Category: Foodstuffs

Minneapolis 2023 – Big Bag o’ Candy

Earlier this year, I went on a little trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota with my family. You can read all about how poorly I ate during said trip here. As something of a follow-up to that post, now I’m going to write about all the candy I bought while I was there!

So, there’s this store called It’s Sugar in the Mall of America. I don’t really know much about it, aside from the fact that it’s a big ol’ candy store. I actually first encountered this establishment when I was in New Jersey last year. In the American Dream mall, It’s Sugar is a three-story-tall paradise with an Oreo-themed café on its top floor. MOA’s version isn’t quite as big, but it’s still basically the promised land for people like me who suffer from an insatiable sweet tooth.

The biggest appeal of this store are the bins upon bins of bulk candy available to mix and match at one’s discretion. Both of my trips to It’s Sugar ended with me buying a bag of assorted gummy candies that was roughly the size of my head. I won’t say exactly how much they cost, but it’s somewhere in the ballpark of fifty American dollars. So, yeah. Look, I’ve never once claimed to be good at money. These bags of candy lasted me weeks though, so the cost was justified enough for me.

Now that you have context, I am going to describe every different type of gummy candy that I selected for my big bag of candy. Because that’s interesting. Right?

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Le Burger Week 2023: First Course

You might think that September is my favorite month because it’s where my birthday lives. And you’d have been right up until a few years ago! Now, however, September is the best month because the first two weeks are Le Burger Week, when restaurants all across the country cook up special burgers that are only available during the event period. I wrote a thing about it last year.

Yes, it’s absolutely a thing that exists to stir up social media buzz one way or another, and because of that I should ignore it on principle. Counterpoint, though: burgers.

As usual, there are tons of options, and many of them are actually quite appealing. My first Le Burger Week burger of 2023 was ordered based on convenience alone; I looked up several restaurants on both Skip the Dished and DoorDash, but only one actually had their entry on the Skip menu on the first night of the event. So the glory goes to State & Main‘s How Do You Like Them Apples? burger.

“We are bringing on a taste of fall with this sweet & salty burger! Two beef chuck smash patties topped with warmed goat cheese, crispy fried onions, and peppered bacon sitting on a toasted brioche bun. Finished off with a creamy slaw and fresh cinnamon sugar apples like grandma used to make.“

I’ll tell you what I told my family when they asked what I thought about it: this burger might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

This burger already has a whole lot going on with just the “regular” ingredients that are present. Goat cheese, crispy onions, bacon, and coleslaw are all flavourful enough that they could have easily carried the burger without its namesake feature. But then you hit those apples. OH those cinnamon sugar apples.

I’m no stranger to combining meat with apples and cinnamon. Pork tenderloin with cinnamon applesauce is one of my all-time favourite things to eat. But on a burger? Could it possibly work? YES. Yes it can. The moment that the cinnamon flavour hit my tongue, I knew that there was nothing more that life could offer me. Nothing richer than the experience that I was having at that very moment. It would truly all be downhill from there. But I munched on through the existential crisis, making sure to savour every bite, every morsel, every greasy, sugary fingertip.

I’ve known many loves over the course of my few short years on this planet, but none so pure as the How Do You Like Them Apples? burger.

Am I being a little hyperbolic? Maybe. But the fact remains that I’m strongly tempted to go back and order another one of these (or more) instead of trying out other different Burger Week burgers. And that’s a first! So good job, State & Main. You’ve won. And I literally don’t need to even sample the competition to make that call. Nothing could possibly match the pure bliss that was your burger.

It’s just a shame that after September 14th, it will be lost to time forever.

Oatsnboats

I travelled south of the border for a day-long getaway last weekend. It’s noteworthy that this is my third trip to ‘Murica in less than a year, after having barely travelled outside of the city for the last decade. It’s kind of fun! (But also I always wind up spending too much…)

Anyway, today I’m going to talk about oatmeal.

Because I’m such an exciting person, you see.

But this is no ordinary oatmeal! No, sir! This is Cap’n Crunch Oops All Berries instant oatmeal! There was also a regular Cap’n Crunch oatmeal available for purchase but, I mean, crunchberries. When am I not going to pick crunchberries? Oh, sure, I could have simply bought both, but I try to limit the amount of excessively sugary things I put in my body as best I can. Aside from crunchberries, of course.

Also, I’m going to call this product OABmeal from now on because it’s easier to type and more fun to say.

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Minneapolis 2023 – Food Journal

A few weekends ago, my family and I went down to Minneapolis, Minnesota for a little bit of a get-away. There was actually a very specific reason why we went there, but I’ll get more into that in a later blog post (I indend to publish several relating to this trip!). What I want to talk about today is the depths of gluttony that I (re)discovered during this journey.

I often joke about how poor my diet is, and I like to think that my exaggeration is usually fairly obvious. That said, I knew that this trip would be one long junk-food-fest and did my best to eat little and well for the few days leading up to it. My family, though I love them dearly, are absolutely enablers when it comes to eating terribly, and I am a boy of very little willpower. Let the record state that I have no-one but myself to blame!

So, yeah, I don’t own a scale, but I could tell by the way that my shirts didn’t fit quite right when I got home, that I definitely over-indulged during my trip. Here’s the summary of all the terrible meal choices I made!

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I Bought Brownies from Little Caesar’s

If this was a YouTube video, that title would include a “so you don’t have to” at the end. But this isn’t a YouTube video, because I’m old and I prefer to do my reviews the old way: with letters. Thank goodness I’m not really old and I’m not trying to do anything in print.

While I do tend to order food more often than I should, I can gladly say that I almost never order pizza any more. No, I make my own pizzas these days! Which is a very overdue blog post all its own. However! Having been sick with the ‘Rona for nearly two weeks, I have been lacking the energy to do a lot of regular things. Number one on the chopping block: preparing meals. So one day I ordered a pizza from Little Caesar’s.

The Little C will never be my first choice for pizza, but sometimes it’s just the right combination of cheap and crappy and it hits the spot like nothing else can. And sometimes they have cookie dough brownies with mini M&Ms baked in. That’s entirely why I got the pizza. I just wanted the brownies.

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