Better Know Your Arnie: Pommie Arnie

BKYA is a feature on this dumb blog wherein Jeff writes too much about a variety of his favorite beverage, Arnold Palmer Iced Tea Lemonade.

This is, I think, the rarest of the Arnie's, Pomegranate Arnold Palmer Iced Tea Lemonade. I call it Pommie Arnie.  

Jeff's Second Father's Day

I just had my second Father's Day as an actual father. Heather said I could do anything I wanted. Well, thanks a lot for your permission, but that is already my legal Father's Day Right. I immediately thought of the foods I wanted to get, though it didn't go as planned. Lucky for you guys I took a bunch of pictures. Let's start at breakfast:

Better Know Your Arnie: Regular Arnie

BKYA is a feature on this dumb blog wherein Jeff writes too much about a variety of his favorite beverage, Arnold Palmer Iced Tea Lemonade.


I really should have done this review first, as the other BKYA reviews don't make sense without this one. Also, Regular Arnie, or just Arnie, is the original so it should have gone first. Let's start by taking a look at it in it's most common variety, the Can:

Jeff Goes to Whole Foods

I'm fairly new to shopping at Whole Foods as I've never lived close to one. Recently two opened near me so I've been easing into shopping there.

Here's how my typical shopping trip to Whole Foods goes: I usually go intending to get some specific item. This is usually beer. They have a good beer selection. But I always figure I'll get some other groceries while I am there. So I start shopping, and then I see something like this:

Fiddlehead Ferns for $7 a pound. It looks like an aggressive garden weed. I wish I could sell my aggressive garden weeds for $7 a pound. Then I start thinking that since this food doesn't exist in the natural world, Whole Foods is creating foods willy nilly. I then just want to leave. I go buy my intended item (beer) and get the rock out of there. 

Last year a Whole Foods opened on my usual biking route. So sometimes I take a break and grab some food and a beverage. I first head to the beverage wall and grab some beverage that is on sale, then check out the prepared food wall looking first at sale items (my wife has me trained well). If there's nothing good I get pizza. Pizza is never bad.

I've been there four times recently. I took pictures so now you have to look at them:

MEAL ONE

It's the Nantucket Nectars Non-Arnie with a small salami sandwich. Well, I guess I'll have to do a separate Nantucket Nectars Non-Arnie post, but I'll just say it tastes good, but it has almost twice the amount of calories as a Regular Arnie, so who cares, I prefer a Regular Arnie.

The sandwich was pretty good. Too many roasted peppers, they overwhelmed the delicious salami taste. 

MEAL TWO

It's Whole Food's meat lover's pizza with Organic Non-Arnie. This meat lover's slice was their special of the day. It was really good. The Organic Non-Arnie was also good, but again it has a lot more calories than a Regular Arnie, so no post for you.

MEAL THREE

Now this was a weird meal for me. I wasn't too hungry so I got some fresh shrimp spring rolls (VALUE ITEM!) and a Watermelon Strawberry beverage. I ate 1.5 spring rolls before I noticed there was a sauce packet underneath. The sauce was surprisingly good, it was pretty spicy too. 

MEAL FOUR

This one was a complete disaster. At the beverage wall, I got drawn to a sign for a beverage for $.69. As I got closer, I noticed the sign was messed up and it was $1.69. I went for it anyway. It is Granny Squibb's Unsweetened Lemon/Mint Tea. I usually avoid unsweetened tea, because I need some sweet, but this one had stuff floating around in it, so I figured it might be OK. It was not. It was marginally better than drinking tap water. I also got the Black Bean and Cheese burrito. It was on sale for $4. It was one of the worst burritos I've ever had, and I've had some bad burritos.  I got it because I thought it was a good deal, then I later remembered at Anna's their vegetarian quesadilla is less than $4. I ate about 1/3 of it and threw the rest away.  

In conclusion, I am the worst Whole Foods shopper, and I should always get a slice of pizza when I go there.

Anna's Taqueria

Most people who know about this blog, and I think there are now over a dozen of you weirdos, are familiar with Anna's Taqueria. So I am not exposing some hidden jewel here. But what I am about to do is convince you that you have been ordering the wrong thing there. Here we go:

Remember when I said El Pelon Taqueria serves my favorite burrito? No, well see those blue words in the last sentence? Click on those. I was nice enough to make the link and all. Lots of people have said to me, "I'm surprised your favorite burrito isn't Anna's Taqueria." Lots of people are like Heather and some other person. I respond to these lots of people by shrugging. But now that I have a dumb blog I can expand on that shrug.

Although El Pelon Taqueria has my favorite burrito, Anna's has my favorite entree at a burrito shop. It is their modified quesadilla. It is better than the El Pelon Taqueria burrito. And I am sure it will be your next order there if you read the words that follow.

First, here's a picture:

Yummy! So, yeah you know about quesadillas and stuff. Well the secret to creating this perfect Anna's entree is you have to ask for your preferred burrito ingredients. For me this means asking for both beans and rice. By default it just comes with beans and no rice. They sometimes say "that's $.15 extra" for the beans/rice, if that happens just nod or something. As I'll explain later, you can afford it. I get chicken, black beans, rice, lots of salsa, lettuce and hot sauce. Since it is a quesadilla, it has lots of gooey cheese inside and the outside has been grilled with some oil and it is nice and crispy. They usually have a tortilla already on the grill so they make it really fast, it will not slow you down.

Now to the cost. Check out the menu. A regular burrito (which is small and comes with no cheese) is $4.85. A super burrito (which is a little bigger, but comes with cheese) is $5.35. Those are great deals for delicious burritos. However, look at how much a quesadilla is. Well you don't have to look because I will tell you, it is $4.50. I'm not quite sure which size tortilla they use, but let's say it is the regular burrito size. The quesadilla costs $.35 less, and you also get all that cheese and oily tortilla crispiness. I like to think they are paying you to add cheese and crispiness. If they use the super burrito sized tortilla they are paying you $.85 for just a crispy, yummy tortilla. This is what I refer to as Anna's Burrito Arbitrage. This means you could potentially make money getting the quesadilla if there existed a burrito trading market, and there really should be. 

So this all sounds good, and I think I've convinced you, but I need to point out that I don't get this very often when I go to Anna's. 

But, Jeff you just typed a lot of good things, why don't you get it all the time?

Ugh, you again asking me questions. Don't you think I was going to explain why? Well I don't get it because I usually get Anna's to go and bring it home. The quesadillas you have to eat right away or you lose the crispiness and it gets a touch oily. So I only get the quesadilla when I eat there.  However, another benefit to eating there is I get their orange juice. It is a big cup of freshly squeezed oranges, and it is delicious. It is like $2 which is pretty cheap for squeezed oranges. If you add it all together, that meal pictured above was less than $7. Next time you go there, you're getting the quesadilla, aren't you?

Mighty Subs: Honey BBQ Chicken Meal

Hey, we have some LTPOH up in here again.

It's the Friday Mighty Subs special. Check this out:

Yeah, that's right, $7.58 for all of that.  Oh, you want some cheese too, let's see $8.14.

This is my favorite of the weekly Mighty Subs specials. It is sliced Honey BBQ chicken, with LTPOH and I also add BBQ sauce. The BBQ sauce mixes up nicely with the hots, so it is like a spicy BBQ sauce. Oh, and I add provolone cheese because cheese is good.

I probably bought this meal every Friday for 6 years. If you do the math, that's like 38 times I got this. Math is really hard. I like this one because it is pretty healthy. You got your coke zero, reduced fat Cape Cod potato chips, and the sub which is relatively healthy. Anyways, whatever, Jeff out.

Lexington BBQ Festival

Aw, yeah, I went to a BBQ festival a few weeks ago. Did you? I think not, loser. First I should say there was an alpaca viewing area right next to the entrance. I made a note to get a picture of Connor with an alpaca later. But let's get some food first. Heather and I got in one vendor's line and she said to me "Hey, get your own food." So I left and went to another line and we regrouped later. Heather got this:

She got two sliders, one pulled pork and one beef brisket, and a corn cob from some vendor we don't even remember. The brisket was really good. The corn was awesome, we told Lillian this, and it sent her on a grand quest to get a corn of cob although the vendor was out of corn. It was like Lord of the Rings, but with corn and no elves. Meanwhile, after hitting the vendor selling Coke Zero for $1, I waited in the long line for Lester's with Big Red. That's Lillian's husband's nickname, not a pack of gum. I should mention this so you don't think I keep referencing a pack of gum. Lillian tried again to get some corn at this point, but no luck. I won't say she was mumbling something about "precious", but I will also not deny it.

In line at Lester's, Red and I were set on definitely getting ribs, so the two options were, two ribs for $8, or 1/3 a rack of ribs for $12. Both came with beans and slaw. I thought, oh, a 1/3 of rack of ribs should be huge, I want that. Red thought the same. They also had 6 wings for $3, 12 for $6. So we decided to get 6 wings each and a 1/3 of a rack of ribs. I thought we might need help carrying the 2/3 rack of ribs back. Since the pack of gum held my place while I bought the Coke Zero, I let him/it go first. He ordered the 1/3 of a rack. They put his order together and it was three ribs. Three. THREE! So like a true BBQ festival pro (this was my first BBQ festival), I just went for the two ribs for value. Here's a crappy picture of the food:

The ribs were really good. The wings were some of the best wings I have ever had. The slaw was pretty good, but the beans were forgettable. Connor had a few beans. He said "Da da blurp, spurzzzzz, aigh!" At this point Lillian finally was rewarded when Red brought her some corn. 

So it was time to leave. We went by the alpaca pen, and the alpacas were all gone. There were signs in the pen that said "All alpacas are for sale." So I just assume some alpaca baron snatched them up. Too bad. After that, we went to get some pepperoni bread, didn't we Lillian?