What in the name of god happened to the hostess cupcake?

We also have a Pizza Shack and a Dixie Lee and I can say is "gag me with a spoon"!

In my close to 8 years here, there are only 2 meals that I've eaten in restaurants here that I can say were very good. #1. was the meatloaf I ate last time at Montana's and #2 the best pizza I've had was at Vito's and both places are an hour drive from here.

There are plenty of restaurants around here, but no one seems to know how to cook. what's up with that?

The Chinese restaurants are a joke! I honestly don't think chicken balls qualify as chinese food and the eggrolls are the same ones you buy frozen at your local grocery store.

In the highly desirable, over-crowded Lower Mainland of British Columbia, competition in the restaurant business is fierce, profit margins are razor thin, and thousands upon thousands of low-skilled immigrants are willing to work very long hours and really hard for little money, so as to be a Canadian citizen.

That is a recipe for a large variety of well-priced well-prepared restaurant food. And it's exactly why you can't have your cupcake and eat it too on the East Coast where you live.

You want lots of good restaurants, fairly priced, near where you live?

You will need tens of thousands of low-skilled immigrants willing to work very long hours for little pay with all the attendant pollution, overcrowding, environmental degradation, traffic jams, noise, etc that go with it.

The facts are that people who have been in Canada for some time, with a good education, and good command of the English language, are simply not going to work as waiters, cooks, bus-boys and dishwashers at around minimum wage, near where you live on the East Coast.

So, you're not going to have the competitive hard working cheap labor base needed for the types of restaurants you want, unless you accept the masses of low-skilled immigrants and all the attendant pollution, overcrowding, environmental degradation, traffic jams, noise, etc that goes with it.

Go ahead and crunch the numbers and see if you could run a successful restaurant with good quality food and dinner entrées at about $10 - $15 and lunches at about half that!

Good luck trying to find hard working reliable people for restaurants of the types you want, without a big pool of immigrants.

For example, here in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, I strongly suspect that a lot of the Asian run restaurants do not make money after all expenses, but are in essence simply an immigration gateway.

Getting into Canada and making enough money to keep the restaurant afloat is still one hell of a lot better than the unsafe and poor areas a lot of immigrants came from.

Plus immigrants and their kids now have the chance to better themselves economically and socially; something that was much less likely in the overcrowded, polluted, crime ridden, corrupted areas they most likely came from.

The problem is, through no direct fault of their own, massive immigration has turned the once fun Lower Mainland of British Columbia into an overcrowded, polluted, noisy cesspool just like any other smelly, polluted overcrowded, noisy "McCity".

You know how long I have to drive each day, just to get to work and back?

Two hours!

30 years ago I would have been able to drive that same distance in no more than 1 hour!

The area I used to live in has doubled in size in just over 10 years!

The area I now live in is surrounded by parkland, but there are plans for a huge marina and condo development just minutes from my home!

Also, because I live near parkland, and because of the massive immigration, to get home I have to cross a police roadblock checking for alcohol, drugs, theft etc. each summer for the whole summer!

Not only that, but they now have an all-night all-summer East Indian security patrol of the nearby lake! I can see the lake from my living-room and can walk to it in a minute!

All that crap just for lots of good restaurants at good prices?

I'll eat at home thanks........and that's exactly what I do!

Wow! That's one sad story, so I'll stop complaining now and continue to enjoy my own spectacular cooking.

Some people are incredulous when I explain that we have East Indian guards at the lake by my home, every night all summer long! I know it sounds insane but that's the tip of the iceberg in terms of the negative changes Canada's massive immigration policy has brought.

I recently took a job with an Aerospace firm employing 650 people, and most of the people there were not born in Canada and speak broken English. Working there is like going to Hong Kong and New Delhi combined.

Enjoy your peace and tranquility while you can, because once it's gone it's gone for good!

Ask Reyn what's happened to the Lower Mainland of British Columbia over the last 30 years. He lives in a much more congested area then me, but not that long ago his area was mostly simple farmland!

My wife says she now has an idea how the Native Americans must feel!

Chumly, I can empathize as we have several of those "urban growth centers" inMaryland . Ive seen entire counties lose their rural character and become an amalgam of pretty tasteless sameness.

In US the problem is that real regional foods are becoming extinct. I was thinking about the REAL DONUT. Stuff that neither Dunkin, nor Tim Hortons could produce. SInce the chain foods have discovered the secret of maintaining profit margins at low profit margin enterprises. There was a time when "Krispy Kreme was actually a good donut. They taste like **** now, In Pa weve had a local institution called "The TASTYCAKE" . It is now a brecciated business enterprise that has disposed of all its previous recipes and substituted **** like corn syrup for real sugar, stabilizers for tasty ingredients , and stuff that never should ever be considered a food group. Wde add crap like SIlicon Dioxide to enhance color, tooth, and maintain shape. Its friggin SAND in your tastycake and Little Debbie.
(Dont get me going on Little Debbies--this great southern snack food has been turned into a toxic laced Zombie cake)

I wanna leave you with the realization that all foods are not created for taste or nutrition. They are created for
1. PROFIT


2. All other reasons , defer back to reason 1


I learned that the venerable HErshey Bar has changed significantly and quietly since desert storm days. The folks at Hershey have discovered that by adding CLAY to our candy bars, they save ingredients and enhance things like mouth feel and tendencies to melt in hot weasther.
A Hershey bar of today will turn a dull pasty looking color in a few weeks after production (yet the product, "sell by date" is one Ice AGe away). The dull pasty grey look is a function of the addition of either kaolin or Montmorillonite, both of which are cheap and readily available from mines around the world. So, if you drive to a Hershey Chocolate plant, you will see, out back, large bins of dry clays and silicon dioxide waiting for grinding and seiving , so that they too can be added to the recidpe for a hershey bar.

ALSO-I want sugar back in my sweets. I carefully look at soda labels and find that I must pay more for sodas that dont have "High fructose corn syrup" as their main ingredient. Now their are some sodas that advertise that they are made with "real cane sugar"

I have some mebers of my family that are diabetic (in my generation, not erlier) and My suspicions are that obesity and sugar substitutes dont help the prognosis.

So, well be eatin dirt and gettin fat and , like veal calves, we dont even enjoy our tastebuds any more.

Hey, maybe we can start somethin by making these food manufacturers become more responsible to their customers, otherwise we shut off the teats to the cash cow.

Frontier Restaurant Albuquerque NM, cental ave, very funky, excellent food, most expensive being the Frontier Burrito at $7.99

We have a Perkins in Raleigh over on Capital Blvd and it's okay but nothing special. Several Cracker Barrels.

But right up the street is a little place called Courtneys that I htink has a handful of locations in the area and it is wonderful. squinney and I ate there a about a week ago.

Huge portions of great food... all they do is breakfast and lnch. In fact, I may throw on a shirt and go over right now.

Ill bet they add silica to their gravies and chocolate desserts

who wants to live forever?

Jesus! This is worse than I even thought!

Mmmmmmm. Cupcakes.

Mmmmmmm. Saint Cupcake (www.saintcupcake.com/index.php/about/ scroll down for cupcake porn slideshow)

You can't go more than a few blocks in my city without coming across great food at good prices. Lucky me!

I still like Yankee Doodles (Drakes). I had one the other day for the first time in at least four years and I have to admit, I found it heavenly. I was in the grocery store, so I picked up a box of twelve and yes, I would have eaten every single one of them if my son hadn't beaten me to them.

Some people find them dry - but I love that really soft, crumbly texture. I don't know how they achieve it and I don't want to know.

I also noticed they've started making the hostess fruit pies like huge or something. My mom used to put one of those in my lunch every single day- either a cherry or apple - there was a hostess factory near the house I grew up in and you could get hostess stuff really cheap in bulk. But I never did like their cupcakes as much as yankee doodles or tasty cakes- and I NEVER liked twinkies - I could taste the chemicals in them even as a kid.
The only little debbie thing I ever liked was their oatmeal cookie creme sandwiches.
Dang- now I'm not gonna stop thinking about this until I go on a ho-ho, ding-dong, yankee doodle binge.

*I do still like Hershey's chocolate though in small pieces - the hershey kisses still taste the same I think, though I have noticed a definite negative difference in their candy bars (which used to be my favorites - I've had to switch to Reese's peanut butter cups).
And I can't even eat Nestle crunch bars at all anymore - they definitely don't deliver the taste sensation they used to.
Doesn't this make you sad for all the little kids who are growing up thinking this is what stuff is supposed to taste like? Fortunately, they'll never know what they're missing.

Oh noooooooo!!!!!! She had to go and mention the ho-ho, ding-dong and twinkies

We don't have that stuff here

regarding donuts, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Krispy Kremes.

They are the Mecca of donuts.

Deadly, but they are sooooooo good.

They're being made costantly, so you get them warm right out of the oven.

I refuse to go to one of these chain restaurants, incl. Dunkin Donuts,
Starbucks and the likes. Dto. for lousy tasting chocolate. If I am ingesting
already a high calorie item then it better be darn good.

I frequent little local restaurants and cafes and buy good quality chocolate
or cake.

Nods to CJ.

Chai, Farmerman did mention Krispy Cremes.

Frontier's burritos - they're famous for them, I think. (Still haven't been there.)

I'm not a fan.

I don't go to any chain restaruants either. Either the food sucks or it's WAY to expensive or both. Then I am pissed off allday because I feel like I got ripped off or I am full on nasty food or both.

It's a total waste of money. Somewhere sombody is making alot of money off this $hit and it ain't going to be me. I am going to the market making dinner and haveing my freinds over.

We all save money, eat healthy food and hang out together. Like an Urban Tribe.

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http://www.urbantribes.net/

Urban tribes

An urban tribe is a subculture that originates and develops within urban areas.It is a group of people in urban areas who have some kind of close association based upon similar lifestyles or activities. Often in larger cities, the enormous size and complexity of the society creates a sense of alienation or isolation on the level of the individual. This can lead to the formation of urban tribes, in which people unite behind common interests to smaller-scale communities.

Re: What in the name of god happened to the hostess cupcake?


I think you are missing the taste of the partially hydrogenated fats. Originally, Hostess used lard, then they switched to oils high in trans fat. Now they are attempting to make the product "healthy", and we all know healthy cupcakes taste like socks.

If you want to make your own this is actually a good recipe:

Mock Hostess Cupcake Recipe