Living on Junk Food

I thought we had hit the perfect food with the chocolate covered bacon…I was wrong.

BACON CORN DOG ICE CREAM!!!!

The perfect food has been created.

Mmmm….Bacon….AND….Chocolate!!!!!!

That wail you’re hearing is the Cookie Monster weeping.
click here for cookie sadness

Haven’t tried one myself, but again, turning down free junk food from the granddaddy of junk food purveyors would be criminal.

McDonald’s is offering the new Southern Style Chicken Biscuit or Sandwich FREE with your purchase of a Med or Large Drink today, Thurs May 15. [Restaurant Locator]. Thanks TheBishoff.

Info on free deal Courtesy of slickdeals.net

Just a quick post, can’t pass up free junk food!

Today Is Free Häagen-Dazs Day

You can grab yourself a free scoop of the Dazs’s Vanilla Honey Bee flavor ice cream today between 4 and 8 p.m. at participating Häagen-Dazs locations. Find the nearest location here, but call ahead to check if your local shop is in on the free scoopage.

Edited so you know what day the free ice cream is.

Coffee.

Mmmm… Coffee.

It’s the first junk food of the day for most of us. There’s an entire industry that has spawned from our addiction to the brew.

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Starbucks these days.

Which brings us to the topic of todays post.

This is a news story that pops up from time to time and seriously, it could taste like pure heaven (which incidentally I believe may a combination of chocolate, and pecan pie and a really good rum), but even if it did, I couldn’t get past the production process for the coffee bean.

Onto the story.

“World’s most expensive coffee has arrived at stores, although it is in short supply. It’s virtually impossible to get hold of in Britain and has only limited availability in the States and Japan.

The coffee is grown only in Indonesia and the bean is rather rare, with less than 450lb harvested each year. Experts say this brew first came to light hundreds of years ago, when explorers sampled it on the Indonesian isles of Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi. Those who harvest the beans only pick the best and ripest coffee berries to be processed into coffee beans.”

However, this coffee might not be to everyone’s taste - and that’s not just because it has a $75 a cup pricetag. Why, you ask? Well, allow me to introduce you to the bean pickers.

The Bean Harvester: a Palm Civet

Yep, the beans are harvested by animals. Specifically, the the palm civet, a cross between a cat and a monkey which lives in Indonesia.

Now one may ask, “How do you train a monkey-cat to harvest coffee beans?”

Well, you really don’t train them. The palm civet, also known as the Palm Toddy Cat, happens to live on a diet of alcoholic tree sap and coffee berries.

Now I know, you’re asking, “If they live on a diet of the coffee berries, wouldn’t they be eating same the berry/beans that people are trying to harvest?”

Kind of, but that’s the point. Here’s why…

The civets eat the soft coffee cherries, digest the fruit pulp but the beans are indigestible so they are excreted onto the forest floor.

That’s right, that $75 cup O’ Joe is made from monkey-cat poo!

Unlucky coffee plantation staff have to collect the beans by searching through the dung to gather the bizarre “harvest” of coffee berries, which are said to emerge virtually intact, and are then sold as Luwak coffee.

“Experts reckon the ‘monkey business’ gives the drink a unique taste, which has made it the most expensive and sought-after coffee in the world. It is also thought that their gastric juices may add to the flavour.

One customer said: “I was a little apprehensive before I tried it but I actually really liked it. It was very earthy and it tastes very smooth. It’s the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. It smells musty, but it roasts up real nice. It wasn’t too bitter and the earthiness really came through.”

Earthiness….Um, Yea….I don’t think that’s the coffee providing the ‘earthiness’ .

I’ll stick to my Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks, and if I want to turn it into a “gourmet coffee experience” - I’ll put it in one of these.

You can buy it here at http://www.mocha.uk.com/shop/al-fresco-dining.shtml

The little coffee warmer, not the monkey-cat poo coffee. I’m not looking up where to buy that despite our love of quality coffee, even we here at Livingonjunkfood.com have our limits…

The International Media loves to distort the truth and blame things on us, ugly Americans, like this one.

“The British have the U.S. of A. to thank for their obsession with Junk Food. Over the last twenty years there has been an invasion of American junk food centres in the United Kingdom. Children, teens and adults have become fatter and fatter.”

A market research outfit called Synovate conducted a global survey and found that 44 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “I like the taste of fast food too much to give it up,” a number that may explain a significant segment of our obese and overweight populations. The British, however, take top honors, as 55 percent of them agreed with the statement.

The British Junk Food Obsession has gone so far as to have the government ban certain Ads on television in order to reduce children’s exposure to foods high in fat, salt and sugar. Which is silly because, Cheese is to be treated as junk food under new advertising rules. The rules treat cheese is to be regarded in the same light as crisps, sugary cereals and cheeseburgers.

Personally, I don’t believe that the Junk Food addiction in Britain is due to the American Fast Food Invasion. I mean come on, this is the Country that invented Fish & Chips! Seriously, how more Junk Food-y could you get than deep frying potatoes and breaded fish & then finishing it off with a nice thick dark, tasty beer?

The British Junk Food Crisis doesn’t stop with humans either. Britian’s Pigeon population has an obesity problem due to Junk food as well. Apparently, people in England are feeding their junk food scraps to the pigeons, and now the birds are “supersized” and dependent on people rather than nature for their food.

The abundance of food on offer was also causing a population explosion of pigeons in Britain, which are considered a health hazard and a nuisance.

“Seven out of the 10 bits of litter we find on our pavements and roads are food related. And with all this trash to choose from, the pigeon, rat, fox and gull population has spiraled,” Woods said.

“People genuinely feed pigeons out of a sense of kindness. But by leaving food around, they are not helping the birds at all. Pigeons become dependent on you for their diet and when flocks gather this spreads disease and drives smaller birds away,” he said.

“Really, the best way to care for pigeons is to stop dropping and littering food, and instead let nature take its course.”

Which brings me to the point of this post…

HOW TO COOK PIGEON (The British Way)

PIGEON PIE–Cover your dish with puff paste crust. Let your pigeons be tender and nicely picked; season with brown pepper and salt and a little chopped onion, and put a good piece of butter, with a little more pepper and salt, under the pigeon; lay them in your pan, with necks, gizzards, livers and pinions between; put a very tender beefsteak in the middle, and add the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs. Half fill the dish with water, lay on top crust, and bake well, taking great care not to burn the paste.

WILD PIGEONS (Stewed)–Clean and wash very carefully, then lay in salt and water for an hour. Rinse the inside with soda and water, shaking it well about in the cavity; wash out with fair water, and stuff with a force-meat made of breadcrumbs and chopped salt pork, seasoned with pepper. Sew up the birds, and put on to stew in enough cold water to cover them, and allow to each a fair slice of fat bacon cut into narrow strips. Season with pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Boil slowly in a covered saucepan until tender; take from the gravy and lay in a covered dish to keep warm. Strain the gravy, add the juice of a lemon and a tablespoonful of currant jelly, thickening with browned flour. Boil up and pour over the pigeons.

Be sure to Enjoy your Pigeon with a Pint of Guinness or two! Cheers!

That’s right, not only is he the undisputed King of Rock & Roll, but he’s also the unofficial, original ‘King of Junk Food’.

Elvis Presley made famous a meal known as the Fool’s Gold Loaf, reportedly his favorite: To construct one, mix one jar of peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly and a pound of bacon. Scoop the mixture inside a hollowed-out loaf of fresh-baked bread, smother the outside in butter and bake. Elvis would eat the whole thing in one sitting—and once flew from Memphis to Denver in the middle of the night to get one from a restaurant called the Colorado Mine Company.

According to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader the entry on page 49 reads: “In the months before he died, Elvis Presley ate an average of about 65,000 calories each day,” roughly equal to the recommended intake for 26 men.

How reliable this number is, or whatever it’s source, it would explain the King’s appearance toward the end.

I blatantly stole found this recipe from another site:
The following recipe is from The Presley Family Cookbook, by Vester Presley and Nancy Rooks. You could try substituting healthier wheat bread, natural peanut butter (just peanuts and salt, without the partially hydrogenated vegetable oil), and soft margarine — or even peanut oil or light olive oil [NO HEALTHY SUBSTITUTIONS!!!! THIS IS LIVINGONJUNKFOOD.COM!!!!]

Elvis Presley’s Grilled Peanut Butter

and Banana Sandwich

* 2 slices of white bread
* 2 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter
* 1 small ripe banana mashed
* 2 tablespoons butter

Spread the peanut butter on one slice of bread and the mashed banana on the other. Press the slices gently together. Melt the butter (or to be truly Elvis-like, melt bacon fat!), over low heat in a small frying pan. Place the sandwich in the pan and fry until golden brown on both sides. Eat it with a glass of buttermilk.

Elvis tended to eat 12-15 sandwiches a sitting!

Hail to the King, Baby!

P.S. If you, too, want to eat like “the King”, you may want to check out the following…

Eat Like Elvis - a website that goes into more detail on “The King’s” eating habits.

http://www.squidoo.com/eatlikeelvis

And the book -
Eating the Elvis Presley Way
By David Adler, Published by John Blake

http://www.elvisinfonet.com/book_eating.html\

And to see more about the King & his eating habits,

there’s a documentary…

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/04/the-burger-and-the-king-watch-elvis-eat-crazy.html

In today’s world, everyone says that they are eating healthier, shopping for organic fruits & vegetables, free range meat & chicken, wild caught fish, and whole grain bread.

BUT… Let’s face it, despite all these claims, there’s a dark side of eating that people just don’t talk about.

It happens in your car, on the way home from a tough day at work…your car almost drives itself thru the drive-thru, and you hand the teenager $5 for a sackfull of hamburgers & fries….or 3 for $0.99 tacos.

It happens late at night, after everyone has gone to bed. You sneak down to the kitchen, and reach into the cupboard above the spice rack…hidden way in the back is that bag of Oreo Cookies… Or buried in the back of the freezer behind the “100% Fruit Juice Pops” is that carton of Ben & Jerry’s “Phish Food”…

Yes, Junk Food is the dirty secret that everyone hides & doesn’t talk about. Why? We’ve had it drilled into our heads by the government, doctors, teachers, etc. that Junk Food is bad for you. It makes you fat, clogs your arteries, has no nutritional value. All, for the most part, true. But they all leave out one key thing…

JUNK FOOD TASTES DAMN GOOD!!!!!

That’s what this website is about. I’m here to talk about what I enjoy, Junk food.

I’m not advocating a strict diet of nothing but Junk Food, that’ll kill you. I’m also not advocating a completely organic lifestyle either, because that’s boring and bland.

What you’ll see here is various posts about lots of different foods, not all junk food, but you can count on most of the posts being about foods your personal trainer would have you spend several hours on a treadmill to work off, but you still eat anyway.

So go ahead & crack open a Coca-Cola Classic, and pour it over that bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and pull up your chair for some purely guilty food posts.

Just remember,if organic eating was healthy, cavemen would still be alive today.