Weird foods: Baker's Treat Apple Pie

America has many weird foods. I think some of them should not even be classified as food (e.g. spray cheese). However, Amy and I plan to sample as many of these as we can during our time here.

For the first installment, we tried Baker's Treat Apple Pie (Single Serving).

It looked kind of nice on the packet. A bit like McDonald's apple pies. But this product is weird in several ways. First of all, there is the fact it is sold in a cardboard box and can be kept unrefrigerated for almost a month. Then, there are the ingredients: Enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup, water, palm oil & fractionated palm oil, sugar, evaporated apples, contains less than 2% of each of the following: food starch modified, salt, preservatives, corn starch, xanthan gum, wheat flour, malted barley flour, cinnamon, dextrose, propylene glycol, calcium carbonate, agar, natural flavors, mono- & diglycerides, sorbitan monostearate and soy lecithin. Flour and HFCS; mmm...sounds delicious.

We put the box in the microwave, as per the instructions.

It was kind of soggy and did not look appetizing when we removed it.

I managed one bite, which is more than Amy managed. It just tasted like extremely sweet, slimy shortcrust pastry, with a slight cinnamon aftertaste.

I think High Fructose Corn Syrup Pie might be a more accurate description. I only found about five pieces of apple in the whole thing.

Facilities Mismanagement

The University of Minnesota has a lot of turf grass. Actually, they don't just have a lot, they have an awful lot. I don't know numerically how much it is, but just look at this map. Most of what you see in light green is grass. Grass that is perfectly manicured. Grass that I see being tended every day I go to work. Grass that is resown every spring, regularly fertilized, watered and aerated, and mowed at least once a week. This is a very costly waste of time. Especially when there are so many other nice ground covers that don't need so much primping and preening. I can only imagine what else could be done with the money that is used to maintain lawns.

And the worst part is, most students don't arrive until autumn, so all this effort is really only appreciated for a couple of months, before it's covered in snow.

A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Work Today

Well, it wasn't funny at the time.

I walked out the front door to our apartment complex into the overcast and humid morning. Rain seemed possible, but I was already about 20 metres from the door so I decided not to go back for my umbrella. I caught the bus as I normally do. About 15 minutes into the bus trip more clouds began to appear and in a few minutes it was as dark as night. A few seconds later, it began to rain. Heavily. This was not just a shower. This was movie rain. Complete with thunder. This was The Matrix Revolutions rain. It was so heavy the bus roof began to leak just minutes after it started.

The rain was still pouring down when the bus arrived at my stop. I stepped off the bus onto the footpath, but I may as well have stepped into a swimming pool. I was drenched within 10 seconds. Then the pedestrian crossing light took forever to change. Fortunately there was a nice Minnesotan who let me share his umbrella until the light changed; after which, I tried, unsuccessfully, to leap the small pond that had formed in front of the curb, and ran for it. It was about a 200 metre sprint, with a laptop backpack. It was pretty pointless though; everything was soaked. Dripping, I walked up to my office, praying my computer hadn't got wet. Thankfully it had stayed dry in my backpack.

I, on the other hand, was completely soaked. How was I going to get any work done like this? I was tempted to just leave my computer there, walk out in the pouring rain and wait for then next bus to take me home. But then I had an idea.

I borrowed a co-worker's umbrella and walked down to the gym. I used their swim suit drying machine (read: large mechanical salad spinner) to get rid of the water out of most of my clothes. But my socks were still damp. And so were my shorts. So I took these items back to the lab, and dried them in the lab drying oven.