THIS IS WRONG

I stopped off at the local Food Emporium to pick up a few chili peppers with which to make my own supply of pertsovka, the fiery Russian pepper-infused vodka.

The recipe is pretty simple, according to Yankee at Midwestern Exposure. You simply take a couple of nice red chiles, hack ’em up and throw ’em in a jar with a half-inch chunk of peeled, sliced fresh ginger and twenty-five lightly crushed black peppercorns. Then dump in 750 ml of vodka. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy - don’t use Grey Goose or Belvedere, Smirnoff or even (gag) Wolfschmidt is just fine - as long as it doesn’t have a paint thinner pong, it should be fine. Seal the jar tightly and let all this stuff marinate together for a few days, shaking the bottle every so often. When it tastes strong enough, filter the solids out and chill it in the freezer.

But as I wandered the aisles of the food store, a display caught my eye and would not let it go. It was an entire pyramid - nay, two pyramids - of those infernal Biscoff cookies.

You know those Biscoffs if you’ve ever flown on Delta Airlines, where they are occasionally given out as an in-flight snack, an alternative to the Ubiquitous Nut-Sack. And they’re obnoxiously tasty, with a warm, Christmas-spice flavor complementing their caramel crunch. Fans of speculoos (AKA speculaas), the traditional Belgian biscuit, will immediately recognize the Biscoff cookie.

I love the damned things, but I am allergic to them. They cause me to break out in Ass-Fat.

Thus it was that I managed to tear myself away from the twin Biscoff-Pyramids of Doom, only to encounter this:



Good Gawd! This is even more insidious and twisted than Nutella!

The jar shows the spread being applied to a bagel. Presumably, this makes the bagel taste like a great big honking Biscoff cookie. Shoot me now!

Spreads like this one - and like Nutella, for that matter - are like the culinary equivalent of porn, with not much in the way of nutritionally-redeeming values. Unlike socially acceptable nut butters like peanut and cashew butter, these products combine ridiculous yumminess with stratospheric calorie-to-nutrient ratios... just right for giving you a serious Food-Boner and a case of Cottage Cheese Thighs.

No, I did not purchase any. But can you imagine how fast I’d empty one of those jars if I did?