​So Gut Check just learned (via Eater) that Jack in the Box is making a big to-do about its new bacon milkshake, part of its disturbing new "Marry Bacon" ad campaign. "It's for real," proclaims the blurb on the Jack in the Box website.

No shit it's for real. We've had a bacon milkshake here in St. Louis since last fall. And this one has booze in it.

We speak, of course, of the "Sweet, Sweet Bacon Shake" at Baileys' Range (920 Olive Street; 314-241-8121). The shake is made with salted-caramel ice cream and bourbon, plus an honest-to-God bacon garnish. Which puts it in another class entirely from Jack's version, which -- shockingly! -- apparently uses bacon-flavored syrup instead of actual bacon.

Stay tuned: We'll have much more (hint, hint) on Baileys' Range next week.

Eckert's pies, but not necessarily filled with Eckert's fruit.

​This Monday, January 23, marks an important national holiday: National Pie Day. This great festival is the brainchild of the American Pie Council -- and how did we not know that such an organization existed, devoted exclusively to the celebration of pie? From this day forward, we resolve that all the spare change we find in the nooks and crannies of our car and couch will go toward our American Pie Council Membership fund ($40 lifetime for amateurs).

In celebration of National Pie Day, Eckert's Country Store and Farms -- Riverfront Times "Best Pie" for 2011 -- will be offering a special buy-one-get-one-free pie deal, featuring fourteen different types of pie. Next door, Eckert's Country Restaurant will be selling all its desserts for a dollar. Joy! Joy! Joy!

Except...except...it turns out we made a grievous error in our citation for "Best Pie."

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courtesy Askinosie Chocolate

Presenting a package of Tableya or 232 school lunches.

The do-gooding tendencies of ​Askinosie Chocolate are as much a part of the company as the chocolate itself. Owner and proprietor Shawn Askinosie has long made it a point to share the Springfield-based company's profits with the farmers in Africa, Central America and the Philippines who grow the cacao, and he's made it a point to donate his time and money to the schoolkids of Springfield and invite them into the factory to learn about the chocolate-making process.

Now Askinosie has manufactured its first product solely for the benefit of others, in this case, the students of Malagos Elementary School in Davao, Philippines, one of the regions from which Askinosie sources its beans: Tableya, a hot chocolate drink.

Unlike Askinosie's other hot-chocolate products, which are powders, Tableya is made from cocoa beans that have been roasted and ground and pressed into tablets that dissolve in hot water. Also unlike Askinosie's other products, it's made and packaged in Davao, by the Parent Teachers Association at Malagos School, and shipped to Askinosie's Springfield factory with the beans. All profits from Tableya will go toward establishing a school hot-lunch program.More >>

Robin Wheeler

The only good use for candy corn -- fake PayDays!

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We don't like candy corn. But instead of taking time to discuss what a heaping mound of corn-syrup crap each candy corn is, we're going in the other direction to prove that even one of the most abhorrent candies can be redeemed.

Candy corn plus salted peanuts equals a PayDay candy bar. A PayDay bar! Somehow, a candy that tastes like sweet wax, when paired with salty peanuts, is caramel-y enough to seem like a good idea.

This PayDay party mix has been around for awhile. Top Secret Recipes posted it five years ago. We didn't discover it until last year when a friend brought a big jar of the PayDay stuff, around the same time Epicurious ran a recipe for PayDay brownies, decorated with the mixture.

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oldtimeconfectionary.com

Amy Poehler's a bubble gum Pop Rocks fan.

​Six months ago NBC's Parks and Recreation had all the food blogs agog with Ron Swanson's turkey burger -- a burger stuffed with a fried turkey leg.

Now the ladies of the show -- Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones and Aubrey Plaza -- are getting some of the food action behind-the-scenes.

Rookie, a magazine for teen girls, sent them a selection of unusual candies to sample. Poehler, Jones, and Plaza obliged with a video review of three candies, informing the young generation that candy is, and will always be, delicious.

Unless it's made with over-salted tamarind.

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Robin Wheeler

McDonald's captures the flavor of autumn in a shake.

​McDonald's isn't 100 percent evil. Take McTeacher's Night: For one evening, hardworking teachers who've already spent a full workday trying to educate our screaming minions get the opportunity to work at a local McDonald's, serving food to those same minions and their families. Their reward? Money to spend on classroom supplies so they don't have to dip into their whopping investment portfolio to buy the gold-star stickers that come home on Junior's successful attempts at spelling ten words correctly.

Seems fair.

Gut Check attended a local McTeacher's Night last week to show our support for Gut Check Jr.'s school. While dodging hordes of kids loaded on soft-serve and cookies, we noticed that McDonald's is no longer limiting its vaguely seasonal shakes to the shamrock. Enter the Sweet Autumn Shake.

What does autumn taste like? We would have asked the kindergarten teacher who took our order, but she was weeping. So we ordered one.

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Image via

​It wasn't all that long ago that Gut Check was donning our finest Disney princess Star Wars character drag outfit and joining the swarms of greedy American children on the hallowed Halloween quest for candy. So we remember well the post-trick-or-treat ritual of sorting the bounty into two piles, i.e., Good Stuff and Crap.

Then we'd head back out and t.p. all the houses where we'd been handed lame candy. We considered the act to be a hint to the clueless to maybe bust out the Snickers next year instead of those execrable homemade popcorn balls. A community service, if you will.

Now we're on the other side of the door, trick-or-treatily speaking, and we're also working from a position of strength when it comes to stamping out Halloween-candy imbecility.

Want to avoid having your happy home t.p.'ed this year? Check back each weekday between now and the Big Day as we count down the 21 Best Halloween Treats and the 21 Worst Halloween Treats...

Best Halloween Candy Countdown, No. 21: Nerds
Earlier this year RFT visited the annual Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago and discovered that -- surprise! -- candy manufacturers are increasingly marketing their treats as "healthy." To paraphrase the story's author, RFT staff writer Aimee Levitt:

What ever happened to good-old-fashioned, tooth-rotting candy?

Well, some of it's still around. Like Nerds -- who among us would be disappointed to find a box or three of Nerds in our trick-or-treat pillowcase? There's no quibbling with tiny nuggets of crunchy, slightly tartened-up sugar that are, in turn, glazed with more sugar. In some respects, if you look beyond the variety of colors/pseudo flavors available, a Nerd in kinda resembles the very thing it destroys: the tooth. Talk about form following function!

Nerds aren't perfect -- they are, for one thing, far from ideal movie-theater fare, owing to their loud crunch and high spillage potential -- but doled out in single-mouthful boxes, they're a solid, down-the-middle trick-or-treat pick. They may not be anyone's true favorite, but they sure aren't gonna piss off the marauding hordes.

Click through to reveal No. 21 on the Worst Halloween Candy list...

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