“There are a lot of stupid products in the world,” you may find yourself muttering. “Has Matthew tried them, so I don’t have to?”

Probably.

**Batter Blaster** is pancake and waffle batter in an aerosol can. And it’s organic! When I brought it home, I said, “Did anybody order…BATTER BLASTER?”

“No,” said Laurie.

“What is Batter Blaster?” asked Iris.

“It’s pancake batter in a can,” I replied.

“That doesn’t sound good,” she said. “Well, maybe good.”

The joke was sure on them. I think Batter Blaster is great. It makes light, crepelike pancakes. Maybe a touch too sweet, but the texture is airy and crisp. The cost is absurd, of course: $5 for approximately 28 pancakes. I added frozen wild blueberries, which was a good move. If you try it, be sure to heed the warning of Amanda Clarke, writing for Serious Eats:

> Using conventional indicators for flippage as my guide (this was my instinct, but it was also in line with the Batter Blaster website recommendations), I had some difficulty in making pancakes that were much to look at. For, when large bubbles began to rise and pop out of the slightly puffed batter and the surface began to look a bit dry, the pancake was invariably not set enough to flip or even check for flipping without some carnage.

Rating: Recommended.

**The Baconator** is not new–Wendy’s introduced it a year ago–but I had my first encounter with it this week. (We stopped on our way home from IKEA. I think Wendy’s + IKEA constitutes the American dream right there.)

What impressed me most about the Baconator was not the six slices of bacon sitting atop the two beef patties and cheese slices. No, it was the fact that by default it comes with NO VEGETABLES. This is the land of meat and honey, baby! In a recent 5-4 decision the Supreme Court found that American citizens cannot be tried in military tribunals, *unless they request lettuce on the Baconator.*

I ate about two-thirds of the Baconator before getting full and bored.

Rating: Baconator, not recommended. IKEA Ivar shelving, recommended.

Any stupid products you’d like me to try?

I am guilty of a great many sins, but reprinting press releases verbatim is not one of them. Until now! I just got the following email, and after I stopped laughing, I knew I would have to share it with you.

> Hi Matthew,

> I read over your blog and really enjoyed it (I totally agree about lime juice by the way! God’s gift to fruit!). I thought you might like to hear about a few different treats we have going on at TCBY and Mrs. Fields – especially Mrs. Fields brand new logo cookies that are so fun for tons of different occasions.

> Mrs. Fields is introducing Mrs. Fields logo cookies: completely customizable soft butter cookies to which you can add personalized messages and images! They are perfect for a bridal shower or wedding reception favor. Or, imagine a big BBQ with a plate full of cookies that say “Happy 4th from the Smiths!” They are reasonably priced and have a quick turn around time, so they are great for any family looking to add a little bit of spice to their holiday plans.

**They also have prefab messages to choose from, such as FUCK YOU OTIS SPUNKMEYER.**

> MRS. FIELDS also presents blended ice cream creations, Chillers and Breezers!

> 1. CHILLERS: Tasty blended treats that allow you to personalize your chiller by choosing cookies from the Mrs. Fields line (ex: chocolate chip and macadamia nut) to have blended with premium ice cream and milk to create a cool drink even better than your classic cookies and milk combo. Great for:
> – Hot summer day at the park or local Little League game
> – Evening strolls on the cool summer nights

> 2. BREEZERS: The new line of smoothies, available in flavors like Raspberry, Peach, and Strawberry-Banana – perfect for your summer palate. With just the right blend of ice cream, fruit, and juice, Breezers are perfect for a person on-the-go looking for a yummy midday pick me up. Perfect for:
> – Carpool on the way home from summer camp
> – After a long day stuck in the office

> — FOR THE MORE HEALTH CONCIOUS —

> TCBY offers a few healthier alternatives to indulgent summer treats.

> 1. SMART SUNDAE: (my personal favorite) This guilt-free sundae provides all of the taste and toppings of a real sundae, but only contains 280 calories! They are also really easy to make at home (I can set you up with the recipe)!

> 2. BERIYO SMOOTHIE: Summer flavored smoothies that combine real dairy frozen yogurt with real fruit, offering a healthy vitamin boost to make sure you can power through the rest of your day!

**Prevents beriberi, yo.**

> I think you would also be pretty surprised to hear about the incredible health benefits of frozen yogurt (a great thing to write about in of itself): the seven multi-beneficial live and active cultures produce results in the body such as:
> * Boost the immune system
> * Help with better absorption of nutrients
> * Promote weight loss
> * Prevent osteoporosis

**You may be skeptical here, but since I started eating frozen yogurt, I have not gotten osteoporosis once.**

> One more great thing going on in the health market right now is the introduction of 4C Totally Light to Go Vitamin Stix: these little pouches of vitamin powder mix right into your bottled water to give you a healthy vitamin boost and flavorful (think passionfruit/citrus!) midday pick up – with ZERO SUGAR and ZERO CALORIES (compared to Vitamin Water with 150 calories, or Lipton2Go with 20 calories).

**4C Totally Light to Go Vitamin Stix? Okay, who’s been spending too much time with the Marketing Department Magnetic Poetry kit?**

> If you want any more information about any of the above products, please don’t hesitate to give me a call or shoot me an email! I can provide you with anything else you need.

**Could you Fedex me a SMART SUNDAE? Thanks.**

> Looking forward to hearing from you,

> Ashley Van Horne
> LIME Public Relations + Promotion

Have you ever wondered whether the people behind the blogs you read are ordinary people like yourselves or *Internet people* with crazy opinions?

I can’t speak for those other blogs, but as for this one: I just had a conversation with Laurie in which I said that if I were in charge of school lunch reform, I would mandate that every meal include multiple cooked vegetables and a minimum fat content of, say, 30 percent, preferably including coconut oil, palm oil, or some kind of animal fat. “Those are the basics, right there,” I believe I said.

Laurie explained that in the case of the fat content, this would be actually illegal. But that’s why they call it reform, right?

P.S.: I would also mandate lime juice. Rivers of lime juice.

Flaky, oily scallion pancakes are one of the great joys of going out for Chinese food. I like them enough that I’ve been known to make them at home. Occasionally. To distribute the scallions throughout the pancake and get the feathery layers, you have to use a fiddly rolling method: You roll out the wheat-flour dough into a circle; brush it with oil and sprinkle it with scallions; roll it up into a cigar shape; coil it into a spiral; and roll it flat again. Even after you master it, which takes many tries, it’s slow. It’s a lot of work for a snack, which is why I usually leave it to the professionals.

There are lots of simplified scallion pancake recipes floating around, but all the ones I’ve tried miss the point. Most have you mix minced or puréed scallions into a batter and cook them like regular pancakes. The result is very green and tastes like a breakfast flapjack with scallions in it. I saw one recipe where you begin with flour tortillas. This was not tempting.

The other day, however, I was rummaging through the fridge and thinking about dinner, and I decided to make a pan-fried noodle cake, something of a Chinese-American classic. I boiled fresh Chinese egg noodles and tossed them with scallions, then threw all the noodles into a large skillet and fried them in peanut oil, pressing down with a spatula so they’d adhere into a cake. When the noodles were browned, I cut the cake into pie wedges and topped it with stir-fried cabbage, red peppers, and shrimp. Everyone agreed that it was a good dish and that the noodle cake was the best part.

“You could put in more scallions and make smaller noodle cakes, and it would be like scallion pancakes,” suggested my wife, Laurie, who is the idea person in the family. I tried it the next day, and there was nothing to it: I boiled the noodles for two minutes, drained them, tossed them with lots of sliced scallions, and arranged them in the hot skillet (nonstick or cast-iron, please!) in four-inch circles—well, sort of circles. You know those imported, dried fettuccine that come in little bird’s-nest shapes? That’s what the noodle cakes looked like before I flattened them. They cooked about five minutes per side over medium heat. My daughter and I ate them for an afternoon snack.

There are two kinds of Chinese egg noodles at my local supermarket: a spaghetti-like noodle and a linguine-like one. I liked the linguine better, but both worked well. For a dipping sauce, I like to mix chile-garlic sauce, soy sauce, chicken broth, and rice wine vinegar.

Two caveats: First, get the cooked noodles into the frying pan quickly or they’ll stick together. You can’t toss the noodles with sesame oil to prevent sticking, because then they’ll never hold together in a pancake. Second, many scallions will fall out and end up kicking around loose in the pan. That’s just how it goes.

I’ll be making these again. Sure, they’re a little greasy, but so are real scallion pancakes.

(This originally appeared on Gourmet.com, but I moved it here for editorial reasons that are, trust me, boring.)