Picture of homemade pie.

You would think that with a title of (take deep breath) Trader Joe’s Chocolate Pumpkin Pecan Praline Tart, how could they miss, right? Nice cheerful orange label with chocolate dots, attractive looking pie. But I won’t make you wait until the end of the review: thumbs down.

What is the difference between tart and pie? [Pause while I go over to Google.]  Okay, here:

A tart is made with a crust formed in a tart pan or a low, straight-walled pan with a removable bottom. A pie, similar to a tart, is baked in a pie pan that has sloping sides. Both a tart and a pie can have the crust prebaked and filled or baked with fruits, custards or chocolate.

Everything 2 agrees with that. Already, things are not quite right with this TJ dessert. This is definitely a pie, not a tart.

Anyway, it has a sweet crumbly crust. I love soft crusts! But it’s not real chocolate, and it doesn’t taste like chocolate, unless it’s the cheap drugstore kind. The filling has a slightly crunchy filling, of substance, but not chewy.

Read more »

I don’t like white bread anymore. Only grainy or dark bread or bread of substance. I like my bagels and English muffins  and crumpets to be grainy, too!

I also don’t like toasters. Too slow.

Or toaster ovens. (What is the point of them again? I think I’m going to toss mine.)

Microwave is fast, but where’s the slightly burnt/toasted edges?

That leaves my big stove. That’s right, I turn it all the way up to broil, put a piece of tin foil down and the bread on top, wait 30 sec, turn it over and put some butter on so it melts just right, and Bob’s your uncle!

Honey is optional, along with the guilt.

And I thought Buster Brown only made shoes! Buster Brown Bread through Flickr Creative Commons Photographs by Derek Farr (Detroit Derek). Thanks Derek!

“Uh oh, we’re out of jimmies.” (Or sprinkles, for you weird people.) ©D. Barstow 2008

I’ve never been good at following directions. I didn’t like the topic of “sugary” for Illustration Friday this week- it made my teeth feel gritty, and I’ve never liked sugar as a topping, not even confectioners’ sugar. But I do like jimmies! Out here they call them sprinkles.

I like them especially on ice cream, but on a sugar cookie or other interesting place they’re also good.

This is a very odd cartoon, isn’t it? But who doesn’t like a little terror with their ice cream? Editors, I guess. It took me several years to realize that men don’t like food cartoons very much, so male editors rarely buy them. They just don’t. And women’s magazines usually have a woman in them, so can’t sell this to them (although the womens mags also buy mostly from men cartoonists, men of a certain age… Most of whom are bachelors…)

I don’t know why I did this idea , but giants have to eat, too. And I wanted to see what he’d do when he didn’t get what he wanted.

So anyway, men editors won’t buy it, and women editors won’t. That doesn’t leave me many options. Maybe if I get syndicated….yeah, that’s the ticket.

UPDATE:

I just found a whole forum on jimmies, here, in Boston, and Boston does know its ice cream. (favorite flavor only in Boston: coffee.)

Someone at school told me that jimmies is actually a racial slur related to the Jim Crow laws (’course, she was from Jersey)…anyone else heard this?

I hope not! I never heard that before. More comments ideas, below.

Yeah, I’ve heard that they’re sprinles if they’re multi-colored, and jimmies if they’re chocolate, because it was slang for Jim Crow. And even if it’s not true, enough people around think it’s true, so I call them all sprinkles.  Read more »

There was a sad obit in the LA Times this weekend: Robert Steinberg, who founded Scharffen Berger chocolate, passed away. They called him the creator of the “new age of chocolate.” I love his smile on the entry page! I know I would have liked him.

When I buy Scharffen Berger at Whole Foods, it doesn’t taste that fresh to me, but one of their reps gave me a bar of their baking chocolate at one of the Western Foodservice Shows, and it was quite good! This was like 4 years ago, before I had blogs, so I can’t remember the details, unfortunately.

Here’s a review at Chocolate Obsession that compares one of their bars to wine. I’ve noticed several reviewers do this. I don’t understand wine reviews. This reviewer at Candy Addict says she prefers their milk chocolate bars to the dark chocolate. The Food Paper agrees with me on the baking chocolate, and says:

Martha Stewart and Julia Child both are fond of it.

Then there’s Pioneer Woman’s comparison baking of brownies with Baker’s,  a Betty Crocker box mix, and Scharffen-Berger chocolate, on Serious Eats. Take a look. SB won.

Still. Total hyperbole in the Times article.  People can say whatever they want, but everyone knows that the new age of chocolate started when my chocolate book, “What Do Women REALLY Want? Chocolate!,” was published, in 2004.

That was the beginning, but of course this sort of movement never does have an ending. To that purpose, I’m pleased to announce that I just bought a new domain:  chocolatecartoons.com. Read Eat it and weep. The new chocolate.

Good try, though, Mr. Steinberg.

“Oh, my. It smells wonderful in here, Iris. Chocolate-scented kitty litter?”