Surprise! Sweets go Prime.

 On Saturday Amazon offered me 20% off of Prime Surprise Sweets,  I like surprises as much as the next person so I figured it was worth trying at least once.  Today the box arrived and Thea decided to help me check it out.

 So this is the box.

 And this is Thea realizing there is a new box.

 No need to rush. The box will wait.

The box appears to be safe.

 "Well are you going to open the box?"

 Prime Surprise Sweets, in case you forgot what the outside of the box said it is repeated on the inside.

 Once again Thea decides to help.

 Thea loses interest at this point.

So what do we have?

 This comes from Christopher's Bakery.  They do not sell an individual piece, but a full cake is $25.00 and this appears to be about 1/24th of a cake.  I'll assign $2.00 to this as individual servings usually cost extra.  At 410 calories a full cake has 9840 calories.

 This comes from The Crispery.  An order of 4 is $39.00.  There is nothing wrong with being basic sometimes so Pumpkin Spice could be good.  Each serving is 160 calories. (There are 4 servings in a bar.)

 Right now, slaves are working on cocoa farms in West Africa.  Many of them are children. Tony’s Chocolonely exists to change that. Our vision is 100% slave free chocolate. (Taken from the Tony's Chocolonely website.)
Freedom costs a little more, in this case $9.95 per bar.  Each serving has 230 calories, 4 servings per bar.

 And now we have the likely winner for best item in the box.  Danny Macaroons sells a 4 pack for $15.00.  Each Macaroon as approximately 140 calories and of course there are four of them in a 4 pack.

And finally we get to the real question, did I get my money's worth?  I got 37 dollars retail for about 15 bucks.  At full price you are still getting this stuff at half price.  There is some novelty value in trying out new gourmet candies and there is some fun in it being a surprise.  At this point I will give it a tentative, "yes."  I have not yet consumed any of the candies and I will post something in the comment section as each item is consumed. (See now we both get a surprise.  Well you get two because it is always a surprise when I update.)

Later

Bob

Edit 12/7/17
As promised, I am updating the post. I ate the Vanilla Wafer Cake. It was quite good. It was as rich as one might expect for an item that weighed three ounces and had 410 calories. It was very flavorful. When you order one of these cakes various items can be added in. My slice had raisins, shredded coconut, pecans and dried cranberries. Other than the coconut which was distributed fairly evenly the other items were discreet. This made each bite taste just a little different and have a slightly different texture. It enhanced the entire experience. I would definitely consider purchasing this cake for an event where no one is counting calories.

Positive Externalities of Stupidity

Stupid is worse than evil.  What, dear reader, you'd like it stated a little more eloquently?  Allow me to oblige:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed–in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical–and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 43)

Ok, maybe i didn't state it more eloquently and Dietrich Bonhoffer did, but i found the quote and you didn't. I am the one that mixed my labor with the State of Nature on the internet so it is mine even if i did not create it; John Locke said so.  But today we are not going to be exploring classic economic theory--i want to expose a little on the upside of stupidity because it isn't all bad.

Today I made caramelized onions.  Caramelized onions are great; that is why they serve them up in fancy steakhouses.  But caramelized onions take a lot of work.  No really, a lot.  So much that when explaining the process cooking writers all lie about how much time they take to create.  There is a convention in cooking to say that the process takes a lot less time than it does in reality.  It took me forty-five minutes today to caramelize my onions, and i probably rushed it and stopped a little too soon, but some recipes will say it takes as little as ten minutes.  It is boring too.  It takes no skill, you just need to stir them occasionally, making sure the onions stay in contact with the pan and don't pile up.

The long, labor intensive process is the reason you are more likely to see caramelized onions in a steakhouse than a burger joint.  A wise man once said, "Caramelized onions are great on burgers."  And Samy was right they are.  They may be better on burgers than with steaks because steaks are already so good that you are really just gilding the lily when you start piling things on.  Whereas burgers can really benefit from the fusion with other ingredients.  But because they take so long to make burger joints don't often devote the manpower to preparing caramelized onions because they cannot fetch enough of a premium to justify the extra labor.  "Time is money," and these damn onions take a lot of time to caramelize.

This is where we see a rare positive externality of stupidity.  You may be familiar with the Fight for 15.  If you are not, look it up. (I don't feel like polluting this page with a link.)  These "Fighters" are basically putting themselves out of work.  Sure you can't raise a family on eight bucks an hour, but you aren't supposed to work that job when you are raising a family.  And you really can't raise a family of four after your job has been replaced by a burger flipping robot because the restaurant cannot remain profitable when they have to pay the least productive labor market participants fifteen bucks an hour.  However, once you replace "Troy, the burger boy" with the TroiMk.3 autonomous grill tender you can take advantage the mindless time intensive processes that robots excel at to elevate your menu.

"Troy, the burger boy" cannot be trusted to actually pay attention to make sure the onions are stirred and do not burn or dry out, he'd rather be chatting up that nurse with a taste for men that never get out of entry level jobs that comes in most days.  TroiMk.3 will not get distracted and can be programmed to stir the onions when not doing cooking and assembly of active orders.  There are probably a lot of things TroiMk.3 will be able to do with downtime to enhance my experience at the future human-free autonomous burger kiosk of the future, but you get the general idea.

So in the future we can look forward to BK and McD (no one will have time for full words or even all the letters in the Idiocracy trending future) to serve caramelized onions with your WppR or BgMc.

Later

Bob