Steveats: Lackluster, and Worse, Halloween Candy

Debuting a new, semi-regular feature! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

In the past, I did a Steveats on some of the weird Easter candy available. Unmentioned by me at the time – Isn’t it weird that there is so much egg stuff with Easter? Rabbits don’t even lay eggs. So, that’s weird that there are tons of chocolate ones.

I was hoping to find some similarly weird Halloween candy, but as of today, I’ve come up somewhat empty in my pursuit. A local Speedway had o options that were mildly intriguing – candy corn flavored M&Ms and Hershey bars.

Now, neither item was good, but they weren’t the taste equivalent of a dumpster fire either. I actually thought both were edible, especially the M&Ms, and that’s high praise for candy corn. Channeling Lewis Black here for a minute, candy corn is usually just the worst, and the Hershey’s bar used another bad base, white chocolate. But somehow, it works to make the whole thing… OK. It’s like covering broccoli or sprouts in cheese.

My bottom three Halloween candies: 3) Any sort of gum. It’s Halloween! Halloween is for candy, gum is for covering up your rank breath at the office after lunch. Gum isn’t candy, gum is just gum.

2) The aforementioned candy corn.

1) Taffy candies in the black or orange wrappers. Good god, they’re awful. According to this amusing blog entry, they’re actually supposed to have peanut butter inside of them, but I’ve never successfully finished one of those things either so I don’t know about that. They are hideous, disgusting, hideous and grossly hideous.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!

Steveats: Gas Station Pizza Showdown

Debuting a new, semi-regular feature! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

As part of my continuing culinary adventures at gas stations, and at the urging of Eric Rueb, I decided to give one certain food item at three different places a try – pizza. The results were… not really that surprising overall, but individually, somewhat surprising!

First discussed and worst I had – 7-Eleven. This actually looked like the best of the three pizzas available to me, as the cheese looked to be seasoned and the pizza hot. Important note here – it’s an incredible curve that we’re judging these pizzas on, as a good portion of frozen, store-bought pizzas are better than these ones.

However, while the 7-Eleven pizza looked OK, it was incredibly bland and greasy. That’s a double dip of bad pizza qualities, since if I’m ingesting a bunch of calories and oily cholesterol, it better taste good. The pepperoni was slightly better than the cheese, but both left this reviewer cold.

In second place is Cumberland Farms. This was only narrowly behind 7-Eleven in terms of look, and it definitely tastes better. It’s kind of like good cardboard with cheese. You know, the type that would be acceptable to send something precious in, as compared to the cheap cardboard used for fast food, or to house gas station pizza.

I think the deciding factor in Cumberland Farms over 7-Eleven is the heat lamp. Cumby’s seems to keep their lamp on a higher temperature, or *gasp* they might actually ditch the pizza more frequently. This leads to fresher tasting cheesy cardboard.  

The surprising taste winner is Speedway, because their pizza looks like it was microwaved about a million times before being put out there on a heat rack under some lamps. This wasn’t a fluke, either – I went at two different times, and three different Speedways, and each time, the pizza looked like a warmed-over substance strip mined from the surface of Mars.

However, it definitely tasted the best of the three gas station pizzas I tried. I have no clue why either. My guess would be that because it’s a bit thinner, it retains its (probably fake) cheese taste and sauce a bit better than the other two. Also, the Speedway ’za is definitely helped by the fact that they helpfully offer up a bunch of seasonings. I went for the shaker of Garlic Parmesan, and covered the slice, and that definitely helped.

All three pizzas were edible, and since the going rate was two slices for $3 at all three places, I can’t really complain about the price too much. However, if you’re looking for an actual meal vs. a quick bite, then your Generic Chain Pizza Place is better for $5, whether you favor Domino’s, Pizza Hut or Papa Gino’s.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!

Steveats: Gas Station Buffalo Chicken Rollers aren’t bad

Debuting a new, semi-regular feature! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

Since my last entry on gas station food was well-received, I decided to go back to that dirty well for this week’s entry. Speedway seems to be the new kid on the block in the northeast, as they either bought out Hess or simply took over the majority of their locations in Rhode Island. Of course, me being me, I was very tantalized when one of them had a sign that said “TWO HOT SANDWICHES FOR $2.50.”

“Ooo, how mysterious!” I thought. “Hot sandwich, whatever could they mean? Is it going to be like Arby’s? Except edible? Maybe a nice pastrami or one of them New York deli sandwiches, as Mitch Hedberg described them, like a loaf of bread and a pound of meat. I’m positive that’s what a gas station would serve!”

With BBQ.

But, as you can (hopefully) guess from the title to this entry, what they mean is tubular meats. And let me be clear about one thing – This aggression of calling a hot dog a sandwich, it won’t stand. I don’t know who started out this horrible misnaming, but a hot dog is its own separate thing, just like the hamburger. That could also technically be a sandwich, if you’re a jerk like that.

Anyway. The buffalo chicken rollers from Speedway are pretty similar to the taquitos I got the other week, but, they were better. The advertising on the front of the station made them look like shredded chicken meat, unfortunately though, it’s still the same ole tubular meat. Thankfully though, the buffalo is potent, and the chicken tastes like chicken. A bit rubbery, but quite edible, and the equal of the hot dog.

With mayo.

One issue if Speedway wants to seriously up its tubular meat game – condiments. If you’re offering a buffalo item, then it’s your civic duty to also offer ranch or blue cheese. Speedway had neither available, so I had to settle for BBQ (not bad) and mayo (ick; just too much). Also, there were no plastic forks, otherwise I probably would have ditched the bun and had my tubular meat kabob style.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!