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I’m not a fan of the traditional chocolate-dipped strawberries. I know they’re supposed to be all fancy and gourmet and special, but they’re not good.

Of course if they’re offered I’ll take them, because strawberries are good and chocolate is good, but the way they’re usually done makes the sum worse than the parts.

And I finally figured out why – it’s a mismatch of textures. Maybe textures is the wrong word – it’s mainly the ratio of brittleness to squishiness.

The problem I have with chocolate-covered strawberries is that when I bite one, the chocolate breaks off in random-sized chunks and the strawberry retains its form. So I either get a mouthful of chocolate bits and no strawberry, or a smidgen of chocolate and a full bite of strawberry. Halfway through, most of the chocolate has broken off, so it’s just an awkward way to eat a strawberry on a stick with some chocolate crumbles.

For those materials engineers out there: using the Shore 00 hardness scale, the strawberry is in the 5-15 range and the chocolate is in the 85-95 range.

What caused me to figure it out is that we were gifted a bag of chocolate-covered freeze-dried strawberries. This one was TruFru brand, maybe there are other brands that are similar. But I had those and it was a problem trying not to eat too many at once.

What makes those good is that the textures are similar. When you bite into a chocolate-covered freeze-dried strawberry, they both break off together.

Also, they are a reasonable size, so I usually just eat them whole. As contrasted with the traditional concept of a fresh strawberry with dried chocolate – they seem to pick the largest strawberries they can. They’re going more for looks and presentation than for edibility.

Note that I do like fresh strawberries covered in chocolate, but fresh strawberries need to have a very soft chocolate, mainly a fondue. For a fondue or a chocolate fountain, the chocolate is softer than the strawberry so it works. I can take a bite of the strawberry and the chocolate comes along too, instead of trying to run away.

Also note: I did try some chocolate-covered freeze-dried raspberries, and they were not as good as the strawberries. I usually like raspberries better than strawberries, but in this context the raspberries were more bitter than the strawberries, so I didn’t like them.

The Kroger line of stores has a couple of store-brand options for various foods. They have the basic cheap brand, the healthy brand, then the fancy brand – Private Selection.

We are fans of the Private Selection ice cream. Gamma likes the Black Raspberry Chocolate Chunk flavor, and I like the Extreme Fudge Chocolate Moose Tracks.

They had a good deal last week, $2.99 for a carton, so I grabbed a couple normal flavors and then I wanted to fill our the order with a flavor we don’t normally get.

Since the weather was turning warmer, my eye was drawn to the limited-edition peach flavor.

I bought it, and next time I had ice cream I tried it.

Not a fan.

In general, I like peach flavored things. Exhibit A: Snapple Peach Tea. Exhibit B: Peaches themselves

But this ice cream, despite prominently featuring peaches on its packaging, had no peach flavor.

Public service announcement: It is a peach crisp flavor, not peach flavor.

What that means is that it tastes mainly of cinnamon and oatmeal. I suppose the oatmeal is more of a texture. But the main idea of the ice cream seems to be the flavor of the crumb topping.

In fact, they could capitalize on that. Because they could take the same recipe, package it as apple crisp ice cream, and it would work as that too. They’d just have to remove the coloring so it was apple colored rather than peach colored.

It’s not a total loss, though, as Gamma really liked it. So I’ll let him eat the rest of it

For the family Super Bowl gathering, I made Puppy Chow. That’s right, I made Puppy Chow not Muddy Buddies.

Since I don’t have the recipe memorized, I turned to the internet for help. There were several results, so I compared and contrasted them. They were basically the same, so I went with the one that made the most sense to me.

But in my research, I came across Paula Deen’s recipe for Puppy Chow. It wasn’t much different from any of the others, but I found it not-so-useful. Here it is.

The reason it is not so useful is because it is too vague. “1 box cereal”, “1 bag chocolate chips”, “1 bag sugar”. For the cereal, I saw two options for box sizes. For chocolate chips, three sizes. I didn’t bother checking how many sizes sugar comes in, as I knew this was not the recipe for me.

I ignored this one and went with one that had actual measurements, like 2 cups of chocolate chips (although I bumped it up to 3 to increase the chocolate-to-cereal ratio, per the comments on the recipe site).

If you’re cooking, feel free to improvise and use whatever looks right. But if you’re producing recipes, please use unambiguous ingredient amounts.

Some Wife was rather inspired this year and made Christmas cookies. Lots of them. A lot of types of them. So, for your viewing pleasure, here they are. Unfortunately for you, they are not for your eating pleasure. Unless you’re family or a neighbor.

These are in alphabetical order by what we call them.

Carmelitas

These have a plain dough base, with carmel and chocolate in the middle, and a crumble topping.

Chocolate Crackle

These are chocolate dough, with chocolate chips in them, and a powder-sugar dusting.

Chocolate Mint

These are chocolate cookies, but with an Andes mint in the middle.

Circle Pretzels

These are just circle pretzels with a Hershey’s kiss melted into it and then a couple M&Ms dropped on top. They’re small, so it’s easy to eat too many.

Coconut Macaroons

These are coconut and chocolate, not unlike an Almond Joy, but without the almond. I would say Mounds, but Almond Joy is better known. And the chocolate is only on the bottom.

Frosted Cookies

These are the easiest to make, because they are ready to bake. GFS has a box of frozen cookie dough already cut into Christmas shapes, all we do is bake them and then frost (and sprinkle) them.

Fudge Puddles

These were new this year. Plain cookie base in a mini muffin tin, then fill with fudge and top with a pecan. Very good.

Graham Brittle

This has a variety of names. It’s a brittle, made with a base of graham crackers and topped with chocolate and toffee. Always very popular.

Lemon Crackle

The lemon version of the chocolate crackles above.

Lime Glaze

These are a plain cookie base, with a lime glaze on top.

Marshmallows

These are marshmallows, dipped in chocolate, then rolled/coated with something while the chocolate is still wet. Half of them got sprinkles (to look Christmas-y) and half of them got crushed graham crackers (to imitate a S’more).

Peanut Brittle

It is just what it says – peanut brittle. This is the microwave recipe, which tastes just as good as the stovetop method, but is waaaaaay easier.

Raspberry Bars

A perennial favorite. Vanilla cake mix for the base (but really dense, don’t follow the cake directions) and raspberry jam and chocolate chips.

Rice Krispie Treats

I have written about these before (see A Christmas Snack). In general, we like the wreath cookies made with corn flakes, marshmallows, and green food coloring, then topped with red hots. But the recipe has not cooperated the last couple years and we end up with a sickly-looking sticky blob of corn flakes. So it lieu of those, Some Wife made these. They still have cereal and melted marshmallows, so it’s close.

Thumbprints

I think everyone knows about this one – make a plain cookie, press a divot into it with your thumb, then fill with jelly. Ours are overachievers and have some icing on top too.

White Chocolate Thingies

One of my favorites, and not everyone likes white chocolate so there’s more for me. Melt white chocolate and mix it in with Cheerioes, Chex, pretzel sticks, and M&Ms.

Not pictured, because it hasn’t been made yet: Chocolate-covered caramel corn. This one can’t be made yet, because if she did make it now, it wouldn’t last until it is needed at the Christmas gathering.

Bacon, lettuce, and tomato make a good combination, especially with the unnamed-yet-standard accompaniment mayonnaise.

We had BLTs, then later in the week had chicken sandwiches, which I happened to top with lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise.

That got me thinking. What other meat goes well as a sandwich with lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise?

After I listed off a few I could think of, I decided the easier question is what meat does not go well with lettuce and tomato? An XLT, with X being any given meat.

Bacon? Good.

Chicken patty? Good.

Leftover Thanksgiving turkey? Good.

Fish patty? Also good.

Hamburger? I prefer ketchup, but with mayonnaise is still good.

Pulled pork? Not sure.

Poached egg? Maybe, but that goes best with ham and a slice of cheese on an English muffin.

I’m not going to consider crab, lobster, or shrimp, because those are not meant to be consumed by humans.

I realized our boys never experienced one of the little joys I had growing up – cottage cheese.

Now this is not just any cottage cheese, but enhanced cottage cheese.

I don’t know when it started, but I don’t remember ever eating cottage cheese at home without putting jello on top.

Now this is not just normal jello, but raw jello. Just the powder, straight out of the box.

If you think about it, it’s a perfect match. Jello powder adds everything that cottage cheese is missing – color, flavor, and sugar.

There was usually an open box of jello in the cabinet drawer, if not, then just pick your favorite flavor and open it up. Dump a bit of powder on your cottaqe cheese and you’re good to go.

I thought I would introduce our boys to the delight that is jello powder on cottage cheese. The older boys weren’t at dinner that day, so it was just the younger two.

I prepared them their bowls:

I like to not stir the jello in all the way, because then you get some more intense bursts of flavor. But just for fun, I stirred one all the way through.

I’m sharing this here because when I mentioned the practice of putting jello powder on cottage cheese, my wife was surprised. That was not something she was familiar with. And if she didn’t know it, probably a lot of other people don’t know it either. Thus it falls to me to spread the news, or recipe rather.

In case you’re curious, the boys were not fans of this dish. But their reasoning was the texture of the cottage cheese, not anything with the jello.

The “food pyramid” lesson of what to eat has been promoted by the US government for quite a while now. I think everyone in America must be familiar with it.

Here it is:

But kids these days might not be familiar with the food pyramid. According to the USDA (food pyramid history here), the MyPlate program replaced the MyPyramid program which replaced the Food Pyramid that we all knew and loved. To give you an idea of the age of some of these concepts, some of the orignal graphics that I got from the government website were in .BMP format.

Back to the topic at hand…

Why did they base it on an ancient Egyptian structure? Of course, if you’re going to pick a recognizable Egyptian structure, a pyramid is the obvious choice. But there are other options.

For example, they could have made a Food Obelisk:

Or, of course, a Food Sphinx:

But none of that makes sense with the MyPlate nonsense they’re pushing now. If you’re going to make a chart out of a circle, at least make it a pie chart. Especially since that is named after a food and would lend itself to some fun puns.