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​Last Thanksgiving, Gut Check took a trip back in time to revisit the Thanksgivings of the good old days. Well, what we really wanted to revisit was the fabulous spread put on by the Park Avenue Hotel in New York, which started with oysters and continued through eleven courses, serving up delicacies such as "Diamond-back terrapin, Amontillado sherry" and "Sweetbreads in cases with truffles" along with good old "Rhode Island turkey stuffed with chestnuts, cranberry sauce" and "Tomato in surprise." (What could that "surprise" be, we wonder? Aspic?)

Alas, that was not possible. We just stared at the menu for a while and drooled.

St. Louisans ate much more simply. The old Globe-Democrat printed up a sample menu in 1883 that wouldn't be out of place today: roast turkey, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. It did, however, reprint a heart-rending tale from Baltimore of a family whose Thanksgiving feast literally crushed the table.

By 1911, exactly 100 years ago, menus hadn't changed much. But Thanksgiving promised to be more depressing that year. On October 1 the Post-Dispatch trumpeted the gloomy headline: "NEARLY ALL FOOD PRICES UP; HOPE IN DRIED APPLES."

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​A dispatch Monday afternoon from the all-things-food site Eater.com noted that restaurants are offering drink specials in honor of the killing of Public Enemy No. 1 Osama bin Laden.

A few establishments among the handful of examples Eater cited were serving free drinks, but the majority were merely offering discounts, and all appeared to be using the occasion of the fallen al-Qaeda leader purely as a marketing ploy, and only a couple even went to the trouble of ginning up a themed beverage. Then again, this is America: Land of the free, home of the avaricious.

With all due respect to Uncle Fatty's Rum Resort in Chicago and its specialty cocktails (the "Floating Terrorist" and "Osama Been Shot") and the Candi Shack in Seattle with its dollar coffee with an "Osama bin Laden Shot in the Dark," you can do just as well at your local watering hole, or at home, with these seven recipes...

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Doesn't that face just scream shortbread cookie!?

​If Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa of Food Network fame, baked up a batch of shortbread cookies for a Girl Scout troop in her neck of the Hamptons, here is what the ingredient list might look like:

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If, on the other hand, you bought shortbread cookies from one of Gut Check's friendly neighborhood Girl Scouts, here's what the ingredient list would look exactly like:

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​It's Girl Scout Cookie season, and Gut Check is celebrating by taking a more-than-cursory glance at this annual sugar and saturated-fat bacchanalia and, well, kinda throwing up in our mouth.

In our first episode, we decried the non-nutritive abominations known as Peanut Butter Patties, or as they were formerly known and still are in some regions of this great land, Tagalongs.

Today we move on to Caramel deLites, which we'll tell you right now contain nothing remotely resembling caramel and are anything but deLiteful. They once were known as Samoas (and still are in some markets), a name that is doubtless intended to evoke the image of a tropical paradise, owing to the presence of coconut (or some facsimile thereof). Ooooh, how exotic! Or, now, Caramel deLites -- whatevs.

The concept here, for those who to this point haven't managed to focus clearly, is to direct attention to this simple but sad fact: Girl Scout Cookies, which are marketed by adults toward children to sell to other children (via their proxies, a.k.a. Mom and Dad), are, when you get right down to it, lumps of artificial glop, blended together, baked and then packaged so as to appear to be edible.

Let's have a look at the label that adorns a box of Caramel deLites -- quickly, because Gut Check's gorge is already a-risin':

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Why are these girls so cheerful? Must be the partially hydrogenated palm kernel, and/or cottonseed oils.

​Gut Check is sick and tired of people gushing about their love of Girl Scout Cookies.

We're no hectoring health-food nutjob. We eat (and drink) our share of crap that's no good for us. But by God, these Girl Scout Cookies, which you're practically held at gunpoint and forced to buy (in multiple quantities, from multiple Girl Scouts, no less) -- they're dreadful!

Today's featured Girl Scout Cookie: Peanut Butter Patties. They used to be called Tagalongs, and still are in some areas. Same shit, different bakery.

Update! Now showing at a food blog near you...Episode 2: Caramel deLites, a.k.a. Samoas

Ready? Here comes a screenshot of the label:

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It's been three years since beet juice made its way to the ice melt market. Missouri's a big fan; the Missouri Department of Transportation used over 258,250 gallons from July 1, 2008, to June 30 2009. It's cheap, uses a product that would otherwise go to waste - the junk that's left after beet sugar's extracted, and leaves behind the delicious taste of beets.

Not that we know for sure. We're not licking the streets or eating the beet-brown snow.

It's not just beets that can stop the skid. Storm-slapped Bergen County, New Jersey, has turned to using pickle juice to thaw icy roads. Time reports that the county's snow removal budget's been decimated, so they've turned to something Jersey doesn't lack - pickle juice. At seven cents per gallon, it makes beet juice - $1.83 per gallon - look like a bad financial move.

There's no confirmation if the green liquid melting the ice in New Jersey is repurposed from consumed pickles, or just another brine, which always melts ice and makes a delicious roast turkey.

Tests are underway at Gut Check International Headquarters to see if pickled beet juice could be the answer to our ice storm nightmares.

Robin Wheeler

Beet pickle brine, applied to uniced concrete on January 31 at 9 p.m.

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Alas, a check at 2 p.m. this afternoon indicates that pickled beet juice is no match for an inch of sleet, but is delicious in a bloody Mary.

On November 29, 1900, the Park Avenue Hotel in New York City hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. While Good Housekeeping advised the masses to stick to roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, tomato soup and pumpkin and mince pies, the menu for the super-rich was quite different.

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Welcome to Girl Walks into a Bar, a weekly Gut Check feature that spotlights local bars and bartenders.

Over the past four months, this Girl has walked into seventeen bars in and around St. Louis. Given that we're big fans of infographics here at Gut Check International HQ, we have some nifty ways of taking stock.

​More than anything else, bartenders pride themselves on their ability to get your drink delivered quickly. Fast and efficient are the names of the game here. They also manage to be both classic and creative, imbuing, as it were, the traditional cocktail with a nice splash of the artistic.

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DON'T BREAK UP WITH ME I HAVE A BANANA!!!

​We've all dated a "crazy" at some point, because they're a blast and - let's be frank - fun in the sack. But crazies are emotional time-bombs. Sooner or later, you gotta end it. Doing this at a restaurant is common, but risky: you might have to dodge some food. Here's what to order right before the last goodbye.

#5. Scalding-Hot Sweet-and-Sour Soup
Essential for cowards, because it's self-motivating: order this and the countdown begins. (You can't turn back now; like wild animals, crazies can smell danger.) The more you hem and haw, the more you run the risk of Asian stew hurtling into your eyes. Tell the server you'd both like the soup, do the deed, then bounce - or else.

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Read the ingredients on any food that has a label, and it might make you a little nervous. Or give you a panic attack, depending on how emotionally equipped you are for dealing with big scary words.

CNN's new food blog, Eatocracy, has picked six food additives that sound scary and try to talk you out of your panic room. It's fine! Really! What's a little xanthan gum among friends?

Okay, eatocracy, who's slipping you cash from the food-additives industry? Because this is some scary stuff.

Not that we're paranoid or anything.

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