Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everybody.  In honor of the season, please enjoy this incredible Christmas card that our friend Donnie sent to us.  Have you checked your shitters?

Yuletide Snacks

It's Christmas Eve, and the only seasonal goodie that I've written about so far has been Gingerbread Toast Crunch and Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes.  This is the last opportunity I'm going to have to squeeze in some of the more interesting holiday themed snacks that we've tried this year, so here goes.

One of the other Little Debbie snacks that we picked up were their Mini Christmas Tree Cake Donuts.  They're pretty much just vanilla donuts with the same coating as the brand's Christmas Tree cakes.  The combination is very tasty, especially with a cup of coffee.

One of my favorite holiday snacks that we had this year was a gift from my dad.  When my grandfather was alive, dad used to give Harry & David Royal Rivera Pears to him as an early Christmas present every year.  This year, he ordered a box of them for us.

I remember enjoying these when my grandfather sharing them with me when I was a kid, but I didn't remember that they were this good!  When they ripen, they become soft and juicy and one of the best tasting pieces of fruit that I've ever eaten.

One of my favorite types of cookies to eat are shortbread, but I usually only get them around the holiday season.  I especially like the tins of Royal Dansk butter cookies, Stauffer's holiday shortbread cookies, and Walker's mini shortbread cookies.

I've always loved the vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry wafer sandwiches that you can find at pretty much every grocery store in the country.  Voortman produced two limited edition Candy Cane and Eggnog flavored wafers this year that I've never seen before this year.  The Candy Cane ones are very good, but the Eggnog Wafers are freaking incredible!  If you own a restaurant that serves eggnog and want to kick up the presentation, serve it in a cup with a saucer with one or two of these wafers.

One of the more interesting seasonal snacks we found were Toasty Holiday Peanut M&M's.  They've got an interesting smoky and sweet flavor that blends chocolate, roasted peanuts, cinnamon, vanilla, spiced sugar, and caramel.  My wife didn't care for them much and said the flavor reminded her of cinnamon and Worcestershite Sauce, but I thought they were really good.

 

Another limited edition seasonal candy that we got to try were Sugar Cookie Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

They're just regular Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that are stuffed with little bits of sugar cookie mixed in with the peanut butter.  They give the cups a crunchy texture, but the only difference I could tell in the flavor is that they're more sweet than a regular cup.  It didn't really remind me of the taste of a sugar cookie.

I can't let a holiday season go by without picking up a bag of Hershey Miniatures.  When I was a kid, my favorite ones were the Hershey Special Dark bars, but these days my favorite is Mr. Goodbar.  I'm not sure if this is true, but I remember reading that this is the only way to purchase a Hershey Krackel Bar in 2024.  It hadn't occurred to me that this was the case, but I think the article may be correct.  I can't remember the last time that I saw a full size Krackel Bar, or even a fun size one in an assortment bag.

This International Delight Peppermint Mocha Iced Coffee grabbed my attention solely on its Home Alone inspired packaging.  The part that really sold me was the Wet Bandits looking in the window.

Crowbars up!

I'm not generally a big fan of sweet coffee, but this was pretty tasty and definitely worth picking up as a holiday treat.

Winter Spiced Cranberry Sprite was something that I was looking forward to trying ever since it was first announced, but I wasn't overly impressed with it.  It's not terrible, but it didn't taste too much like cranberry to me.  It just tasted like Sprite with some weird spice flavor mixed in.

I think that Starry Cranberry Blizz tastes a lot better than Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry, but it's not my favorite Christmas seasonal soda that was available this year.

 

My favorite for the second holiday season in a row is Canada Dry Zero Sugar Cranberry Ginger Ale.  If getting excited about ginger ale is a sign of being middle-aged, I suppose I'm guilty as charged.  I don't really have strong opinions about ginger ale one way or the other, but it makes a good base to bring out the cranberry flavor.

And that's a wrap on Christmas snacks in 2024.

Shingles For Your Gingerbread House

Gingerbread Toast Crunch
General Mills (2024)
This has quickly become my new favorite Christmas-themed breakfast cereal.  It's good to have with milk for breakfast, it's even better to eat dry as a snack, and it'd probably be a pretty decent way to put shingles on a gingerbread house if you're making one for the holidays.

This is the back of the box  (click here to enlarge)

The flavor is a combination of cinnamon, sugar, and gingerbread that's not sickeningly sweet, but not bland either.  I'm going to pick up a few boxes of this when it goes on clearance after the holidays to use in trail mix.

God Bless Us, Every Kernel

Mickey's Christmas Carol Coloring Book
Orville Redenbacher (1983)
During the holiday season of 1983, shoppers could pick up a free Mickey's Christmas Carol coloring book with the purchase of two jars of Orville Redenbacher popcorn.

These days, you can usually find these coloring books on eBay for ten dollars or less, but you'll have to supply your own popcorn.

The Man Of Steal

Rickey Henderson
1958 - 2024
The greatest leadoff hitter, and the greatest baserunner that the sport has ever seen passed away today, just four days before what would have been his 66th birthday.

The first ballot Hall of Famer is one of the greatest players who ever set foot on a baseball diamond.  In a career that spanned a quarter of a century, Mr. Henderson has set records in baseball that may never be broken, including most career stolen bases (1,406), most seasons leading the league in stolen bases (12), most runs scored (2,295), most unintentional walks (2,129), most games led off with a home rum (81), and most consecutive seasons in which he hit a home run (25).  He's also the only player in the 123 year history of the American League to steal over 100 bases in a single season, and he did it three times.

Calling Rickey Henderson the all-time stolen base king doesn't do justice to this man's dominance on the basepaths.  This chart that was put together by jletha on Reddit tells the story better than words could.  He isn't just the greatest base stealer of all time - he's the greatest by a mile.  His career total is just one shy of putting him at a 50% lead over Lou Brock, who has the second most stolen bases of all time.  He broke Brock's all-time record on May 1, 1991, which is around the halfway point of his Major League career which began in 1979 and ended in 2003.

Here's a number that puts Rickey's dominance on the basepaths in perspective.  He played for the New York Yankees from the start of the 1985 season until June 21, 1989 when he was traded to the Oakland Athletics.  In his four and a half seasons with the Yankees, he set the record for most stolen bases in franchise history with 326.  Derek Jeter broke that record on May 28th, 2011.  Jeter debuted with the Yankees on May 29, 1995 and became the team's starting shortstop the following year.  It took Derek Jeter 16 years (over 1,700 more games played in a Yankee uniform) to accomplish on the basepaths what Rickey Henderson did in just four and a half seasons.  Incidentally, after the Yankees traded him to the Athletics, he went on to lead the team to a World Series Championship, winning the ALCS MVP in the process.

Here's another statistic that absolutely blows my mind.  In 1982, Rickey Henderson stole 130 bases in a single season.  That was two more stolen bases than the Philadelphia Phillies entire team had that season.  It's more stolen bases than 13 entire teams had in a 2024 season, which took place after the bases were enlarged and the rules were changed to limit a pitcher's attempts to pick off a batter.

In a 2008 article for Sports Illustrated in which it was argued that Mr. Henderson should be the first person to receive 100% of the vote for their Hall of Fame candidacy, Joe Posnanski shared this observation:

I'm about give you one of my all-time favorite statistics: Rickey Henderson walked 796 times in his career leading off an inning. Think about this again. There would be nothing, absolutely nothing, a pitcher would want to avoid more than walking Rickey Henderson to lead off an inning. And yet he walked seven hundred ninety six times to lead off an inning.

He walked more times just leading off an in inning than Lou Brock, Roberto Clemente, Luis Aparicio, Ernie Banks, Kirby Puckett, Ryne Sandberg and more than 50 other Hall of Famers walked in their entire careers.

I simply cannot imagine a baseball statistic more staggering.

There will never be another Rickey Henderson.

This Is A Sorority House, Not A Convent

Black Christmas
Warner Bros Pictures (1974)
The movie that is widely considered to be both the first slasher flick and the first Christmas horror movie was released fifty years ago today.

If you want to see it before Christmas, I'm happy to say that it's very easy to find.  It's streaming for free on Tubi, Crackle, Amazon Prime, and The Roku Channel, and it's available commercial-free on Kanopy, Shudder, Peacock, and about a dozen other providers.  Just be sure that you're getting the original film from 1974 because this movie has received not one, but two remakes.  The 2006 remake isn't as good as the original, but it's a decent modern slasher that's worth checking out.  However, the 2019 remake is hands down the worst horror movie that I've ever seen in theaters and has no redeeming qualities of any kind.

This Cracker Is Praising The Barrel

Cracker Barrel
Highland Park Blvd - Wilkes Barre, PA
My wife and I both have come to appreciate Cracker Barrel more with each passing year.  The food is both reasonably priced and delicious, their store is fun to browse through while you're waiting to be seated or after you've finished eating, and best of all, the atmosphere has remained relatively unchanged since I first set foot in the place.

That last point about the atmosphere may seem like a silly thing to point out for a nationwide chain like Cracker Barrel, but it's a big deal to me.  When I was growing up in the 80's and 90's, every restaurant that I remember visiting made an effort to make their dining room feel pleasant and comfortable.  This is true even for fast food restaurants.  McDonald's and Burger King had dining rooms with dark wood, large booths that had a salt and pepper shaker on each table, a play area for children, and in some cases were decorated in such a way that set them apart from other restaurants in the chain.  I remember the McDonald's in Hazleton had their walls set up as three dimensional representations of the coal industry that once dominated Northeast PA.  That same restaurant today looks like just about every other fast food establishment in the 2020's, which is to say that it feels cold, empty, and lifeless - like something you'd find at an airport or a bus station.

I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way because I frequently see comparisons being made to the dining rooms of chain restaurants in the 80's and 90's to today.  The old Taco Bell dining room with it's southwest color scheme had a charm all of its own, as did Wendy's with their yellow and red design and their sunroom at the front of each restaurant, and Pizza Hut with their dark brick walls and Tiffany style lamps hanging from the ceiling above each table.  Go into any of these places today and the vibe feels more like a warehouse or something out of a dystopian fiction that, if it were to change tomorrow, would be missed by absolutely no one.

I'm sure there are some chain restaurants across the country with locations that haven't been remodeled to fit the modern aesthetic (if you could even call it that), or maybe a chain or two that I haven't been to who place more of an emphasis on making their dining rooms feel like a place that you'd want to relax for a half an hour or so.  There are also diners and small town restaurants that still feel warm and inviting, although they are far fewer and further between than they used to be.  However, the only chain restaurant that I've been to that have adhered to the principle of "if it's not broke, don't fix it" with their dining room atmosphere is Cracker Barrel.  I'm not going to go so far as to say that nothing at all has changed, but it feels exactly the same as it always has for the most part and I appreciate that.

The food here is also very good.  I had their pot roast dinner with hashbrown casserole on the side, and a glass of Sugar Plum iced tea to drink, and everything was delicious as it always has been.

 

Quite a few of our holiday decorations and Christmas tree ornaments have come from the Cracker Barrel store.  We have far too many decorations for the size of our house so we didn't pick up anything new, but it's still a lot of fun to look around and see what they've got.

We didn't walk away empty handed though.  There was a sign that advertised holiday pies to take home, and that Cinnamon Roll pie was calling my name!

Santa's Two Wheeled Sleigh

We didn't have much time to walk around Lititz when we stopped at the Tomato Pie Cafe this past weekend, but we did get to see this group of bikes go speeding past The Wilbur Hotel when we were headed back to the car. 

Sweet bike, St. Nick!

Twenty Years Of Berwick Lights

Christmas Boulevard
Berwick, PA (2023)
This is the 20th consecutive year that my wife and I have driven out to see the Berwick Lights together during the holiday season.  Our first year was in 2005 before she and I even started dating, and we've been out here every year since.  It's crazy how fast twenty years can go by.  It doesn't really seem like that long ago, but it's just a few years short of being half of my life.

Twenty years is peanuts compared to the length of time that Berwick have turned Market Street into a seasonal attraction.  The first Christmas Boulevard was put together in 1947 and this is the 78th year for the holiday tradition.  

Happy holidays!