the frig blig

Q: How much coconut is in a package of Coconut M&Ms?
A: Would you believe, none?

That’s right, none. Zero. Zilch. The ingredient that the product is named after does not exist in the product.

I found this rather shocking. After all, peanut M&Ms contain peanuts. Almond M&Ms contain almonds. Peanut-butter M&Ms contain peanut-butter. So I got a little teed-off when the ingredients list on coconut M&Ms did not list coconut.

Here is the actual list of ingredients as printed on the package:

Ingredients: milk chocolate (sugar, chocolate, skim milk, cocoa butter, lactose, milkfat, soy lecithin, salt, artificial flavors), sugar, cornstarch, less than 1% - corn syrup, dextrin, coloring (includes yellow 5 lake, red 40 l ake, blue 2 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5, blue 1, red 40, yellow 6, blue 1 lake, blue 2), artificial flavor, gum acacia.

Screwing up my eyes and looking closer at the front of the package, I saw the fine print: Artificial Flavor.

Is coconut really so prohibitively expensive that Mars Inc. can’t afford to put even 1 percent coconut into their coconut flavored product? Or does including actual coconut do strange things to M&Ms, like make them melt prematurely or mottle their pretty shell colors?

Only their kitchen and/or lab knows for sure. Me, I’m never buying coconut M&Ms again.

Drinking coffee offers no real benefit as reported by Lewis Page in The Register.

Christopher Cox makes a case for no-stress consumption of the mollusks in his Slate article with the famously stolen title.

By popular request, this is the recipe for the rich chocolate confection I learned to make from my mother. It’s different from typical “linzer torte” pastries.

Linzer Torte

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3/8 lb. butter (the real thing) [1.5 sticks]
1 cup almonds, ground (I buy slivered ones & chop ‘em in a hand chopper)
3 hard-boiled egg yolks
1 raw egg
3/4 cup softened semi-sweet chocolate chips
raspberry preserves

Mix flour, sugar and softened butter. Add egg yolks, raw egg (beat), softened chocolate (melt in double-boiler), and finally stir in the almonds and mix well. Batter will be stiff. Put batter in lightly-greased (butter) square baking pan, not more than 1.5″ high. Smooth batter, spread with raspberry preserves, and lattice with remaining batter (remember to leave a little in the bowl for this step — it doesn’t take much). Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

How many turkeys died over the past week in order for north americans to enjoy their little feast? Could it be… millions?

Monsanto guilty of lying — Read all ’bout it!

De-gourded on the 31st, separated for drying on the mat.

So right there on 7th Ave near the intersection with Aurora sits the Hurricane Cafe. (It occupies the site of the former Dog House restaurant for you old-timers.)

I ask my fellow Seattleites this: when was the last time you saw a hurricane around these parts? Answer: never. Hurricanes just don’t make it up to the pacific northwest. What we do get are occasional earthquakes and volcano eruptions and lots of fog, mist and light precip.

So I’d like to suggest that the owner(s) of aforementioned Hurricane Cafe get a little more real and more local, and rename their establishment the Earthquake Cafe. Or the Slime Cafe. Or the Drizzler. (”Home of the Tsunami Burger”.) Or something besides a completely foreign weather concept.

Sometimes it’s fun to look down.