Ghosts and Bats and Snacks Better Scurry...

Because I am who I am, I cannot help but look around the grocery stores each and every Halloween to see if there is some snack or goodie that is new to me. 

In a strange twist of fate, despite my lifelong Halloween obsession, I am not nor have I ever been a candy-holic. While I quite love certain candies (see below), my sweet tooth – even as a child – was usually sated within one or two bites of something. When other kids were seriously disgruntled when they received packs of trading cards in their bags (I mean, sure, they had a stick of chewing gum in them, but come on...), I found it an easy matter to swap out a Snickers bar (in the pre-"fun size" days) for a few packs of whatever cards were making their way through the rounds that particular year. It's how I made off with my initial stack of Topps You'll Die Laughing trading cards back when I was around nine or ten (more on this in coming weeks) and how I loaded up so well on Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, and Bay City Rollers (yup...) cards back in the day.

So, when Halloween rolls around, we make sure to have candy on the off-chance that we actually have trick-or-treaters in an given year (last Halloween was the best turnout in ages – we are in a new neighborhood and no longer in an apartment building – so we need to be sure to load up this time). But I don't really spend much time perusing the different types of candy, except to be sure to find some Tootsie Caramel Apple Pops for myself and something chocolatey for Jen. My main concern when I go to the store in October is in finding other snacks that fit the Halloween season in a proper and fun way.

You may be thinking immediately... PUMPKIN... and you are so wrong. Yes, I do have a great love for both pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread. I also don't mind trying the odd pumpkin flavored this or that if it is offered to me, or if I decide on a whim to test out something. But we really are at an over-saturation point on all things pumpkin (though I am sure it is grand for the pumpkin industry), which I somewhat blame on Starbucks and on rich white people in general (I am pretty certain Martha Stewart had a hand in this somehow). Oh, yeah, and places like Trader Joe's.

And this is the stuff that I
cannot even try...

Now, I love Trader Joe's. When we lived in Anaheim for the past decade and had one just down the road from us, Jen and I shopped there weekly; now that we are a little farther away, we get to one about every three weeks or so. We have favorite items there that are staples in our weekly menus, and I cannot get by without having a stock of their Sparkling Lime Mineral Water at hand. But any trip to TJ's in late September will reveal to you entire cases full of pumpkin-flavored items that really have little to no business being pumpkin-flavored. While I am a connoisseur of tortilla chips, I just can't quite make the commitment to pumpkin-flavored ones (I've tried them though, so I at least gave them a shot). Honey-roasted pumpkin ravioli, which I have not tried because, medically, I cannot, also doesn't really appeal to me, which is also the case when I read aloud the names of many of Trader Joe's (or any other company's) pumpkin-enhanced items.

So while I don't completely write off finding something interesting in the pumpkin realm, I always hope to find something else odd in the grocery store that speaks to the monster lover that I am or really gives me a challenge for the palate beyond that great orange gourd. Unfortunately, I am saddled with dreadful wheat and rye allergies that limit me to making sure most items that I try are marked as "gluten-free" to ensure that I avoid either of those ingredients. Since wheat flour seems to be in just about everything these days, this rather kills me from trying out the bulk of items they have for sale, such as the many holiday-themed turns on Joe-Joe's (Trader Joe's brand knockoff of Oreos), including their Halloween variation which, surprisingly, does not have pumpkin-flavored cream in the middle. (Seriously, how did they miss this one?)

Last year, Trader Joe's announced Ghost Pepper Potato Chips, and I jumped on checking them out right away. Compared to another product that I tried out from another ghost pepper chip company (Paqui, though theirs were tortilla chips not potato) at the same time which blew my taste buds out, the TJ's chips were far tastier overall but not nearly as hot as the dare of the packaging led me to believe. [You can read that review from last year here.]

Cut to our impromptu visit to a Trader Joe's in Irvine the other day where, due to unexpectedly light traffic, Jen's mom, Sande, and I had a full hour to kill before my scheduled visit to my doctor, a gastrointestinal specialist. Perusing the aisles of each Trader Joe's is always interesting because every store is laid out in a  slightly different way, and this location was no exception. For one, the aisles seemed a tad wider than usual for a Trader Joe's, but it looked like it had been dropped into a much larger space than they normally tend to have. The layout of the different sections was also markedly different, so it took a little bit to get our bearings, but even the biggest Trader Joe's is still much smaller than a normal supermarket, so it is never too hard to figure out where one is situated.

The poem, I must admit,
is more than a trifle
lacking in style...

Naturally, there were a couple of different endcaps and a huge display prominently promoting roughly 8,000 pumpkin products (really, under a couple dozen) but nothing that really stuck with me. I figured that I might check out the chip aisle to see if the Ghost Pepper Potato Chips were still around, just in case nothing else stuck. But then something did stick... Ghosts & Bats Crispy Potato Snacks!

If there is such thing as love at first sight for a product, it was this as I rounded the corner and saw yet another endcap featuring a brand new product to my eyes. A greenish and purple bag with a haunted house on the front, featuring ghosts and bats flying around it, and windows on the house that you could see straight through that showed the potato crisps inside. And the best part? The crisps were shaped liked ghosts and bats!

If I had a "Squeeee!" in me at that time, that would have been the moment for it to eek out into the atmosphere and shock the old lady standing nearby me. That bag was in the cart faster than you could ever imagine. The price on the item – only $1.99 for 5 ounces – also made it a no-brainer for a taste test. Of course, part of the fun of many Trader Joe's items is the packaging, which sometimes reach J. Peterman catalog-levels of odd intrigue. Not so this time. Instead, a poem is printed on the back of the bag, and as you will tell, whoever wrote it needed to give it another draft or two:

Cute UPC ghost
negates bad poetry...

"There once was a 
house in a forest dark,
where ghosts and bats – 
upon a lark...

...happened on to potato crisps
and commenced munching 
forthwith.

No squeaks or moaning 
were ever heard,
instead – 
a crunch, crunch, crunch, 
so absurd...

It was not long before
of their favorite snacks
the ghosts and bats
began to snack!

Spooky."

So, yeah... If this guy ever gets buried by accident at Poets' Corner, he would probably come back as a bull in a china shop. But it's entirely beside the point. They were just trying to sell a back of potato chips/crisps, and they did their job on me before I even got to the stupid poem with its horrible meter. Besides... there is a cute little ghost hanging out over the UPC label, so technically, that negates the awfulness of the poem.

Yup, that's what they look like. Bat and ghost,
ready to die of (your) consumption...

All of this aside, how are Ghosts & Bats Crispy Potato Snacks? Well, they are certainly crispy, they are made of potato predominately (thankfully, there are only five ingredients listed on the back, potato flour and potato starch being those two), and they fall into the snack category. So, truth in advertising is in full force already. These are more crisps than potato chips, though please don't confuse that with the British term "crisps," which actually means "potato chips". These are pretty light and almost dissolve on the tongue after a short wait, almost like a cheesy poof.

As for the "ghosts and bats" part, indeed, opening the bag revealed that the greater proportion of pieces were cute cut-out shapes of winged batties and little ghosties with oval eyes and mouths that I assume are going "Woooooo!" Of course, any bag of potato snacks will have its crushed denizens lurking about within, and this was no exception. Luckily, most of the ghosts and bats were intact, and ready to charm straight away. 

As for taste, like any potato snack, I prefer to stack up multiple crisps in one bite for more potato flavor, but I will say that there was a definite lack of overall saltiness that actually turned out to be quite appealing. I would suppose some would consider that a bit bland, and normally I would, but it worked out fine in this case.

It really didn't matter, because I was purchasing this bag for the fun of the experience, and fun is what I received. It was a relatively light (130 calories per one ounce serving), silly snack that I will be more than happy to buy again before the Halloween season is over. I wouldn't mind Trader Joe's trying out different flavors with these in the future; perhaps a salt and vinegar version might be terrific (no matter what I just said about downplaying the saltiness).

But, please, despite the season, no pumpkin-flavored potato chips...

RTJ

Introducing My New Food Allergy Blog... Intelli-Allergentsia!

I just started a new blog about food allergies called Intelli-Allergentsia. Visit http://intelli-allergentsia.blogspot.com/…/the-road-less-sw… to read the first part of my telling how I found myself suddenly plunged into the wheat-free world.

Eventually, I hope to include food reviews, restaurant reviews, and general discussion of other food allergen groups beyond mine (wheat, rye, shellfish, and codfish). I may even solicit articles from my friends with similar problems in the future so that they can tell their stories or give their observations.

Please feel free to leave comments on there as well. I want this conversation to continue, and we will all have an easier time negotiating the food alternative world when we share. If there are wheat or gluten-free food products you would like me to review, or restaurants in the Southern California area that have good gluten-free options, please throw me your suggestions if you'd like.

And if you are someone who just automatically thinks this is me being trendy, you should probably take the time to read the full article (in three parts) when it has been posted to see how wrong you are. Not everybody is a hipster. Not everybody does things just because they think it makes them feel better. Not everyone asks questions or for special menus in restaurants because they crave being the center of attention. It's embarrassing.

I would eat a regular cheeseburger right now with real, honest to goodness bread full of wheat flour if I could be assured that I wasn't going to projectile vomit it across the room twenty minutes later. And then cough endlessly for the next four hours. Shut up and read the story...

Once again, http://intelli-allergentsia.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-road-less-swallowed-my-allergy.html.

Thanks!

RTJ

The Ghosts of Peppers Past

The news is full of stories about the annual obsession with pumpkin spice enemas and whatnot, and it is fully understandable given the season. The stores have gone crazy with pumpkin-flavored everything, and I would be wrong were I to tell you I did not approve on some level. My favorite pie is pumpkin, I love to chew on pumpkin seeds, and I will drink a pumpkin shake on the rare occasion I deign to down a milk-based product through a straw.

Speaking of things gastronomic, I grew ever more excited about Halloween this year once I heard that ghost pepper items were beginning to hit stores and menus around America. I fell in love with the evil little things while still slaving at my old gig, where the very nice lady who served as the director of our one truly noble program -- providing soccer-playing opportunities for the handicapped -- would bring my office partner and I a steady supply of her home-grown ghost peppers and red scorpion peppers. 

I learned quickly when cooking with these peppers that it was best to wear rubber gloves when cutting into them, and if you are not wise enough to cover your eyes with safety goggles, at least cut the peppers with your arms extended from your body and face as far as you can. And I am not one of these YouTube attention hounds that will just eat the entire pepper on a dare. I preferred to figure out what amount for each pepper would give me that desirable spice burn, but not flame my tongue (and subsequently my internal organs) out forever.

While watching a show on the Food Network last Sunday (starring that douchebag chef I don't really like, though I do enjoy his competitive cooking show he hosts), one of the ingredients that absolutely had to be used by the contestant chefs was a bag of ghost pepper-flavored tortilla chips. While the cooking was going on for that round, the judges tore into a bag and test-tasted the chips themselves, behaving as if the bombing of Hiroshima was being reenacted live on television. Of course, I was assuming the judges and host were playing it up a bit, and when a couple of the four dishes set before them turned out to be not quite as spicy as they would have preferred (a couple of chefs were too successfully -- and thus, failures -- in "turning down the heat"), I figured that the chips were probably pretty spicy, but not unmanageably so.

Jump to the next day when Jen is out shopping with her mom, and she texts me from Trader Joe's that she found a treat for me. I flashed back to the experience on TV the night before, and asked "Is it spicy?" and she responded "Could be..." Since Trader Joe's mostly carries items with their own branding, I figured chances were slim that they were the chips I saw on the cooking competition show. And when she arrived home, sure enough, they were Trader Joe's Ghost Pepper Potato Chips instead. Still, I erupted with joy at the thought of tasting anything with ghost peppers added to it! Best of all, they were gluten-free, which for me is not a trendy tag or a mere option; it is the allergy-tested and doctor-ordered manner in which I have to live in order to breath comfortably day to day.

The "ghostly" poem on the back of
Trader Joe's Ghost Pepper Potato Chips.

There is no grace period between my taste buds and a spicy snack. There is no downtime where I study the chip, consider its texture and shape, and muse on the expanse of flavors that could be discovered. And my apologies to Master Yoda, there is no "DO NOT"... there is only "TRY the chip" and "DO deal with the consequences". And I tried. And I did. The dealing would come later (I assumed). I tore that bag open the second it was in my hands, and popped a rather large potato chip into my mouth.

And... I was slightly disappointed. The chips were spicy, but lightly so, as if Trader Joe's (or whoever they had packaging their food) were truly afraid to offend anyone's sensibilities (or send someone to the hospital). So, lacking that barrage of heat after a single chip, I went for what you often have to do with spicy snacks: slowly build a fire and don't let it go out. I ate ten chips one after the other, and got a pretty decent buzz going (not a buzz like in pot, but spice hounds will understand) in the back of the tongue. That made me happier, but it died down quickly. Another ten chips reestablished the buzz, but not wanting to ruin dinner, I quit knowing it probably wouldn't get much hotter than it had. Visiting the bag later that evening and the next day confirmed my conclusions.

The chips are tasty and the packaging is attractive (I like the ghostly pepper next to the poem on the back of the bag) [see picture], but I was getting more out of the chips from the overall flavor than from any accumulation of ghost pepper powder. I would easily buy them again just as a very good potato chip, but for a regular spicy snack, I would much rather dip into another bag of Tim's Jalapeño or Cajun Potato Chips (though, according to their own website, Tim's is no longer producing that second wonderful flavor). At least with those two styles, the heat stays with you for a while and allows you to build on it if desired.

These chips want to kill your mama...

But, what if you want heat that kicks your ass before you even bite the chip? I wouldn't think  it was really a desirable thing except for heat extremists, but I suppose they must be out there somewhere. Also out there somewhere were the chips I saw on the cooking show, and I wanted to find them. I can't let those weenie judges get to try the chips but not me! I checked for the brand on the internet -- Paqui Tortilla Chips. The store on their website has nothing for sale, and their lousy excuse is that they are too busy making more chips for everyone to enjoy! So, you can't hire someone to set up E-Commerce on your site to sell your product? At least give me some links to locations that sell your chips. Next up was Amazon, which had other ghost pepper related items, but no Paqui chips at all. Yes, I could get other chips to try, but I wanted to find these particular ones.

And so I decided to stake out the local supermarkets next and try to track them down. Vons was a no go... hardly a spicy chip at all outside of Doritos Habanero and Spicy Nacho. Been there, done that. The next day, I took advantage of a ride up to the other grocery store down the street -- Ralphs -- and was able to locate Paqui Tortilla Chips right away, albeit a little bit hidden on the shelf behind a floor display. Unfortunately, they only had their verde-flavored and habanero-flavored chips. Definitely wanted to try both, but I really wanted the ghost pepper ones. All appeared lost until I made the last minute decision to run down to the produce area to grab some tomatoes for tacos later that night. On the way back to the cart that Sande was pushing around the store, I ran into a floor display at the end of a random aisle (one that no food in it whatsoever) that was filled with Paqui Haunted Ghost Pepper Tortilla Chips!! Victory at last!

Challenge accepted!!

I didn't hesitate to grab a bag and fought hard to not try one until we got back home. Luckily, we are only a mile away, so it didn't take long. Grocery bags out of the car and into the house. Chip bag out of the grocery bag. A mad dash to my office. Pictures taken of the bag, front and back. And then the tear. A barely perceptible atomic cloud could be seen rising from the slit at the top of the bag as it popped open, its small mushroom a warning against those who trespassed without the most diamond-hard of constitutions.

Let's flash back to that bit I said about heat kicking your ass before you even bite the chip. This is that chip. There is so much peppery dust on each chip in the bag that if you are not careful, and you bring in even the slightest bit as you prepare to bite into it, you will begin coughing without tasting the actual chip. And this is what happened. Since I have been going through a lot of allergy issues the last few years, and coughing has been the subject of much unendurable pain to me, this was not a happy thing to occur. I try so hard to not begin coughing at all, since it almost always leads to even more coughing, and sometimes it can go on for hours or days. I have it under control with asthma medications and some other major changes to my diet and exercise plan recently (yes, I actually do have a plan finally). So I didn't enjoy it when the first chip started me off on a fit right away.

I settled down and took a proper bite. It should have been a much smaller one. The chips are the usual large tortilla chip size, but every bit seems to be fully coated with the pepper mix, so you cannot avoid the heat at all. And it is pure, Hades-inspired heat. The first chip was so hot that I couldn't have another one for over ten minutes. Even with the cough warning, I was truly unprepared for it. I even nearly fell into the novice trap of reaching for a water, though I knew full well it would only worsen the problem. Because I am a pepper moron, I wouldn't try to drown it anyway even if I had something at hand that could do so, like milk (which I hate), and I let the forest fire in my mouth and throat gradually die down and mostly dissipate.

Then I did what only a true slave to the spice can do (I feel like I am in a twisted version of Dune): grab another chip and eat it. I was soon able to have a few in a row, with the burn down times a little less each time. As I write this (Saturday), it is now the exact amount of time that it took me finish off the bag of Trader Joe's chips, and I still have over a half bag of the Paqui left. In fact, after that initial burst of activity, I only had a few more later that night, and just three chips today. The problem for me is that the Paqui brand are tortilla chips, and not potato chips. If the more insane amount of pepper dust were on potato chips, I would still probably finish them a lot faster, because my true comfort snack love is potato chips. I prefer tortilla chips when they accompany other foods, like salsas and bean dips, or in nachos, or when I add them to tacos to make "Nacos" (as on Kim Possible). For me, having other tastes and textures with the chip itself helps to break up the overall blandness of the tortilla chip. I could see crumbling these chips into a taco salad to add a devilish burst of flavor and spiciness, and then again, it would be a case of combining a tortilla chip with other items. Overall, though the spice level is exactly what I was hoping for and more -- they are the hottest snacks I have every tasted -- there is not much taste-wise beyond the burn except for the taste of a pretty good tortilla chip.

Where the Paqui chips definitely prevail is in the packaging. While their website failed to help me at all except tell me about their flavors, the bag itself is delightful. As you can see from the picture above, the words "Homemade Horror" appear right on the front of the bag, and if there was ever a more appropriate connection between the text on a bag and the Satanic contents within, I haven't discovered it. Once again, there is also a ghostly looking pepper on the packaging, and definitely not as intentionally cute as the one of the Trader Joe's bag. Best of all is the text on the back, where a warning declares "The contents of this bag are extremely frightening. Paqui is not responsible for any injuries that may result from ingesting this delicious terror." The list of "Haunted Ghost" ingredients is prefaced with "MADE WITH HORROR AND", and then heads into the unimportant, real world stuff. Fun packaging that not only sells the product but gives you ample reasons to shy away if you are not built for this speed.

On the whole, I wish the heat from the Paqui chips were on the potato chips from Trader Joe's. I would buy the Trader Joe's chips as is for a regular, delicious potato snack in my home (if I weren't actively trying to excise salty snacks from my diet), but am disappointed in the heat profile. I think I might try the habanero tortilla chips from Paqui next for a comparison. And if I wanted to be evil at a party, I would definitely sneak some Paqui Haunted Ghost Pepper tortilla chips into the bowl on the refreshment table. I would love to see the faces on the unsuspecting partygoers as their abilities to taste normal and to possibly maintain regularity get destroyed for the remainder of the evening.

You probably shouldn't even invite me in...

The Best of Bread [Remastered Gluten-Free Edition]

When last we joined our hero [http://bit.ly/1VdrSKK], he was mired in sadness and not just a little bit of outrage at the exorbitant cost of a 24 oz. loaf of Udi’s Gluten Free bread at his local Target store.

As I stated in that post, the cost of the 24 oz. bag over the regular 12 oz. loaf they carried was just a shade under three times as much (for only twice the content). My suggestion was that this smacked of either taking advantage of those Target considered easy targets because of their hipster trendiness or being evil shits for making it insanely expensive for those who have a serious medical need to avoid normal baked goods and use a popular alternative.

My normal mode of operations is to create a personal boycott when such methods arise. I don’t need to drag the rest of the world into my temper tantrum; keep it small and confined to my own actions. And it would be easy for me to just simply not shop at Target anymore. There is nothing that they sell at Target that I cannot find elsewhere in the vicinity or even online. The only upsides of the place are that I can get many of the things we need in one place at the moment we need them and that they are only a mile away. So, it should be fairly easy not to shop there if I chose not to do so. If I could only instill and maintain longevity in such actions, a personal boycott would work for me.

However, my record in these things is pretty hit and mostly miss. I skipped most of a season of The Simpsons when Fox cancelled Firefly, but I melted like butter when there was something I really, really wanted to watch on (actually several somethings, but I don’t remember what), and so it didn’t take me long to relent on my anti-Fox stance. I went full vegetarian for about a year after seeing the movie Babe, then decided hamburgers didn’t actually have ham in them and I missed them, so then it became “I no longer eat pork products.” That lasted about two more years until I decided one morning that maple-cured bacon was just too delicious a thing to not have in a breakfast burrito, and my revolution lost its leader. Hypocrite, thy name be Rik.

And it wasn’t like I was going to change the minds of the others in our household, including my wife. I was not going to add even more to the tension in our current living situation with a frivolous denial of a local shopping outlet just because the place had what I considered too high a price on one item. So, I let it out in a blog post and just decided to see how long Target would carry the item at that ridiculous cost.

Cut to Tuesday, and a stop on the way home at that same Target a few weeks after my initial outcry. I wanted to see if the price was still set at $14.99 per loaf or if they were even still carrying that larger size of Udi's anymore. As you can see from the photos above, the regular price remained the same, but they had a special sales tag on the shelf reading “I’m New” and a price of $8.99, six dollars below the normal.

I was overjoyed to see this, so the question then was whether or not to purchase a loaf at this price. Right before our Target visit, we had gone to Trader Joe’s, where we picked up a bag of their own brand of gluten-free bread, so I had what I needed already for lunches. But here was a reasonable price on a very large loaf of GF bread (as in, what you lucky folks who can consume the real stuff would say was a normal-sized loaf, and bought for only a few dollars).

Of course, we did buy the larger loaf from Udi’s. My main reasoning was that, even if they price it regularly so high, I would rather have the option of buying it there than not have them carry it at all. Assuming that their tendency to carry a product is based at least a little on the public’s continued purchasing of said item, I figured that I should at least take full advantage of such an excellent sales price when I can. 

It’s odd that I have to consider such things when purchasing something as seemingly commonplace as a mere loaf of bread, but as I am finding out, when you are living suddenly in the realm of specialty foods, nothing can be taken for granted. We shall see what happens next.

If A Store Can Sell A Thousand Loaves, Then Why Can’t I Buy You?

Lower right: Oroweat Potato Bread
Lower left: Udi's 24-oz Whole Grain Bread
Top: Udi's 12-oz Whole Grain Bread

As someone who recently found out that his allergy to wheat was a definite thing (and compounded by about two dozen other allergies to various plants, molds, and foods), the most positive aspect was that, with these discoveries, I wouldn’t have to change my diet one iota. I have never needed to actually avoid gluten (my difficulties are entirely in the esophageal area), but I have found that living gluten-free was the best path to follow in order to more easily dodge both wheat and rye. As a bonus, since I don’t eat either cod or shellfish (the other allergy-inducing comestibles on my list) in the first place, a steady course full-steam ahead using the current diet is a go.

However, I still have to do battle with the greed of one half of the marketplace in presenting gluten-free options at fairly exorbitant prices to a captive audience, and the reticence of the other half of the marketplace to even present gluten-free options AT ALL. For the moment, let’s discuss the greedy half. And let’s also discuss bread.

Bread is the staff of life… blah, blah, blah. I didn’t really believe this until I had it pretty much wrested from my grip due to the allergies. Then I missed it a lot. But, then I discovered gluten-free bread… and I missed real bread all the more. Do you think I am kidding? I would vote a straight Republican ticket (is there any other kind... at least openly?) without hesitation or a single care if I were to be promised that I could eat warm brie and ham on a real, freshly baked French baguette again without a single negative consequence to my health. So, yeah… I really freakin' miss the good stuff.

Then I found Udi’s. After trying about a couple of dozen or more brands of bug taint flour this and millet fungus that, and trying to find something that equated the taste AND texture of real goddamned bread, I finally figured out that Udi’s — whether whole grain or white — was the closest I could find. Sure, you needed to heat up or even lightly toast the bread to get the closest approximation to the sponginess of “bread bread,” but it is worth it. Also, if you don’t heat or toast, the bread tends to crumble after it hits room temp, especially if you are buttering it or making a sandwich. But the taste is just fine, and after trying far more bland and even outright horrid brands (and to be fair, I did find a couple of other brands, such as Rudi’s — not sure if there is a relationship with Udi’s or if one copied the other — that I also didn’t mind), to finally find one that I could trust to be consistently OK was a huge relief.

But, even with finding a gluten-free bread that I mostly enjoy, there was one area in which ALL of the GF brands came up short, and that is, well… being short. Gluten-free breads, mostly due to the difficulties in baking larger loaves thanks to the lack of stretchy, expansive glutens, tend to look like they smoked cigarettes as kids and had their growth stunted. It has become routinely depressing to leave the grocery store with two loaves of bread in the bag: a normal loaf for Jen that was the usual size and shape of a loaf of bread, and a GF one for me that was about 2/3 the width and length of the other, but often cost twice as much as the normal one. GF bread tends more to relative squareness as well, and when Jen and I make grilled cheese sandwiches at home, I usually end up using four pieces of my bread to her two, creating two tiny sandwiches to get close to the normal size.

In 2014, I went to Idaho. Specifically, I went to Costco in Idaho with my wicked (and wonderful) stepmother Jo Ann, and found a 30 oz. loaf of Udi’s Whole Grain bread. Twice the length of a regular Udi’s loaf, weighing 1-1/2 times the normal weight, and — best of all — WIDE. Wide as an average slice of absolutely pedestrian bread… and I was so happy to find it. (Who knew that, for once in my life, normalcy would be looked at by me as a blessing?) Luckily, Jo Ann purchased two loaves, and I was able to bring most of the bread home with me to So Cal and be content on the baked goods front for a short while. It was astounding to eat sandwiches that looked like the size of a real sandwich again. I couldn’t believe my luck, and I figured that if a Costco in Idaho had these loaves, then surely a Costco in Southern California — home of the ultra-picky, modern diet whores — would cater to a growing gluten-free public.

And the answer was NO. After researching our local Costco (where we once had a membership), they not only lacked Udi’s in stock, but also didn’t carry any GF breads at all in their bakery area stocked with about thirty-plus brands (not counting their fresh varieties). We also discovered that of the GF brands, Udi’s and Rudi’s were ubiquitous, appearing the most in stores throughout Orange County. But while the bulk of those stores each carried the normal, tiny, square Udi’s loaf in the twelve-ounce size, not a single one offered a hint of the larger, thirty-ounce version. A visit to the Udi’s website, which features an online store promoting their full line of products, showed no trace of a bigger, 30-oz. loaf. 

I gave up. I was tired of running around trying to locate a decent sized loaf of bread. It was back to the itty bitty bread for me. 

When we moved from Orange County to Riverside County recently, we did get a new Costco membership, and one of the hopes would be that we would find the larger Udi’s loaves out here. Not so far. Both of the stores nearest us continue to have a serious lack of GF bread choices, though one of the boxers at the counter was kind enough (without our even asking) to go onto their computer system to check their inventory just in case we missed seeing any. We hadn’t, but she seemed, or at least acted, shocked to find Costco was almost entirely GF-deficient.

Then, just three weeks ago, on a random trip to the Target just down the street, I decided to check their tiny GF frozen section, even though I didn’t need bread. There on the top shelf, above the regular 12-oz. loaves were much bigger Udi’s loaves! They were only 24 ounces, not thirty, but it was the same width bread as that from Idaho. I was astounded! Best of all… a sign: CLEARANCE SALE. This had me confused, because I was at this very Target just a week before, and there were no 24-ounce loaves of Udi’s bread. How can it be a clearance item so quick? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t matter. Stores do this all the time to push pricing and sales or even introduce items. It just sounds like they are getting rid of something, but I have seen furniture stores have clearance sales non-stop for years (and even going out of business sales). The main thing is that the price of a 24-ounce loaf was $5.99, not much more than a 12-oz. loaf ($5.29). I grabbed a loaf of white and a loaf of whole grain and made off like a bandit.

Cut to today. I was down to just a few pieces of bread in the second loaf, and I had been wondering if Target was still carrying the much larger loaf. Naturally, I was concerned because it is the only place in Southern California that I have seen it. If they still carried it, I wanted to make sure to buy more so that they knew there is an audience for the brand here, even if it is just one guy. My mother-in-law, Sande, announced she wanted to go to Target today, and I jumped at the chance to go with her. When we finally hit the frozen GF section, I saw the 24-ounce bags of bread and grabbed one of each style in a snap. [And now, for the slow twisting of the knife…]

I discovered to my horror that the clearance sale was no more, and that the regular price for a 24-ounce loaf of Udi’s Gluten Free Bread was $14.99. That is correct: $14.99! Mother pus buckets! That works out to just under a dollar per slice of bread. And in comparing it to the 12-oz. bag, yes, the 24-oz. is twice as big, but the price is almost triple the price of the regular loaf (once again, $5.29 a bag).

As much as I wanted that bread in my life, I couldn’t justify it this time, especially given that I am out of work right now and that Jen’s mom was buying the groceries. It would have been entirely too frivolous of me, and besides, I didn’t want Target to win this one. I did not want to give in to this impulse. And I really did not want to fall victim to such obvious price gouging. I guess it would have balanced out given that we had gotten an excellent deal on it the last time around, but that is a most dangerous way to go shopping. But mostly, I was just pissed that yet another thing in my world had just come crashing down. Believe it or not, my general happiness three weeks ago was balanced on finding the right bread at the exact right time, and now even that has been shattered for me. Discovering larger slices of gluten free toast has apparently been propping me up over the last couple of very rough years, and now, losing confidence in this obsession has made me just a little bit grimmer. 

And once you finally discover that bread really is the staff of life, in more ways than one, then you have learned everything this world can possible teach you.