Brad McConahay

Where can you get just plain mint ice cream? Just smooth mint with no chocolate, no peppermint sticks, no nothing… just mint. This drives me crazy. I do like mint chocolate chip. It’s my favorite flavor of ice cream. But I’d really just prefer plain mint. UDF is my favorite, but I’m not that picky. I like Breyer’s interpretation, too. But please, just mint.

Peppermint ice cream tastes wonderful, but I won’t touch it because of the crunchy peppermint sticks that stick to the teeth. Just give me the peppermint flavor please. NO STICKS!

Mint.

I guess I could try to make it myself. Every time I’ve tried to make homemade ice cream, it turns into a huge mess that tastes questionable, at best. I don’t really consider this a valid option.

Maybe somebody out on the net makes a smooth mint. I was looking right before I typed this post. And then I realized that I’m going to have to do some big Google investigation to find a smooth mint. “smooth mint” (in quotes) brought up “Smooth mint ice cream speckled with rich chocolate pieces”, “smooth mint ice cream, swirled with dark chocolate sauce and dark chocolate shavings”, “smooth mint ice cream loaded with Andes Candies and thin mint cookies”, and other similar crapola. Now it’s gonna be work, and that pisses me off, so here I am.

By the way, I feel the same way about banana cake and banana ice cream. Always the need for chocolate, as though the banana flavor doesn’t hold up on its own. Always with the ruining of the banana with the chocolate…

In 1984, I decided that I would never again eat at McDonald’s. I wanted a Big Mac with only cheese, ketchup, and mustard, and they flat-out refused to make it. And so started my official personal boycott list of companies that piss me off. Yes, I realize that nobody cares about this list but me, but that’s okay. It’s just a matter principle and it exists for my own satisfaction. It’s not a list that’s written down and there aren’t very many companies on it. But with few exceptions, it’s a list I stick to.

So today, the wife and I were trying to decide what fast food we might get for lunch. Normally we would choose from Burger King, Arby’s, Gold Star, White Castles, Frisch’s and a few others – but never McDonald’s.

While discussing who has the least offensive fries, we agreed that McDonald’s always had some of the better fries in the realm of fast food. Then I mentioned how much I loved their strawberry shakes … long story short … we decided to get McDonald’s. I threw my arms up ceremoniously and declared them officially removed from my boycott list. My wife snickered, “I’m sure they’ll breathe a sigh of relief.”

Here’s how it turned out. The following picture shows two things:

1) I ordered a Big Mac with cheese only, and

2) the order is double-checked by them for accuracy. I’d assume that the sticker is placed on the box only after it’s inspected. Pretty damn impressive!

Now, here’s what was actually in the box.

Argh! The cheese is there, but so is what I assume is “special sauce” with scary looking green crap in it. Foul stuff. It was on both layers, so there was no salvaging the sandwich. And to top it off, they totally forgot to include the order of fries! I can only guess that this order wasn’t in any way actually double-checked.

For good measure, here’s photo of how small the McDonald’s meat patty has become.

That’s really sad.

Wow, less than an hour after lifting their 21-year boycott, McDonald’s found their way right back onto my list. “Ba da ba ba bahhh… I’m hatin’ it.”

It’s comforting to know I’m not the first person to feel wronged by the difference between fast food ad pictures and the actual pathetic product. Arby’s seems to be the worst offender. In fact, I went googling to see what others had to say about Arby’s, and found a great article on the subject right here in a home town paper…

http://www.citybeat.com/2000-05-18/adnauseam.shtml

I was ready to do some high level bitching here, but that article kind of stole my thunder. I’m glad he did the research, because the details of the whole false advertising thing were gnawing at me. Apparently false advertising is perfectly legal. Who knew?