I don’t chew gum.

So why is there a picture of Dentyne gum in this post? Simple: Dentyne’s marketers reached out to me for some blog-vertising action (just one of a recent spate of requests to come this way). They sent on two “bottles” worth of the gum, so I guess I’m obliged.

That’s one thing: “Bottles”. Dentyne refers to these plastic containers as bottles, even in ads. And yet, with their wide-mouth lids, they’re clearly more like jars. Maybe “jar of gum” sounds like an odd packaging description, but “bottle of gum” doesn’t sound much better.

Such packaging isn’t new in the gum/candy game. It’s been around for years now, obviously geared toward car-cupholder placement. But once again, I’m not a good fit: I don’t own a car. And even if I liked gum, I don’t know about having a jar (yeah, I said it) taking up valuable space inside my everyday man-bag.

So is there anything I like about this freebie? Just one thing: That wild artwork on the container’s outer wrapping. It’s a commissioned design by Anthony Yankovic, part of a series of color-themed designs for Dentyne’s flavors. Those intricate line-drawings are mesmerizing. I particularly dig that psychedelic triple-eyed owl, the centerpiece of this mini-mural.

As it happens, Yankovic and I share a bit of a connection: He currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida — the same town I made my home in for 15 years. In fact, as near as I can figure, Yankovic moved to the ‘Burgh just about the same time I moved out, some four years ago. Small world.

In any case, after this review, I’m left with a couple of 60-piece counts of sugarless peppermint gum in a cool-looking container. Nice to look at, but ultimately, I’ll have to give them away, fanciful art and all.

Ponder the inequities of existence, condensed into my Chinese-food dinner last night:

My fortune cookie had not one, but three fortunes tucked inside it. Meanwhile, the empty fortune cookie remains bereft of any paper-slip of wisdom (plus lucky numbers on the back!).

Then again, my triplicate-bearing treat was quickly gobbled up by yours truly. The EFC, though split in half, lives on. Plus, the restaurant where I was dining was almost completely empty. So lots of see-sawing on the apportionment scale for a Friday night.

Once the province of boxers in training, raw eggs have been a chic ingredient in New York City cocktails for the past year. So it was only a matter of time before the city cracked down on all this eggshell-cracking mixology:

Nevertheless, on that fateful evening, an inspector from the New York City Department of Health cited Pegu Club, at 77 West Houston Street in SoHo, for serving the [Earl Grey MarTEAni] without telling the customer who ordered it that it contained raw egg. The notice said it was a serious infraction that required a court appearance.

I’m all for adventuresome imbibing. Still, I’m kinda glad that the brakes are being applied here. When I’m ordering a martini — even a tea-infused one, which I’d totally dig — I’m not necessarily looking for another avant-garde additive in the glass. Although the rationale is enlightening:

“The tannins in tea, alone, can build up on your palate and exhaust it — which is one of the reasons why many people drink tea with milk and lemon,” she said. “The egg white in this drink achieves the same feat, without the potentially coating effect that you’d get from milk or cream. The raw egg white adds an ethereal mouth feel, much like a foamy mousse — the raw egg white has the ability to aerate into a much greater volume than pasteurized could.”

A heady mixture, indeed. But I’ll stick to the less-modulated chemical reactions that come from alcohol intake, sans chicken ovum. The eggs will still be there the next morning, to do their job in cutting through the hangover haze.

For lack of a more colorful dish — or, for that matter, ethnicity — The Bloggess goes back to culinary basics to represent her down-South heritage:

For Hailey’s Multi-Cultural Day party at her school all the other parents brought food for the party indicative of their culture. I showed up with a plate of crackers. No one got the reference. The kids were all “YAY! WE LOVE CRACKERS!”

I just hope those crackers were rich in Vitamin B. Otherwise, they’ll accentuate a similar crimson-hued stereotype.

(Via dustbury)

When it comes to the lifestyle habits of the modern-day urban paleolithic hipster, committing to the raw foods and infrequent eating schedules of our Stone Age ancestors isn’t the weird part. Here’s what is:

Another caveman trick involves donating blood frequently. The idea is that various hardships might have occasionally left ancient humans a pint short. Asked when he last gave blood, Andrew Sanocki said it had been three months. He and his brother looked at each other. “We’re due,” Andrew said.

So amongst the other ill effects of our softy agrarian society is the tendency to bottle up too much of our own blood in our veins. I didn’t realize that one of the definitions of “paleo” was “light-headed”. If I were one of these latter-age hunter-gatherers, I’d chill the hell out and treat myself to a brontosaurus burger.

At one point during dinner last night at La Bonne Soupe (where I, somewhat ironically, did not have the soup), I was convinced that Sarah Silverman was sitting just a couple of tables over.

Then the woman got up to leave, and I could see clearly that it wasn’t her. I mean, it was certainly her, in that she was whoever she was. But she wasn’t Sarah Silverman.

I dejectedly turned my attention back to my table’s post-dessert chit-chat. I’m pretty sure my dining companions hadn’t noticed my preoccupation, nor my subsequent disappointment.

Interestingly, beermaker Molson Canadian recently rolled out a low-calorie brewski called Molson 67. The number in the name refers to the calorie-count per bottle.

I find that interesting because, being a student of history, I instantly recognized that “67″ as a reference to 1867, the year that Canada’s nationhood was established. Invoking the year of independence, in whole or in part, is fairly recognizable as a patriotic gesture north of the border, exemplified by a storied junior hockey team in the Canadian capital. The parallel with America’s 1776 — Spirit of ‘76, 76er’s, etc. — is obvious.

It can’t be a coincidence. You have to believe that Molson purposely concocted this special beer with a caloric value that matches Canada’s birth-year, all for the subtle-but-inherent marketing value. What red-blooded Canuck wouldn’t want to knock back a couple of cold ones that suggest love of country merely when you ask the bartender for the brand?

And yet, a cursory search of the news mentions and corporate communication surrounding last month’s launch of Molson 67 doesn’t seem to mention the patriotism angle. They wouldn’t want to be overbearing with it, but I’m surprised it didn’t get at least a passing mention. Is it possible that this crucial part of the marketing message got diluted by the time the beer hit the market? Or are Canadians not sufficiently gung-ho enough about their history to care?

It’s amazing some U.S.-based brewer hasn’t thought of a similar 76-calorie beer for the American market. Molson, of course, is part of Molson Coors, which is headquartered in Denver. So I’m guessing that a red-white-and-blue festooned “Coors 76″ will appear on Stateside store shelves in the near future.

For Thanksgiving, I’ve taken it upon myself to meet the needs of both the generational extremes that will converge at my mother’s house this Thursday. Translation: I bought a small batch of toys and games for my little nephews, so that they’re sufficiently occupied-slash-out of our hair; and I sprung for the wine, so that they rest of us have sufficient social lubrication.

As always, I’m a sucker for standout novelty wine-bottle labels. So when I saw this Rudolf Müller “Rabbit” Riesling on the store rack, I couldn’t resist adding it to my selection. Heck, it even calls itself “aka The Bunny Wine” on the back label.

Hopefully the taste measures up with the cutesy bottle-art. I like rieslings anyway, and I’m guessing the dry sweetness will match well with the turkey meat. If not, at least I’ll have a conversation piece.

If Kraft Foods Australia learned anything from the strident, New Coke-like public backlash to its recent name-that-foodstuff promotion, it’s this: Aussie are very touchy about their Vegemite.

It all began in July when jars of caramel-brown Vegemite mixed with cream cheese began appearing on supermarket shelves with brightly colored labels inviting consumers to “Name Me.” After weeks of secrecy, during which the company sold more than 3 million jars of the new product to a population of just 22 million people, Kraft took an expensive advertising slot during a nationally televised Australian-rules football final Sept. 26 to announce its winner: Vegemite iSnack 2.0.

The reaction was fierce. Vegemite-loving consumers took to the Internet to voice their collective indignation about the name. Thousands of Twitter posts, at least a dozen Facebook groups and a Web site dedicated to “Names that are better than iSnack 2.0” blasted American-owned Kraft for tampering with an Australian icon…

After four days, Kraft announced that it would put the name back to a vote. This time, it put forward six rather more conventional choices — including Vegemate, Snackmate and Vegemild — from which Cheesybite was elected through an online and telephone poll. The controversy quickly died away.

I’m extremely skeptical about this chain of events. I’d bet anything that Kraft orchestrated this controversy by choosing a “winning” name that they knew would incite negative reaction. I mean, come on — “iSnack 2.0″?? Even the most insular corporate groupthink wouldn’t deem that worthy. The quick turnaround in rolling out a backup name is another tipoff. This was an in-house guerrilla marketing stunt, all the way. It succeeded by overblowing what would have otherwise been a so-what product launch, Vegemite fervor notwithstanding.

I wonder how the photo above, which I snapped a year ago near 1st and 1st in the East Village, would look with jars of Cheesybite interspersed among the straight-yeast flavor. Probably not as visually appealing.

It’s a testament to Caprice Crane’s writing chops that I cannot get this Halloween-appropriate tweet of her’s out of my mind:

Kids’ first experience with Orwellian language comes when they see those tiny candy bars entitled: “Fun Size.”

No better way to instill Newspeak into the head than by going through the stomach (by way of the sweet tooth). Trick-or-treat totalitarianism! I’m sure Orwell, as well as Big Brother himself, would concur.

There is a spectre haunting your supermarket aisle — the spectre of “simple”:

The new marketing code word being used to boast about fewer ingredients: simple. From 2005 to 2008, there’s been a 64.7% increase in new products using the words “simple” or “simply” in the product or brand name, reports researcher Datamonitor.

In 2010, products that tout simplified labels will be more sought after than those clinging to the formerly hot buzzwords “organic” or “natural,” says [trends guru Lynn] Dornblaser.

At its simplest, simple sells.

“The food business has always been ingenious at turning any criticism into a new way to sell food to us,” says Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. The best-selling book popularized the notion of buying only foods with five or fewer ingredients. “As soon as you stress fewer ingredients, you’re implying that the food is healthy.”

Strength in fewer numbers, so to speak. There’s also the sense of transparency in your foodstuff. The typical run-on sentence of chemical additives found in processed foods is countered by this stripped-down simplicity.

But what good is it? Plenty of fatty foods are just as “simple”, and no less unhealthy due to the lack of preservatives. As usual, it’s purely perceptional:

At [a consumer focus group] gathering in San Francisco, one of Häagen-Dazs’ strongest markets, a panelist mentioned that when he shopped recently, he found himself comparing a bag of potato chips that had 20 ingredients with a bag that had three. He said the bag with the short list was the obvious choice.

Just another trend. Although I’m intrigued by how the further deconstruction of our munchies will manifest next. Will we soon be buying bags of mixed-together protein strands and vitamins? Bring it on…

A couple of days ago, I picked up a new flavor of tea: A maté-citrus black tea blend. It’s labeled as “energizing”, presumably moreso than regular caffeine-chocked black tea.

I have to say I haven’t felt the energizing burst, despite drinking at least one cup of this brew every day for nearly a week. It certainly wakes me up, but no more so than any other black tea. The flavor variety alone is worth the switch-up, but beyond that, I’m not feeling any added zip.

Mentioning this, someone told me that the maté rush comes only if you drink it every day for a prolonged period, so I simply haven’t been drinking it long enough yet. I’m pretty sure that’s nonsense. What’s more, I know how that notion came about: Because maté drinkers tend to be fanatical about the beverage, they wind up drinking it all the time. In South American countries, it’s the national drink, so it’s a virtual water substitute. So the theory sprouted up that copious intake was the only way maté’s effects worked, because that’s how regular drinkers take it anyway.

As for me, I’ll certainly finish this box that I bought. No rush to replenish it after that, though.

I can’t attend this Thursday’s Halloween-eve Ted & Amy Supper Club gathering, so I’m recording the holiday-themed menu as a way to experience it vicariously:

Zombie Brains
(pan-fried calf brains served with lemon aioli)

Headless Horseman Soup
(pumpkin soup topped with cloves and honey)

Skeleton Bones
(roasted bone marrow with parsley salad)

Creature from the Black Lagoon
(grilled calamari over squid ink linguine)

The Devil’s Food Cake
(individual chocolate-caramel cakes served warm with whipped cream)

Cocktail: Red Rum

Selection of Wine

I tell you, the fried brains would definitely send me running for the hills of Fort Greene. The Black Lagoon course, on the other hand, I could devour like an eater possessed.

Too bad I can’t make it. Aside from the fun of wandering around Brooklyn in pre-Halloween costume, I could contribute to the wine selection with a Vampire Merlot and a black cat German white.

Yesterday, I hit upon a new (for me) lunch option: A sushi rice bowl. Basically an unconstructed sushi roll, with the sashimi artfully layered atop a pile of white grains. Tasty.

As I was munching, I wondered if I could, indeed, take the contents of that bowl and actually roll my own sushi. The rice was certainly sticky enough, probably sushi-quality. There wasn’t enough salmon, crab, and vegetable (couldn’t quite tell what that was) to make more than two or three bites, but that just meant extra rice on the side.

Maybe they should market these rice bowls as sushi-roll erector sets, for those more ambitious during lunchtime. Or is that anathema with the lazy preference for unorganized foodstuff in bowl form?

Last night, I was told how to make a “ghetto sangria”, and it really couldn’t be any easier:

- 1/2 red wine
- 1/2 Diet Coke

…Nor much more disgusting.

Obviously, the common theme for such ghetto-ized cocktails is sugar — lots and lots of liquid sugar, in soda and/or juice form. And since you’re killing the alcoholic spirit with all that sweet stuff, the next element should be just as obvious: The booze better be a bargain.

In fact, let’s make that the rule of thumb for these down-low drinks: If the bottle of alcohol is as cheap, or (gulp) cheaper than the bottle of mixer, then you’re imbibing in a ghetto-fabulous way. In which case, by all means, drink up.

My fortune-cookie fortune, cracked open just minutes ago:

Hard work pays off in the future,
laziness pays off now.

I’m sure the intent of this little chestnut of wisdom is to encourage sensible preparation for the future. However, as I check my timepiece, I see that it’s precisely… now o’clock. So clearly, I know what to do — or, to the point, not do — to get that instant payoff.

Too bad I’m too busy to heed that cookie-borne advice. All told, I’d have been better off with a non-committal, if enigmatic, empty fortune cookie.

Not long ago, in a little town in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, ordering an orange juice at a certain outdoor cafe would have gotten you, instead, an “Appletizer” and some candy:

At this cafe, you get what the person before you ordered. The next person gets what you ordered.

For the record, here are the rules of the Ogori cafe:

1. Let’s treat the next person. What to treat them with? It’s your choice.

2. Even if it’s a group of friends or a family, please form a single-file line. Also, you can’t buy twice in a row.

3. Please enjoy what you get, even if you hate it. (If you really, really hate it, let’s quietly give it to another while saying, “It’s my treat…”)

4. Let’s say “Thank You! (Gochihosama)” if you find the person with your Ogori cafe card.

5. We can’t issue a receipt.

Basically, the food service is purposely out of sync with the food delivery. (What happens if you’re the first one to place an order that day — do you come away empty-handed?) The element of surprise is key, I think. Knowing the deal ahead of time obviously affects what you’d order; the results are “purer” when someone truly doesn’t expect the time-shifted pre-order. It’s a little bit crowdsourcing, a little bit roulette, and a whole lot of Japanese-style weird. Although maybe it’s better summed up this way:

It forced one to “let go”, just for a brief moment, of the total control we’re so used to exerting through commerce. It led you to taste something new, that you might not normally have ordered. It was a delight.

Taking away that element of control, when we’re so accustomed to a “customer is always right” concept, is the kicker. If you can’t trust your everyday consumer routine, you get a jarring feeling.

It seems that the Ogori cafe was a limited-time experiment in social behavior, because it’s since closed shop. Or maybe it pissed off the wrong patron. I’d love to witness the mayhem triggered by a Stateside edition…

As much as I deplore zombie culture, I deplore those non-stop Subway commercials even more. I’m glad someone else picked up on the built-in wordplay in the sandwich shop’s former “Subway — Eat Fresh!” tagline, which I bastardized to “Subway — Eat FLESH!” long ago, out of disgust. Re-dubbing the brand as “Zombway” is a little much, but I’ll allow it.

Admit it: You can totally see Jared as a drooling, shuffling undead. Let’s see him keep those pounds off with a steady diet of brainssssssss…

If that ocean of font names seem overly ornate, you might consider a food-based mnemonic to keep them straight. Or you just might want to see if you can distinguish between a typeface and a fancy hunk of milk curd, with Cheese or Font?.

In other words, is Holland’s own Gouda truly bolder than Goudy Bold? And can you tell the difference? Without using either bread or paper as a testing medium, of course.

We’ve all heard the rumors about the ridiculous contractual demands made by pop bands when they’re on tour. Among the screwiest is Van Halen’s early-1980s insistence upon being served M&M’S with all brown-colored pieces removed — which turns out to be absolutely true.

I take a similar approach while enjoying my M&M’S, although with a reversed premise: Instead of discarding a particular color, I eat around all the green pieces, saving them for last. (Why green? Because they’re the tastiest ones, duh — and it’s my favorite color, not-so-incidentally.) When you’re digging into a little single-serving bag of the candy, it takes some finger-digital dexterity to successfully extract the non-greens. It quickly becomes an Easter-egg hunt if I luck out with a bag overloaded with greenies.

So I guess this irrational segregation of sugary snacks is my way of being the rockstar that I’m not, and never will be. At least I’m left with chocolate.

Building off those body-decay anti-smoking ads from a few years back, New York City is applying the gross-out warning to sugar-packed soft drinks, in the form of a too-detailed visual representation of human fat.

The ads — which cost about $277,000 to develop over three fiscal years, including money for creative work and focus groups — will run in 1,500 subway cars for three months. (The $90,000 cost of the subway advertisement comes through a private donor, the Fund for Public Health in New York.)

Cathy Nonas, a dietitian who directs physical activity and nutrition programs at the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which developed the ad, said that officials concluded, after conducting focus groups, that a graphic, in-your-face approach worked…

“We had to make sure it looked like real human fat,” said Ms. Nonas, of the health department. “We did want those little blood vessels and things like that.”

“Pouring on the pounds” and “don’t drink yourself fat” provide the textual subtlety to counterbalance those cascading globs of sugar-spawned lard. Mentally hitting the straphanger high and low, I suppose.

High time that Gotham lashed out at the sugarwater scourge. I’m sure these tactics will be just as effective in stamping out sweetener-spiked beverages as they were in eliminating ciggies — because you can’t find anyone lighting up in New York anymore, right?