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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