Lost in the Supermarket: El Jibarito is el Jefe edition

Is it cheating to run a Lost in the Supermarket from the “ethnic foods” aisle? Not when it features the smiley Puerto Rican Walt Whitman-homage guy! According to Wikipedia, El Jibarito is a sandwich that was invented in Puerto Rico in 1991, so I like to think of this can’s mascot as Puerto Rico’s foremost practitioner of the menage a, um, tres:

I was hoping that “Pois Congo” meant something more exciting than “Congo peas,” but life is filled with disappointment.

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Lost in the Supermarket: Zhang Yimou edition

I’m a big fan of Zhang Yimou‘s movie Hero (no, not the Andy Garcia one!). An Asian friend of mine described it as a “Confucian action movie,” and I’ve stuck with that definition ever since, even though I know little about Confucianism.

I wasn’t such a fan of House of Flying Daggers, because it looked like a bunch of spare footage from Hero. Don’t get me wrong; I’m also a big fan of Zhang Ziyi, but her gorgeousity wasn’t enough to carry it for me.

I’m disappointed that he’s working on a sequel to that one, but I’m glad he’s got a marketing tie-in for his new actioner —

— House of Steamed Potato!

(Really, the only Chinese movie I’m pining for is a sequel to Kung Fu Hustle.)

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Lost in the Supermarket: Dr. Jack edition

In Borgesian style, there are a bunch of Virtual Memories posts that were never written but sound truly awesome. Two of them involve cooking. One is a photo-essay of the time I prepared an MRE at home. We brought an MRE back from our first post-Katrina visit to Amy’s family in Louisiana. I remember sitting in her parents’ backyard, reading some F. Scott Fitzgerald while Amy & her mom were out. Her dad came out to ask me if I wanted to go out and get some lunch.

“Or we could stay here and have some MREs.”

“. . . You have MREs?”

They’d been given a couple of 24-pack cartons of them at a relief site after they returned home (they were smart enough to bug out before the storm hit). We decided to go out instead, but during the rest of that trip, enough of Amy’s relatives talked about their favorite MREs and the best ways of preparing some of their contents. We were intrigued enough to bring two home (Jambalaya and Cheese Tortellini) and try it out.

Why I never wrote about it, I don’t know. In fact, I’ll post the pix later this week and try to write it up just for you. (Remember, it was almost 4 years ago, so I probably won’t have much to say about the food itself. Still, the pix are pretty neat.)

* *  *

The other food-post I never wrote? The time I used a Jack Daniel’s Mesquite EZ Marinader to prepare a steak. (On a dare, natch.)

I imagine it would’ve gone a little something like Patton Oswalt’s review of the KFC Bowl.

I never thought anything would compare to the vileness of that “authentic smokey sweet flavor from mesquite wood, complemented with Jack Daniel’s® Tennessee Whiskey flavor and a special blend of spices,” but then I discovered I could “grill and chill with the rich, bold taste of Dr. Pepper®”!

Now, I’ve consumed a lot of questionable foods over the years, but even I wouldn’t go anywhere near this combo —

— because it’d likely dissolve my steak, knife, fork, plate, and dining-room table.

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Lost in the Supermarket: Through the ‘S’ Bend

In response to popular demand (okay, one commenter), Lost in the Supermarket is back! I’d been thinking about resurrecting this Tuesday-morning feature for a few weeks, and my wife’s trip to the supermarket last weekend clinched it!

What other venue could possibly be appropriate for the sheer inappropriateness of . . . Deep Reach toilet bowl cleaner?

As Amy put it, “Shouldn’t the dispenser be a rubber fist?”

What S Bend?

Back next week with something less toilet humor-ish. I mean, not much less. After all, this blog once had an “about the author” tagline of “Gil Roth: Lowering the bar since 1971.”

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Lost in the Supermarket: Deadliest Catch edition

Lost in the Supermarket is on vacation this week, on account of neurasthenia. But your faithful blogger wouldn’t leave you in the lurch!

Since tonight marks the premier of the new season of The Deadliest Catch, one of the most awesome “reality” TV shows of all time, I offer up a retro Lost in the Supermarket post: The Imitations of Crab!

My wife & I, meanwhile, will go back to our Tuesday night routine of sushi-and-crabtini in honor of the Northwestern, the Cornelia Marie, the Wizard and the Time Bandit (and evidently a couple of new boats, the Lisa Marie and the Trailblazer)!

What’s a crabtini?

Bet you’re sorry you asked.

See the whole Lost in the Supermarket series