Wednesday, September 23, 2009

"Secret Code" or "Secret Menu"




Americans love to try new things, especially when it comes to food. When we dinning out, we would order the best food because we know that we would not be able to eat like that at home. So people tend to order their favorite dishes or the ones that are highly recommended. We see people with their food, we would look at it and try to figure out the name of the dish. But majority of us, when we go to a restaurant, we would order something that is familiar to us or something that is recommeded by friends or family relatives. It is like a chain, people forward it on to people their secret menu. This is how the whole secret menu started.

It started with In N Out Burger with their secret menu, animal fries, fries that drenched in cheese, grilled onion, and spread sauce. Animal style burger, come with extra pickles, extra sauce, grilled onions, and a mustard cooked patty. And the flying dutcher, which has no bun, no veggie, just two patties and cheese. We love the secret menu because they are flavorful. I mean if you take a look at the recipes, you would want to try it right away. After In N Out's secret menu, place like McDonald also has their own secret menu. You can order chicken nuggets or fries with Big Mac's sauce, or order a Poor Man's Big Mac, which is a double cheeseburger with Mac's sauce and lettuce. You can also ask for onions and lettuce on your burgers, both are free at McDonalds. So for only a dollar, all you really miss out on is the Bic Mac's seasame seed bun.

Not only fast food restaurants have their own secret menus but places like Starbucks and Jamba Juice also have their own secret menus. At Jamba Juice now you can order smoothies that no one can order it if they dont know the secret code or the secret menu. Some of the secret smoothies that I know of are white gummy bear, red gummy bear, skittles, pink starburst, fruit pebbles. Personally, I really like the white gummy bear because there is that creamy taste to it. Red gummy bear tastes exactly like the actual red gummy bear. At Starbucks if you are a chocolate lover you can order chocolate cream frapucinno. It is a chocolate syrup and chocolate flavoring blended. Sounds yummy right? But are the food and smothies healthy?

Most of these food contained very high calories as you can see. These foods are not made for people with high cholesterol because the ingredients are very creamy and extremely high in calories. They contained a massive amount of fats, especially saturated fats, and sodium. So why is it this bad? Well, these food and smoothies are not really secret. The secret is that the menu is actually customized by customers. Secret menu is like your own customize recipes, it goes with what you want or how you want your meal base on your own taste. Personally, when I make my own meal I dont look at the calories. I put whatever I like in it, things that satisfy my belly. So that is why these secret menus are unhealthy. But secret menu is like a trend nowaday, because people like adventure, want to try new things. When something taste good, people would pass it on. The more people order it, the more profits these fast food places will earn, so that is why fast food places made up all these secret menu or secret code. They want to sell something that will make a big amount of profits and at the same time taste good so customers would come back. But it is a secret menu now that everyone know about it? Secret menu is just a name to make it sounds more interesting. The word "secret" is the secret to get peoples attention.

Chicken


Everyone on this planet knows what is chicken. Chicken is a poultry meat that as we discovered more and more ingredients to it, we find ourselves having variety dishes of chicken. From a chicken's whole body, we cut down to parts, the breasts, the drumsticks, wings, head, and feet. Here in America, we usually throw out the head and the feet. We mainly eat the breast, drumsticks, and wings. The chicken wings are the favorite parts to many people because as we all know there are Buffalo wings, hot wings, sweet and sour wings, and Cajun wings. We can make alot of dishes out of chicken like chicken salad, grilled chicken, popcorn chicken, chicken sandwich, fried chicken, orange chicken, chicken soup, teriyaki chicken, chicken curry, and so on. Even pizza nowadays has chicken as topping like barbeque chicken at California's Pizza Kitchen. Therefore, chicken to us is a typical evryday food, and we can get chicken everywhere.
However, there are some quite interesting facts. If we go to a fancy restaurant and order chicken dishes, of course the chicken meal there is going to be more expensive. For example, like chicken alfredo, it is just grilled chicken and pastas. So it depends on the restaurants, the fancy restaurants make chicken sounds good but heavy on the wallet. In contrast, we can buy a whole chicken at a grocery store or a market with lesser price. We tend to think that food like chicken taste better at a fancy restaurant. It may be the outer look of the dish but it is basically just chicken.
Here in America, chicken is like our daily food, nothing special unless there is a secret ingredient to marinate the chicken. Overall, it is just an average type of meat that everyone can afford. Yet, in foreign countries like Vietnam and China, only upper class or middle class income families can eat chickens on a daily basic. Chickens are expensive in Vietnam. Lower class income families only eat chicken on special occasion like on Vietnamese New Year or at a wedding dinner. Since chickens are so expensive there, people eat everything from the inside organs, the head, and the feet. Some think those are the best parts. Chicken, in some foreign countries, ranks social classes of people in a hierarchy. Only rich people can eat chicken everyday, and the poor only eat on special occasions. Another quite interesting fact, in some foreign countries, it is inappropriate for girls who use hands to eat chicken in public, especially the chicken parts like drumstick or wings, because that show no manners. So are you glad that we can eat chicken whenever we want and eat how many as we like in America? Majority of the people love chicken, it is affordable and tasty.