Pick-A-Day

June 2007
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X-13D

A trip to an American supermarket is an adventure—especially if you’re used to shopping in supermarkets that would fit in the produce section of your typical American Kroger.

I hit up the local Kroger yesterday—shopping cart in hand (hey, it’s free! No 1€ coin in the slot for a deposit), and started shopping. I was there looking for the ingredients needed for home-made pizza: olives, feta, onion, and red pepper. It was a sort of Greek-Pizza, complete with a pesto sauce instead of the normal tomato sauce—but that’s fast forwarding to the end of the evening.

Having not seriously shopped in a large US supermarket in awhile, I was taken a bit aback by the choices. The bread aisle, for example, was larger than the two (independent) bakeries at my local REWE in Weimar, combined. Choosing between multiple brands of sliced or diced black olives makes me cry: I can only find pitted black olives at the local German supermarket on rare occasions (and when I do, I buy all of them); and I still have to chop them myself!

Of course, for all the selection, Kroger also offers some mysteries—like how can so many different kinds of bread exist, yet none of them are actually good? At the two bakeries in my REWE I have a wide selection of good bread to choose from. There isn’t “Health Nut” bread in Germany – nor is their bread with “double fiber” (excuse me, I must take a brief pause while writing this).

While overlooking the cola aisle (it wasn’t where I expected to find it), I found myself in the chip aisle, looking at a display for Doritos. Now Germany does have Doritos, and I once bought a package of “cool American” flavored chips (sadly, I did not taste Ryan Phillippe on the chips, it tasted more like Cool Ranch); but I have never seen X-13D flavored chips.

This is the X-13D Flavor Experiment.
Objective: Taste and name DORITOS® flavor X-13D. Receive additional instructions at snackstrongproductions.com or text ‘X-13D’ to 24477 (‘CHIPS’)
Tasting notes: All American Classic.

The girl I was shopping with said that if it was an experiment, they ought to pay us to try and name it. That logic in my ears, I threw the bag in my cart and paid for it. Back at the Klein Schloß, I opened the bag and we sampled a few chips while the dough was rising and the pizza baking. We had a hard time deciding what flavor it was, other than “not Mexican,” and with beef tallow, we were a bit mystified. For those of you who are curious, some have speculated and it seems right to me.

Meanwhile, I need to return to Kroger—the cherries that were on sale were eaten in one day so I really should grab some more.

7 comments to X-13D

  • Ed

    I figured you for an O’Malia’s type of food shopper.

  • Jul

    Aaah, American grocery stores… don’t forget to pick up some protein water and diet coke with vitamins. No need to eat nutritious food anymore!

    Too bad I missed the Doritos marketing experiment, but since it sounds like they’re meat-flavored, it’s probably just as well.

  • koko

    gross. oh and i was at the market yesterday too…probably the one you were at 🙂

  • ed: I can shop anywhere. Kroger works for a lot of things.

    Jul: I did see the Diet Coke with vitamins. I stopped and looked at it. I was disturbed–what a bizarre concept.

    koko: I won’t save you any 🙂

  • Ed

    Selling point: O’Malia’s Has Quisp Cereal shaped like flying saucers. Just the thing to take me back to the 1960’s. I know you weren’t born yet. Blahhh!

  • Tried them here in California a few weeks ago. The flavor here was Honey Mustard.

  • ed: I will have to seek out the alien cereal– next time I hit O’malia’s.

    daveo: I do not remember a honey flavor at all in mine. It definitely had a sharp bite to it, like a pickle.