I Pissed Off Purina

Well, maybe in the smallest of senses I managed to tick them off. I came across the below bag of Beggin' Strips on the clearance shelf at Albertsons last week.

The most important thing when purchasing dog treats is to know where the bag was printed

Obviously the "Printed in the USA" is the most important piece of information here since, you know, the bag is what our dogs are going to be consuming.

So anyway, these were on the clearance rack. Not sure why. Maybe they weren't selling. We've all been hearing about the dog food and treat recalls of products that are either made in China or utilize ingredients from China, so pet owners are becoming much more observant of what they're feeding their four legged friends. Unfortunately there's a lot of grey in what the FDA requires pet food companies to put on their labels in relation to where the ingredients come from. Sure, it can be manufactured in St. Louis, but where are the ingredients originating? There aren't any regulations to list that on the package, though I do believe there are regulations that state if the company is asked, they have to be truthful.

I took this "Printed in USA" bag to Twitter. Keep in mind that Beggin' Strips are produced by Purina which is owned by Nestle, so this is big business we're talking here. What happened next...kind of ticked me off. Here is the brief yet informational exchange with some of my added commentary:

wyld_stallyn (me): #purina #begginstrips manufactured in US, bag printed in US, but where are the ingredients from? @Purina @Beggin #huh
Beggin (them): Most ingredients are sourced near our plants and a limited amount from other countries. Chat us: puri.na/1c5gUU4 - BT
PS: After each of their tweets they become more and more adamant about chatting with them. Since they're trying to avoid admitting where their ingredients come from, it's pretty obvious why.
emilie80 (another girl who decided to chime in): @wyld_stallyn @Purina @Beggin I would stick strictly to USA products. These were making dogs sick.
wyld_stallyn: Cool, which countries?
Beggin: @emilie80 All Beggin products are made in the USA. Please chat us with questions: puri.na/1c5gUU4http://. Thanks so much - B/T
Beggin: @wyld_stallyn We'd love to assist you further. Please chat us here: puri.na/1c5gUU4 We look forward to chatting with you. - B/T.
PS: See what just happened here? They want to get us off their Twitter as quickly and quietly as possible. The only problem, however, is that Beggin already set themselves up by saying in the beginning that they get some ingredients from other countries, which obviously means the person I'm talking to knows exactly where they're coming from but has been trained to avoid saying "China" wherever possible.
wyld_stallyn: That's nice of you but all I really wanna know is which countries you previously mentioned that your ingredients come from.
PS: Checkmate. I suppose I could have said "Cool, like Germany, England, or the Falkland Islands?"
Beggin: We do source a limited amount from other countries including China. Thank you. - B/T.
PS: I think I ruined his day. Notice he didn't want to chat with me anymore. But Purina had to try and save face here.
Purina: @emilie80 This isn't true. Our products are 100% safe to feed. Chat us here for more info  - puri.na/1c5gUU4
PS: Purina is referencing emilie80's above comment, not refuting what Beggin said, nor bothering to address anything I had said. 
wyld_stallyn: @Beggin thank you for the information :)
wyld_stallyn: @Purina @emilie80 As long as ingredients are coming from China then that's what people are going to believe.

So there you have it. Now, let me be clear: I realize it's difficult to get pet food products that don't contain ingredients from China because A) these big pet food companies are so deceiving and B) the stuff that's not from these big companies can sometimes be more expensive and harder to find. But when you ask a company where their ingredients come from, they should be confident in giving you an answer and it's pretty clear here that this guy was trained to avoid using the C word and try to get me off the Twitter waves. His goal was to get me to chat with them, not to answer my question, but he clearly set himself up from the beginning when he mentioned the importing of ingredients from other countries.

Always know what you're feeding your pet. In fact, if you check out a non-chain pet store you're gonna find food and treats that are far superior in quality to the kind you'd find at Petsmart or Petco. The reality is you CAN make a pet food without importing ingredients from China or basing the entire production of them there, and whichever multi-billion dollar company decides to finally invest some money will get a HUGE PR bump.

Thanks Purina. Great customer service skills you got there. Just kidding. It was horrible. Bad customer service = bad press.

Blame Gordon Ramsay

Yes, I'm still here. Yes, I still check this website daily. A couple points I want to bring up:

*There were two reasons I got burned out on maintaining this blog. The first was the daily recaps of Hell's Kitchen and MasterChef in 2012 and 2013. Specifically with Hell's Bitchin', the episodes just got so bad that it was almost unbearable to watch. Pair that with the fact that I had to watch each episode twice in order to get a recap out, it just became more of an annoyance than a fun side hobby. The second reason is that when it came to food pictures, I found myself being really repetitive with what I was posting, so, yeah...

*I've been quietly watching Hell's Bitchin' this season and it is an improvement over the last two seasons. There's been only one To Be Continued episode whereas at this time last season there had been about five. And believe me, the one TBC episode thus far was probably one of the worst Hell's Bitchin' episodes ever. And seriously, To Be Continued? It's a damn reality show, new episodes every week. Of course it's gonna be continued. The concept of a TBC for a reality show is so damn dumb that only Gordon Ramsay would be so blind as to its idiocy.

*Graham Norton has lost a crapload of weight.

*The Purge is a horrible movie - I still get comments about this.

*If you're gonna send me an e-mail pitching your online marketing services to me, it's probably best not to start said e-mail with "Dear gregsgourmet.blogspot.com Team".

As always, thanks for reading!

Buffalo Burgers

Buffalo is one of those entities that serves as a one-up for whatever is considered the standard. For example, why blow your money on whatever stupid phone Samsung is trying to push out when you could just save yourself a lot of aggravation and buy an iPhone? Likewise, whenever you see the option to upgrade your generic beef burger to a buffalo burger, you're naturally gonna jump at the chance, unless you're an asshole, of course.

So this is the upgraded buffalo burger at Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain in Orange, CA:

I had ordered curly fries, but it would have taken too long to send these back - sometimes you just have to pick your battles

This was a pretty good burger. Buffalo just has a little more a flavor to it than beef, which is probably why they nearly went extinct in the lower 48 during frontier times. 

I haven't food blogged in a while so work with me here. Watsons is a good place to eat, check it out.

Oh Hi

Just a quick update.

I'm still here and I actually do have some new food pictures that I'll get to posting.

As always, thanks for reading.

Holes in My Hostess Part II

So I received a response from Hostess regarding the 20 pinholes in the package of my Hostess fruit pie. The response kinda freaks me out, I gotta say:

"Recently we began perforating the product film with pin holes to reduce moisture in the package.  We feel this enhancement will provide a flakier crust and is not considered damaged packaging.  Your concerns have been forwarded to our Quality Managers and you should receive follow up correspondence via U. S. mail."

Dude...what??? Okay, I don't know much about food packaging but I have to assume that if they've got the balls to poke holes in their pie wrappers then there must be a "logical" reason. But I'm sorry, I wouldn't buy a candy wrapper with holes poked in it, I wouldn't buy a box of cereal with holes poked in it, and I certainly wouldn't buy a pie that has holes poked in it. Whoever's working in their brand management is a moron for thinking this is actually a good idea. If you know me then you know how much I love sweets, but I will absolutely not be purchasing this product any longer and I told them as much.

This is almost as annoying as when Poking on Facebook was mainstream

Seriously, with all the germs and other crap that supermarket shelves inevitably pick up, and you're gonna basically carve a way for them to get onto your products? Disgusting. "Sweetest comeback in the history of ever"?  I could think of a few different adjectives to describe it.

Holes in My Hostess

I haven't posted any sort of food-centered blog in a while, but today's incident got me so angry that I simply couldn't resist.  I'm not going to say that this is my triumphant return to food blogging, but...it's something.

So, Hostess.  A little over a year ago they went bankrupt, then they were bought over, then Twinkies and other like products returned to the shelves.  I like Twinkies.  I like pies.  I like Chocodiles, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, Sno Balls, Zingers, Donuts, Donettes, etc.  Some of those I don't think they've brought back yet but I digress.  A couple weeks ago at Albertsons I reached for one of the Hostess pies when I noticed something really frickin' creepy: all of the packages had little pinholes pricked all around them like a kid with zits all over his face.  Every.  Single.  One.  I took one of the packages to customer service with the theory that someone had deliberately poked holes the pie packages with a needle or something.  They were then promptly removed from the shelves.

Fast forward to today.  I again reach for one of the pies only to find that the packages are littered with pinholes.  Every.  Single.  One.  And the holes are all in the same spots, so this wasn't deliberate.  No, this is on Hostess.  So I purchased one to take home, take pictures of, and write directly to Hostess.  Here, my friends, is the specimen:

The specimen

Look closely

If this pie were a camera it would be a pinhole

Seriously, what the hell is this?  I counted TWENTY of these tiny little holes around the package.  Now, unless some butthole is coming into Albertsons and meticulously poking the same pattern of holes in every single Hostess fruit pie, then clearly something is going wrong during the manufacturing process.

I'll update you on my correspondence.

Just an FYI

Just an FYI to people coming to this blog (and according to my numbers apparently a good few still do), no, this blog is not very active at the moment but no, I have not abandoned it.  I actually come here everyday and I still read all the comments from old posts.  I'm just not posting as much.  Blogging is hard.  Blogs will return at some point.

As always, thanks for reading!