Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch

Working on the campus on the campus of the United States Naval Academy affords me a few opportunities. One of those opportunities is to chance to meet some real, in-the-flesh, Navy people. You could include amongst these individuals a number of Captains. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some men, some women, some in actual command of ships, and some drydocked. But none of them look like this guy:

Naval credentials aside, there’s no disputing the following of swashbucklers and seamen that Cap’n Crunch commands. While I’ve yet to submit to full impressment to his cereals and his cereals alone, I’ve dabbled in Crunchberries from time to time, and respect the iconic nature of the Original. Yet when it comes to one of his most popular vessels of war, Peanut Butter Crunch, I’ve yet to step on board.

Until now.

What took me so long, you ask? The reasons are many, but at the end of the day, despite developing a newfound appreciation for peanut butter, the results still the same. I had been avoiding the Captain’s peanut butter ship because I was serving aboard an enemy craft, the venerable, if not unsinkable, U.S.S. Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs.

Would a tour of the Cap’n's arsenal convince me to abandon my principles of cereal allegiance and defect from General Mills to Quaker? There was only one way to find out.

The initial taste of Peanut Butter Crunch is salty-sweet, with a distinctive peanut butter flavor that could almost pass as coming right out of the jar. The pieces are crunchy and airy, slightly gritty to the palate, but smoother than, say, similar toasted corn cereals like Kix. It doesn’t really taste like classic Cap’n Crunch, but there’s no mistaking the Peanut Butter taste. It strikes me as intense and “natural,” like those peanut butter brands which don’t add any sugar and just rely on ground peanuts. I can appreciate it but I think it could use a little more sugar, or, at the very least, a little less of a slight corn and salt aftertaste.

The saltiness dissipates a little in milk, but it still carriers enough weight to avoid any cloying connotation. Slightly more “creamy” in terms of mouthfeel while in milk, the corn and peanut butter based puffs take on a delectably if not signature stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth feel that many have come to expect from both Peanut Butter and Captain Crunch. Personally, I like the sensation. It allows you to enjoy a genuine peanut butter flavor, and to slow down in the mindless spoonfuls that sometime consume the serial cereal eater. The end-milk though is pretty worthless. It doesn’t absorb the sweetness well, and doesn’t taste of peanut butter.

I can’t help but feel something is missing from the Cap’n's Battleship of Peanut Butter power. While the depth of peanut butter flavor is more natural tasting than Reese’s, the mouthfeel of the pieces suffers from a certain degree of grit and lack of smoothness. Likewise, the salt to sugar ratio just doesn’t match the tastes of what you’d expect in a kids cereal, while a darker sweetener would be preferable to just plain old sugar. Last but not least, the cereal is just to one-note. Peanut Butter without chocolate or peanut butter without jelly is like a bagel without cream cheese. I mean, it’s good, but it’s just so much better when you add that much-needed sidekick. Like a Pirate Captain without a first Matey, or just Mike Leach without an efficient starting quarterback, Peanut Butter Crunch losses itself on the high seas in search of the treasure island of cereal awesomeness.

And now, to get the opinion of another great, not quite an actual Pirate Captain. Mike Leach, your thoughts?

Current Rankings for Peanut Butter Cereals:

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs
2. Peanut Butter Multigrain Cheerios
3. Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch
4. Pebbles Boulders Chocolate Peanut Butter
5. Mothers’ Peanut Butter Bumpers

Food for Thought: What’s the best Cap’n Crunch Flavor (Seasonal and discontinued versions fair game)

Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch

• Price: $2.00 (On sale at Safeway)
• Ranking: 7/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 65%

Safeway Makes a Killer Breakfast Sandwich on the Cheap

Egg, cheese, and meat. It’s the cholesterol-laden trinity of the grab-and-go breakfast world, and seemingly the last thing you’d expect a serial cereal eater to be buying. But recently the grocery chain Safeway has been pushing their “signature” sandwiches with more ads than a used-car salesman in a one stoplight town, going so far as to offer a breakfast sandwich free to those who sign up for their “Just For U” program.

I think it’s safe to say that Safeway (ha, I kill!) and the rest of Howard County, MD’s grocery chains are feeling the pressure from Wegmans. Most are light year’s behind the Wegmans prepared food department, and given how Wegmans is able to offer staples like milk at dramatically lower prices, it’s as if Giant, Safeway, Weis, and the rest of the crew have to do something drastic.

My Ham, Egg White, and Cheese breakfast sandwich (retail $1.99) is a good start. For one, this is a filling sandwich. The Foccacia bread is dense and chewy and a bit herby, while a good three ounces of juicy and salty ham off the bone gives life to the otherwise useless egg-white. Usually offered with Cheddar, I got mine with Provolone, which gave  a nice milky and mild smoke flavor (not to mention fatty quality) to each bite. My only complaint is that you can’t add any condiments or vegetables, at least according to the guy who made the sandwich. A tomato and some onions would have added some needed relief and sweetness, while something acidic like mustard or a spread would have went a long way. Still, for two bucks, this is a much more hefty sandwich than one you could get at Subway, and the first salvo fired back at Wegmans from Howard County other grocery chains.

Food for Thought: Ham, Bacon, or Sausage? Which cut of pig do you like best on a breakfast sandwich?

Kids Like Us: Two Years Later

A little preface is in order. This link will help clear things up.

Late July will always hold a special place in my memory. It’s hard to believe that it was only two years ago when I sitting in hotel in Salt Lake City, rubbing elbows with future NFL players at Western Athletic Conference media days. A yearly gathering for college football conferences prior to the start of fall camp, media days provide a relaxed atmosphere for coaches, players, and league officials to preview the upcoming season for members of the media.

The three-day event is beyond description for a 21-year old college football junkie with a hope to make a career out of sports journalism. I remember coming in with this grand plan that I was going to sweep commissioner Karl Benson off his feet and somehow guarantee myself a job with the conference staff out West.

Psh, like it actually worked out that way. Two years later, Karl (a great guy, mind you) is the head of the Sun Belt Conference, I’m working a desk job in Maryland, and the WAC stares down its finale season as a conference.

The conference wasn’t without its good days. From Boise State’s epic BCS “busting” campaign and subsequent win over Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, to its bygone days in which BYU and Air Force built dynasties, The WAC exemplified all a college football fan could want.

With the WAC goes a part of me, — a sense of the goofy college kid in me, if you will. It was during that summer that I arm-wrestled current NFL players like Colin Kaepernick, getting a pleasant reminder that future careers — of success, or of failure — can wait. Even future NFL stars, I learned, really aren’t that different than the goofy college newspaper editor.

Eventually we all eventually move onto different things, and as I watch the coaches and players of the current conference assemble for one final season, I’m reminded that just because we exit the field on one Saturday, doesn’t mean we can’t stride onto another the next year.

Grilled Plum Frozen Yogurt with Vanilla and Honey

I distinctly remember the first time I ever tasted a plum. I was 21, and it was a cold, probably snowy day in Logan, UT. I remember being worried that day. Worried,  and rushed. Come to think of it, that day must have been like every other day during the early spring of 2010, when the stresses and anxieties of life were wrecking havoc on my attempt to make it through junior year of college.

It was a Wednesday, I think, and I was in a dark office. Jessica’s office, to be precise. She was staring at me and not saying a word, allowing a silence others could only label as “awkward” to hang between us. It was never an awkward silence with her though, it was a frustrating silence. She wasn’t the first therapist who I had frustrated with my stubborn and recalcitrant habits, and chances are, she wouldn’t be the last.

I remember that day being particularly frustrating. I’m quite sure I had unleashed a torrential hail of thoughts and emotions within the first few minutes of entering her office, and having exhausted herself in tough-guy mode with me the prior few weeks, she could see I needed a break. Mostly, she could see I just needed rest.

Running between classes and meetings, it was customary for me to eat lunch while we met. I had a plum that day, just like I had a plum most days. I used to grab them two or three at a time from the dining halls, and would typically throw them into a nightly oatmeal concoction to warm me on those dark and cold Utah nights. How they got them so out of season I never knew, but I’d go through them like M&M’s. But even though I had eaten them many times before, I had never truly tasted one.

That was until Jessica decided to use my plum as the focus for one of her calming exercises. I swear, I used to hate those things. Chances are, if you’ve ever seen a therapist, you’ve probably hated them to. It’s that ”close your eyes” or “breath in” kind of mumbo jumbo that you’d expect from a yoga class, not a medical professional who you’re paying to help unscrew-up your life. Still, for the sake of both our collective sanities in that dark, expressionless office, I decided to play along.

And as I slowly took a bite from my plum, concentrating on the crisp and waxy flesh, the juicy, sweet interior, and the floral, bright flavors, I suddenly understood the words that Jessica was saying. It’s giving you strength. Nourishing your body.

I flash forward two and a half years. I’m grocery shopping for my family, and holding a plum in my hand. I close my eyes, embracing the summer bounty while transporting my senses through space and time.

I breath in, then breath out. My body and my mind are still in need of nourishment. A year away from Logan and I yearn for something to connect me with the people of the one place which ever really embraced me, and the one town in which I could see myself spending the rest of my life. I see Jessica’s blond hair in that darkened office, a look on concern on her face. I see my own detached self, shivering in the springtime thaw, unkept, unshaven as usual. And when I open my eyes, here and now, there and then, I see a plum.

I ended up buying several pounds of plums at Safeway the other day, and I could have eaten them one by one in perfect concentration and awareness of my surroundings, just like Jessica had led me to do two and a half years ago. Instead, however, I decided to move on. To show myself that I can do more when given a plum than just eat it mindlessly. Paying attention to the taste, to the source, and to the blessing of the bounty and nourishment the humble little purple fruit gives, I decided to make Grilled Plum Frozen Yogurt.

I started by breaking out a grill pan and heating up to medium high. After brushing the plum halves with a little melted butter and honey I grilled them cut-side down for four or five minutes, or until the surface sugars began to caramalize. I then grilled them another two to three minutes on the round side before transferring them to a blender with whole milk yogurt, lemon juice, and orange rind (I had no lemons(. I added 1/4 cup sugar to the mixture before blending, then transferred the blended mixture to my ice cream maker and froze for 20 minutes. Following the churning, I allowed the mixture to set in the freezer for another four or five hours, after which it reached a true frozen yogurt consistancy.

I’m not going to lie and say this was some artisan frozen yogurt. While my family loved it, I was a bit harder on myself, recognizing a distractingly intense vanilla extract flavor. Likewise, I could have settled for a few more tablespoons of honey added after grilling, or upped the sugar to a half or three-fourths a cup. Still, for only the third time in my life I’ve used the ice cream machine I’ve long had stored in my family’s basement, I’d say it was a worthy attempt, and one, I think, which Jessica would smile at.

Grilled Plum Frozen Yogurt

6-8 plums, pitted and halved

2 Tablespoon honey, divided

1/2 Tablespoon melted butter

2 Cups (16 ounces) whole milk yogurt

1/2 Cup of sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Lemon Juice, to taste

Grated Lemon Zest

Directions: Heat a grill or grill pan to medium heat. Meanwhile, brush plum halves with melted butter and 1 Tablespoon honey, and grill 3-4 minutes per side, until tender. Combine Yogurt with the remaining ingredients in a food processor or blender, adding the plum halves when finished grilling. Blend until smooth, then transfer entire mixture to an ice cream machine and freeze

Food for Thought: Anyone out there with their own ice cream maker? What ice cream or frozen yogurt flavors would you make and why?

Good Friends, Questionable Food

I live a kind of lonely life. Being a naturally social person it sounds like a misnomer, but it has more to do with a lack of real friendships than just being “friendly.” I guess that’s what happens when you choose to move 2000 miles away from the place where you went to college. Floating around from job to job, place to place, the past year hasn’t left me many opportunities to just hang out with people my age.

I’m guilty of exasperating this lack of a social life, if for no other reason than proclaiming that taking the time and money and effort to get together with people who are close to me would somehow endanger my career prospects or “master plan.” I’ve come up with a million excuses, especially when it comes to trying to get together with friends visiting Washington D.C. From not wanting to waste gas money driving down, to using my work schedule — which, oh by the way, I control — I’ve put off more than a few chances to reconnect with people from my past, including my good friend Rhett and his wife, Allie.

Former classmates of mine at Utah State, Rhett and Allie are the kind of people I love hanging out with. They’re positive, funny, and incredibly humble, and every second with them reminds me how much I loved my time in Logan, and how real and caring the people there are. People like Rhett took me into an extended family when I was at college — the Utah State family, for sure, but in a way, the entire cultural family of Utah’s Mormon population. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it as long as I live: The LDS community is filled with some of the nicest, most giving people you will ever meet.

It was about time I returned the favor to some old friends, and after driving down to D.C. to pick them up, the three of us checked out Old Ellicott City for some window shopping before Mass. While there, we stopped off at Sweet Cascades. I love this place. The guy who runs it just exudes that “kid in a candy store” nature that tells you he’s happy to be alive and enjoys every minute of what he’s doing. And what he’s doing is apparently making some wicked chocolate confections. This place covers everything in chocolate. Twinkies. Cheetos. Bacon. Old Bay seasoning. Most of it’s great, and most of it has precedence in the sweet and salty kingdom of foodies.

Most, but not all.

Say hello to the Chocolate Covered Bacon and Provolone Sandwich.

Need I say more? Amazingly, I do. Allie actually found the sandwich to be somewhat palatable, although Rhett, ever the diplomat, proclaimed “I was hungry” when later asked by my parents if he liked it. As for me, I passed. I’ve eaten quite a few questionable things in my life, and given the urge of hunger, might be so inclined to go for something as bizarre as a cold panini covered in chocolate.

More traditional palates eventually prevailed when we came back to my house later in the evening for some hot dogs and hamburgers, and after hanging out playing yard games and Nintendo-64 the next morning, I drove them back down to DC. For me, ever the cautious, usually self-absorbed person, the whole weekend was exactly what I needed. With the economy the way it is these days, and with a million competing voices telling us what we “should” do to get ahead, it’s tempting to go into a shell and act like a business man each day, denying yourself the kinds of out-of-your-way experiences of friendships like the one I had with Rhett and Allie. But we can’t live that way. We have to remind ourselves that life isn’t a series of transactions, and that the truest forms of love are those which see us invest ourselves in making other people happy. Because that’s what ultimately makes us happy. And, if along the way we chomp down on some truly bizarre culinary creations that remind us of just how fun we can be, well, then what more can we ask for?

More Sweet Cascades at HowChow

Food for Thought: Eating out with friends. Are you cautious or adventurous. Epicureon or tried and true? And if you could cover one and only one sandwich in chocolate, what would it be?

Fiber One Nutty Clusters & Almonds

When you get as passionate about cereal as I am, it’s hard to resist developing a hierarchy of brands and flavors. Like an analyst pouring over college football statistics and the perception of certain teams, I not only recognize a hierarchy in terms of the best and worst cereals, but attribute labels such as over and underrated to them.

Among my most cited and favorite underrated cereals, you ask? That would e Fiber One’s Honey Clusters, which features a delectably sweet combination of toasted, hearty multigrain flakes and crispy oat clusters.  I mean, what more could a guy want, besides, you know, some marshmallows and chocolate chips thrown in there for good measures? Well, now that I think about it, some fruit and nuts would work great too. Which is probably exactly why I was drawn to the newest addition to the Fiber One cereal family, Nutty Clusters and Almonds.

I think Fiber One’s marketing people do a swell job for the most part. I mean, nothing makes me want to run out and buy something more than a witty Englishman, and when you basically make fiber taste like candy, you’re going to get my attention. But Nutty Clusters? That’s the best they could come up with? The Fiber One team is almost as bad at coming up with cereal names as I was coming up with newspaper headlines.

The good news is that you can, in fact, see the Almonds. Likewise, the hearty flakes are just as good as they are in the Honey Cluster cereal. They’re crunchy and slightly malty when eaten plain, developing a stronger sweetness during the process of mechanical digestion. Like many Fiber One products, a light chicory flavor stands in as a banknote, but it contributes to the depth of flavor and woodsy sweetness.  In milk you get a better sense for the subtle molasses flavor of the flakes, which turns an al dente soggy.

The almond slivers add a bit of anise flavor, but they don’t come across as intensly flavored through toasting, and lack the ideal crunch you’d get from a whole almond. You’ll be able to pick up the flavor if eaten dry, but in milk, they’re kind of moot point.

The biggest disappointment, however, is the clusters. They seem few and far between, and fundamentally different from the crunchy, sweet, and glazed clusters of the Honey Clusters and Raisin Bran Cluster flavors of Fiber One. For the most part they look the same, but they just lack the same crunch and sweetness, and don’t often enough. Likewise, there are a few scattered puffed wheat pieces in the bag, which add about as much value to the team as the third string long snapper does for your college. In other words, why?

I like Fiber One Nutty Clusters, but I wouldn’t choose it over Fiber One’s Honey Clusters or Raisin Bran Clusters, or Honey Bunches of Oats for that matter. Despite having more sugar than the Honey Clusters it doesn’t taste as sweet, and the lack of a chewy aspect in dried fruits holds the experience back. If you’re an Almond fan like me, you might just want to throw some almonds into the Honey Clusters, and maybe even go ahead and add some marshmallows while you’re it.

Fiber One Nutty Clusters and Almonds

• Price: $3.00 (On sale at Safeway)
• Ranking: 6/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 40%

Life Cereal

Yep, the following cereal review has “life”, if not overtly spiritual, undertones and metaphors. But before you go rolling your eyes and impulsively hitting that comment button, ask yourself: Would you do the same for a review with sexual metaphors? Just something to think about, courtesy of that smiling Quaker dude and yours truly. 

Life, I think we can all agree, is deplorably mundane most of the time. There may be certain things to look forward to – the weekend off, the big game on Monday night, that next visit to In-N-Out – but for the most part, Life walks a line between moderately sweet, mournfully soggy, and yes, mostly plain.

That is, until you choose to complete it, and make it whole.

Then, something once plain and ordinary somehow transforms into something worth celebrating. Kind of like Life cereal.

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve hit a rut recently in my interest for cereal. Heck, I’ve hit a rut in my interest for food and blogging. It’s been hot as all get out here on the East coast, and now that I’m working again, I feel less of a compulsion to feign expertise as a food blogger. Mostly, I just feel tried and worn out.  Not to get to deep with you here, but I’m rethinking my relationship with food, which for far too long has taken the place of tangible, real relationships and meaning in my life.

Take cereal. I’ve gone from one box of cereal to another chasing some form of childhood nostalgia or sugar high, and each occasion has left me far from satiated. They pile up in my pantry and go uneaten, with their smiling mascots reminding me only of the temporal (if that) euphoria of the first whiff of a newly opened cereal box. After that, it’s all vanity. And stale cereal which eventually gets thrown out.

So I’ve stopped buying cereal recently, and let the pantry stock dwindle to whatever my mother has in the “family” stock. It’s been getting especially lean as of late, and when I looked inside the other day, one of the only remaining boxes was the one with the smiling Quaker Oats guy. What, can you tell me, does this dude possibly have to smile about?

The impossibly cheerful Quaker guy notwithstanding, I’ve long been lukewarm to Life cereal, just like I’ve been lukewarm to embracing a sense of change in my life. I have “my” cereals, just like I had, and still have, those habits and crosses which set me back and make me a more unhappy, less selfless person.  Sure, a handful of Froot Loops here and a few chomps of Mini Wheats there might lend  me some memory of childhood or temporary euphoria from a sugar high, but sooner or later I’m reminded I live in a different world now, and that even a sugar high backed with whole grains can leave me cantankerous or, worse yet, compunctious.

Taking a look at the smiling Quaker man, I have to admit I’m not excited. There’s no rush of the “living to eat” adventure I’ve sometimes (ok, oftentimes) embraced in the world of blogging, and taking a look at the relatively straightforward ingredients, I’m left with a singular thought; ordinary. Maybe the problem isn’t with Life. Maybe the problem is my approach to Life. I haven’t been looking at is as full, as whole. I haven’t allowed myself to open up to give it what it needs to reach its full potential. Handfuls at work are half-assed, you might say, and never fully committed, never fully “all in.”

I was killing time after work the other day when I realized I’m not to most devoted of cereal eaters, just like I’m not to most devoted worker, son, and yes, Christian. I’ve been incomplete in these roles because I’m always letting something stand in the way. And oftentimes, amongst other things, that “something” is food, and more specifically, food blogging. I also realized I have the power to change the way I embrace these elements of my life.

Just like I have the power to choose to complete my bowl of Life cereal with whole milk.

I’ve had several different milks in my life, but I don’t know if I’ve ever had whole milk. Not that it hasn’t been around, or that people haven’t sworn by it. Come to think of it, whole milk seems steady and reliable, time-tested and enduring. Coconut. Skim Plus. Almond. They all come and go, and some are pretty worthwhile. But just like the cereals that come and go, and the fads and thoughts and trends that ebb through history and our lives, they eventually fall out of favor and are replaced. Whole milk? That’s been on the shelves before there were even shelves, when “getting milk” meant a smiling white-clothed dude dropping it off on your porch.

I returned home with my gallon of the smiling bovine nectar with a new perspective. This wasn’t going to be some post workout rush of a bowl, but rather, a meal. Something to be enjoyed, and something eaten for the sake of eating in order to live. Before pouring the cool dairy over my bowl, I took a handful of the crunchy squares. Not too crunchy, mind you, they’ve got a wholesome wheat and oat taste. It’s simple, but classic, with no off flavors or distracting and overly multigrain tones. The sugar crystals dotting the squares maxamize the perceptale sweetness, which takes on a cool and refreshing, almost ice cream like quality when I pour a half cup of whole milk into the bowl. I watch the milk slowly ebb and flow in and out of the squares like the ocean tide setteling into an old dock, creating sparkling squares of wheat and oats.  There is a refreshing quality of the playfully soggy pieces in milk, especially in the summer sun after a long day of work. Any light crunch is lost to a porridge like consistency, with the crunchy crystals sugar slowly dissolving into the milk to add another burst of sweetness to the milky fresh flavor. So this is the spirit which seizes one to slurp up end-milk like a dog slurps up the water on his bowl during a hot day!

I must be frank; I’ve never enjoyed milk so much, nor have I enjoyed a cereal with such a restrained ingredient list as much. Finishing off the bowl, I ask myself, “was there any surprise?” I’ve long known that in this crazy, mixed up world where I’m always pushing myself, it’s oftentimes the simple things that satiate me and calm me down. I guess it just hadn’t occurred to me to put two and two together when it came to cereal, and enjoy the whole experience of Life for what it is.

Food for Thought: Do you remember any of the discontinued Life flavors? Which is your favorite?

Original Life (ranking adjusted for whole milk)

• Price: $2.50 (On sale at Food Lion)
• Ranking: 10/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 100%

Pip’s Dock Street Dogs

The other day at work, one of our Acquisitions Editors treated me to a hot dog from Pip’s in downtown Annapolis. She asked me what kind of dog I wanted. I asked for the “Devil Dog.” Named for the nicknames of the Marines, it boasts of being “Only for the few, the proud , and the brave… Spicy  all-beef dog with habanero salsa, habanero mustard, tabasco sauce, and a poblano pepper.” The dog looked gorgeous in the wrapper with a charred interior from being split on the flattop, while the grilled bun had excellent texture and a steamy sweetness from being wrapped up in foil to go. I took a bite into it like an overzealous recruit, and immediately realized the folly on my enthusiasm. This was the hottest single meat product in tube form I have ever allowed to come into contact with my taste buds. Despite a haircut that might fool you, I guess I was never meant to be one of the few and the proud.

New! Keebler Cinnamon Roll Cookies

Temptation isn’t hard to come by in the walkway between Concourse B and Concourse C in the Salt Lake International Airport. Somewhere between the always alluring sight of a Krispy Kreme donut and the smell of Stout BBQ at Squatters, wafts the the most siren of aromas known to mankind.

A Cinnabon Cinnamon Bun.

I’ve walked down the hallway there more times than I can count on my fingers, each time weighing the pros and cons of the hundreds of calories of empty sugar and fat in those rolls. I know I wasn’t the only one. Tausha would be there as well. Usually around the Holidays, and always while her husband waited in the terminal. We’d see each other, inevitably, and joke of spanish class the day before and how good it was to be getting out of Logan just as the storm of the century month was rolling through. General chit-chat between friends, to be sure, although masking the prevailing thought; you order first.

I somehow managed to avert the epic if not iconic tug of the Cinnabon during those two years in which I routinely passed through Salt Lake International, but the memory of those Cinnabon’s – or, should I say, those behemoth volcanos of richly sweet dough erupting with gooey cream cheese lava — still calls to me. Reminding me of the vague memory of a childhood encounters with the massive buns, which, while I cannot place definitively in time or space, must have occurred before the notion of a calorie ever crossed my mind.

Ignorance, they say, is bliss.

Enthralled by such memories of both youthful innocence and college nostalgia, I’ve since searched far and wide for a worthy replacement, if not somewhat restrained, replacement for the Food Court’s most destructive menu item. Fortunately, my favorite elves this side of Judie from The Santa Clause seems to have come up with just the remedy.

If Keebler gets points right off the bat for partnering with Cinnabon in this venture, than they lose points for still living in the 20th century of cookie packaging. Please, Keebler, take a note from Nabisco and invest in the resealable cookie bag. I have only so much patience for chip clips and tape. Regardless of this flaw, these cookies are your standard size. Slightly longer than an oreo in diameter, they look exactly like they do on the package, with a sweet confectionary and glycerin based icing rather than cream cheese frosting.

The taste is, in a word, classic. It’s almost unthinkable to think that after all the mediocre snacks/bars/cereals/what have you that Cinnabon has leant their iconic blue and white text to over the years, we should arrive at something which actually tastes like a Cinnabon. What’s great about these cookies is they work both a room temperature and heated in the microwave. On their own, they’re moist enough to mimic an actual Cinnabon, yet firm enough on the interior “roll” portion to give the impression of crystallized sugar and butter within the dough. Speaking of that “roll,” it’s done just right. More cinnamon and rich in taste than coying, it breaks down to a gooey, warm mess when heated. I even taste the eggs in the dough. No, like for real.

I thought the icing could have been a tad thicker, but once heated it takes on a sweeter and gooier state that reminds you of freshly drizzled donut glaze. My only complaint about the cookies themselves is what you’d expect; small. A hungry hand could devour one in a single swoop, and even a conscious eater (or, say, reviewer) has trouble getting more than three nibbles out of each. Knowing such, that whole “Health Halo” might just go into effect, completely mitigating the seemingly reasonable nutrition of this little guys.

I guess you could do worse than unconsciously devouring half a box, though. At least Keebler’s latest cookie will save you from the Mall Food court, and keep you from that guilty feeling of ordering a whole Cinnabon for yourself. What it won’t do, unfortunatly, is bring back those days of chilling with friends at the Salt Lake airport, or stuffing my childhood face without those little nutrition police hanging over my shoulder. I don’t mind too much though, because for a few nibbles, you can almost taste those days.

Keebler Cinnamon Roll Cookies

• Price: $1.88 (On sale at Weis)
• Ranking: 9/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 100%

Examples from Amos

At the risk of making an overstatement, one of the things that really bothers me about the world we live in today is the propensity for people to think we’re all stuck in some unique historical phenomenon. Blame it on twitter, Iphones – or trace it through much more complex social and cultural factors — but whatever  you attribute it to, it’s my belief that we tend to view ourselves as unique, and almost always view our problems as something never before encountered by humanity. There’s a fundamental disconnect with the past — the history, that’s for sure — but specifically, to the people of the past, and the struggles and situations they faced. There are times I am guilty of cutting myself off from this perspective of centuries; often given to a sense of personal anxiety, I struggle to identify what I should do or where I should go in life without consulting examples of people from the past.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’ve been drawing so much inspiration from the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular. The prophets of ancient Israel are, in  a lot of ways, no different from you or I. Many were average people living in a turbulent world. In many cases, they were unsure of not only themselves, but their spirituality and their place in those turbulent societies. Take the Prophet from a recent Sunday reading, in particular. More or less just a dude (aka, in those days, a sheep herder), Amos leaves the comfort of everyday life and is instead admonished by those in the Northern Kingdom after God sent him there to preach.

Amiziah, priest of Bethel, said to Amos, “Off with you, visionary, flee to the land of Judah! There earn your bread by prophesying, but never again prophesy in Bethel; for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple.” Amos answered Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor have I belonged to a company of prophets; I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. The LORD took me from following the flock, and said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”

At the time (8th century BCE), the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Southern Kingdom of Judah weren’t on the best terms. None of that, though, would have mattered to Amos if he had it his way. Like he says in the passage, he just wants to tend to his his sheep and farm his figs. I don’t blame him. There are many days — most, actually — where I just want to be Adam. A dry-humored young man trying to earn a buck in the real world, while blogging about subjects of the utmost unimportance. The cookies I eat, the cereals I buy, the college football debates I engage in. It’s just so much more ‘easy’ pretending to be some kind of psuedo-expert in trivial things than dealing in weighty matters. And these days, when advocating a poltical or religouse belife is tantamount to asking for death threats on Twitter (just ask Brad Pitt’s mom), the idea of doing something comfortable, goofy, and in many cases meaningless, is often too hard to pass up.

Sometimes, we have to talk about things a little more important than ice cream…

Like Amos, I’d rather avoid the kinds of exchanges like those with Amaziah. Nobody likes getting yelled at, especially when it’s getting yelled at by some one of authority.

There’s a lesson here though, and it’s a lesson that I’m learning — and embracing — more and more with each day. Unsurprisingly, it’s a lesson I’m sure some people reading this blog may not like. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Like Amos, we’re often called to do things we’d rather not, and to take the messages we’ve been asked to take to those who aren’t going to want to hear it. To talk about and to assert a message of hope and love for our fellow men and women, and one based in the spiritual truth of God’s love. It’s a message, however, that’s often misunderstood and misinterpreted, and because of this, we might get blasted for even mentioning it. Our words are going to be twisted, and, talking about things like faith — heck, anything outside of food on a blog like this — isn’t always going to be popular. Most times, I think, it’ll be unpopular.

At times like that, I’m tempted to stop, and to return back into my little world of cookie and cereal reviews while posting pictures of crazy stuff I’ve come up with in the kitchen. Heck, for a long time, it’s what I did on another blog. Yet the example of prophets like Amos — who recognize, even though it’s personally uncomfortable for them at times, to go out and say what needs to be said — stays with me, and guides my writing. More than anything else, it’s that reminder of the uncompromising and unconditional love of God — and that hope that we  can share that love with each other — which leads me on through the “get losts” of the Amiziah’s of society.

It may not be popular or ‘acceptable’ when it comes to food blogs, but it’s the most important job I have. I can’t help it, land ike Amos, I truly believe it’s something I’m called to do. And with a little courage, and some perspective from the past, its something all those who believe in love and hope, family and faith can assert as well.