TheSnackHound

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?