Speaking of magic, there can also be the magic of fermentation at play here, the handiwork of the god Zymurgy. According to Darcy O’Neil’s history of soda, “Fix the Pumps,” the first recorded instance of “ginger ale” was in a Baltimore ad in 1818; it described a carbonated water flavored with ginger. But its cousin ginger beer was different; more like a beer, it was fermented and probably contained alcohol, and that’s what distinguished the two for decades. But along came the teetotalers who, appalled by the very mention of beers and ales, took aim at both of them, nearly wiping one out with Prohibition and the other with, I dunno, craziness. And so now the two terms are often confused; technically ginger beer is still fermented and ginger ale is flavored carbonated soda, but often marketers will use the term “beer” just to denote stronger flavor, or just for kicks.

Today, with bar and food geeks getting all old-timey about everything, is it any wonder that the eaterati are brewing their own ginger ales and digging in the crates to find complex mixers for their drinks? So, today here at Salon HQ on a slushy, freezing-rain kind of day, we decided to warm ourselves up from the inside and taste 10 kinds of the stuff.

Seagrams

Well, we might as well kick the tasting off with the standard. (Disclosure: I meant to buy Canada Dry and ended up with cans of Seagrams instead, but, I mean, aren’t they the same thing?) And it’s perfectly pleasant, just like what Mom used to … open. Lemony more than anything, it tastes basically like Sprite. News editor Steve Kornacki called on political history: “Decent. Normal. Eisenhower’s America in a can.” And superstar Alex Pareene just can’t help but jet set: “I feel like I’m on a plane,” he wrote in his tasting notes.

Blenheim: Red Cap (Old #3 Hot) and Gold Cap (#5 Not As Hot)

A few weeks ago, I tweeted a question: “How do you know when a ginger ale is good?” Back came many, many responses (people have their passions), but it was food writer Brandon Fox who lit it up: “When it burns the back of your throat. When your children refuse to drink it.” And Blenheim, the pride of Hamer, S.C., is America’s premier maker of get-that-out-of-your-kids’-hands-before-they-throw-it ginger ale.

You have to be careful with it; it’s a session drink. It’s like drinking pins and needles. Like drinking down a sneeze. The flare goes back up your throat, through your nose, and for a moment, you are breathing Godzilla’s nuclear blast. OK, that’s probably overstating it, but if, like, Godzilla had a pilot light for his nuclear breath.

And it made Kornacki cough and gag. “Could be good in allergy season,” he wrote. Anyway, heat aside, it’s tasty stuff, the flavor bright and acidic, like apple, and the texture is marvelous; the flavor just rides on down on a wave of bubbles. Which, of course, only makes it tingle more.

Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew

I don’t like to be judgmental, but it is a very bad sign for your beverage if four out of 11 tasters use the phrase “cat food” in their notes on you. As in, “tastes like cat food mixed with marshmallows.” Or “this really does smell and taste like cat food.” Also: “Butt nasty,” which doesn’t actually say, “cat food,” but I think it’s implied. News blogger Adam Clark Estes wrote, “Tastes like candied yams,” which is certainly more appealing than cat food, but … it’s ginger ale. Fans of Reed’s in our crowd assure us that this cat-foodness is some kind of aberration — can ginger beer get skunked? So maybe this is an outlier. But … ew.

Ginger People Ginger Beer

The packaging for all the Ginger People products features very cute cartoon humanized ginger pieces, with faces and smiles, doing fun things. Swinging on vines, dancing, lounging around eating ginger candies. (CANNIBALS!) I think they are meant to evoke the feeling of the product. And so the Ginger Beer features a jolly turbaned Ginger Person riding a freaking tiger. God, I hope this stuff gets you high.

But! But! BUT! It tastes like floor cleaner, the bitter, sticky, angry goo of festering ginger. It is so intensely gingery that it threatens to wrap you up and throw you in a burlap sack. And all of a sudden I start thinking, “Ginger People … They’re people! This stuff turned people into ginger and then they made them pose and prance and take pictures of them for their sick amusement.” It is horrifying. I might be high. For another perspective, Salon film critic Andrew O’Hehir called it, “a well-intentioned blend of flavors.”

Fresh Ginger Ale by Bruce Cost

Bruce Cost is one of America’s greatest teachers of Chinese and Asian cooking, and he’s been studying these cuisines since before I was born. So the man knows ginger, and I was excited when he started putting his name on a ginger ale. And it is, in the words of one of our tasters, “awesome.” Cloudy with floating-around bits of fresh ginger, the soda has just a faint bite and a muted tartness; the flavor is mellow and sweet, like curling up with a ginger candy. It’s not strange, then, when Adam described the flavor as “almost chewy.” 

Fentiman’s Traditional Ginger Beer

Now this is an odd bird. Of all the drinks today, this is the one that is most obviously fermented; the label says it contains a trace of alcohol. But instead of a punch in the face, your first sip will make you think of your grandma’s flower closet. Wait, what’s a flower closet? I don’t know, but that’s the first thing I thought of. It’s only barely sweet, the ginger warms slightly, and there’s a yeasty, beer-y umami aftertaste that lingers pleasantly. And in the middle, riding high over all of this, there are the aromas of dried flowers and spices. It’s quite lovely. Although one of our tasters wrote a sort of poem of displeasure in response: “Stale old man/the taste of wood or grass.” And another said it “tastes like very watery beer with a little sugar.” Superstar Alex Pareene was with me on Team Fentiman’s, though: “I like it! Slightly yeasty like home-brewed beer, but with balanced flavor. I’d make it myself if it weren’t for the explosion hazard.”

Regatta Authentic Bermuda Stone Ginger Beer

Tasting Regatta Authentic Bermuda Stone Ginger Beer, which takes less time than it does to write out its name, is like making out on a sailboat in the sun. But every once in a while, when you aim your tongue at a shoulder or a thigh, you hit a wave and all of a sudden you’re licking a life preserver. What I’m saying is that you kind of have to take the good with the bad with this stuff. It’s nicely gingery, a breezy drink, but there is a faint taste of plastic that bubbles up. I’m not the only one whose imagination was swept away, though. Andrew wrote: “Fruity, distinctive, genuinely is suggestive of a beach vacation. Would enjoy very much in warm weather.” But that breezy quality translated as lame for some: “Could be served at a restaurant without causing a stir.” And then there’s our dear Kornacki, whose fantasy world is probably a lot different than mine: “If you could liquefy mulch, this is what it would taste like. But I like the smell of mulch in the spring, so this wasn’t a terrible experience.” What?

Good-O West Indian Ginger Beer

How can you not love a soda by a company with a name as endearingly goofy as “Good-O”? Also, I should note that this was the only one of the sodas we tasted today that came in a two-liter, not some precious not-quite-12-ounces glass bottle with fancy graphics. I mean, really, Good-O’s labels they haven’t changed since 1947, and so I am predisposed to liking this stuff already. And that’s before we get to the jaunty note on the bottle that says, “It’s Peppery!”

And peppery it is, a definite bite that snaps through the corn syrupy sweetness, and I would have been happy to guzzle this anytime, especially since it cost about an eighth of the average price of the other bottles. But others were not so charmed. Adam said, “It’s not that peppery. The bottle should say, ‘It’s watery!’” But then again, I think by this point all our sinuses have been annihilated.

Boylan’s

Boylan’s has mastered the art of the appealing soda bottle; the painted graphics are strong and simple, the text is vaguely nostalgic, and the flavors are grown up and just bourgie enough to make food scenesters feel ok about drinking a soda. That’s not a slight; I really like them. So I crack open their gorgeous green ginger ale bottle and… nothing! There’s nothing there! It’s tasty, a little tart, nice fizz, but after the full nuclear assault of Blenheim and others, it seems like there’s no ginger here at all. But wait, there it is! Hold it in your mouth and breathe through your nose, and you get an aroma; actually a really pleasant one. There’s no bite, but this is a more refreshing, less sweet, more sophisticated version of a Seagrams or a Canada Dry. I’d be thrilled to have this over ice on a hot summer night. See, doesn’t that sound good? Ginger ale, over ice, on a hot night.

But for all the mockery, I’d always assumed that we only kid because we love. I mean, everyone grew up on Spam, right?

Right?

Turns out, no. In fact, in the office yesterday we asked if anyone had actually never tried Spam … and the uninitiated doubled the deflowered. Where’s the love for tinned luncheon meat? For the meat-ish loaf that dare not speak its name?

I suppose it doesn’t help when Spam’s own website reads no more deliciously than this: “What is Spam? A family of meat products that are very versatile and tasty, which can be served in a variety of ways, such as sandwich meats, salad ingredients or to make a meaty mac & cheese food dish.”

Still, maybe it’s because I’m Asian, or because I’m the child of immigrants, but I always assumed eating Spam was like the taking of mother’s milk. The salty, porky lump is totemic, iconic. You can’t pry it out of the hands of a Hawaiian. It comes standard between soft white bread and creamy scrambled eggs in Hong Kong breakfast diners. It functioned, one memorable vacation, as the meat we had to bring with us, because my father, in love with the bounty of America, insisted that we have meat at every meal.

And I have to say, through all that, I’d always loved it. I loved its soft, creamy flavor. Its comforting squishiness. But I also haven’t had it in forever. How would it stack up now? Inspired by Mark Bittman’s column the other day about reacquainting yourself with white fish, “Broiled, Sautéed, Roasted, Poached,” I decided to give a can of Spam my own variety of treatments.

The Uncanning

The first whiff was … not as appealing as I remember. It’s the smell of Vienna sausages, of certain blander dog foods. I tap tap tapped the bottom, until it slid out, riding a wave of its jelly, making that telltale sucking sound. You really have to admire a food that gets 78 percent of its calories from fat.

Bonus first course: Sashimi

Well, if I got my hands on a beautiful fillet of fish, the first thing I’d do is slice off a little bit and try it raw, just to see it in its most unadulterated form. (I guess “alive” would count as “most unadulterated,” but I’m not going there for you.) So in keeping with the spirit of things, I took a thin slice of Spam sashimi. (It’s already technically cooked, of course.) It cuts like cream cheese, and peeling it off my knife, it’s kind of … beautiful. You can see the patterns of the fat and streaks as they were turned and folded, this meat mass that was once like dough.

It is salty. Very salty. But meaty, too. Ham-like, for sure — but if ham had its own built-in mayonnaise. I don’t think Spam sashimi is really something you need to try, particularly.

Sautéed

I seared a slice in oil, and watched it throw off grease like a 2-year-old doffs his clothes. It’s an unnerving sight for the over-30 me, and when I took it out of the pan, I drained the slice on a paper towel. Am I missing the point? Maybe! But am I ready to die? No, I am a chicken.

The edges really brown up nicely, crisping up in that ideal, hear-it-more-than-feel-it way, and the inside keeps a juicy tenderness. But then that melting quality gives way to firmer, more meaty texture. I’m reminded of the taste of scrambled eggs, even though it doesn’t actually taste like scrambled eggs. Must be some kind of pavlovian thing as I channel the spirit of breakfast sandwiches from decades ago. As I chew, it starts to taste a little metallic, but in a minerally way, in a not altogether bad way. But gah, the salt!

Broiled

Sizzling and popping in the oven, I take out my third slice of Spam to see that it’s rendered off a bunch of its fat; it’s visibly shrunken. Tiny bubbles formed on the surface, translucent and crisp, and the color deepened to a brick-ish red. Flipping it over, I see the side that sat on the pan; by the color, it’s nearly burnt (oops), but it’s amazingly crisp, almost like a chip, in the way that bacon gets amazingly crisp.

I would have feared that overcooking the Spam would dry it out, but 1) “fear” is overstating it, since the pool of rendered fat in the broiling pan is now kept away from my body and 2) science has ensured that it is impossible to dry out Spam. Sure, it’s a little chewy, but in a satisfying, jerky-like way. (In Spam, Hormel has made the ur-meat.) Once I detect the vaguely smoky flavor from the intense browning, I realize what my reaction is: This is what people love in bacon. Yes, it’s aggressively salty, but with less mass, it feels more appropriate. And it’s not like there are juices that keep the salt coming in waves.

Poached

Yes, I poached my Spam. If that sounds pretentious, I can tell you I boiled it. Either way, I’m sorry, but this is delicious. This is a flavor of my childhood, and I can’t ever forget it. I grew up on big bowls of chicken broth full of macaroni elbows, diced boiled Spam and canned corn. (Try it. Really.)

But aside from nostalgia, boiling actually accomplishes a few things. One, most important, it washes much of the saltiness away (mostly if you cut the Spam up into small bits; if you’re going for big chunks and slices, it’s still salty as hell). The heat and moisture keep the Spam soft and supple, with just enough to chew on. That creamy, fatty flavor comes to the front, round and rich. Remember when I said earlier that Spam tastes like ham that comes with its own mayonnaise? This makes Spam taste like mayonnaise that comes with its own ham.

Braised in white wine

The beauty of braising is that the long, slow cooking is the cook’s alchemy. It can take tough meat and turn it tender. It takes different ingredients, extracts their flavors into the sauce, marries them and then changes them, rounding them off, concentrating them, turning them into an intense form of something just a little bit other. So I seared off a slice of Spam and braised it down in white wine, applying the most magical technique I can muster to the science of Hormel. I’m pretty sure God never intended for this to happen.

At certain points, I opened the lid to find the Spam bloating up like a giant bubble. At other points it would deflate. The wine thickened with juices pulled out from the fatty Spam, and wrapped its tartness around the meat. I was sure something was going on in that pot. Maybe not something good, but something.

But then I took a bite. And after I got past the intense flavor of reduced wine and got to the potted essence of the Spam itself, I was both stunned and comforted by what I found. Nothing. Nothing changed. After all that, Spam remains Spam.

Airlines won’t let you fly with it, Singapore’s mass transit won’t let you ride with it, and at least one hospital in the Philippines won’t let you bring it in, even for a final wish.

And now I’m about to eat it.

I have, to be honest, avoided durian for years. I don’t have many food hangups, but certain things stick with you, and my dad’s wild-eyed terror of the stuff is so acute I developed a sympathetic fear of it myself.

My father, in very rare storytelling mode, once told me about visiting friends in Thailand. (“Dad, you have friends? In Thailand? That you visited?” I asked, incredulous. All I’d ever known of my dad is him either working, eating or sitting in front of the Internet, buying cases of nail clippers for really, really cheap on eBay. I guess this my family’s version of the, “Son, when I was your age …” talk.)

Anyway, he was at their place, trying to enjoy a dinner that was probably far too spicy for his delicate constitution, when dessert time came. Pleased beyond belief, the hosts hauled a fresh, ripe durian into the room, and the way my father described it, it was like there were vultures circling, dodging the ceiling fan blades overhead. They sliced the fruit open and offered him, the honored guest, the first sloppy plateful. Wanting to show his appreciation, he took a small bite. They urged him on, so he took another. And another. Only he couldn’t bring himself to swallow it, and he just chewed and chewed, letting the durian sit in his mouth. Soon, Dad’s head was a prison, an unholy combination of gasoline fumes and smushy rot. He excused himself to use the restroom, where his body promptly rejected the poisoning it thought it was taking.

It’s hard to be the son of a man who’s gone through that experience and look at a durian without wanting to punch it.

But now that — thanks to a sadistic boss — my own date with durian destiny is here, I quickly learned an important lesson: You do not want to punch a durian. The spikes are not for show, people. They are sharp, tough and for hurting you and any other animal not tough enough to rip the durian open, eat all the insides and carry its seed far, far away. And considering that the specimen I just bought is the size of a bowling ball and weighs a good 6 pounds, the mind boggles at the number of ways the durian can be weaponized, even before you get to its famous smell.

So what about that smell? Well, sitting there, unopened and threatening, the smell is actually quite mild and … lovely. It’s like a cantaloupe on vacation in the tropics. But when I plunged the knife in, the rest of Salon knew about it. “Oh, there it is,” someone said, and by the time I split the fruit in two, gasps and groans were in the air.

And it wasn’t just the smell, which was clearly assertive, like eggs and onions and a bit like cheese. It was also how it looked, which one person described as “anthropomorphic,” and another as “anatomical,” before the brilliant Drew Grant noted that it possessed a quality of “Cronenberg-ness.” Gruesomely Naked Lunch it was, opened up to reveal white, bulbous soft flesh like brains, with a cut-open seed that looked like split bone or a gland or another animal part that you’re really not looking forward to in a plant.

The first bite was also bizarrely, intriguingly and, yes, kind of disgustingly not like any fruit I’ve ever had. I dug in with a spoon, to find the durian jealously holding onto its custardy flesh. Cutting through fleshy fibers, I stole a mouthful and it was creamy, sweet and … oniony. Sulfury. Thomas Rogers, who gamely stepped up for a spoonful of his own, was visibly disturbed. “It tastes like eggs,” he said, and then nervously walked over toward the trash. I understood where he was coming from. As I chewed, the soft fruit giving way to a meaty chew, the flavor really, honestly, tasting exactly like creamed onions, my brain fought with itself. “This could be delicious with some salt and slathered on a burger,” one lobe said. “This is supposed to be a freaking fruit, and that’s just weird,” the other shouted back. I had trouble getting it down. Plus, by now, someone else walked into the office and said, “Hey, you guys, it smells like a big [case of the vapors].”

The second bite was very different. Juicier, sweeter, much less oniony, it was inarguably pleasant. I really can’t understand how creamy this stuff is, how rich like dairy, with a strong but soft sweetness, like coconut and melons. A third bite, though, and it was back to onion casserole land, and it seems that you have to kind of feel your way around the fruit to get a sense of where it’s going to taste like tropical panna cotta and where it’s going to taste like a burpy burger topping. Kerry, The Boss, was reaching for his water after a spoonful it looked like he’d enjoyed. “I did like it, but, uh, the aftertaste …”

I don’t know if I want that kind of uncertainty in a fruit, but as I put away the durian, I felt a sense of peace about it. Maybe I could learn to be its subject, or maybe I could just stay out of its way. But I felt no violence toward it, no hatred. I put it in the fridge and went toward my desk, when someone stopped me. “I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but I think it’s soaking into your clothes. It didn’t smell here until you just walked by.” 

The Rich Taste of Succulent Shrimp Returns to Taco Bell Without the Pricey Cost

It’s no longer just about who you know – but knowing where to go. Starting this week, everyday foodies craving succulent shrimp can look past the nearest yacht party or invite-only gala, and turn to Taco Bell® for its Pacific Shrimp Taco and NEW Pacific Shrimp Burrito. Filled with tasty ingredients and shrimp marinated with chipotle seasonings, the limited-time menu items will satisfy mouth-watering hunger for shrimp – all while offering red-carpet taste for less green.

Infiltrate yacht parties! Steal from invite-only galas! Forget shellfish, it’s subversive class warfare! Sadly, though, all this creative revolutionary fervor dies down under the crushing weight of still being a corporate press release, and so it continues for another 250 words, including choice selections like, “flavorful, premium protein option,” and “tumbled in a ‘waterfall’ of chipotle marinade.” At some point, it refers to an ingredient called, seriously, “red strips.” Presumably they are not made to deliver that “red-carpet taste,” but who can say what magic food scientists have conjured?

But, hey, since it’s Lent, which for non-Catholics is also known as “Fast Food Seafood Season,” I’ll bite. (Fun fact: McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish, and possibly every other fast food seafood item, was invented to keep Catholics coming to burger joints during Lent.)

Remember the old Taco Bell slogan “Run for the Border”? Well, if you’re in midtown Manhattan, the border is the basement of Penn Station, and while I appreciate commuter rail, it’s hardly the first place you want to look for lunch. But there I was, grabbing my to-stay burrito and taco from a counter that doubled as a KFC.

Not to be all enviro-weenie, but why do they bother to ask if it’s to stay or to go and still hand it to you in a plastic bag either way? I went to a table, empty but for alarming, dried-on streaks of barbecue sauce, and on the way passed by a woman struggling to free her taco from its plastic sack. She finally got it out, tugging, exploding the wrapper and showering the floor with a confetti of lettuce and cheese. It was, for a split second, captivating, the green and orange shreds sailing in air. It was like a scene deleted from “American Beauty.”

I went for the burrito first, and that familiar kinda-sticky, kinda-tangy-smelling, kinda stretchy tortilla gave way to cold lettuce and salty cheese, which I couldn’t now help but imagine falling onto the floor, over and over again. There came a crunch — shreds of tortilla chips, dyed red (Ah! The “red strips”!). And then there was the shrimp, coiled and about an inch in diameter, pleasantly chewy, and which, to be honest, tasted pretty good. I mean, the “waterfall of chipotle marinade” meant that it was going to taste mainly of vague spices, chile and “natural smoke flavoring,” but under that, there was an actual flavor of shrimp. In particular, the iodine-y tang you often find in Gulf shrimp. (Though I am under no illusions these are American wild-caught Gulf shrimp.)

It’s a flavor not everyone loves, but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to find any shrimp flavor at all in these guys. Usually shrimp this size are too immature to develop much real taste or texture. And while the size-obsessed may gripe over their puniness, a few bites that included all the various ingredients really kind of convinced me of their size-appropriateness; they’re part of the harmony of the burrito mélange. (Yes, I just said that.) A mélange in which, it turns out, the red strips are the crunchy star, like a pile of tortilla-wrapped nachos, doused in green-tinted mayo. (It’s “avocado ranch,” apparently. The world has so many lessons to learn from ranch.)

Next, I went for the taco, which was basically the same thing, minus cheese and red strips (sad!) and plus “salsa.” As I tasted this “salsa,” I thought, “Whoa, cucumber! Turns out cucumber and cilantro are delicious together!” And then I realized there was no cucumber in it, but rather just very wan tomatoes. I filed away the cucumber-and-cilantro idea for my own personal use.

Still, this is all supposed to be about the shrimp, and I got to wondering how they could find small shrimp with so much flavor. I checked Taco Bell’s ingredients list, and, sure enough: “chicken broth” and “natural flavor.” One means that they’re not quite the purely pescatarian delight you may have been hoping for; the other means “better living through chemistry.”

As I prepared to leave, I went back to the counter, to get another shrimp taco to go for a curious friend. I still had the flimsy bag in my hand from my own order, so I handed it toward the woman behind the register, suggesting she just put the taco back in it. She used a look that would have been reserved, in prior centuries, for lepers and fingerless beggars. I persisted, saying something about “I can just re-use the bag.” She was not amused. She used that look again, and I felt … witheringly small. Like I’d been caught crashing a yacht party.

(Here’s a discouraging sign: “Because the beverages are classified as nutritional supplements, they have received much less scrutiny and are under fewer restrictions than both foods and drugs.” Gee, yay!)

So while the health effects of all that taurine, caffeine, L-caritine (what?) and whatever else are being debated by people way smarter than me, there is one question I feel qualified to answer: How does this stuff taste? I grabbed an armful of cans to find out. (Over the course of five days. I’m not actually suicidal, you know.)

Red Bull (The O.G.)

So … this is why the pouty frown is the favorite face of party girls. You want to know how this tastes? Imagine you’re at a party, and someone hands you a vodka and soda with a fistful of lemon wedges. You’re already drunk, so by accident you spit your bubble gum into it, and you put it down on the stove. Only someone else really drunk left one of the burners on by mistake, so your plastic cup and vodka and soda and lemons and bubble gum all melt together. Red Bull is what it would be like if you volunteered to clean up that mess with your tongue.

But once you force it down, the effect really is … noticeable. Just a few minutes after downing the thing, I have to say this: you know all these super-indulged kids on the sidewalk / subway / shopping mall? With their hyper-permissive mothers and their incessant sugar-buzz screeching? I can understand what they’re saying. One, right now, is going, over and over, “Someone tore apart the human brain someonetoreapartthehumanbrainsomeonetoreapartthehumanbrain!” And I don’t even want to kill him. In fact, I think I am him. Now pardon me while I start stepping on some stranger’s lap and reach for the pretty little handrail.

Ten minutes after that, I grabbed my girlfriend’s heavy old bike and ran up the stairs with it. That part was easy. It’s just the breathing that’s hard, with my chest feeling too small for my heart. You live with the tradeoffs, I guess. They say this stuff only has as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, and I can believe that, if you actually mainline that coffee directly into your bloodstream. (Also, within a half hour, I was also scarfing down a greasy pile of onion rings, total drunk-style, so maybe this stuff is a party in a can.)

5 Hour Energy Extra Strength

It smells exactly – and I mean exactly – like children’s cold medicine my mom would give me, which you’d assume would make me want to gag, but for some reason I feel like this is strangely … reassuring. And I need the reassurance, too, because I just read the supplement facts label, and this little two-ounce bottle contains as much caffeine as a 12-ounce coffee, 200 percent RDA of niacin, 2000 percent of vitamin B6, and 8333 percent of vitamin B12. That wasn’t a typo. 8333 percent of the recommended daily allowance. What the hell is that much vitamin B12 going to do to me? I’m scared!

… and, it turns out this feels fine. There’s a little bit of the “niacin flush,” where your face and skin get warm and red for a few minutes after you take niacin. Ostensibly, the dilation of blood vessels niacin causes will “detox” you, but I’m pretty convinced all the energy drinks put the stuff in there so you’ll feel the flush and think that something’s working. But other than that, I feel slightly caffeinated and alert, and otherwise like normal. It’s pleasant, but kind of unremarkable. A nice complement from a good-looking stranger would probably do the same trick.

MONSTER Energy

I can’t help but think, looking at this black can with neon green claw marks spelling out an M, for “MONSTER Energy,” that this, truly, is the drink made for people who decorate their cars with stickers of a cartoon Calvin peeing on things.

Here is some text from the can:

MONSTER packs a vicious punch but has a smooth flavor you can really pound down*

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

So I take a swig, knowing that the FDA can’t vouch for MONSTER Energy’s flavor, and: OMG. It is HORRIBLE. It has that bubblegum, generic soda flavor, but like, cranked up to 13 and shrieking with sour. It’s so awful. It is so awful. It tastes like a monster trying to crawl down my throat to have its young in my belly. If you made prisoners drink this it would be a war crime. Sorry, folks, you’re not going to get a report on how big a hole I punched into the door with my superhuman Wolverine strength, because the rest of this drink is going in the toilet immediately. Ugh.

MONSTER KHAOS Energy Juice

The version of MONSTER Energy that actually contains fruit juice (50 percent!) is called “KHAOS,” so it’s probably a naïve hope to think it might be a little more subdued in its assault on my sense of taste than its brother. But I take a sip anyway and … hey, what do you know, hope springs eternal! It is much more calm, like being softly beaten about the face and head with a sack of sugar, instead of being sandblasted with it. It still has that weird bubblegum flavor, but add to that notes of orange juice and tin can. Delicioso, no? To the sink with you!

AriZona Caution Energy Drink

I remember, back in the early 90s when AriZona’s “sun-brewed style” iced tea, all dolled up in vaguely Native American designs, was all the canned tea rage. Seriously, you couldn’t not see it, and its somewhat more subtle flavor than the other teeth-grinding canned ice teas seemed at the time like a small form of salvation. Those AriZonans were showing their shamanistic wisdom!

But then I was in a car, on the way to the mall in Short Hills, New Jersey, when my friend pointed at a house and said, “That’s where the family that owns AriZona ice tea lives.” No, the drink had nothing to do with the Tea Party’s favorite state. (Although now that I think about it, I can’t believe they haven’t hit on that marketing campaign.) The stuff is made in New Jersey. So they’ve been selling snake oil for a long time.

By now, I’m pretty frightened of these drinks, but I go for it. And this tastes … not terribly bad, really. Kind of like orangeade you used to get in school cafeterias, kind of like the brown water they call their iced tea. A little bitter in the end, but the orange flavor really starts to come through. The ingredients actually list “orange blossom honey,” and the flavor is almost … tasteful. Or, as tasteful as a drink that comes in a can that looks like a stick of radioactive dynamite with the label CAUTION EXTREME PERFORMANCE can be. Hey, I think I just tasted some mango!

30 minutes after drinking this thing, my heart isn’t beating faster so much as it feels like it’s beating harder. I have to say that writing is feeling very easy right now – my fingers clacking along nearly as fast as I can think of the words. That’s not to say, though, that the words make a whole hell of a lot of sense. I’ll have to leave this until I come down to read it over and make sure it’s in English. But if you’re looking to feel like your brain is maybe trying to push out of your skull and your heart is four times beefier and you like the taste of oranges, you could do worse than this oh my God I think I just broke through and now I can’t stop typing holy hell what is happening someone call someone and put me in a I don’t know what but just something and get me to shut the hell up SOMEONETOREAPARTTHEHUMANBRAIN SOMEONETOREAPARTTHEHUMANBRAIN

I am an on-the-record lover of Biscoff cookies, the treats served on Delta Air Lines flights that have earned a cult following, if a cult following for an airplane snack can be said to exist. Light, fantastically crisp, just-sweet-enough and tasting of caramel and warm spices, they’re like everything you’ve ever wanted in gingerbread or graham crackers.

But how does it taste in creamy spread form? I got my hands on two versions: One is by Lotus, who makes the Delta cookies, and who is one of the legal combatants for the patent. (Willems, Lotus’ legal rival, doesn’t export its version to the U.S. yet.) The other is by Tamarin, who is not affiliated with either Lotus or Willems, so I’m tempted to think they’re just Belgian rogues quietly selling cookie paste under everyone’s noses. (The kooky video on Tamarin’s website, where two fresh-faced teenagers dress up in safari gear in a shopping mall and start guerrilla-selling its spread, doesn’t do anything to dissuade that thought.)

The box for my Biscoff Spread reads, “Europe’s alternative to peanut butter,” which is hilarious because it’s a cliché that Europeans hate peanut butter. They’re mystified by Americans’ love of the stuff, and the sight of a PB&J makes them shake their head in pity for us. So now, apparently, their answer to peanut butter is: creamed cookies. If you’ve ever said that America’s junk food is getting the world fat, please take a moment to reflect on this.

Biscoff’s version is literally made of cookies, pulverized and emulsified with oil to a smooth, peanut buttery paste. It’s dark and glossy, definitely good-looking, but Tamarin’s needs a little work. It’s pale, and it doesn’t spread well, making it look suspicious and fatty.

First, the plain-on-bread test:

Biscoff: Wow, this is kind of incredibly delicious. It really does make the bread taste like the familiar cookie, ginger-snappy, only richer and smushier. You really need the bread with it, though, because it’s also very sweet. God help you and your child’s eventual diabetes if you actually do switch out your peanut butter for this. That said, I only meant to take a couple of bites, but then kind of involuntarily ate the whole sandwich. I cannot, by law, recommend that kind of behavior, and am nervous about how much sugar and fat I’m about to find myself eating.

Tamarin: Ugh. UGH. The greasy flavor of the fat hits you first, then, even as the sugar and gingery flavors follow, the fat keeps poking its head up and waving hello. It won’t go away, and it has the unmistakable flavor of supermarket cake, the kind that is frosted with Sweetex. Wait, you’ve never heard of Sweetex? It’s a commercial frosting shortening called Sweetex. Say that word out loud. Isn’t that all you need to know about it? Anyway, I think the Tamarin part of today’s show is over.

Now, the warm-on-toast-with-banana test:

OMG!

And finally, the smeared-on-apple test:

OK, now this stuff is getting dangerous. From a technical standpoint, the pairing of this spread and apple — in this case a very tart Granny Smith — works because the acidity in the fruit lifts and balances the richness and sugar. But as it’s making me eat more and more of this not-very-good corner deli apple, I’m realizing how utterly scary it would be to be a parent with Biscoff spread in the house. I mean, imagine being a kid and realizing that there is a jar of something that makes everything taste like cookies.

The bright side, nutritionally, is that you could probably convince anyone to eat this apple. But, you know, you’d be eating about half a pound of fattened-up cookie with it. Proceed with caution, people.