cartoon of fat women and thin women wanting ice cream

Which is what you’ll become if you eat too many of these. My friend Candy (her real name) says the reason ice cream sundaes are so good is that they combine the hot sauce with the cold ice cream. I had never thought of that combination as the key factor, but I believe she’s right.

Caption: What fat women daydream about, what thin women daydream about: a hot fudge sundae.

More cartoons:

1. Giant ice cream sundae.
2. Best ice cream of the year.

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.

Pumpkin is one of my top flavors – I’ve never met a pumpkin product I didn’t like! I can taste the pumpkin, feel the pecans, and very vaguely taste the praline. But it doesn’t add up to much together. And at $6.99 each, it’s too expensive for below average. (I bought this last month, when the economy was slightly better. I wouldn’t even buy it now.)

Trader Joe’s doesn’t have the confidence to post photographs of any of the products it sells. Or the PR know how. So no photo from them. The photo above is from Viking Range, which has lots of other yummy looking recipes.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Our local Trader Joe’s in Silver Lake is run like a slum store, even though it’s the busiest store in the country! So no love lost there. I even wrote a lyrical poem about it in my other blog: http://donnabarstow.com/park_blog/2008/02/28/i-hate-trader-joes-silver-lake/. But I like the Trader Joe’s in Toluca Lake, so perhaps I’m not biased after all.

And check out my chocolate cartoons blog for more talk about desserts.

More cartoons:

1. Cherry pie isn’t worth lying about.
2. In which I get syndicated.

"Uh oh, we're out of jimmies." (Or sprinkles, for you weird people.) ©D. Barstow 2010

I found a whole forum on jimmies, here.

Someone at school told me that jimmies is actually a ra-cial 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 sprinkles 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. Noooooo guys! You’ve got it allll wrong! The chocolate sprinkles known as, “Jimmies” were started in the Boston area a number of years ago. The reason for calling them Jimmies was because each time a person put these chocolate sprinkles on their ice-cream, the money spent on the sprinkles was donated to the Jimmy Fund. Hence, they started calling the chocolate sprinkles “Jimmies.” I am not sure whether the money is still donated to the Jimmy Fund, but the act of kindness still lives on as the name “Jimmies” still continues.

Full disclosure: I’m from Philadelphia. Jimmies it is. Also: I would have loved to have included this quirky cartoon in my chocolate book, but the title is “What do Women Really Want? Chocolate!” So I had to leave this one out. I’ll include it in my “What Do MEN Really Want?” book. The answer to that question is chocolate, too.

Right?

This is a very odd cartoon, isn’t it? But who doesn’t like a little terror with their ice cream?  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. (Yes, the editors are that sexist.)

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.  And I just think a giant sundae sounds wonderful.

I wrote more about jimmies in my chocolate blog.

More cartoons:

1. Best ice cream of the year.
2. Seeing double at the ice cream bar.

There was a sad obit in the LA Times this weekend: Robert Steinberg, who founded Scharffen Berger chocolate, passed away. I found their fresh baking chocolate to be superb!

The Food Paper agrees with me on the baking chocolate. :)

Then there’s Pioneer Woman’s comparison  of brownies made with several brands of chcolate, including Scharffen Berger. Ever since I looked up her chili recipe which seemed to include a can, and her idea of complicated cookies that involve showing a photo of eggs, I’ve never thought she was much of a cook…or a blogger.

Still. Total hyperbole in the Times article about Steinberg.  Everyone knows that the new age of chocolate started when my chocolate book, “What Do Women REALLY Want? Chocolate!,” was published.

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.

More on this story over there!

More cartoons:

1. Trader Joe’s does it again. Bad pie, TJ.
2. She needs a good cookie or a good time, take your pick.