Junk Food Nation, Merry Xmas Eve!  If you celebrate Xmas that is. For everyone else, a continued Happy Holidays! Let’s all eat tons of pie today! PIE!

Like I mentioned yesterday, today’s gonna be my last post until…well, not sure. Just gonna take a little break. But there’s some important stuff we still need to get to:

TODAY’S TURKEY HILL FREE COUPON WINNERS:

Today’s random winner from yesterday’s comment contest is:

Meral (Meral_____@yahoo.com)

Congrats, Meral! – email me your contact info to Junkfoodguy@junkfoodguy.com and I’ll get the free coupon in the mail to you!

TODAY’S WAY TO WIN A FREE 1.5 QT OF TURKEY HILL ICE CREAM:

To win today, we’re gonna keep the comment contest going…COMMENT BELOW. You know the drill – comment and I’ll pick someone to win. Actually, since this is the last Turkey Hill giveaway for the season…I’ll pick multiple winners.  I’m not gonna say how many for now…I’ll decide later. Here’s what I want you to comment on:

WHAT IS YOUR GIFT OPENING POLICY?

I’m rehashing this topic (and text) for like the third or fourth time, but so what? I’m fascinated. The question is: “When do you open gifts?” The usual suspects:

1) Opening gifts the night of Christmas Eve. For people who want nothing to do on Christmas morning. You just wanna wake up to a mess of wrapping paper and say, “….anyone wanna go see a movie?”

2) Opening one gift Christmas Eve, and the rest Christmas morning. This is for parents who need to placate their screaming children who are hopped up on Pepsi and cookies and will not stop yammering about presents. HERE TAKE ONE GIFT AND OPEN IT, YOU LITTLE MONSTER! NOW GO TO SLEEP!

3) Wait until midnight when it’s “technically” Christmas, and open presents then.  I remembering doing this a bunch when I was a kid.  This is for parents who are too tired to fight children who are trying to be lawyers when they are 12 years old. “Well, mom, TECHNICALLY it IS Christmas now!” Yeah, and technically you’re a nerd. Like I said, I pulled this stunt often.

4) Wait until Christmas morning. The traditional gift-opening time, if you can pull it off. Works on little kids who still believe in Santa. Doesn’t work on kids who are over the whole Santa thing, and who are asking, “So wait, are we waiting til Christmas morning to open presents out of conformity?? FIGHT OPPRESSION!” Calm down, buddy.

Of course, I realize this only applies to people who celebrate Christmas, so I imagine for those who celebrate Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/etc., there might be other gift-giving-opening rules as well!  I wanna know those too.

So below, please comment and tell me, whatever religious/spiritual background you celebrate, what the gift giving/opening policy in your household was!

TODAY’S JUNK FOOD: Curly Canes!!

I posted a photo of these Curly Canes on my Instagram earlier this month, and finally I went and bought them. “Delectable Dessert Flavors” huh? These better be. Still, I do like the extended curl on this Curly Canes…that’s fun.

Curly Canes come in Key Lime Pie, Cherry Pie, Banana Cream, and Strawberry Shortcake flavor.  I like all of these flavors. I’m probably most interested in the Key Lime flavor, since I LOVE citrus-y pie.

Curly Canes have 60 calories per cane and are apparently only made of sugar, sugar, artificial flavors and food coloring. Um….yikes.

I tried all of these Curly Canes, and I have to be honest – I hated them. Like, I really did not like these…at all. I’m sorry, company-who-made-these.  Let me break it down:

Key Lime Pie: I got a slight lime flavor when I first sucked on this cane, but it faded very quickly and never reached the level of citrus that I wanted from a key lime flavor.  Really disappointed with these.  I hoped the flavor would get stronger as the candy went on, but no. It dissipated and was gone.  Boo.  Fake lime flavor – NO.

Cherry Pie: Not as big of a fail, but this tasted like a plain cherry lollipop….like a standard cherry flavoring that didn’t really remind me of cherry pie.  Like the key lime, it also faded very quickly until I was just sucking a sugar stick.  Lame.

Banana Cream: Interestingly, this was the best flavor of all four.  The banana flavor, while artificial, reminded me of the same type of artificial banana flavor I was used to in other goods.  So it wasn’t that foreign.  It also had a decent butterscotch flavor, which reminded me of the cream inside of a banana cream pie.  The whole thing was still sort of fake tasting, but if I was grading success of flavor, this would be at the top of the pile of four.

Strawberry Shortcake: UGH NO. I’m not even sure what this flavor is/was, but it was NOT STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE, much less strawberry at ALL. NO. NOOOOOOO.  This one was awful.

I might’ve been willing to give these canes a pass if they had a good texture, but they weren’t nice and glass-like like normal candy canes…they were sort of soft and crumbled into weird plastic-y sugar pieces.

Look, there’s a reason these only cost $2, and I’m sure the makers of these canes weren’t trying to make a gourmet product…but if you want my opinion: AVOID.

Huh, a negative review on Christmas Eve. Weird.

ANYWAYS – I hope everyone has a great holiday season!  Comment below on the topic above, and I’ll see you on the flip side!

PURCHASED AT: Safeway, Waterfront Metro, DC

COST: $2.00 on sale

Thoughts? Please comment below or hit me up on Twitter @junkfoodguy or LIKE my Facebook Page and message me there. I also have Google+!! Let’s hang out.

Sincerely,

Junk Food Guy