I ordered some of the online-only mustard-flavored Doritos and they are waiting on my doorstep as we speak. I’m cautious, but hopeful.

There was an urban legend for a number of years about a syringe found in a McDonald’s ball pit. The original version had it in Midland, Texas, but at some point one version morphed to “Midland, Tennessee” — which is, in reality, a rural crossroads with, at most, a little country store/gas station not far from me.…

Just make sure you don’t ask for a tour of the Hormel plant:

I step from the kitchen into the dining room/living room and ask Alexa to set a timer. I have toyed with getting an Echo Dot just for the kitchen, but it’s an old apartment and outlets are at a premium. The nice thing about the Echo Dot with the digital clock is that, when it’s in timer mode, the clock face switches…

Came here to say this!

It’s not an either-or situation, thankfully. Yes, there’s something special about freshly-mashed potatoes, but, as you say, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the instant stuff as well. It’s like those “imitation crab” products. I try to think of them, not as imitation crab (they pale by comparison), but as their own…

Love Sidral Mundet. I pick it up occasionally from the Latino aisle of my local Kroger.

Just returned, today, from a two-week mission trip in Uganda. I’d never been to Uganda before, but I was thrilled to find that they have my two favorite drinks from Kenya: Stoney Tangawizi, a citrusy ginger drink with a great kick, and Krest bitter lemon, which is *just* bitter enough to be refreshing. I have not been…

Ronnie McDowell, who’s had a successful country career in his own right but will always be known for his Elvis-related work, sometimes plays a little venue in the rural Tennessee county where I was a newspaper reporter and editor for 35 years, and I got to do phone interviews with him a couple of times and saw his…

You can also re-use the regular bags, with some caveats -- the bag gets a couple of inches shorter each time, because you have trimmed off the seal when you cut it open. Also, you’re not supposed to reuse the bag after storing raw meat.

This. Freeze the liquid overnight in a plastic container, pop it out of the plastic container and vacuum seal the already-frozen puck.

Nope. Theirs is made with sausage.

Actually, Bojangles — a Popeye’s-like chain in the Southeast with a major marketing presence in college football — does have dirty rice, under that name, on its menu. Bojangles also has a great all-day breakfast menu, and — like Hardee’s — their biscuits are made from scratch at the restaurant.

My understanding is that Fuji TV used the “Backdraft” movie theme without clearance, or at the very least without clearance to use it in the U.S.A. They negotiated a settlement of some sort, and while the “Backdraft” theme continued for the original Food Network run of the Japanese episodes, any reruns since then…

Tiger Sauce has an interesting history — I remember reading a Nashville newspaper story back in the 1980s when a Knoxville company (which later sold out to Reily) resurrected the product after a couple of decades. As I understand it, back in its *original* heyday it was sometimes used as a promotional giveaway by…

There was a TV movie adaptation in 1992, with Angela Lansbury, Diana Rigg and Omar Sharif (!). As best I can tell from Wikipedia, the UK editions used “Harris,” while the US editions used “ ‘Arris.”

They wouldn’t even be able to see, since the photons would presumably be too large to interact with the rods and cones making up their retinas. This has been a long-term gripe of mine, ever since I was a teenager and Isaac Asimov -- who had gamely agreed to write a novelization of “Fantastic Voyage” -- picked the very…

I prefer the version you used -- but you need to clarify that there are *two* different versions of the powdered mix. One is meant to be mixed with buttermilk and mayo, the other is meant to be mixed with milk and mayo. (Presumably, the second version contains cream of tartar or some other acidic ingredient.)…

I live in a small rural town, and I was disappointed four or five years ago when our local stand-alone Pizza Hut replaced itself with a delivery-and-pickup-only storefront. I was not a regular visitor to their buffet, but I did it every now and then. It was reasonably priced, and it included a salad bar. (There were…

You obviously didn’t watch the piece. One of Oliver’s points was that — because the seemingly-low startup costs — many Subway franchisees turn out *not* to be big ownership groups or wealthy corporations. A lot of other chains now prefer an individual or group who will take on multiple locations, but many Subway…