If I made separate posts out of all the Taco Bell developments I haven’t covered in the last week, there’d be no room for anything else in this blog. There’s still some more to come (possibly tomorrow), but here are several Taco Bell items of note.

– Taco Bell experiments with Mountain Dew A.M.: Mountain Dew A.M., it turns out, is Mountain Dew mixed with orange juice. That sounds like something I might have found completely awesome when I was 7, or, alternately, like something I would have created myself (at that same age) if I had access to a soda fountain and some orange juice.

At 31, though, a Mountain Dew-O.J. hybrid just doesn’t sound very appealing. Or even mildly appealing. I don’t drink many sugary beverages though, so I’m probably not the target Mountain Dew audience. Also, as the linked post points out, “Dewdriver” and “Morning Dew” are much better names for the same thing.

Maybe it’s so you get caffeine in your Taco Bell orange juice? I’d rather have coffee, though. Back when I worked at the deli — before I drank coffee, I guess — I used to sometimes empty a can of Red Bull over ice in one of those big styrofoam deli cups and fill up the rest with unsweetened Iced Tea. The tea made the Red Bull more tolerable and the Red Bull made my hangover more tolerable.

Via Greg.

– Make your own Crunchwrap Supreme: Sarah Sprague passed along this recipe for a homemade Crunchwrap Supreme. If you lack access to Taco Bell this is probably extraordinarily useful.

– Taco tantrum happens: A man named Michael Smith in Huber Heights, Ohio, got so mad that his local Taco Bell forgot one of the tacos he ordered that he drove back to the drive-thru, exchanged words with employees, then drove his truck into the building. I like to imagine he was like, “I’ll show you a drive-thru!” Or something like that.

Alex, who passed this along, asked what my worst-ever reaction to a screwed-up Taco Bell order is. I’m not sure I have many, except, you know, driving back and telling them they screwed up my order. And I don’t even do that very often. All things considered, I’m a pretty mild-mannered guy about stuff like that, and the last thing I want to do is piss off the people who provide me Taco Bell. After too many screwed-up orders I stopped going to one of the three Taco Bells near my parents’ house, but that’s pretty much my only recourse.

In my years of Taco Bell-eating, I’ve really only seen one massive overreaction at the drive-thru. I detailed that here.

– I eat Firstmeal: Some of you may accuse me of burying the lead here, but I prefer to think of this post as swelling toward a climactic moment, like a Broadway play or something. Only this one’s anti-climactic because so is Firstmeal.

It turns out Phoenix is a Firstmeal location, so before we left that city for the Grand Canyon, I tried the Bacon and Egg Burrito, the Johnsonville Sausage and Egg Wrap, a Cinnabon Delight and a piece of hash brown. I figured the Johnsonville Sausage and Egg Wrap for a breakfast version of the Crunchwrap Supreme, but it is much smaller:

The Bacon and Egg Burrito seemed to feature the same underwhelming Taco Bell bacon we’ve encountered before, with some not particularly notable fast-food eggs and cheese. Once I added Fire Sauce it tasted like Fire Sauce, but that was pretty decidedly the best thing in there.

The Johnsonville deal was, honestly, a pretty poor advertisement for Johnsonville. The sausage patty inside was grey and rubbery. Uninspiring. I suppose it was wrapped up like a Crunchwrap Supreme to fit the full, round sausage patty, but it definitely could have benefited from a taco shell or some Crunchy Red Strips in there.

Actually, that goes for everything I tried at Taco Bell breakfast: Less breakfast, more Taco Bell. The only thing that distinguished it from any other fast food place’s breakfast is that many of the items are served in tortillas. None of them are even served in tacos! Plus, you’ve got all that Lava Sauce sitting right there and there’s just no way you’re going to convince me that’s not awesome on breakfast foods. Now put it on a Volcano Breakfast Burrito.

Hopefully that’s part of Phase 2.

The Cinnabon things are pretty delicious as they are filled with Cinnabon goo. The hash brown was notably good by fast-food hash brown standards.