included):

Chocolate pudding pie
Twizzlers
Hershey’s Cookies and Cream
Chunky
Combos
Reeses Peanut Butter Cups
More Peeps
Ellio’s Pizzas
Keebler Fudge Shoppe Peanut Butter Filled Cookies
Entenmann’s Little Bites Blueberry Muffins
Teddy Graham’s Honey Graham Snacks

Thanks

I just want to take a moment to give thanks to people who have made me excited to create and continue this blog.

Firstly, Lindsey Bourque, for the marvelous pictures. She took the picture that you see up at the top of the screen when you come to the blog. Lindsey took time out of her schedule to help me out and took a ton of pictures, which will rotate as my blog header.
The photos are amazing in quality and I almost feel bad having to reduce them to fit on the web. They carry through not only as phenomenal Snackmaster themed photos, but as incredible portraits too. Many many thanks, Lindsey.
Please check out her website at:

www.lindseybourque.com

for more amazing photos.

Many thanks to Cassie Raihl who came up with most of the ideas for the photos as well as helping to assist make it all happen. I also have to give credit to Cassie for initially giving me the idea of making a snack-themed blog. Without her, this blog wouldn't be here.

Also, Andrew Graham, deserves a shout for giving me moral support during the shopping spree that preceded the photo shoot. In addition to that, he was actually the man who first christened me "The Snackmaster", so too, without him, there would be no The Snackmaster blog.

Lastly, the followers and people who have taken time out to check the blog. Thanks guys, keep reading. I hope it entertains!

Back in the Day Segment: 52 Green

Cool Ranch Doritos.

At the age of 18 I graduated high school and immediately struck out on my own. I started working at a cafe 5 days a week, 8 hours a day and soon moved into my first apartment with some pretty cool people. We lived at a place called 52 Green and, for me, this began the era of Cool Ranch Doritos.

I had been eating Doritos for a handful of years before this, but mainly the Nacho Cheese Doritos. I had never been a big chips guy, and Nacho Cheese Doritos were the "safe" brand for me. I really never even ate potato chips up until a couple of years ago. But slowly, in my late teens I made the transition from Nacho Cheese to Cool Ranch. This process was no huge. monumental shift at the time, and I really did not eat a large amount of Cool Ranch Doritos. But somewhere at the end of senior year of high school and the summer afterwards, Cool Ranch Doritos became The Staple.

Please don't get this confused with any ordinary preference or obsession. Cool Ranch Doritos became entire meals for me. Probably because I earned so little and because of an unexplainable finicky phase that I was going through, a large bag of Doritos was often times the only thing I wanted and could really afford to eat regularly. Now, eating snacks as a meal is a ridiculously stupid thing to do, and even I knew that as an untiring 18 year old. Clearly, the majority of snacks just do not possess the materials for your stomach to send the necessary signals to your brain indicating satiation or contentment. But Doritos kind of sneak in the in between. While their flavorings are certainly fattening with no nutritional value, the corn chip itself was enough of a compromise to my 18 year old self to make me believe that if I ate enough of them, I could actually consume enough corn to substitute for an entire healthy meal. I imagined it was like substituting 5 quesadillas, just without the cheese. Surely 5 quesadillas is a big and nutritious enough meal for me! So instead of taking home the incredible sandwiches that got thrown out every night at the cafe I worked at (sandwiches that I would LOVE to have now), I would down a half to a full bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and call it a night (the large bags). The danger would only come when occasionally I would want desert and I would go up the street for something like a 2-pack of Hostess Cup Cakes. Throwing those on top of a stomach full of Cool Ranch Doritos produced a queasiness strong enough to cut through the lies I would tell myself about the harmlessness of a meal of Doritos.

Cool Ranch Doritos stuck with me long after that era, which amazes me because I ate enough for anyone to be sick of them for life. I often accredit that to the complexity of the flavoring mixture that is used. Trying to describe the mixture, I actually find myself at a loss for words. Fifteen years after I first started eating them, they are still a regular part of my weekly diet, and the experience of eating them has dulled only so slightly. They are still the rule by which I judge any other chip or breaded light snack.

Planters Cheez Balls:

I can't talk about snacks at 52 Green without mentioning the ever-present round tin can of Planters Cheez Balls. While I certainly never tried to make this a meal, these were consumed almost as frequently as Cool Ranch Doritos. The craving for these hit me around the time I first moved into 52 Green, as I found myself needing a more potent munchie. I had always eaten Cheez Doodles, but shied away from the Cheez Balls because they had a bit of an extra cheese kick to them and were much saltier. Those inhibitions faded. I remember buying these at the CVS up the street from me in the largest container I could find. They were also a hit with the guests, so much so that I had to horde and defend them. We would go through a canister ever other day. At a certain point the empty canisters became trash cans, lying around on the floor of my bedroom. This soon became a problem when they also started to double as ash trays and the dried up "trash" inside would start to smolder and almost catch on fire.
To me, Cheez Balls were decadent. They represented a leap I had made in expanding my horizons. The packaging was incredibly unique and unforgettable. Unfortunately, I haven't seen them in a long time and I hear that they are now also discontinued.


Older packaging, this style of packaging was the one right before I jumped aboard. The basic colors and layout remained the same but some formatting and font changes occurred.

March 25, 2009

Lunch:

Nothing special. Few Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. The uber-small kind, individually wrapped, Christmas treats.

Dinner:
I hauled out the sack just to tempt myself with an extreme amount of selection.
Ended up eating more Christmas treats. The marshmallow santas in foil wrap.
Then moved on to some gummy worms, "Sweet Rainbow" brand. I had never heard of the brand, but picked them up in the photo-shopping free-for-all. They come in those packs that are about 3.5 ounces and used to be sold two for a dollar but now sell for 99 cents. There are so many companies that make gummy worms and package them in this format, and for a while I figured they would all be the same level of quality of taste. This brand, however, was surprisingly sweet. They tasted .... more pure; a good analogy would be the comparison of Mexican Coca-Cola, which uses real sugar cane, to US Coca-Cola, which uses corn syrup sweetener. This brand would be the Mexican Coke.


Bad things happen to good snacks.

March 24, 2009

Lunch:

No morning treats from my buddy Ju. at work. I figured it was my turn, so I gave him an individually wrapped Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Yesterday, he brought me a cup full of these bizarre marshmallows. They were typical marshmallow size and shape but they were duo-colored. The outer shell would be one color, and the inside would be another. The colors spanned the range of pastels. They also tasted a bit different. I couldn't really distinguish tastes between the colors. The taste resembled the mild sugar flavors of Pixy Stix or Sweet Tarts, but without the tangy, tarty flavor. They were an interesting little morning adventure, but not something I would pursue in the future.
Today for lunch I finished off a larger sized Russell Stover Chocolate Marshmallow Rabbit that I had began yesterday at lunch. These are different from the ones I reviewed earlier. This one came in a box with a cellophane front for you to see the rabbit inside. The previous ones come in foil wrappers and are smaller. I have to say I prefer the foil packaged ones, although this one was good as well. This larger one advertised milk chocolate but kind of tasted like a dark chocolate. I also wasn't as fond of the proportions of chocolate to marshmallow on this larger one: there was much too much chocolate.

Dinner:

I had a Snack Pack Triples Chocolate and Vanilla single serving pudding. I was pretty pumped for this because I had totally forgotten I had two left from my 4-pack when cruising the fridge tonight. For whatever reason this was just what I had wanted. I also threw down a couple of Snackwells Devil's Food Cookie Cakes. You know, Snackwell's advertises Fat Free on most of their cookies, but don't let that discourage you. As you probably know, these cookies are pretty dope. They're soft and flavorful, and, although not mentioned on the package, they have a slight mint taste to them.

Weekend Action 3/20 - 3/22/09

So this weekend was The Snackmaster photo shoot.
I feel it best to hold off on the full description of the shoot and it's content until I have the photos ready to put up.
In the meantime I'd like to discuss the prep for the shoot. I spent a little bit over $100 on snacks, treats and desserts.
Unfortunately, I left the shopping to the very last minute and had to rush around a bit. This did not compromise my selection, but it did compromise my really being able to savor the experience of spending $100 on pure junk food.
Truth be told, I was somewhat anxious about the process of buying so much snacks. When it comes to shopping for snacks, it is always best to be impulsive. Often, I will anticipate something very specific less than 3 hours ahead of time. Any more time than this you really cannot accurately gauge what you will we be in the mood for when it is time. Any attempt that I have made to pre-empt what I really want too far ahead of time has almost always spoiled the eating experience for me. This, for the most part, holds true for meals as well. So going shopping for about a month or two's snacks in advance was a bit disorienting for me. I did not doubt that I could do it, rather I knew I would have to overcome some sort of mental obstacle in order to execute the shopping experience. I ended up hitting up 2 grocery stores and 4 convenience stores.

I only gave myself two simple rules:

1. Only buy stuff that I KNOW I like and that I know that I will eat. I was not going to spend $100 on props. Everything I bought has value to me and has history with me.

2. Try to buy as much of a variety of snacks as possible.

Number two is pretty obvious. A larger range of labels will make for a more interesting picture. Practically, a more diverse range of snacks will not feel like a responsibility in the coming month or two when I eat all of these snacks. I won't get bored or tired of eating the same thing.
Nonetheless, the huge sack of treats that now sits in my room does have a bit of an intimidating presence. My approach has been to not think about it. The enormous bag of snacks is there. It is not going anywhere. I do not have to eat something every chance I get. (Everything is pretty much packaged so I also don't have to worry about anything going bad.) My feeling is that I will pick at it whenever I feel like it, and within a week I will have forgotten most of the stuff that I bought, leading to some pleasant surprises and internal self-congratulatory thoughts for being smart enough to have picked up such and such item.
Another point of anxiety was that I was not going to get enough for the shoot. I was worried that I would hold too tightly to the variety rule, and end up not getting enough sheer visual quantity to make the photos effective. One hundred dollars worth of treats looked a lot smaller than I thought it would have. Fortunately I pretty much got JUST enough to make one of the shots look just about right.

Onto this weekend's actual consumption:
It was a pretty slow weekend for me. I had no appetite on Friday night, and I went out on Saturday night. Sunday night I had dinner with my sister's family over at my aunt and uncle's house. My aunt and uncle made an awesome dinner and brought out some brownies engineered to retard the ability to move one's body. They had chocolate frosting on them as well, something that I really don't see often enough on brownies. Add to that a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream and I felt that I had made up for the weekend's drought. At the end of the night my aunt sent me home with some food and about 1/3 of a plate of the brownies. Also, my sister gave me a bag full of my Christmas stocking candy that I had left at my parent's house and that my parent's had brought up and left with my sister. Carrying that stuff back home to be greeted by the garbage bag full of junk food, I felt a rising sense of pressure inside me....

One specific highlight of the weekend I have to mention is the acquisition of a handful of Little Hug juice drinks. These have gone by many names. When I was a kid the corner store stocked "Teenis", which is pretty much the exact same product. They are the tiny, clear plastic, kool-aid type drinks that come in a container that resembles a mini barrel or jug. The tops are sealed with foil on which the only type is found. The classic move for these bad boys was to bite into the foil with your teeth and immediately begin sucking the juice out. As a wee-lad, the pro technique was to bite down and immediately suck the entire contents out in one motion, imploding the cheap plastic container. They come in like ten different flavors and all are pretty decent. Amazingly, these drinks seem to be inflation proof. When I was REALLY little, I believe I first got them for like 15 cents or something. Not soon after, they were selling for a quarter. I didn't check the price last weekend, but I did get six for a dollar at the same store about 9 months ago. You GOTTA love that.


Little Hugs in all it's simplistic glory.

Quick Note

You will never catch The Snackmaster discussing "a piece of fruit" or "some celery with peanut butter". These are not "snacks." Those are a joke.

March 19, 2009

Lunch:

My fellow Snackmaster in arms at work gave me another small treat this morning before lunch. More easter loveliness: a small Nestle Crunch Egg. Nestle Crunch is solid; no matter what shape size or portion it comes in, the recipe holds up.
At lunch I had a two-pack of Peanut Butter Twix. I've struggled with purchasing these a lot in the recent past since their cookie switch up. Yes, now you can no longer get Peanut Butter Twix with the white cookie.. it's always chocolate cookie. Granted, it doesn't affect the taste all that much, but it is noticeable. Frankly, if it's not broken, don't fix it.

Dinner:
No snacks again. Had breakfast for dinner again. That usually takes care of the snack cravings. Cracklin' Oat Bran, as recently reviewed.

Cereal Profiles, Entry 1

Cereal is, with little question, in it’s own sub-category of snacks.
It can be eaten as a meal and it can be eaten as a snack, but it’s never quite wholly one or the other.
Now there are certain brands of cereals that clearly excel more in snacking aptitude, but I’d like to reserve those fetishes for later, more focused discussions.

I was the type of kid whose parents wouldn’t let him get sugar cereals for breakfast. The best I could get was Honey Nut Cheerios and occasionally Frosted Flakes (when it became clear that I was just going to pour spoonful after spoonful of sugar on my Corn Flakes to try to get the same effect.) I was bitter at the time, and I had my sugar cereal retribution in my late teens to early twenties, but now I am somewhat grateful to that routine they taught me.
Recently I’ve felt I need something that resembles something substantial in the morning. Unfortunately, this means that Lucky Charms isn’t going to cut it. So to keep breakfast exciting, I hunt down rare, old healthy favorites or try new healthy looking stuff.
Recent Favorites:

Cracklin’ Oat Bran (Made by Kellogs) :
My family experimented with this a bit in my early teens. This stuff is really good, it’s nice and sweet and you can easily get really stuffed on it. Cracklin’ Oat Bran is a brown colored, squared O that is very thick and very hard. It is crunchy, but not in any light flaky way. The “Cracklin” can definitely be coming from the crunch sound coming from your teeth as you bite down. This is one of those cereals that feels like a borderline sugar cereal to me. It’s got the flavor and sweetness of a sugar cereal, but essentially, it is (rightly) marketed to an adult, health conscious audience. There are no fruity colors and no fun shapes. Sadly, there is no mascot.
The down side to this type of cereal is that the Os are so big and clunky that you can really only get 2 or 3 in each spoonful. In addition to that, they are so dense that you will also need a substantial amount of milk in your spoon or it will feel like you are eating dry food. I often will pour a bowl and then pour the milk way over the peak of the highest cereal bit in anticipation of this situation. Unfortunately, your stomach doesn’t know that that excess milk is a balance for the cereal in your mouth, and the milk will weigh heavy on you.
I recommend hunting down some Maple Brown Sugar Oat milk to have with this. The combo is insanely perfect and unbelievably good. There is no way that this combo can’t be considered a treat. Let’s get it Cracklin’.



Honey Graham Oh’s (Made by Quaker):
I know: made by Quaker?! Quaker makes decent cereals? Indeed.
I’m convinced that this is a version of Cap’n Crunch reshaped visually and marketed to the adult cereal market. They taste almost exactly like Cap’n Crunch except a little less light and airy. They’ll even cut up the roof of your mouth the more passionately you eat them, like Cap’n Crunch. Appearance wise, as the name states, they are shaped like Os. The middle of these “Oh’s” are crammed with more foodstuffs, possibly little oats? The flavor is marketed as being a mixture of graham and honey and oats, but whatever, they taste like a slammin’ sugar cereal.
In my travels I’ve found that boxes of these are incredibly hard to find. At the present, I only know of one place that sells them. Much like the Hostess Pudding Pies, I hadn’t seen Honey Graham Oh’s for probably over a decade until one random day I stopped into a bodega near my friend’s apartment in Fort Greene looking for cereal and found a box. I went nuts. My feeling on this, without having done any research, is that this product was probably not discontinued, rather demand for it in the areas that I have lived is pretty much non-existent. For all I know, Honey Graham Oh’s may be on the shelves of every supermarket in the mid-west.



Good Friends (Made by Kashi):
I have to talk about this for a second. Not because it’s a good cereal that I obsess about, because it’s not really even that good. I have to talk about it because of it’s box design. The box fronts of Kashi’s Good Friends cereal intrigued me and drew me in like a magnet for years as I perused the cereal aisle. Only recently did I actually step up to the challenge of trying them out; and let me restate IT IS NOT GOOD (I mean come on, they even advertise on the front that it is made up of “flakes, twigs, and granola”. TWIGS?! That’s what we would call the stuff Grape Nuts was made of when we were trying to emphasize how revolting it was. Why would you put it out there like that?)
I merely have to mention this because of the absurdity of the cover. The cover always consists of two people of different ethnicities hunched in real close together, smiling like it was payday and hugging their bowl of “Good Friends” cereal. For the longest time I would only see this in nature/health food stores, and looking at the cover I suspected that it was the intention of Kashi to make me FEEL like a better liberal while eating their cereal. In all honesty, I expected the cereal to be edible but not in the slightest bit exciting or rewarding. To my surprise, I discovered it is possibly less appetizing than Grape Nuts. Heed the words of The Snackmaster and stay away from this.
I apologize for this deviation from all things snacky, I just felt it had to be discussed.

March 17 ,2009

Lunchtime:

The day started a bit early for me. A fellow worker (who, himself, is probably a bit of a Snackmaster in his own right; this guy snacks on different random stuff at any hour of the workday, something I cannot claim) gave me a small individually wrapped Sunkist Fruit Slice. These are like sugared gummy candies; very soft and chewy. Generally I cannot eat anything between breakfast and lunch for fear of hampering the most critical energy building section of the day. But I saw nothing wrong with sneaking this little bit in. After a massive sandwich for lunch, I had a few small York Peppermint Patties. These were the snack size that come collectively in a larger bag. I have grown a fondness for chocolate mints recently, but I feel that the York Peppermint Patties are a substitute for the superior Junior Mints (Re:Weekend Action 3/14 - 3/15, the Peppermint Patties were purchased because of the unavailability of Junior Mints). Part of the logic of this claim of superiority boils down to the chocolate:mint ratio. Junior Mints have the absolute perfect portioning while York Peppermint Patties are a little too generous with the mint.

Dinner:
KFC. Long day. Got home late. Tired. No room for treats.

March 16, 2009

Easter Candy Continuance

Lunch:
So I broke into the Solid Chocolate Rabbit and discovered why it costs so cheap. Really probably some of the worst chocolate I've ever had. It is much too sweet and does seem to confirm the suspicion that there has got to be something funny about your product when it is labeled "Milk Chocolate Flavored." It's so sweet that it almost tastes... perfumed. Like a weird super sweet that is semi–acidic to your tongue. Ate half today. I'll finish it, but I won't enjoy it.

Dinner:
Banged out the second row of 5 peeps that come in the duo-pack. This duo pack is set up all wrong. Clearly each pack of 5 should be individually wrapped and then both wrapped together. As we all know, Peeps are notorious for going stale really quick. I somehow avoided this; granted it was only 24 hours since opening, but that is still plenty of time for Peeps to harden up.
Had to do another Cadbury Creme Egg too. I got a pack of 4 and originally promised my roommate half, but that's clearly not gonna happen now. At the moment I'm scheming on eating this last Marshmallow Rabbit in bed while I watch tv but that may be a bit too much...

Weekend Action 3/14 - 3/15/09

I was craving some Junior Mints on Friday night so I decided to make a trip to the Rite Aid down the street from me with the intention of making an investment for the weekend. I had forgotten that this Rite Aid, incredibly, does not sell Junior Mints. Nonetheless, I went in with the goal of stocking up and I wasn't going to come out disappointed. Once I got in the Rite Aid, I noticed that they had started stocking up candy for Easter. You know, the type of deal where they dedicate an entire half aisle to Easter candy. Bong bong.
Let me break it down piece by piece:

Peeps:
I'm a yellow Peeps type of guy. I know that it's just food coloring and there's no difference but still. I feel less disgusting eating yellow Peeps than when I eat the pink ones. The pinks, for obvious reasons, just seem unnatural. Now, I know Peeps are a very divisive type of candy. You kind of either love them or are insultingly disgusted by them. I'm really no different, but I've seen both sides of the issue. When I was younger I just couldn't deal with Peeps. I'm sure it was something about the fact that they're ridiculously sweet and I think I used to have a hard time thinking about the texture of the outer coating in my mouth. But, I got over them, in much the same way I've had to get over other treats that I previously didn't like. There was a time when I NEEDED something candy-like and sweet and there was nothing but Peeps. Your mind has the amazing capability to bury grievances when you feel like you are backed into a corner. I downed a full row of 5 Peeps tonight.

Cadbury Creme Eggs:
Same thing with these as with Peeps. As a kid I just couldn't stomach them. To me they were just TOO rich. There was something about the center that intimidated me. The fact that you could only portion a small amount of the chocolate shell combined with the "soft fondant center" in each bite really turned me off. It was too much of an overload. Of course now that's the exact reason why I worship them so much and find myself longing for them at random moments throughout the year, waiting for Easter to come. But the transition here was something different than the Peeps revelation. I think I was always attracted to Cadbury Creme Eggs, and I always wanted to be able to take them on. I remember trying them again and again, even though I would have successive experiences of failure. Then, sometime in my early teens, I finally just started to completely enjoy every experience of eating a Cadbury Creme Egg. I had one of these tonight. It's do-able, but even The Snackmaster has a tough time eating two in one night.

Russell Stover Marshmallow Rabbit:
This may actually be the first time I've had something like this in Easter season. Typically, it's the Marshmallow Santas during Christmastime. My mother e-mails me before every Christmas asking what type of candy I hope Santa would leave for me in my stocking and the Marshmallow Santas are first on my list. These Rabbits are exactly the same. Perfect. I really can't think of any other product where you can find this type of marshmallow texture and flavor. It's really soft and really chewy and can melt quickly from just a touch of your finger. It has the consistency of a lightly roasted camp-fire marshmallow, but at room temperature. This may be the real treasure of my adventures this weekend, and I fully expect to go back to Rite Aid later this week to stock up again.

Palmer Solid Chocolate Bunny:
This was only a buck, and a 7oz bunny at that. That was a no-brainer. This can last me for a day or two. Palmer is not a name I would recognize if I just read it, but their logo is instantly recognizable to me as a classic Easter Candy company. The strange thing about this product is the wording on the package. Word for word it reads: "Palmer Happy Easter Milk Chocolate Flavored." I mean, I can tell it's a solid milk chocolate bunny so I guess they don't need to write it right there on the package; but most companies do. Also, Milk Chocolate "Flavored" got me a little worried. That makes it sound like some weird composite food that has been flavored "milk chocolate". Luckily, the ingredients list a normal mix of a chocolate recipe.
I haven't broken into this one yet. Solid milk chocolate is obviously not the main attraction of this ensemble. It's just a great back up to have around.

March 12, 2009

Lunch:

Nestle Crunch "New Richer Chocolate!". To be fair it did taste different. It didn't taste worse. I can't really determine if I care enough to say that it tasted better than any other Nestle Crunch bar that I've had. It kind of tasted like those small chocolates wrapped in foil that you get around Christmas time. I know thats vague but I can't think of a name brand to cite. What it didn't really taste like is richer chocolate. It tasted more like minutely heightened flavor. If I could be naive to have expectations of such marketing schemes, I would imagine the chocolate to be on par with Cadbury Milk Chocolate bars imported from Europe. This did not taste like Cadbury Milk Chocolate bars imported from Europe. Nonetheless, it was a Nestle Crunch bar, and that's what I wanted then; it worked.

Dinner:
Man, I had breakfast for dinner tonight. Cereal, which certainly did not prepare me well for the mini-bag of Knott's Berry Farm Raspberry Shortbread cookies that I ate. Oh yeah and a 50 cent bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
Word.

March 11, 2009

Lunchtime:

Copped out and got a Butterfinger bar. Really wanted Reese's Pieces but the corner store didn't have them. Didn't really enjoy it all that much so I'm not going to go on about them. However, I have to take this opportunity to mention the pizza place I get lunch at. NY Pizza Suprema on 8th ave and 31st street is hands down the best slice in Manhattan. Luckily, it's right around the corner from where I work. The workers are friendly, service is always fast even during lunch hour rush and the plain slices are slammer. You can tell that the the owners/management are not just some regular New York Italian schmucks who are completely bored with the idea of working at their pizza shop. These guys sincerely take pride in their superior pizza. I've gotten my lunch there about 3 times a week for around a year and a half and still go back. In that time I've NEVER had a problem with the service or the food. Check them out.

Dinner:
Couple of those same chocolate wafers... meh.

Hostess Pudding Pies

These are ridiculously impossible to find.
Rumors are that they stopped making them, however I have found 2 stores that sell them in the last 6 months.



Hostess Pudding Pies entered into my world in my pre-teens in the form of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pudding Pie. In fact, it’s quite possible that this was my first Hostess product experience period. I came upong the TMNT pies during a very focused phase in my early years when I spent my meager allowance every weekend on nothing but snacks and candy. I’m not going to lie and say that it wasn’t the fact that this was a TMNT product that made me first pick it up. If it were now, this kind of marketing would be the decision maker for me to NOT buy it. But thankfully, at that age, I did. These pudding pies were unbelievable. I would usually buy one to accompany an assortment of other random snacks and save the rest of my money to rent a VHS down the street with my buddies. If I remember correctly, this was also around the same time I would down the 1 pounder bag of Twizzlers that were frequently on sale at CVS for $1.29. These pies were weird, I will admit. They were green. They had unknown cream in them (I had never before in my life eaten pudding in any form). But they hit the spot. They were awesome. It was often a dilemma for me to figure out at what point in the sequence of snacking that the TMNT pie would be enjoyed. Naturally it was the highlight, the dessert of desserts; so often I would save it to the end as the real treat. But sometimes I just couldn’t wait and it would be the first treat to get taken down.
What's also unique about the Pudding Pies is their packaging. They are wrapped in a wax paper that is noticeably thicker than the wax paper used to package Hostess' other Pies. Hostess' Fruit Pies are wrapped in a significantly thinner, more translucent wax. The Pudding Pies have no opacity to them at all. The stiffness of the wax paper feels like if you folded it, it might crack. Holding them in your hands, you know you have a different product.
I can’t remember what it was that made them disappear from my routine. I’m betting it was a mixture of me getting sick of them and the store not carrying them. Frankly I had not even thought of them until 6 months ago when I saw a regular style Vanilla Pudding Pie at a convenience store and a flood of nostalgia swarmed over me. Of course I picked it up. Unfortunately I cannot remember now where I got that one pie from.
However, last week I found two Hostess Chocolate Pudding Pies in a corner store on Bedford and North 7th in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and immediately snatched them up. Now I’m not really a big fan of the chocolate ones; I grew up on the TMNT ones that had vanilla filling and the outer cake was really just vanilla (plain?) dyed green. But nevertheless I had to have them.
So the question is what happened to them? They are definitely out of major circulation. If you do a quick google search on them you come up with several pages asking the same question. Some go as far back as 2004, but I’m pretty sure they were out of major circulation long before that. There’s even a site where you can sign an e-petition requesting their return. But this doesn’t explain how I found these 3 pies in the last 6 months. Sure, the joke with Hostess products (Twinkies in particular) is that their shelf life is ridiculously long. But what really are the chances that there are some distributors that have a stock of Pudding Pies that have sat in their warehouse for at least 5 – 10 years? Surely there most be more out there, and you better believe I’ll be back on Bedford and North 7th next week to check for more…

March 10, 2009

Lunchtime:

I did today what I warned against yesterday. I ate a little too much for my dessert. I went to this sandwich shop down the street from where I work, and since it is not close enough to a corner store with a decent selection of treats, I usually buy one or two cookies from the sandwich shop. Today I decided to get the large, 6 inch diameter chocolate chip cookie. It was pretty good and it went with the flow of that lunch; I had ordered a fairly large and overstuffed turkey sandwich. So you know, if you're gonna do it, you might as well really do it. Indeed, I was annihilated going back to work after lunch, and seeing that I have to stand up all day at where I work, my digestion process is certainly not coddled.
The cookie was good though. This sandwich shop gets its pastries and cookies and such from a bakery on 8th ave and 30th street, and while I don't frequent them much, this cookie hit the spot. The edges were semi-crisp and the center was not too soggy or doughy. This is a frequent concern of mine with large cookies. Not over-cooking the edges and not under-cooking the center is a tricky task.

Dinner:

Just finished a Chicken Parm sub and Cheesy Bread from Dominoes. Both were meh. Left feeling pretty stuffed and seeing that it's already about 10:30 I may have to skip tonight's treat. Although I do have some Reese's Peanut Butter Filled Hearts that I picked up on sale after Valentine's Day that I may partake in if my stomach feels like it can handle more later.
Not a very exciting day for The Snackmaster.

March 9, 2009

Today's treats:

Lunchtime's snack was a two-pack of Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Brownie Cookies (something like that.) They were kind of stale; definitely much stiffer and less chewy than packs of the same brand that I'd bought in the past. Definitely disappointing. You really only get one shot at a lunchtime treat. If the first one sucks you really can't eat another treat without risking getting too stuffed and pretty much ruining the entire lunch experience.

Real-deal snack time is at night for me. This is when snacks can truly be fully enjoyed. Tonight brought a No Sugar Added Fudgsicle into my world. Now I'm not really that big on pop/fudgsicles so I can't really say what a regular, non-No Sugar Added fudgsicle tastes like, but these are certainly adequate. It's not a product where you taste a lack of sweetness due to "No Sugar" b-s. Also downed a few Nestle "Amor" "Waffer" (chocolate wafer crisps). I live in a predominantly Latino neighborhood so this is a Central American product. Tastes just like you would expect any chocolate wafer to taste, however these are a bit thinner than the majority of wafers I've eaten.

This was not a big night for me. These sweets felt like a compromise. I didn't have much in the house and didn't want to go to the store to make an investment in snacks that would surely spill over into the rest of the week.

Inception and Mission Statement

So here begins the first blog of The Snackmaster.
I think it's important to start out by explaining what my intentions for this blog are.
I don't take the title "The Snackmaster" lightly. I am very passionate and dedicated to eating snacks. I like to consider myself a man who has a very expansive knowledge of a very diverse range of snacks, treats, sweets and candies. My feeling is to start this blog out in a very organic manner. I will post as frequently as possible, giving updates on the snacks I've eaten. While my first passion is to express my personal connection and history to the snack, hopefully I can impart some information outside of my own musings about these snacks.
Thanks for reading and check back soon!

The SnackMaster