recipe for disaster?

i just made a batch of queso…

…it’s not bad. it’s not “good”, but it’s not bad. it USED to be great. but then fate intervened. “fate” as in corporate america did a cease and desist on a main ingredient in some of my signature shit and fucked it all up. not the first time it’s happened. in fact, there was also…

apple slice – remember “slice”? the citrus soda? it wasn’t bad…but then they made an APPLE version. that shit was “fire”, as the kids today say. absolutely delicious. granted, enough sugar to give a race horse diabetes, but SOOOOO not the point…

and while we’re on the apple kick, let’s not forget sour apple rockstar which begat rockstar “hardCORE”, an apple core pun accompanied by old school tattoo graphics subtly placed on the can:

the former (left) is gone, which is fine…the semi-current (right) tastes better and has 50% more caffeine…but is getting a LOT harder to find (conveniently still available at a place near the house AND near the shop, but supplies are dwindling) and while the latest incarnation has even MORE caffeine, it’s also zero sugar, and to be honest, tastes like a big ol’ can of chemicals, as most zero sugar energy drinks do. remember what kept you bouncing off the walls as a kid? sugar! you think you can do without that and still be okay, energy-wise? not without meth, blow, or a big ol’ can o’ chemicals. it might as well say…

but then again there’s a chance my caffeine addiction never woulda happened if only they’d kept…

as a kid THIS was the soda i got on when i hit my teens and pre-teens. immortalized in the back to the future movie when the soda jerk (legit term) thinks fox is trying to score a soda gratis. but they got rid of it, so mom just shrugged and started buying twelve packs of the normal stuff as such packaging was just coming out, and the rest (and my teeth) was history!

but just so you don’t think i only got screwed by canned sugary shit, there was also the burn in the bag mesquite:

(if you’re expecting a pic so was i but the kind i used to buy i couldn’t even find pics of)

it was a staple of many a juneteenth and other bbq for years, and then was gone one summer never to return. then you had to do charcoal and put wood chips on it. not bad, but NOT the same. and that brings us up to the latest victim of my recipes to fall to corporate genocide:

i thought it was just OUR store that stopped carrying it, but it was a chain-wide deletion. did they forget how many brown folk we have in this state? don’t none of them want plain-ass cheese!