Supertaster
Green Your Hangover
360 Vodka Gift Set, plus Taco Filling and Nature’s Burger
What's new? What's great? What's weird? Our columnist samples offerings from supermarket aisles and fast-food menus.
By: McCormick Distilling
Suggested Retail Price: $26.99 for a 750-milliliter bottle and a CFL light bulb
Who buys vodka because it’s “green”? McCormick Distilling is aiming to find out with its aggressively marketed World’s First Eco-Friendly Gift Set, which includes a 750-milliliter bottle of vodka, an energy-saving Philips CFL light bulb, and a “100% recycled 360 Vodka Guide to Going Green.”
The guide contains factoids and musings that range from the useful (many energy providers offer the option of switching to green energy if consumers ask) to the innocuous (wear organic cotton!) to the insidious: A section titled “We don’t want to drop names about who’s involved in the green movement … oh yes we do” goes on to praise Starbucks, Unilever, General Electric, and (drumroll) Dow Chemical, which it describes as “formerly a target of environmentalists.”
Do they mean formerly as in throughout this spring when protesters targeted Dow over the ongoing fallout from the Bhopal disaster? Or maybe formerly as in this March when the company came under fire for its slow cleanup of dioxins dumped into Michigan waterways?
There’s a word for this shit: greenwashing.
That said, the savings you obtain from the enclosed CFL light bulb will (in theory) pay for the entire cost of the gift set over the life span of the bulb. If you’re looking for a way to rationalize buying more booze, it’s hard to beat “It’ll pay for itself … and then some!”
And the vodka? I’m not sure what’s green about it. It’s not organic, and it’s got a harsher bite and more of a discernable alcohol smell than Reyka, which I sampled it against. Better yet: Drink Square One, which is a certified organic vodka.
Taco Filling and Nature’s Burger
By: Fantastic World Foods
Suggested Retail Price: $2.29 for about six burgers or five tacos
If you enjoy the hearty flavor of formerly living muscle tissue and/or fat, vegetarian substitutes can be off-putting. But, despite the odds, the Orwellian-sounding Fantastic World Foods has taken a stab at two great American classics: tacos and burgers.
The faux ground beef of the Taco Filling has a pronounced smoky, oniony, savory flavor that—thanks in part to its eerily authentic pebbly texture—comes very close to the experience of eating a Midwestern, mom-made, ground-beef taco. Moreover, it lacks the grease so often associated with the real thing. When served with lettuce, Frank’s RedHot, tortillas, and shredded Cojack, this stuff makes a taco that is, for lack of a better word, good.
While the Fantastic World Taco Filling succeeds by being faux authentic, the Fantastic World Nature’s Burger succeeds by being completely unlike what it’s supposed to evoke. It starts as a pile of powdery stuff that looks suspiciously like instant oatmeal. Once this mix (which contains brown rice, dehydrated veggies, and whole oats, among other things) is introduced to boiling water, you let it set up and cool, make it into patties, then fry them. It’s delicious. Nothing at all like a hamburger, mind you; the resulting patty takes a sear OK, but it’s sweet and almost nutty tasting, evoking lentils far more than cow flesh.
James Norton is the founding editor of Flak Magazine and the author of Saving General Washington. He lives in Minneapolis and writes about food for publications including Salon and Minnesota Monthly. His wife, Becca Dilley, takes the photographs for Supertaster. She specializes in
weddings and food photography, and is the coauthor of and photographer for
the upcoming book The Master Cheesemakers of
Wisconsin. The Supertaster column appears every Monday.
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Who would you give this "gift set" to? Someone you don't like, obviously. Vodka and light bulbs go together like Nutella and cedar shingles. That is to say, not at all.
When I heard "360 Vodka Gift Set," I was envisioning a fruit-basket-type-thing with hundreds of sample bottles of different vodkas.
I am terribly disappointed.
Actually, the company looked into organic, and says it wasn't sustainable. They source the wheat for the vodka within a 90 mile radius (it's made in northeastern Kansas), the bottle is 85 percent recycled glass, the label is made from 100 percent recycled paper with soy ink, each bottle comes with a postage-pd envevlope to mail back the top, which is re-used; the distilling is done with new equipment that is more efficient; the company's billboards (biodegradable vinyl) are re-made into reusuable grocery bags, wine totes etc.; the promotional coasters have seeds embedded and can be planted to grow flowers; the web hosting is a company that in part, uses wind power; and they make donations to environmental organizations.