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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seriously, he said that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, to the review!

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

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

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

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

Everything is so neatly tucked inside!

Love that they included a knife and packet of desiccant!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or, I like to put carbs in my carbs then fry it up in a pan

I found this bag of frozen japchae goon mandu at a local Korean store. Mandu (sometimes spelled mandoo) are Korean dumplings sort of like gyoza or pot stickers. They come in many varieties and can be served steamed, in soup or fried. Goon means fried, I believe although I’m not 100% on this as when I was a child my mother would give us “yaki mandu” which were also fried. I should know better than to write Korean food posts when my mother is asleep so I can’t call to ask!

Japchae refers to the filling, which I’ve described how to make following my mother’s japchae recipe. You’ll notice on the bag it says jabchae, which is an alternate spelling along with chapchae – many Korean sounds lie between two English sounds so you’ll often find words spelled several different ways on menus.

I found “Tastes good mandu – Authentic flavor of Jabchae” delightful. (note click on each picture if you’d like to see a larger version)

CJ Freshian sounds like HR Puffnstuff’s friend!

Instructions are pretty straightforward. I liked that you don’t need a ton of oil to cook these.

Not exactly health food, but the price is right! Just under $8 for about 25 dumplings.

Frozen, read to cook. Each dumpling had one smooth side, one textured side. I’m not sure why, probably something to do with the manufacturing process.

Fully cooked. While the filling didn’t come out looking like lovely fresh japchae, the taste wasn’t bad at all. You could tell that there was MSG in it as the umami was off the hook – it had that hmmm, these aren’t really as good as they taste but I can’t stop eating them quality, much like the finest Doritos.

At least it contained real vegetables!

These aren’t something you’d want to eat all the time, but they are pretty good for frozen food. I served some on the side with some Asian food while my niece was visiting and she snarfed them right up, so they are teen-friendly. If you’d like something a bit better and fresher, try my mom’s spring roll recipe!

Or, not everything that comes out of a can is completely disgusting

B&M Boston Brown Bread in a Can with Raisins

If you’ve seen a few things what come in cans slideshows, you are probably already familiar with B&M brand Boston Brown Bread in a Can. If not, it’s simply a ready to eat version of Boston Brown Bread with raisins. I am not from Boston, but Wikipedia tells me that if you make it at home, it’s cooked in a can, too. I admire that, it seems so New England thrifty-chic.

The instructions are straightforward enough. It seems that for a special treat, you can serve it with baked beans but I have very strong feelings about raisins going near my savory foods, so I won’t be trying that. I didn’t realize I’d grabbed the can with raisins and decided to just go with it. By the way, if you want your own can, it was with the baking supplies in the grocery store, not the bread as one would suspect. I am hopeful that soon the baking aisle will also be stocked with cupcake in a can and pie in a jar. Then it would have to be called the “Baked and Baking” aisle and I could pretend to be stoned and giggle at that.

Nothing really exciting to see here. No word on if there is a dairy free, gluten free version.

And the top comes off. That’s not so bad, is it?

Again, for a brown cylinder being pushed through an opening, that doesn’t look too bad. Using the can opener at the bottom reminded me of how I thought my dad was the smartest man in the world when he showed me how refried beans would just fall out of the can in a perfect cylinder if you just opened a small bit of the bottom. I mean, how do people just figure out that stuff like that would work? Physics?

And this side sludge reminded me of how much I like any little bits of cake sludge left in the pan or on the plate. You know what I’m talking about. You know it’s good, almost as good as chewing up cupcake wrappers, but I guess kids these days don’t do that as much since the foil ones have become so popular.

Shut up. You know you used to do it.

By the way, the sludge tasted a bit chemically and bitter, but I still had high hopes for the flavor once it was warmed.

And unlike my trapezoid of corned beef, the canned bread came out relatively intact.

You know who else I thought was a genius? My friend Alycia when she told me that aluminum foil and plastic wrap boxes have little tabs at each end that you can push through to keep the roll from falling out.

Seriously, is there a special school that other people go to that teaches them these very important facts while I had to read Ethan Fromme like a sucka?

Well almost intact.

But it still doesn’t look that bad.

In this case, the wrapping would prove to be the real challenge.

So, I tried to do the folding one end into a triangle thing to get it to wrap around neatly, but neatly wasn’t in the cards. You know, I’m thinking if I can’t make a perfectly square boxes look all tidy and crisp, the bread cylinder didn’t have a chance.

Somewhere, my mom is saying “I can’t believe you put that clumsy work on the internet!” but I did, Mom, I did! That’s what you get for being a Tiger Mom. Seriously though, Korean moms are the best and I wouldn’t be where I am today, furtively photographing canned goods on my deck if it weren’t for the excellent work ethic I was raised with.

So while the bread was reheating in the oven, I went poking around my fridge for some topping and found these things that needed to be used up. I bought the apricot preserves because I love apricots and I love preserves but unfortunately I never eat toast because my toaster broke. The fromage blanc, I bought at Whole Foods and I don’t know why. It just looked so wholesome.

I kept taking pictures of me unwrapping the bread to try and capture the steam, but never managed to. How do you photograph steam? Is it possible or do other people just photoshop it in?

Looks okay!

Tastes? Well still kind of chemically and slightly bitter and slightly like why the hell would anyone go out of their way to eat this? It sort of reminded me of those little foil packets of fruit cake that used to come in MREs only not so fruity and not so delicious.

But I have fromage blanc!

Did that improve things? Maybe a bit, certainly less bland, but the cheese had a rather pronounced tang that didn’t play well with chemical and bitter.

Oh, but my friend apricot preserves would never let me down!

And indeed it did not, but I liked the fromage and preserves even better on a nice crusty baguette.

Verdict? Would not buy again, would be interested in trying it made fresh.  I might try this Alton Brown recipe with the kids and try it with a homemade pot of Boston baked beans.

Or, damn you Brazilian canned corned beef!

Pampa canned corned beeef

What: a can of Pampa brand canned corned beef, a product of Brazil. It says the meat used is 100% beef, which makes one thing that somebody is trying to be cute with descriptions. Okay, the meat is 100% beef but what of the other organic ingredients?

The backstory: I bought it at Big Lots. $1.30! What a steal. I’ve no idea why it ended up there; I wish Big Lots were the kind of store where the employees would write cutesy little stories about the food on index cards, liberally illustrated with flowers and smiling suns, and hang them in lieu of boring price tags. That’s the kind of stuff I used to do when I worked at the hippy health food store back in the day and look at me now! Still in the food industry, still using narrative to connect people with food.

But then, you know, I guess Big Lots would be very expensive with hand illustrated histories of each product, although now that I think more about it, hippy health food store only paid minimum wage so for the price of one surly employee you could surely hire one overwrought, slightly spoiled, moderately affected one.

Of course, the real reason I bought this was not because canned meat is pretty much the bread and butter of the grody food industry but because you open the can with a key! I haven’t had mystery loaf of meat in a tin that you open with a key since the late 1970s!

Let’s see, I think I remember how to do this…

Hmmm, are you supposed to remove the label from a can before opening it with a winding key? At this point I was becoming concerned as I was on my front porch and a tow truck was right in front of my house and I felt like the driver was judging me. I mean, it’s not like he was repossessing my car or anything, so who cares what he thinks? Well, me, I guess. Also, the mailman hadn’t been yet and he tends to come mid-afternoon on Mondays.

Yikes, this doesn’t look too promising.

And just like that I snapped the thin metal winding strip in two and came face to face with the reality that my dream of triumphantly lifting off the top to reveal a perfect trapezoid of meat was not to be, at least not today.

The edge of the can was razor sharp so I had to be careful in trying to get the meat out. I decided it was best to go ahead and try the corned beef now, before who knows disgusting thing could happen.

The taste? You know, I have to tell you, that it’s surprising how many of these canned foods I try have no real taste at all. I was expecting this to be salty like spam or that canned corned beef hash, but mostly it tasted weakly of pasty, stringy beef. I would have preferred it to taste foul as that would have at least been interesting.

I decided to go to the shed out back to find a hacksaw and get this opened and over with since the tow truck driver was still in front of my house and I was getting super nervous about my mailman walking in on me messing with my beef.

But upon arriving at the shed, I realized that only crazy, low class people use hacksaws to open cans on their front porch and plus, I am afraid of encountering a deranged hobo every time I walk into our shed, so I just grabbed the first thing I saw that looked like it might work, which happened to be a thingamabob that my mom bought me to prune crap. Yeah, like that ever happened.

Don’t worry about it being dirty, remember, I tried the corned beef in the last picture up there. That’s why I’m the pro, I can anticipate problems that might occur in the future and find ways to sidestep them.

Finally, success but this was not the preserved meat trapezoid of my dreams.

Never let it be said that I’m afraid to get my hands dirty in pursuit of my goals.

And finally, the upright tower of beefmeal has a companion!

Topped with B’lard! I wonder if that solid white fat is suet, although I seem to remember suet is only the fat that surrounds the cow’s kidneys or something gross like that. Then again, you know, that sounds very British to me and my ancestors didn’t fight their tushes off for me to have to let British people push me around when it comes to terms for fat so suet it is!

Bye!

PS If you want to see more, full sized image visit the Brazilian Corned Beef in a Can set on Flickr.

Also, if anyone wants some weak ass canned beef that doesn’t even deserve to be called corn, you are welcome to drop by! We’ve got plenty!

Or, A hasty post dashed off so a little boy could have some gum

Lotte Black Black Gum Hi-Technical Excellent Taste and Flavor

You’ll never know what you might find secreted away in different nooks and crannies of my house. I have a bad habit of leaving my new purchases wherever I happen to set them and my husband, aka creator of “THE SYSTEM” has an equally bad habit of putting things away so that I can’t see them and thus forget them.

So, today he was looking for a document or something in our document stashing box and came across this gum. Our second oldest son was with him and asked for some and was told he had to ask me. So he walks into the kitchen and asks “Mom, are you blogging this?”

And thus I figured I needed to take some pictures and write up a post quick smart so that the boy could have some gum. I’m a good mom that way. I hope that they remember that but if they do not, that’s the other purpose of this blog post.

I bought this gum at the counter of on of the Korean shops in town. It’s in Japanese, so I can’t read it, but then again, I couldn’t read it if it were in Korean, either. I thought about going on some random internet sites and asking people if they could translate for me, but figured I would just get trolled and become an object of fun and derision for believing that this says something like “Intense gum made of shavings from the bark of 1000 trees that grow only on the shores of Japan’s Eastern shore. This gum is for the purpose of living in happy harmony with brain waves and emotions”

So you know, instead of that, we’ll just look at the pictures.

It is a rather attractive pack of gum, is it not?

The color was a teeny bit more purple in real life. The taste? Intensely minty, something like an Altoid with a very elusive herbal undertone that I might just be imagining because I figure Japanese Hi-Technical gum must taste more exotic than Altoid. It chews up fine although the flavor fades faster than I would have liked. Would buy again, mostly because I am a fancy person who prefers not to have the same mainstream gum as everyone else.

Lotte – Black Black Chewing Gum can be bought at Amazon  if you can’t find it locally. I wish I’d thought to look at Amazon before I started writing this post because I would have found out:

Ingredients such as oolong tea extract, gingko extract, and caffeine give this gum that extra punch!

Also that Lotte – No Time Chewing Gum exists!

Don’t have time to brush your teeth in the morning? No problem – grab a pack of NoTime gum

What a refreshingly honest way to package gum! I’m thinking it’s the perfect stocking stuffer if you don’t mind the very slight chance that you’ll make the recipient cry.

Note: Amazon affiliate links in post.

Or, would a lazy person spend 20 minutes putting together a post about peanut butter and jelly? I think not.

People like to talk smack about Goober Grape but my friends I’m here to tell you that it ain’t all that bad, not by half.

“They” like to say it’s for lazy people.

“They” like to turn up their nose at the fact that it’s not all natural peanut butter.

“They” need to step off and leave my friend Goober Grape alone.

Okay, I’ll admit it, it’s not that good for you. Neither is being a dogmatic stick in the mud but unlike DSM Goober Grape tastes great!

I mean look at it! Isn’t that just gorgeous? I think it’s classy when foodstuffs have decorations on the top, like cappuccino foam pictures or when the bartender stamps a shamrock on your Guinness like they do at the finest Irish pubs.*

See, what the naysayers don’t realize is that it isn’t about being lazy. It isn’t about just shoving crap in your gob. It’s about the unique flavor profile that only Goober Grape can give.

The peanut butter with the palm oil enhanced texture that reminds one so vividly of the long rectangular packets of peanut butter in the MREs one’s father would bring home from the field. One taste and one is reminded that it’s all about family and freedom my friends, family and freedom.

And although my family’s usual PB&J is Smucker’s Natural peanut butter spread evenly on one piece of bread and strawberry preserves evenly on the other, Goober Grape offers a wild ride of textures and flavors. Will you have a mostly peanut butter bite? OR will you hit the jelly jackpot? It’s not just a sandwich, it’s a lottery.

Other benefits to Goober Grape:

Economical - who hasn’t been a starving college student and been forced to choose between peanut butter or jelly? With store brand goober grape you could get both!

Space saving – not all of us live in mansions with zillions of metric cubic units of storage space.

Can save marriages – people don’t like to talk about it, but arguing about peanut butter and jelly is on the rise. I don’t usually like to air my marital dirty laundry on this blog but I myself married a man that doesn’t eat peanut butter and jelly. In fact, he claims not to “get” it. I was warned against marrying foreigners, but did I listen? Look, I’m not trying to meddle in your personal affairs but have the peanut butter talk before you slip on that ring.

Effective child management tool – I found out for myself today that bringing out the jar of Goober Grape that has been tucked away in the medicine cabinet for six months is a great way to get a cranky, doped up on allergy meds child to hush already and eat some lunch.

Do you like Goober Grape or are you some sort of cuckoo spread snob?

*Not technically true, just wrote that to see if my husband is reading my blog. I do, however, really like it when people make art with my food, authenticity be damned.

]]> http://ihatemymessageboard.com/2010/10/12/in-defense-of-goober-grape/feed/ 9