Anger Burger

Alice over at bread & honey received her green tea Kit Kat in record time and apparently didn’t even wait to get off the porch before she assaulted her husband with a piece.  Which you know, is what I hoped would happen.

In my recent state of mental retarditude, I broke my sugar and palm oil rules (re: CUT IT OUT) and just ate whatever looked remotely interesting.  I’d like to say that it worked out great for me, but it didn’t.  My Crohn’s didn’t appreciate me clobbering it with a bunch of long-chain fats and complex sugars and my tastebuds were sad I wasn’t feeding them croissants.  Fair enough.

I like marshmallow creme products.  I really love Boyer Mallo Cups, which have a marshmallow interior that has a strange chewy quality I associate with cooled-off s’mores.  I also love Sifers’ Valomilks, which are notoriously difficult to find outside the Midwest.  I figured that the Hoffman Cup-O-Gold was a slam-dunk, and yet I didn’t like it.  It’s pretty easy to pinpoint: the chocolate cup is very thick and in parts almost too thick to bite through.  I didn’t realize until eating a Cup-O-Gold that I just consider the chocolate to be a carrier for marshmallow creme.  But don’t take my word as the end-all (not that you would anyway) — there are lots of die hard Cup-O-Gold fans out there.  I’m not one of them.

What about something I used to love and don’t any longer?  When I was a kid, Christopher’s Big Cherry was near the top of my candy list, but no longer ranks in even the top 20.  And for similar reasons: too much mediocre, over-sweetened milk chocolate.  To make it worse, the cherry fondant inside is about 1,000 times sweeter than I remember it being, it was like getting kicked in the face by a unicorn.

I had really high hopes for the Nestle Coffee Crisp.  I like crispy wafers!  I like coffee!  What could go wrong?  Strangely, too much of a good thing: this bar is deceptively massive and consists more of the coffee-flavored cream filling than wafer.  After just a couple of bites I was done and never felt the desire to revisit it.

Huh.  I wonder why my stomach aches.

So you see, my mom has cancer and late last month signed up for having her bowels stop working.  She doesn’t remember signing up for this, but I don’t remember signing up for having bad posture.  These things happen.

This is of course a really flip way to put something that was rather horrific, but we’re a family with a mutated sense of humor.  The end of the story is as happy as is possible in these situations: after eight days in the hospital, she’s back home and has her problem wrestled into some semblance of control, but not before she lost 25 pounds.  25 pounds!  In a week!  And she was already under weight when this started — needless to say, it’s imperative that we put some weight on her, like immediately.

Not surprisingly the hospital nutritionist fairly peed herself touting the importance of drinking Ensure or Boost, which are liquid nutritional supplements marketed toward people who are losing weight through illness or old age.  I’ve heard they taste awful, but I figured, they’re worth it, right?  If it gets calories in people, then choke it down.

And then I read the ingredients.

Water, sugar, corn syrup solids, milk protein concentrate, vegetable oil (canola, high oleic sunflower, corn oils) and less than 0.5% of soy lecithin, carrageenan, salt, natural and artificial flavor [and then a list of vitamins and minerals].

It is sugar, sugar, milk, vegetable oil, salt, and artificial flavors.  I would not feed this to my dog, let alone my mother.  Additionally, the strawberry flavor has artificial coloring, and the butter pecan flavor has sulfites.  If you’re asking yourself how this garbage became standard issue nutritional replacement for the ill and aged, you’re asking yourself the right question, because the answer is simply: money.  Politics.  It’s simple pap to hand to the sick and elderly, and in a way I suppose it’s acceptable, but still cripplingly sad.

Research online for a healthy alternative to these drinks came up with very little.  Most people suggested “simply” blending up a smoothie of banana, peanut butter, blag blah blah — people!  Stop!   I want to see you make a blender smoothie while having no red blood cells and a propensity for gagging.   My mom is not unusual in her need for something in a glass ready immediately that has as much protein and fat in it as is humanly possible.

God forbid any of you will need to make use of this, but I concocted the following four-ingredient beverage that not only tastes good, but has double the good fat and almost double the protein of Boost:

Starr’s Magic Fatmix
by coconut milk, I mean the thick fatty stuff, not coconut water, which is entirely different. also, not coconut cream, which is sweetened and made for making pina coladas with. if you’re using a nut milk instead of cow milk, read the labels to find whatever has the highest fat content, and also be advised that some cancer patients are told to avoid soy products because of estrogen content.

1 14oz. can of coconut milk
3 cups of milk (cow, soy, almond, as long as its full-fat)
7 heaping tablespoons of NutriBiotic Rice Protein powder
honey to taste

• This admittedly mixes better when blended by an appliance (either an immersion blender or a standard pitcher-blender), but it makes a week’s worth.  It is also improved by sitting overnight.

• Decant into a clean old juice bottle or milk jug so that you can shake it before pouring each time.

That’s it.  6 ounces of this (versus Boost’s 8oz) is a hit of protein equivalent to three eggs, and a good chunk of your daily fat, without all the processed sugar, artificial flavors, colors, questionable grain oils and gnarly texture.  Coconut fats are short- and medium-chained, which means they are digested much higher in the tract and made available to the body as energy immediately instead of being stored.  Sorry for the jibber-jabber, what I mean to say is: GOOD FAT.

Now, regarding NutriBiotic Rice Protein: it is a very digestible, bioavailable protein that tends to be a little more tolerable than whey protein. We also like it for two more reasons: the flavors are pretty good, with chocolate being surprisingly mellow and mature-tasting and not candylike, and it comes in optional unflavored powder. !!!  This is fantastic!  You can slip spoonfuls into everything from egg salad to mashed potato to milkshakes to gravy…  And while it does contain rice syrup powder for sweetness, it’s almost undetectable and actually requires a little tweaking if you’re aiming for a sweet beverage.

My hope is that someone else will be Googling “healthy alternatives to Boost” and find their way here, even if it’s just one.  And it’s lame to me that an undereducated grumpy blogger has to be the vanguard for healthy nutrition replacement but here we are.  The Future!

I forgot to take a goofy photo of myself posing with MELODY’S BRAND NEW COFFEE KIT KAT BAR!

But I did take a screen-grab of her win.  I hope you all aren’t too disappointed.  I mean, I know you aren’t, Melody, but everyone else is pretty much hating randomized number algorithms right now.

However!  As I previously mentioned, I have a few more things to give away but I want to do a normal post or two first.  There’s just some things I want to get off my chest.  I hope you all understand.  Don’t worry, no one’s in trouble.  Also, I ate way too much cheese and avocado quesadilla for dinner and now I’m kind of urpy.

Okay, let’s try this again.  WITH DELICIOUS GODDAMN COFFEE.  This is probably also something strange I’m missing like “espresso with Hokkaido double cream” but as far as I know it’s just coffee.  C Fierce, are you listening?  I hope you are.  I’m pulling for you.  And by “pulling for you” I mean “treating you like a random number.”

So anyway, yeah, I bought one of these and I want to give it to one of you.  I think we can all agree that we hope Alice doesn’t get it this time, though of course she’s welcome to try.  And then if she does win it, I think we can all agree that god is a vindictive jerk.  Anyway, as with the green tea one, I ate one of these myself and have to say with authority: it’s pretty damn good. The first real bite is intensely sweet, like holy mother of Jesus, my throat is burning, but then!  Then it’s coffee!   And we’re not talking girly coffee, but truly bitter, coffee-grounds coffee.  It’s the most surprising transition.  I actually kept nibbling it just for the wonder of bitterness with each bite.  I can’t help but make comparisons to Western candy that doesn’t manage nearly as mature a flavor while still clearly being sugary junk food.

Here’s those rules again:

1) You may only comment once.  If you comment more than once I will delete all but one of your comments.  To be perfectly clear: you will not be disqualified, you’ll just have all but one of your comments deleted to ensure you get the same chances as everyone else.

2) I don’t care what you say.

3) Contest closes at 8pm PST on Friday night – any comments made after 8pm will not qualify.

4) Anyone may enter, dad.

5) Winning this one won’t disqualify you from another one .  You could – theoretically though improbably – win again and again.  Alice.

Good luck to you all, and thanks for reading Anger Burger.  Normal content will resume after this giveaway, but I’ve still got a few goodies I want to mail to someone, so don’t be gone too long.

***CONTEST CLOSED!***

Giveaway is over!  Stand by for winner.

Because you just won yourself a BRAND NEW CHERRY-BLOSSOM GREEN TEA KIT KAT BAR!

That’s right, with your BRAND NEW CHERRY-BLOSSOM GREEN TEA KIT KAT BAR you’ll be the talk of the neighborhood!   As an extra bonus gift, there’s an inaccurate American label on the backside that claims this is an azuki bean Kit Kat bar.  It is not.

Boy, aren’t you excited?  Here’s the number from Random.org in case the rest of ya’lls is in denial that you lost:

Now, this is admittedly sort of strange and hard to believe, considering that Alice and I already have a history of mailing each other candy.   In fact, it feels IMPROBABLE.  But that’s randomness for you.

Everyone else, sit tight, for tomorrow is another day.  And with a new day comes a new giveaway.  Stand by.

Alright!  You’ve twisted my arm with all your being attractive and grammatical correctness and whatall.

I’m going to give someone this GREEN TEA KIT KAT merely for COMMENTING.  From now until Wednesday night at 8pm, you are encouraged to comment once, about anything you’d like, after which I will use an online random number generator to determine the winner.  And then I will go to the post office and mail it to you!  Just like that!  To top it off, after this box of matcha Kit Kat is given away, there will be a different prize for you to enter for.  And then another one!  And then ANOTHER ONE!  Until I run out of items to give away!  I haven’t actually counted how many I have yet, but it is more than three.  And less than ten.

You should know that I ate one box myself already and it was delightful.  The strangest part is that the green tea was mild while a totally unexpected flavor of some love child of cinnamon and maple syrup came through a little bit stronger.  Super weird, but I truly and literally had a difficult time not opening another box and eating some more of them.

So once again, here’s the free candy law:

1) You may only comment once.  If you comment more than once I will delete all but one of your comments.  It’s not personal, but more than one comment will throw the odds of the random number generator.  AND THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.

2) I don’t care what you say.

3) Contest closes at 8pm PST on Wednesday night – any comments made after 8pm will not qualify.

4) Anyone may enter, dad.

5) Winning this one won’t disqualify you from another one .  You could – theoretically though improbably – win again and again.

So there you are.  Winner will be announced Thursday sometime or another.  Yay, this is fun!

CORRECTION UPDATE: Apparently the pretty cherry blossoms aren’t just for design on the package, and the flavor is actually CHERRY BLOSSOM & GREEN TEA KIT KAT.  Holy shit!  Also: explains some of the beguiling cinnamon/maple flavor, which my brain can now just interpret as “floral”.

*** CONTEST IS CLOSED! ***

Stand by for results!

Life is rough, most of the time.  I’m predictably pessimistic, if you haven’t yet caught that.  And while I like that we each have our own beliefs about life, mine is this: there’s nothing more than this.  Nothing more than what you are feeling, experiencing right now.  I believe this to the core of myself.  Doing what makes you happy is your only obligation in life.

My friends Junko and Sean are two of a few close friends helping me through an intense part of my life right now, one where my happy place is pretty elusive.  But their calm, kindhearted presence is invaluable.  Also: Junko’s “Oh, I’m just making a little Japanese breakfast.”  Those are beautiful words.

Grilled mackerel, or saba, is slowly surpassing my other favorite fish (trout) for first place.  Unlike trout, saba is oily and rich.  I’ll always love trout, but the older I get the more my brain requires Omega-3 fatty acids in order to keep from sticking to itself.

If you’ve never had burdock, or gobo, you’re missing out.  It’s a homely, brown, long and slender root vegetable that needs to be peeled and cooked, but its flavor is something between a sweet potato and a parsnip; somewhat dry, earthy, mild and pleasantly textured.  Burdock is also pretty cheap, so if you see it you should experiment with it.  Tell your kids you’re having stick for dinner.

An egg to slide over your rice when you’re ready, and a very lightly steamed piece of broccoli topped with a squiggle of Kewpie mayonnaise – this is a flavor combination that breaks my heart with perfection.  The Kewpie isn’t like American mayo – it’s more vinegary and somehow more savory, less like a sandwich spread and more like, well, a condiment.  If that makes sense.  I’ve implored you guys before to try some Kewpie, and I am practically begging now.  A little dollop on anything from a cube of rare seared tuna to a simple black olive — okay, it’s not like I need to be encouraged to eat more mayonnaise, but, c’mon.  Right now is not the time for austerity.