11.8.10 — Costco's Finest

Here we have a collection of the finest European cookies with Belgian chocolate... from Costco.

Don't get me wrong, The Woman and I swear by the big box from Kirkland. Their fresh produce and meat selection is surprisingly good. We make a pilgrimage there at least once a month.

But, it is a little comical to be getting Kirkland Select brand of premium European cookies. Not comical enough for me to have any, of course.

I will note that the tray pictured is the second of two. The first one was wiped out before noon. Current bets have this one emptied by 2 pm.

11.5.10 — More Ezell's

This month's managers meeting meant more Ezell's fried chicken and fixins. Again, everyone was really high on the chicken and it did smell pretty good. I could only take their word for it. As for the fixins, I refuse to believe that cold mashed potatoes, runny coleslaw (urk) and coagulating gravy was "tasty" or "hearty" or any other appetizing descriptor.



The mashed potatoes was the only item that was wiped out. Maybe it was good warm.



I've already said what I will about coleslaw. This is a case where the photo speaks for itself.



And then we get to the brown pool, slowly coagulating in the back corner there. I guess it's unsurprising that it didn't look like anyone had touched it.

All in all, not appealing even if I wasn't trying to lose weight.

11.4.10 — Post Party Donuts

The Agency had a big party last night to celebrate winning An Important Award (and rightfully so - it was a radio campaign for a pro-bono client that won the top award in a competition that had never given the award to a PSA before. It really was a big deal. I'm really not being an ass by capitalizing An Important Award).

As these things tend to go with this group, most people who went to the party are in the hurt box this morning. The organizer showed up a little while ago with 5 dozen assorted Top Pot donuts as a way to help ease the rough edges (and oh are there rough edges everywhere).

Normally, as I've pointed out before, the arrival of food in our kitchen and my coworkers' response often reminds me of a pack of starving hyenas falling on a wounded wildebeest on the Serengeti. After this morning's display, I need a new analogy.

Good Christ. 2 dozen were gone in minutes. Minutes.

Maybe piranha cleaning a cow's carcass down to the bone. Or, swarming South American army ants cutting a swath through an unsuspecting village. Or I can go with accuracy - a group of seriously hungover office workers who are desperate for sugar and grease, and haven't made the trek over to McDonalds yet. Yeah, that works.

To make things worse, I was very hungry myself this morning. The smell of all that sugar, grease and quiet desperation was hard to resist.



I do love a good aftermath shot. By the end of the day, there were 4 or 5 donuts left, out of 60.



Mid-afternoon, these showed up. That's right, the leftover Cupcake Royale cupcakes from last night's party. There were close to 30. I almost gained a pound by accidentally breathing near the cloud of sugar haze hovering over the kitchen table. Between the donuts and cupcakes, the aroma was powerful enough that I could smell it back at my desk.

11.2.10 — Uh Oh and More Candy

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

An unexpected challenger enters the room.

I had been girding myself against the traditional bite- and fun-sized post-Halloween onslaught. But, like a prize heavyweight fighter who had prepared to go all rope-a-dope on his normal class of opponents and suddenly finding himself facing an goddamn ninja horde, I find myself unable to withstand the lure of these soft, chewy circles of cookie heaven.

Well, almost.

See, unbeknownst to the ninjas, that heavyweight fighter came into the arena packing an AK-47 and whole lot of fucking ammo. Result? A lot of dead ninjas.

You may not be fun-sized, you cookies, but I will eat none of you this day.



Another batch of leftover Halloween candy appeared In the late afternoon. The Poprocks don't do much for me, but everything else would have normally been on my Definitely Fly List, especially the Reese's cup. You got your chocolate on my peanut butter? You got your peanut butter in my chocolate? Sounds like a recipe for a party in my mouth. Those two flavors together is on my top ten list of favorite things, along with the Blues Brothers movie (original only, the sequel sucked ass), the words magma and waffles, and reading LOL Cats captions. I once did an experimented with Peanut Butter Captain Crunch and Coco Puffs to try and find the perfect ration to produce a reasonable chocolate peanut butter breakfast cereal. Turns out to be about 25% Captain and 75% Puffs (the Captain has a powerful flavor).

Wistful ramblings aside, the photo is here so I didn't eat any of it.

11.1.10 — The Day After

Hmmm. I was expecting a lot more. I mean everyone takes their leftover candy from Halloween night to the office the next day. I think my coworkers are getting annoyed that I'm putting everything they bring in up on this blog.

Someone asked me today how long I'm going to keep this up. I answered, "Until I start eating it." She said I needed to start eating stuff soon. She then said she didn't bring in her leftovers mainly because she didn't want to end up on this blog.

I do know that people are no longer telling me when stuff shows up in the kitchen. I've had to "discover" stuff more and more. I don't think they are hiding it from me yet, but they also aren't being so blatant about dropping off food.

That's okay. We're getting into that special season. Now that Halloween is done, it's time for Christmas with a slight detour for Thanksgiving. The last few months have been nothing.

10.29.10 — Office Halloween

Our annual office Halloween party — costumes, booze and lots of pot lucky food.



Things got started a little early with the Monkey Brain shots — a disgusting looking mix of kaluha, schnaps and grenadine. I didn't try one. Those that did kind of regretted it if only for the texture, described as something akin to snot in a glass.



The old standby. Is there any other candy in the world that has as bad a reputation as candy corn that still gets purchased, put out in big bowls and (sometimes) eaten by people? I don't think so, and yet it endures.



More of your normal Halloween bite-sized fare. Or maybe that's fun-sized. Or maybe it's why are my thighs as big as small children-sized?

What follows is a sampling of the variety of treats, both tasty and confusing, that were displayed on the table in our kitchen. I stayed away from it all and honestly wasn't that tempted by any of it. Mostly I was fighting off a supreme level of irritation because our group almost didn't get to go at all due to a pile of last minute work dropped on us right as the party began. Maybe that is the secret to resisting food you shouldn't eat — be really angry already when you face it.

10.27.10 — Pumpkin Pie and The Lingering

It's been a slow week for goodies. The best my coworkers could come up with were these Pumpkin Pie cookies. After announcing my new weight loss achievement (201 lbs. lost), maybe they taking it easy on me? Yeah, I didn't think so either. We don't call Judy the Snackasaurus because she has tiny forearms and hands.

Still, the dollop of cream cheese did make these a little intriguing. Eh, who am I kidding. They looked kind of sad, and they were all stuck together in a unnatural kind of cookie mass.

Speaking of stuck together...



They just won't die. I can see now why old people have bowls full of hard candies that have melded into one ginormous chunk. These things linger beyond any kind of normal life span. Seriously, a bowl of ANYTHING is gone sometimes in moments around this office. The fact that the Ranchers have survived almost a whole week is nothing short of amazing... and a little scary.