Great Moments in Marketing

A few fairly recent marketing concepts should win the marketing equivalent of a Nobel Prize.  Keep in mind this doesn’t mean they are good for you, or the environment, or anyone besides the companies who came up with the marketing.  But for them, pure genius.

Bottled Water

Wait, soft drink companies can skip all the sugar, flavor, carbonation, and WORK, and just sell a bottle of plain water?  And charge the same or MORE than they do for soda?  Brilliant!  Hopefully the person who pointed this out to Coke got a big promotion.

Energy Drinks

I think Red Bull was the company to do this first – take soda, put in a little extra caffeine and a few supposedly “special” vitamins or whatnot, shrink the can down, and charge $2.  They set the bar, and other companies followed in their footsteps.

100 calorie Packs

Take an existing product, shrink it down to a much smaller package, PROMOTE the fact that you have shrunk the size of the packaging, and bump the price by weight way up.  Not only will people not complain that they are paying more for less, they will actually THANK you for it!  Genius!

Hastings Cakes video

I shot my first real video with the new camcorder this morning. I did a mini cooking show on how to make Hastings Cakes.

I shot it and edited it this morning before heading out to work, just before leaving I started it uploading.

It came out kind of long, 6 mins 16 seconds, I can probably get it down to 4 minutes by cutting out the washing and waiting to cook parts. But I think it came out OK for a first try.

Hastings Cakes Recipe from Tev Kaber on Vimeo.

Chocolate Space Invaders

I’ve been playing with making chocolate things recently… I’ve made chocolate-covered mint oreos, chocolate Lego bricks with a graham cracker and peanut butter center, and most recently, I got a Space Invaders mold and made Space Invaders chocolate:

Each one has an espresso bean in the center.

Uno Chicago Grill… alignment: LE?

Uno’s nutritional info looks like they are gaming the system to make the numbers seem good…

http://www.unos.com/kiosk/nutritionUnos.html

For example, the chili looks like it’s 260 calories…
until you notice it is 1.62 servings. 1.62 ???

In other words, it’s 421.2 calories.
A bowl of chili is not more than one serving, bastards!

Someone needs to officially redefine $servings as INT instead of FLOAT.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Peanut Butter Muffins

Sarah said on her FaceBook status this morning that she was “eating peanut butter puffins” – her friend Melissa misread it as “peanut butter muffins” and expressed envy.

So Sarah looked up a recipe, and we made peanut butter MUFFINS a reality tonight.

They turned out really dry though, and not as peanut-buttery as hoped.

Spreading peanut butter on them helps, but sort of misses the point.

Drink this, not that

Found a good alternative to a favorite drink of mine, though I’m not sure about its availability, I found it in a health food store in Northampton, MA…

Starbucks Vanilla Frappuccino

Serving size: 1 bottle (9.6oz)
Calories: 200
Fat: 3g
Sat. Fat: 2g
Cholesterol: 15mg
Sodium: 100mg
Total Carbs: 37g
Fiber: 0
Sugar: 31g
Protein: 6g
Calcium: 200mg

Alternatively:

Adina Sumatran Iced Vanilla Latte

Serving size: 1 bottle (8.5oz)
Calories: 110
Fat: 2g
Sat. Fat: 1.5g
Cholesterol: 10mg
Sodium: 120mg
Total Carbs: 20g
Fiber: 0
Sugar: 19g
Protein: 3g
Calcium: 150mg
Potassium: 5% DV
Vitamin A: 4% DV
Iron: 6% DV

The Adina kind tastes just as good, and is lower in calories, fat, and sugar, and made with organic fair trade ingredients.

Predicting the past with old cookies

I just grabbed a handful of alphabet cookies to see what’s in store for me, and the letters were:

F L Y H T

So not only are the cookies out of date, they can’t spell.
I guess they have been sitting on my desk awhile.

There’s only a few left in the bag now. The last letters are:

B A ? K (the third one was just a fragment of a cookie)

so the whole thing was:

F L Y H T B A K

oh, “flight back”, well done cookies… you sucessfully predicted something that happened TWO DAYS AGO! I need some fresh cookies. Especially since this bag’s empty now.

food intake

Here’s what I’ve had to eat the last few days, for this gallstone cleanse experiment:

Monday

  • bowl of cereal with 2% milk
  • 8oz of Three Philosophers beer
  • 12oz apple juice
  • 12oz apple juice
  • 2 apple juice juice boxes from McDonald’s

Tuesday

  • peach
  • salad with fat-free dijon dressing
  • 1/4 cup steamed veggies and 1″ cube of steamed chicken
  • virgin strawberry margarita
  • 12oz coffee with hazelnut syrup
  • 1.5 cups apple juice mixed with 2 Tbsp epsom salts
  • 1/2 cup olive oil mixed with 1/4 cup fresh squeezed grapefruit juice

Wednesday

  • english muffin with jam
  • steamed swiss chard with salt
  • 1.5 cups apple juice mixed with 2 Tbsp epsom salts
  • 1/2 cup olive oil mixed with 1/4 cup fresh squeezed grapefruit juice

I’m predicting the last part of Wednesday, but since it’s after 2pm and I’m not supposed to eat after 2, it’s probably pretty accurate.

Incidentally, a mixture of olive oil and grapefruit juice has the same taste and acidic feel as vomit. Mmmm.

Of course, the only way to test the results of all this is to get another ultrasound and see if there are less or no stones. Which is probably something the doctors won’t let me do, since I just had an ultrasound a few weeks ago. Maybe Sarah can help me convince them to do it.