Who's Hungry?

Well crap.
Crap, crap, crap.
I wish I could give you all some really amazing excuse for my absence from these pages.
It would be awesome if I could say that I was sold into white slavery in Chinatown, or that I was hit over the head and woke up in Guantanamo.
Plus that would make for some really juicy blog material.
But the truth is that I have no such yarn to weave friends. I've just been lazy about sharing my fantastic adventures with the free world and for that I do apologize. I will make a concerted effort to rant here more often.
I went on an amazing retreat over my birthday in June, and after that I sort of felt the need to keep on retreating. I spent time with friends, hung out with my dog, and with myself, and just did a lot of letting go and a lot of just "being". It's harder to do than it sounds, trust me. But I guess it was time away that I needed because these days I feel really beautiful and truly, truly blessed.
And now on to fun the business at hand for today!
I thought that as a welcome back exercise I would do a little examination of some of the products for sale out there on the grocery store shelves that Americans are consuming as "food". Please take notice of the quotes around that last word. They are essential for your understanding of what I am about to present to you.
When I go home to my parents house in New Jersey they shop at a store called Wegman's. It's a MAMMOTH supermarket chain that contains everything that you could ever want to eat, and everything that you should never eat if you ever intend to collect on your 401 K.
Look I am no dietary saint. I could stand to lose say half an eight year old's body weight give or take, and lord knows that I have given into the lure of the Entenmann's more than once in my lifetime (see sidebar). However I do make a conscious effort to consume whole foods on a daily basis. Basically if a packaged food contains any ingredients that I can't spell, pronounce, or pick out of a lineup, then I am not eating it.
However I am continually fascinated at what your average American will eat when the dinner bell sounds. I'm not even going to get into the fast food industry here. Any person who would intentionally consume something like say the Hardee's "Monster Biscuit" which contains three strips of bacon, four slices of ham, a sausage patty, and...wait for it...51 grams of fat, clearly has no interest in seeing their children graduate from grade school. So today I just want to look at a couple of items that really stuck out for me on my list visit to your average suburban grocery store.
Let the fun begin!

Let's talk breakfast!
-Who wants eggs?
-Oh yum! I love eggs thanks.
-Great! How about some bacon?
-Well sure why not?
-Some cheese on that maybe?
-Well, I really shouldn't but what the heck!
-Terrific! Let me just get out the toaster.
-Oh toast too, wow thanks. I'll have whole wheat.
-No, no, I need the toaster to cook the eggs and the bacon.
-Wait...what?
-I need to toast the eggs, the bacon, and the cheese.
-Wait...what? Hold on a second I'm confused.

As well you should be!
The Pillsbury dough boy has once again made all of our breakfast dreams come true by placing eggs, bacon and cheese in one handy pastry wrapped package!
I don't know about you but I am so tired of eating all of my foods separately on a plate, and with utensils. Who has time for that nonsense? I am a busy woman, and I want my food combined into one congealed paste and forever entombed in a pocket of dough.
I want to be able to hold my breakfast in one hand, drive my car with the other, and scream at my ungrateful children all at the same time, and now thanks to that charming little dough boy I truly can have the American dream.
My favorite part of this particular package incidentally is in the upper right hand corner where it boasts "Made with REAL eggs and bacon!" No doubt about it folks! Those are real chicken embryos flecked with genuine slaughterhouse scrapings. Yum! Can't you just taste the freedom our forefathers fought for?

Keeping in line with our breakfast theme allow me to introduce you to these delectable nibbles. Smucker's Uncrustables and Kraft's newest taste sensation Bagel-fuls. My first thought here is that our children are barely literate as it is. Uncrustables and Bagel-fuls are not words. These are pieces of words that have been forced together shotgun wedding style by ad executives on a lot of cocaine. Can we please all put a halt to this madness now before I have to go to my gynecologist and request a "Papa-Smearo." I'm sorry but it's fucking stupid.

Now let's talk bagels shall we? I am a New Yorker and therefore a lover of all things bagel. So I know all to well the absolute drudgery of having to slice open a bagel, toast it and THEN smear it with cream cheese all by my lonesome, miserable self. Frankly this is the 21st century, and it's just bullshit people. Where are we Russia? I want my bagel in tube form, and I want it pre-pumped full of delicious dairy goodness! The good news is that these also come in the cinnamon and chive variety. If anyone has eaten one of these and lived please let me know.

As for the Uncrustables I believe we have been over this already. If I have to de-crust my own PB&J then the terrorists have already won.




Now that we are done raping the toaster I have a quick question for you. Who out there hates their kids? Want to give them a jump start on adult-onset diabetes?
Or maybe you are just sick of shopping for kids clothes, and you figure it would be easier if you could all just wear Lane Bryant sizes.
Well man have I got the stuff for you!
Check out that appealing package! It just screams nutrition doesn't it?
I am old enough to remember when Lunchables (again, not a word) first came on the market. It took much begging and pleading for my mother to buy me a package of these bad boys, and this was before they had such appealing varieties as "Pizza" or Jesus help us "Nachos".
There was no Capri-Sun that came with, no Starburst included for "dessert", just an incredibly sad stack of meat and cheese by-product covered by a thin veneer of hopelessness. Now if I had been able to partake of something as enticing as say, "Pepperoni Flavored Sausage" I am certain that my lunchtime could have been a far less morose occurrence.
Seriously, if you intentionally feed your child this product you should either be sent to jail, or be force fed a vintage Lunchables from 1986. I think my parents may still have one in the back of their fridge.

And on a final note, could someone please tell me where the "Cool Cotton Candy" trees grow? That's not a folk song, I'm really asking the question. You see way back in the 1980's when I was a tot yogurt came in flavors such as strawberry, blueberry, lemon...you know, actual fruit like items. But this alas I suppose is GoGurt (again, not an actual word assholes) and it is a far, far cry from my beloved yogurt of yore.
First off it comes in a tube!
What great fun!
When I was a child if you attempted to squeeze your yogurt container straight into your mouth they made you spend your afternoons in the green rug room with the boy who ate hair, and the girl who started fires. But today we are encouraging such short-bus like behavior by actually marketing products which encourage a complete lack of social graces in our children. Look I'm not expecting everyone to behave like they just came out of Miss Porter's here gang, but the kids who suck down this garbage make the boy who ate hair look like a goddamn Rhodes Scholar.

Well that's all for this visit. I hope you have enjoyed this little journey down the supermarket aisle with me. Please, at your next meal take some time to remember those who have no GoGurt, those who will never know the joy of a Bagel-ful, and those who God willing will never, ever have to endure a meal time consisting of something called a Lunchable. Until next time y'all. Happy eating!