Seems like everywhere I go, somebody makes an effort to sell me some substitute-form of what I actually ask for. Lite this, fat-free that, lower-cholesterol something or other. Hey, didn’t I just request something specific? How tough is it to give me…what I fucking asked for? Anyway, when any of the following items are proposed to me as an alternative for what I really want, my reaction is the same. Even though I can’t always voice it, the sentiment: Uh, pardon me, but shove that up your ass, is what I’m really thinking.
1. Fat-free Oreos
If I’m in the supermarket, and the grandmother they’ve hired to hand out samples makes an effort to pawn off fat-free Oreos on me, despite an abundance of good old fashioned fatty, tasty Oreos filling the shelves, I’ll politely turn the impostor-cookie down. But really, I’d like to turn a crinkly-cellophane-wrapped package sideways, and have her ram it up her rump. Yeah, fat-free/taste-free Oreos. Just what I want to pay ninety cents more for…and get less cookies, to boot.
2. Tofu
Here’s the deal. If I go out to a restaurant, I want to eat something pleasant tasting and appealing and enjoy the ambience and company and atmosphere and maybe even a frozen drink. I did not come out to order soylent green in the form of a tasteless, spongy substance that some desperate reject from the Food Network is trying to manipulate into something…anything… other than what it actually is. Tofurkey? Fuck you. Soy burgers? Please… Teriyaki-tofu morsels? Go kamikaze some of those things yourself, Garcon, and bring me the fajitas I asked for, with real steak and real, honest-to-goodness cheese, not some shredded soy bullshit whose only link to dairy is the faux-milk product some third world children squeezed out of it before trying to pass the rest of it off as to-whatever.
3. Carob
“But, it tastes just like chocolate,” I’ve heard health-conscious foodies tell me. Just before I play Charlie Brown to the tree-hugger’s Lucy, take a bite, and consider the repercussions of spitting the half-chewed nugget back in their face. Now, don’t get me wrong. If Carob was offered up just as Carob, and not some you-can’t-tell-the-difference choco chameleon, it would be semi-tolerable. But I’ve tried Carob-peanut butter cups, Carob bars, Carob paste, a Carob spread, etc., and you know what? If you weren’t lying so hard to yourself that it was just as good as chocolate, it might be passable. But the truth is it isn’t, and no matter how you gussy it up, it is *not* going to work come Valentine’s Day, unless you’re dating some stick-insect vegan babe who proclaims she is healthy as an ox, yet cannot go three days in a row without getting a cold. Yeah, Carob…here’s what you can do with your Carob, food-freaks. The rest of us’ll have a Hershey’s kiss and worry about the cleanliness of our colons later.
4. Turkey bacon, Fakin’ bacon, or any bacon that doesn’t include…bacon
Note to the folks at Morningstar Farms. Those meat-free strips you try to hawk as substitutes for bacon? Has anybody on your staff ever actually *had* bacon? Because, trust me, these things are no substitute. Turkey bacon? Are you freaking kidding me? Yeah, let’s try and replicate the greasy, salty, fatty flavor of bacon with one of the driest meats in existence; give it a leathery texture that will never crinkle up in a frying pan, griddle, or four alarm fire; is chewier than the fattiest piece of Canadian slab bacon; and see how many fools we can get to buy into it as being, “Just as good as the real thing.” Screw you, folks, the only thing that’s as good as the real thing is…the real thing. And, if I’m ordering breakfast and I just asked for hotcakes, a buttered roll, a side order of hash and bacon, and you ask me if I’d rather have your veggie breakfast strips? How about you take those pressed veggie pads and tie them into a noose, and go hang yourself in the back. Preferably near the salad and sprouts and soy products, so as not to fuck up the food the rest of us came for.
5. Boca/Veggie burgers
Hey, I eat these things. In fact, I’ve got some in the freezer right now. Occasionally, I’ll have Pam fry some up with some onion, because as a meat-substitute, they’re dismal failures, but they don’t taste hideous if done right. But…let’s get something settled up front. They’re not burgers. They do not taste like meat. They do not really taste like much of anything, except what you put on them. Like cheese, onions, salt and pepper, etc. In reality, these burgers taste like pressed styrofoam. So, if I’m out in California and I order a burger, rare, and the waitress reacts with distaste because I want real cow with that burger, and I need to sign a death waiver so as not to allow the cook to char my lunch like the livestock in Pompeii the last time Vesuvius threw a hissy-fit, my attitude is, “No thanks, ma’am, please bring me the animal-flesh I requested, and keep your health-conscious mystery patty on a sourdough roll. Maybe try using it as a maxi-pad. In my experience, they’re extraordinarily dry, and should be very absorbent.” Go green, baby, go green!
6. Sausageless sausage
Much like imitation bacon, meat-free sausage is kinda like the emperor’s new clothes of breakfast snake-oil salesmanship. There is nothing remotely similar to real sausage, except the color, and even then, that’s iffy sometimes. Have you ever tried this shit? This food-debacle? This culinary Hindenburg? It’s hideous. It makes turkey-bacon look like five-star cuisine. It makes tofurkey practically gobble. Somebody out there is packaging sawdust and industrial cleanser, no-sodium salt, and perhaps something which floated out of the large Hadron collider, pressing it into patties and links, and selling it as food. I have no doubt the person behind this atrocity once worked at USAMRIID, probably on new strains of anthrax and botulinim toxin, and then one day in the cafeteria, reading about an outbreak of some cattle disease on Plum Island, thought…”Hey, I have an idea!”
7. Smashed ‘taters’
There it is. The lie is put to you right before your eyes. Because, there’s no tater involved whatsoever. What the foodies are trying to do here, is actually substitute one vegetable for another, because in their anemia-driven minds, they have determined the potato is not a good *enough* veggie. Organic goddamned snobs. You’ll hear them say, “Ohhh, but the potato really isn’t a vegetable, it’s a starch.” Sorry, freakazoid, but if it’s self-perpetuating, and it comes out of the same fucking ground as a carrot, or a beet, or an onion, then take your vegetable elitism and your pureed cauliflower and shove it up your ass, all right? Amazing isn’t it? For as long as I can remember, the potato has been a vegetable. And yet, it’s like the redheaded stepchild of veggies. Only corn takes the same kind of abuse. Consider this. You can mash and boil cauliflower. It’s still a vegetable. You can steam cauliflower. Still a vegetable. You can even roast it, or eat it raw. Still a vegetable. But…cut potatoes into slices and fry ‘em? Now they’re junk food. Remove corn from the cob and gasp! Pop it with hot air? No longer considered much of anything. To hell with such vegetable discrimination. Tell the man to stop keeping the potato down! Rise up! Revolt! Put the taters back in mashed potatoes, and stop this dishonest sham in which cauliflower masquerades as it’s tastier, carb-rich cousin!
8. Country Crock, Shedd’s Spread, or any other unidentifiable butterless butter
At least the folks behind Country Crock sneak some honesty into their brand name, because crock is exactly what this non-butter butter substitute is. I’ve had it. Truth? It isn’t bad. But that doesn’t translate into a replacement for butter. For the health conscious? Sure, it’s better than dry toast. You can’t cook with it, and it doesn’t translate well when it melts on hot foods, but if you’re in that precarious position where butter is off the proverbial table, it’s edible. Offer it to me when I just ordered the big breakfast three-meat special at the diner? Uh, no. If I wanted margarine or another waxy, bland substance to put on my English muffins, I’d opt for sun tan lotion out of a tube. Sure, it might taste awful, but it’ll at least have taste, and in most cases, the same texture and consistency of these spreads… Cheez Whiz, anyone?
9. Low-carb bread
The effort? Noble. The execution? Epic fail. Bread is bread, and no matter who’s tried to reduce the carb count, they’ve run afoul of the laws of food chemistry. Despite the fight, they fought the law, and the law won. Low carb bread tastes kind of like a dried out sponge. One that was left on a window sill in an abandoned mining town circa 1835. Warmed up. Pam’s tried low carb bread recipes. She can cook up just about any type of bread or dough, and it comes out great. But low carb bread simply does not work. We bought a sack of low carb rolls from a health food store, and no amount of PB&J could salvage them. Know how bad they were? Even my dog wouldn’t eat them. The average dog will eat cat shit if given the opportunity, so they’re not the most discriminating culinists. And yet, the pooch scoffed at this faux-food and walked away. What’s *that* tell you about low carb bread, huh?
10. Soy cheese, lite cheese, lowfat cheese and the nefarious imitation processed ‘cheese food’
It’s not just the vegans who are dairy disparagers, so good ol’ cheese is in the crosshairs with foodies for any number of reasons. Fat content, cholesterol content, use of cows to provide the perfect cookie-compliment, etc. Which has led to soy cheese (which is roughly comparable to shredded packing peanuts); lowfat versions of something remotely related to cheese and which retains some taste, even if it won’t melt on a BBQ burger; and the imitation processed cheese food, which begs the question, isn’t cheese a food unto itself? Why do the folks behind this dairy delinquent fake feel the need to put ‘food’ in there after cheese? Is it *so* far removed from identification that perhaps people would use it instead as wallpaper? (Note: I would not be surprised.) Listen, if you object to using cows to produce milk to turn into cheese, that’s cool. But, don’t try to get me to join in your agenda by trying to convince me that non-cheese is anything like cheese-cheese. I’m a carnivore, so I don’t particularly get miffed that cows get milked. If I want to eat healthier, then I’ll skip the cheese on occasion, rather than try to ram something down my gullet that reminds me of dental molding gelatin from back when I got fitted for a crown after a root canal. You cannot fake cheese. It’s like handing an NHL goaltender a pair of crotchless panties and telling him, “They work just like a jock strap!” Yeah, you might talk a good game. You might show him the way the stitching compares and the elastic feels just as stretchy. But in practice, when that first vulcanized rubber puck hits him in the nuts and there’s nothing there to stop it but his junk, that’s where the comparisons fall apart, and the truth, not to mention swollen testicles, shall be revealed. You want cheese? Then eat cheese. You want a miserable alternative that reminds you of a latex glove in your mouth and a tube sucking up spittle while something snotty with a chemical taste drips onto your tongue? Then by all means, go soy. Go low-fat. Go imitation processed cheese-was-once-a-thought food. Just don’t expect me to fall on that non-dairy sword with you, sparky, ain’t gonna happen.
