The DAN ZONE

From the day I first read on the net that Dr. Pepper would be celebrating its 125^th anniversary with a limited edition REAL sugar version of its spicy cola, I was having Pepsi Throwback throwbacks I mean, flashbacks. I was SO excited to once again experience a soda the way it tasted in my youth.

After weeks of stopping at every grocery store, Target, Walmart and 7-11 I passed, I finally found Sugar Doctor—and immediately bought three 12-packs. Once I got them home, I had to try my patience by leaving the Sugar Doctor in the fridge for HOURS before tasting it. See, I will NOT try an all new soda experience with ice, because when warm soda hits cold ice, the ice IMMEDIATELY begins to melt INTO the soda and messes with the natural taste of the soda, essentially rendering the soda flat by watering it down.

So it was around 9 at night that I finally snapped open my first can. The fizzy sweetness touched my lips and…well…I was so NOT blown away. It didn’t taste all that different than the crappy corn syrup version of Dr. Pepper. The only real difference I noted was that it was a bit ‘cleaner’ or ‘purer’ tasting, with no pasty aftertaste coating my mouth. What went wrong? Were my taste buds off? Where was the sugary wonder I’d experienced with Pepsi Throwback? And how cruel are the hands of fate to keep me awake all night with only my disappointment as company while I watched Roseanne reruns on TV Land waiting for the late night caffeine injection to wear off?

It appears that instead of using PURE cane sugar like Pepsi Throwback, this real sugar Dr. Pepper has used a cheaper alternative called liquid ‘beet’ sugar, whatever the hell that means—sounds like nothing more than an alternative corn syrup to me. At least this appears to be the situation based on what I could discern from the crazy people on the net who have nothing better to do with their time than obsess over this ridiculous soda stuff. That’s why I had to have a corn syrup Dr. Pepper/Sugar Doctor taste test with my friends at work the next day!

Yeah, we used the blindfolds and all. There were four of us, me and three females, and the results were absolutely convoluted and inconclusive. One of the females pointed out that it could have something to do with which of them was at which point in their ‘cycles’ and how that affected their desire for sweets. Another problem was the unfair playing field—see, I had the limited edition Sugar Doctor in a can, and the guy who fills the vending machine at my job decided THAT week to stop featuring corn syrup Dr. Pepper cans in its vending machine. I had to make a special run to a deli, where I could only find corn syrup Dr. Pepper in a plastic bottle. And the simply fact is, soda does not taste as good in a plastic bottle as it does in a can. So it would seem that corn syrup Dr. Pepper was at a disadvantage.

And yet, Sugar Doctor didn’t win the taste test. Myself and one of the females both ended up selecting the Sugar Doctor as the cleaner tasting drink with no aftertaste. Yet the other two females BOTH liked corn syrup Dr. Pepper better, claiming it was ‘sweeter’. However, they did detect the filmy aftertaste. Meanwhile, some guy walked by who is a passionate Dr. Pepper lover but has stopped drinking soda, so he wanted to just SMELL the sodas to see if he could detect which was the real sugar variety. Another co-worker later pointed out he had a 50/50 chance of getting it right, but at the time he took the sniff test, we four tasters were in awe that he matter-of-factly pointed to the Sugar Doctor as the one with the real sugar. I still don’t know how, on the soda wagon or not, he didn’t at least TRY a sip of the stuff.

So anyway, we figured we needed a taste tiebreaker, so we found another candidate—again a female co-worker! PLUS, this chick doesn’t even LIKE Dr. Pepper. Anyway, it turns out she actually liked the Sugar Doctor better but only because she felt it wasn’t as sweet as the regular Dr. Pepper with corn syrup.

So I guess we could say three out of five people preferred the Sugar Doctor, even though one of those who ‘preferred’ it simply disliked it less than Dr. Pepper with corn syrup. A general consensus seemed to be that corn syrup made the soda sweeter, which was fine for those who like it sweeter and are willing to suffer the yucky aftertaste. In the meantime, I’m having more friends over this weekend to share in Sugar Doctor with me. Perhaps I’ll be able to score a can of the corn syrup version so everything can be on a more even playing field—especially since there will actually be more men than women doing the tasting.

Okay, I’m grocery shopping tonight, picking up soda for a video game weekend with my friend, and suddenly my eyes detect a different color scheme in the Pepsi section of the grocery store. I quickly absorb every image and word on the twelve pack carton to make sure it isn’t some stupid repackaging of their flavors to cross-promote with some lame summer blockbuster. I quickly had to re-read. And the re-re-read. Was I really seeing Cherry Vanilla Pepsi??? REALLY???

Yes really. And I just finished drinking my first can. Now let me say, Cherry cola is my absolute favorite cola EVER (okay, next to limited edition Pepsi Holiday Spice from 2004, but I can’t even really talk about it. Too soon.). Based on what is currently on the market, Wild Cherry Pepsi is my favorite–simply delicious, followed by Cherry Coke–not cherry smooth enough, and then Cherry Dr. Pepper–almost tastes like kiddie cough syrup.

About five years ago, Coke released a Black Cherry Vanilla Coke, and I was a fan…until it suddenly disappeared from stores. Damn you limited editions and brand experiments! Then we got Pepsi Jazz Black Cherry French Vanilla, which was pretty good, but almost sickeningly sweet, despite being a diet soda–which I can’t actually drink because they destroy my stomach. Doesn’t matter anyway, because that also went away. After that, we were treated to Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, and I think that was my favorite cherry vanilla soda so far. So you know what that means…they sent that fucker to Pepsi Holiday Spice land…wherever that may be.

And now, Pepsi returns to the realm of Cherry Vanilla with this latest version, in both regular and diet (which makes me wonder how  different plain old cherry and plain old vanilla tastes compared to BLACK cherry and FRENCH vanilla in the Jazz soda). As for the non-diet version, which I just finished drinking, I’d have to say, it tastes almost identical to Black Cherry Coke, but is a bit sweeter and is unevenly balanced with way too much focus on the vanilla. I can’t even really taste any cherry and I’m highly disappointed. Hell, I might as well be drinking a syrupy sweet Vanilla Pepsi (is that still on the market? Probably, since I hate it). I seriously wish I had a regular Wild Cherry Pepsi floating around the house right now so I could mix it with this new Cherry Vanilla Pepsi to dilute what appears to be a full bottle of vanilla extract that was dumped into this latest flavor’s formula…

M&M’s are back with candy that LOOKS like peanut M&M’s, but when you bite into one, you instead experience the crunch of pretzel. Seems like such an obvious idea, right? Chocolate covered pretzels are amazing and those chocolate covered pretzels you get in gourmet candy shops that are covered in mini M&M’s are taste bud blowing. But is this pretzel twist going to become a new M&M classic?

My initial thought when biting into my first Pretzel M&M (so important to only have ONE on the first try instead of a handful popped into the mouth, which is too much of an assault on the buds) was that there was SO much crunch that it was like eating one of those M&M’s crispy candies that were out a while back but eventually discontinued (and ironically—or not—were also packaged in a blue bag that was pretty much the same color as the pretzel bag). The difference here is that the crunch is not candy coating on top of crisp with chocolate in the center—the order here is candy coating-chocolate-pretzel crunch. Nice. Does it taste like your traditional chocolate covered pretzel? Not at all. It’s a rather confusing experience. Your mind thinks “this is all candy crunch and pretzel crunch,” which is the majority of each piece, yet somehow, the minimal amount of chocolate in between is extremely sweet! So sweet in fact that you can’t quite devour too many in one sitting. That is, of course, until your taste buds become accustomed to the experience and begin craving another hit…and another…and another. However, what this abundance of sweet does is mask any hint of salty. Sweet and salty is, after all, the draw of chocolate covered pretzels.  But that contrast just doesn’t come through here.

In essence, they’re yummy. But they are definitely an acquired…not taste…but texture. It’s almost as if the classic candy coating gets in the WAY of the traditional chocolate covered pretzel combo, in which your teeth usually first sink into the soft and sweet layer of chocolate before quickly chomping into the crunch within. And because the pretzel has more ‘give’ than the solidity of the candy coating, your final experience isn’t the crunchiest part of the M&M. That takes some real getting used to, and it could be in part to the fact that since Pretzel M&M’s are the same SIZE as Peanut M&M’s, your mind sort of presumes that you’re going to strike that nutty solidity inside, but is instead given a dusty crumbly pretzel.

So Pretzel M&M’s are quite the unique addition to the M&M family. Different than Peanut M&M’s, different than chocolate covered pretzels, different than chocolate and mini-M&M covered pretzels. This truly all-new experience is definitely going to require more of me sinking my teeth into them. But I’m pretty confident that I’d still turn to Dark Chocolate Peanut M&M’s or Almond M&M’s before Pretzel M&M’s (which means I’ll probably be hooked on these things within the next few days).

I’ve recently tried lactose-free milk for the first time because I haven’t been able to drink real milk since I was a kid–and duh. It suddenly hit me a couple of weeks ago for the first time in my forty years that I should try the lactose-free stuff just for the hell of it, you know, on a weekend when I was going to be home in case I had to deal with any of the  ‘side effects’ (aka: backside effects) that I get from regular milk. Well, it turns out that I get none of that from lactose-free milk! So I’m finally drinking milk again. Never again will I have soy milk in my Cap’n Crunch. The only problem is, as usual, we people who have to deal with food reactions are further punished by exorbitant prices! Lactose-free milk costs a fortune! You would think that, considering it is actually MISSING an ingredient, it would cost less! heh heh.

Meanwhile, today we’re taking our pups for a stroll and we see these two young children, a boy and a girl, neither of them older than, I’d say, six, standing on a corner, no adults in sight. I assumed they were our neighbor’s grandkids, who I consider nothing more than terror tokens to my kid-loathing dogs, so I don’t pay them enough mind to recognize them if their faces should they end up on the side of a lactose-free milk container, which isn’t a stretch of the imagination considering what happened next. I commented to Danny that it was odd that such young kids were out there by themselves.  Seconds later, they’re waving to us and saying hello in their little kiddie voices, so we waved and said hi back. But then the little boy goes, “Are you strangers?” So Danny responded that yeah, we’re kinda strange, and we said bye.

Not exactly a comforting exchange. Think about it. Obviously, this kid has been told not to talk to strangers, but the rules weren’t ever clearly spelled out for him. First, he talked to us BEFORE realizing we ‘might’ be strangers. And then, he ASKED us if we were strangers. Now, what would he have done if we had said, “No, we’re not strangers, we’re friends of your grandpa”? See? ANYONE could answer that question to the kid’s satisfaction, making him believe he’s NOT talking to a stranger since he apparently doesn’t quite understand that a ‘stranger’ would be ANY person that he doesn’t know, not just someone who, when interrogated, is willing to admit they are a stranger. Scary stuff. It’s 1:41 A.M. as I write this. Do you know where your children are? And do you know if they understand the precise definition of the word ‘stranger’?

In celebration of the new MINI Cadbury Creme Eggs, I present you with the classic clucking bunny rabbit from the original Cadbury Creme Egg commercial. This chocolate shell egg with an ooey gooey, man juice-looking center was always tough to eat, because it would pretty much burst all over the place when you bit into it like it was an apple, the pearly white cream oozing from the corners of your lips. Which makes you wonder why it took them like three decades to come up with smaller, pop-em-in-your-mouth versions. But they have! They come in a little ‘dozen egg’ case, and each is individually wrapped in tin foil like the original size. They also have the Cadbury Caramel Eggs available in this mini edition. It is the ideal way to get your creme egg fix without looking like a prudish spitter once you’re done.

I’m known around my parts for my absolute obsession with cherry cola, Excedrin and anything chocolate. And it has also become apparent over the past 6 years (although doctors and allergists were never able to pinpoint this) that many of my digestive problems are exacerbated severely by caffeine intake, an allergy I seem to have acquired due to my overdosing on the stuff daily since I was 18 and was first diagnosed with TMJ (aka: worn out cartilage in the jaw joint that makes one of my favorite activities hurt like hell…singing, of course.).

The fun thing about this allergy is that along with it comes addiction. Which is why I’m a caff-fiend. I can’t look at the beautiful white, green and red of an Excedrin bottle without my stomach growling hungrily and my eyes dilating in anticipation! Thing is, it’s mega-hard to accept that you could have such a bad reaction to something that you spent years of your life enjoying with no side effects (other than dents in the walls as you bounced off them). Over the past few years, I’ve managed to get off the ‘juice’ a couple of times for several month stretches, and it was wonderful. But then comes that one day when I slip—I just have to re-experience a cherry cola with pizza, or must try that ‘NEW! Limited Edition!” chocolate bar winking at me seductively on the grocery checkout line. I tell myself it will be just that once, just for that day…and then I tell myself the same thing the next day…and the next day. And before you know it, I’m back in this vicious cycle of feeding my unhappiness about my GI tract and my bloating belly with the very thing that is causing it.

The longest I walked away from caffeine was about 3 months, and that was like 3 summers ago. And in those 3 months, I lost 15 pounds and all the bloating! So I decided my New Year’s resolution would be to do it again, this time for a year, and see how I felt overall. So I started January 1^st. On January 2^nd, I woke up and said to my partner, “I’ve been off caffeine for a day! And now…someone must DIE!” But here it is 11 days later, I haven’t had a hint of caffeine, and no one is dead.

Unlike other attempts in which I did it all myself, this time I blatantly told people in my life that I need their help, literally insisting that if they see me go anywhere near chocolate or soda or Excedrin, they should rip it out of my hands. And amazingly, people have been SO good. If my partner is indulging in chocolate or soda, he’s doing it outside the house while at work. Although, I have been trying to get him to finish up this bag of mini-Reeses that has been floating around the house since the holidays so they won’t be there calling my name, but he hasn’t touched them (Is he trying to suffer along with me?). And yes, I’ve looked at the bag, and, um…sniffed the bag…several times when home alone, but so far, I’ve fought the temptation.

My video game friend who comes over for weekend marathons and what used to be gallons of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi to keep us awake until all hours of the morning has said she would give up the juice for me for the video game weekends. Luckily for her, a worse enemy to my system than caffeine is any artificial sweetener, so I have no problem not touching that poison. And my friends at work, with whom I would go on chocolate runs around the office to raid other employees’ candy bowls, have stopped inviting me to these types of hunts and have not been dropping surprise pieces of chocolate on my desk as they used to simply to make me ‘happy’ because they knew I loved it.

So, that’s where this caff–fiend stands right now. Eleven days sober.

Marketer’s dream that I am, I saw a commercial last night for Domino’s complete new and improved menu. Supposedly, they took their customers suggestions and complaints about the taste of their food and changed all their recipes in accordance. As a lover of the Domino’s experience every now and then (you have to be in the mood for it because it’s not ‘real’ pizza), I new right then and there what I would be having for dinner tonight. Ordered a standard pizza with pepperoni, plus cheesy bread with marinara sauce on the side. I can say now from firsthand experience that Domino’s new recipes taste exactly the same as their old ones. I noticed NOTHING new. No different herbs and spices as the commercial claimed, no different quality in the pizza crust per the commercial. And that’s fine by me. Who wants their favorite junk foods altered anyway? Look at the fiasco with New Coke in the 80s. They changed it, people hated it, so they brought back “Classic Coke” to appease those customers…and then New Coke mysteriously faded away, leaving us to this day with ‘Classic’ Coke labels on the soda bottles.

Christmas really feels like Christmas this year. I have a house filled with Christmas cheer, two dogs who have been littering the floor with the remains of numerous Christmas squeaky toys all week, two feet of snow feel, I’ve been eating chocolate like I’m giving it up as my New Year’s resolution (oh wait—I am), and we’ve been doing a bunch of holiday week hosting and visiting (the downside being that I’ve actually had to shower, shave and get out of my pajamas every day, which is part of the fun of being on vacation).

This weekend I had friends over for a video game night. We were going to break in the four-player New Super Mario Bros. Wii game, so I had to run out and buy two more Wiimotes and Nunchucks. It was a costly, but it was worth it. The game is a blast. It’s total old school side scrolling Mario action, but this time with four characters on screen at the same time. We spent the night laughing until we were crying, repeating difficult levels over and over again, and blaming our friend who is the self-proclaimed king of the Mario world every time one of us lost a life, even if it wasn’t his fault. This game is so addicting with its inclusion of all the classic moves from old Mario games, including jumping on enemies, ground pounding, throwing enemies, flying on Yoshi, and so much more. The only real issue with the game is that, while two of the characters are Mario and Luigi, the other two are both Toads—and in all the chaos that ensues on screen, the Toads look way too similar to some enemies and mushrooms, which can be seriously confusing. Oh yeah. There’s one more problem. Once you’ve played with other people, you’ll never want to play it alone, because that would just crush the fun factor.

With a lot of baking going on in my house this week, the slice n’ bake cookie taste test still returns the same results—Nestle Toll House slice n’ bake cookie dough tastes fantastic baked but nasty when eaten raw, while Pilsbury cookie dough gets the medal for best raw cookie dough but can’t compare to Nestle Toll House when baked.

Something else that hasn’t changed is that Best Buy still sux. With gift cards in hand, I went there tonight to pick up the Blu-Ray discs of Paranormal Activity and Jennifer’s Body, both of which were released TODAY. There were approximately 2,000 copies of Paranormal Activity collecting dust, but Jennifer’s Body was sold out! How does a major movie retailer run out of that movie on the first day of release??? Are there really that many horny teenage boys who own Blu-Ray players and got gift cards as presents who are running out during Christmas break to buy a film just because the title suggests that the entire movie is about actress Megan Fox’s body??? Oh. I guess that all adds up, huh? Ah, to be a young, straight teenage virgin who scoffs in the face of a recession at the allure of Megan Fox’s naked body in high definition. What a way to ruin a gay horror lover’s Christmas vacation.

But there was one Christmas miracle this year, even though I hate to give ABC any props since it canceled my favorite new show Eastwick (gonna suck watching the last episode tomorrow night). However, ABC did make a brilliant programming decision this year that seemed logical to me when I was seven years old and Rudolph’s Shiny New Year first aired. They actually aired the show tonight, right before the New Year holiday instead of a couple of weeks before Christmas as has been done for over thirty years. It took over thirty years for them to realize they could garner some Christmas week ratings by showing a New Year’s holiday special between Christmas and the New Year??? Even better, there’s a Charlie Brown New Year’s special on tomorrow night! Two holiday specials to help ward off the post-holiday blues just a little longer. I really do feel like a kid all over again this year.

Snagged me some new Snyder Hersheys Dipped Pretzel Nuggets the other day. Figured they couldn’t really taste any different than the standard chocolate dipped mini pretzels. Wow, was I wrong. These are like the best thing I’ve tried since the “Hersheys Bites” series, which seemed to use a higher quality, ‘polished’ chocolate for its formula to make it extra delicious. That seems to be the case with these new nuggets, which sparkle like a diamond when you hold them up to a light. Chocolate is a Dan’s best friend. The chocolate is phenomenal, so I refuse to believe that they are using average Hersheys chocolate, the worst tasting chocolate on the market that’s only a step above those horrible Palmer brand holiday chocolates you can get at any dollar store.

These new chocolate dipped nuggets are not even in the same league as the standard Snyder Hersheys Chocolate Dipped Mini Pretzels. Which makes me thing the company may be using a better quality chocolate just on the initial presentation of the new product. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a year’s time, the nuggets taste just as boring as the mini pretzels. Has anyone else ever noticed how new food products seem to taste amazing when they first appear, but eventually seem to lose their unique flavor? Is it just because we become too familiar with them, or are we truly being hooked with higher quality ingredients that are later changed out for inferior ingredients? I know that Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms don’t give me the rush they once used to…

There’s been this Starbucks Instant Coffee Taste Test commercial airing recently that shows different groups of people tasting coffee while a voice over says, for example, “Civil War reenactors can’t tell the difference.” One clip shows a man screaming out loud in a public setting while the voice over says, “People who yell at town hall meetings can’t taste the difference…” Well, in a commercial that I pretty much ignored and had no interest in since I don’t drink coffee, that last line made me laugh every time I saw it. Obviously, it was poking fun at all those people who got their fifteen minutes of fame literally shouting at town hall meetings about the healthcare reform. They want fame? Well fame costs. So it was just a matter of time before their actions were spoofed. But apparently, these people have no sense of humor. I saw the ad this morning, and the town hall part has been REMOVED from the commercial. So I immediately made my way to Google, and lo and behold, these same people were up in arms over the fact that they were being parodied in this commercial, so I guess they got their way and bullied Starbucks into removing that part from the commercial. Now, if they’re lucky and get their way again, all their town hall shenanigans will ensure that not everyone in our country is guaranteed health insurance…