The Dao of Debbie

When it comes to the smiling faces on snack packages and fast food wrappers, it’s hard to know what to believe. Colonel Sanders, Aunt Jemima, Wendy the Redheaded Burger Girl - did these people ever exist or were they simply the products of genius marketing?

Sometimes, as with Betty Crocker, the line between fact and fiction is frustratingly blurry. Though rarely seen in person, Betty spoke on radio programs and published newspaper columns. She wrote the quintessential entertainment guide, personally responded to letters asking for baking advice, and in 1945 was even named America’s 2nd most popular woman by Fortune magazine (Eleanor Roosevelt, that minx, snagged first place).

Yet, despite her friendly demeanor and media savvy, Betty was bogus. When it came down to it, she was nothing more than a pleasant phantom invented by General Mills and made real by the hundreds of secretaries who mastered her curvy signature.

I have to admit, when I first discovered this truth, it shook me to my very core. “Betty Crocker was a crock!” I found myself wailing in the bakery aisle, much to the confusion of my fellow shoppers. If you can’t trust an American institution like her, who can you trust?

Read more

Snack Review: Triple Chocolate Fudgsicle Assortment

After my traumatic experience with the Chocolate Éclair Bar, you’d think I’d have learned. But I was intrigued by the introduction of dark and white chocolate versions of the original Fudgsicle. I realized that this just left me open to the possibility that this would be a box of Triple Disappointment: the old-fashioned milk chocolate being not as good as I remembered and the new kinds being both not traditional and no good at all.

But what can I say? Hope springing eternal, as well as the fact that “Triple Disappointment” sounded like a charmingly bad translation of a name of a dish on a Chinese restaurant menu, sucked me in.

Read more

Classic Snack Review: Chips Ahoy!

I had to try these. I owed it to Science, see.

Because when I try any other chocolate chip cookie, this is what I am comparing them to. They are my baseline chocolate chip cookie. But, after writing the review of the Whole Foods cookies, I realized that I hadn’t had these since they changed to no trans fats.

The thing is, I just didn’t want to know. I had been traumatized by the no trans fat Oreos and decided to just live in my memories.

But now for you, gentle reader, I had to make the sacrifice.

Read more