Geometrical Shapes

So I was noticing today at the local Pathmark that all of the Entenmann's cakes are now in a square box instead of a rectangular one.  But I just can't for the life of me say for certain if this is because they've just decided to make the cakes square for some reason while providing the same amount of cake, or because it seemed like a nice way to hide one of those stealth price increases.  The current Marshmallow Iced Devils Food Cake has 510 grams of cake, 8 260 gram servings, 260 calories each, and that looked to be the same for the Black and White Cake, the Fudge Iced, etc.  So if anyone out there has a 2 or 3 month old Entenmann's cake in their freezer in the "classic" rectangular box, can we get to the bottom of this?

And then moving from the squares and rectangles to the circles, orbs, spheres, ellipses and similar such things, there is more news on the Tim Hortons front.

As described here and elsewhere, the Riese Organization, a longtime purveyor of indescribable fast food to the NYC masses, is spending the weekend turning its Dunkin Donuts outlets into Tim Hortons outlets, giving Tims an instant beachhead in Manhattan several weeks ahead of the previously announced co-branding with Cold Stone Creamery.

Is this an example of "watch what you wish for, you might get it?"  The Riese Organization, its official corporate history aside, is just not known for its fine food and fine restaurants.  As is mentioned in the NYT article linked above, there is an infamous incident in which the NY Post took pictures of beloved animals enjoying the cuisine at a Riese Dunkin Donuts outlet.  OK, in fairness, I should do my first-ever blog link to the NY Post and its coverage of the donut war news.  I'm sure that kind of thing doesn't happen often.  Still, as much as I like my timbits, I'm not eager to get them at the Riese food courts that I've managed to avoid for many decades, just as I've managed to avoid their Fridays franchises.  And their Houlihans outlets.  And everything else.

Cold Stone Timbits

I am a big Tim Hortons fan.  I love just thinking about precious little Timbits, only 60 calories in a banana cream.  You can read what I said here about the genius idea of having Wendy's spin off Tim's.  

I am not a Cold Stone Creamery fan.  I prefer Ben and Jerry's, where Ben and Jerry do the hard work of picking yummy flavor combinations for me.  I think it's too much work to have to select the mix-ins at Cold Stone, and I don't think the ice cream is particularly wonderful that I've wanted to wait on line for 45 minutes as I once did with my niece.

But it looks like I'll be going to Cold Stone a little more often now that they've announced plans to roll out a co-branding initiative to three Manhattan stores, including the one on 42nd St. across from the AMC Empire theatre.

I don't know how much space each brand will get, but let me say right now loud and clear that they better have room for some Timbits.

I worry a little about having temptation so close at hand, or that the bloom will go off the rose when I can get Timbits more easily.  But hey, life is full of risks.