Category: Food & Drink

Brainiac On Banjo: On Meat Mountain, We Have The Meats Alright!

Brainiac On Banjo: On Meat Mountain, We Have The Meats Alright!

Saw a big Brangus Steer standing right over there, so I rustled up a fire, cooked him medium rare. Barbecued his brisket, roasted his rump, fed my dog that ol’ Brangus Steer’s hump. — “Eat Steak,” Reverend Horton Heat (Jim Heath)

Do not read this right now if you’re about to have dinner. Or read it now if you want to go on a diet… for a few weeks.

Fast food has been part of our popular culture at least since 1955, when the first McDonald’s franchises started to appear. Chains such as White Castle, Burger King, and Jack-In-The-Box (what is in that secret sauce?) preceded the franchised golden arches, but it was McDonalds’ advertising and branding that turned fast food into a lifestyle.

I just read a piece about a sandwich they’ve been selling at Arby’s. Yup, I know. Arby’s. I probably lost you. That’s okay, and you’ll see why. I’m guessing you weren’t going to try this anyway.

Evidently, Arby’s has a “secret menu.” If I’m any example, they’ve been quite successful keeping it a secret. Anyway, on this secret menu there is a sandwich called Arby’s Meat Mountain. It contains 1.5 ounces of each of the following: roast turkey, ham, corned beef, brisket, steak, and roast beef, plus both cheddar cheese and Swiss cheese, two chicken tenders, and of course, 1.5 rashers of bacon. Their Mountain is covered by an additional starch vehicle, evidently because they couldn’t come up with an edible handle.

Hey, gotta love that health food, right? According to TheTakeOut.com, the Meat Mountain contains a mere 120 ingredients — all of the above succulent substances of gastronomical trauma plus sodium erythorbate, sodium diacetate, sodium lactate and other sodia (which, I infer, is the plural of sodium) to aggregate of 3,536 milligrams of salt, approximately two and one-half times the recommended daily limit. This is an amount sufficient to make the Morton salt girl lose her shit. I do not know the amount of cholesterol in this delivery system of death, but I suspect the number is in the range of the melting point of aluminum.

The most amazing thing about the Meat Mountain, other than how you actually eat the sucker and what happens a couple hours thereafter, is that this extravaganza is a mere 1,275 calories. That’s about the same as Arby’s King’s Hawaiian Sweet Heat Beef ‘N Brisket Meal… but at least you get a soda with that.

This sucker has been around since 2014 and, according to their website, remains available to this day. Don’t feel left out of the loop if all this comes as news to you: it’s only on their “secret menu.” This is a meal Tony Stark might feed to The Hulk as an act of desperation. At its time of introduction, the Meat Mountain cost ten bucks a pop.

Remember, you will not see this heavenly satellite of gristle and grease on the big-ass menu over their counter. You’ve got to ask for it by name and they’ll (allegedly) create it for you from scratch. That’s how this secret menu thing works.

For better and for worse, we live in the Days of The Internet so secret menu items are hardly a secret — they’re just not on their store menu or their website. I don’t have Arby’s app; it might be there. But if your looking for a bit of variety — assuming the Meat Mountain doesn’t offer enough — check this out. I admit those Onion Tanglers sounds interesting. Then again, do I really want to tangle with an onion?

Lots of chains have their own secret menus. I will never know what’s on the one at Denny’s as I am much more likely to die of starvation with $20.00 bills hanging out of my every pocket, my dead and molting body repurposed as a 200-pound external door stop. And, while I’m on the subject, no, I don’t want to know what’s on Hooter’s secret menu either. Let’s just assume it involves nipple tassels.

Arby’s slogan is “we have the meats.” Yup, and they put them all in their Meat Mountain sandwich. It’s perfect for people who have three hands, a bib, a forest of napkins, a strong colon and, perhaps, one of those bags you might find in an airplane setback pocket.

(A tip of the hat to The Florescent Leech and Eddie who provided this week’s secret message. And to Rev. Heat, because the writer always needs more barbecue.)

With Further Ado #247: Student Guest Column Contest – How Wine Lovers Geek Out

With Further Ado #247: Student Guest Column Contest – How Wine Lovers Geek Out

We’re right in the middle of an annual tradition that’s part of a class I teach at Ithaca College all about pop culture and running conventions.

Each year, I ask the students to submit a column on pop culture as if they were the author of this column. Our crack editorial staff has poured over the submissions and selected our winners.

Our first runner-up of this year’s column contest is Ellie Aliperti and her thoughts on Wine and wine lovers as a fandom.

Congrats to you, Ellie.

***
How Wine Lovers Geek Out
By Ellie Aliperti

There is a stigma around wine. It is often thought of as a sophisticated person’s drink, and to many, it may appear intimidating. I, however, happened to grow up in a family that owns a winery and with a father who makes wine. So, I know the story of wine before it’s poured into your glass at some fancy wine bar.

To me, it has always been a part of my life. While for some people wine can be intimidating or exclusionary, others (especially many in the food and beverage industry) really “geek out” on it! A wine geek can be best described as an individual with an eccentric devotion to alcoholic beverages created by fermented grapes. One should not confuse the Wine Geek with the Wine Snob (though there can be a crossover). Continue reading “With Further Ado #247: Student Guest Column Contest – How Wine Lovers Geek Out”

With Further Ado #075: Wake Up!

With Further Ado #075: Wake Up!

How’d it all go last night? Did you dance and party your brains out at the greatest event of the year? I hope there was a passionate midnight kiss involved.   Or are you one of those folks who leaves “Amateur Night” to others and got cozy on your couch watching episodes of The Twilight Zone?  I’m not judgey – both plans sound  pretty great to me.

Either way, you probably need a little coffee to get going today, and that’s the focus of this week’s column.

Death Wish Coffee Co. is a small business from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., one of my favorite places in the world. Founder Mike Brown has been on a mission to create the world’s strongest coffee and to fuel coffee drinkers not only each morning, but wherever they go. You might think that the coffee market is oversaturated, or dominated by big companies. It might seem like there’s no room for new ideas, but this is innovative company has been rocking it.  When they won Intuit’s “Small Business Big Game” competition in 2015, they were awarded a 30 second spot on the SuperBowl.

Brown and his team make a solid product with pride and strong ethics, and obviously have fun along the way.  In my classes, I teach college students how magical things happen at the intersection of entrepreneurism and creativity. And that’s the case here.

By Odin, ‘tis Glorious!

One of the things Death Wish Coffee did was create a comic book. It’s called Odinforce and now it’s become a series. Deathwish is just about to publish the third issue!  Continue reading “With Further Ado #075: Wake Up!”

Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #060: Cow Belches

Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #060: Cow Belches

I love digging out under-reported facts that go against the grain of common wisdom. It’s the demonstration mode of the old axiom “Live and Learn.”

For example, it is common wisdom that one of the more serious contributing factors to global warming is cow farts. Yes, I said “farts.” Get over it. Of course, the people who most like to perpetuate this wonderful myth – outside of the vegan Morlocks – are people beholden to the energy industry. They don’t want you to cut back on gasoline consumption or get into renewable fuel sources. They don’t want you to maintain the anti-pollution standards that have brought massive reductions in air crap. You know, the very standards that our current president and his fellow Trumpublicans abolished, killing tens of thousands of people each year. Continue reading “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #060: Cow Belches”

Brainiac On Banjo #041: It’s Not Easy Drinking Green

Brainiac On Banjo #041: It’s Not Easy Drinking Green

If you’re from the Midwest or you’ve spent some serious time there, you are about to understand why I am expanding the meaning of the phrase “pop culture.”

I had just turned 11. I know this because my Uncle Irv took me to Normie’s deli for lunch, and it was next door to Weiner’s Drug Store where I purchased Superman #149, “The Death of Superman.” Yup, that’s the way fanboys organize our personal histories.

I told Uncle Irv I wasn’t very hungry and he suggested I just order a plate of french fries. I didn’t know you could do that, so I was thrilled I didn’t have to waste stomach-space on stuff that inadvertently might be healthy. He then asked me if I ever had a Green River. I didn’t know what that was, so he ordered me a glass. Green River was – and remains – what we in the Midwest call “pop.” Some southerners call it “co-cola” (even if it’s Pepsi), and folks out east call it soda. That annoys me – in my world, “soda” has ice cream in it. Seeing that New Yorkers look down their nose at all things non-New York, I refer to the substance as “soda pop.” They scowl, but they don’t complain. Not if they know me. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo #041: It’s Not Easy Drinking Green”

Brainiac On Banjo #021: How Much Stuf Is Too Much Stuf???

Brainiac On Banjo #021: How Much Stuf Is Too Much Stuf???

If you need further evidence that the big money people are banking on wide-spread legalization of marijuana, you need not look further than the folks at Mondelēz International, current owners of Nabisco. They manufacture the all-time favorite food of stoners, Oreo cookies. And it seems the folks who make Oreos have a keen eye on the bounding weed market.

A couple days ago my editor texted me about this new product called “MOST Stuf Oreos.” More than Mega Stuf, more than Double Stuf, this stuff has enough Stuf to put your average American into a diabetic coma. She alerted me that it just came out, is a “limited-edition,” and is presently available at places such as Target, Walmart, and Rite-Aid. Well, there’s a Rite-Aid near me, and it is a drug store so it must be healthy, and I inferred my editor was making an assignment.

So the next day I labored out to the drug store where I secured the last package of Most Stuf Oreos they had.  Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo #021: How Much Stuf Is Too Much Stuf???”

With Further Ado #017: When Steve Rude Almost Saved Christmas

With Further Ado #017: When Steve Rude Almost Saved Christmas

Back in the early 90s, we needed to save Christmas and I almost got Steve Rude to do it.

I was in brand management when I was starting out my marketing career. I had the great fortune to be assigned to Nabisco’s OREO brand.  It was a lot of fun.  I worked on the launch of Mini OREO, introduced the Halloween OREO and a Christmas variant with red crème.  In those days, changing anything about Nabisco’s brand was a serious exercise only undertaken with the most serious thought and planning.   This is in stark contrast today, when every season there are several more flavor variants to the brand.

Christmas and cookies always go together, and one of the annual traditions for the brand was to create a collectible OREO tin. These were tins with a wistful, family-focused Rockewellian painting that would be sold with a 16 oz.  package of OREO inside it.  From a marketing perspective it served many purposes: it was one more reason for someone to buy OREO, the retailers had an excuse to build a display and we even had fans who collected them each year.

We typically hired a commercial illustrator to provide the painting of a family eating OREO cookies by the Christmas Tree. They were perfectly fine, but I had the idea that I wanted to step it up with one of my favorite artists.

Steve Rude had burst onto the scene the decade before with his brilliant Nexus series and other comics work.  His work was always exciting and fun to look at fun to look at, but one couldn’t help but be struck by both his brilliant design sense, and his ability to render expressive figures.  Many of the covers would be painted, while the interiors would showcase his impressive traditional comics work.  His paintings are what sparked my idea.  Continue reading “With Further Ado #017: When Steve Rude Almost Saved Christmas”

Star Wars Sunday Funday: Club Starkiller Base

Star Wars Sunday Funday: Club Starkiller Base

If you’re looking for family fun, look no further.


The Galaxy’s hottest club is Starkiller Base.

Located in the upper lower west side of space, this hollowed-out ice planet is the creation of some hardcore Empire fanboys who wanted their own Death Star and figured “Hey, third time’s the charm.” This place has everything: stormtroopers, wookiees, angry Darth Vader impersonators, giant Sith lords in loungewear. And look who’s at the bar. Is that Emperor Palpatine? No, it’s three ewoks in a trenchcoat.

If the bar’s not your scene, head down to the garbage compactor where DJ Phasma is spinning remixes of C-3PO’s Top 100 complaints.

And this Friday, the first hundred people through the door get to see a plucky band of rebels destroy the whole thing with a single critical flaw and the power of friendship.

(Also, droids drink free before 10pm)