Despite recent appearances to the contrary, the ongoing Gross-Off series has not been abandoned here at jefitoblog; it’s just that between getting caught up on music reviews and changing poopy diapers, I haven’t had as much time to plumb the depths of American junk food. Never fear — I’m always on the lookout for new and exciting taste-icular experiences.

Which is why I bought the new Mountain Dew “energy soda,” A.K.A. MDX, at the local Nob Hill this week:

I want you to know two things up front. First of all, I’m not a soda man, which is why this is our first soda Gross-Off since last October’s Pepsi Holiday Spice incident.

Second, I haven’t had a Mountain Dew since I was in high school and heard about its wang-shrinking power (which those grumps at Snopes dispute, but why take chances?).

Actually, there are several things I’d like you to know, and most of them have to do with MDX’s terrible magnitude of green. These photos have not been doctored in any way. In fact, what the photos don’t tell you is that MDX actually stains ice cubes green. Bright green. I don’t understand soda these days — a few weeks ago, I bought a case of something called Mountain Dew Pitch Black II to write about here, but after I poured a glass and saw the fluorescent purple foam, I chickened out. Isn’t it enough for stuff to be fizzy and sweet anymore?

Apparently not. In fact, it’s no longer enough for it to be fizzy, sweet, and painful to look at. Our soda must now also pack a little something extra. MDX, specifically, is “fueled by Power Pack.”

What’s Power Pack? Well, take a look:

I have never even heard of D-Ribose or Maltodextrin. Why would anybody want to drink a glass of this? It glows with evil green power, like Homer’s coffee after he accidentally drops a nuclear rod in it at the Springfield power plant.

Naturally, I wrangled The Boy into this experiment, which wasn’t too hard, since he’s forever asking me questions like “CAN I HAVE SODA FOR LUNCH?” — apparently, seven-year-old boys aren’t as put off by neon food as their wimpy, grown-up uncles. Oh, chill out; I only poured him a small glass. And after all the buildup, his only reaction was a big grin, followed by, “THIS TASTES LIKE MOUNTAIN DEW.”

Kids, man. They see through everything.

As for me, my wife, and my mother-in-law, we all agreed that it tastes like a melted popsicle, but none of us are avid Mountain Dew drinkers, so maybe that’s just what the stuff tastes like these days.

You know, I’ve never cared much about Halloween. Even as a kid, the candy didn’t excite me as much as it did my friends — I quit dressing up to go trick-or-treating in fifth grade.

But now that I’m all grown up, I love Halloween. Not because I get to pass out candy to snot-nosed little brats (not many of them come knocking anymore anyway), but because it always signals a fresh round of brand new junk food at the supermarket.

Behold! LIMITED EDITION Batman cereal!

Actually, I guess it’s The Batman cereal, but that sounds funny. Why The Batman? Is The Batman different from plain old Batman? I can’t keep up with all this stuff anymore. The Boy has been clamoring loudly for a video game called “Ultimate Spider-Man” lately. Ultimate Spider-Man? Really? Will there be no more Spider-Man games after this one? Because if this one is the ultimate, then the rest of them will pretty much suck. Could there be an “Ultimate Spider-Man 2″?

Anyway. I’m losing track here. The point is, even though Batman (or The Batman) is on the front cover of most of Post’s cereal lineup this month, he’s getting his own box. It’s LIMITED EDITION, so I had to act fast; besides, who wouldn’t be tempted by the prospect of “cocoa flavored cereal with marshmallow bits”?

They look like rocks, don’t they?

Well, let me tell you: They’re every bit as crunchy. Oh my God, all this time I thought Trix and Cap’n Crunch represented the absolute peak of gum-shredding cereal technology, but I was sadly, sadly mistaken. The Batman cereal is capital-C Crunchy. The Boy took one bite and said, “UNCLE, THIS IS SO CRUNCHY.” And then: “IT TASTES LIKE CHOCOLATE.”

I ate a bowl across the room from my wife, and she wouldn’t stop complaining about how loud my chewing was. (I chew with my mouth tightly closed.) I had to leave the room.

I guess the point here is that The Batman is so goddamn crunchy that it sort of eclipses any chocolatey goodness, or even the added benefit of marshmallow bits (though The Boy did add “I LIKE MARSHMALLOWS”). It’s shockingly crunchy. The only thing I can guess is that you’re supposed to put it in milk, go out and fight crime for awhile, and then come back when it’s close to normal cereal consistency.

Don’t take my word for it — go out and get your own box. But act fast. It’s LIMITED EDITION, after all.

It’s almost Halloween at our neighborhood Safeway:

Veteran Hostess consumers will recognize “Glo Balls” as cleverly transmuted Halloween versions of “Sno Balls,” which, if you aren’t familiar with them, consist of cream filling inside chocolate cake which has been covered with marshmallow and coconut. Like many Hostess desserts, they look mighty fine if you’re running on an empty stomach and jonesing for some quick energy. Like all Hostess desserts, they are not mighty fine. Matter of fact, I happen to think Sno Balls are the absolute worst Hostess has to offer. They’re maybe 20% cake; you bite in expecting some marshmallow-topped chocolatey goodness, but all you get is a foamy mouthful of sugar.

I think most people know enough to stay away from Sno Balls, which is why they don’t come in a box and don’t have a mascot. Like Suzy Qs and Choc-O-Diles, they exist on the fringes of the Hostess universe, and are mostly found on dusty racks in interstate gas stations. They were probably discontinued fifteen years ago and just take so long to go bad that Hostess is still burning through warehouses full of product.

But oh ho, what have we here? Glo Balls. My wife and I had a debate in the store over whether or not they would actually glow. Neither of us thought they really would, but for different reasons. She pointed out that the box says “Glo” and not “Glow,” while I tend to think it has to be illegal to sell glowing food.

But I had to know for sure. I mean, hey, these things come with S’Cream Filling!

Regular Sno Balls are white (duh) or pink. I keep hoping they’ll come out with yellow ones, because that would be really fucking funny, and maybe they could talk Frank Zappa’s family into letting Hostess use “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” for a super-hip ad campaign. Anyway, Glo Balls are fluorescent orange. Witness the Glo Ball in all its foul glory:

In the picture, it appears to be glowing, but isn’t really. That’s just some righteous photography by yours truly. I held the Glo Ball up to a light source for a minute or two and hit the lights. Voila!

I’m somewhat saddened (but mostly quite relieved) to report that Glo Balls do not, in fact, actually glow. This does not make them safe to eat, however, something to which I can personally attest.

They don’t call it S’Cream Filling for nothing. Oof.

Back in February, I mentioned driving past Crazy Buffet, a new restaurant in Sunnyvale. I didn’t have any intention of eating there, really; I just thought it was a funny name for a restaurant. But people have been coming to the blog on a weekly basis since then through searches for “crazy buffet” or “crazy buffet sunnyvale,” so I decided I needed to pay the place a visit.¹

Ordinarily, I have no use for restaurants with “Crazy” anywhere in their name, so I was a little leery, and I made my brothers go with me. Also, I hate the buffet. Here’s how I feel the transaction should progress whenever I’m dining out:

1. I give you my money.
2. You bring me my food.

The buffet is all wrong. I hand over my money and then I have to go get my own food? It’s insanely popular in America, and I think this is mainly because the buffet tends to be an all-you-can-eat proposition, but when what you’re eating has been sitting out underneath a sneeze guard for an indeterminate length of time, I tend to believe that the less you eat, the better.

Anyway.

This particular buffet has a sort of weird pan-Asian menu, with middle America’s most popular desserts thrown in for good measure; I suppose this is where the “crazy” comes in, but in the Bay Area, it really isn’t all that out of the ordinary to see sushi and Jell-O sharing space. I will admit that we did share a long laugh when we saw apple pie next to the steamed mussels, but that was about as wild and wacky as it got. The place was crazy packed full of people, even at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon — we were lucky to find a parking spot.

So what did we eat?

Crazy General Tso’s Chicken!

Crazy Mystery Fish and Bacon!

Crazy Seafood Soup!

Crazy Sushi Rolls!

It all tasted disappointingly sane, I have to say. I mean, it isn’t crazy good, certainly, but I think that’s to be expected with the sitting out and the sneeze guard and all. But it isn’t that bad, either, especially considering it only costs $8 a plate for the lunch menu. I think we were all happiest with the rubbery steamed appleish rolls. In retrospect, we could have gone there for dessert, loaded up on those, and gotten our money’s worth. All in all, it’ll do in a pinch if you’re absolutely starving for spicy tuna rolls and soft-serve ice cream. I guess.

In celebration of my lunch at Crazy Buffet, here’s a handful of Crazy MP3s! Have a great Friday afternoon and a helluva weekend, everybody!

Bill Frisell - Crazy (live)
Georgia Satellites - Crazy
Dwight Yoakam - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Bruce Willis - Crazy Mixed-Up World

¹And now that I’ve included both of those phrases in this post, in quotes, even more of ‘em will come! Web magic go!

So I’m pouring The Boy’s cereal this morning, and I notice something a little different about this week’s box of Trix:

It seems our old friend the Rabbit has decided it’s finally time to abscond to South America, Nazi-style, with his ill-gotten booty. Fun in the sun! Brazilian chicks! And — best of all — South American kids are too busy earning their next meal by selling chiclé to tourists to worry about an idiotic talking rabbit and his box of gums-bleedingly crunchy cereal!¹

We’ve talked about cereal marketed to Spanish-speaking kids before. I believe we’re looking at the beginning of a trend here. And it isn’t bad, necessarily; I just wish these companies could figure out a way to do it without pandering. I think that the target audience for this stuff has got to be hip enough to be completely unimpressed with a game of ¡Encuentre el Trix!

(Which means: FIND THE TRIX!)

Of course, to find the Trix, you need to take a tour of South America, and all the wonderful things it has to offer:

The colorful chameleon calls the jungle rainforests of Costa Rica home. Here one is perched on a leafy maze. Draw a line from start to finish throughout the maze, and behold, thousands of colorful chameleons have been bulldozed by greedy capitalist land-raping developers! ¡Encuentre los indigenous peoples!

Some of the world’s greatest coffee is produced in the central highlands of Guatemala. Can you guess the name of the drug hidden in these bags? Did you know that you can’t spell “cocaine” without using the letters C, I, and A? ¡Es muy bueno!

Did you know that in Brazil, soccer is called fútbol? Add up the total goals in this game, then multiply your answer by the total number of fatalities from the riot in the parking lot, divide by two, and you’ve got the number of people in Los Estados Unidos who give a flying fuck about soccer! Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!

Considered one of the great marvels of the world, the Panama Canal links the Caribbean with the Pacific Ocean. Can you name the country whose government Señor Teddy Roosevelt intentionally destabilized in order to complete construction? ¡Viva J.P. Morgan!

Now suppose you just can’t get enough of that South American flavor. What do you do? You can’t very well go around eating Trix all day. Not to worry — the fine people at Sunshine Foods have just the thing for you:

They’re shaped like triangles, because the triangle is the official shape of Mexico. ¡Viva Fiesta Cheesy Taco!

This comes as no surprise; Cheez-Its have come in all sorts of new flavors recently. Most of them look pretty awful — I’m pretty sure there’s something like a “Cheddar BBQ” variety out there, and “Garlic & Sour Cream” Cheez-Its sound like poison — but I guess “Fiesta Cheesy Taco” Cheez-Its make a little bit of sense. There’s also a “Fiesta Cheddar Nacho” flavor, but I chose these because The Boy thinks he’s allergic to cheese, and I thought the “Taco” in the title would outweigh the “Cheesy.”

I was right. He ate one — more than one, actually; more like a handful. Then he declared “THESE TASTE TOO MUCH LIKE TACOS” and has refused to go anywhere near them since. It was a strange comment, even from The Boy; he loves tacos. But now I understand what he meant. These things taste like tacos, all right — just like tacos. From a poorly-ventilated taco truck. I think you know the taste I mean — a little meat, a little cheese, a little tortilla, and a lot of sweat. It’s somehow tolerable when you’re eating an actual taco (under the right circumstances, it can even be downright delicious). In cracker form, however, it tastes like nothing so much as sweaty cheese. The “sweaty” part is all on the back end of the taste, too, so you munch for a few seconds thinking “This isn’t so bad,” and then you gag a little.

And yet somehow it looks like half the box is gone. I think eating all this shit must finally be catching up to my taste buds.

¹Seriously, what’s up with the Trix? They’re like fruit-flavored croutons. Me and my friends couldn’t make it through a bowl of these things without bleeding from our gums for the rest of the day, and that was back when they were round — now they’re actually shaped like fruit, all the better for poking bloody holes in the roof of your mouth. Let the damn rabbit have it already.

During their Biblical forty years of wandering in the desert, the Jews subsisted on a miracle food that fell from the heavens each night. Described as a grain tasting like “flour with honey,” it enabled them to survive in what should have been lethally inhospitable conditions. They called it manna. I prefer to think of it as the world’s first breakfast cereal.

Like many men I know, I have an inordinate preoccupation with cereal. I’ve had long, in-depth conversations with otherwise sane adult males about the relative merits of various breakfast products. Rarely does a trip to the grocery store occur without me dragging poor Leah to the cereal aisle in search of some new and exciting variation. And I’m far from alone in this.

Women don’t understand it. They approach cereal the same way they look at cars — function over form, practicality over flair. I believe they’ve always been this way; as little girls, they don’t get overly excited about Cap’n Crunch or the Trix Rabbit. Boys, on the other hand, go positively insane for any brightly colored box giving off the slightest whiff of sugar. We carry this intense love affair into our adult lives when, as slovenly bachelors, we realize that — aside from being totally awesome — cereal is delicious, portable, and convenient. Cooking for yourself sucks! Just pour a bowl of sugary goodness and you’re all set!

And, because we always ate the coolest cereals under the disapproving gaze of parents who couldn’t believe the crap we talked them into getting for us, it’s those very same cereals we return to as grown-ups. Now nobody can tell us what to do. We can eat an entire box of Crunch Berries and nobody can stop us. This is what adulthood is for.

There were lots of great cereals when I was a kid — any of the Cap’n Crunch varieties were cool, or Trix, or even Lucky Charms. Usually around Halloween, the grocery store would start stocking the Day-Glo trifecta: Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry. And then there were the fad brands, like C-3P0s or Smurf Berry Crunch. Most of them — as a final “fuck you” to parents desperately trying to steer their kids toward healthier fare — came with toys (or what at least looked like a toy on the box). One cereal, though, was always cooler than the rest; it didn’t even need to include a toy to get your attention. I’m talking, of course, about Cookie Crisp.

It’s the simplest, most ingeniously clever idea for a children’s food in the history of food itself. What do kids love more than anything? Cookies. So how do you make the perfect kids’ cereal? Why, you take cookies and put them in a bowl. End of story. Sure, they had the obligatory goofy mascot and cartoon commercials, but it didn’t matter. They could have just put “COOKIE CEREAL” in generic black type on a plain white box and it would have sold just as well.

I mean, really. Cookie cereal. I hope the guy who thought of it won some awards. And that he lives in a gigantic mansion. Made out of cookies.

Anyway, while other cereals have tinkered with their formula over the years in various efforts to boost sales, Cookie Crisp has resolutely remained the same (that brief “vanilla wafer” experiment doesn’t count). You don’t tinker with perfection, after all, and besides, what changes could you possibly make?

They found one:

I had my doubts about this. Sure, peanut butter cookies are good, but with a main ingredient that’s marginally healthy, they’re nowhere near as cool as chocolate chip. And what’s with this stupid new mascot?

His name is Chip, and he’s a wolf, I guess. The message here seems to be that wolves like peanut butter, or that burglars don’t; I’m not sure. Either way, he doesn’t know how to say “cookie”:

Actually, I just looked, and I guess Chip is now the mascot for Peanut Butter and regular Cookie Crisp. When did this happen? Why? Did Chip eat the burglar?

Anyway.

I poured myself a bowl:

Looks good, huh?

It is. I shouldn’t have worried. I should have known the good people at Cookie Crisp wouldn’t let me down. It’s like a bowl full of little peanut butter cookies — crispy but not too crispy — and though nothing could be as good as the original, this comes fairly close. I had two bowls.

This is it, my friends — the end of Week Boy-Ar-Dee:

It’s been a bumpy road, to be sure, but an educational one nonetheless. We’ve learned, for instance, that it’s possible to can the taste of soggy nachos, or to take the worst parts of the flavor of pepperoni pizza and inject them into ravioli. Most importantly, I’ve learned never to eat anything made by Chef Boyardee again.

But first, the Cheesy Burger Ravioli.

The Boy was all hopped up for this one. He and his mom were gone this morning, and as soon as they came back, he was asking me when we’d be having lunch:

“DID YOU MAKE THE CHEF BOY-AR-DEE YET? WHICH ONE ARE WE HAVING TODAY? I WONDER WHAT IT WILL TASTE LIKE!”

Initial appearances were encouraging: It looked like ravioli because, I mean, it’s ravioli. There were no awful smells, no strange floaters, nothing to cause undue concern regarding malignant after-effects. And you know what? It actually smells pretty good when you cook it.

Doesn’t taste bad either. This is due mainly to the fact that it doesn’t taste anything like a cheesy burger — flavor-wise, it’s pretty much just meat ravioli — but I’m not complaining. I’d been worried that this would be the worst of the bunch, so its relative edibility (is that a word?) was a really nice surprise.

Unfortunately, The Boy didn’t agree with me. He took one bite and cocked his head a little, like he couldn’t quite decide what he was tasting; then, after swallowing, he (somewhat bravely, I thought) speared another ravioli and put it in his mouth. After chewing a few times, he decided he’d tasted enough: His cheeks bulged out, his face turned red, and he started making a bunch of loud noises.

“You like it,” I said. He shook his head wildly. “Yep,” I said. “It’s the best one.”

So he went to the chalkboard we have hanging on the kitchen wall and wrote:

In case it isn’t legible, it reads “THIS IS THE WORST.”

Kind of a sour note for Week Boy-Ar-Dee to go out on, I guess, but those are the breaks. What it basically comes down to is that if I’m ever held at gunpoint and forced to choose between these four lunch products, I’m going for the Cheesy Burger Ravioli. But gunpoint is pretty much what it’ll take.

Cheesy Burger Ravioli
The Boy: “THIS IS THE WORST.”
jefito: “Hey! Tastes like ravioli!”
overall score: 3 out of 5

So. We meet again, my fat, toque-headed nemesis:

I won’t lie to you — yesterday’s Boyarxperiment hurt me, and hurt me bad. Judging from the way my hands were trembling as I opened today’s Can O’ Foul, my body is quickly developing a physical aversion to the Chef’s wares.

And today’s sounded pretty bad:

You won’t believe this, but I’m normally fairly picky about my meat. The missus and I generally shop for the blue-ribbon, grass-fed, free-range stuff. I’ve read Fast Food Nation and seen Super Size Me — pretty much the only reason I buy meat at all anymore is that I like the way it tastes enough to not think about the way it was probably made while I’m eating it. If I wasn’t such a pussy, I’d raise and butcher my own livestock.

Anyway, so:yeah. Picky. There are a lot of restaurants where I’d never even think of ordering a meat dish. Denny’s? Carrow’s? Oh God — Lyon’s? No thanks, I’ll stick with the pancake breakfast.

I tell you this so you’ll understand the level of dread I experienced when thinking about a Chef Boyardee chili cheese dog. Even as a kid, I was smart enough to avoid the “hot dog” bits in Spaghetti-O’s, or to at least dump enough parmesan cheese on everything to cover up the shape and taste of what lay beneath. And here we have the Chef’s best version of a chili dog — in other words, those same old gross slivers of “hot dog,” along with minced-up bits of mealy “meatballs.”

I gasped a little when I opened the can:

Do you now, or have you ever, owned a dog? I have. In case you don’t, or haven’t, let me share some information with you: this shit looks like dog food. The Boy, of course, was all over it.

“IT SMELLS LIKE SPAGHETTI,” he said. “WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO TASTE LIKE?”

“A chili dog,” I told him.

“IT SMELLS LIKE CHILI! EEEAAAAUUGGGH!”

“Have you ever had chili?”

“NO!”

Didn’t stop the kid from trying it, though — in fact, he dug in before me. “UNCLE! HURRY UP AND TRY IT! WHAT DO YOU THINK IT TASTES LIKE?”

The verdict? Well, it’s:surprisingly okay. I mean, I can’t think about the ingredients without feeling sick, but I suppose that should be true of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (now with Limon!), and those are just too delicious to avoid. They basically taste like Spaghetti-O’s — which, now that I think about it, is probably the root of all these insane new Boyardee lunch products. All they have to work with is pasta, cheese, tomato sauce, and meat; modern kids are too hip for more than a couple days of that. Dress the same old crap up in bizarre new clothes, though, and you can compete with Lunchables!

Chili Cheese Dog Twistaroni
The Boy: “THAT TASTED GOOD. I LIKED IT.”
jefito: “The best one yet.”
overall score: 3 out of 5

Yes. Fucking Pepperoni Pizzazaroli:

You would think “Pepperoni Pizza Ravioli” would be good enough, or even “Pepperoni Pizzaroli,” but no. They had to add another Z in there, to make it a little more “extreme” or something. Say it with me: pizzazaroli. Up in heaven, the angels are keeping a list of the most retarded food names, and I’m pretty sure “pizzazaroli” is at or near the top.

Anyway, after yesterday’s twistaroni debacle, I scaled The Boy’s portion way back:

This stuff looks okay enough on the surface, I guess. Kind of like the old-fashioned Boyardee ravioli from my youth, but with a pepperoni odor. A not altogether pleasing pepperoni odor, I hasten to add, but The Boy didn’t seem to notice. “WHEN WILL IT BE DONE?” he asked. “I WONDER IF I’LL LIKE IT. DO YOU THINK I’LL LIKE IT? I’M GOING TO TRY SOME.”

And he did. In fact, not only did he eat the pizzazaroli I put in his bowl, but he asked for, and ate, seconds!

This is why six-year-olds are fascinating to me. Personally, I found it hard to finish my bowl. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly why, because Pepperoni Pizzazaroli tastes pretty much the way it’s named; it’s like they took whole slices of pepperoni pizza, pureed them, and stuffed them into pasta shells. You’d think eating something like that would be sort of cool, but no — it’s actually fairly awful. There’s a really foul undercurrent to the taste that I couldn’t quite identify while I was eating. While I was eating, I couldn’t figure it out, but after I’d been finished for a few minutes, I realized what it was: the aftertaste. Yeah, you read that right — the aftertaste on this stuff is so bad that it sneaks back around and hits you even before you’re done.

I’m actually shaking a little just thinking about it.

And here’s another thing. I’m not the kind of guy who normally tends to get heartburn, except for maybe after a heavy night of drinking, and even then it doesn’t show up until the next morning. But no sooner had I rinsed off my bowl than I could feel that fat fucking Chef tearing his way through my innards. Ooof.

Pepperoni Pizzazaroni
The Boy: “THIS TASTES LIKE MEAT AND CHEESE. EXCEPT I CAN’T TASTE THE CHEESE.”
jefito: “(nauseated burp)”
overall score: .5 out of 5