The McDonald’s McDouble is now more than a dollar.

This price hike makes me as angry as a child whose parent got them the wrong Happy Meal toy. And this anger causes my blood pressure to rise, much like how eating a McDonald’s McDouble does. It’s only 29 cents more, but this is the second time McDonald’s has taken something on their Dollar Menu that I love and increased its price (first one being their Double Cheeseburger).

However, with both cases, McDonald’s replaced the pricer sandwiches with another dollar burger. The McDouble replaced the Double Cheeseburger, and now the BBQ Ranch Burger replaces the McDouble.

The new burger is one of several new additions to McDonald’s revamped Dollar Menu & More…um, Menu. It’s made up of a beef patty topped with a slice of white cheddar, BBQ ranch sauce, and chili lime tortilla strips.

This year, McDonald’s has used that white cheddar as many times as I’ve used a puppy’s tongue to plant wet, warm licks on my neck. It been in their Grilled Onion Cheddar Burger, Bacon Habanero Ranch Quarter Pounder, and Egg White Delight McMuffin. As for the chili lime tortilla strips, they’re also used in their Southwest Salad and Southwest McWrap. The BBQ ranch sauce is something we haven’t seen before from McDonald’s.

Before trying it, I thought there’s no way this burger with less meat would be as satisfying as the up-down-up-down-left-right-left-right-meat-cheese-bread combo of a McDouble. However…

Holy sweet mother of cellulite!

The McDonald’s BBQ Ranch Burger is a delectable little sandwich that makes me want to dive into a wishing well and collect all those pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters so that I can buy more of this cheap burger. The creamy BBQ ranch sauce is a little sweet, slightly tangy, and a smidge spicy, but a whole lot of delicious. However, it’s the chili lime tortilla strips that make this burger special. They not only add an extra saltiness and tanginess, but they also give the BBQ Ranch Burger a wonderful crunchy texture.

To be honest, I was surprised the tortilla strips didn’t end up soggy by the time I got around to eating the burger. I was sure the sauce and heat from beef patty would turn those strips into limps. However, the slice of white cheddar, which doesn’t provide much flavor, isn’t as melty as McDonald’s American cheese so I believe it shielded the tortilla strips from certain soggy doom.

As yummy as it is, I have to say it has a too familiar flavor. The combination of the BBQ ranch sauce and chili lime tortilla strips make it taste somewhat like the McDonald’s Southwest Salad, which I’m quite familiar with because it’s the only salad I buy from the Golden Arches. I also said the same thing about the recent Southwest McWrap.

But overall, I will love this burger with all my heart…until McDonald’s raises its price to $1.29.

(Nutrition Facts – 350 calories, 140 calories from fat, 16 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 680 milligrams of sodium, 37 grams of carbohydrates, 7 grams of sugar, 3 grams of fiber, 16 grams of protein.)

Item: McDonald’s BBQ Ranch Burger
Purchased Price: $1.00
Size: N/A
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: A delectable little burger. Creamy BBQ ranch sauce is sweet, tangy, and a little spicy. Chili lime tortilla strips give the burger a little tanginess and a whole lotta crunch. White cheddar helps prevent the tortilla strips from getting soggy. It’s only a dollar.
Cons: White cheddar doesn’t add flavor. Tastes like a McDonald’s Southwest Salad, which is probably fine, you don’t regularly eat the salad. Raising the price of a McDouble. Getting the wrong Happy Meal toy.

Purchased Price: $2.00
Size: N/A
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Applewood smoked bacon makes the McDouble better. Nice smoky bacon flavor in every bite. If you don’t mind the extra fat and sodium, I think it’s worth paying two dollars for a McDouble with a bacon upgrade. Pickles, onion, ketchup, and mustard complement the beef and bacon wonderfully. For the same price as a McDonald’s premium sandwich, you can get two of these.
Cons: It’s just bacon on top of a McDouble; nothing innovative or something that took a lot of thought to come up with. Bacon not crispy. The regular McDouble is no longer just a dollar. Thinking too much about how its price may make it taste better than it really is.

Nutrition Facts: 460 calories, 210 calories from fat, 24 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 85 milligrams of cholesterol, 1120 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, 7 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, and 28 grams of protein.

Purchased Price: $4.99*
Size: N/A
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: It tastes like a much spicier McDonald’s Southwest Chicken Salad (which is the best McDonald’s salad). Sauce has a nice peppery/smoky flavor. Nice burn, if you likey the spicy. Hearty. Chicken in almost every bite (except towards the end). If you’ve had thoughts about drinking McDonald’s Habanero Ranch Sauce from a cup, you will enjoy this McWrap. The soft drink that comes with it if you order the meal.
Cons: Habanero ranch sauce will be too spicy for some. Not completely enjoyable when the sauce dominates the other ingredients. Habanero ranch sauce pools at the McWrap’s bottom, so expect a very spicy jolt as you finish it. Cheese was completely unnecessary. Some of the greens had more crunch than the tortilla strips. I wish it had the beans and corn from their Southwest Salad. McDonald’s fries aren’t good at spiciness relief.

Nutrition Facts: (Grilled) – 520 calories, 180 calories from fat, 20 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 80 milligrams of cholesterol, 1300 milligrams of sodium, 54 grams of carbohydrates, 10 grams of sugar, 4 grams of fiber, 31 grams of protein, 15% vitamin A, 20% calcium, 15% vitamin C, and 20% iron.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

Do you remember the great pumpkin shortage of 2011?

If not, lucky you. Here’s a brief history lesson: Hurricane Irene stifled the pumpkin crop that summer, and aside from leaving us with a dearth of pumpkin-flavored goodies, it also pretty much crippled society. Families cut ties when informed that there would be no pumpkin pie on the Thanksgiving dinner table; teenage girls broke up with their boyfriends en masse when they didn’t come back with Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes; and many a tree suffered unspeakable damage as rowdy 12-year-old kids with no pumpkins to smash took to TP’ing trees on Halloween.

Dark times, indeed.

Through it all, McDonald’s remained a beacon of hope for pumpkin lovers. For just a buck, I remember getting their warm and sweet baked pumpkin pie even when grocery stores were out of orange Libby’s cans. So if my local McDonald’s could sell pumpkin pie even amidst a worldwide shortage, why are some areas of the country instead selling sweet potato pies this fall?

After hitting up a half-dozen Baltimore-area McDonald’s I really have no idea why, but the good news for pumpkin lovers is that we probably shouldn’t care. I know sweet potato pie is something of a regular occurrence in the land of Dixie, but considering I’m about as southern as Winston Churchill, well, let’s just say it was a new and wonderful experience for me. To borrow a line from an Alabama song that hasn’t made sense until now, this is a pie that will make you shut your mouth.

It all starts with the crust. The outside of the pie looks exactly like the McDonald’s Baked Pumpkin Pie, right down to the cinnamon dusted freckles and scored top. Like the pumpkin pie, the crust is an enjoyable upgrade over most cheap, prepackaged single-serving pies available in grocery stores. There’s enough sweetness and cinnamon flavor to convince you you’re not just eating layers of shortening and flour.

I was surprised the McDonald’s Sweet Potato Pie’s filling had a creamier texture than their pumpkin pie’s, although it doesn’t have a necessarily creamier taste. In fact, if I do have one complaint (okay, two complaints considering there are no pecans), it’s that the filling lacks the richness of cream and butter and the emulsified body of a baked custard. I worried about a stringy interior or fibrous texture, but the tubular center (hooray for vegetable puns!) was stuffed with a smooth and fully cooked purée that wasn’t excessively watery or diluted.

Even though it has more grams of sugar than McDonald’s Pumpkin Pie, its sweetness is mellow and just right with a hint of molasses and some cinnamon and cloves that help to round out the filling. Dare I say it, but the sweetness discrepancy between the pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie is a testament to the sweet potato’s natural and more starchy flavor. In this application, it just works. And with much better interior filling coverage than a Pop-Tart, it doesn’t feel like you’re getting shortchanged with nothing but crust.

McDonald’s Baked Sweet Potato Pie isn’t my beloved pumpkin pie, but it’s more than an acceptable substitute. The crust is flaky with a wonderful cinnamon sweetness, while the filling has a smoother, even creamier texture than McDonald’s Baked Pumpkin Pie. It’s so good that it might make you forget about driving around to look for their Baked Pumpkin Pie.

(Nutrition Facts – 270 calories, 110 calories from fat, 12 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 150 milligrams of sodium, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 6 gram of dietary fiber, 16 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein.)

Item: McDonald’s Baked Sweet Potato Pie
Purchased Price: 98 cents
Size: 2.7 oz.
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Flaky, slightly crunchy crust with tastes of cinnamon and sugar. Plenty of sweet potato filling with molasses-type sweetness. Creamy texture. Just a buck. A crapload of Vitamin A and fiber. Regional delicacies finally understood.
Cons: Lacks taste of cream and butter. Not a true custard filling. No pecans. More calories than McDonald’s Baked Pumpkin Pie. 1980s country music songs.

I love Halloween, but it stresses me out. Most people get apprehensive about Thanksgiving and all the year-end religious holidays because they often involve family and gift-giving.

I get stressed out by Halloween because it ushers in that massive three-month-long wave of seasonal goodies that are only available FOR A LIMITED TIME – so already I’m rushing around frantically trying to grab them before they’re gone.

To make matters worse, October and November specialize in one particular ingredient that can be found in just about everything you can buy: Cookies, crackers, potato chips, drinks, ice cream, nuts, pastries, popcorn, waffles, yogurt, condiments, bread, hand soap, and even air freshener. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, except instead of pod people, it’s pumpkin spice! I call it THE PUMPKINING. And as a sucker for seasonal gourds, I fall for it every time. (Get it? Fall? Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Tip your servers!)

McDonald’s is no stranger to THE PUMPKINING, having already introduced a most reasonable pumpkin pie a few years ago. But it never offered the second most reasonable pumpkin venture to go along with that pastry –- a pumpkin-flavored hot drink.

So that’s why I got really excited when I saw McDonald’s had introduced its own pumpkin-flavored coffee for the season — the McCafé Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Wondering what exactly constitutes “pumpkin spice?” Nutmeg? Vanilla? Cinnamon? All of the above?

In the case of McDonalds’ new McCafé Pumpkin Spice Latte, it seems to be 1) cinnamon, 2) vanilla, and 3) a metric shit-ton of sweet flavored powder. Seriously, it’s like 70 percent sugar, 20 percent milk, and 10 percent espresso. It was like getting punched in the mouth by a “pumpkin.” And yes, I used those quotation marks on purpose. This isn’t how real pumpkin tastes… and having been a connoisseur of pumpkin pie for decades, I also feel this isn’t how real pumpkin pie tastes, either.

I was unable to verify whether this latte came straight from a powder mix, but it reminded me of the flavored instant coffee I would buy from QuikTrip back in the ‘90s. And that stuff was so full of sugar it might as well have come with a free blood sugar meter and a warning label with Wilfred Brimley’s face on it.

The McCafé Pumpkin Spice Latte was so sweet that you didn’t need to add sweetener. That’s probably why it doesn’t come with whipped cream. If there had been, I’d surely be writing this review with the help of an intelligent machine transcribing my subconscious thoughts from deep within my diabetic coma.

I tried both the hot and iced versions, mostly by accident. During my first visit to my local McDonald’s, I was forced to order my McCafé Pumpkin Spice Latte with ice because (quote) “The hot machine [was] out of order.” No biggie. Here in Southern California, it’s still 80 degrees and may quite possibly stay that way until January, so a frosty drink is A-OK.

Later, I got the hot version, and my taste buds were met by the familiar creamy sweetness and a thick, slightly grainy texture that was vaguely reminiscent of hot chocolate mix. It was all right. While, I can’t exactly say I hated my iced Pumpkin Spice Latte in comparison to the hot one, I would say it wasn’t really refreshing. The iced Pumpkin Spice Latte was creamy and cold and full of sweetness, but after a few minutes, the milk, the sugar, and the caffeine starting swirling together into a maelstrom of nausea, and I began to seriously reconsider my life choices.

Was all this barfy agita worth it? Well, the price is good, especially when compared to the $3.95 price tag of a 12-ounce Starbucks Pumpkin Latte. With the change I’d spare, I could afford to go full-throttle and load up on all the pumpkin English muffins, pumpkin yogurt, and pumpkin-scented shampoo that will hang around until Thanksgiving only to be swiftly replaced by Peppermint- and Snowman-flavored everything.

I’ll call that THE DECEMBERING.

(Nutrition Facts – Small size (12 fluid ounces) – With Whole Milk – 270 calories, 9 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 130 milligrams of sodium, 41 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 39 grams of sugar, and 10 grams of protein. With Nonfat Milk – 200 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 125 milligrams of sodium, 41 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 39 grams of sugar, and 10 grams of protein.)

Item: McDonald’s McCafé Pumpkin Spice Latte
Purchased Price: $2.39
Size: Small (12 oz.)
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: THE PUMPKINING. Does not skimp on sweetness. Competitive price. Seasonal gourds.
Cons: Getting punched in the mouth. Diabeetus. Slightly grainy mixed powder texture. “Pumpkin” flavor.