The Junk Drawer

You’re all aware of my love affair with bacon, so it stands to reason that I eat my fair share of BLT sandwiches.

There are two places I get my fix. Subway and Wawa. Today we shall have a smackdown between the two sandwich giants.

There is one clear winner and it all boils down to the ordering process because the faster and easier I can get my grubby little hands on my BLT, the happier Kathy is and the less punishment the general public has to suffer for me being hungry and annoyed.

How to order at Subway:

Enter establishment and queue up to the start of the assembly line. Tell the sandwich prepper what sandwich you want, on what bread and with what condiments.

The prepper grabs your selected bread and EVEN THOUGH YOU JUST SAID WHAT YOU WANTED, proceeds to ask you at each condiment container what you want on the sandwich.

What kills me is the part where, even though I just said I want a BLT, the prepper asks me if I want LETTUCE and TOMATO on my Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich. It makes me want to cry. They do this every single time, without fail.

Yes, I would like lettuce and tomato on my Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich and if you ask me if I want bacon on that, I’ll have to give up on you and leave without my sandwich and that’s not good for the general public, remember?

Pickles? No. Cheese? No. Onions? No. Peppers? No. Olives? What? No! GROSS.

After finally making it to the end of the condiment station, my sandwich is ready and I wish I had gone to Wawa. Although Subway has the best bread, Wawa has the ordering process down to a science.

How to order at Wawa:

Enter establishment and walk up to a gloriously easy-to-use kiosk that beckons me to buy any number of happy-looking hoagies, sandwiches, wraps and subs.

I touch the screen to begin.

Welcome!

Oh, why thank you!

What kind of sandwich would you like?

I shall have a BLT.

On what kind of roll?

Hoagie, please.

Would you like that toasted?

Oh, yes, toast me, baby.

What size do you want? Shorti? 6″? 10″? Giant?

Let’s say 6″. By the way, I love you, pleasant-sounding beeping machine.

What condiments would you like on that? My selections are never-ending. Among them is mayonnaise and not just one button for mayonnaise.

There is a special button called “Extra Mayo” that should have a halo around it because it is a button made in heaven and blessed by God.

Why, yes. Yes, I would like extra mayo.

Almost finished. More bacon ($1.09 extra)?

Oh, sweet Jesus. Could it be? A button you press to get more bacon? What happens if I press it twice? Three times? Do I get a whole pig? Bring on the more!

Beep-boop-beep-boop-beep. My order is finished and out pops a receipt. And by the time I’ve paid for my delicious, bacon-packed BLT swimming in mayonnaise, the server hands it to me and I’m on my way.

The only possible improvement that Wawa could make to this process is if they incorporate the sandwich-ordering technology into the gas pumps outside. Yes, Wawa is also a gas station. Don’t knock it til you try it.

Everyone knows I’m an awesome product tester and so it makes sense that I know what I’m talking about in the sandwich-ordering, gas-pumping, time-saving department. What do you say, Wawa? Care to make a great system even better?

Also, could you install a debit card swiper so I can pay for my sandwich right at the deli to avoid annoying children standing at the register, screaming at their mothers that they want Bazooka bubble gum for dinner? Yeah, that’d be swell.

I’d like a BLT with a side of humor blog.

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Is it bad that I wanted to kill this thing because I was delayed loading my 4th of July foodfest gut in the car because my husband refused to leave until it leapt away, for fear that if it remained, the wind would blow it off and it would die a grisly death on the roadway?

Is it bad that my husband believes that it’s illegal to kill a praying mantis? (It’s not.)

Further, is it bad that I went to the 4th of July foodfest with the top button of my pants already unbuttoned, and that by the end of the day I appeared to be seven months pregnant and that all I wanted to do was dump myself in the car and speed to the emergency room because I was pretty sure I just ate my weight in picnic food and needed a good old fashioned stomach pump?

These are the things I’d like to know.

  Humor bloggers like their bugs crunchy.

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Some days I think I could be a vegetarian.

But here’s the thing. I loves me a good burger. What makes it easy to eat meat is that it doesn’t still look like the body part it came from, unless I’m eating Thanksgiving turkey, and then I try to ignore that it’s missing its head.

The most disgusting thing I’ve eaten that still looked like where it came from was this:

Italian tripe

Beef tripe is usually made from the first three stomachs of a cow, the rumen (blanket/flat/smooth tripe), the reticulum (honeycomb and pocket tripe), and the omasum (book/bible/leaf tripe).

I ate the reticulum. Sounds kinda like “rectum,” doesn’t it? 

I found myself presented with a plate full of the above “I’ll be throwing this up later” delicacy once when my high school boyfriend took me to dinner at his grandmother’s.

His was an old world Italian family where dinners were hours-long events to be taken very seriously. If something was served to you, no matter how revolting it looked, you respectfully ate it, smiled, and asked for more.

If I recall correctly, the vomit-inducing tripe was served to me in a soup. When I took my first helping, I was appalled. Each honeycomb sheet looked like bubble wrap after the bubbles were popped. It was pale in color and resembled something you might peel of your shoes if you should happen to walk through a garbage dump.

I couldn’t imagine eating this mess, but I really had no choice. A lot of love went into making this meal and I’m not sure I would have been allowed to leave if I didn’t at least try it.

And so I did.

I don’t remember the swallowing part; I only remember the chewing. I could have saved myself a lot of time and trauma if I’d swallowed the pieces whole because it took ten minutes to chew through the stuff. Essentially, I ate a bowl of rubber bands.

One by one, the sheets went down. Imagining I was eating food instead of an office supply, I slowly worked my way to the bottom of the bowl. I was careful to pace myself so that I didn’t finish too quickly, as that would only invite the question “Kathy, would you like some more?” Oh, no. Please, God. No.

To this day, I can’t believe I ate what I ate and have only the occasional nightmare about it. Give me another part of the cow — any other part — and I’m fine. Impossible-to-chew, sheets of skin-like stomach matter? No, thanks. I think I’ll pass.

So, what’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever eaten?

——

It’s chow time over at Humor-Blogs.

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Today we have the first ever Food That Looks Like Stuff submission from my sister, Ann of the Shampoo Bag.

I give you, The Muffin Man.

Do you know the muffin man?

These little blueberry guys are given out to post-surgical patients where Ann works. I’m guessing it’s so they get a quick energy boost after not having eaten prior to surgery.

This reminds me of the last time I tried and failed to donate blood. I have hard-to-find veins and, try as they might, the folks trying to get blood from me just couldn’t do it. I left the chair disappointed, and wanted to leave, but they require you to sit down in the refreshments area and have cookies and juice.

I shamefully ate my snacks, glancing around at those who actually bled for their food, thinking I had no business eating my allotment of Vienna fingers. It was the only time in my life I felt guilty shoveling fistfuls of cookies in my pie hole.

* Advanced apologies to anyone who clicks that photo caption and has the song in their heads the rest of the day.

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As many of you know, I’ve been trying to lose weight for months and months. Strike that. I’ve been thinking about losing weight for months and months.

The problem is I have very little will power and therefore, the scale laughs at me each and every morning. Oh, Kathy, Kathy, Kathy, we’re not going to do this again, are we?

Tomorrow might be different, because today I had a guardian angel keeping me from eating all afternoon and he didn’t even know it. I estimate he saved me about 1,000 needless calories.

Part of my job as a computing consultant is to install and update software on a PC that gets mirrored to 36 other computers in one of our labs in the building. The gentleman who saved me today asked me to install some software for him, which I did last week. Before I sent it out to all the other PCs, I needed him to come to my office and thoroughly test it.

He arrived at 2:00 and tested for three straight hours. In an office the size of a walk-in closet.

How did that help me? His presence just a few short feet away kept me from diving into the following things, which I was too self-conscious to eat in front of him:

One Peanut Butter Balance Bar: 200 calories

One snack bag of White Cheddar Cheez-its: About 250 calories

Ten Caramel Hershey Kisses: 230 calories

Half a dozen Goetze’s Caramel Cremes: 260 calories

My office is more a candy store than a place to conduct business. There is a candy dish that sits at the front desk next to a trim and fit woman who makes sure it is always full. God bless her. She allows herself one Hershey’s Kiss per day, if she’s been careful with her eating the rest of the day. I’d kill for her discipline.

The bowl is very small, however, so rather than emptying it out in one visit, I go straight to the source and take directly from the drawer where the big bags of it live. It’s the other junk drawer in my life. I do replenish what I take, but I don’t know why I bother putting new bags in there, because I’ll be taking it right out an hour later.

Somebody please help me! Would anyone consider being my food guardian angel? You’ll never see a better deal in your life because I’d pay you to do absolutely nothing.

You’d come to my office, pull up a chair and sit and stare at me so I don’t eat. I would occasionally talk to you, but we don’t have to speak if you don’t want. You can bring reading material if you like, or I’ll give you a laptop and you can watch a movie or surf the web. Popcorn and candy obviously prohibited.

It’s either this, or the junk drawer has to go. Do any of you have struggles with an abundance of goodies in your office? Have you ever suggested a moratorium on junk food and been successful?

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I received a great little item for the Food That Looks Like Stuff collection this weekend. This devilish tomato comes to us from Carla at blah blah blah Blogolicious. She says:

Here’s a picture of a tomato that grew in our garden a few years ago.  We of course adorned it with necessary facial expression.

I don’t know what it is about tomatoes that makes a person want to draw on them, but I did it myself to Weeble Tomato Guy, who was second to appear in the collection.

Anyone who sends me a food that makes the cut receives a Junk Drawer magnet! So please look carefully at your food before you scarf it down. There might be a prize in it for you!

Lycopersicon esculentum diabolus

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Trust me. This post title will make some sense in a minute.

We’ve got something new for the Food That Looks Like Stuff collection. This little guy was discovered in a pack of chicken fingers from Wegman’s in Bethlehem, Pa.

Taken on the whole, this looks like a sleeping dog to me. I’ve decided it’s a Basset Hound, though sadly, front legless.

Because I like to get second opinions when I’m not sure I’ve got a food that looks like something, I sent it to my sister Ann to examine. Here’s her response:

Is that God’s face on the right?! Or Zeus?  Full head of hair and full longish beard?!  OMG!

Do you see the face?

Taking a poll. Who thinks it’s a dog and who thinks it’s God/Zeus? Who thinks we’re seeing things?

Sleeping Basset Hound-God-Zeus Chicken Finger

Addendum, 4/29: OK, folks. Here’s where I see the face. Please don’t mock my graphic design skills. I have none.

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For those of you who think my junk drawer is too neat and clean, you haven’t seen my refrigerator.

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I’m doing lousy with my diet, but my husband Dave’s doing just great. He’s well into a double-digit weight loss and I’m thrilled for him.

But I wonder if what he’s eating has altered his brain chemistry a bit.

He said this yesterday and meant every word of it: “God, this celery is so freakin’ good!”

I’ll call a doctor in the morning.

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Another delicious submission from Heather Simoneau for the Food That Looks Like Stuff gallery. She’s the same reader who brought us Bagel #9.

I believe Heather’s working on an entire Grand Slam Breakfast That Looks Like Stuff. We’d love some bacon next time if you could swing that. Oink.

Part of a Heart-y Breakfast

I’m always happy to post reader submissions. In case you see a food that looks like something, here are my two simple rules:

1. The food must not have been deliberately constructed to resemble stuff. Heather was very clear about the circumstances under which this heart came to be. She insists she only tapped the yolk once or twice after it went in the pan, without any thought as to its food-looking-like-stuff qualities. But then the heart appeared suddenly and she ran for her camera.

I’m glad Heather has her priorities straight. Her kids were starving, but instead she held a photo shoot. That’s the spirit!

2. The object must not display male or female “appendages.” A Junk Drawer reader recently emailed me an X-rated tomato. It took me quite a while to figure out how to tell her I couldn’t accept it on the blog.

I think it’s obvious I have almost no limits for what I’ll put on the blog about myself, but I must use care not to offend naked fruits and vegetables. Can’t be too careful. They may not have thought those pictures taken early in their careers would ever see the light of day. Yeah. Those kinds of pictures.

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Back in November, I wrote about a cake I bought from a new bakery in town. I threw it out because it was too dry and the icing looked better than it tasted. I promised I’d give them a second chance and post back about it.

They blew it. Again.

Yesterday after a 45-minute walk with my sister, I thought I’d reward my effort and ruin whatever benefits I gained from exercising by making a return visit to The Dry, Gross Cake Bakery.

Everything looked scrumptious in the case and I ordered three items (pictured above): A Napoleon, a Southwest pizza thing (don’t remember what it was called), and a half-dozen donuts.

The Scorecard:

1. The Napoleon: Not horrible. The cream and flaky pastry part were serviceable, but the icing was overly-sweet and gummy. It may or may not have been fondant, which is a bakery staple for wedding cakes that looks really pretty, but sometimes tastes like crap. Grade: C+

2. The Southwest pizza thing: Bad all around. The bread was rubbery and tasteless. What I remember of the topping was diced tomato, corn and some unidentifiable meat. I thought it had cheese, but no such luck. Had the topping been 100% bacon, I could have salvaged it. Instead, it went in the trash. Grade: D.

3. The donuts. Ah, the donuts. How can a bakery screw up a donut? Donuts are Pastry 101! I should have known something was wrong when the cashier handed me the bag containing a half dozen of the lovelies. They were so heavy, I almost lost my balance. In my opinion, glazed donuts are supposed to be light and airy. Artery-clogging, yes. Deliciously sweet and fattening, yes. Brick-heavy, no.

Here’s a closer look. See that nice sheen? That’s perhaps how a glazed donut should look. Except for one thing. That’s not the glazed side. It’s upside down. Go ahead and click to enlarge, just put your sunglasses on first.

That shininess is caused by deep-fryer fat globules that are soaked all the way through. I wanted a donut, not a blob of lard. It tasted oily, burnt and slightly rancid. And crunchy. Donuts aren’t supposed to be crunchy, right? Grade: A Big Fat Lardy F!

Now look at the bag they came in. The grease reached flood stage about two inches from the bottom of the bag. It’s soaked through solid up to the first crease. If I thought all the grease got sucked out of the donuts, I might actually consider eating the rest. It seems such a waste to throw them out, but that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Here’s a question: It’s obvious I’m never going back to this bakery, but should I let the owners know how dissatisfied I am with their products?

They should know how un-yummy their stuff is, so they could at least fix the donuts. I refuse to believe I’m the only one who finds crunchy, oily donuts unappetizing. I wanted to love the bakery because they’re close to home and I need a new place for all my forbidden food needs.

I don’t want to post the name of the bakery, since I’m not a professional food reviewer (although I should be). If you know me and want to know where it is, give me a buzz. The rest of you don’t have to worry about stumbling into this greasy dive trying to pass as a bakery.

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My husband Dave and I have been dieting religiously the last six weeks, but we lost our minds tonight and ordered take-out.

Here’s what Dave asked for when he placed the order by phone:

• Four cheeseburgers with mayo
• Two perogies
• One garlic knot

Here’s what we got when I picked it up and brought it home:

• Four cheeseburgers with mayo
• Two orders of perogies (3 to an order)
• And this…….

One garlic knot.

Every other time we’ve ordered from there, “one garlic knot” meant “one order of garlic knots,” which contains six knots. Ordering one garlic knot is akin to ordering a single french fry. It’s just not done.

The joke was on us. We got exactly what we asked for.

I don’t know about you, but we can eat about ten of these, and that’s after the burgers and perogies. So who took ownership of the one knot? Our cat, Stinky. She was smelling it up and down while I took this picture. Now we don’t have to split it, which is good because half a delicious knot is worse than no knot at all.

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While cleaning out a closet this morning, I ran across this photo I took some years ago when I was on a random picture-taking excursion. I love this guy. His eyes look so soulful to me. It makes me feel guilty for wanting a delicious char-broiled quarter-pounder right now. With cheese.

Seeing it, I’m reminded of one of my childhood memories involving cows, ice cream and my dad’s Lincoln Continental.

Around the time my sister Ann and I were seven and five years old, respectively, a favorite treat was our Dad driving us to a nearby dairy for ice cream. Part of the fun was driving fast over a hilly section of the road leading up to the dairy. Dad would speed up before the incline and coming over the crest we’d get that flip-flop feeling in our stomachs and shout WHOOOA!!! as we came down the other side. Funny, the little things we remember.

When we got to the dairy, Dad would go in and chat it up with the owner and Ann and I would stand outside the cow pen and hope that one of the mammoth creatures would saunter over and say hello. I can’t think of any small dairies that still exist around here, but if I see one, I have an irresistible urge to stop and moo at the cows.

On one particular visit, Ann and I were all moo’ed out and went inside to collect our ice cream. Typically, we’d get started licking in the store and be just about done by the time we got home. But this trip was different. It was the first in a long series of incidents that end with the question Why do these things always happen to me?

My problems started almost immediately after my Dad got out onto the country road. It must have been a hundred degrees that day and so the ice cream melted faster than I could lick it.

And then the dribbling started. All over my hand, down my arm and all over my lap. And then Dad found out. Nevermind that half my cone was running down my leg, all I could think was how mad he would be when he saw the mess I just made of myself.

If it’s one thing we kids tried to avoid was bringing harm to his only prized possession: his deep blue, formerly clean, 1970 Lincoln Continental with the doors that opened outward in opposite directions. He worked hard all his life to support his family and make sure we had what we needed. The car was the one thing he allowed himself to splurge on.

Unable to pull over on the narrow, one-lane road, he opted to at least keep things from getting any worse. “Stick it out the window! NOW!,” Dad shouted.

“Oh, no! Dad! My ice cream!”

“Get it out of the car!”

I did as instructed and shoved my delicious treat out the window. All my glorious chocolate ice cream hit the wind and, unbeknownst to me, rained down all over the side of the car. I thought for a second that I could stick my head out the window and keep licking, but I was too busy sucking it off my arm and hand.

What’s interesting, in hindsight, is that my Dad didn’t make me throw it out the window. Only stick it out the window. Perhaps none of us guessed that so much of it would splatter back onto the car door.

It did in a big way.

When we eventually got out of the car, we gathered ’round to assess the damage. What we had before us was the Kathy version of a Jackson Pollack painting. Thick splats at the start of it, thinner towards the middle, and dot dot dots where it tapered at the end.

I don’t remember my Dad being mad at me. After all, it only required a quick cleaning. What I do remember is I’d given up a perfectly good cone to the forces of physics and wondered whether it was possible for me to still eat that. The one rule for ice cream and kids? Do not separate.

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Last week I wrote about my love affair with bacon, which included an attempt to find out whether the doggie treat Beggin’ Strips taste like real bacon. The answer: A big fat NO.

After reading about my love of all things bacon, Susan of the My Right Brain blog suggested I try out BaconSalt, a bacon-flavored seasoning for the times I want to baconize my food in the absence of the real thing. According to their website, the makers of BaconSalt are “on a quest to make everything taste like bacon.” Best. Tagline. Ever.

I got online that day and ordered up two containers of it: one for me, and one for my bacon-loving sister, Ann of the Shampoo Bag. They arrived last night.

I gleefully took mine to work today in anticipation of making my Healthy Choice Chicken Parmigiana with Broccoli meal a little more palatable. Here’s my assessment:

1. The stuff doesn’t smell 100% like bacon. It smells more like barbecue sauce, but I salivated nonetheless. I also sneezed.

2. It’s less like salt, and more like crushed up bacon bits. I expected a powder substance, but it had a slight crunch to it.

3. When it hit the food, it didn’t dissolve. It just laid there like a bacon bit would.

4. It didn’t taste all that much like real bacon, I suspect due to the absence of glorious grease.

5. Because I bothered to buy it and wanted to give it a full assessment, I sprinkled another teaspoonful onto my lunch and decided I didn’t hate it. But……

BaconSalt has one major flaw.

Three hours after lunch, I realized I could still taste bacon, or some facsimile of such. The thing to watch out for if you buy this stuff is the aftertaste.

Bring a toothbrush, mouthwash, gum and floss if you don’t want everyone you come into contact with later in the day to know what you had for lunch. And by all means, don’t eat it if you have a dentist appointment within two days. Unless you hate your dentist. In that case, by all means, go forth and breathe heavily.

My sister Ann hasn’t received her order yet, and I’m pretty sure she won’t want it now. But, Ann, if you want your stinky bacon, come ‘n get it. 

Product Tagline: A

Idea in Theory: A

Real World Test: C+

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Whoever said chocolate is the food of the gods had it all wrong. We all know it’s juicy, sizzlily, fattening, lickity lips BACON!

How much do I love it? This weekend my family hosted a birthday party for our mother, held at my sister Marlene’s house. Marlene’s dog, Tootsie, is a great lover of Beggin’ Strips, a fake bacon doggie treat. She always gets one after she comes in from outside and I got the honor of doling one out when she pattered into the kitchen.

I grabbed the bag and pulled one out. Hmmmm…. Looks like bacon, smells like bacon. I wonder if it really tastes like bacon. As all of the partygoers stood around watching me study this artificial bacon strip, one thought came to mind: What would someone pay me to eat this thing?

Apparently nothing, because when I announced I would eat part of the strip for money, nobody pulled out a wallet. I suspect this is because they held no reservations that I’d actually eat the thing. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s probably not good.

Not in position to make any money, but still curious, I broke off a decent-sized chunk of it and began chomping away. And chomping, and chomping, and chomping some more. It’s no surprise I had such a hard time breaking it down to the point where I could swallow it.

Why? Because I’m convinced the ingredients that go into making a Beggin’ Strip are the same ingredients that go into making plastic. Did it taste like bacon? Not by a long shot. The closest thing it came to was unsalted beef jerky. Hard, juiceless, tasteless unsalty beef jerky. Do dogs have any taste buds at all? Can you really call this a treat?

Geez. Even Science Diet cat food tastes better than this. Oh, did I just say that out loud? OK, I did eat a pellet of cat food once, on a dare, and it tasted like granola. Quite good, to be honest.

So there you have it. If you’ve ever wondered what pet food tastes like, wonder no more. Oh? You never wondered what it tasted like? Must be just me. Consider yourself sane and well-balanced.

Now, if you love REAL bacon, you’ll like comedian Jim Gaffigan’s take on just what makes bacon the food of the gods.

UPDATE: Recently, this video was removed from YouTube with the following notice: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC Universal. Bastards! It was such a funny video. You’ll have to trust me.

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Potato salad anyone? Today we have two new additions to the Food That Looks Like Stuff collection, submitted by a colleague whose husband thought she was nuts for photographing a heart-shaped potato. Until he found another one just like it and wanted to get in the game.

Here we have the first ever husband-and-wife team submission called Two of Hearts. Thanks Maryann and Frank!

When I saw I was getting potatoes that looked like stuff, I dusted off a potato picture of my own that I’ve been holding onto since Christmas. I wanted to submit it to the collection but couldn’t figure out what it looked like. I know it looks like something, but can’t place it.

Maybe my readers can help. Here it is.

I’m convinced this peeled potato resembles someone from children’s literature. It may be an animal. It may be a person. I enlisted the help of a librarian where I work, who also believes it looks like a character from literature. Along with the photo, I emailed her my description of who I think it is:

I believe it’s from a classic book and that the character I’m thinking of wears glasses. I see a short, stocky male character who is possibly also dim-witted.

Another colleague who reviewed the photo believes that the character is British and has small animal-like hands.

We have ruled out characters from Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, as well as Mole from The Wind in the Willows. It helps to view this picture as a face that is gazing upward to your left and that its right eye is out of view.

In my mind’s eye, I see the character as having little or no neck. He speaks softly and may or may not wax philosophical. He is not the protagonist in the story, nor a foil. Although he may be of little brain, he is wise in a Winnie-the-Pooh kind of way.

If anyone recognizes who this might be, please cast your vote in the comments section. If you think I’ve finally lost my marbles, don’t bother telling me because I already know I have.

p.s. He was cut up into cubes and made a fine addition to our Christmas dinner. He didn’t scream at all.

———-

Humor-bloggers prefer french-fried potatoes.

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I’m delighted to announce an addition to the Food That Looks Like Stuff collection. This piece, dubbed Bagel #9, was submitted by reader Heather Simoneau. Of course, if you turn it upside down, it can be Bagel #6 to you.

She reported it was found in a package of Thomas’ plain bagels at a SuperFresh store in Bethlehem, PA. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Today’s post, brought to you by the #9

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Like many high-schoolers my first job was at a fast-food restaurant. I learned a lot about responsibility, working in a fast-paced environment and coping with the public.

I also learned why you should avoid eating there if at all possible. Consider this the next time you pay a visit to your neighborhood quickie-meal joint:

1. Teenagers run the place. The majority of the staff were under 18 years old. Teenagers have zero vested interest in serving quality food to you. They are biding their time until they can punch out and resume the part of their lives they give a damn about.

2. Managers can’t be everywhere. Yes, the good managers will oversee the production line and make sure nothing bad happens to your food. But they are not omnipresent. I once witnessed a co-worker drop a large cut of roast beef on the floor while trying to load it into a slow-cook oven. He picked it up and put it right back in. (I reported him).

3. The sneeze guard over the salad bar is worthless. Understand that salad bar items are subjected to dirty fingers, dirty air, coughing and hacking customers and fluctuating cooling temperatures. Face it. The food sits out all day and God knows what happens to it before you sidle up and help yourself. In addition, if enough of one item is too much to toss for the day, it’ll be put out the very next day to mix with the same environmental pollutants as it did the day before.

4. Cleanliness is not top priority. One day the restaurant’s drainage system backed up and we sloshed around for two hours with plastic bags over our shoes, still serving food, before someone came from the Health Department to shut us down until repairs could take place.

5. Food for you one minute, dog food the next. For about a year, our restaurant entered into an arrangement with the local SPCA. Food that was deemed fit for human consumption was fed to people. After the food was under heat lamps too long, it was dropped in a bucket and picked up to be fed to dogs. We’re not talking quality here. Five minutes ago, it was meant for you.

6. You get what minimum wage pays for. Almost anyone can get hired. The same guy who dropped the roast beef on the floor also cut off part of his fingertip while slicing ham. A week later he was caught smoking pot behind the drive-thru window and finally fired. He worked under the influence a lot of the time. Your best interest was not on his stoned-out mind. We didn’t like to think what else he did that no one caught him doing.

7. Cross contamination is the norm. When things got busy, the same person who just swept garbage off the floor might be asked to perform cashier duties without washing their hands in between. They may rearrange your food on your serving tray, help the food line staff assemble sandwiches, grab cups and utensils, all with their bare hands. What they touched, you touched and you probably put it into your mouth.

Bon appetite! (if you dare)

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I’m pleased to announce an addition to the Food That Looks Like Stuff collection. The piece, called Carrot Love, was submitted by a friend and colleague who clearly has an eye for art. Study it carefully.

This photograph reflects the highest standards of excellence that The Junk Drawer strives to achieve when accepting items for publication. This is exactly what we’re looking for. You know, pictures that would make adolescent boys snicker.

"Come on, baby! Gimme a kiss!"

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Blogger’s Note: I realize this makes the third post about food in four days. I’m sorry. It’s not my fault.

I blame my pal J.D. over at I Do Things. She’s the woman who throws entire pies away when she and her husband know they’ve had enough and shouldn’t eat anymore. Today, she sent me a note about the time her husband threw away a perfectly good box of chocolates he received as a gift just so he wouldn’t be tempted to eat it. Her note reminded me of the time I, too, had a box of chocolates destined for the trash.

I used to love Cella’s Chocolate Covered Cherries before I bought two boxes and sat down to plow through one of them. All comfy on the couch, TV remote in hand, I opened the box to see that one of them was sporting a full head of hair. I just about threw up.

You can click that picture to get a better look, but I wouldn’t recommend it. All you need to know is the little guy down front needs a box of Just for Men hair coloring and the one next to him isn’t much better off. The remaining others are in the early stages of decomposition, and thus have much less-developed hair follicles. But they’re on their way.

So irritated that I couldn’t enjoy my sweet chocolaty snacks that night, I drove back over to the store where I bought them and informed the clerk of my gag-inducing discovery and that I wanted a refund.

I opened the box to show her the funky confections. She freaked just like I did, then called her manager over to have a look. "Ewwww, look at this," she says.

The manager, strangely NOT horrified, says "Yeah, we got a letter about that on Friday."

"You got a letter? About the hair? On Friday?" I asked, on a Monday I might add.

"Yeah, they said there was some problem during manufacturing. Wanted us to pull them all off the shelves," she explains.

I ponder for a moment why a person would remember reading a warning about a science experiment being carried out in a box of chocolates, and then do nothing about it.

I didn’t have the patience or energy to ask her why they didn’t pull them by now, but I did stay long enough to get my money back and see that she removed them all from the shelves.

After a year-long moratorium on buying boxes of Cella’s, I recently resumed eating them. But I always give them a thorough once-over just to be sure none of them is wearing a wig. Hair is not a good look for them.

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I love food. No doubt about it. In fact, it appears I also love to write about food, as the Food category in my sidebar is the second most-tagged topic in this blog. Seeing that just scared me a little.

Like most people, it’s a daily battle to count calories, get enough exercise and not feel like a moo-cow every time someone brings food to the office. I’m usually the first in line to inspect what kind of goodies have been bestowed upon us. And whoever thinks fruit cup is a dessert doesn’t know how much better it could be dipped in chocolate.

When it gets really bad and I want to eat an entire family-sized bag of cheese curls for dinner, there is one tactic I’ve used on more than one occasion. THROW ALL OF IT IN THE TRASH. My friend J.D. over at I Do Things has a name for this, whenever she and her husband want to rid themselves of a certain crusty baked dessert they shouldn’t have. It’s called Pie Rage. Yep, just get all insane and throw the stuff out!

Now for all you people that think that’s a horrible thing to do, what with all the starving children in China, I ask you this: How is this bag of orange-colored snacks going to get to China? And it’s not going to be enough to feed everyone anyway, and I’m not even sure cheese curls qualify as food. It’s better off in the trash, and off my thighs.

This week Dave and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. To treat ourselves, I picked up the chocolate drip cake you see pictured above. I was trying out a new bakery in our neighborhood and that cake looked spectacular in the display case and I just had to have it.

Unfortunately, the cake looked better than it tasted. The cake part was dry as sand, and it made me question just how long it sat in the bakery before I arrived and salivated all over it. The icing looked so yummy and I assumed the cake that it enveloped would taste scrumpdillyicious. But I learned you can’t judge a cake by its icing.

We would have had no problem eating that whole thing over a few days, had it tasted better. You know how it’s tradition to hold the top layer of your wedding cake in the freezer and eat it on your first anniversary? No chance. We ate the whole thing in two days after returning from our honeymoon. I don’t know who thinks you can keep opening your freezer for the next 364 days and not dig into it. People who do that are just not right.

So what became of our anniversary cake? It went bye-bye in the next day’s trash. It felt sad to dump the whole thing out, but at least it saved us about 6,000 unwanted calories. The next time you want to skip exercising for a day, follow one simple step and throw out the food you were about to eat. There. Now you don’t have to burn it off. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

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A couple years ago I noticed what looked like a smiley face on an overly-seasoned snack chip. That curious discovery led to an endless search for other food that looks like stuff.

Weeble Tomato Guy
Mr. Weeble came to me in a bag of home-grown tomatoes given to me by a colleague. His bottom began to dimple and he soon was unable to stand on his own. Weebles wobble and they DO fall down.

Yummy Yammy, The Elephant Man
Found this face in a yam from dinner. Random fork stabs happened to
give Elephant Man a set of eyes.

Meatloaf for Brains
Yummy Yammy accompanied this brain-like meatloaf.
As gross as it looks, it was quite tasty.

Kitty Cat Face
Dave found this kitty cat sleeping in his ice cream.

Garlic Knot Mitten
Submitted by colleague Jason Slipp. Taken with a camera phone, so it appears much larger than it actually was.

The Chip with Heart
Long forgotten in a kitchen cabinet (awaiting its submission to the site), this chip is eight months old. It’s remarkable to me that it withstood changes in temperature over the months and never showed signs of wearing down. Preservatives will kill us all.

Carrot Love
Reader Brad Price submitted this shot of two carrots in a loving embrace. Spooning isn’t just for humans anymore.

Bagel #9

Reader Heather Simoneau submitted this picture of a numeric and tasty bagel she found in a package of Thomas’ bagels.

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My 11-yr-old niece loves to read stories in this blog about when her mother, my sister Ann, was a kid herself. She loves to hear about what she was like when she was her age and the silly or stupid things she did.

One such story involves a bike, a serious misjudgment and a pair of Drake’s Devil Dogs.

Here’s the thing about Devil Dogs. It was Ann’s favorite snack food back then and the first thing she’d spend her allowance money on. And she could get them just about any time she wanted. We were lucky to have not one, but two, corner stores near our house growing up. One was called The Apple Shack, which was owned by a woman named — I kid you not — Candy Apple.

The other one was called Verna’s, run by a little old lady and her husband. Located about three blocks from home, it was the quintessential Mom and Pop store. Sure, they sold incidentals like milk and bread for adults, but we kids knew it only as Junk Food Central.

Among other things, Verna sold ice cream, popsicles, homemade cupcakes and shoe-fly pie and giant lollipops bigger than our heads. She had a large wooden, glass-front case where we could peer inside at the array of penny candy and ask Verna to put together a little brown bag full of sugary confections. You could score a pound of goodies for about a buck if you chose wisely.

I always liked to get red licorice shoelaces, Flying Saucers, Tootsie Roll Midgies and Chick-0-Sticks, the latter being something of a cross between a less-sweet version of Butterfingers and pretzel sticks. You had to chisel half of it off your teeth, that is, if you had any left after eating them. Chick-o-Sticks and mortar. Same difference.

Then there’s Ann. Ever the discerning snack connoisseur, she had just one favorite — the Drake’s Devil Dog, a devil’s food cream sandwich whose wafers were shaped somewhat like a hot dog bun, hence the name. She’d eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner if our mother let her.

One Saturday afternoon in 1975, after getting our allowances, we decided to go on a candy and Devil Dog run to Verna’s. We hopped on our banana-seat bikes, pedaled hard up a two block hill, rounded the corner, dropped our bikes in front of the store, and had Verna throw some stuff together. Me with my grab bag, and Ann with her two Devil Dogs.

When we got outside and prepared to bike back home, Ann realized she should have gotten a bag for her things but didn’t feel like running back inside for one. Standing there, straddling her bike, she maneuvered the handlebars with just the palms of her hands, while she held the Devil Dogs with the tips of her fingers so as not to smoosh them.

I told her, "You’re not gonna be able to ride right if you hold ‘em that way."

"Yes I can!" she shot back.

I seriously doubted it, and sure enough, she would soon pay dearly for this error in judgment.

We set off for home, proud that we still had a few bucks left of our allowance and happy to have enough snacks to spoil our dinner. As we approached the hill we biked up on, we prepared to set sail downward. It was always great to pick up speed and catch the wind in our hair. We’d blast through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill, then race each other home in the last block.

But this ride was like no ride before, because somebody cared more about the welfare of her Devil Dogs than getting home in one piece. We’d gotten about halfway down the hill and picked up considerable speed when Ann hit a patch of stones in the road and it was all over in a flash. Because her hands were gripping the Devil Dogs instead of the handlebars, any chance of controlling the bike went right out the window. It was a hopeless situation.

When she braked to try to stop the slide, she was thrust head first over the handlebars and got herself caught in them so that she and the bike crashed to the ground in a twisted metal ‘n legs pretzel. Together they slid for about ten feet. And all along the way, gravel and other road debris became embedded in what were now ripples and ripples of scraped-up skin.

Had her dismount been part of an Olympic event, the judges would have leapt to their feet and pronounced it a "10" because not only did she damage herself quite badly, she also rendered her bike un-rideable. It was a perfectly-orchestrated knockout and both of them were down for the count.

The first thing I did, of course, was run to her aid and see if she could stand up. Crying and moaning, she gingerly rose to her feet and insisted she could walk home. I helped her over to the curb and urged her to sit back down and get her bearings first. I turned around to assess the damage. Looking in the street at her mangled bike, handlebars all askew, I spotted the reason Ann found herself battered and bloodied.

Amid the mangled mess of her bike lie two perfectly rounded, fully-formed, light and fluffy Devil Dogs, still in their micro-thin plastic wrap. The only visible damage was that some of the cream had oozed out the sides, but the wrap hadnR