Recently in Food & Drink Category

When we arrived for our usual Wednesday evening interlude at the Rankin Highway Starbucks, we were greeted by a barista wearing a lobster on her head. I tried not to stare, acting as though this was a commonplace occurrence in my daily routine, but curiosity finally got the better of me.

Why are you wearing a lobster on your head?

My boss told me I had to wear it until I sold ten of these. She pointed at something in a rack in front of the register. So far, no one has felt sorry enough for me to buy one.

She was referring to the little packets of Via, the company's new "instant coffee" (although they use the more refined term, "microground"). There had been a flurry of ads about it a while back, but I hadn't seen any lately and hadn't given it any serious thought.

Well, I'll help you out; add this one to my bill. I handed her a three-pack of the bold Italian Roast, good for three cups and at $1 per cup, a better deal than their in-store brew.

I fried up a cup of water yesterday afternoon and dumped in the contents of a packet, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. In fact, I think I prefer it to the in-store version, which is usually strong to the point of bitterness. Via was smooth, and was plenty bold without overdoing it. I recommend it.

However, I'm still on the fence about wearing the lobster on my head.

We enjoyed a DiGiorno pizza last night, a Thin Crust Supreme supplemented with extra mozzarella and pepperoni, if you must know. And while it was quite tasty and a completely acceptable and less expensive alternative to a restaurant offering, it was also square.

There were some logistical issues of fitting it on a round serving platter and figuring out how to slice the darned thing, but the shape also raised an issue that should be of paramount importance to every serious pizza aficionado: assuming the area is the same, do you get more crust from a round pizza or a square one?

I'm sure there are manifold websites devoted to explaining the relationship of the circumference of a circle to the perimeter of a quadrilateral shape, but I chose to do it the old-fashioned way, with a slide rule and abacus. Ha ha, just kidding. I used Excel. (I wanted to use my iPhone's calculator but it doesn't compute square roots. At least not like I want to compute them, with one touch of a key.)

And, of course, what I found shouldn't surprise anyone. By choosing a square shape for its pizza over a round one, DiGiorno has effectively caused the amount of crust to be...oh, look! A baby bunny!

You didn't really think I was going to deprive you of the joy of figuring this one out for yourself, did you?