Friday, May 25, 2012

Red Velvet covered promises



Today on facebook there was a post from a facebook friend that made me laugh out loud.
It read:
Dear xyz  Donuts: you can NOT just put red food coloring in a mix and call it a red velvet donut. For those of us who know the true deliciousness of a moist red velvet cake w/cream cheese frosting, we cry foul!
Reminded me of the old saying about dressing up a pig but its still a pig.  Things are not always what they claim to be.  Heck, even people aren’t always what they claim to be.  Certainly I learned that lesson in my online dating days.  Well, until Joe came along and was a “real” as I was.  

But back to the donuts.  I know the owner of this particular donut shop for which subbed in xyz because they are THE BEST donuts in Muskogee and beyond.  I am tempted to call him and ask him if it was simply red food coloring in the donut batter instead of actual red velvet cake batter. If so, shame on him.  LOL  Foul! as my facebook friend said.

Our new work “logo” is a Heart.  We are Hope, the Hospice with Heart.  We have embraced this new name and the pink and black colors having been Horizon Hospice before with orange and reds and what on earth is the symbol for horizon?  Certainly not as cute as a heart and before that we were Trinity and a purple leaf for some reason??  Anyway, we were going through a catalog that is known for its “cheap toys and assorted other junk” to put it nicely so I don’t know what made my co-worker and I think that the “heart shaped balloons for only $16.99 for 144 would be anything but “crap”.  But needing something to give away at Old Settlers Day in Checotah to the kids we ordered them.  They came and when you took them out of the bag they were remotely shaped like hearts, that is if you had them right side up.  Upside down they looked somewhat pornographic (think male privates).  We had a good laugh and agreed that we would have to blow all of them up if we were going to hand them out.  So we blew one up.  It would only blow up so far and then it popped in your face, well before it ever looked like a heart.  What it did resemble if you blew it up enough that it was as full as it could get without popping was a breast with 2 nipples.  Halfway blown up they did resemble a Hello Kitty but only the pink ones and we would have to draw cat faces on them and somehow Hope Hospice, the hospice with Hello kitty didn’t work.  The red ones looked like devil horns when blown up halfway.  And so, I emailed the company and asked for a refund telling them that the balloons would not blow up into hearts without popping.  They very nicely issued me a credit.  When I went back on line to use the credit there was a survey to rate the products recently ordered and there were comments from other consumers.  Had I read those BEFORE I ordered, I wouldn’t have wasted my time.  Somehow the word balls and deformed boobie would have prevented me from ordering.

Last fall I ordered a dress for my wedding that I still am awaiting a refund on 3 months after I returned it.  To CHINA!!!!..what an ordeal that’s been.  Thankfully, the dress was pretty cheap (less than $100) and so I’m not out hundreds of dollars like some of the others who have posted complaints about the company on the website.  Should’ve know when I saw the number was international that I was risking my money.  But at the time I had several weeks before the wedding and it was a beautiful dress.  At least it was on the website.  When my size 24 (I ordered a 14) mustard yellow (the site and picture said off white) and puffy sleeve, peasant dress (not at all what I ordered) arrived I was super disappointed and assumed they had sent me the wrong dress.  Apparently off white in English and off white in China are two different colors. They told me that the dress I received was the same one on the website and even after I took pictures and sent them they insisted it was my error.  Paypal is still working on that one.

Then there were the pedometers.  The “morale” committee at work for which I’m in  charge decided to celebrate National Take a Step day in May with a campaign to see who could walk the most steps with weekly prizes being given.  I ordered “CHEAP” pedometers thinking they would be good enough for our purposes.  What a joke!  It took about 10 minutes for everyone to discover that they were so sensitive that if you sneezed it counted it as steps. One creative employee put one on her shoe and one on her bra to see which would calculate the most steps. Others turned theirs into  maracas and shook steps onto theirs.  Needless to say, the contest never got off the ground and the pedometer sit on my desk, a reminder that you get what you pay for.  It would cost more to ship them back than they cost.
And who among us has not fallen prey to the late night commercials, the “as seen on tv” products.  Some of them may be totally worth the money but I suspect most are pieces of junk.  Or at least they don’t deliver what they advertise. Pajama jeans for example “flatter every figure”.  I don’t think so.  They look horrific on the 100 pound model.  Or all timesaving appliances like the melon slicer.  I actually bought this one at just 9.95 and got a free fruit cookbook after I paid separate shipping and handling.  It’s totally worthless. I had visions of slicing thru a cantelope like an apple slicer slices an apple into nice little wedges.  The melon they use to demonstrate on tv must have paperthin skin ‘cause I broke the plastic rim and bent the blade the first try to get it to slice my cantelope. 
One year Andy bought me the perfect pancake maker from the “as seen on tv” site.  He was super excited about it.  Not only did it not make perfect pancakes but I managed to set a pancake on fire (yes flaming pancake) with the stupid thing.  (sorry Andy, it was the thought that counts).  
From the “miracle” breast growing cream I ordered from the back of one of my mom’s True Story magazines when I was about 10 years old to the solar tanning panel guaranteed to give you a golden tan which turned out to be a very large piece of tin foil or something that resembled that, I have fallen victim time and time again to product promises. 
The truth is “you get what you pay for”, “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is” , “there is no such thing as a free lunch” and..well you get my drift.
It’s no wonder our society has become increasingly cynical.  Seems there is always a “catch”, a hidden motive, fine, fine print or a disclaimer read so fast that there is no way you can understand what they just said on the commercial.
Oh, every once in a while you find that the sale is really a sale and not just an item marked up the night before, put on sale the next day and you end up paying more thinking you are getting a good deal.  And every once in a while a product that is advertised actually does what it says it will do.  If that happens let me know but I probably won't believe you...lol
Maybe my facebook friend missed the donut disclaimer…maybe there was fine print underneath the sign that said “red velvet like” donut. 
I read labels a lot now that I am diabetic and as a result a trip to the grocery can take a lot of extra time as I try to decode the food labels.  Sugar free doesn’t mean no sugar and 100% juice doesn’t mean its 100% the type of juice you think it is.  Your orange juice may be 100% juice but it might be cherry juice and grape juice and pineapple juice with orange food coloring to make it look orange and thus be labeled orange juice.  Ok, that’s an exaggeration but you get my point.  Net carbs, and carbs and other sugar alcohols and fiber and portion size….its enough to make you throw up your hands and say will somebody just tell me the truth about what is in this thing??????? 
What happened to truth in advertising?  At what point is bending the truth and outright lie? 
That’s a subject for another blog.  Right now I am going to go and have some low carb, no sugar added, all natural vanilla bean, no artificial color or flavoring good for me frozen yogurt.  Somehow I suspect if it needs that many words to describe it and “sell “ its   probably not worth the effort to dip it.  Maybe I’ll have a peach instead.    

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