Food and Drink

Willy Wanker and the Keto Bread Factory

Aaron Aldous Cinder6 Comments

As Wilford Brimley would say, I have DIE A BEE TUSS. And when you have DIE A BEE TUSS, you can’t eat anything that tastes good. No sweets, no pasta, no rice, no bread, no potatoes, no soda, no ice cream, no candy, no pizza, no hamburgers, no CEREAL!… And the list seems to go on and on toward the end of the universe.

When you have DIE A BEE TUSS, the best kind of diet is low-carb, high protein – just like Dr. Now tells his overweight patients on 600-Pound Life. “Hello. How you all doing? Where you coming from today?”

Eating right has been a struggle for me throughout my nearly 15-year battle with this disease. Is it really a disease, or just poor lifestyle choices? Either way, it sucks not being able to eat whatever you want without suffering deadly consequences.

I love sweets. I love desserts. I love all the things I’m not supposed to have. When I flip through a cookbook for diabetics, I’m just grossed out. Ugh! And it’s especially tough going into a grocery store to buy food. It seems nearly EVERYTHING is bad for you and the stuff that is good for you costs three times as much.

Well, today, I went into our crappy local grocery store with a focus on looking for diabetic-friendly foods. I read a lot of labels, and I think I made some good choices. But sometimes those good choices are not good at all.

If you look at the picture that accompanies this post, you will see a piece of bread with a giant hole in it. That’s from a loaf of keto-friendly bread that cost almost 6 damn dollars. When I first opened the package, I was like: “What the fuck?” It wasn’t just one or two pieces that had this ginormous hole in them, but literally half the entire loaf and then some.

I sent the picture to my wife who was at work, and I told her that this must be the way they reduce the carbs. Is it? Surely not. Did the guy who baked this particular batch have a bread fetish and stick something weird in that loaf that I don’t want to know about? Gross.

But I was so damn hungry, I made myself a summer sausage sandwich. Sausage is fine. No carbs.

Just so you know, keto-friendly bread pretty much sucks… and it’s expensive. This particular bread I ate had ZERO flavor. It was sort of dry, too, and it kind of smelled like wood paneling from the 1970s. Oh, and the giant hole. That, too. So, what will I do with it? I suppose since I paid so much for it, I’ll just suck it up and try to get through the loaf with the help of family members and a jar of peanut butter… Or maybe I can turn the pieces into some sort of sexually frustrated finger puppets. Yeah. Sexually frustrated finger puppets with DIE A BEE TUSS and they complain about keto-friendly bread all day in their weird little village where the government frowns upon any sort of joy.

Thanks for reading about my problems with DIE A BEE TUSS.

Summer Sausage!
Tasteless bread that made me unhappy.

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Aaron Aldous Cinder

Hairy Pancakes and a Bad Honeymoon

Aaron Aldous CinderLeave a comment

It was a warm morning in late July when I woke up alone on the wrong side of the world. The bathroom mirror greeted me with a reflection of disorientation, mussed hair, and puffy eyes. I tried to shake myself awake, for this morning I was to meet my bride and have breakfast at the downtown café we frequent for our marriage meetings. I had my notes prepared. I was going to lay it on the line. Little did I know what was to come.

I rode the curving roadways for miles. The wind struck like a moist dryer drying towels. The engine hummed like a good motor should. I thought about Detroit. I thought about Japan. I pretty much decided in my own head that I was going to go for the pancakes. With sliced banana. With sweet maple syrup. And a good cup of coffee. My spirits were slightly elevated. I thought about my love. She was waiting there in her car, pulled up to the curb, diagonally. I forgot to bring the bandage like she had asked. My memory is slipping like an old lady on wet winter ice. Damn it. I should have written it down.

We met up. Did the ritualistic kiss thing. I may have palmed her butt a little. It’s okay. I’m allowed. We went in and ordered. I laid out my plan to the clerkie. She took it all down, I guess. We found ourselves a table. A tall college kid came in and said he knew us. He joined us at the table, and we all waited for food. The clerkie brought us silverware wrapped in napkins, but I was missing a fork. I cried out something like, “How am I supposed to eat pancakes without a fork!” The whole place got silent. People were stunned I suppose. My wife and the college kid were embarrassed. Reminded me of when I was in the Kroger the other day and some guy suddenly blurted out to his kids: “Stop fucking around!” And the whole world was in silence and shock because he really did say the F word really loud, right there in the meat department. I thought to myself: What an asshole. Yeah, that really happened.

Anyways… The pancakes came and I was eating them, and they weren’t as good as they usually were, and I was bummed about that and then I found a hair — cooked into the pancake. Yep. My wife was like “Eww.” She said I should take them back, but I was too embarrassed and figured if they were going to give me a fresh plate, they would probably stuff the pancakes down their pants and jiggle around a bit before slapping them on the plate. You know, like in that movie. I just took the loss because I have serious trust issues. My wife let me buy a cinnamon roll. My woman is good about that. Caring and such. She was very sorry that happened. Now we’re going to take a nap together and that’s pretty good stuff.

Earlier we had talked about the Memphis woman who was killed in Fiji on her honeymoon, allegedly by her husband. Um… On your honeymoon? You kill your wife on your honeymoon? Damn. Talk about a bad time. I guess getting a hair cooked into my pancakes isn’t so bad after all.   

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Aaron Aldous Cinder

I Long to Live the Log Cabin Syrup Life

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With the state of the world such as it is, I look to Log Cabin syrup to bring some sense of peace. I guess I always have. I would consider it one of my favorite food packaging labels of all time.

“What a lunatic,” someone might say. “Who could possibly find comfort in a bottle of pancake syrup?”

Have you ever looked at the picture on the label? I mean, REALLY looked at it.

There’s a cozy, finely crafted little cabin right in the middle. It has four windows and a door, each aglow with golden light. There’s a chimney on the snow-covered roof, and out of the chimney comes a swirl of smoke from the fire crackling away below, a man inside stoking the logs with a harpoon-like poker.

The cabin is surrounded by angelic-white snow – deep snow. There are seven pine trees, their boughs slightly weighted down by the same snow that surrounds them. Misty mountains stand as sentries on the horizon. A golden-yellow sun looms large over it all as the dawn of a new day undresses.

Even though the interior remains unseen, I imagine what it must look like. It’s square. The fireplace is in the far corner, and an area to prepare food and drink sits to its right. There’s a large table in the center of the cabin, a sturdy wooden table with four chairs – even though I would wish to be alone here. I imagine a homemade bed off to one side, thick blankets unfurled atop it, some sort of pillows, an opened trunk at the foot, a small table with an oil lamp within reach.

The whole place smells like camping.

There are no tracks, neither man nor animal, outside in the snow. It must be fresh powder, or the man inside just hasn’t had to go out in a while. Or maybe he can’t. Perhaps the Earth has drifted too close to that enormous sun and the world is set to burn, but wouldn’t the snow be completely melted?

“It’s simply a representation of the welcoming of a shiny new day. You should buy a bottle of our syrup to celebrate,” says the man from the marketing department.

“Oh,” the man inside the cabin says. “You have convinced my simple mind. I will buy some of your beautiful pancake syrup.”

“And be sure to buy more when you run out,” the man from the marketing department insists. “You will need this syrup forever. You will need it to survive.”

“Here’s all my money,” the man inside the cabin says.

“Great,” the man from the marketing department says, reaching out a hand and snatching the cash. “You’ve got a good job, right?”

“Yes, but I hate it,” the man in the cabin replies. “But it pays for the high-speed internet… And the syrup.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a black-market human butcher,” the man in the cabin answers.

“Sounds like a lifestyle that must be stained in blood.”

“Much more blood than you can possibly imagine… But I don’t want to talk about that. It upsets me… So, the sun isn’t real?” the man in the cabin wants to know. “Am I merely living in a simulation?”

“Oh, it’s real alright. The world is melting away. I’m just here to convince you otherwise. You’ll be safe. As long as you buy our syrup.”

“I will. It’s delicious… There are many other products on the shelf, but this one is the best. I love the picture on the bottle. Absolutely love it. Just the thought of eating pancakes in the wilderness calms my anxiety and tenderizes my angst. It brings me hope at the end of a dark day. Goodbye now.”

The man inside the cabin slams the door and goes back to sharpening his knives.

By

Aaron Aldous Cinder

I’ll show you my cereal if you show me yours (With Poll)

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I’m someone who eats cereal at night. I’ve never much enjoyed cereal as it was intended – a breakfast food to kickstart one’s day. Not for me. I’m not really into kickstarting my day. For me, cereal is much more of a snack food, a bowl of deliciousness cradled in my lap while watching House Hunters or My 600-Pound Life in bed with my wife.

I have to admit that I’m a sweets guy. I like sugary cereal. That’s unfortunate for me because not unlike the late, great Wilford Brimley, I have DIE-A-BEETUS. The Lucky Charms leprechaun is literally killing me, or rather, I’m letting him kill me. But what a way to go. Maybe more on that struggle later. But it’s the weekend and I thought I would just do something short and simple and fun today.

So, choosing what my favorite cereal is not an easy task for me because there are so many I like. But I’ll narrow it down to my Top 10 – in no particular order:

Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries

Lucky Charms

Corn Pops

Honey-Comb

Sugar Bear’s Golden Crisp

Post Raisin Bran (Has to be Post because IMO it is the best)

Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes

Grape-Nuts

Apple Jacks

Cocoa Pebbles

And there you have it. Now that I have confessed my cereal desires, what about you? What’s your favorite cereal? Check out the poll below and vote for your favorite.

But before that, I guess it’s only fair that I share my worst cereal experience – and that would have to be: Cracklin’ Oat Bran. I’d rather eat avocado smeared atop a piece of tree bark.