Jiffy Mix: Counterpoint

Let it not be said that Dead2Us™ discourages open debate on whether some person, place, or thing should or should not be dead to us. The following correspondence by a dead2us junior staffer expresses disagreement with a recent posting on the shittiness of Jiffy Pancake and Waffle mix. Indeed, there has been some conflicting opinion regarding Jiffy even before this letter was received. We at dead2us are concerned with the trend of Michigan companies (e.g. Fridgidaire, General Motors) that have become dead to us recently, and were sad to see Jiffy also categorized as such. We leave it to you, dear reader, to make your own determination.

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Dear editors of “Dead to Us” “blog”, I am seriously disappointed with the quality of your “blogging” of late. The editorial that was posted regarding Jiffy Buttermilk Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix was both disturbing and misleading.

My personal satisfaction with this product has been, as the name states, complete. Not only has it proven quick and easy to use, but has exceeded my expectations. The taste, texture and aroma of Jiffy Buttermilk Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix is unparalleled in the instant food product market.

Unlike some of your readers, I am a single man living alone. Between the requirements of my job and various single man hobbies, I find very little time to prepare mouth-watering meals from scratch. When I do happen to decide not to partake in delicious left over Hot and Ready pizza or make a trip to McDonalds for a McGriddle or two, many times the ingredients for a breakfast feast are not readily available, or fit for human consumption, in my pantry. I have made the mistake of purchasing pancake and waffle mixes requiring such items as eggs or milk in the past, only to find lumpy milk in expanded cartons and eggs that expired in June of the previous year in my refrigerator. What is one to do then?

The one ingredient that I can always rely on being available is crisp cold tap water. What can one do with that, you might ask? Jiffy Buttermilk Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix is the answer. Jiffy Buttermilk Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix has been a godsend to my household. Whereas breakfast at home used to consist of a cup of instant coffee, a handful of nacho chips, and a cigarette, now I can enjoy delicious fluffy pancakes every morning! Sometimes I even throw some bacon in the microwave, and live like a king.



Sure they’re not up to par with breakfast food made from actual dairy and poultry products or a stack of steaming Hotcakes from McDonalds, but what can one expect from a product requiring only water to bring out its internal goodness? Would the writer of the anti-Jiffy Buttermilk Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix “blog” disrespect NASA for Tang for not tasting like fresh squeezed orange juice, blame Quakers for the quality of instant oatmeal, or speak ill of Marco Polo because the taste and texture of Kraft Easy-Mac is sub par? I sincerely hope not! All of these products increase the quality of our daily lives in their own way, and the hard working people of Jiffy have never let me down.

In the future I hope that the editors, writers, and reader of the “Dead to Us” “blog” will take time to contemplate where our world would be without the instant products that enrich it, before taking extreme viewpoints and spreading malaise across the internet.

Sincerely,

Christopher M. Jablonski

Jiffy Perfect Pancake and Shitty Waffle Mix

Dear Editors of "Dead to Us" :

We felt it was of critical importance to inform you and your readers of a shitty product experience! Upon a recent trip to the market, my fiance was kind enough to purchase a pre-made pancake & waffle mix, seeing as it is the main source of major disagreements in our household. Trying to start off our marriage on a strong foot, Harry chose "Jiffy Perfect Pancake & Waffle Mix (tm)." Harry normally likes to make waffles from scratch. I, however, am afflicted with what the doctors call, "laziness."

Tonight we decided to make Breakfast-for-Dinner. This novel twist on meals is a great way to ring in the weekend. Harry defrosted the bacon and I commenced mixing the ingredients: Jiffy Brand mix, water, and oil.

I was confident that, indeed, we were making "Perfect" waffles. Between the two of us, we have over 20 years combined waffle making experience. Plus, I felt good that I was supporting a locally manufactured brand. We warmed up the Cuisinart* waffle maker, and the green light means, "GO!"

First Attempt: Our first waffle quickly started to ooze out the sides of the waffle maker and onto the counter. Upon opening the lid for a peek, the waffle separated into two half-baked halves. Harry quickly suggested that we (1) add more Jiffy Brand Perfect Pancake & Waffle Mix to the bowl, and (2) spray the Cuisinart with some Pam. I commended him for his quick thinking and leadership with this situation.





Take Two: After spraying the machine with aerosol oil, we still had the same problem, more or less. At this point the bacon was done and cooling on the paper towels. We were getting antsy, so we started in on the bacon. The bacon was good, and we were a little disappointed that the Perfect Waffle wasn't going to have a perfect slab of bacon to go along with it. This round of waffles was difficult to remove, and crumbled on the way to the warming ovens.












Take Three: After adding a little more vegetable oil, a little less of a sticking problem, but it was burning on the outside, while still gooey on the inside. Difficult to remove. Still crumbled. We thought that this may just be an aesthetic problem, but no. Upon tasting the Jiffy waffles, we had a few comments:
"Cakey and oily!"
"Dry, yet gooey!"
"Too sweet!"
"Just plain awful."
"It's a bad doughnut!"
"Shitty!"

The dogs liked them just fine.

From now on, we're sticking to the old fashioned methods of waffle making, as passed down through the generations. Since the batter tasted so gross and performed so poorly, we decided never to try to make the Perfect Pancake with them. I have never left a waffle unfinished, until today. Jiffy's been in business, making mixes since 1930. It's all they do! You'd think they'd have it right by now. Thumbs down, Jiffy. We want our $2.29 back!

Respectfully Submitted,
Julie Thornton and Harry Frank









*please note, we purchased the Cuisinart waffle maker before our unilateral ban on Cuisinart products.

The Bee Hive Should be Sprayed with RAID

4048 Packard St
Ann Arbor, MI 48108

The Bee Hive is a party store I have occasionally stopped at on my way home. They have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 parking spots, and I've seen maybe 3 of them filled at any given time. This surplus parking doesn't stop them from being grumpy about anyone using their spaces for Flower shop parking. They have 4 large signs (professionally painted on metal backing) proclaiming "NO FLOWER SHOP PARKING!!" It seems to have never crossed their mind that someone might actually want to both pick up some flowers and get beer.

Anyway, their crabby attitude always bugged me a bit, but the convenience factor kept me going back. Finally one day I stopped there to pick up ice cream for my kid. When the stinky assholes behind the counter saw that I was only getting a quart of ice cream and no alcohol they started making quiet jokes to each other. They asked to see my ID, and one said there was a lot of alcohol in the ice cream. The first said, "don't tell him that--he probably won't buy it!" These jerks were used to selling exclusively liquor and cigarettes to other stinky bastards and seemed to enjoy poking fun at the lack of alcohol in my purchase. I didn't really get the joke, but I did get annoyed enough to go elsewhere from now on.

The only time I'll be parking in the Bee Hive lot from now on is to pick up flowers.

Lay off Lays

Lays Potato Chips
are greasy.

and

not very good.

I hate how they stick in your molars.

So imagine my disgust, when I discovered that my half-eaten bag was filled with dead ants. The ants were stuck in my teeth, too.

Taco Hell

There was some #2 in my #3 Combo.

Taco Bell has given me the gut-wrenching-four-days-cramping-stomach-turning-explosive-scheisserei for the very last time! After ending up in the emergency room, I decided that I didn't want to eat Grade D Beef anymore!

D is close to failing.

I contacted the manager of my local franchise to let him know how bad his food makes me feel. He says that in the seven stores he manages, over the past 17 years, there has never been an incident of food contamination! How could this be possible?! Bullshit, as I bet that all of the DTU readers have gotten the trots from Taco Bell at some point in their lives.

(NOTE: not all members of the DTU staff are willing to write off taco bell, even at the risk of #2 in the #3.)

Up yours, MCI!

Back in the day, when I had a "land line," MCI was my long distance carrier. I was living Ann Arbor, and reaching out and touching someone, etc., without a second thought. One month, I received a huge bill with a ton of calls originating in the far-flung mystery spot of Ann Harbor, Michigan. Ordering for a pizza cost about $4.00.

So I got on the horn with MCI, who bumped me back to SBC, who tossed this potato back in their laps. I asked them kindly to correct my bill, but nothing happened. In the meantime, I didn't pay them. I called them, wrote, faxed, emailed all my old bills, and even a map of Michigan. I would mysteriously get disconnected everytime I was on hold. After a few months of this, they didn't want to listen to my blather anymore, so they sent the bill into collections. The relentless bastards were calling me everyday and demanding their dollars.

I asked MCI for the phone number for their corporate office. Their response, "We do not have a corporate number." The phone company doesn't have a phone.

I probably owe them about $20 for my long distance. Bill collectors followed me for years, wanting to settle for $300. In the meantime, MCI went out of business and had some sort of fraud lawsuit. I would like to thank the good citizens of Ann Harbor for helping kill this corporate asshole.

Cuisinart should be ground up, brewed, and served as a $6 Grande Mocha piece of shit

The following is a letter sent to Cuisinart by a member of the DTU staff:

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Cuisinart® Customer Service
150 Milford Road
East Windsor NJ 08520

To The Brilliant Engineers at Cuisinart:

How would you like to wake up to this in the morning?

I don’t know if you’re like me, but I like to have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Except, with your poorly designed “Grind and Brew” machine, it’s a complete crapshoot as to whether I’m going to wake up to coffee, or an explosion of burnt coffee grounds and scalding water.

This has happened so often, I have come up with a theory as to why my $100 coffeepot can’t brew a cup of coffee:
The vibration from the poorly designed grinder (which needs special cleaning detail with a toothpick) often unlatches the ineffective plastic hook that is supposed to keep the brew basket in place. As a result, the basket pops open. Without any sort of safety device in place, the machine continues to brew. The outcome is a concoction of rancid, burnt coffee and boiling water that blows up into the machine, onto the machine, onto the countertops, the cupboards, the floor, etc. There is a gummed-up coffee crust that forms on the hotplate, the carafe, inside the machine, inside every little nook and cranny. This delicate cleaning process involves the use of specialized cleaning instruments (toothpicks, barbeque skewers, scouring pads) and at least a half hour of time. Not especially convenient when you’re trying to get out the door in the morning.





Maybe you think there must be “user error” in here somewhere. Indeed, the first half a dozen times this happened, we thought we must’ve done something wrong. But our sharp minds led us to double-, even triple-check the basket before going off to bed the night before. We would check the button, yes, fully out. We would press firmly on the “Cuisinart” logo, to make sure the basket was fully seated. We would even give the basket a little tug, just to see if we could pop it off easily. With this triple-safety-check in place, we felt confident that we had not seated the basket improperly.

Maybe you folks think this is a great design. Perhaps I can send you my coffeepot, so you can enjoy this experience first thing in the morning, too. Please let me know, as otherwise, I will be placing it in the trash.

The attached photos represent the small mess that is produced when I catch the malfunctioning coffeepot early in its cycle. When allowed to complete its ill-fated journey, the disaster is much, much worse.

Please be advised that as a young consumer with disposable income, I have plenty of good spending years ahead of me, and I will never buy a Cusinart product again.


Sincerely yours,

Dead To Us