Tag Archives: confusing labels

What Am I Eating?

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The title question should be easy to answer. Tonight, for example, I’m having chicken, pasta, and veggie salad. My friend Catherine prepared this meal out of things I recognize. Yesterday I had my specialty, “use-it-or-lose-it” soup, which I make from any lightly shriveled vegetables in my refrigerator. My meals might not qualify for a Cordon Bleu award, but at least I know what’s in them. Which brings me to the subject of this post: the bewildering labels sellers tack onto food. Take a look at this one:

I snapped this photo through the bus window when we paused next to one of the food carts that provide quick, cheap lunches for New Yorkers. The NEW YORK HOT DOG they’re selling may be delicious, but if I asked for that, I’m not sure what I’d get. Here’s the wide-angle view:

My choices appear to be a hamburger using an alias or an actual HOT DOG.

Nor would I know what to expect if I patronized this food cart:

Or this one:

Would I be eating an actual Executive or whatever the cook thinks an Executive wants for lunch?

Writing about food has made me hungry. Perhaps some cheese:

Now I just have to hope that the block this NATURAL CHEESE is off of isn’t the one I live on. Bon apetit!

Time to Eat

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We all like to eat, right? And most of us like to eat right. We do our best to select nutritious and delicious food that doesn’t bust the budget. But finding such food isn’t always easy. Indeed, sometimes figuring out exactly what you’re buying can be problematic. Take a look at this item, which my friend Sean spotted:

What is it with the canine references? A couple of posts ago I showed you a sign indicating a “large bread dog park.” Now someone’s putting pastrami on Snoopy! This label is also evidence of (in my opinion) a culinary crime. Lettuce and pastrami shouldn’t go together on a beagle, a bagel, or anything else.

The next photo comes to you courtesy of last night’s dinner:

The meal was quite tasty, but I did wonder whose hands were involved with my salmon, and how. Handcrafted, my dictionary tells me, means “made skillfully by hand.” Unless my biological knowledge is faulty, salmon make salmon, and fish don’t have hands. Yes, I know the handcrafted part might refer to grilled. In that case I hope the hands wore heatproof mitts. Otherwise those dark stripes on the salmon were . . . well, let’s not go there. I ultimately decided that handcrafted is similar to artisanal (a label I have also seen applied to fish). Both mean “you’re paying too much.”

I did not buy this dessert, but I did wonder what the store was selling, and to whom:

Is this treat intended for an extremely small lover of chocolate? Or is the store informing the customer that the chocolate bits in the sundae are undersized? Maybe the sundae is smaller than the size the store usually sells. The whole thing can be resolved with punctuation: I favor a mini, chocolate-lover’s sundae. Actually, I favor a maxi sundae, but I shouldn’t indulge.

I hope this sign, like the previous one, has a punctuation problem, because if it doesn’t, someone better call the cops:

That’s it for today. Time to eat!