Consider "Texas Two Step Chicken" on the back of my jar of salsa. The two steps are basically "buy some chicken" and "bake it." I mean, you do put the salsa and some other prepared condiments on it before baking, but that hardly qualifies as a recipe.

My wife gets a magazine whose purpose is to provide simple recipes. One of the ways they keep costs down is to print readers' suggestions. Let me tell you, there's some pretty non-creative readers out there. For example, one recipe consisted of essentially store-bought ravioli, with a store-bought alfredo sauce, and topped with bacon. Since when is buying stuff at the grocery store and heating it up a recipe? Hey, with that as the benchmark, I could make all kinds of "recipes." Just replace the store-bought alfredo sauce with store-bought marinara, or bolognese, or vodka sauce, or anything else. Top with gratuitous bacon.

There's another pet peeve, while we're here. I live in the South. Everything is better with bacon. Potato salad? Yeah, put some bacon in there. Corn chowder? Make it with chicken stock and add some bacon on top. My friend Ryan over at vegblog.org became a vegan a while ago. He told me a story about the subsequent family Thanksgiving dinner. A well-meaning relative told him "since you're vegan now, I made my fish entree without the bacon." "Well," he told her, "there's still the fish." Oh. Right. People just don't think about the gratuitous meat.

It's really no wonder that Americans are so fat and so culinarily deprived. We get vegetables that are flavorless and bland because we breed them for shape, color, and durability during shipment (none of which favors flavor). Then, when we try to spice things up, we add a bunch of fat (chicken fat, chicken broth, bacon, etc.) to make up for the bland taste. Nutrition goes down, calories and bad stuff go up. Simple equation.

Since so few people cook much sophisticated food any more, what qualifies as a recipe has had to shift. Nobody knows how to make a roux any more (I always have to ask my wife the proportions), much less a sauce based on a roux. So we resort to so-called "recipes" that are little more than shopping lists for prepared foods and heating directions.

How many recipes can there be? One might say "an infinite number," but I think that's too generous. There's only so many unique combinations of stuff that are likely to appeal. And remember that we're trying to appeal to the most basic of people. When you look at the recipes I'm talking about (on boxes, jars, cans), these are written for people who have little more than the box, jar, or can of product being promoted.

So, for the challenged marketing wonk who has to put some passable "recipe" on a product, here's Paco's Special <insert adjective> <insert product>:

• Take 2 chicken breasts (it's always 2 chicken breasts)
• Apply 2 tablespoons of <product>
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
• Bake 15-20 minutes or until done (duh. Don't bake more or less than 'done')

Congratulations.

That's the best picture my iPhone could do.

Consider for a moment that you can't call something "cheese" unless it is naturally made. A bunch of other terms exist like "pasteurized process cheese" and "pasteurized process cheese food" and "pasteurized process cheese product" to describe things that you might mistake for cheese. That last one is most interesting in that it is more a failure to fit any of the other categories than an achievement of some level of quality. I.e., to be "pasteurized process cheese" there is a minimum standard: "The moisture content of a pasteurized process cheese food is not more than 44 percent, and the fat content is not less than 23 percent." If it doesn't fit that standard, it has to be called "pasteurized process cheese product" instead. Anyways that's not the end of my musing. It's just the basis.

If I go to some bland, American restaurant where they sell bland, American food like "macaroni and cheese," the question is whether they are putting cheese in it. Given that there really are definitions of cheese, I wonder if they're putting real cheese on the menu. Consider something big, like Darden Restaurants. They probably get most of their base ingredients (dairy things like butter and cheese) from a major company like Sysco. I don't know if that's literally true, but it's conceivable. Let's just assume that's true. Their Smokey Bones restaurant has macaroni and cheese on its kids' menu. So, is that "macaroni and cheese" or is it "macaroni and pasteurized process cheese food" or is it "macaroni and pasteurized process cheese sauce"? The difference is important. Nutrition value varies quite a bit depending on whether it's milk solids or mostly water. Is there sugar or some other undesirable, non-cheese additive, or is there just cheese?

So, my fundamental question then is: do restaurants follow the same guidelines as manufacturers? No, they don't really. Must they? Actually I don't know, yet. I'm not sure where to start looking. Should they? Yes.

Companies like Sysco are honest in their labeling, in that they identify products as cheese, or cheese food, or cheese sauce. It's not clear to me whether they are required to adhere to the same guidelines as manufacturers who sell to consumers. I can say this: If their product catalog lists something as: Cheese Imit Amer Yel 160 (product number 6173736), you can believe it is imitation american yellow cheese, and Sysco is labeling it correctly. Can Darden use that in their kid's macaroni and cheese and not tell me that it's imitation cheese?

I don't really know the answer to this stuff. But it annoys me. American restaurants and food manufacturers routinely mislead consumers, and Americans willfully ignore what goes into their mouths. I don't know why.

In doing my research, I came across an interesting spreadsheet. The nature of it suggests that they probably didn't intend for it to be published. It's interesting, though, since it gives prices from multiple manufacturer/distributors. Vive la web!

When I entered my room...

The first thing I noticed was a pair of water bottles, 750ml each. I've been to lots of hotels, and I've found the occasional free bottle of water in my room. Most often that's occurred at longer-term places, like Residence Inns or Oakwood corporate apartments. Not here at the Westin. A tag on the bottle notes that if I drink it, I will see a $5.00 charge on my bill. I'll pass, thanks.

The Mini-Bar

The Mini-Bar is a common feature in upscale hotels. You have a small refrigerator in your room. It works on sensors built into the fridge. Touch anything in it and you immediately incur charges. They could figure out what you ate by doing inventory and noting what they had to restock. Of course, that's absurd. It would be correct. When my oldest son was a toddler, he went with us to Belgium and we stayed in a fine hotel. Toddlers can do a number on mini-bars. Thankfully, that hotel was gracious about understanding what had happened.

The Westin lists all the prices on a small card near the bar. Sadly, the prices aren't the prices. What's the point of putting prices down and then saying "15% stocking fee will be added..."? We're all accustomed to tax being added onto the price of things, so when it says "10% tax will be added" I realize that it's not the Westin's fault and that Chicago is just taxing me. But the Westin is making up this 15% stocking fee. Look at the prices in Table 1. The Westin charges me $2.88 (before tax) for a 12oz can of Pepsi. That can should cost in the neighborhood of 50 cents. Even $1.00 is within reason. But $2.50 plus a 15% stocking fee? Wny not say 75 cents plus 383% stocking fee? Or, for crying out loud, why not just say "$2.88" and be done with it? If you think this is bad, wait until you see room service.

Table 1

Source Pricing

For most of the groceries, I just checked Peapod. I often rounded up, and I factored in a 5% sales tax, which makes the comparison a bit more fair. For prices on liquor, I used a random store online called Randalls.

Awesome. I did a little research into the whole "Banana Moon" brand snacks that the Westin offers. It turns out their products from a company called In-Room Plus You can get their entire price list off their web site. That's what I did for the comparison prices above. I expect that Westin, being big and all that, negotiates a better rate than what is published here. However, I used the worst (i.e., most expensive) price in my comparison table, just to show how much mark-up there is, even if Westin pays list price.

The In-Hotel Restaurant

Naturally, the in-hotel restaurant ("The Benchmark") is pretentious. Since I'm a vegetarian, that means it'll have slim pickins for me. I enquired about the two potentially vegetarian soups (corn chowder and butternut squash bisque). The waiter is sure the corn chowder is made with chicken stock, since it's made by the Westin staff. They "don't know" about the squash soup because they don't make it. (I guess the cans it comes in aren't labeled either?)

I decide to order a salad that says something about greens over "crisp, shaved potatoes." I get some greens (spinach, arugula, etc.) with a nice vinaigrette, and Lays potato chips sprinkled in. I swear I am not making this up. There was no difference between these potato chips and Lays (or any similar brand) of basic potato chips. For $9.00 I get spinach and potato chips with oil and vinegar.

Then I ordered the "Pizza Toscano blah blah blah." It was appealing because it mentioned artichoke hearts and spinach. I've had those on pizza. Yum. This was listed under what was effectively second courses, not main courses (because main courses are only meat, right?). It turned out to be a full pizza, maybe 16 inches in diameter. Not exactly something I'd call a second course. And it was a cheese pizza. A singularly uninspired cheese pizza, with spinach and artichoke hearts dumped on top of it, in the middle of it. So I basically got a better salad than the one I ordered as an appetizer, and I got it delivered with a bland cheese pizza underneath it. Gaah!

Room Service

This is the granddaddy of all pretentiousness. Rather than have the Westin staff deliver food to your room, why not just shred some twenty-dollar bills and pour vinaigrette over them? I can't imagine that the food will be extraordinary (given my other experiences at the hotel), but I can assure you that the price will be. Take a look at Table 2 for what it costs to get basic breakfast items. It seems to me that you'd be a fool to order orange juice, for example, because you have a 10oz bottle of it in your mini-bar. That bottle will only cost you about $3.75 after title, taxes, tags, and destination charges. Do it by room service and a glass of orange juice (presumably less than 10oz) will cost you around $10. TEN dollars!?

Table 2

Internet

Right. Depending on where you are in the hotel, this can cost you $10 or it can cost you nothing. I'm blogging this from the bottom floor of the hotel, where the meeting rooms are. There's free wireless internet down here. The wired internet in my room costs $10 per day. It's nice and quiet down here. There are comfy chairs and convenient power outlets. It's just not my room. I'm not going to dignify their scheme by paying for it.

I'm offended

I travel a lot and I see a lot of hotels. It's the fancy ones like the Westin that do this nickel-and-dime crap. They charge you a lot for a room (more than, say, the Marriott across the street) and then they charge you for every little thing, too. The value just isn't there.

What makes me so angry is that I feel like my whole experience is sorta booby-trapped. It's everywhere. My room is full of little things that, if I'm not careful, will cost me extra money. The water is out, offering itself to me. There's a room service menu in a fancy folder on the desk. There's a room service card on the bed. There is no piece of furniture in the main room that does not have some product offering on it.

And it's not an inconsequential amount of money, either. Grab one of these things or order off the menu, and you can increase the cost of a night's stay by 10%, 20% or more.

And it's not like the prices are justified by some unusual or unique quality. Quite the opposite, in fact. The can of Pepsi they will bring me for $10 is the same can of Pepsi I can get at a grocery store for about 50 cents. The orange juice, the Campbell's tomato juice, the gin, bourbon, and scotch are all commodity brands.

Only the bathroom is sacred, it seems. Nothing in the bathroom is for sale. Thank goodness.

And I'm not even ranting about the usual ways that hotels annoy. I am not discussing phone charges, pay-per-view TV, or outrageous prices on dry cleaning.

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