Brother Al here again, with another episode of

Sugar, sucrose, saccharose, a white crystalline solid disaccharide, whatever you call it, it's delicious. Sugar played an extremely important role in early civilizations' economies and cultures, but more importantly, sugar is delicious and is the primary ingredient of most candy, which is also delicious. Everybody who has ever been a child has found a container of baking chocolate, believed they made the find of a lifetime, then suddenly realized it tastes like garbage. Why? No sugar. I think its pretty safe to say that without sugar, most people would kill themselves.

So to celebrate sugar and all it represents, I present 4 ways to eat sugar that you may not have known about.

First up:

Corn Flakes

Have you ever bought a box of Frosted Flakes? Of course, we all have. A lot of people love frosted flakes, and have fond memories of lighthearted commercials featuring a cartoon tiger kicking a soccer ball into some kid's face. But today, try and remember that feeling when you pour yourself a bowl of frosted flakes, and have gotten past the 3 first bites.

If you can't admit it to yourself, then I'll tell you - it sogs up almost immediately and gets shitty. The sugar dissolves instantly and the paper-thin flakes become saturated with milk. There's a reason we don't put potato chips in a bowl and eat them with water. It would be gross, but also the salt would vanish and the chips would sog, leaving a brine-like liquid bathing soggy potato chunks, just as Frosted Flakes leaves a bunch of food chunks in sweetened milk. Potato chips and Frosted Flakes are both made to be eaten out of the bag.

So what's my point? Corn flakes are notoriously resilient to soggage, and sugar can be added to give them the sweetness that spits in the face of Frosted Flakes. The recipe here is pretty self explanatory, so let me give you some history on Corn Flakes, and another reason why Frosted Flakes sucks.

Kellogg's was founded in 1906 by the two brothers Will Keith Kellogg and John Harvey Kellogg as an accessory to the Seventh Day Adventist religion. The two fought endlessly about whether or not it was right to add sugar to the cereal, as little was known about the sweet powder and its drug-like effects. Will wanted to add sugar to the cereal, while his brother John Harvey protested it. It is worth mentioning that John Harvey also protested sex between married couples, so nobody really took him seriously. Nevertheless, the cereal still went on without sugar for some time.

Eventually, in 1943, John Harvey died, and the argument was settled: Kellogg's cereals would have sugar.

So back to this recipe or whatever, add the sugar to the cereal and eat it. Just look at the pictures if its not immediately obvious. Oh, and have you ever gotten a bag of frosted flakes down to the end, where its all dust? Try adding that to milk if you haven't already - its impossible to enjoy eating that. Go with corn flakes.

Next we have:

Bagels

This is simple, but never quite as public as I would think. Bagels with butter is delicious, everyone knows that. Butter has a strange rapport with sugar though, which not everyone knows. There's a reason why Shortbread is such a stupidly simple recipe - you add butter to sugar, and the work is basically done. You just need to add some flour to thicken it up, and you have delicious shortbread. What is it about 'creaming' butter and sugar together that makes it so delicious? Who the hell knows - but it is true, and we're gonna do it.

So get one of those bakery-fresh bagels, slice it in twain, and toss it in a toaster big enough for it.

Toast the bagels. I prefer mine darker than most, but you can do whatever the hell you want.

Make sure you butter it while the bagels are still hot, or else you'll get unsightly butter chunks. Not totally unpleasant to bite into, but it may scare off the more jaded bagel fans. It's all moot as we're about to drown it in sugar.

Now we have this patent-pending maneuver to perfectly distribute sugar on both halves:

Make sure you start off by adding too much sugar for one half, and give it a little shake and spin before opening it, you want to get all those stupid nooks and crannies.

Look at that, it's beautiful. I could eat this for every meal for a week and never truly be unhappy.

Next up we have Popcorn

Every now and then, at your local Circus or Train station, some jackass will be selling popcorn, as well as 'kettle corn'. What makes it more kettle-like than its sugar-less counterpart I don't have a clue, but kettle corn has the right idea. Take something good, and add sugar to it.

I'll be honest - I thought this thing was a full-size when I bought it. I think the mini popcorn bags are retarded - its impossible to scoop out any popcorn without touching all edges of the bag, and there's about 1/3 as much popcorn as a normal size bag. More work + less reward = stupid.

So there you go, add sugar to the bag of popcorn, and give it some serious shaking. Make sure its buttered + salted popcorn too - salt + sugar + butter is the combo we're looking at here, and it doesn't work if you drop any one.

Next up is Sugarwater

Fair warning - this one is not for lightweights. If you've ever said the words "too sweet" without immediately being followed by "my ass", this probably isn't for you. This has a relation to the previous examples as a triple espresso has to a half-decaf, or 83% dark chocolate has to a Hershey's bar, or whiskey has to a bud light.

So get a nice glass of water. Look at its innocence, unknown to the perils that lay in front of it.

Get some sugar. Here we'll be adding a half cup, although you could probably double it for this amount of water. I would save that for emergencies though.

So now you have a glass of water with a big pile of sugar on the bottom, and you feel like a jackass because it's not going to dissolve. Believe me, it will. Stir the shit out of it.

Cloudy and thick at first, keep stirring. This can take a few minutes, but keep stirring for fuck's sake.

Boom. Clear again, but an unmistakable difference from when it was just water. Swirl it around a bit, and you'll see its viscosity has skyrocketed. At this point it's more like maple syrup (not the fake stuff) than water.

So what's left to do? Drink that shit. Avoid your teeth too, having this in your mouth is like having a jolly rancher stuck on your teeth, and that's not good.

Delicious.

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