2435 Mystery Mountain

Food is an ingrained part of our culture.  That's why Lady Gaga made such an impact a few years ago when she appeared at an awards ceremony outfitted in a dress made from raw meat.

Perhaps that's why everybody was so surprised at the Oscar's this year when she appeared in a simple white gown to sing songs from the Sound of Music.  What they didn't know was her dress was actually fashioned from bleached pork rinds.

So when a person gave me a Brown and Haley Mountain Bar recently I was curious.  I haven't had a Mountain Bar since I was a kid.  My idealized golden glow of memory promised a treat.

Not so much.  One word: Bland.

The chocolate and peanut concoction seems to have had a bit of a recipe alteration.  It still claims to be "a mountain of chocolate flavor with crunchy peanuts over a creamy vanilla center."  But adding the word "flavor" to the word chocolate has made less room for actual chocolate.  The peanuts?  Pulverized to tasteless powder.  The vanilla cream?  Wouldn't stand up to the lard in an Oreo.

Wonder if the flavorlessness is related to the partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, invertase, dextrose, or egg albumen.  Or the sodium laurel sulfate added as a "whipping aid."  Sodium laurel sulfate is the ingredient that makes your hair shampoo lather.  Yum. 

Maybe its unidentifiable blandness is because or the trace flavors engendered by the Mountain Bar being "manufactured on shared equipment that processes peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, soy, and wheat. 

Or it could be because the word they use to describe how they make it is, "manufactured." 

Delicious candy concoction? No. Something dry and tough enough to make a dress out of? Yes. 

Even better as a hockey puck. 

America, ya gotta love it.