Elina Shatkin
We brake for coffee. We visualize whirled peas. Our child is always student of the month. As longtime proponents of living life by bumper sticker slogan, we try to eat dessert first — especially now that we're living in end-times. Why bother with freeze-dried beef stroganoff or pad Thai (yup, there is such a thing; check back tomorrow for details) after Judgment Day has destroyed civilization as we know it? Might as well get to the good stuff.
After their huevos rancheros, turned into a sour vomitous soup of chemicals, we were skeptical of Backpackers Pantry, and rightly so. Their Mocha Mousse Pie is equally ambitious and only slightly less awful.
Amid the jagged carcasses of skyscrapers and supermarkets in post-apocalypse Los Angeles, we'll probably be damn pleased to find anything approaching sugar, but the first problem with this “mousse pie” is that after adding hot water, you must spend two full minutes stirring the brown powder. It's not easy within in the confines of a tight package, and after, it still looks suspiciously liquid. We dutifully seal it up, hoping the 15-minute wait will help it thicken. It does, though only a little.
The result is a bowl of brown goo that's neither mousse nor pie and “chocolate” in a mostly theoretical sense. Congratulations on paying $3.49 (or one gold button or whatever form of money we're using after the Rapture) for a bowl of really weak cocoa powder. If you want dessert in the Apocalypse, stick to packages of Swiss Miss or astronaut ice cream (which is actually better when it's not rehydrated). They're a much sweeter deal.
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