Sad right? On this very blog, I posted this box of hamburger patties. I hate wasting food. Yet, I was fished in by the "shortage" rumours around hamburger and beef patties in the spring of 2020. Thankfully this was the only supply shortage I was party too. Now, the supply shortages are actually inflation and well, I'm sure this box costs two bucks more. Now, I did enjoy two of the patties, some sort of hamburger, but made with bread. They were tasty burgers, um... yeah. They were decent. Um..yeah. They were better than the cheap patties. Silly me. I don't really eat hamburgers, or check that, I don't really MAKE hamburgers. I leave that to restaurants. Now I could have used the meat for anything else. I could have even thawed and crumbled the meat into sauce with my spaghetti. Hell, rolled a few into meatballs. Yep. When I finally figured I'd try that, the patties were freezer burned. Not frost bitten, but the meat had turned white. It was a year and a half at least in my freezer. They have rules about this for good reason. I tossed them. I hated it, but tossed them. Welcome to fall 2021.

Yet, this is booze. This tiny airline bottle of licorice flavoured booze has lived in my freezer for years. I keep it there for the one day I use it when I make a mixed drink my friends and I enjoyed a number of years ago. Like a Hairy Buffalo only adulterated with THIS. I've never had the nuggets to buy butterscotch schnapps and rum and triple sec and tequila and fruit punch and margarita mix.  Maybe I'll do it as a fall treat.

Speaking of wasting food, I guess I'm going to have a few pictures where food was wasted because I had to waste it. There was a recent salmonella outbreak and for weeks, they weren't sure were it was coming from. I had bought this onion with the intent of making a pasta salad with tuna and I was looking forward to finally making one but OH NO! Yep. Unmarked yellow onions from exactly the time period I had bought this...RISKY! It was when at the beginning of the pansamatic, they recalled some other food stuff where I had missed the recall dates. Whew. I didn't miss this damn pansamatic. I started keeping a diary way back when as I usually diary when I take trips to Chicago or Louisville or Florida. I want to remember what happened on those great trips. I had started my diary for a Florida trip that was cancelled at the last moment and kept detailing what it was like to live through a pansamatic. I thought I was done with it when I ran out of pages, but started a new one when it looked like... What? Spring 2022? We have to live with this "bug" now... Hell. Happy thoughts right?

So, more food. "Smart Ones" frozen meals are well, some of the best tasting frozen food you can get. Yeah, frozen meals are still heavily processed  and bad for you, but when you did a pansamatic switch from eating fast food almost every lunch to eating frozen microwave food, the lesser of two evils right? My mother turned me on to Smart Ones Pot Roast meals and she's right. Real roast with real veggies. Great. In fact I've had a few of these varieties of meals and all of them, with a little "enhancement" are great. "Enhancement" being adding some canned veggies. Maybe a little cheese here and there. It makes a smaller meal into a bigger meal and tastier. When I saw a "tuna casserole" frozen meal, I thought "why not?" Well... Have you ever heard of a frozen tuna casserole? Why not, right?

Dana Carvey show. One of his bits was an official sponsor. Mountain Dew was an official sponsor. He sat with Steve Carell and stared into a glass of Mountain Dew asking "What does THAT look like?" So, I ask you. What does THAT look like? Yeah, okay, it has bread crumbs. I took it out of it's container because I never microwave in the container. I use a plastic lid for that.  "Citrus eee goodness? " No, Mr. Office.

Here it was, prepared with a cheddar cheese enhancement. It wasn't too bad, but it made me aware of one thing I never grew out of. I used to hate peas, now I love them. I used to hate canned HOT seafood. I STILL DO. Canned Salmon to me is the worst because it's crunchy. I love tuna when it's cold. I love Salmon when it's hot and fresh in a "piece" form.  My mom used to make canned Salmon patties and well I had to choke them down or refuse to eat dinner or eat everything else. The only thing I would have done is have more tuna in this meal, but no, I won't get it again. It was sort of dry because of the bread crumbs.

As to this year's shortages. My local food store has a good selection of private label breads. If they didn't have the Italian bread on sale that I liked that week, I'd get the store brand. A few months ago, they didn't have any. The shelves were bare on everything but their generic white or wheat breads. I was happy they had it back in stock the next time I went. However, something was different. A completely different recipe? This one was more like fresh baked Italian bread and that should have been a warning.  After a weeks time I went for a piece and well, you see the result. I thought I could waste a few pieces, refrigerate the rest and finish the loaf. Oh no, the other side was a large stripe of growth down the underside. I never wasted any bread during the pansamatic other than when the bread had foreign substance sprayed upon it by what appeared to be a malfunctioning date sprayer nozzle. Ahh, we learn. I usually get a max of 5 to 7 days from any "fresh" bread, but bagged bread can last an average of three weeks without Mr. Mold showing up. It's just they didn't tell us that the loaves were different. Now they are back to the same old loaf. Ask your store manager about your loaf today! They'll be glad to talk to you I'm sure.

Then there's cleaning. These are Pabst 12oz cans. I drink four of these each week because I like to drink Pabst while I do radio. I would have 24oz king cans dubbed "Ziggy Zockys" *skitch* *The Man Show* *Thanks.* but they don't sell them to the public where I live. At least once a month, I'd go to PA and hang with Boomer The Dog and I'd always come back with my supply. Well, that stopped. I've only had Ziggy's this summer that one time I visited Boomer when it looked like we were headed out of the pansamatic. Haven't been back since so it was back to the more expensive 30 pack. This pack, on  the first four from the pack, I found GLOOP on the cans. I have been cleaning my cans before I drink from them ever since I bought some Pepsi products from a surplus foods store that was near me when I lived in Louisville. Oh, did I mention they were in taped up cases? Oh did I mention they were from when Louisville had the FLOOD? When entire neighbourhoods next to the river were wiped out and were under water? Where exits were closed because you would go 1/4 down the ramp and be in the river? Well, two years later here they were for 1.99 for a 12 pack! Value priced. Old Dr. Pepper and old Mt. Dew in cans that were UNDER WATER? Needless to say, each can had to be scrubbed before drinking and even then, two year old Dr. Pepper tasted like two year old Dr. Pepper. Wash those cans! At least wipe them really good... We should all be good at that if you ever bought a bottle of pop in spring 2020 right?

Here's another odd thing that I gotta break out of.  I've never owned salt and pepper shakers. When I moved to Toledo, I needed some salt and pepper and bought these DISPOSABLE salt and pepper shakers. You know, the cheap ones you get for a picnic that get thrown away when you're done? The only thing more disposable would be the little salt and pepper packets you get with take out. Well, I don't use a lot of pepper and salt in my food. So, I didn't use these that much. Let's see, I worked for WIOT Toledo back in 1996-97. Hmmmm. Do the math. 1996-2021. Hmmmm. That's like making a popcorn string for your Christmas tree in 1996  and then tasting it in 2021? Yes, these DISPOSABLE salt and pepper shakers were 25 years old! Now, I used the salt shaker to add a little salt to my humidifier in the winter so I've refilled it with salt a few times, but the pepper? It's been so long since I've used it that I finally sprinkled a bit of it on my food at lunch a few months back and thought...hmmmmmm. "Self?" "Yes dumbass." "Maybe this pepper has seen better days." "Oh, YA THINK?" Yeah, it was time. I thought I should hang on to the containers themselves because I'd had them for 25 years! Yep. They are not going to the Smithsonian. They are not going to an antique sale. They are following the freezer burned meat or tainted onion. "86!"   

Now a few other things rather than talking about food. Ministry! This is their latest album and it's quite good. It's got enough "old Ministry" sounds as well as "new Ministry" sheen to be a classic album. Lead Ministry creator Al Jourgensen has varied Ministry for many years. He released a trilogy of albums that were largely against George Bush and released everything from Euro-Techno which he hates to sludge metal like the last album "AmeriKKKant". Fans of 90's Ministry when they were in their prime would dig the stuff on this latest album. Ministry was to come to a close when "From Beer To Eternity" came out, he even did a track at the end where he said we could "enjoy the quiet now..." but hell, as long as "Uncle Al" takes a breath, we know where our Industral/Metal bread is buttered. As long as it's a loaf treated with that stuff that doesn't make it mold over right? Talk to your manager. I'm sure they want to hear from you on such important issues.

"Oh NO Theo, not another AUSTRALIAN band...." Amyl And The Sniffers release their second album "Comfort To Me", and well, I haven't taken it out of my MP3 rotation yet. Classic punk, and despite being the sophomore album, improves on their first self titled album into what a friend called "Blondie before Rapture". I'll agree. When this pansamatic stuff is done, maybe the punk sound will explode again in the US and make this group huge international stars. Music is too easy to make these days. GOOD music is harder. Lots harder. To make good music. Really really really HARD! Like twice the HARD. Tee shirt in a meat market HARD. Head light hard!

Welcome to the early oughts. Even Al Bundy had a TIVO, or wanted a TIVO anyway. When I saw this at my local Meijer, I thought...hell, they don't make VCRS anymore. Why do they kill such good analog tech? Was the VCR a good tech? All I remember was tapes that looked like crap after a couple plays, the hours of my life spent rewinding or fast forwarding to my content or replaying the transformation scenes in the Shaggy DA over and over. Um... did I say that out loud? I bought one of these to be the modern blogger. To capture the fun that is late night television when I'm out getting shnockered. I need that extremely left biased "humor" and can't miss the 100th time Seth Meyers imitates the My Pillow guy and says "Da Bears."  Actually, all I have is a collection of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" that I'm building. That's it. I don't have cable. I have the internet. Fast forward through the 72nd time Fran Tarkenton tells me I should call now and enter my zip code for great benefits. You wore huge fur coats on the sidelines! Did you ever watch the Shaggy DA transformation scenes on repeat? Um..really? Dean Jones was pushed.

..and finally... more tech! When I was in Pitt, we went to Boomer's old neighbourhood and they had a classic small Foodland I believe. It was a 30,000 sq ft store, maybe less. It seemed like a large convenience store but it was a full grocery. I'm amazed by the nostalgia of these relics. We went in and took lots of pics. Well, recently when I got a big back up drive for my computer, I started sorting and going through all the pictures. I think this was taken in 2012 or so. I held up what seemed like maybe the first or second generation of CFL bulbs that were available. Note the price and the yellow of the container. My guess is this bulb had been there for at least 10 years and they had two of them. 8.99. Value Priced. I think I first got them in a 4 pack for $5 from Lowes when I moved into my home and they were 4th or 5th gen so they were truly COMPACT.  Cheers ya'll. Hope yewts have a good holiday season, although I may have a few more posts this year... -Ric