Hey there meat bag! Oh, don't take offense. I mean, we are all just walking bags of meat. The only differences are in our perspectives and intentions. (Some people are real d-bags of meat for sure.) Look, all I am saying is that minus our acquired items, clothing choices, jewelry, and hairstyles: we are all the same. Strip it all away and we are just a bunch of meat monkeys placing meaning and importance in all kinds of random stuff. None of it matters. We are all the same.
There is a reason that there are so many superhero/fantasy movies and every time they reboot one, they start at the origin story. In every origin story there is that moment when the person discovers that they have some inert power that makes them special (different). Some situation where a lady with a baby is about to be crushed by a car and the "special" person stops it with their hand or something and the film allows a pause so we (the enviable audience) can relish in this moment of a person realizing that they are unique. The rest of the film, who cares? A bunch of computer generated shiny crap breaks and blah blah blah. People watch for that moment and the rise of a hero/special/unique person.
I find superhero movies, by and large, boring and formulaic. If you want an origin story with moments of discovery try watching a baby. They are literally experiencing that superpower moment constantly. You just put a toy in their hand and their fingers grasp it and they are like "Holy sh*t! The tiny things at the end of one of my top-arms just wrapped around this thing! Did you guys know I could do this? When were you going to tell me?" Then in the blink of an eye their arm spasms and the toy cascades to the floor. "Double holy sh*t guys! That thing just flew away. Look at it over there. Well, it is dead to me now. What am I going to do? I can't even do that weird sh*t you are doing where you move around on your butt-arms. What? They are called "legs?' Now YOU are the crazy one and this is coming from a tiny person who has your wife's boobs on his breath." I mean, I am not a father quite yet but I imagine that is a pretty accurate peek into the mind of a baby.
My point is that children have those moments because they are experiencing new things all of the time. Discovery is a superpower. You can experience those moments of wonder too. There are things you haven't tried. Some of you could even try not being such a d-bag. (That means you Leslie. You too, every Seth on the planet.) Do you know what is the greatest superpower? Better than being so strong that you could beat up anyone? More special than everyone knowing your name and treating you like you are royalty?
Do you? Well, I'll tell you:
You could be kind. Ask for nothing in return. You could just be kind.
(Today we are talking about meat and the 1-5 scale is brought to you by perspectives and intentions.)
One of the real bonuses to having a blog about snacks/candy/drinks etc... Is that when people find things that are interesting they will buy them and gift them to you. Lets see, what is that called? Oh yes. Kindness. Well, this first snack was purchased for this blog by S's mother. She found it on a trip to New Orleans. Our first of the four snacks today is Gator Jerky. As we can see here, nothing too fancy. We have meat in a bag. The tiny sticker on it here also has a picture of a gator. So there is no confusion as to what type of "gator" we are about to eat. I am sure gator is a popular nickname in some areas. Lord knows I thought it would be a great name for my future daughter. (Just kidding. Gator is a terrible nickname for a girl named Anustasia. Pretty sure I spelled that right. I am not too versed in Disney Princesses.) So what we can tell by the wrapping is that they are not going for pretentious. They aren't trying to win you over with a story. They just want you to buy and enjoy their wares. Meat bag to meat bag.
Alright. Well, it smells like a smoked meat. I guess more accurately it smells like liquid smoke. It looks like the type of jerky that you can get for 88 cents. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean it in a specific way. A specific texture and waxy fold style.
Lets see how it tastes:
S- Well. It tastes muddy. As I'd expect from something that lives in the mud. It just smells of liquid smoke. I guess that is pretty normal. Oh no. If you take a big bite it dissolves in your mouth leaving a muddy swamp mouth behind. (*She didn't mean swamp mouth behind. I think I should have put a comma there like "muddy swamp mouth, behind." Never mind. Lets just move on.) This is not good. I give this a 3 out of 5. For originality and it definitely is gator. So there is that.
d- I agree. Although I don't get the muddiness right away. Oh no wait. There it is in the finish. Is that the appeal to eating gator? Couldn't you soak it in something? The meat breaks down in your mouth in a way like it is giving up. It is claiming your mouth as its grave. I have a gator grave for a mouth. I give this snack a 2- I have this thing where if I see something shiny I will touch it. Not like a conscious thing. Like I see it and my finger pokes at the shiny object. Way before my brain even comes to the party all like "Oh hey eyes, I noticed that you see something shiny and that finger has expressed some interest in getting involved but before that happens lets maybe weigh out the pros and cons of the situation." None of that take place. It just goes "Shiny. Poke. And then usually regret." More often than not the shiny thing in question is just something wet or greasy on a table. Now what we have here is a moment of discovery. My intention was to....well, I am not sure exactly but there are two ways to perceive the outcome. 1) My finger may have been dry before this and now there is a slim chance that I just touched some lotion. 2) You can really never wash your hands enough. I choose the latter option-out of 5.
Alright, we can already see that this is a different beast all together. This Chili Lime Jerky bag is bright and modern looking. However, they included a meat window there so we can still see that this is jerky. The neon green is a definite middle finger toward the traditional muddy brown color palette of most smoke meat products. Not a bad choice I suppose. The message is clear. They are listing healthy advantages and that there isn't weird stuff in there. Just the meat in the bag.
I know. I know. Could I put less effort into the photos? Not really. There is a paragraph about whatever and then a spicy sliding scale. What I would like you to look at is the paragraph above the scale. "Tease your taste buds with tender..." Ugh. Gross. Who wrote this? Hannibal Lector? "Hello. Clarice. This meat is "marvelously moist." WTF. Hey creep show. We took "moist" off the table for everything. Find a less disgusting word. (Sorry if that sounded critical.. Lets just move on.) There is also this extensive list of ingredients. Now for something that doesn't have weird stuff in it this sure is a long list of weird stuff. Shouldn't it just read "beef, chili, lime?" Hmmm.
Um. This bag just has 3 meat leaves in it. Wait a minute. Meat doesn't grow on trees? This is supposed to be beef but we both agree that this looks like some turkey jerky.
S- This feels like turkey jerky. Ugh. The lime tastes fake. Everything says minimally processed on the bag and as if this is good for you but the ingredients don't seems so great for you. I give this a 2. I just feel like it is really trying to be something that it isn't. (I think she meant "good.")
d-I don't like the stringy texture and it really has an artificial lime taste that is off putting. I get a little chili in the finish. I am curious what type of beef this is exactly. I don't know about this. I just get an overall weird feeling. Like someone is trying to trick me. I give it a 1- One time I wanted to make my wife the BEST bean dip on the planet. So I went out and bought the best things I could imagine going into a bean dip and I prepped all these ingredients and really put a silly amount of effort into something that is honestly not even her favorite thing. Anyway, after all of that I wanted it to have a specific texture so I put it in the blender and tried to blend it. The problem was that only the bottom was getting whipped. So I tried to roll the blender around and in doing so it ever so slightly came off the base. It spun out of my hand and slammed into the counter top shattering glass and bean dip all over. Now I had a situation. I could be mad (at anything but myself) but I chose to perceive this as yet another challenge and I concocted a plan to strain the glass out of the expensive bean dip. This was awhile ago. Many years to be exact. While we don't know if I realized on my own how incredibly unsafe broken glass bean dip was or if I talked to my wife and she let me know maybe that wasn't the best idea. The point is dip happens or sometimes doesn't happen and you break the blender. Sometimes it is best to cut your losses. The kindness still counts even if you don't get to eat the dip or the cookies you burnt or whatever. Learn to laugh and move on -out of 5.
Next up we have a Ghost Chili Jerky that S's mom bought for me at a beer and wine festival in Portland. I guess that it looks somewhere between the first two options today. We have the old school meat bag but with a glossy label. A glossy label with a picture of their jerky that is then covered by possibly the worst ghost drawing I have ever seen. (First of all the ghost looks live a larva or a lumpy marshmallow. Next the ghost is sad. Probably because it has fingernails. What would a ghost do with fingernails? Oh fingernails make the transition from living matter to the dead netherworld yet not our butt-arms? That seems odd to me. Anybody else?) So we have bad business decisions happening here. Pay someone to photograph your meat (I am sure they aren't the only person haunted by making that mistake.) Then pay someone to draw a ghost to cover your meat. (I am guessing they paid someone for such an awesome artistic rendition.)
So upon opening this meat bag I get a real beef and spice aroma. I really can tell that we are going to be experiencing some chilis in this meat bag. This is how I would like something to be if it is a meat snack. It looks like meat. Not a form of meat or vaguely familiar to something. This looks like beef minus some meat moisture. (This beef isn't moist as some would say.) You can also see a fair amount of chili seed on the outside.
S-This is hot. This is definitely beef. I get the flavor of the ghost chili. The ghost chili has a nice citrus note and it comes through here. It is hot and the meat is good. The ingredients are good ingredients. I like it. I give it a 5 out of 5. It is exactly what it says it is.
d- The hard thing about making a ghost chili jerky is that I wish I could taste the beef first and the heat second but since the spice is so powerful and on the outside there is no chance that will happen. I agree with everything S said. I really like the spice level here and the texture. I mean this is hot. One dime size piece and my face is sweating. Yet it doesn't feel like they were trying to push the spices so that this was inedible. I also give this snack a 5- One time while S was making dinner something went wrong and she dropped the dish of pasta on the floor. Our one meal dinner was there on the floor of the kitchen. She looked mortified. Tears began. I remember being confused. Here I see somebody with the kindest of intentions, have an accident and then blame herself. I didn't get it. I said that it was ok but it wasn't until she looked down and saw me say "Look, it is fine." And I ate some floor pasta. I really think that image was either so silly or she just realized that I didn't care. I wasn't mad or blaming her. Suddenly we were laughing. The tears were over. To this day, if life serves us floor pasta, I will gladly eat it -out of 5.
Alright. now this is a meat post (poor choice of words) and yet here we have chocolate. This isn't the first time we have had the two together. We have had chocolate covered bacon and even a beef and cheese truffle. This is, however, the first upscale chocolate bar with meat that we have had.
Well, what do you know? A paragraph on the back of the upscale chocolate bar? I am shocked. Oh it is a stirring origin story. I am sorry. I have said it before and apparently I am not finished saying it yet. Hey artisan chocolate people, if we needed a paragraph to win us over to buy your chocolate then maybe it isn't very great. I didn't buy your intentions. I bought your confections. Either it will deliver or it won't. I am not going to eat something sh*ty and then read the back and go "Oh, well instead of selling lemonade at a garage sale, she made this... I guess it is better than boring lemonade." What? No. Just no. Also "peace" really? You are going to peace out after your riveting story? Ugh. Lastly "a tasting tip?' I am so enraged by this nonsense I am struggling to not use expletives. Just read that for yourself. NO. No. NO.
I am not trying to be dramatic or hurt any one's feelings here but this snack straight up smells like dog food. Not is a quirky fun way either. Not a playful wink towards dog food. This is like a full on glare at awful horrid dog food. I am so excited to move on from the wrapping to this aroma. What a lovely greeting. One might even say it is like being greeted by a dog. A wet dog that has just eaten dog food. Dog food that (oh I don't know) another dog just threw up. (One could say that. Sadly. I can say that.)
S-This is dog food. This is the worst. This might be the worst thing you have made me try. This is really REALLY gross! This is probably only good as dog killer. You know, since dogs can't have chocolate but they would want to eat it since it smells like their food. This company made dog poison. A huge 0- out of 5.
d-It tastes worst than it smells. How is that possible? This is disgusting. This makes me want to wash my hands and bleach my tongue. I don't even want to type this review because it requires me to recall what this experience was like. You know that scene in movies where the person has been exposed to such life changing evil and feels so unclean in the shower that they are rubbing their skin raw? My mouth is that shower after a parade of atrocities. This is not better than boring lemonade. I'd rather drink the lemonade from that limerick "Milk milk lemonade..." Yeah, that one. I will take that over this any day. I give this a 0- One time after a long night at the bar with friends drinking pints and Jager-bombs we went home and continued to party. At one point a few friends and I were in the basement party den and the perception that the disco ball looked a lot like a punching bag came into my mind. Look, I know that this seems like a bad idea. However, remember what I said about shiny things earlier? Couple that with the Jager part I more recently spoke of. Ok. Got it? I am not a violent person. This was a specific combination of two objects: disco ball + punching bag. So I punched the disco ball. What happened? It smashed against a window shattering it. Yeah. It. Was. Pretty. Cool. However, I also had a rather bloody hand now. So my friends and I concocted an elaborate story about what happened to cause my hand to be injured. The story was somewhere around ten minutes long. Which is really long when you are so hyped up on red bull Jager and adrenaline. So I ascended the stairs to tell my wife this amazing tale so that I wouldn't get in trouble. The second that our eyes met though I said "I punched the disco ball and broke a window." She smiled and bandaged my hand. That was it. I couldn't lie to her. That isn't how we work. We are ourselves with no apologies. Maybe that is our superpower. That many people can't be just themselves around anyone and we have each other. I can be the mess that can be myself and that is not just ok. It is appreciated -out of 5.
So where were we? Oh yea, the meat of this post is human kindness. Try some. It's super.
(*Worst post ending? Perhaps. However my wife is in the other room and I think I see something shiny on the table so I gotta go. Take care and thanks for your time.)
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