Taste Testin'

If you've memorized my blog posts, as is required of all regular readers, you know that my Highly Esteemed Husband and I had a nasty experience with hazelnut iced coffee at a local McD's a couple weeks ago.

I couldn't believe my beloved McDonald's would intentionally create a drink so heinous. It seemed only fair to give the fast food purveyor another chance.

Strictly for research purposes. It had nothing to do with my affection for caffeine or the two coupons for free iced coffee we had scored at work. Plus, think of Ronald. It ain't easy being a clown nowadays. Those giant shoes aren't gettin' any cheaper. We needed to restore his good name.

Since all legitimate research is based on a hypothesis, here is mine:

As it pertains to the sense of taste, the negative reaction to the initial caffeinated sampling was not indicative of the innate and essential properties of the signature beverage in its properly configured proportions and was instead the byproduct of operator error.

In other words, the confused BigMacista working the counter during our previous visit had f*ed up our hazelnut coffee drinks.

All systems were go on Monday for the re-tasting. Husband had the day off. Children were safely deposited at camp. And we in our car hurtling (actually pre-caffeine it's more like moseying) towards our favorite McD's.

I don't know if it's an indictment on suburbia that we have four McDonald's within a 15 minute drive of our house, or an indictment of the sorry state of our children's' diets that we have a "favorite" among the available Golden Arches. But we do, and soon enough we were there.

Having sworn off hazelnut flavoring for the rest of our lives after our earlier traumatic experience, we ordered one regular iced coffee and one "vanilla."

And they were good. Not Starbucks Frappuccino good, but a solid B good. Actually, they were free, so that warrants a B+ at least.

Therefore, our testing confirmed the hypothesis, in that it strongly suggests the revolting mega-sweetness of our initial experience was the result of a counter person who was very, very confused.

Whereas this time our waitperson seemed familiar with the recipe. Although strangely, the "vanilla" flavored version actually tasted more coffee-ish than the simple coffee version. There seems to be some estimation in the process that allows for variation (which all seems strangely un-McDonald's to me.)

Some sort of cream goo (technical term) gets squirted in, and I suppose that goo is sweetened...my plain coffee version was lighter than the husband's vanilla, so it must have accidentally had more of that cream junk.

Anyway, we had a lovely breakfast, perched at a Mickey D's cafe table. Our iced coffee washed down a couple of sausage sandwich breakfasts. McDonald's also happily provided reading material -- the calorie counts and nutritional information listed on the back of the paper tray-liner.

Look at all the fat and sodium! Enjoy your meal!

Somehow though, the nutritional awareness made my sausage and egg biscuit sandwich feel very naughty, and I savored every bite (blame twelve years of Catholic school for that twisted logic.)

Then we were off, icy remains of coffee beverage in hand, to do some shopping at Target and Old Navy.

Damn! We are such jetsetters.

Now, just one of you dare say our lives aren't exciting as hell.