Vegan MoFo - Copycats and crap shops

One of the things I wanted to do was a whole week of copycats - recipes that other MoFo'ers posted this month.  I didn't get around to that, but since I'd bought all the ingredients to make The I-40 Kitchen's Sausage Balls, I decided that those, at the very least, I had to have.

I only made a half batch because I didn't want to use up the entire box of Bisquick on one recipe.  I used Cheezly mature red cheddar for the cheese and Fry's sliceable sausage log thing for the sausage.  I tried one almost right out of the oven, and they were amazing, but they were also kinda crying out for gravy, so I whipped some up.  This was probably the trashiest and most delicious meal I've ever eaten!  I kinda wish I'd made a whole batch because we ate them all, but at the same time, I would probably already have eaten the rest if I had done.

After breakfast, we had to go get Mike's passport photos done, and then I headed up to Cameron Toll shopping centre.  They have a new American store called Amerikandy (I guess using a k when neither America or candy is spelled with a k gives it that added whimsy so crucial to a store that sells nothing but junk food).  When I walked by the other day and saw a tower of root beer, I promised myself I'd go back and check it out.

I had a comprehensive look around, and this is the impression I came away with - the person running the shop has probably never been to the US and possibly was accidentally sent a bunch of crap that s/he then marked up ridiculously to try to offload it to dupes.  They have boxes of Cocoa Pebbles for £8, and cans of soda (Mug and A&W root beers, Wild Cherry Pepsi, vanilla Coke, grape Fanta, and a few flavours of Mountain Dew) for £1.50 each or £16.50 for a 12-pack.  They also have Pop Tarts.  The rest of the shop, which, as you may recall, is called Amerikandy, is full of candy and junk food from the UK, some of it even made in Edinburgh.  I promise you that no child in the US will have ever consumed an Iron Brew (their spelling) lollipop.

Growing up only buying brand-name sodas when they were on sale for 2/$5 (because the generics were half as much and tasted the same), I'm reluctant to part with what amounts to about $25 for a box of soda.  When you then consider that Lupe Pinto's has most of the same sodas for £1.10 each, and also has other products I'd actually want to buy, I'm unlikely to shop here again.  However, I did grab a few things out of a combination of desperation (for root beer) and curiosity/shock value.

Mountain Dew, Wild Cherry Pepsi (which I've loved since my childhood taking the Greyhound from TX to NY, stopping at Withville, VA, for driver changes on almost every trip), A&W root beer, and Mug root beer.  Let's get a closer look at that Mountain Dew, shall we?

What the honest fork, Mountain Dew?!  Yes, that is a mountain man (called Hillbilly Willy) with a moonshine bottle cork blasting a hole through his hat, and it's called "throwback".  Well, at least he doesn't have a wild look in his eyes and isn't brandishing a shotgun.  The gimmick with this is that it's made with sugar (like the original Mountain Dew) instead of HFCS (like current Mtn Dew).  Soda companies' attempts to be down with the kids by doing some stupid promotion or changing their products to be more "xtreme" are annoying but usually not offensive, so could we please not use stereotypes in our marketing campaigns?

I'm hoping to get some more tester recipes done tonight and tomorrow, so I'll blog about those then.