As children, some foods truly disgusted us. But the same ones—Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and spinach all come to mind—we now dream of roasting, braising in butter, and creaming with ricotta. As adults, there are still plenty of foods we can look back on and agree—they are better left for the kids.
Joe Posnanski lists what he calls "Pixifoods," or "any food substance that is highly pleasant to the taste as a child and tastes shockingly unpleasant once you become an adult."
Some examples he includes: cotton candy ("cotton root canals"), Fig Newtons ("fruit chunks wrapped in death"), and Spaghetti-O's ("plastic and ketchup"). While many of the descriptions send shivers down my spine—Beanie Weenies are a no-brainer—I still snack on and enjoy Marshmallow Fluff and Pop Tarts from time to time. So, serious eaters, what childhood foods disturb your taste buds as an adult? [via Metafilter]
A Men's Health article that was republished on the Huffington Post makes all us weight-watchers feel less deprived by listing six junk foods that are actually OK to eat and drink. The list is amusing and even in some cases informative. I mean, pork rinds? Really? If pork rinds are on the list, shouldn't bacon, country ham, and prosciutto make the list?
A study by the Journal of Consumer Research reported on in the New York Times actually suggests what my wife has been saying to me for months now: Smaller packages of snack foods actually cause serious eaters to eat more rather than less.
The study suggests smaller packages can lead consumers to eat more, by blunting their wariness about how much they consume. In one experiment, students were primed to think about their body shape, then were given potato chips and left to watch television. They ate nearly twice as many chips when given nine small bags as when given two large ones. They also hesitated less before opening the small bags.
Recently my wife told me not to buy any 100-calorie snack packs, that having them around the house actually caused me to eat more snacks than not. I of course ignored her advice and bought a ten pack of 100-calorie bags Snyder's of Hanover pretzel snaps.
So this week I quit eating 100-calorie snack packs cold turkey. I left the pretzel snaps on Cape Cod. I didn't even bring the bag or two I normally do for the five-hour trip home.
Life Savers Fruit Splosions, Double Creme Betweens, and Spitz sunflower seeds from paulandstorm.
Doesn't a creme-filled chocolate cookie sandwich just put you in the mood? Eh, never did before, but now that Flickr user paulandstorm mentions it, maybe the Double Creme Betweens wrapper should include a "Parental Advisory" sticker.
Shoot, no wonder kids these days are growing up so fast. Think of all the other double entendres in the snack aisle: Skor, Lays, Corn Nuts, Poppycock.
Good morning, serious eaters. To start the day, I submit to you these bacon, egg, and cheese Combos. I have to say, I can't think of a better breakfast combo than bacon, egg, and cheese, but I'm groggily freaking out about these things. They're at once compelling and repulsive. I can't help but wonder if Ed Levine would consider replacing the baked potato chips in his ideal diet breakfast with these. Probably not. But that gets me thinking about weird breakfasts. The most unconventional breakfast I've done in recent memory has been cold pizza—though that's not really too far out there. Maybe the cold-pizza omelet I made on the advice of a friend? What's the weirdest or most embarrassing thing you've ever eaten for breakfast? 'Fess up!
Little kids like Legos, and putting things in their mouths. How convenient that Kellogg's Lego fruit snacks exist to confuse toddlers that bite-sized toys sometimes come in squishy, gummy bear-like textures that really can be digested. Is this the start of edible jacks and chess pieces? And a mommy uproar? [Via Penny Arcade]
After the jump, a cartoon where perplexed normal Legos attempt to make sense of these gelatinous cousins.
In honor of the invention the recently deceased Dr. Fredric J. Baur was most proud of, we submit a handful of Pringles commercials for your approval. From a 1973 spot that introduces the "newfangled" potato chip to a bewildered nation to a Weird Science meets Pretty In Pink meets Revenge of the Nerds commercial from the '80s. There's also the SoCal-styled Pringles ad that Brad Pitt makes an early appearance in. And, so, so sugoi, a Japanese Pringles commercial that introduces "Funky Soy Sauce" flavor chips. Grab a couple Pringles, make a duck mouth, and watch with us after the jump.
Oreos may be the wold's best-selling cookie, but it has yet to make much of a impression in biscuit-obsessed England. Nightline covers the Oreo invasion on British soil: what's the Oreo's strategy, how is it being received, and, most importantly, does it dunk well in tea? After the jump, watch the analysis of the Oreo takeover.
Dunk 'em while you can, folks. Hydrox are back—but for a limited time only.
Hydrox, the cookies that the Kellogg company drowned as a brand in 2003, will be hitting shelves once more,the Wall Street Journal reports, as the company bows "to more than 1,300 phone inquiries, an online petition with more than 1,000 signatures, and Internet chat sites lamenting the demise of the snack."
But don't get too happy, Hydrox hounds. First, the comeback may only be temporary. "Kellogg's move is more about marketing and showing its responsiveness to consumers," the Journal says, "than about a permanent product reintroduction: The cookie will be sold nationally starting in August, but only for a limited time." (If reception is positive, the company may go permanent with the comeback.) Second, the recipe may be different, a company spokesman said—no trans fats, for one.
With all the cultural exports the U.S. floods the world with, it's hard to imagine the iconic Oreo is only now making a splash in England. But, sources tell me, drinking a glass of milk, let alone dunking cookies in it, is an alien concept in Europe. I love the subhead on the Christian Science Monitor story on the phenomenon: "What fresh vulgarity have the Yanks brought now? Milk dunking!"
When you're dieting, real treats are important. How do I define a real treat? Something that makes your eyes grow big as plates when you peel or unwrap it. Something crazy good that doesn't break the bank calorie-wise (less than 200 calories) and that doesn't send you into a guilt-induced food coma. Something creamy, crunchy, and delicious (for me it's something that's also chocolaty). Something substantial enough to savor through a full half-inning of the new baseball season.
A sweet-and-spicy though not very juicy Golden Nugget Mandarin orange, my current favorite citrus fruit, is delicious, wonderful even, but it's not a treat. A perfectly ripe banana with lots of light brown speckles on its skin is a beautiful thing, but it's not a treat. A small bag of lower fat baked potato chips doesn't qualify as a treat either, because although they might be perfectly fine, they're not the real thing, and I know exactly what I'm missing in every pleasant but not great bite.
Until last week I had never found a treat that fit all my criteria, until a plain white box was delivered to our door at Serious Eats that was literally the answer to my prayers.
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 27, 2008 at 12:30 PM
Pretz is a popular Japanese snack in the form of a pretzel-like stick that mostly comes in savory flavors. Like many Japanese snack commercials, the advertising for Pretz is...unique. Sumo wrestlers, geishas, and dancing scientists are just some of the characters used to illustrate the awesomeness of this snack.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, February 25, 2008 at 9:30 AM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
Long before I was introduced to the snap, crackle, and pop of Rice Krispie treats, I was sinking my teeth into these Chinese soft flour cakes, or sachima. Made with flour, eggs, maltose, and lard (yes, lard—which, gram for gram, has “less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol” than butter, so I’ve never understood why people get so antsy about it), these are chewy, sticky-sweet, and have that fun, universally adored “mozzarella stretch effect," trailing gossamer strands of golden malt syrup between bites.
No, you do not want to eat these with braces or a newly installed crown.
My wife, who has never struggled with her weight, called me out yesterday about the proliferation of 100-calorie snack packages she has noticed around our apartment. I of course got defensive and told her I had the whole thing under control. Furthermore, I was doing research for an upcoming series of posts on the best 100-calorie snacks (both sweet and savory). In other words, my longtime defense and justification for overeating was rearing its ugly (and fat) head again: "I'm just doing my work, dear."
Then yesterday evening, after I had consumed my third 100-calorie snack pack of the day, it hit me like a ton of Cheez-Its. Maybe she's right.
When I was little, there was a girl in my class at school who, at lunch, would lick the ketchup off her French fries and then re-dip them. I've never forgotten it, mainly because it was so gross, but also because I sort of understood where she was coming from. Ketchup is delicious. I can't enjoy a burger without it. Or, for that matter, scrambled eggs at brunch, a ballpark hot dog, or a greasy diner grilled cheese.
With Super Bowl Sunday right around the corner, I've been thinking a lot lately about snack foods. And one of my all-time favorites is definitely ketchup chips. Not only are they completely addictive—salty, tangy, and a tiny bit sweet—they're also a shocking shade of paprika red. Way more sophisticated than nacho cheese orange, ketchup chips are the perfect addition to any sports-related smorgasbord.
Perhaps the best use of two dollars, Meiji's Kinoko No Yama ("mountain mushrooms"), are found at even the most average Japanese market. The chocolate cap and biscuit-like cracker stem harmonize wonderfully. And the chocolate-to-cracker ratio is spot on. While the milk chocolate isn't great quality, similar to Glico's Pocky, there's something about the chocolate's density that offsets the cracker stem perfectly.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 14, 2008 at 3:00 PM
In Singapore, watermelon seed consumption is a predominantly Chinese affair. At wedding ceremonies the seeds are fertility symbols for the couple (representative of their family’s eager wishes), and at traditional Taoist three-day funerals the seeds are everywhere you look. Strangely enough, despite the Chinese love for symbolism there does not seem to be a significance for the watermelon seeds’ ubiquity at funerals.
In the past week, I’ve asked all the matriarchs I know as to whether a deeper meaning lies behind it, and I’ve come to a (half-baked) conclusion. But first, a little preamble (bear with me): The Chinese believe that the deceased’s body needs to be watched over at all times—lest a pregnant cat jumps over the coffin, prompting the corpse to sit up. Now, I don’t know how true this is, only that it’s a very good thing Chinese families tend to be large and extended…so relatives can take turns to "chor ye"—the filial duty of staying up to shoo cats away. Everyone knows staying up requires munchies, and what better to munch on when struggling to stay awake than something as tedious and time consuming as watermelon seeds?
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 7, 2008 at 8:00 PM
Editor's note: Our Grocery Ninja, Wan Yan Ling, is currently visiting Singapore, from where she's filing additional Snapshots from Asia.
The concept of "chestnuts roasting over an open fire" is an alien one to Asians, and the notion of buying chestnuts raw and roasting them yourself even stranger—why would anyone choose to go through all that hassle when the streets are lined year-round with hawkers frying them right before you?
When I lived in Australia, I was horrified by the price of hot griddled chestnuts sold on the streets, and no wonder they were exorbitant: Each individual chestnut would be meticulously turned and cosseted as it cooked, and it would take (to my impatient mind) till the cows came home for the vendor to roast up a goodly sized paper bag full of them.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, October 15, 2007 at 5:00 PM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
So I've been peeking into other grad students' offices and using this column as a way to not look like the resident moocher. (You know, the guy who wanders around the office cadging a fistful of chips here, a cookie there, and when you ask him why he doesn't keep food in his own cubby, his response is always to pat his tummy and say: "Oh, I couldn't... I'd polish it off in seconds!" before reaching around you for an extra caramel.)
Anyway, a new discovery I've made: The leverage you get when you've got a professional-looking SLR on your arm is considerable. It's like, "Oh, look at your spiffy camera! I see you are on a quest to further the bounds of human knowledge. Here, try this x-y-z I traded a monk my GPS in Timbuktu for, carted back via camel, and smuggled through customs!"
Anyway. The one thing grad students, especially international grad students, can always be counted on is to have food in their office. And it doesn't matter how busy they look, they're always happy to talk about food from home.
Thanks to my wife, I discovered Roots and Grubs a few weeks ago. It's Matthew Amster-Burton's blog about his food life with his wife and young daughter. I really liked Matthew's take on cooking and eating with children and asked him if he'd blog on Serious Eats here and there. So every other week, on Mondays, we'll bring you a bit of advice from him. Here's his first entry. Enjoy! —Ed Levine
By Matthew Amster-Burton | The Man has crushed some of my family's favorite convenience foods under his twin jackboots of recall and import ban!
When the FDA announced a recall of salmonella-tainted Veggie Booty snack food in late June, I was concerned for the safety of its young consumers, but I was also smug. OK, I had a bag of the stuff on top of the fridge, but we're past the stage where my three-year-old, Iris, would request Booty and a cup of warm milk every afternoon for a snack. And adults don't eat that sort of thing. Maybe seven or 12 pieces here and there while preparing Iris's snack. That's it.
Then, the same day, the U.S. banned
imports of one of my favorite convenience foods: eel from China. (The ban also covers catfish, shrimp, basa, and dace. Sorry about that, all you basa and dace fans.) A package of barbecued eel in the freezer and a bag of rice on the shelf meant lunch was minutes away: Cook some medium-grain rice in the rice cooker, and when the rice is almost done, toss a frozen barbecued eel fillet on top and let it steam until the eel is hot.
The same meal will set you back maybe $12 in a Japanese restaurant; at home it's a couple bucks. If you have a little more time, you can buy unagi no shiroyaki, eel without sauce, and make your own sauce with soy sauce, sugar, and mirin.
Well, you could at least, before traces of nitrofuran, malachite green, gentian violet, and fluoroquinolones were found in the now-banned Chinese seafood.
So now our house is a Booty- and eel-free zone. To the global food industry: Please clean up your act. Nobody wants to see a frozen potsticker recall. That's one staple dad and daughter can agree on.
Is there a Veggie Booty or eel addict in your house? How are you dealing?
About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. His favorite food is pad Thai.
According to the New York Times, it's the Kettle brand lightly salted variety. I believe the attorney general's office should look into the Times rankings (just kidding). My only question: How could they leave out Cape Cod Dark Russets? For me, that dark brown crunchy beauty is so baked potato-y, so crisp, and just greasy enough that it should be enshrined in the National Potato Chip Hall of Fame, which unfortunately doesn't exist—as of yet.
Celebrating the Fourth in proper fashion, the New York Times dining section is all over one of life's perfect foods, the potato chip. Kim Severson's lead story is chock-full of resonant chip history, lore, and fun facts. Appropriately, she leaves the chip science to Harold McGee, who fills us in on the sonic appeal of the chip, or as McGee calls them, the "sounds of crispness." Serious Eater Jonathan Bender weighed in on some of the newer "designer" chip flavors here on this site almost three months ago.
Snack pimping: the act of constructing a grossly giant version of a snack, usually a member of the chocolate, candy or pastry family, although savory specimens have also been known to be pimped. The snack pimping movement started in the UK and is best documented at Pimp That Snack.
When I need something to brighten my day, one of my solutions is to head over to Pimp That Snack and see what new developments have occurred in the snack pimping world. What ghastly bomb of sugar and fat has someone come up with now? What cross section of a monsterously huge chocolate bar monster will I stare into next? Perhaps I should be disgusted that the world's abundance of chocolate bars and wafers can result in the birth of a bowling ball-sized Ferrero Rocher that no one should eat, but not only am I not disgusted, I'd happily take a baby chunk out of the Rocher-zilla for personal consumption.
After watching Giles Coren make a giant Jaffa Cake on Gordon Ramsey's The F-Word, I felt somewhat inspired to pimp a snack. Only somewhat because Giles had to find an industrial-sized oven to fit his giant pan and his Jaffa Cake didn't actually end up being palatable. Besides that, it looked great.
Maybe I will start off with a simple pimp. A giant Pocky stick probably wouldn't be that difficult. What snack would you pimp?
The Philadelphia City Paper's Margaret Battistelli lists five delicious Amish treats and where best to get them in the area. My tastebuds are all a-flutter at her description of the Stoltzfus Bakery's wet-bottom shoofly pie, "like two desserts in one — a buttery coffee cake laid over a thick, sweet sludge made of brown sugar, butter and molasses. It's better than the cakier dry-bottom version, and sweet enough to make your teeth ache on contact."
Taiwan is not a country that generally comes to mind when the food-obsessed think of where to vacation, but everyone I know who's ever been has come back completely gobsmacked by everything they've eaten there, vowing to return and in some cases already planning their second trip back. Mei is lucky enough to live in Taiwan, and she put together her own local snacking guide, Top Ten Taiwanese Tucks.
Everything she describes sounds delicious, from the stuffed pastries to the knife-sliced noodles, but the listing that intrigues me most is her favorite shaved-ice place: "Xin Fa Ting in the Shilin Night Market. Winter or summer, come rain or shine, this place is always packed. What makes the ice here so special is that the store actually makes the ice out of condensed milk."
It's been open for more than 30 years, so it must be doing something right.
I am currently in Barcelona eating as much ham as I can before leaving on Sunday. In between porcine bites, I sometimes venture into places like supermarkets just to see what a supermarket in Barcelona looks and feels like.
Last evening, marching down the snack aisle, I came across two kinds of Lay's potato chip bags with a drawing of what looks like a chef. I pick the bag up and discover it is none other than Ferran Adriá of El Bulli fame, the man often described as the greatest chef in the world and the man who moved foam from the shaving kit to the dinner plate.
I opened the bag half expecting foam to be coating the chips. Alas, they were just regular old chips, not half as good as say Cape Cod Dark Russets or even regular Cape Cod chips. These chips are the emperor's new chips.
Even the molecular gastronomers among us have a price they're willing to sell their name and likeness for.
With artisan potato chips showing the same detailed preparation and ingredient experimentation as micro-brews and independent wineries, it was only natural that Serious Eats would hold a tasting. While eating 11 varieties of chips is not something we’d recommend (two of our five tasters bowed out after the ninth round), the chance to examine what makes a potato chip great is worth the sodium intake.
The chips were graded on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the most desirable) in nine categories that encompassed taste, texture, and smell. The five types of Kettle Chips were part of the third-annual People’s Choice Passport to Flavor campaign (all limited-edition releases). Island Jerk was selected by the public in 2007 as a permanent addition to the Kettle line-up. The other six flavors were from Anchor O’Reilly’s Chip of the Month Club, which ships its customers six bags monthly from three or four independent chip producers.
The chips are reviewed in the order they were tasted. Water and Diet Coke were applied liberally between rounds.
Nosheteria says snacking, thy name is decadence: "When the bacon is sizzling hot, and crisp to your heart's content, remove the bacon from the pan, and add popcorn kernels to the grease. Cover the pot, you wouldn't want your popcorn to bounce everywhere. Appalling though it might seem, this is really no different than adding oil to pan of popcorn kernels. It's just in this case the oil tastes like bacon!"
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 16, 2007 at 3:36 PM
Hilarious piece on a potato-chip connoisseur, from The Onion: "On my birthday last year, I opened a delightful three-year-old bag of Doritos that I'd been saving, which had a ranch essence—but with cooler undertones," Sterken said. "I'll say it again, 2003 was a great year for Doritos."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 9, 2007 at 10:46 AM
"Isn’t it wonderful to live in a country where drunken panda-seals lounge on peanut snack packages sniffing beer? Well, not all Japanese packaging is that weird, but see for yourself. Here is PingMag’s Best of Snack Characters. Enjoy!"
Okay, I finally went to my supermarket to check out the caloric content of the national cookie brands to compare them to the 5o calorie (and rather small) South Beach Diet Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. Sure enough a regular Chips Ahoy cookie has 53 1/3 calories, a s does a regular Oreo, and a Fig Newton has 55 calories. The only conclusion a sane man could come to: Eat two Oreos or Fig Newtons. Of course the problem is they don't make 100 calorie packages of regular Oreos or Fig Newtons. But doesn't this suggest a marketing opportunity for Nabisco?
In my never-ending quest for the perfect hundred calorie bag of happiness I have come across South Beach Diet Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. I have to say that they're not bad, not bad at all. Which to my way of thinking is the highest accolade I can give a whole grain cookie made without butter. These cookies have a nice crunch, aren't too sweet, and are pretty tasty. They come two cookies to a bag, so utilizing my formidable math skills I conclude that each cookie has fifty calories. That seems like a lot to me, so I'm heading to the grocery store to check out the caloric content of various popular cookies. My beloved Oreo crisps have the same caloric content, but they come 21 crisps to a bag. I guess what I'm saying is that since it takes longer to dip your hand into a bag and eat 21 crisps (I try to eat them one at a time) then it does to eat a measly two cookies, the satisfaction meter is higher with the Oreo crisps.
Still dieting, I am always on the lookout for hundred calorie packaged snacks. At my local Duane Reade I discovered 100 calorie bags of Spud Delites, made by glennys . They are potato-like baked potato crisps, and they are crunchy, crispy and just salty. Dee-lish. They satisfy carb cravings in a non-destructive way.
I can't believe I haven't talked to all of you about Oreo Thin Crisps. They are a dieter's best friend. They come is 4/5 oz. 100 calorie individual bags, and what you get is a bunch of Oreo crackers (they look like chocolate cheez-its) without the cream inside. Why do I love them? Let me count the ways. They're crispy, chocolaty and not too sweet. Unlike many Oreo lovers, I do not have a passion for the grainy, sugary filling inside regular Oreos. So I don't miss the cream filling at all. Because they come in these nifty 100 calorie bags, you are automatically practicing portion control when you eat them. There are perhaps 20 in each bag, so it take you awhile to get through a bag. Lastly, they have o grams of Trans Fat and no cholesterol. They satisfy my sweet tooth and my chocolate craving. I have tried the 100 calorie bag of South Beach Diet peanut butter cookies, but they only come two to a bag, and they taste too damn healthy. So I say this to the food scientist team at Kraft Foods that developed Oreo Thin Crisps. You have the undying gratitude of dieters everywhere, and I personally think you should receive a MacArthur Genius grant. Please note: I have no connection with anyone at Kraft Foods.
A study by the Journal of Consumer Research reported on in the New York Times actually 
Little kids like Legos, and putting things in their mouths. How convenient that 
With all the cultural exports the U.S. floods the world with, it's hard to imagine the iconic Oreo is only now 
When I was little, there was a girl in my class at school who, at lunch, would lick the ketchup off her French fries and then re-dip them. I've never forgotten it, mainly because it was so gross, but also because I sort of understood where she was coming from. Ketchup is delicious. I can't enjoy a burger without it. Or, for that matter, scrambled eggs at brunch, a ballpark hot dog, or a greasy diner grilled cheese.
When the FDA 
When I need something to brighten my day, one of my solutions is to head over to 
