On the rare occasions I eat at McDonald’s, I almost always get the same thing: two regular hamburgers and a medium fries.

It’s what I like at McDonald’s. The bigger hamburgers, I have discovered, after much consumption thereof and time spent actually tasting the food, are nasty and I do not like them. And large is just too much fries. (Note, of course, that I refer to Canadian portions, which are all about a size down when compared to American portions. The last time I was in an American McDonald’s, I ordered a medium Diet Coke and got this frigging vat of pop.)

On very rare occasions, when it is available, I will indulge in a McRib. However, since Loblaws introduced the President’s Choice BBQ Riblet (cheaper and better), these occasions have become even rarer.

But I have one fatal weakness when it comes to McDonald’s: whenever they introduce a new large sandwich, I feel compelled to try it. I am not sure why this is, since inevitably the same thing happens: the sandwich is terrible and leaves me feeling nauseated and gross for hours afterwards. The latest culprit is the Southwestern Chicken Sandwich, which was like a bag of ass sandwiched between two slickly slippery buns with hot sauce on top.

(Traditionally at this point a hippie shows up and tells you something about commercialism.)

Behold: a burger made from ground bacon.

Via Junkyard Clubhouse, I discovered this site filled with image captures from a 1979 church-group cookbook, and after having looked through the (really disgusting) recipes, I have a question.

A lot of the recipes seem to combine Jell-O and pineapple. But I thought pineapple was, like, the thing you couldn’t combine with Jell-O? Because of some acid or chemical or something in the pineapple that prevents gelatin from setting?

Am I wrong about this? Is this just erroneous conventional folk wisdom? Please inform me, people! This is rocking my world!

And I know they will want to know how to make salad bowls out of bacon.

Deep-fried Mars bars are A) very sweet and B) very VERY sticky.

It was an experience, and not a bad one either, but definitely not one I think I’ll repeat any time soon. I think there’s still some of it in the back of my mouth a day later after brushing my teeth twice. Seriously, it’s like the dessert equivalent of eating a bucket of tar.

EDIT TO ADD: Since people keep asking: the Duke of Gloucester, on Yonge south of Bloor.

McDonald’s foods as pizza toppings.

The horrific thing is that, even though I do valiantly try and usually manage to eat in a healthy manner, I found myself wondering what this would be like with A&W or Wendy’s.

This week, we feature refreshing kiwi juice. Kiwifruit (never just “kiwi”, as that is either a flightless bird or a New Zealander or both) are extremely rich in vitamin C, as well as having a great deal of vitamin A and E, a decent amount of potassium (nearly as much as a banana, by weight), and lots of flavinoid antioxidants. However, were you aware that the kiwifruit is native to China?

Indeed it is. The kiwifruit is a product of the pernicious Chinese subcontinent, and as such is one of the great unspoken advancers of Communism upon the world stage. Is it not appropriate that such a modest, proletarian-appearing fruit should be so dedicated to the overflow of the corporate bosses whose unspoken, silent control strangles the will of humanity like the puppetmaster’s strings wrapped around the neck of his marionette?

Important moments in recent kiwifruit history include:

- 1917. Five-year-old Harold “Kim” Philby drinks his first glass of kiwi juice.

- 1940. Ethel Rosenberg, looking for a delicious and healthy dessert for herself and her husband, purchases a small container of kiwi juice to serve alongside a small pineapple upside-down cake. The Rosenbergs greatly enjoy the juice, and fatefully decide to purchase more.

- 1959. The Great Leap Forward begins to fail dramatically, not least because of Lysenkoist planting techniques wherein plants were placed closer together than was healthy in the name of “solidarity.” The sole plant to flourish (although this was later covered up) - the kiwifruit. Indeed, the proliferation of kiwifruit would prove invaluable to Mao when advancing the Cultural Revolution a decade later, as he plied exhausted Chinese nationals with kiwi juice to whip them into socialistic fervour.

- 1968. Chinese spies plant fields of kiwifruit in North Vietnam and Cambodia. In response, Richard Nixon orders secret bombing runs against Cambodia in the hopes of destroying the Red-creating kiwi fields, to no avail. The United States abandons Vietnam within seven years, not least because of the proliferation of North Vietnamese juice bars.

- 1993. Boris Yeltsin, offered a tall glass of kiwi juice, spikes it with vodka at a ratio of 2 parts vodka to 1 part kiwi juice. The Red ideals of the kiwifruit are destroyed by the clear potato-based alcohol favored by Russian politicians and drunkards and drunkard politicians, and the final fall of the Soviet Socialist Republics begins.

In conclusion: Savor the delicious, healthy sweetness of kiwi juice at your own ideological peril.

This week, we feature delicious papaya juice. Papaya juice is, like most sweet juices, considered to be an aphrodisiac in certain parts of the world. It’s also excellent for tenderizing meat as a marinade, and of course papaya juice is a source of not only vitamin C and E but also beta-carotene. However, the most noteworthy aspect of papaya juice is its usefulness in dispatching of one’s enemy.

Consider your enemy. Regardless of whatever form your enemy might take - sneering mastermind, plucky young rebel, devious femme fatale, superintelligent woolly mammoth, what have you - papaya juice offers one thousand and one ways to end their threat.

Consider:

- You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Papaya juice’s sweetness easily masks the flavour of the strychnine you have cunningly mixed into the juice.

- You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. “Aha,” they say, “I know about that whole strychnine trick.” They sweep the glass aside dramatically to make his point, sending it scattering across the table to break on the floor. While their hand is relatively distant from their person, pull out your gun and shoot them.

- You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. The sweetness overcomes them and they go from being a dangerous enemy to a fawning supplicant.

- You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Then, the hidden assassin you have hired, who was cruelly beaten by papaya farmers as a youth, has a flashback to a particularly severe beating, goes mad with rage, and attacks the hated papaya juice drinker.

- You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Then you point out that their entire species is extinct. The delicious drink combined with the crippling knowledge of their own mortality drives them into suicidal depression and they jump off a cliff. (WARNING: Only works on superintelligent woolly mammoths. Do not attempt this method on superintelligent dinosaurs, whose towering egotism leaves them typically immune to this tactic.)

- You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. Then they offer you a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice. This is known as a “papaya standoff,” and to win here you must, through sheer willpower, make sure that your opponent drinks their papaya juice first.

- You offer your enemy a tall, refreshing glass of papaya juice, being sure to serve it alongside a piece of ripe papaya. The inherent vaginal imagery requires them to seek therapy. While not a total victory, this method is certainly useful as a delaying tactic.

There are as many ways to dispatch your enemy with papaya juice as there are stars under the sky. Its sweet power is limited only by your imagination.