Month: August 2008

Burger King Fresh Apple Fries

Ace 20 Comments

When I first heard that Burger King sold apple fries, I naturally assumed that they were deep-fried like their potato brethren’s namesake. I recall that when chicken fries first hit the market, my brain engulfed itself like a neutron star in a defensive state of shock, panic, and excitement. They didn’t live up to the hype, so I figured that this was their finishing salvo – a one-upping of Taco Bell’s caramel apple empanada that would dash any child’s hopes of a healthy existence.

It was not until after I ordered the “fries” that I learned that my anxiety was gravely misguided. Burger King’s apple fries are merely apples cut into the shape of thick-cut French fries. Kind of a cop-out, I thought, especially since they were going at $1.59 for a 2-ounce bag. Still, I was glad to have something remotely fresh and healthy in my mouth after I finished inhaling my Whopper combo.

I was surprised by the freshness of the apples, as they managed to stay clean and crispy with a refreshing bite of tartness to go along with the mellow sweetness. Of course, none of this elaborate description is necessary if you’ve ever eaten an apple. You know, that thing that’s supposed to keep the doctor away? Yes, I admit that I have forgotten what it had tasted like too.

The thing that turns this from cut fruit into kid-friendly treat is the accompanying packet of caramel sauce from which you will try to squeeze every last drop from the packet as if it contained the last vestiges of the antidote. The package is only half an ounce, but its potency will almost trick your brain into believing that you’re eating a caramel apple. Brain deception like this is key in practicing any type of diet – just ask any of those vegans who insist on serving tofurkey’s every Thanksgiving.

The apple fries are a bit pricey on their own, but you can substitute it for free when you’re ordering a Kid’s Meal, or presumably any other type of meal you may order. It’s a good way to treat your kids to something wholesome or to placate your conscience about the Triple Whopper you’re scarfing down. Either way, everyone wins and you can finally start to keep that creepy family doctor at bay.

(Nutritional Facts – Apples – 1 packet – 25 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 mg of cholesterol, 0mg sodium, 6 grams of carbs, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 5 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 8% Vitamin A, 35% Vitamin C, 4% Calcium, and 0% Iron. Caramel Sauce – 1 packet – 35 calories, 0 grams of fat, 9 grams of carbs, 0 grams of dietary fiber, and 5 grams of sugar)

Item: Burger King Apple Fries
Price: $1.59 (free to substitute with regular fries)
Size: 2 ounces (apples), 0.5 ounces (low-fat caramel sauce)
Purchased at: Burger King
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Good alternative for French fries, especially in a Kid’s Meal. Comes with frypod box. You will try to suck the caramel sauce out of the packet. Low on fat and refined sugar.
Cons: Pricey if you buy it on it’s own. Portion of 2 ounces is pretty small. Technically still just cut fruit with a condiment.

REVIEW: Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Marvo 17 Comments

By itself, the smell and taste of mayonnaise is kind of disgusting, but when placed in between two slices of bread with cold cuts, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes or mixed with potatoes, spices, hard-boiled eggs, and mustard, it tastes pretty good. This Jekyll and Hyde condiment also has a reputation for being a bitch when it comes to healthiness, turning normal healthy sandwiches into tasty pockets for saturated fat. It’s hard to believe something so innocently, virgin off-white, could be a sinfully, slutty evil.

Mayonnaise makers have tried their best to create slightly more wholesome versions of this spreadable cream, but their attempts have pretty much ended up with bland tasting paste that would be better off being used for a mayonnaise bikini than for a sandwich or salad. Enter the Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Nutritionists have told us for years that olive oil is one healthy mofo, providing healthier fats that contain one too many prefixes, like polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. The folks at Best Foods have shoehorned Bertolli’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil into their mayonnaise to go along with the usual soybean oil, eggs, and vinegar. Those ingredients will emulsify into a mayonnaise that has three times less saturated fat and almost half the calories of regular Best Foods Mayonnaise. However, it also has one-third more sodium than the original, but overall it’s healthier thanks to the multi-prefixed fats mentioned earlier.

Messing with a sandwich staple seems sacrilegious, because if you change one thing, it seems to change everything else. The Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil smells like regular mayonnaise, but I have to say its flavor kind of threw off my taste buds after I spooned some in my mouth. The olive oil doesn’t overpower it, but there’s just enough to know that there is some in it and there was also a very slight bitter aftertaste to it. After getting the taste of mayonnaise out of my mouth, I realized that most sane people wouldn’t eat mayonnaise with a spoon and I needed to try it in a real world situation, so I slathered a generous glob of it in a turkey sandwich.

With olive oil mayonnaise oozing from under the bread, I consumed the sandwich and determined that it had sort of a muted mayonnaise taste with a hint of olive oil. If you’re trying to eat healthier, it’s indubitably a much better option than any light mayonnaise, but it definitely wasn’t as good as the regular version, making the Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil a lot less of a sinfully, slutty evil.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 tbsp – 50 calories, 5 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 2.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, less than 1 gram of carbs, 0 grams of protein, 1 mayonnaise bikini.)

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to TIB reader Alexander for recommending this product and making me his lab rat.)

Item: Best Foods Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Price: $6.19
Size: 30 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: A lot less of a sinfully, slutty evil. Much better tasting than light mayonnaise. Lower in fat than regular mayonnaise. Contains polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Creamy. Like most mayonnaise, it makes a good mayonnaise bikini.
Cons: Muted mayonnaise taste. Hint of olive oil may turn people off. Higher in sodium than regular mayonnaise. Slight bitter aftertaste to it. I paid six dollars for a jar of it. Eating mayonnaise with a spoon straight from the bottle.

Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner

Marvo 11 Comments

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m in my shower I have to be completely naked, because just like I believe a bed is meant for sleeping and sex, a shower is meant for nudity. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, whether it’s showering, cleaning the shower, or butchering the Cyndi Lauper song “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” just as bad as Miley Cyrus, I have to be naked within my shower’s three walls and shower curtain. Because I’m buck naked when I’m wiping down my “cleansing cubicle” I don’t like the cleaner I use to consist of stuff that may melt off my junk or makes me smell like a high school janitor who took a bath in Pine-Sol. Fortunately, I found a bathroom cleaner that I can get all hippie naked with — the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner.

There are several elements I like about my new shower partner. It’s non-toxic, biodegradable, and environmentally friendly, but perhaps its best attribute is the fact that it’s bottled in an actual 1-liter soda bottle that someone once drank out of. It’s cool to think that there is a possibility that I littered a park with this bottle, someone picked it up, and Terracycle then used it to bottle their cleaning products. I guess something good can come from littering.

Of course, all of this eco-friendliness would be meaningless if the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner couldn’t get my bathroom clean, but I gave my entire bathroom a good spray and wipe with this and I have to say that it did as well as any other product I’ve used. It easily cleaned the gunk in between the shower tiles, wiped away the crap on my sink fixtures, got rid of the stuff in the sink basin, and it made the shit on my mirror disappear, but it didn’t do well with troublesome hard water stains.

If you’re going to use the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner, don’t expect your bathroom to smell like potpourri, a florist, or “lemon fresh” after spraying it all over your bathroom. There are no fragrances or dyes in it, which technically makes this cleaner au naturel, like me when I’m in the shower or when I’m walking around my apartment. Its scent can be best described as sterile, which is not a horrible scent, but it’s also not a pleasant one. With most cleaning products, after I spray it on, I have to leave the room because the fumes overwhelm me and cause me to gag, like the extreme gleefulness and repetition I’m exposed to while riding the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland would, but it didn’t happen with this product.

Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner, because it does an excellent job of cleaning in an environmentally friendly way at a reasonable price. It may not be the prettiest smelling product on the market, but a wise man once said, “The scent of a stripper does not equate to their ability to work the pole.”

Item: Terracycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner
Price: FREE (retails for $2.99)
Size: 1 liter
Purchased at: Given by Terracycle
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Cleans just as well as most other products. Reuses an actual 1-liter soda bottle. Reasonably priced. No chemical fumes to overwhelm. Non-toxic. Biodegradable. Environmentally friendly.
Cons: No pleasant scent. Didn’t do well at all with hard water stains. Not too widely available (can be picked up at Office Max and Target). Strippers who don’t know how to work the pole. It’s a Small World ride.

Oops! Disposable Panties

Marvo 26 Comments

Whenever I want to get my kink on at home, I put on a nice tight dress, a pair of black stockings, a brunette wig, six-inch heels, and my favorite shade of lipstick, which is Sexy Fire Red #5. The problem with doing all of this is that I can only wear it indoors or on Halloween, because if I were to go outside on a regular day with all that on, I’m pretty sure Eddie Murphy will come and “accidently” pick me up. To get my kink on when I’m not at home, I like to put on a discreet article of women’s clothing, which is always something I wear under my “normal” clothing.

It’s such a rush to be talking to someone and they don’t know I’m wearing something like a Victoria’s Secret blue lace trim thong or a curve-hugging Frederick’s of Hollywood silk and lace corset or a white Wicked Weasel sheer g-string under my clothing. You would think putting on a piece of women’s clothing would be second nature for me by now, but sometimes when I’m in a hurry, I’ll forget to put something on. Thankfully these Oops! Disposable Panties, which I keep in my car’s glove compartment and get another rush by putting them on in my car in the middle of a Wal-Mart parking lot, saves the day and I can continue my personal kink fest.

These disposable panties come in three colors: pink, blue, and yellow. I chose the pink because they match the color of most of my bras. Oh, and ladies, I just want to let you know that the bra’s underwire also can be uncomfortable for male chests too. As you can see in the photo above, the Oops! Disposable Panties come in an easy to hide disc shape, which is about 1.75 inches in diameter and .75 inches thick. Each disc consists of two “Magic Panties,” which is appropriately named for reasons which I will leave to your kinkiest imaginations.

On my head, the Oops! Disposable Panty looks like the world’s most ineffective shower cap, but when I slip it on my body, it just feels so naughty, so right. The mesh-like material was comfortable and durable while wearing it under my “normal” clothes. Sure, it wasn’t as comfortable as my striped cotton Victoria’s Secret PINK knickers, but it will do fine in a pinch and it makes my ass look damn good. It also wasn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever put on and it didn’t fit as well as I hoped, but that was probably due to my junk in the front. Apparently one size fits many and I believe that because I have a 31-inch waist and there was definitely was a lot of room to spare for someone with a bigger waist-wise.

According to the packaging, the Oops! Disposable Panties are handy for those heavy flow days, which means absolutely nothing for me and my fellow kinksters out there. What’s important is that they’re washable, so I can use them to get my kink on again and again.

Item: Oops! Disposable Panties
Price: $1.99
Size: 2-pack
Purchased at: Longs Drugs
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Comfortable and durable. One size fits many. Comes in several colors: blue, pink, and yellow. Convenient for crossdressers on the go. Hygienic and washable. Makes my ass look damn good. Writing this review while rubbing my nipples.
Cons: Didn’t fit as well as I hoped, due to my junk in the front. Not sexy. Not as comfortable as my regular panties. World’s most ineffective shower cap when placed on head.

Ken’s Steak House Lite Accents Honey Mustard Vinaigrette

Marvo 12 Comments

The Ken’s Steak House Lite Accents Honey Mustard Vinaigrette spray bottle takes me back to my youth. Back then, I had to find ways to entertain myself because I eventually got tired of my toys. Lego got boring after I made a F-15 fighter out of it. Playing with my Star Wars figures became old after it turned out Luke and Leia were siblings, which totally ruined the love triangle I created with them and Darth Vader. G.I. Joe got lame when Cobra Commander changed to that lame cloth hood, which replaced his helmet with the shiny face shield. Finally, I put down my Barbie dolls after I found out they were not anatomically correct and because boys were not supposed to play with them.

After losing interest in most of my toys, I turned my attention towards spraying. I don’t know what it was about spraying that interested me. Perhaps it was the continuous hissing sound or the fine liquid mist, but whatever it was, I was hooked. It started harmlessly with a little Spray and Wash to get rid of the “ring around the collar,” a little Pam non-stick spray, and Raid bug killer, but then I moved on to spray paints and hair spray. I eventually became a graffiti artist/pyromaniac, but it turned out that I had no artistic skill, so I just became a pyromaniac with a pack of matches and a salon-sized can of Aqua Net hair spray. It was exciting burning bugs and melting my G.I. Joe figures, but something called the “ozone layer” eventually ruined my fun.

(Editor’s note: The Impulsive Buy does not condone the use of hairspray and matches to create an awesome blowtorch. It is a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do. Doing so may cause harm not only to yourself but to others as well.)

So that’s why I weep as I spray the Ken’s Steak House Lite Accents Honey Mustard Vinaigrette on my salad with its lame pump spray, instead of a CFC-spewing, rock-and-roll aerosol spray that would blow the leafy greens away. WOOOO!!! Actually, the spray from the Lite Accents bottle was more like a stream, which made it hard to evenly coat a salad. According to the front of the bottle, each spray is one calorie, but according to the nutrition facts, 10 sprays equals 15 calories, so it’s actually 1.5 calories per spray, which means my mathematic abilities are still at a sixth grade level. The bottle also states that it can dress more than 25 salads, which is approximately the number of salads I’ve had in the past five years.

The dressing was watery, since physics probably makes it hard for something creamy to come out of a tiny spray nozzle. It had a slightly sweet, tangy flavor to it that I didn’t enjoy when I sprayed it directly into my mouth, but enjoyed when I sprayed it on a salad. It maybe a low-calorie, low-fat salad dressing, but it doesn’t taste as “healthy” as pourable low-calorie, low-fat salad dressings. The bottle also recommends using it on steak, chicken, or fish, which is good because I really don’t know when I’m going to eat my next salad.

(Nutrition Facts – 10 sprays – 15 calories, 0.5 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 95 milligrams of sodium, 2 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, and 1 pointer finger workout.)

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to long time TIB reader Brie for kind of recommending this product. Actually, she wanted us to review the Wish Bone Salad Spritzers, another salad dressing spray, but we ended up reviewing these because they were on sale.)

Item: Ken’s Steak House Lite Accents Honey Mustard Vinaigrette
Price: $3.99 (on sale)
Size: 7 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Decent slightly sweet, tangy flavor. Low calorie. Low fat. Can use on steak, chicken or fish. Homemade blowtorches. Cobra Commander with the helmet and shiny face shield.
Cons: Pricey for salad dressing. Watery. Not really a spray, more like a stream. CFCs. My artistic abilities. My need for more salads in my diet.