Fresh on the heels of a small earthquake that rocked me out of bed at 4am, I’m just not really feeling excited about reviewing food this morning. Oh, it was no Haiti or Chile (or Whittier Narrows, in which I was on the second floor of a 1930s era school building), but definitely not the type of thing to calm your nerves.

Because of that, this review of Campbell’s Chunky Grilled Chicken & Sausage Gumbo is going to rely on a tried-and-true, boring, unimaginative review “device”. That device is to present you with the raw list of things I wrote down whilst sitting eating this soup. It’s entertaining for me (but maybe not for you) to try and decode what I wrote down, sometimes months ago.

Yes, I actually sit with a pen in one hand, a spoon in the other, and I try and think of witty things to say about canned soup. It’s a wonderful life.

Transcript follows, with later commentary in brackets:

Chunk Gumb Soup

Smell - Smokyness is pleasant, pretty good, very peppery - Jalap & green peppers, if you don’t like, then bad. [Spelling, grammar: terrible. 10 Demerits.]

Soup Consistency - More watery than some Chunkys I’ve had [erm, isn’t that Chunkies?]. Bit “slippery” like gumbo should be [I’ve no idea what I meant by this].

Salt - Med. high, would dilute it for most ppl. [Usually dilute it nearly two to one with water].

Spice - Med. heat, pleasant - I like more. [Please sir, may I have another] Not sharp, but this may be just right for majority.

Taste - Tiny bit of metal tincan taste overall [Good for goats]. But not bad. Slight smokiness [I thought we already covered the pleasant smokiness in detail, must be important]

Broth - Good flavor [Gee, THANKS FOR NOTHING]

Rice - I personally like rice “soft” in soup. If you’re used to crunch of risotto, may not like it. Almost like noodles. [Definitely showing my age here, but I do still have most of my teeth]

Veg - Tomatos [Ding. Quayle issues], Cellery [I kid you not, I wrote “Cellery”. Did I mention that I used to spell at a 5th grade level in Kindergarten? I dunno what happened], Bell pepper, decent amount [As opposed to an indecent amount, I guess]

Chicken - Breast meat - a little dry bland. If I was make homemade would use non-breast or brin it. [LOL - just grin and bear it, or brin and gear it.] But at least not salty.

Sausage - Pretty decent size [Insert joke about my sausage and your sausage, and how one may or may not be lengthier than the other], has some heat to it. But in general, not much flav [Flavor Flav] believe it’s given its all to the flavor of soup. If homemade, you put sausage in later. [At least this is somewhat true, I’ve found it’s better to delay putting in sausage into gumbo until like 1/2 hour before serving.]

Score - Probably 7, but price? 1.49 not bad. Overall excellent [My, my - very descriptive]

Price: $1.49 for 18.8 oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10

Before you blurt out, “What is this godforsaken malarkey,” I would like to assure you that this kind of things does not NOT happen very, very often.

In a perfectly sane, normal world, I wouldn’t be eating this.

However, as we’ve come to realize, this is not a perfectly sane, normal world. In fact it is such an imperfectly insane, abnormal world that anything can happen. Wonderful times. Wonderful times, don’t you agree?

That is how I came to be ingesting a Macaroni and Cheese Hot Dog the other day.

Oh, it was a perfect storm all right. Leftover macaroni and cheese, hot dog buns and an open pacakge of lonely Oscar Meyer hot dogs. We don’t tend to have that combination all at once in our house. I took full advantage of it and made me a Mac-n-Cheese Dog with Habanero Tabasco sauce.

Pretty damn good. The hot sauce really kicks it up.

A notch, on my belt buckle, that is.

I had hoped to patent this macaroni and cheese hot dog, but I don’t have any money to do so.

Please send me some. Money, that is. And three cases of McCutcheon whiskey.

Thank you, and so on.

I’m in a charitable mood this morning.

That’s right. What I’m going to do right now, right here and now, is NOT wankle around. Wankling - that would be a word that’s a literary bastardization of my own creation. No, nothing to do with a Wankel engine, whatever that is.

Here is my definition. “To wankle” is to veer off topic while writing in a manner that causes surrounding readers to stutter-step and bleed resulting boogers out of their noses. The text created by such a wankler has been the downfall of many an innocent office wanker. Sorry, I mean worker.

That’s how I normally start a review - by wankling around. Wankling, while humorous at times, is not very conducive to the creation of a robust and helpful product review. The review wankler is often so caught up in his own wankling (no, not wanking, you pervs) that he doesn’t realize that he’s not talking about the product in question until it’s almost time to catch the latest episode of Days of Our Lives.

Companies hate reviews that wankle around, because they never quite get to the point of praising their product. To be sure, if the wankler has wankled in a truly artful way, it’s possible to keep readers around until the wankler finally gets bored of wankling and starts talking about the product.

Now, I’m happy we live in a glorious modern age where wanklers are free to wankle (or even winkle, by God) without the fear of persecution. In the old days, if you dabbled in wankling too frequently, you were liable to be strung up with all the other wanklers on a telephone pole line. Or at least fired from your editorial job. Still, the crafty wankler will always keep his wankling somewhat on the down-low. You know, people start to talk: “Did you read the latest product review on Cheap Eats? Man, that wankler is really off his wonker this time. I think we should turn him in to the feds.”

That’s right, I’m just going to talk about the product. No messy wankling around. See these are Pizza Bites. See, I could’ve come up with endless funny insults about how “These Pizzas Bite”. And so on. That would definitely become the bulk of the review. But no, homie don’t play that today. It’s just me, you and Pizza Bites. Yep, that’s all there is. Straight as an arrow. Clean as a whistle. It won’t make you sad, like other things.

Why, just the other day, I was thinking about how sad it is that most people never get to visit Alaska. Alaska is a great place to visit, a great wild country full of fun things. Lots of polar bears. Haha, made you wikipedia. Yeah, I KNOW there’s no polar bears in Alaska. Polar bears grow on islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

What I like about Alaska, should I choose to visit one day before I die (I’m assured this is NOT their official slogan, but hey, why not?), is that the soil is composed of teeny tiny toasters. Quite handy to just reach down and grab a miniaturized toaster when you need it. These toasters, while obviously handy in case you have miniaturized your muffins a la Fantastic Voyage, will also cook up miniaturized Pizza Bites. Except, you don’t really need to miniaturize your pizza bites, since they’re so small already.

That was lame. What I really need are some miniature polar bears. I would put them in a shoebox, call up Conan O’Brien, and tell him “God damn do I have a hot ticket to the top for you, brotha.”

But seriously, Sarah Palin ain’t all she’s cracked up to be. For instance, I bet she wouldn’t know how to cook these Pizza Bites, bears or no bears. I tried making them in my Alaskan toaster, and I didn’t have much luck. I made two separate batches of them, and both exploded all over the foil I’d thoughtfully placed on the rack. I baked up the first batch at 425F for about 10 minutes. The second batch, I did at the same temperature but for only 8 mintues. I still had 2 out of the bunch explode on me. Maybe my old school toaster is too powerful. Or maybe it’s only meant for Baked Alaska.

I’m wondering if, instead of baking them in the oven, I should’ve instead hired a polar bear chef to deep fry them for me. You just can’t have enough deep-fried-ness. Plus, it’d be nice to have a hairy paw in the kitchen.

The crust on these bites was surprisingly good. A bit crispy and chewy at the same time. I don’t even want to guess the types of things they put in there to make it taste like that.

In general, the filling was paste city. Tomato based, a bit on the salty side, but not the worst I’ve had. There were all sorts of unidentifiable objects in the filling. After reading the ingredient list, it became apparent these were miniscule chunks of pepperoni and both real and fake mozzarella cheese. There’s also parmesan cheese in there. But don’t get too excited. My polar bear friend tells me there’s more Beet Powder than Parmesan Cheese in these.

By now, you’re bored. And I’ve run out of wankling juice. So we’ll just cut to the chase. These pizza bites don’t necessarily bite. They do taste pretty accurately like really cheap frozen pizza. Frozen, like the frozen tundra of Alaska. However, with low grade frozen pizzas being so inexpensive, I’d probably spring for that instead. But the Bites were 99 cents for about 15 of them, so it didn’t break the bank. The novelty factor was also there, and if you were in a hurry, it might be faster than throwing a frozen pie in the oven.

I was going to say portability may be a consideration - it’s difficult to put a full size pizza under your arm and gallop off with the polar bears. But you know what, if the leakage on these things wasn’t just from my overpowered monstro-Alaskan toaster, portability ain’t going to be a possibility. Unless you like tomato paste ‘n cheese glue all over your clean white shirts.

[Editor’s Note: I apologize to Alaska and Alaskans. The allusions and references to Alaska in this review are no doubt far-fetched and untrue. I haven’t even been there yet, sadly. However, you must give me at least some props for not making more Palin jokes. That would be too easy. Like shooting polar bears in a barrel.]

Price: $0.99 for 7.5 oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 3/10

Spicy Bung

Ah, yes.

There are many roads I could have gone down with this review. Many, many roads. Roads not taken. Roads passed by and gone forever. Two roads diverged in a mofo woods, and I said screw it.

I said “woods”, not Tiger Woods.

Yes.

When presented with choices, I inevitably choose the most difficult route. Or at least the one that annoys the most people. Here is a Shin Bowl by Nong Shim, one of those instant noodle and soup contraptions. I planned to review it a few weeks ago. But I couldn’t really think of what to say about it.

Scorched poo hole

I could have gone down the “Shin Bowl Is Connected To The, Knee Bowl” route. Easy peasy. But I chose not to confound you with Hokey Pokey. I could have gone down the “Tastes Exactly Like Cup O Noodles If You Add Cayenne Pepper” route. Because, it does sort of taste like a cup of Cup O’ Noodles. Sorry, I mean a Cup ‘O Cup ‘O Noodles. Hell, let’s just add another “cup” to it and call it Cup ‘O Cup ‘O Cup ‘O Noodles. That’s Cup Cubed Noodles. Haha, says the math major dropout.

As usual I’ve chosen the road of grade school goofiness. Playground puerility. As is my wont.

Wont wont wont. Wont. As a side note, I sometimes imagine a parallel universe where everyone only has ONE word in their vocabulary. If that universe were ours, I would hope my word would be “wont”. It would be so entertaining to run around and just say “Wont, wont wont wont? Wont wont WONT wont.”

Anyhow, I’ve already guessed you may not like this review approach. It’s so tired and abused. Not amused.

Anal ring of fire.

In fact, I’ll lay you ten to one that right about now, you are wishing this was a Youtube video of an ambitious cat trying to climb into a box. Go ahead - change the channel. I don’t blame you.

Truth be told, I’m no longer the fake-fried-instant-noodle aficianado I was in college. Still, I regularly eat another one of Nong Shim’s products. That one is called “Neoguri” Udon Type Noodles, and I get the “Spicy Seafood” variety. Not sure if that’s the only variety they have, but it’s the one they sell in a giant bulk pack. I decided to try out this instant Shin Bowl (hmm… why isn’t it called a “Shim” Bowl) for old time’s sake.

Holy hole of burning, Batman.

One difference with the Neoguri one is that it doesn’t come in a styrofoam bowl, so you have to cook it in a pot. Yes, a pot - those things you put on the stove and boil water in. It also has two seasoning packets as opposed to one for this bowl.

Overall, the Shin Bowl didn’t come close to the texture or taste of the Neoguri package. For one thing, the noodles do really taste like spongy Cup ‘O Noodle noodles. The flavor of the soup was not as spicy as the Neoguri either, but I wonder if that’s because I didn’t dump all of the packet in.

Raw and red flaming cornhole

The “vegetables” in these things are awful - I almost wish they didn’t put them in and just made the bowl bigger. It had carrots, shiitake (not shittake or shitocky) mushrooms and green onions. Sometimes for grins, I crack an egg in noodles like this. But that only works if they’re the type you cook on the stove.

I also felt like the amount of noodles wasn’t as substantial. But this could be because I was punch drunk hungry at the time.

Squinting, fiery turtle head poking out of it’s carapace

OK, I will stop with the rectum allusions. But I don’t apologize for them. To be honest, I couldn’t think of any other synonyms for bungholes. (PLEASE DO NOT WRITE IN TO TELL ME WHAT THEY ARE. THANK YE)

You see, I want people to read this review and think, “This is NOT the intelligent, musings of a high-bred (or in-bred) college student having fun with a blog.” I want people to read this review and think, “These are the projectile vomitings of a prickly, gross thirty seven year old idiot loser who eats instant noodles for breakfast lunch, dinner and dessert and then talks about how he has to take a spicy crap.”

Indeed.

Price: $0.99 for 3 oz bowl
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10

Another year, another poll. Ever eat food dropped on ground? Please answer at top. See you later.

What. You were expecting a long and drawn out discussion of the winner of our previous poll: “Food Makes Me Feel…”?

[Editor’s Note: Today’s post and discussion analysis will be brought to you entirely inside of this editor’s note. Why do people attach these stupid, italicized things to posts anyhow (he asked himself rhetorically)? Well, I know why I do. Since my memory is slowly fading away like so many 37 year old twinkies, I often forget to talk about important things in the main body of the post. And it takes too much of that fading brain power to rewrite the post to include that all-important tidbit. So I just tack it on at the end.

No, I wouldn’t know anything about that.]

Man, what a day.

I mean, man what a week. Hmm… let’s extend that to, man what a month. Man, what a year.

Man, what a life.

Et cetera, exaggerated and so on.

In case you haven’t noticed, I am very, very old. I once had a reader tell me that judging by the way I spake (speaked, spoke?) I was probably a 55 year old crotchety wizard living in his parent’s van down by the river, typing grumbly food review posts by day and selling Depeche Mode T-shirts to ex-New Wave disc jockeys by night.

I THINK he was being insulting, but to this day, I’m not sure.

He will never know how close he was to the truth. Actually, he’ll never know because I deleted his email, blocked his IP, ISP, erased his face. Excuse me, I mean erased his Facebook. Whatever that is.

But enough about trolls. Let’s get back to the heart of the matter, the kernel of the nugget of truth, lies and videotape.

And that is that yeah, I’ve been around for awhile. I remember Back In The Day™, we had these things called Fruit Roll-Ups. All these Johnny-come lately frou-frou fruity bogus bars make me laugh. Back In The Day, we actually had to harvest our fruit rollups from our brown paper lunch bags.

That’s right. Oh, it was hard times back yonder, moseying down through dusty playgrounds and school hallways. I remember a fellah, what was his name… I think it was Samson. Nice guy, but near dang didn’t make it through past recess. Had a jonesing for some Fruit Rollups, so he tried to harvest ‘em early from his sack. Teacher caught ‘im and strung ‘im up on the fence as an example. But we was always doin’ stuff like dat back in dem der days. And our rollups was all flat an’ simple-like. Plain fruit for plain folks. None of this Scoobie whatchee-callit printed on it.

Tough times, and so on.

But seriously, it’s been awhile since I’ve had Fruit Roll-Ups. I just remember that they seemed to show up in my brown bag lunches quite a bit. Before I go on, I just wanted to show everyone a pic again of my good friend “Better If Used By“, which appears on the new box:

This still makes me laugh out loud. It makes me LOL, man. Or is that “Lots of Laughs”? Sorry, I failed BBS Abbreviation class Back In The Day. I also failed Leetspeak 101, though I did manage to figure out that 55378008 typed into a calculator actually meant something.

These new fruit rollups are packed individually in a new-fangled metallic cellophane or mylar wrapper. I don’t know if it stays fresher that way, but it sure allows me to see a reflection of my aged and ancient face squished in disturbing, carnival-esque ways.

A note to self and/or others: when they say “Peel from cellophane backing before eating,” what they reallly mean is “No one, not even Bryan, would make the mistake of forgetting to peel off the cellophane before eating, but just in case he is having an off day, let’s remind him.”

I think the size of these fruit rollups may have gotten just a little smaller. I don’t have one from the 1980s to compare it to, so I’m not sure. One thing that I definitely did not remember was just how many Pears exist in a Fruit Roll-up. This is somewhat disturbing, considering that these are “Strawberry” Fruit Roll-Ups. Also, there is no mention anywhere else on the packaging of pears, pear-like substances or pear shaped things. (By the way, try and google “pear shaped girl”. It is amazing how many non- Sissy Bar references are returned, since that is that only reason I know that phrase.)

So I guess the biggest surprise is how these rollups are imprinted with edible ink featuring the likeness of fricking Scooby Dooooo. Don’t get me wrong. I dig him and his pot-smoking buddy Shaggy (I call him Scooby Doobie, hahahaha). But, Like Wow, I’m just surprised to see Scooby show up on my fruit roll-up, especially since there was no mention of him on the packaging. Not that I’m complaining. It’s all “Ro Kay!” to me.

I’d forgotten how sweet this stuff is. Kinda like dropping a few chunks of sugarcane into a glass of sugar water and then pouring in some sucralose. Or Stevia. Or whatever it is they’re using nowadays. No wonder I loved this stuff as a kid. We used to barter with Fruit Roll-Ups. “I’ll trade you my mint condition plastic R2D2 windup toy for your fruit rollup.” Guess who got the shite end of that deal…

I got a small pack of them with four roll-ups inside. I think this isn’t the typical number you get, but that’s what they had at the dollar store. Not too bad for a quarter each, I guess.

I have to admit, I didn’t find them as fun as I probably could have. Oh, I did try and stretch the fruit rollup and see if it would mold around my hand. Actually, I would like to make myself some hockey gloves out of fruit rollups. You see, they’re so sticky that they’d help me keep a hold of my hockey stick while being checked into the boards by all the goons that come after me since I’m a small 5′5″ defenseman with no slapshot.

Go Kings. And so on.

Price: $1.00 for 4 0.5 oz Rollups
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10