Oatmeal is healthy and wholesome.

Well, at least that’s what Wilfred Brimley and the guy who yells at fat people on NBC tell me. But just like wholesome Amish kids during rumspringa, oatmeal can get wild, crazy, and do unhealthy things as well.

For example, instead of using skim milk or water to make my oatmeal, I use melted ice cream and then top that with crushed Heath candy bar pieces, Hershey chocolate syrup. a small bag of M&M’s, and half a container of Cool Whip.

That sounds totally diabeteeriffic!

I can corrupt oatmeal to the point where you would have to start calling it ho-meal. But it appears Quaker has done the corrupting for me with their new chocolate chip instant oatmeal.

Okay, they haven’t really done any corrupting because there aren’t many semisweet chocolate chips in each instant oatmeal packet.

If you’d like to teach your child how to count using the chocolate chips in each packet, you’re going to have to open a number of packets to equal the level of learning your child will get from watching an episode of Sesame Street, because each one contains four or five chocolate chips. And they’re not big chocolate chips. They make the oats in each packet look bigger than they really are.

I made a bowl of Quaker Chocolate Chip Instant Oatmeal using vanilla soy milk and another using filtered water. Using filtered water is healthier, but using vanilla soy milk makes it taste better. But if you read on, that’s not saying much.

The chocolate chips take awhile to melt, and after they do, the oatmeal looks chocolatey. As you can see above, the liquid looks like the milk at the bottom of the bowl after eating Cocoa Puffs, but that liquid is a liar.

A dirty stinkin’ liar!

The chocolate flavor is almost non-existent. It has less flavor than the other Quaker flavored instant oatmeal varieties I’ve had. I wish Quaker had put a little hot cocoa powder in their Chocolate Chip Instant Oatmeal to make things tolerable. So it looks like, in order to get through the rest of the box, I’m going to have to make this oatmeal tolerable on my own with some cocoa power, semisweet chocolate chips, M&M’s, crushed Oreo cookies, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, chocolate sprinkles, crushed Butterfinger candy pieces, Hershey’s Kisses, and melted Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 packet – 130 calories, 20 calories from fat, 2 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1 gram of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, 16 grams of other carbohydrates, and 3 grams of protein.)

Item: Quaker Chocolate Chip Instant Oatmeal
Price: $3.29
Size: 10 packets/1.23 ounces each
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Quick to make. Good source of whole grains. Rumspringa. Sesame Street. Decent source of fiber. Low in fat.
Cons: Really faint chocolate flavor. Really small chocolate chips. Not many chocolate chips in each packet. The liquid in the oatmeal is a liar, a dirty stinkin’ liar! Using the chocolate chips to teach your child to count won’t get him or her very far unless you open several packets.

I can’t think of sandwich crackers without thinking of grade school day care. Unnaturally bright neon orange crackers with some sort of peanut-related substance smeared in between. I’m sure they don’t serve those anymore, since some kid named Billy who eats his boogers has a peanut allergy so severe that just being in the same room with something that barely qualifies as peanut butter sends him into anaphylactic shock. Kids are such sissies these days.

I’m also pretty sure I haven’t had sandwich crackers since those grade school days. I think time has shown that I’ll eat some pretty juvenile shit – I was about to write that I’d eat Dunkaroos if they still existed, but Google just told me they do, so now I’m conflicted – but there’s something about sandwich crackers that makes me wince. Perhaps there’s a deep-seated feeling of abandonment caused by having to go to day care after school. More likely it’s that my friends and I used to scrape all the peanut butter out of the sandwiches and use it like a greasy substitute for Play-Doh. I once made the perfect sculpture of a nose. It was the pinnacle of my artistic career.

These Ritz Crackerfuls Big Stuff Colossal Cheddar aren’t sandwich crackers, however. These are filled crackers. At least, according to Ritz, that’s what they are. But I can see through Ritz’s facade. Look at that packaging. The cracker looks like it’s sitting on a pristine marble countertop. The “k” in “Crackerfuls” is sprouting a stalk of wheat from its head, presumably indicating that it is natural or healthy. And yet, for the menfolk, it is made clear that there is 75% more filling, so nobody will make fun of you for eating wimpy, under-filled sandwich crackers. I mean, filled crackers. No, I mean sandwich crackers.

In size, they certainly aren’t your kids’ crackers, coming in at 4.5 inches long by 2 inches wide, with a generous amount of filling. I’d say almost too generous, but the ratio of cheese-to-cracker is just about right, although the cheese does squish out the sides when you bite down, making for a less than tidy snack.

The crackers have a pleasant buttery taste, just like regular Ritz, but they aren’t flaky and are much more sturdy, helping to compensate for the heft of the filling. The cheese, when tasted by itself, has a bit of a grainy feel to it, but when eaten as a sandwich, the cracker seems to cover that up. The cheese has the consistency of a soft cheese spread (hence the squishing out the sides).

It also tastes a lot like a processed cheese spread, which is my biggest complaint. Ritz seems to be marketing these crackers to a more adult market, and while the cracker is quite tasty, the cheese filling tastes too artificial for most adult palates. I still eat cheese-in-a-can, but I’m not exactly “normal”. I also think the cheese is too soft; most adults don’t want cheese spread squishing out everywhere, and the consistency adds to the feeling that you’re definitely not ingesting actual cheese.

Ritz Crackerfuls Big Stuff Colossal Cheddar filled crackers seem caught between two demographics. Too large for a child’s snack and lacking the flashy packaging that would make a kid scream at their parent until it wound up in the shopping cart, and yet too unrefined and artificial-tasting to appeal to most adults, who would probably take the individually-wrapped sandwiches to work and then find themselves embarrassed to be wiping processed cheese spread off their faces. Ritz got the cracker right, but the cheese all wrong, and with 75 percent more of it, that just makes that downfall more obvious.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 pack – 190 calories, 100 calories from fat, 11 grams of total fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 2.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 4 gram of monounsaturated fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 300 milligrams of sodium, 70 milligrams of potassium, 20 grams of total carbohydrates, 4 grams of dietary fiber, 3 grams of sugars, 2 grams of protein, 0% vitamin A, 0% vitamin C, 6% calcium, and 4% iron.)

Item: Ritz Crackerfuls Big Stuff Colossal Cheddar
Price: $3.29
Size: 5 filled crackers
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Crackers were buttery and held together well. Using peanut butter as a substitute for Play-Doh. Sandwich was large enough for an adult snack. The opportunity to watch a co-worker eat a messy sandwich cracker.
Cons: Cheese tasted too processed. Kids screaming for junk food at the grocery store. Cheese was too soft and messy. Being that adult eating a messy sandwich cracker.

I’ve always been supportive of fast food corporations’ revenues on new items, and now that the Colbert Super PAC has taught me corporations are people, I am also trying to be more supportive of fast food corporations’ self-esteem. In order to be more sensitive to Dunkin’ Donuts’ feelings, and because their new product is a sandwich, I will use the sandwich method of feedback to review the new Smokehouse Sausage Breakfast Sandwich by sandwiching each piece of negative feedback between two positive thoughts.

Positive: The sandwich stayed warm while I walked the 6 blocks home.
Negative: I recently moved apartments and there are now two Starbucks within those 6 blocks. You better up your locations around here, Dunkin’. I love you, but I also love gingerbread lattes and free WiFi.
Positive: On the other hand, the counter guys at Dunkin’ Donuts never judge me for constantly confusing the only two Italian words I know. Stupid smug baristas.

Positive: The cheese was well-melted and kept the split-length-wise sausage link in place very well.
Negative: I suppose the two half-links of sausage probably provide more meat than a regular sausage patty, but they were like a square peg being put in a round hole, or more accurately two half-cylinders bifurcating an oblate spheroid (now there’s an expression that could really catch on). The half-links felt awkwardly bulky on an English muffin, and I ended up with inconsistent amounts of meat in each bite.
Positive: Overall, the sandwich did feel a bit more filling than your average Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast sandwich.

Positive: The premium sausage is produced by Hillshire Farm, whose founders are in the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame. No seriously, that exists.
Negative: Any Hillshire Farm product hits you with a bunch of fat and sodium, and this new sandwich is no exception, weighing in with a whopping 36 grams of fat and 1,500 milligrams of sodium.
Positive: I’ve finally found a Hall of Fame whose membership is worth spending my life aspiring to.

Positive: I guess the sausage had some slight scent of smokiness to it.
Negative: That slight smoky scent didn’t really translate at all into the taste. (I just spent a half hour trying to formulate a joke about the minuscule smokiness of this sandwich, my roommate’s pack-a-week smoking habit, and smoking his sausage. I couldn’t get it to work, but dammit, B, if you stop smoking I’ll promise to stop making sex jokes about you in my reviews.)
Positive: Sausage means penis and that is funny.

Positive: The sausage mostly just tasted like a hot dog (I happen to like hot dogs). As with your average hot dog, it was quite salty, and the casing had some snap to it.
Negative: As anyone who’s ever been to a ballgame knows, overpaying for a hot dog sucks, and this sandwich cost four dollars.

I know that last feedback sandwich was open-faced, so here’s a super positive closing paragraph to make up for it and boost Dunkin’ Donuts’ self-esteem. That was a good try, Double D! Just because I wouldn’t buy the Smokehouse Sausage Breakfast Sandwich again doesn’t mean I won’t come visit all the time and taste whatever new items you have rolling out next. Hey, didn’t your IPO just go really well? If you’re still feeling down after this review, I’ve got great news: Starbucks has buy-one-get-one-free holiday drinks this weekend. How about a gingerbread latte, my treat?

(Nutrition Facts – 550 calories, 320 calories from fat, 36 grams of fat, 13 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 245 milligrams of cholesterol, 1,510 milligrams of sodium, 36 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 4 grams of sugar, and 21 grams of protein.)

Item: Dunkin Donuts Smokehouse Sausage Breakfast Sandwich
Price: $3.99
Purchased at: Dunkin Donuts
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Sausage mostly just tasted like a hot dog. The melted cheese kept everything in place pretty well. Sandwich stayed hot on my walk home. It might’ve been a bit more filling than an average DD breakfast sandwich. There’s a Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame. Using the sandwich method of feedback. Buy-one-get-one-free gingerbread lattes.
Cons: Sausage mostly just tasted like a hot dog. Smokehouse sausage wasn’t actually all that smoky. Half-links in an English muffin were awkwardly bulky. Tons of sodium and fat. $4 is too expensive for what would be considered a small hot dog. Judgmental baristas.

Burger King loves coming up with product names that end with -er as much as I love watching Maru the Cat videos on YouTube. First, there was the Whopper. Then, Burger King released the Stacker. And now, there’s the Topper.

BK Toppers come in three varieties:

Deluxe – American cheese, lettuce, onions, pickles and Stacker sauce.

Mushroom and Swiss – Mushrooms, Swiss cheese and Griller sauce.

Western BBQ – Onion rings, American cheese and Sweet Baby Ray’s Spicy BBQ sauce.

All come with a 3.2-ounce beef patty, cheese, and a sesame seed bun.

If you find yourself having to choose one because you lack the funds to buy two or three, I’d suggest avoiding the Mushroom and Swiss one. Its mushroom flavor is definitely strong. It made my mouth taste like I just tried to get rid of a bag of psychedelic mushrooms by eating them while cops break into my bathroom, which has a toilet clogged from trying to flush my weed stash, hence the reason why I’m eating all those mushrooms. But what makes this burger the least appealing of the three is the Griller sauce. I have no idea what Griller sauce is, but whatever it is, it makes the burger a bit too salty. It’s as if I’m French kissing a mermaid.

Update: The new BK Chef’s Choice Burger also has the same sauce and I enjoyed it, so it’s pretty much the mushrooms that ruin this burger. Sorry, grill sauce.

Because my mind is like the World Book Encyclopedia of fast food, the first thing I noticed about the Deluxe and Western BBQ BK Toppers is that they both have ingredients similar to past Burger King burgers. As Grub Grade points out in their review, the Western BBQ BK Topper is basically a Burger King Rodeo Cheeseburger. As for the Deluxe BK Topper, it sounds like a smaller version of the discontinued BK Big King.

Anyhoo, unlike the Mushroom and Swiss BK Topper, both the Deluxe and Western BBQ BK Toppers were worth the $2.49 I paid for each of them. So it’ll be worth the $1.99 you’ll probably pay because you don’t live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

If you enjoy the tangy, Thousand Island dressing flavor of a Big Mac, you’ll like the Deluxe BK Topper. The pickles and onions are larger than what you’ll find in a Big Mac, but it’s almost as messy as a Big Mac. It’s a tasty burger, but I have to say the Western BBQ BK Topper tops it. (Tops. Get it? I. Am. Lame.)

The BBQ sauce sets the Western BBQ BK Topper apart from the others. According to this article, Burger King is using Sweet Baby Ray’s Spicy BBQ sauce. While tasty, I wouldn’t consider the sauce to be spicy hot. However, the sauce’s flavor made me wish it came in Costco-sized tubs so that I could dunk the Mushroom and Swiss BK Topper into it to make it taste better. The onion rings gave the burger a little crunch and a bit of onion flavor that complimented the beef patty and BBQ sauce.

Overall, the BK Toppers are a pleasant addition to the Burger King menu. Well, the Deluxe and Western BBQ ones, but two out of three ain’t bad.

(Nutrition Facts – Deluxe – 420 calories, 26 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 820 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 7 grams of sugar, 15 grams of protein. Mushroom and Swiss – 410 calories, 27 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 850 milligrams of sodium, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of sugar, 16 grams of protein. Western BBQ – 400 calories, 23 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 720 milligrams of sodium, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 10 grams of sugar, 16 grams of protein.)

Item: REVIEW: BK Toppers (Deluxe, Mushroom and Swiss, & Western BBQ)
Price: $2.49 each
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Burger King
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Deluxe)
Rating: 4 out of 10 (Mushroom and Swiss)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Western BBQ)
Pros: Western BBQ BK Topper is damn tasty. Deluxe BK Topper is tasty. Thick patties. BBQ sauce is pretty good. Inexpensive. Even more inexpensive if you get to pay the $1.99 price. Maru the Cat.
Cons: Mushroom and Swiss is the worst. Griller sauce is salty. Available for a limited time. Weed clogged toilets. Deluxe is kind of messy. Having to eat a bag of psychedelic mushrooms before the cops get you.

The first thing that occurred to me when I purchased my trim, little magenta-and-white package of Trident Layers Sweet Cherry and Island Lime sugar free gum is that it sounds like a 70’s-era grindhouse action duo. Sweet Cherry is the prostitute-turned-undercover-inner-city-vice-detective and Island Lime is her hard-hitting, trash-talking, crime-solving Rastafarian partner.

I should invent a secret time machine and become a 70’s Hollywood producer. I’d make millions….. MILLIONS!!! (But maybe not if I forget to adjust for inflation.) The second thing that occurred to me is that it looks like the lime is violently bisecting the cherry on the package. This gum will be rated R.

The Sweet Cherry and Island Lime gum itself is shaped like a rectangular block. Upon first chew, you immediately taste a strong splash of artificial lime flavor. Not terrible, but a bit too strong. Then the cherry flavor comes in. It’s not as potent as the lime… definitely more understated. The cherry is a subtle low note to the lime’s sparking high note. Though I soon began to wish the lime would shut up.

Like other Trident Layers gum flavors, the taste disappears after only a couple minutes of vigorous chewing. I thought for a second that maybe I was chewing too hard, and then I remembered that this is America, and I will chew my gum as hard and as quickly as I damn well please. Nonetheless, I did attempt to chew another piece more slowly to see if the sweetness would stick around longer, but alas, it wasn’t enough to prolong the fruity sensation. If this were one of those old gum commercials where the blast of flavor was portrayed as a bitchin’ wave, I would’ve bottomed out on the ocean floor and shredded my face on a coral reef in seconds. Totally NOT tubular, dude.

Trident Layers Sweet Cherry and Island Lime gum is all right, but its flavor lacks longevity, and even if it did last longer, I probably wouldn’t like it because the artificial sweetness is too much. The overall flavor profile of cherry mixed with lime is that of a jaunty cocktail minus the alcohol (a mocktail), although I guess you could chew this gum immediately after downing a couple shots of straight vodka and really have yourself a drink. I’d imagine you’re saving that kind of thing for the weekend. Or for when Sweet Cherry and Island Lime’s Badasssssss Fruit Splash Song premieres in a theater near you, back in 1974. But perhaps I’ve said too much.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 stick – 5 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of sodium, 2 grams of carbohydrates, and 0 grams of sugar.)

Other Trident Layers Sweet Cherry + Island Lime Gum reviews:
Mmm…Deliciousness
Gum Alert
TV & Gum Are Awesome

Item: Trident Layers Sweet Cherry + Island Lime Gum
Price: $0.99
Size: 14 pieces per pack
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: High notes of lime flavor accompany low notes of cherry very well. Exploitation cinema. Chewing your gum American-style. Mimics the flavor of jaunty, fruit-flavored mocktails. Time machines.
Cons: Artificial sweetness is overpowering. Flavor doesn’t last long. Mocktails. Wipe out, dude. Forgetting to adjust for inflation.

I hate the Albino 3D Gingerbreadbaker, or as he’s more commonly known as, the Pillsbury Doughboy. Look at him smiling and being shielded by the Pillsbury logo on the box of his new Pillsbury Sausage & Cheese Grands! Biscuit Sandwiches.

He better hide behind that logo because I want to throw one of his new breakfast biscuits at him…frozen. Why frozen? Because I’m pretty sure throwing a heated one at the Doughboy as a projectile is as unsatisfying as eating one.

Each box comes with two sandwiches, which are individually wrapped and split into two halves. Depending on how powerful your microwave oven is, preparing a biscuit sandwich takes anywhere from one minute and 15 seconds to two minutes and 15 seconds. Sadly, for those of you who don’t like the convenience of a microwave oven, there are no conventional or toaster oven instructions.

Look, Pillsbury knows how to make dough and produce commercials that make you want to poke other peoples’ bellies to see if they giggle, but the eggs, cheese sauce, and sausage in the Pillsbury Sausage & Cheese Grands! Biscuit Sandwiches are things they don’t know how to do well. All of the ingredients in the middle of the sandwich get lost in the flavor of the somewhat tasty buttermilk biscuit, which was a little chewy in places and slightly fragile.

I can understand the eggs not providing much flavor, because with a lot of frozen breakfast items, the eggs usually just give everything a little color, some protein, and jack up the amount of cholesterol the product has. However, it’s disappointing the sausage and cheese sauce didn’t have strong flavors because look at the photo above. It looks like the buttermilk biscuit was caught in the middle of a pork hail and cheese rain storm. It’s covered in both, but it doesn’t make a difference in terms of flavor.

The only way a three inch wide and 1.5 inch tall Pillsbury Sausage & Cheese Grands! Biscuit Sandwich could be satisfying is if I could strap the Pillsbury Doughboy to one as I microwave it and listen to him plead for forgiveness as he’s pounded by microwave radiation.

Of course, it would only be satisfying for me.

For the Pillsbury Doughboy, not so much.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 280 calories, 140 calories from fat, 16 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat*, 95 milligrams of cholesterol, 730 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 9 grams of protein, 2% vitamin A, 6% calcium, and 8% iron.)

*Uses partially hydrogenated oil

Item: Pillsbury Sausage & Cheese Grands! Biscuit Sandwiches
Price: $3.00 (on sale)
Size: 2 sandwiches
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Decent tasting buttermilk biscuit. Getting to bake the Pillsbury Doughboy. Lots of sausage and cheese sauce.
Cons: Hard to detect the cheese sauce and sausage. Eggs don’t provide any flavor. Kind of small. Pricey for two sandwiches. Biscuit was chewy in some places. Uses partially hydrogenated oil. No conventional or toaster oven instructions.