Florida Strawberry Festival

Wendy's Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger

It was edible, I ate it all, but it's nothing special.

The pretzel bun didn't stand out. (They didn't even bother to put bits of salt on it!) The greens were hard to chew, and the cheese looked like it never really melted. Also, it had that onion smell. The not good one.

Cuban Breezes

The Cuban sandwich at Cuban Breezes was like a McDonald's version of the Tampa classic. The bread was wrong, the cheese was wrong, but it was still edible.

The beans and rice had a minty flavor, like a shamrock shake, for which I have no explanation.

Fiesta Day and Flan Fest

Pączki

Polish donuts!

Food logistics as entertainment

I almost don't believe it's real.

(Via @zapp)

Cotton Candy

Cephas

It's a Jamaican restaurant.

Free food!

Sometimes people do crazy things, if others are watching.

(Via solwat?)

Happy Hot Dog Man

OMG!

(via scienceandmisadventures)

Real Life Soup Nazi

"Further, I found it distressing when, after eating, with obvious self-satisfaction, people said, 'SO FULL!'."

Frankies

Frankies, they bill themselves as "The Gourmet of Fast Food". I couldn't tell what was "gourmet" about them, but everything tasted clean, the atmosphere was relaxed, and I loved their really long hot dogs. It seemed like a fun place to hang out.

Ice cream cookie

It's hard to describe this item of food, a Giant Caplico Cone:

It tastes a lot like a wafer cookie, but in this case the wafer is in the form of an ice-cream cone and the filling is foamed and in the shape of ice-cream:

I can attest to the fact that it is highly edible:

30 dollars worth of food: Sweetbay

What I bought:

Plain yogurt, 907g $2.89
Cereal, 454g $2.59
Cheddar cheese, 227g $2.79
Oats, 1.19kg $2.79
Whole milk, 1.89L $2.49
12 X-large eggs, 766g $1.69
Bread, 567g $1.07
90% lean ground pork, 448g $3.29
Yellow onion, 349g $0.69
Potatoes, 4.54kg $4.29
Collard greens, 454g $2.49
Turnip greens, 454g $2.49

What that equals:

6.76 days worth of calories (@2400 calories per day)
13.8 days of protein (@50g per day)
6.15 days of calcium
16.84 days of vitamin A
7.64 days of vitamin D
10.43 days of vitamin C
5.84 days of iron
4.72 days of riboflavin
4.18 days of thiamin

And that's with cereal which isn't fortified.

The Szechuan Peppercorns of Doom

Found this odd bit of information on a package of szechuan peppercorns. Note, these are supposed to be used the same as normal peppercorns:

"Servings per container: 4"

"Serving size: 28g"

"USER WARNINGS"

"Do not eat as a snack. Raw food please wash under tap water at least 5 minutes before cooking. Please cook in hot boiling water for 30 minutes before consuming."

"Contains sulfites"

Something tells me that the person at this company who knows English does not know how to cook.

Ybor City Celebrates Communism

Today I went to Ybor City for what was billed as a "Cuban Sandwich Festival". Strangely, it had a Communist distribution system. Let me explain.

All the food was "free". Politically powerful people got to gorge themselves on sandwiches while ordinary people stood in line, waiting for leftovers:

Only a lucky few actually got anything.

If you had American currency you could stand in another line to buy actual, full sized, Cuban sandwiches:

A long line:

Food shortages were endemic, and even the two capitalist establishments had problems keeping food in stock. The first of the two places selling sandwiches ran out as soon as I got to the counter.

This place was in an isolated area and had them in stock:

The festival was a disgrace to the Cuban community, not that any of them noticed.

Also on display were cigars:

And antique cars:

I guess I got a genuine Cuban experience!

le macaron

It's a store selling macaroons!

These are what I purchased, they look kind of weird:

And they taste weird, too:

French macaroons have a crispy outer shell, which shatters when you bite it, flinging shards of macaroon everywhere. Inside is a mushy glob, which is much too sweet, even for my American palete. I guess you're supposed to enjoy the flavor, but with the sweetness it reminds one of medicine.

Worst cookie ever!

(I suspect these are actually tiny pavlovas, a dessert from Australia and New Zealand.)

Italy has problems

Living in America, I can find "Ristorante Pizza Speciale" in my grocery store's freezer section:

It isn't premium pizza, it's very competitively priced. But it goes to some effort to sound authentically Italian. Also, it's imported, but not from Italy:

I wonder how a German company can make frozen pizza, ship it to the US, and charge so little. And if this is possible, I wonder why an Italian company isn't doing it instead.

Milky Chocolate

Taco Bus

This is a chain of Mexican street food style restaurants. The larger ones are run out of buses, the smaller ones look something like this:

Everything they make is great, and they even do breakfast!