New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides & WHY THE HELL ARE THESE NBA GAMES ON SO LATE
Junk Food Nation, last night was Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the OKC Thunder and the Miami Heat. And whether you cared that OKC won or that Miami lost, I think fans of both sides can agree: THESE GAMES ARE ON TOO DAMN LATE.
The game ended at 11:42pm. 11:42!!!! Yes, I acknowledge that when I was in my early 20’s, staying up til 11:42 would not have been a big deal. Hell, even into my LATE 20’s I would have no problem answering a text at 12:30am when I had just gotten home only to bounce back out to meet another friend. But you know what? I’m NOT in my 20’s anymore. And 11:42pm for the end of the game is ridiculous.
Why the heck is tip-off AFTER 9:00pm. Because of the West Coasters?? I get it, David Stern. You want everyone to see the game, but honestly? Stop it. Start the games earlier, even 8:00pm EST. It will make NO difference to West Coasters if the Game starts at 5:00pm vs. 6:00pm, because no West Coast teams are IN the Finals! (Sorry, Seattle).
When games go this late, old farts like me struggle to stay awake, and worse yet, kids who love the game usually can’t stay up to see the end without destroying their morning the next day.
Am I on an island here, or what? I KNOW there are those who, like me, need sleep. Love sleep. Crave sleep. Let me hear it in the comments below!
Today’s junk food: New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides!
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: The Money Shot
I know what you’re thinking: Rice Sides?? This is junk food????
Me: This is rice that is flavored to taste like Baby Back Ribs and BBQ Sauce. If this can’t be considered junk food, I’m not sure what can.
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: Love the motif - menu flavors, like you're at a diner. The neon wording plus the cartoonish Sonic-like font - it's all clickin' here.
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: A hint of hickory smoke? FANCY FOOD INDEED!
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: So much sodium you can almost feel your fingers getting plump, no?
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: Favorite ingredient on this list - BACON FAT
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: Love the recipe suggestions, Knorr...which is really just "Cook meat, place on top of our rice."
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: cook on stove for 7 minutes, dirtying a pot, or pour into a giant bowl and nuke it for 12 minutes? Which do you think I chose? 😛
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: My giant Pyrex measuring cup is perfect for this
I opened bag, and the dried packet contents smelled immediately like like barbecue sauce. Sweet, and a little smoky. That’s a good sign, right?
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: added water, and the whole thing turned into a watery light orange mess. Yummy.
Then I mixed the rice with some water and wooooooooooooooooooo did it smell funky. Like, really funky. Still sweet and smoky but for some reason the aroma was pushed even stronger…almost into the burnt BBQ arena. Powerful. Overboard. More descriptors.
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: 12 minutes done!!! Yikes, my microwave needs cleaning.
Things not to do: grip the Pyrex after 12 minutes of microwaving. Holy Hell, that was hot.
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: You can just smell the absorbed sodium, can't you?
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: After a bit of stirring it looks...still not wonderful, but nothing out the ordinary. A gloppy rice side.
Stirred up my hot concoction… it still smelled a little bit like burnt smoky meat, but I guess that was the aim.
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: Surprisingly appetizing looking in this shot. A nice mixture of rice and short pasta forms a gooey bite
New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides: The sauce is so well mixed that it holds the individual grains together like glue
Ok, so I took a bite of this New Knorr Menu Flavors Baby Back BBQ Rice Sides and:
The rice and pasta combo was soft. The whole mixture actually set up nicely so it wasn’t like I was eating a bowl of porridge. It still stuck together well because of the sauce. The sauce was sweet and tangy as described…but definitely tasted artificial (not surprising). Smoky – yes. It basically tasted like the sauce that goes onto baby back ribs – very sweet, very smoky. This was eating rice mixed with BBQ sauce, plain and simple. The color wasn’t the most appealing, but it was warm and stick-to-your-ribs satisfying (I mean, its a starch, so…)
Did I like it? Meh. Not horrible, but I didn’t love the idea of eating BBQ-sauced-rice. Plus the smoky flavor overwhelmed a bit. I’m sure this actually WOULD taste good with some meat…but alone it was sort of sickenly sweet.
So what do you think? Let me know if the comments below! Or hit me on Twitter @junkfoodguy or on my Facebook Page.
Sincerely, Junk Food Guy
Discuss - 14 Comments
Spoken like a true east coast snob. Fact of the matter is there is much more viewership from one time zone west to the coast than in the east coast – with or without a west coast team in the finals. We here on the east have no concept of how this is viewed out west. For them, MNF and NBA finals and such are happy hour events!! Not after dinner viewing. 5-6pm is the perfect start time for happy hour, any later and your audience goes home and forgets to turn on the TV. Besides, that’s what DVRs are for, you record the second half and watch it in literally 30 minutes while you are eating your breakfast the next morning. That way you get all your beauty sleep, haven’t spoiled the ending, and are up on all the details when your fellas gather ’round the coffee pot in the office.
@Neil: record and watch the next day????? Never!
I’m with you junk food guy. I would love the games to be on earlier. I’m up at 4:30 every morning. There is no way I can stay up that late and have a productive day at work or be in a good mood. It’s not the same to DVR sporting events. On that note go THUNDER!
@Will: I’ve reached the age where it DEFINITELY affects me if I don’t get enough sleep. Grumpy all day
Dinosaur BBQ in Newark (and New York City) do a BBQ Fried Rice side dish which, from what I could tell after ordering it, is basically bbq trimmings mixed into leftover rice with a sort-of-soy-sort-of-bbq sauce cooked in. It was interesting, but hell, I can make that at home.
@Shorneys: “I can make that at home” True dat
I do not like, love and/or crave sleep. It’s more like…meh. I do, however, need sleep. Unless you start work later than 9 in the morning, games ending at/after midnight EST are a pain for sports fans on the east coast. Admittedly, this reflects my east coast snobbery, but DVRing a game just isn’t a substitute for the live broadcast. If someone isn’t going to remember to turn on the TV when they get home from happy hour, then that person really isn’t much of a fan to begin with and any other distraction/entertainment on during happy hour should suffice.
As bad as the late-ish start times of championship series can be, the scheduling of regular season baseball games for east coast teams playing on the west coast and starting after 10 has got to be the worst. If you’ve got a notoriously slow-moving team involved –like the Yanks or Sox, who regularly take almost 4 hours to finish a game– there’s no way kids on the opposite coast get to watch even a good chunk of the game. And if we aren’t thinking about the children, then what’s this all been about?
@Corey: Agree re assessments of West Coast sports fans. They’ll make time no matter what – so make it earlier.
Unfortunately, I have been lame for much, much longer than JFG apparently has, and thus I can say that I haven’t watched a weeknight NBA finals game since 2005 or so. It’s just too late in the evening. What can I say. I agree wholeheartedly.
@Lindemann: You, sir, are never lame
China and India each have a single time zone. I don’t see why we couldn’t do it. People on the west coast could complain about having to stay to work till 9pm every day.
@Kahnfucius: Theorized like a true philosopher.
Who ever wrote this little article, is a knuckle dragging idiot.
@Jack: thank you, thank you