Where: Taco Bell
What: A Cheesy Gordita using a Blackjack or Volcano hard tortilla shell with Blackjack sauce, nacho sauce & Lava sauce
Cost: $1.90
Success: No

Here at Eating the Road we’ve got a new feature called Will They Build It? We will attempt to have the workers at various fast food establishments build whatever concoctions we can come up with in our sick twisted minds (we’re also open to any suggestions readers might have). There are not any steadfast rules but it must be “off the menu”, price is not a consideration (we know in some cases they may be extremely ridiculous) and going into the restaurant we must have the item in mind and not try to tweak it at the counter. We really want to see if they can and will make strange item requests.

The first foray was to Taco Bell for the Nacho Cheesy Blackjack Volcano Gordita Crunch. The new Cheesy Gordita Crunch is a hard taco layered with melted cheese and a soft Gordita. It is a very reasonable $.89 but it needs a little boast. In step the Blackjack and Volcano tacos. The Volcano taco is your standard taco but with a red shell and Lava sauce. The Blackjack taco is a standard taco with a black shell and Blackjack sauce (which apparently is just Baja sauce but I’ve also been told it’s a Pepperjack sauce depending on which Taco Bell you’re at).

I placed my order and the cashier stared blankly at me for a second and paused. She put up her index finger, told me to “Wait a sec,” walked back to her co-worker and said, I’m not joking, “We’ve got a creator here.” They talked it over a bit and figured they would try their best.

Unfortunately they no longer had either of the red or black taco shells. What the end product came out as was a Gordita tortilla, melted cheddar, a regular hard taco shell, beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, pepperjack cheese, Lava Sauce, nacho cheese and Baja sauce.

It was quite close but not what we had in mind. We have failed in our first attempt at Will They Build It? Pricewise it was extremely cheap considering. She only charged me for one addition and it rang in at under $2 for quite a hefty item. With a little Fire sauce as well it actually wasn’t too bad, although I bet it clocks in at around 600 calories.

Nacho Cheesy Blackjack Volcano Gordita Crunch

Nacho Cheesy Blackjack Volcano Gordita Crunch

I just love Twitter. I know it sounds lame and I used to scoff at it, but seriously, it’s turning into such a useful tool.

Just the other day, @jambutter tweeted about how many calories a US dollar could buy. I tweeted back and asked for source info and he passed on a note that the stats came from a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This “research” took about 45 seconds.

I did a little further digging and I found this Time Magazine article that summarized the source data well but I’ve put it in my own format:

$1US = 1200 calories of potato chips
$1US = 875 calories of soda
$1US = 250 calories of vegetables
$1US = 170 calories of fresh fruit.

Now, the obvious point is that potato chips and soda drinks are more calorie dense than fruit and veggies so you get more calories for your dollar; however, they are not more nutrient dense and that means you eat more of them to feel satisfied.

To put these stats into perspective, I turned to my colleague professional home economist Amy Snider-Whitson who always has something to say about nutrition:

“This is why we have an epidemic of obesity and people suffering from chronic diseases that healthy diets could help to prevent (…and, no wonder people can’t grasp portion control when you buy a cheap snack and end up eating half a day’s calories!).

Unfortunately, the way we produce food today makes the nutritious choice often much more expensive. So, people choose calories over content. While many, many people consume too many calories on a daily basis, not one of us can say that we are getting too many essential nutrients. One consolation is that if we invest today in choosing nutrient dense foods, we might save health care dollars in the future.”

When you’re shopping, do you consciously plan how much of your budget is spent on nutrient dense foods? Or do the ‘chips’ (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!) fall where they may?

The finest example of food overindulgence America has to offer!

(pic is from here)

Please welcome Ask Brian to our ranks, and please take note that while you may get the impression that Brian is answering your questions, he’s not.  He’s just Ask Brian.  You’re more than welcome to try asking him something, and there’s even a chance that he will address whatever it is that your question is about, but if he does, it has nothing to do with you.  Be careful though, any questions asked of Brian could be used on the site if he decides (for whatever reason) to address them…so please don’t email him with any questions you wouldn’t want your friends/boss to know you were asking.  With that said, please enjoy Ask Brian #1.

If you’re reading this blarticle (Oh, mercy.), you’re a pasty, greasy product of our fast food culture.  No offense (but seriously, yes offense); I’m including myself here. My susceptibility to catchy marketing and love of salt have led to a cumulative fourteen years of waiting for McDonald’s to re-re-re-re-release the McRib (Due to Popular Demand? Hell yes. For A Limited Time Only? Fuck you, Ronald.). As of this writing, I weigh twenty pounds more than I did when I graduated high school. The story of my life was ghostwritten by Dave Thomas.

 In 1994, I turned twelve years old, and the whole world changed.  I remember that year for three things: 1) Rudy Tomjanovich and the NBA’s all-time best Center, Hakeem Olajuwon, battled the stupid ass-tasting San Antonio Spurs in the playoffs[1]. The third game of which was interrupted by 2) the O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase.  Now, I don’t want to take sides here, but he obviously did it (don’t EVER interrupt the Rockets.), and I’m glad he’s dead*. Both of these events were overshadowed by 3) the looming, distended tummy of the awesome new Jack-centric advertising campaign from Jack in the Box.  I was a sucker for a bad hamburger before, but no fast food joint had ever tried to lure me in with humor, and it knocked me out like the ShamWow guy assaulting a hooker.  To this day I lie awake at night, shuddering myself to sleep while I think about the ridiculous Coca-Cola-style advertisements (We’re all part of the ethno-urban world community!  No pickles?  Fine!  Just dance!) that McDonald’s leaves running down our faces like a stinking handful of feces (or worse) thrown by a greedy zoo monkey.  Burger King finally caught on a few years ago, with their creepy, silent, perpetually laughing rapist “King” character.  Those commercials are good, but you can’t beat the original; Jack in the Box owns funny burger-tising.  It’s been fifteen years now; we’ve all realized that everything they sell tastes the same because it’s all fried in the same vat, yet they still won me over with their slick soap opera-ish “Jack got hit by a bus” string of care-mercials.  And I do care, because I’ve seen more of Jack over the years than about seventy-five percent of my own family.  Just writing this makes me want to go buy a couple of tacos ($1.00) so I can contribute to his hospital bills, and yet I feel no inclination whatsoever to call anyone in my family (except for my mom, so I can borrow $1.00).

None of this is meant to insinuate that advertising is all-important in fast-food culture.  Tradition and heritage, just as in states beginning and ending with vowels whose citizens would prefer to switch to an outdated flag, play a huge part in what I choose to eat five times a day (fast food is wildly absent of all but a scant trace of nutritional value, so it requires massive doses for one such as myself to stay in tip-top physical shape (5′11” and a pudgy 200 lbs.?  It’s true!)).  These are the reasons McDonald’s still charges $2.89 for a six-piece McNugget.  Wendy’s nuggets are cheaper (5/$1.00), as are Burger King’s, and Jack in the Box doesn’t even sell crappy nuggets, preferring instead to discontinue that menu item for a more-respectable “All White Meat Chicken-Breast Strips,” but while these others may be less expensive and/or higher quality, they’ll never sell as well, because I didn’t beg my mom for them the second I was physically able to digest solid food.  In fact, as prejudiced by the amount of time I’ve been slamming them into my face-hole versus the required time to convince myself that some items genuinely do taste better than others I’d previously grown accustomed to, here’s a listing, in no particular order, of the best fast food items on Earth:

1. The Reigning King, McDonald’s French Fries.  How are they always (usually) so crispy? So salted-to-perfection? We’ll never know (uniform slicing of the potatoes/industry standard frying times/beef broth and extra salt, respectively), but they are the essence of pure love incarnate.
2. McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, as discussed above.  These were a staple of Morgan Spurlock’s diet in Super Size Me.  Doubt was cast on Mr. Spurlock’s contention, however, when Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs author Chuck Klosterman revealed in the same that he’d conducted a similar experiment years earlier, wherein he’d eaten nothing but McDonald’s nugs for a straight week as part of an article he was writing for his Fargo, N.D. paper.  Klosterman maintains that his cholesterol went down as a result of the experiment, and that he had McNuggets again less than a week after it ended. In short,fuck you, Mr. Spurlock, for trying like hell to ruin my life.
3. Sonic soft drinks.  No one makes a vanilla coke like Sonic (at least no one that brings it to your car. Sorry, Waffle House.), and the Cherry-Limeade is the only thing that comes close to counteracting the squalid, urine-in-a-humidifier atmosphere of a Texas summer, but the real star here is Sonic’s ice.  It crunches in your teeth pleasantly, and I swear I think it somehow keeps soda colder, too.
4. The Big Mac.  Also known as “The BM.”[2] The original McDonald’s burger may be the one you can’t stop burgin’ on for a fortnight at a time, but the Big Mac’s Special Sauce, lack of a meaningful vegetable (Shredded lettuce?  That’s it?  Really?  Really? Alright, no complaints here.), and fatty-baiting size marked it as the very first B.T.E.W.T.H.U.A.E.T.A.I.H.P.O.U.W.D.L.A.A.[3]
5. Taco Bell.  All of it.  There’s no point in specifying a particular menu item: everything tastes the same.  Their impressive empire expanded from one small string of incorporated franchise operations that made caucasian Californians feel less hesitant about the brown devil that is Americanized Mexican food to making all of North America feel better about eating it on a daily basis. Except for actual Mexicans, I mean (they love it, but wish they had some more variety).  Taco Hell also invented the term, if not the concept, of “Fourthmeal,” the meal that takes place post-dinner but pre-breakfast, usually consumed when drunk.  This is a contribution to our culture as significant and beautiful in its own way as Billy Joel’s “The Piano Man.”

A couple of Honorable Mentions:  First, Wendy’s Frosty, for realizing Dave Thomas’s dream that a drink could be a dessert; that a dessert could be a meal.  Burger King’s Snicker’s Chocolate Pie, for being awesome.  And last, but not least (but least), Long John Silver’s Chicken Plank, for showing the world that chicken can be fish, too.

If nothing else, fast food chains, from the highs of their “this-can’t be meat-but-fuck-it” sandwiches to the lows of their hideously-dirty-but-admittedly-cleaner-than-they-have-any-right-to-be bathrooms, have made the dollar bill worthwhile again. 83% of Americans [4] are in the same economic situation as me.  Every semi-delicious, fattening, non-nutritious item on a soulless fast food chain’s dollar menu is cheaper to produce, and thus cheaper to purchase, than anything I can make with groceries.  When it comes right down to it, I love to cook, and often I’d rather eat in.  But when the maintence guy’s taking forever to fix my oven, and I don’t want to stop playing video games for long enough to make dinner, much less eat it while hunched over the kitchen sink and crying, and all I have are two lonely dollar bills failing to procreate in my back pocket, Burger King is there for me.  McDonald’s is there for me.  A Cheesy Double-Beef Burrito?  That is what I’d like to eat-o.

[1] Fun Fact: David Robinson is an avowed holocaust denier and committed voter fraud to seal the 2004 election for George W. Bush**

* to me.

[2]  Just by me, as far as I know.

[3] Burger That Exemplified Why The Terrorists Hate Us And Ensured That An Increasingly Higher Percentage Of Us Will Die Large And Alone.

[4]  According to a survey conducted by the center for I just made this shit right up.

Right now we are sitting in class talking about big ag. companies, the government and who should demand and implement changes, such as the labeling GMO foods.  Some people say it is the responsibility of big business, some say the government, and I challenge that it is we, the people’s responsibility.  I heard this story on NPR the other day about McDonald’s changing its logo and want to pass it along for discussion.

- Jacob S.

We’re feeling nostalgic at Itinerant Foodies these days—it must be the impending holidays—and it seems to’ve hit a nerve with you lovely readers: Jill’s posts about Steubenville, the surrounding Ohio Valley, and DiCarlo’s Pizza, in particular, have evoked fond reminisces in our comments sections on the blog and on its corresponding Facebook links. Reading about the Ohio folks’ childhood memories had me longing for my own youthful favorites, and, with a few days of downtime in my hometown before the trek up to Pennsylvannia for the family’s Thanksgiving festivities, I knew just the place to hit.

Winchester, Virginia’s, answer to White Castle, the Snow White Grill has been a fixture on the downtown mall since 1949, when it opened as one in a mini-chain of six Shenandoah Valley-area locations. Now the last Grill standing, it’s played host to everyone from Patsy Cline to hordes of hungry high-schoolers. Though the restaurant has changed hands a few times in the intervening years, one thing remains unchanged: the tasty little burgers.

Well before the slider craze struck many a modern-day upscale restaurant, the Snow White Grill was churning out these four-bite wonders—nothing fancy, just a small round of ground beef, a pile of onions, and two slices of dill pickle and one of American cheese, all on a steamed dinner roll.

The new owners have expanded the menu, but it’s unnecessary to read any further than the first three lines; an order of fries is a given, and a milkshake, too, if you’re feeling flush. (Full disclosure: I’m speaking here as someone who’s never tried anything other than the burgers, fries, and shakes.)

Prepared the same way as they have been for as many years as I can remember, and probably for as many years as the sliver of a lunch counter has been in business, the beef patties go straight on the grilltop, where they’re then covered with slices of raw onion and occasionally pressed down upon by a spatula-wielding cook until he determines that they’re ready to flip.

The timing has to be just right—they’ll only be turned once, yielding, when done properly, a perfectly browned exterior crust and a moist, juicy, loosely held-together interior, crowned with tender, softened onions. These guys have it down to a science, and the results are almost always perfect.

Scooped off the grill and onto the pillowy potato roll so quickly that the cheese barely has a chance to melt, it’s a struggle against temptation to add the requisite ketchup and mustard without taking that first bite. Resist, if you can.

Wash it all down with a chocolate milkshake (this is only half a portion, by the way—the rest comes on the side, in the metal mixing cup, for self-administered refills), and take a minute to catch your breath before rolling back out to the brick-paved mall. Think about how nice it is that there are some constants in life, that no matter how many chefs explore fusion cuisine, deconstruction, foams and the like, there are still places to find good, honest, old-school food.

However. I do have one small complaint, one thing that’s been phased out that I wish would make a comeback. The Snow White Grill used to run a great advertising campaign: tiny 2″x3″ spots in the local newspaper featuring head shots of real live diners. It was always a treat to flip through the paper to see if you knew anyone in that day’s ad, and, as evidenced in the clippings below of friends of mine in starring roles, you often did.

Given the current uncertainty surrounding both the newspaper industry and our economic times, a small reminder of happier memories goes a long way. Some things are better left unchanged.

That is, if you buy into their latest move to hop on the corporate green bandwagon and portray a socially and environmentally responsible face to the public.

As many companies hurry to retrofit their corporate images to portray a greener, eco-friendly and more ethically conscious face to consumers, McDonalds has chosen to join the club by updating its iconic Golden Arches logo. McDonalds has decided to replace its classic ketchup-red background for a more environmentally friendly relish green. Thankfully it’s only happening in Europe. For now.

In an effort to promote a more eco-friendly image McDonalds believes this Europe-wide initiative may be just what’s needed to aid in repairing a somewhat marred environmental reputation.

McDonalds is by no means the first company to attempt to hop on the green bandwagon by changing their logo colours. GM has also toiled with the idea of changing its classic blue background for an updated green, and recently industry giant Coca-cola unveiled their new environmentally friendly logo and “PlantBottle.” Once again proving that large corporations see their consumers as nothing more than obtuse dollar signs. It’s a sad state of affairs when anyone in our society will take changes like this as proof that these companies have truly gone green. Although I will give Coca-cola a sliver of respect for actually backing up their claims. Coke’s new bottles will be 30% made from materials produced from sugar cane and molasses, replacing their current petroleum-based plastic. And their logo change isn’t a total redo, they just made a subtle change that has all the same impact as a big redo.

So is McDonalds really going green or are they simply using the green crutch as a publicity gimmick to appeal to European nations that are very much eco-conscious and on board with the green movement, if not leading the way in it?

A few franchises in Great Britain and France have already started using the new signs and 100 restaurants in Germany will make the switch by the end of the year.

Hoger Beek, vice chairman of McDonald’s in Germany, said, “With this new appearance we want to clarify our responsibility for the preservation of natural resources. In the future we will put an even larger focus on that.”

The change will be made on all new and refitted restaurants “out of respect for the environment,” Beeck told the Financial Times Deutschland.

“out of respect for the environment” (cough, cough*bullshit*cough)

McDonald’s has long been under fire from environmental groups on several fronts, including its use of packaging and deforestation. (Not to mention the utter disgust and loathing my body feels towards me after I have ingested anything on their menu)

However, superhero environmental campaigners Greenpeace have flown in to save the day and are praising the company for their efforts to be more environmentally friendly, including introducing refrigerators without harmful chlorofluorocarbons and converting used oil to bio-diesel fuel.

McDonalds has more than 32,000 chains in 118 countries and  their revenue is somewhere around $23-24 billion worldwide, which gives me the impression that if they really wanted to be respectful of the environment they have more than the means to do so, especially something more impactful than a paint job.

I would be more inclined to believe Dirty Ronnies and the giant pile of corporate BS they just threw in my face if they were to install solar panels to power their signs or their stores entirely. If they changed their packaging to be less environmentally harmful or got their meat from cattle who have not been artificially fattened with high-corn diets. *Cows aren’t supposed to eat it, it’s not part of their evolutionary diet, but it’s cheap and fattens them up*

And lastly, I wonder what will happen with all those thousands of wasted big old plastic red signs? I’m sure McDonalds – now being the green leaders they are, will dispose of them in an environmentally friendly way.

A Better Energy Plan

Slashdot It!

via Grub Street New York

Nice to see the car-hop experience is alive and well. Business was booming: it took more than five minutes for someone to come on the speaker to take our order, and rather a girl on skates delivering our food, the manager walked over with our grub to help out the girls. Food was OK, but you are paying for the experience.

Saiu um press release do McDonalds anunciando a troca de logomarca. Sai o vermelho já famoso e entra o “verde ecológico”. Na verdade, esta mudança não é nova, é apenas um rollout de mudanças profundas que começaram em 2007. Por partes:

O press release (já editado e comentado pelo Estado de SP): “A rede de lanchonetes americana McDonald’s está se tornando verde – trocando o tradicional vermelho de seu logotipo por um verde escuro – para buscar uma imagem mais “ambientalmente amigável” na Europa. Cerca de 100 lanchonetes da rede na Alemanha vão fazer essa mudança até o final do ano, de acordo com a companhia. Algumas franquias na França e na Grã-Bretanha também já começaram a usar a nova cor no logotipo. “Essa não é uma iniciativa alemã, mas de toda a Europa”, disse Martin Nowicki, porta-voz da rede na Alemanha.

A rede, sediada em Oak Brook, no Estado de Illinois, nos EUA, conta com mais de 32 mil lanchonetes em 118 países, e vem sendo há um bom tempo alvo de ativistas ambientais, acusada de “inimiga” do meio ambiente. Por causa disso, a companhia vem tentando adotar práticas mais “verdes”, o que inclui a conversão do óleo usado nos restaurantes em biodiesel.

“Com essa nova aparência, nós queremos deixar clara nossa responsabilidade na preservação dos recursos naturais. No futuro, colocaremos um foco ainda maior nisso”, disse, em comunicado, Hoger Beek, vice-presidente do conselho de administração da companhia na Alemanha.

Mas os ativistas ambientais não ficaram muito convencidos com a mudança de cor no logotipo. Clare Oxborrow, do grupo Friends of the Earth (Amigos da Terra), disse que a empresa continua usando carne de animais criados em florestas devastadas. A empresa disse, porém, que toma cuidados para que isso não aconteça.””

Na França, desde o meio de 2008, além das lojas, o McDonald’s já assinava sua propaganda de TV com verde. Olhe abaixo:

Apesar da logomarca ser bonita eu não gosto da estratégia. Como já escrevi antes sobre o McDonald’s (aqui e aqui) estas mudanças todas estão desfigurando o que significa McDonald’s na cabeça do consumidor. McDonald’s é fast food, é hambúrguer, é vermelho.

Este novo posicionamento pode funcionar? Pode, tudo pode. Mas SE FUNCIONAR, vai custar muito mais do que deve. Certamente não vai se pagar, além de no final gerar uma marca mais fraca do que a atual.

Este gigantesco investimento seria melhor gasto criando outra marca mais verde do zero.

Fast, junk, street e outras expressões que precedem a palavra food estão pelas mesas (muitas delas de trabalho) mundo afora

Por Melissa Toledo

Brasileiro gosta de comida, mas também de termos em inglês. Fast food, junk food, street food estão por todos os lados. Mas o que estas expressões significam? O termo mais comum deles, fast food, “comida rápida” em inglês, é dado ao consumo de refeições que podem ser preparadas e servidas em um curto período de tempo. No “menu” estão sanduíches, pizzas, salgados e outros alimentos comumente vendidos em lojas pertencentes às grandes redes de alimentação.

Já o significado da expressão junk food parece mais assustador. A “comida lixo”, em tradução literal do inglês, é uma expressão pejorativa para nomear alimentos frequentemente com alto teor calórico, níveis reduzidos de nutrientes, altos níveis de gordura saturada, sal ou açúcar, muitos aditivos alimentares e, ao mesmo tempo, carente de proteínas, vitaminas e outros atributos saudáveis.

Embora muitos alimentos fast food se enquadrem nesta categoria, o termo é mais usado para comidas industrializadas como salgadinhos chips, batatinhas e outros alimentos do gênero. Tais produtos normalmente possuem prazo de validade prolongado, não requerem nem mesmo refrigeração, são mundialmente populares por serem fáceis de encontrar, requerem um mínimo ou nenhum preparo antes do consumo e assim são cada vez mais disseminadas entre os fabricantes.

A expressão street food é empregada quando a rua (street, em inglês) é a cozinha. As chamadas comidas de barraquinha, como a pamonha anunciada aos gritos, o cachorro quente do carrinho, o acarajé da baiana, a tapioca do ambulante na areia da praia, o milho verde, o churros, a pipoca, o espetinho, o churrasquinho grego – comidas comuns também em festas populares, circos e outros eventos. De tão popular, a comida de rua tem até um festival no Rio de Janeiro, o Degusta Rio, feira de gastronomia que aconteceu no início deste mês de novembro no Cais do Porto.

OPKLIK voor grootbeeld

• 3320 S. Westnedge Avenue
• Kalamazoo, MI 49008
• (269)342-0323
• Website
• Menu

McDonald’s twice in one week?  I know.  I apologize.  This was one of those unplanned stops. 

J and I left Waldo Stadium about halfway through the third quarter to avoid the incoming rain.  Somehow, I ended up back in Portage after leaving the stadium, so we came home I-94 to Westnedge.  About the time we were getting to our turn, J said she was still hungry.  I didn’t want to say anything, but I was too.  We had only eaten a slice of pizza and some popcorn at the game and didn’t have much of a lunch.

J was craving a smoothie and the only place we could think of at 10:00 at night that would have a smoothie was McDonald’s.  We knew there was one just a mile or so down the road, so we skipped our turn and headed to the golden arches. 

McDonald’s in the South Westnedge neighborhood is on South Westnedge near Elys Way.  Like I mentioned in my McDonald’s review earlier this week, I hate drive thrus, so we parked and headed in.  The restaurant is open 24 hours, but the lobby closes at 11:00.  We got there ahead of that, so I wasn’t forced to argue with a speaker because neither of us can understand each other. 

I was pretty predictable again.  Double 1/4lber meal with a Sprite.  I did not make it a large this time though.  I don’t need that many empty calories that late at night, but I needed something substantial. 

J ordered a small strawberry/banana smoothie and a Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap with crispy chicken.  Our bill was under $10.

We took it to go so we could get home.  We were both good and actually waited until we got home to eat….except for the few fries J stole from me.

My burger was what I expected and what I always enjoy from McDonald’s.  No surprises.

J said her chicken wrap was pretty spicy.  I didn’t take a bite, so you’ll just have to take her word on it.  I could smell the smoothie, but I don’t really like bananas or strawberries.  She enjoyed them both. 

I said it last time, I’ll say it again.  McDonald’s is what it is.  It’s cheap.  It’s quick.  It’s consistent. 

Strawberry-Banana Smoothie

Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap

In our first post one of our first discoveries in Barcelona.

La Fourmi (The Ant, in French) is one of these typical friends bar-restaurant, with movie posters on the wall and rustic chairs to sit on. But as we don’t go to IKEA to buy food, we were not there for the furniture.

The chef’s specialty, Naan (photo), is a very famous Asian dish. Any similarity to a pizza is just a mere coincidence.

We usually go there before 6 pm, the deadline to order the Naan Menu, which includes a Naan, a drink (water, juice or beer) and coffee, for just €6.90.

Last time I ordered a Dulzona (goat cheese, bacon and honey) and my friend ordered an Olivia (smashed black olives, spinach leaves, grated parmesan) with tomato. The good thing about Naans is that you can add any ingredient you wish or you can even make your own.

And if you are the dessert kind of person we suggest you the Cheesecake, that is only €2.50 the piece until 6 pm.

Pros: incredible fresh ingredients, Wi-Fi, friendly staff

Cons: there is no non-smoking area, toilets

La Fourmi

Carrer de Milà i Fontanals, 58, 08012 Gracia

Everyday from 9 am to 12:30 am

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image credit: flickr user iirraa

McDonald’s is going green — or rather, their logo is in Europe. By the end of this year, around 100 German McDonalds restaurants will switch their trademark red background to a deep hunter green in hopes of promoting a greener image. Some have already made the switch in Great Britain and France.

So what’s actually behind this change? In an article by the Associated Press, Hoger Beek (vice chairman of McDonald’s in Germany) is quoted as saying,

“With this new appearance we want to clarify our responsibility for the preservation of natural resources. In the future we will put an even larger focus on that.”

Again, it seems that the trend of going green is potentially reeking more havoc than doing good. McDonalds can change their colors all they want, but until they are environmentally active, the sign is all greenwashing. Not to mention a company that pretty much sustains our nation’s ever-growing beef industry will never be an environmentally-friendly venture, just due to its nature.

Instead of spending the money on green marketing and promoting a false sense of being eco-friendly, why not put the money into tangible change?

For multiTRIM information, go to: multiTRIM.

Pounds Lost: 55.6

Changing her dinners from a steady—and increasingly disagreeable—stream of Lean Cuisine, Lisa (not a born chef) is embarking on the culinary adventure of cooking from scratch.

And not only that, she is also steering her palate in directions it would never, not in a million years, have headed on its pre-weight-loss own.

Listening to her palate, Lisa can still hear—though fainter and fainter (and that is good news): Big Mac, ground beef, French fries. Lisa, however, having grown stronger than her palate, has researched many sites for good, simple, nutritious, low-calorie from-scratch recipes, and they rarely call for neither Big Macs, ground beef, nor French fries.

“Just buying ground turkey rather than ground beef was a big step,” Lisa says. It simply went against the grain of what I ‘like’ to eat. But then I discovered something: recipes I found prepared the ground turkey (or the squash, or the pasta, or the whatever-it-may-be-that’s-a-little-healthier) in such a way that it actually tasted good.

“Well, if not good—according to my palate’s two cents—at least not bad. And the second time I tried it my palate actually had to concede: ‘it wasn’t all that bad.’ Third time—and yes, stick with it, the palate (surprise!)—can actually change—darn if it didn’t taste good.

Bottom line: cooking healthier meals does not necessarily alienate your palate. It will work with you, regardless of initial protests.

Ask Lisa if you don’t believe me.

Saw this on Tim Stevens’ blog this morning.  Hope it’s helpful.

Picture from Pebbles From Paradise

McDonald’s, the fast food chain known worldwide, is updating its logo. The signature plastic red backdrop will now be forest green in some countries in Europe.

In an attempt to remodel the chain’s image, restaurants in Europe have changed the classic red McDonald’s sign to green. Apparently this color change makes up for the misguidance in McDonald’s ethical policies. A british blog, Guardian, has more information about the re-branding of the famous chain that sells heart congestion in hamburger boxes.

“Tim Lyley, a goldsmith from London, is one of the cynics. He says: ‘It’s just a marketing thing isn’t it? What McDonald’s do is so ingrained in people’s psyche that no amount of rebranding is going to change what people think about it.’

The group’s financial results seem to disprove that sentiment. In April the company reported an 11% rise in global first quarter sales to $5.5bn, and a 22% increase in net profits to $762.4m. This was put down to surging sales in Europe and strong demand for new menu in the US.”

I find the sales increase frightening. If people are so easily duped by a marketing scam and would actually start going to McDonald’s because of the logo color change, then society has bigger problems than rampant obesity.

The thing about McDonald’s is that its image is directly correlated to the actions of the company. Since the company’s debut in 1940, increasingly larger portions of the signature greasy, high in fat food have been promoted. Though it is ultimately up to the individual to decide what is best for her own health, a restaurant should not wield its power so irresponsibly. McDonald’s was often accused of contributing to the rise of childhood obesity and was said to be marketing to young children with the introduction of Ronald McDonald in 1963.

Marketers use re-branding as a tool to change the image and oftentimes the values of a company. When a company needs to associate itself or distance itself from a particular image, a revamp of the logo is usually indicative of re-branding.
However far McDonald’s feels it needs to run from the greasy environmentally corrupt image it was linked to, will not change the fact that it continues to serve these same products under the same conditions.

McDonald’s Facts

-There are McDonalds restaurants in 119 countries.
-The “play-place” first appeared in 1987
-Six weeks after the film Super-Size Me came out, McDonalds elimianted the super-size option.

A McDonald’s in Islamabad, Pakistan. Picture from Wikipedia.com