Pellegrino Foods Heat and Eat Pepperoni Pizza Flavor Pepperoni Balls are made by Pellegrino Foods from Warren, PA. The only thing I can find out about this company is this antidefamation appeal [pdf]. In any case this item consists of two dinner rolls injected with something approximating pizza gunk. Ingredients include: Potassium Bromate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Mozzarella Cheese Substitute, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Sodium Citrate, Sorbic Acid, Sodium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, Zinc Oxide, Cyanocobalamin, Ferric Orthophosphate, Pyridoxine HCO, Calcium Caseinate, Tricalcium Phosphate, Disodium Phosphate, Trisodium Phosphate, Calcium Panothenate, Sodium Erythorbate and paprika. All in just 6oz and for $1.30.

It was also inspected and passed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture EST 8575. Excuse me while I go die.

Since I have apparently created some expectations among you farthurdlers regarding my gustatory fetishes, I went down to the dungeon for round n with the vendy. I picked up Pierre Foods™ Fast Choice® Double Beef Stacker with Cheese, one of the original items in the vendy that has recently made a comeback. I’m quite sure I’ve angered the burger deities by buying a $1.65 double decker hamburger out of a vending machine. I’m probably banned from Stevenson’s. In any case, I did it. Before I get to the burger though, I should tell you this:

I met the woman who stocks the vendy. She had just filled it up with concoctions from her cauldron. She was short and squat and pigeon-toed with frizzy grey hair and slightly myopic owl eyes. When I told her that I was going to get something out of the machine, she watched me make my decision. It was obvious that she took great pride in the quality of product she stocks that thing with. This week she added pudding. You can buy a 3 ounce container of pudding for a dollar! Big AZ Bubba Twins have returned as well. She said that she has, unfortunately, had to throw lots out, because, get this, no one has been buying anything. Crikey lady, I wonder why. On the plus side, she did add a dollar coin dispenser to the machine, so next time I pay with a fiver, I won’t get $2.95 in change in nickels.

The burger, of course, what shit as burgers go. As an item from the machine, however, I would definitely buy another one. I am trying to figure out how something that is mostly TVP could supply me with 47% of my RDA in saturated fat. It must have been the cheese, which, post-burger, is now being cut quite often. I’m quite sure that nothing in this sandwich actually came from real plants or animals. It required virtually no mastication, which was good since the “cheese” disintegrated my teeth upon contact. So, basically, other than the fact that it tasted like shit and is currently mounting a simultaneous breach attack on my stomach and colon, it wasn’t that bad.

Link of the day: Joe’s Worthless Baseball Card Collection

Y’all thought I’d decided to stop eating crap from the vendy didn’t you? Well, you were wrong. Today I spent a whopping $1.50 on the worst hot dog I’ve ever had. Even worse than Big AZ Bubba Twins, and that is saying something. I’d another relatively inoffensive experience with Landshire products, and their record currently stands at 0-1-1.

I would like to go on the record saying that no item purchased from a vending machine can be legitimately called “gourmet.” Similarly, there is no such thing as a “gourmet” hot dog. The Landshire Supreme Gourmet All Beef Hot Dog was also two days past its expiration date. Much like the Bubba Twins, it has a money-back guarantee, although only a full refund, not double the money back. The packaging encouraged me to visit the Landshire website, but much of it hasn’t been updated since 2002. This leads me to believe that most of their food must date from that time as well. This hot dog was 3.5 ounces and cooks in the microwave for approximately one minute, or however long it takes for the plastic wrapping to melt into the sesame seed bun. The bun itself was about as tough and leathery as a smoker’s lung and the beef in the hot dog probably came from a lockjawed guinea pig. I didn’t find any actual information on this item on the Landshire site, but I did find this picture of a man shoveling shit into his own mouth, which seemed appropriate for both their site and my behavior.

The hot dog’s nutritional content wasn’t that bad, a mere 14g of fat and 560mg of sodium. I’m glad I had a bowl of Kashi this morning. I heartily recommend that none of you folks reading this attempt to ever eat anything out of a refrigerated vending machine.

Some weeks ago I had the Pierre™ Foods Pizza Parlor Meatball Sub [$2.05USD 1.65€] from the vendy. I didn’t review it at the time because the experience was still so freshly traumatic, so fraught, that it was the best I could do to lie in a puling mewling fetal position under my cubicle and moan at the slightest mention of food.
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The vendy is almost empty this Friday. Someone, other than me, has been eating stuff from it. I hypothesize that the folks working all night on the 4th floor are to blame. All that was left in the machine were things I’d already eaten [Muffin, Chicken Salad, Pickle] except for a chimichanga and what I ended up choosing today, Pierre Foods Fast Choice® Pizza Charbroil with Cheese.
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I shouldn’t have done it so soon, but I did. Today I purchased the Pierre Foods Fast Choice® BBQ Pork Rib Shaped with BBQ Sauce Sandwich from the vending machine. Bad idea. To say that my stomach is upset after eating this would be like saying that Mike Tyson has an eating disorder.
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I hope to the Almighty Dog that my buddy from college who is from Philadelphia never reads this. I’ve been eating pretty healthily lately [apart from eating a whole box of Donut Sticks on Monday], so today I purchased the Pierre™ Philly Style Cheesesteak Beef Steak Patty Sandwich with Green Peppers, Onions and Cheese from that bastard of a vendy downstairs.
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I’ve been defeated by a mere cucumber! Well, not perhaps mere. The Kaiser Famous Dill Pickle, made by Kaiser Foods in Cincinnati, OH [no website] is a dangerous adversary. The pickle, which I’m assuming weighed in at just less than one pound, came in a plastic bag and was sitting in its own brine. It cost one dollar and had a total of 5 calories. It also had 1050mg of sodium, or 44% of the RDA. The bag explicitly states that it contains one pickle. By gum, its a mankiller. I didn’t finish it. It was like licking the ground of the Great Salt Lake and washing it down with some Dead Sea water. Bleargh. Everything tastes like salt now and my chest is burning.

Another visit to the Pierre Foods kitchen today at the vendy. I got 2 Char-Broils with Cheese for $1.50. Total weight: 4.8 ounces. Unfortunately I could not find the exact same item on the Pierre Foods site. Instead I’ve linked to the closest one. No nutritional information available, unfortunately.
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Now that I am fully recovered from my sickness, I’ve restarted my exploration of the refrigerated vendy downstairs. This morning I bought Big Mike’s Gourmet Sausage and Biscuit for $1.50.
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Otis Spunkmeyer is at least a recognizable name in the creepy refrigerated vendy downstairs. Yesterday I bought a Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffin for $1.00. It was 6.5 oz and 700 calories of muffin goo, held together only by long chain saturated fats, but nonetheless was tasty in a processed sort of way. I was going to buy a corn dog but someone had beaten me to it and in its place was a pickle in a bag complete with pickle juice. I didn’t have the courage to try that.

My quest to eat all the crap in the vending machine downstairs led me to the Landshire Supreme Chicken Salad Sandwich, today. I paired this with a bag of Porkies Crispy Fried Pork Rinds.
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There is a vending machine downstairs, recently installed, that contains a variety of dirt cheap refrigerated lunch products. They all look completely gross. So, since I’m the kind of guy who eats hot dog flavored potato chips just because they’re there, I’ve determined to eat one of each thing in that vending machine. Today I had BIG AZ Bubba Twins chili cheese dogs.
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