Occupy Grocery Store: Fake Blueberry Pancakes

I'm not usually a big basher of Big Food or Big Ag, but for some reason this drove me crazy.

Blueberries were on sale at Harris Teeter recently, so I was looking for some pancake mix to make blueberry pancakes - an excuse to have fresh blueberries AND feed my crippling maple addiction.

I almost bought this Hungry Jack "Blueberry" Wheat pancake mix, thinking between its blueberries & the fresh ones, I'd have some pretty good pancakes.

But then I looked closely at the box and in tiny letters it said "artificial blueberry bits." Number one ingredient: Dextrose, a sugar.

Where's the line between obviously fake and trying to pass something off as real? It's a hard one to figure. I mean, no one expects Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries to have actual berries (they have a trivial amount of strawberry juice concentrate and are an incredible 42% sugar according to the Environmental Working Group's Sugar in Children's Cereals report).

But you certainly expect potatoes in Hungry Jack Mashed Potato Mix, don't you?

It's stuff like "artificial blueberry bits" that makes me feel like every step through the grocery store, I have to watch out for corporate food trying to put one over on me - fake food, cheap fillers, surprise chemical additives. And I'm not even a parent.

Deep Thoughts on Blueberry Muffins

16 minutes seems like FOREVER when my blue heaven is waiting to come out of the oven.

While I'm waiting for my Saturday morning breakfast of Betty Crocker muffins to be ready, I thought I'd mock the tin the "wild" blueberries come imprisoned in. There's no indication of where the blueberries come from, and they're of course joined in the tin by high fructose corn syrup.

As part of the mix, the blueberries are almost an afterthought, looking tiny even on the box artwork. I mean, it's not the flour, sugar & milk I'm excited about. Nor is it the eggs, or even the vegetable oil. It's the blueberries. (I'm fully aware this package only cost me about $3 & I should temper my expectations accordingly.)

Fortunately, back in high school I spent many days in the kitchen of Rebecca's Cafe in Boston with people how actually know how to cook, like my cousin Paul Whalen & the immortal Jim Sterling. To get the muffins even close to the consistency they did, I have to add, and I am not making this up, an additional half pint of blueberries.

Finally, I can't make blueberry muffins without thinking about this scene from Casino. EQUAL AMOUNT: