Tag: Condiment

REVIEW: Hello Kitty Rice Seasoning Mix

Marvo 14 Comments

Death by Hello Kitty is not how I hope to leave this Earth, but the Hello Kitty Rice Seasoning Mix has the power to make it happen with its 2,739 milligrams of sodium per package.

Although that’s not how I imagined Hello Kitty would truly off me.

I figure if Hello Kitty wanted to end me, she would use Hello Kitty chloroform or Hello Kitty roofies to knock me unconscious, restrain me with Hello Kitty handcuffs or Hello Kitty duct tape, keep me silent with a Hello Kitty gag rag, throw me in the back of a Hello Kitty van, drive me to the nearest Sanrio shop, secure my body to a Hello Kitty torture rack, pour water all over me with a Hello Kitty bucket, wake me up via electrocution with Hello Kitty jumper cables connected to a Hello Kitty car battery, break my nose with the butt of a Hello Kitty M-16 assault rifle, place several connected sticks of Hello Kitty dynamite around my body with a long fuse, light the fuse with a Hello Kitty blowtorch, say to me “Goodbye, Kitty,” walk away and I blow up moments later.

The Hello Kitty Rice Seasoning Mix (or furikake for those of you who like to keep it real) is made up of Hello Kitty-shaped pieces of dried seaweed, strips of dried seaweed, rice crackers, bonito powder, monosodium glutamate and a shitload of salt and cuteness, both of which can cause high blood pressure.

When I first received the product, I expected it to contain nothing but kawaii Hello Kitty-shaped pieces of seaweed, but it came with all of the not-so-cute ingredients and only 5-7 Hello Kitty-shaped seaweed in each of the three packets. The amount is enough to satisfy a casual Hello Kitty fan, but not enough for a Hello Kitty maniac who would probably use the pieces to create an extravagant stop motion video and post it on YouTube to prove that she is THE Ultimate Hello Kitty Fan.

Each packet has enough to sprinkle over 3-4 bowls of rice or, if you’re feeling lucky, one-soon-to-be-very-salty bowl of rice. The product was much like other rice seasoning mixes I’ve had. It had a fishy and salty taste, although it was significantly saltier than others, but I guess it should be since salt is the first item listed in the ingredients list. I’m surprised that my blood pressure didn’t rise by just having it in my apartment. The rice crackers added a little crunch, but didn’t add to the taste since the salt and MSG overwhelmed everything, like the smell of a stripper after receiving a lap dance. Even with its disappointing taste, I can see Hello Kitty fanatics buying this to make their bowls of rice more adorable.

Besides increasing blood pressure, the Hello Kitty Rice Seasoning Mix proves that the people who own the license to Hello Kitty have no shame and love the money from licensing Hello Kitty to any company who is willing to dish it out. If Hello Kitty wanted to, she could probably get rid of those greedy bastard by using the second cutest way to die, which is Sailor Moon hair strangulation.

(Nutrition Facts – 16.5 gram package – 36 calories, less than 1 gram of fat, 0 grams saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, 0 milligrams cholesterol, 2739 milligrams of sodium, 7 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Hello Kitty Rice Seasoning Mix
Price: FREE
Size: 3-pack
Purchased at: Received from sister
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Cute. Dried seaweed shaped like Hello Kitty. Rice crackers add crunch. It’s from Japan.
Cons: Extremely high in sodium. Contains MSG. Not a lot of Hello Kitty-shaped pieces of dried seaweed. No pink. Sailor Moon hair strangulation. Death by Hello Kitty. The whoring of Hello Kitty.

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.

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.

Budweiser Barbecue Sauce

Marvo 19 Comments

Oh, what I would give to have the Budweiser frogs in front of me right now. Not for nostalgia’s sake or a Super Bowl commercial, but because I want to know how good their legs would taste with the Budweiser Barbecue Sauce.

As we all know, Budweiser is the King of Beers…for people who end up getting arrested on the TV show Cops. So every time I used the Budweiser Barbecue Sauce, I put on my dirtiest wife beater, a trucker hat with a fake mullet sewn into it, and set my CD player to play the Inner Circle song “Bad Boys” with a press of a button. All of that done in preparation for cops to break down my door and chase me throughout my neighborhood with a blurry spot following me around on my face.

Unfortunately, I’ve gone through most of the bottle and the cops have yet to show up, which is good, because I have yet to get rid of some particular hydroponics growing in my closet.

The Budweiser Barbecue Sauce does actually contain Budweiser beer. As a matter of fact, it’s the second ingredient listed on the packaging, behind ketchup and in front of water. Now you’re probably wondering if the beer in the sauce can get you drunk or make Scary Spicy not so scary. I think the Listerine and NyQuil rules of alcohol come into play here, which is, if you don’t throw up first, drinking a gallon of it you will get fucked up.

Consuming the Budweiser Barbecue Sauce as a condiment on a burger I made did make my face feel warm, much like sucking on a bottle of Grey Goose vodka does. However, there weren’t the other usual side effects I get when consuming alcohol, like my face turning red, having to piss every ten minutes, my breathing constricted a little, and screaming Nelson Mandela should be let free…which he has been for almost two decades, but I’m too drunk to remember that.

I’m not too sure if the warm feeling I had on my face was from the beer in the sauce or because of the spiciness of the sauce from the crushed red peppers in it. The kick was definitely nice and as my friend who enjoys going on Southeastern Asian sex tours always likes to say, “Me likey, the spicy.”

The Budweiser Barbecue Sauce looks like ketchup, except with minced garlic floating in it. Along with the spicy kick there’s a slight sweetness and a hint of beer flavor to it. I also used the sauce as a marinade for some thinly-sliced meat and it came out pretty good.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the Budweiser Barbecue Sauce is good for cooking, after all Budweiser the beer is also good for cooking. Boiling hot dogs with a can of Bud is surprisingly good. Another thing these two products have in common is their ability to make me puke if I chug too much of either via a funnel.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Peachy for recommending the Budweiser Barbecue Sauce to review. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to smash the bottle on my forehead.)

Item: Budweiser Barbecue Sauce
Price: $3.00
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Tasty. Spicy. Slight sweetness. Garlic. Nelson Mandela is free.
Cons: If you don’t like spicy, it’s not for you. Scary Spice. Chugging too much Bud via a funnel. Not remembering Nelson Mandela is free. Not having the Budweiser frogs to try the sauce on. Diseases from Southeastern Asian sex tours.

Vegemite

Marvo 42 Comments

(Editor’s Note: In honor of Steve Irwin “The Crocodile Hunter,” The Impulsive Buy will review an Australian favorite, Vegemite. Irwin was a crazy mofo, but my kind of crazy mofo. He will be sorely missed, even the crikey. Rest in peace, Crocodile Hunter.)

There are things in life that we all must experience. Love and heartache. Happiness and sadness. Taxes and death. Jury duty and public urination. Liking a band and 10 years later realizing how lame they were, like WHAM!

Along with these experiences, we each have our own list of individual things we want to accomplish in our lifetime. My list is long because it contains things like, becoming a millionaire, being on the Today Show, and touching a woman’s boobie, none of which I have accomplished.

Recently my list became a little shorter when I tried Vegemite for the first time. It’s been something I’ve wanted to try ever since hearing the 1982 Men at Work song “Down Under.”

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Vegemite, it’s a Concentrated Autolyzed Yeast Extract, which forms the acronym C.A.Y.E., which ironically spells out the sound that came out of my mouth while running and gagging to the nearest sink after trying Vegemite on Ritz cracker.

Hmm, how can I describe the taste of Vegemite without causing an international incident or losing any Australian or New Zealand Impulsive Buy readers?

It looks like chocolate, spreads like peanut butter, smells like beef bouillon, and tastes like what I imagine tossing someone’s salad would taste like. I guess the salad tossing taste would explain the “vege” part in Vegemite.

Vegemite is definitely one of those things that will put some hair on your chest, and if you already have hair on your chest, it will put the hair someplace else. Since I already have hair on my chest, I believe the hair will probably grow on my palms, but I won’t know if it’s the Vegemite or my excessive masturbation that causes it.

I’m probably wrong about this, but I believe that Vegemite was created to disgust foreigners from anywhere outside the Australia/New Zealand area. Perhaps it’s payback for all the horrible things that we Americans have exported to Australia and New Zealand, like Rob Schneider movies.

If that’s the case, I’d like to call a truce.

Item: Vegemite
Price: $2.99 (4-ounces)
Purchased at: World Market
Rating: 1 out of 5
Pros: Puts hair on your chest and if you already have hair on your chest, it will put hair someplace else. Looks like chocolate. Low fat. Wonderful source of riboflavin and gagging.
Cons: Almost made me puke. Salty. Does not go well with Ritz crackers and probably won’t go well with any other cracker. Smells like beef bouillon and tastes like I just tossed someone’s salad. Steve Irwin’s passing.