TheSnackHound

Some people would give their sweetheart the moon and the stars. Goofballs that we are, the equivalent for My Favorite Guy and I is the keys to the chocolate factory. We have a particular one in mind that wouldn’t require us to relocate to inherit, own or manage it. We have our fantasies all ironed out just in case they happen in real life. Why be trite. The star that everyone else is swinging on would be a bit crowded.

Apparently, for a $175.00 set up fee, you too can trick your friends that you indeed own a chocolate factory, or bestow elegant, tasteful chocolate business gifts to your clients. Somehow if your other fantasy of being as successful as Bill Gates comes true, the question of whether you have a food handling license would probably come up if you decided to go your own way, actually make truffles for 5,000 people and stuffed them into foldable boxes from Joann’s Fabric.

The $175.00 includes the set up of your logo to print on golden-sheened boxes. After that, its all up to you, you just purchase as many different boxes from the tiny to the huge. Of course, you wouldn’t pay $175.00 if you only wanted one box. You would need to order 150 boxes right away, or at least in a 12 month period. If you do not take delivery in that window, a $2.00 storage fee per box will be accrued and the rest will be delivered directly to my house. Not really. But I can keep dreaming, can I?

Do you think custom chocolate products will impress your friends and clients? Or would you do it for your own vanity?

If you have a fancy last minute brunch, a “day after the wedding” breakfast for guests or suddenly the Queen of England knocks on your door at 5 AM and asks to use your bathroom, it is pretty poor form to say “I’m on a budget” and offer guests a few crumbs out of the end of a generic vesion of Corn Pops and a stale piece of toast.

Make your guests think you just walked over to one of those expensive chain coffee shops and brought them all yogurt parfaits.

1) Firstly, scour the world for Kashi coupons. There sometimes are coupon codes from Kashi, including occasional deals on Amazon, but you can also try to combine electronic coupons, your store sale, and manufacturers coupons. What you’ll want to buy is the Honey Almond Flax cereal. Then scare up one tiny container of in-season fruit. You’ll only need a slice or two for each parfait.

2) Get out your good crystal. If you don’t have any, before the party, visit the thrift store and consignment shops for mismatched water goblets and fancy wine flutes. Sometimes you can find whole sets, but sometimes you can cheaply buy mismatched singles.

3) Fill the goblets with a few spoonfuls of Kashi Honey Almond Flax cereal, then add a few dollops of plain yogurt. After that, add a few slices of strawberries or even a drop of chocolate syrpup, then more yogurt and Kashi. Ultimately, the top layer should be raspberries or some other more expensive fruit.

4) Inspect for chips. If one is chipped but won’t cut a lip, all the better. You now can knowingly gaze over to the guest with the chip and announce that they have either won the prize or feign embarrassment while you scoop the goblet up and tell the story of rich but crazy Aunt Felicity who brought the goblet over on the Mayflower. Actually, use “Uncle Oceanus.” Apparently, someone named Oceanus was either born on the ship or born slightly later in the “new world” and folks could actually look up and verify that he was a real person.

One last thing, you’ll want to purchase one actual yogurt parfait from the pricey coffee shop. This way, you can have a receipt lying around somewhere, so everyone will know that you at least spent $3-7 a piece for them, and they’ll do the math.

As far as clean up? Just set them on the back porch. When no one sees goblets in the sink or on the counter, they’ll assume you have a staff.

Christmas has been officially over, which leads the mind to stray about chocolate again. Valentine’s Day is coming up, and though I don’t mean to rub it in the noses of folks who are not affianced, it clearly is a moment of overabundant chocolate choices that persons of any status that are true chocolate lovers can appreciate. You just have to really watch out for all the waxy novelty goods.

See’s has a Valentine’s Day fundraiser programs that schools, teams and nonprofits can take advantage of. It involves selling select items from See’s regular stable of offerings with a V-Day slant. Chocolate fundraisers can sometimes be a lesson in personal tooth decay or a crapshoot. It is well worth it to groups with a set in audience of candy lovers, but not worth it if the profit margin is low. Chocolate candy bars sometimes have the highest profit margin if you are earning half of the sale price, but let’s face it: You have to sell a zillion to make those fifty cents add up. When you sell larger ticket items, you may sell fewer, but you may profit more on items people might decide to buy at the pharmacy or grocery store if it wasn’t for your team.

Honorably, See’s has a profit calculator. You enter the number or participants, and the number each participant is projected to sell.

With my absolute slacker example with only 5 participants selling maybe one of each item, none of the high ticket items and maybe a few of the low ticket items, the group made $400+ profit. You can use the calculator to speculate as much as you like to see if it makes sense. For groups where there are 50 active participants, the fundraising ends up in the thousands. Of course, this does not take into account that some of the participants might actually be stockpiling the goods for their own future use.

I am so rude. I couldn’t help but listening in to a conversation while waiting in line.

“People will die if they don’t drink water for three days.”

“No, you are wrong. I’ve gone a week without water.”

“There is water in root beer.”

“Okay, but even if I didn’t, and I didn’t drink anything, I’d still be alive. My body would just suck the water out of the food. Maybe not so much in chips, but there’s a lot in spaghetti sauce. And I’d of course have a grape or two.”

“Okay. So we can’t go without LIQUIDS for three days.”

“Yup. Doctors are all so wrong. I just get it from food and air. I am like a cactus. They can go without water for three YEARS.”

Back to The Snack Hound test kitchen, I researched and found that the irreverent shopper was correct. It’s true. The cactus part, at least. Sounds good for all the black thumbs out there.

The resiliency has led to the craze if looking to desert plants instead of rain forest plants for extreme antioxidant content.  Whether it is the Prickly Pear or the Nopol cactus, where Nopalea juice comes from, there are no formulations all the time. Drinking the juice directly from the cactus comes with prickly results. You could give yourself a piercing , but like coconut juice directly from the fruit, you might need to be chained to the bathroom for awhile. Cactus juice naturally is a constipation fighter, but don’t worry, the blends that the juices are in won’t overload your system to cause any sort of emergency. Life is too cruel for a juice peddler to do that. The combo of antioxidants (Betalains), however, are proven to reduce inflammation/irritation in the body. Too bad it won’t help burning ears. I swear when someone is in the next county is referring to me, I call them and they say “I was just thinking about you.”

When you have a theme restaurant, where the theme is not merely “let’s nail as many reproduction metal signs on the walls and suspend as many sleds and bike parts over patron’s heads,” but razor sharp specific, you really have to “sell it.” Johnny Rockets just doesn’t work if your soda jerk is sporting a mullet. And Strawberry’s Magical Blueberry Bunny Cupcake Patch doesn’t work when Mrs. Santa is wearing a Lady Gaga shirt, nor does “Braveheart” become more endearing of a movie once you notice the wristwatches and boxer shorts.

Among the cheap eyeglasses you can buy to finish off your crew’s uniforms in a way that mob caps and fake mustache’s without robbing anyone but the most ardent fans their dignity are candy heart and Christmas cane embellished spectacles. If you have a bakery, a princess party tea room or breakfast with Santa that runs to sold out crowds for several weeks, you can find the appropriate eyegoggles. After all, they can more easily swap their regular eyeglasses out at break time. It’s easier than ratting down a purple beehive, no?

So, if you are really adamant that your elves aren’t wearing Ray Bans and your fairy princess is wearing proper pink with roses without tripping over the little angels, it seems that the Zenni site has every manner of spectacle starting at $8.99 and up for prescription.

Thanks for the post from Al Mills

Ever since my husband and I signed up for Directv through http://www.cannonsatellite.com/ we have gotten totally into Top Chef. The new season is in Texas, and since we live in San Antonio it’s really fun to watch. Most of the beginning of the season was filmed here, so it’s really cool to see a lot of familiar places on TV. I also love to cook, so it’s cool to watch all the chefs and learn a thing or two.

Since we’ve started watching I’ve been thinking abut taking some cooking classes so I can improve my skills. I guess I’m a good cook for an amateur, but I’d love to make beautiful meals for my family. I don’t think there is anything better than having people over and feeding them delicious and beautiful food. I’ve learned to make a few really amazing meals, but I’d love to take it to the next level and get really good knife skills. If I could only do things faster, it would be much easier. Sometimes I get tripped up in the simplest things like chopping vegetables.

Sometime in the 90s, I was wandering around a health fair. There were all sorts of elaborate booths – from booths offering vision screenings to massage therapists doing chair massage. One booth was plastered with worded placards and in the center was a woman on an elevated platform, with a tiny tray of small cups in front of her hawking Noni Juice. For only $45.00 a bottle, you could achieve optimum health. It tasted okay, and I imagine that if your diet consisted of potato chips and deep fried bacon, it would create a miraculous result in your health.

Every few years, another juice form an exotic fruit is introduced, sold through multi level marketing and is not available in stores. The last one I remember was Acai, and supposedly there was a special patented form. The folks who sold it at $40 a bottle swore that the Acai juice in stores was a watered down, low grade version. But now you can even find Noni at the health food store.

The latest juice product is Nopalea (pronounced No-pah lay’uh), and its put out by Trivita . The fruit is harvested from the Nopal cactus plant that has survived the harrowing weather of the dessert. Adherents claim that it reduces inflammation and rids the body of toxins. Antioxidants found in various fruits do just that. But, does it do more than readily available antioxidant juices and supplements?  The jury is out. Everyone wants a magic cure. While Nopalea doesn’t cure, most consumers wish a single dietary change to make a miraculous difference, whether than the miraculous difference coming from an overall balanced diet free of saturated fats.

On the other hand, drinking a high antioxidant juice and replacing soft drinks or “junk juice” drinks with it may have individuals noticing enough of a difference to inspire them to make other changes necessary in their diet.

If you have tried superfruit juices like Nopalea, write in and let me know what you think.

(* = By the way, this site, nor any of its friends, affiliates, or advertisers, including The SnackHound, Foodbuzz, Mrs. Butterworth, the good people of Hershey, Pennsylvania, Frankenstein, my nextdoor neighbor Tiffany, Dr. Watson, nor PayPerPost are affiliated in any way with Trivita)

Here’s wishing you and yours had the very merriest of National Cupcake Days. For those of you who did not partake in any way, I have saved you one of your very own, above. The featured cupcake comes to us from Maggie Moo’s, where they were giving away a free cupcake today between 4:00 and 7:00 PM. Just scrawl that with permanent marker for the next December 15th on your calendar.

The cake featured very little cake, topped with cake batter ice cream and green whipped cream frosting which left a healthy glow on the teeth and fingers. I am still scrubbing the tip of my finger to get it out. It was absolutely marvelous and it brought back all the feelings of an indulgent toddler with cherry, or in this case, Ecto-Cooler KoolAid all over their lips.

So..if you feel cheated that you didn’t hear about NCD, make yourself a batch of cupcakes and hide or eat an odd number of them. This way, people will think these are just leftovers from the actual day.

This post brought to you by Swifto. All opinions are 100% mine.

Attention on all Four Legged Snack Hounds:

Has the human left the room?

I’ll give you a minute to check. Good.

Dear Snack Hounds:

If you are currently living in New York City or you are visiting New York City now or through the holidays, don’t always rely on those dogmoms and dogdads. They are going to be extra busy and might get caught up in holiday traffic. You surely will be crossing your legs. They might even spend hours some afternoon doing crazy things like drinking colored liquids at something they call “brunch,” or flapping their lips and then sticking greasy pizza in it. That will surely mess up with your afternoon potty break.

Help is on the way. You can type, right? Well, my dog can.

Go check out the nice folks at Swifto. They have a dog walking service that will bring a qualified, experienced and insured dog walker right to your door. A one hour lead time (or more) is needed.

• Online payment is accepted. No embarrassing moment of you delivering cash in your mouth.
• $20 covers walk and tip.
• For $5 extra, bring a friend! Yes, that new baby pup they just rescued IS your friend, you just don’t know it yet.
• For $10 extra, double the fun. You’ll receive a whole ONE our walk.

Whoops…here comes a person! Click on the sidebar of this site somewhere and bring up another article.  We have to keep this secret amongst ourselves, don’t we?

At Carrabba’s, as well as at some upscale local eateries, an exposed kitchen is all part of the dinner theater. On one particular visit to one such place, a friend of mine was really paranoid. Every soup or salad or bread stick she ate, she inspected for phantom hairs. The ice cube had a hair on it, the salad had hair in it.

I looked up at my Death by Chocolate cake. “That’s a potato straw.” Then, after a few bites: “That is a caper.”  “That is a chopped strand of endive lettuce.” “That’s a hair. No. Just kidding.”

Some of the visible kitchen staff were wearing uniforms or company T-shirts and had their hair pulled back, some did not. Even so, pony tails flew through the air as cooks and waitstaff whirled around the kitchen and the ordering window.

The only hats I could find that encapsulate hairdos completely without looking like a cheap hair net was at Blue Sky Scrubs. They are usually known for making medical scrubs for men and women (http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Women/)but their head coverings are not industry-specific. I could see the Poppy scrubs hat being worn by pastry chefs. They come in a multitude of patterns, including camouflage, and also many solids.