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Dave Eggers' The Wild Things is available for preorder, in regular hardcover and
limited-edition fur-covered.
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[Got a new food you'd like to review? - - - - Gorp Submitted by Katelyn Sack Some say the name comes from the sound this blessed mixture makes when it hits the floor. Others maintain it was a gift from otherworldly creatures and that the name means "ambrosia" in their green-scaled tongue. The composition of gorp is no easier to pin down than its provenance. With ample variation depending on available supplies, gorp is typically a mixture of plain full-fat yogurt, fish oil, ground flax seed, Floradix liquid vitamin supplement, blackstrap molasses, and fruit. The fruit might be mashed banana in the morning and at lunch and applesauce in the afternoon. Like my great-grandma May Belle (she of mayonnaise-cake fame) professed: "Whatever you have will do." More importantly, gorp is an ideal baby food. Its ridiculous quantity of omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, calcium, iron, B vitamins, potassium, magnesium, pectin, and vitamin C will advance early childhood development by leaps and bounds. I submit as proof my brilliant infant twin charges, who speak some Russian ("Da!"), French ("Tête!"), and Italian ("Mamma!"), in addition to already knowing that the doggy says, "Woof!," the kitty cat, "Meoooow!," and the fox, "Shazzam!" Gorp washes down nicely (if not neatly) with V8 thrice a day, supplying babies all the nutrition they'll need for life. Shazzam. - - - - Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Kisses Submitted by Will Hindmarch A lady at the grocery store was giving out free samples of these. My wife tried one, then brought home a bag of them. She said they were so rich, so ridiculous, that a single one of these seasonal treats could be a dessert. I must have eaten six of them just now, while proofreading this. They're new, but I'm not sure they're food. Though these are Hershey's candies, they're not chocolate—at all. Each dollop, though, is presented in the shape of a gnome's hat, wrapped in crinkled foil, so I guess they qualify as Kisses. Each little candy is a compound of orange outside and, on the inside, where the almond would be in an almond Kiss, white stuff. The package includes a little cutaway schematic. Depending on ambient lighting, the orange may seem to be the exaggerated peachy flesh tone of a crayon or the cartoonish pallor of a woozy Oompa-Loompa. They are weirdly soft. Instead of chewing them, try pressing the candy with your tongue to the roof of your mouth, forming a spread. Imagine that each is a dose of pasty homeopathic medicine prescribed by a witch—a bit of Halloween doled out to heal the need for holiday sweets. To be sure, a Pumpkin Spice Kiss is sweet, but also subtly savory. Pumpkin spice, it seems, is any combination of cinnamon, clove, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, and mace (which isn't what I thought it was; it's the sheath the nutmeg seed comes in)—or anything that tastes like any combination of that stuff. My wife put one at the bottom of her coffee, to make a knockoff pumpkin-spice beverage, and it sort of melted into a dose of autumn flavors, but it also transmuted into a waxy, oily slick across the coffee surface. Still trying to puzzle out this mix of old-fashioned flavors and newfangled paraffin-like substance, I offered a couple of friends some free sample Pumpkin Spice Kisses. One of them stopped in midchew, her face contorted, unsure how to get away from the thing in her mouth. "I feel like I ate a candle," she said. - - - - Monster Biscuit Submitted by Dave Snyder As an enthusiast of cryptozoology, I was excited this morning to try the Monster Biscuit, a breakfast sandwich from 7-Eleven. But what kind of monster? I wondered. Griffin? Chupacabra? Too impatient to wait until I got to my office, I scanned the ingredient list for what monster (or monsters!) I'd be eating. I wasn't familiar with any monsters on the list: propyl gallate, apocarotenal, erythorbate (which is probably a man-eating earthworm, don't you think?). There was an ingredient called "bha," which might be a dragon-snake or something from India, but mostly Monster Biscuit was made out of stuff like cottonseed oil, corn-syrup solids, artificial flavors, and pork. Undeterred, I tried Monster Biscuit when I got to work. I'm no expert, but I'd say that Monster Biscuit has the mellow gaminess of yeti and the mouthfeel of Tennessee wampus cat, with more than a hint of skunk ape in its bouquet. - - - - Sangria Fresca Orbit Gum Submitted by Molly Young You see, it took on the elements of an odyssey. First, we were called to adventure. "Orbit has released a sangria-flavored gum," I told them. We couldn't wait to try it. Would it be a Spanish-style sangria? Would there be a realistic wine flavor? Would alcoholics be permitted to sample it? A road of trials followed. We stopped at gas stations in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, but didn't find the desired gum. We tried Mint Mojito flavor (decent) and, at a low point, Fabulous Fruitini flavor, which tasted of cheesy popcorn. So far, the union of cocktail flavors and chewing gum had gone very, very badly. A week later, back in New York, I found it. Wrapped up like a new toy amid a row of other flavors, the sangria package had an ill-chosen orange-and-purple color scheme. I think it was supposed to invoke the fruit ingredients of the original beverage. The gum itself was the color of a rotten tooth. By now, my companions were gone and I was left to try the gum alone. Very thoughtfully, I unwrapped a little gray piece and put it on my tongue. The taste? Well, I was chastened. There was no orange flavor, no lemon. No brandy or Cointreau. Not even a suggestion of wine. It was grape, all grape. Graper than grape jelly—and more persistent, too. How disappointing. I spit it out, soberly. A lesson had been learned. - - - - The Laughing Cow Light Cheese Wedges Submitted by Reid Brian Hall Middle-school P.E. It's a metaphor unto itself. Really, I can't think of many other images that stir up as many visceral, nauseatingly vivid memories. Whenever I feel the knurled surface of one of those tough, red playground balls, I can't help but feel it slamming into my ear, blinding me with pain while stinky cotton shorts cling to my thighs with sweat. Whenever I see indoor bleachers, I immediately taste my gummy tongue in my mouth, and in my mind I'm hunched over, battling for breath while my peers shoot up and down the stairs with ease. A fat kid in middle-school P.E. That was me. If P.E. was the Crimean War of my middle-school life, then cheese was my Florence Nightingale. Every day after school, I sought refuge in Kids in the Hall reruns and a thick block of lactose-filled comfort. Crackers? Not necessary. Just a sturdy slice off the Costco block of cheese—usually cheddar or gouda—that perpetually haunted the refrigerator shelves. Cream, cottage, curd, wheel, baby loaf: these were the materials from which happiness was fashioned. Of course, adolescent cheese-aholism has a strange way of leading to childhood obesity, and childhood obesity has a strange way of leading to adulthood obesity. It was a few weeks ago, during my most recent attempt at losing my lifelong cheese gut, that I discovered Laughing Cow Light. It's a smooth, creamy cheese spread that comes in individually wrapped wedges, a pack of eight resembling a winning Trivial Pursuit pie. A single Laughing Cow wedge adds a sophisticated and explosively delicious tang to damn near everything. Toast, crumpets, Gardenburgers, sandwiches, wraps, celery, a spoon: divine, all. The "Classic Swiss" flavor proves most versatile and approachable, while "French Onion" and "Garlic and Herb" tease the palate with hearty strength and confidence. With every creamy bite, my inner fat kid giggles with glee while my outer adult, reflecting on the cheese's mere 35 calories per wedge, nods in approval. - - - - Homemade Mint Ice Cream Submitted by Benjamin Straus Wanting to make ice cream for myself and friends, I bought an ice-cream machine. I made hazelnut, chocolate-chip, and cake-batter ice cream. The hazelnut flavor tasted amazing, with that distinctive, rich, somehow creamy nutty flavor mixed with rich milk chocolate. The cake batter tasted just like the package cakes at kids' birthday parties, with chocolaty frosting and heavy sugary hail-shaped sprinkles. I loved mint-chocolate-chip ice cream as a kid, it was my favorite flavor, and I thought, How hard could it be to make? I didn't want to use peppermint, because I didn't want the ice cream to taste like candy canes. So, using my immense brain, I decided to pick up spearmint leaf at the supermarket and use that. While cooking the milk, I dropped in the chopped-up leaves, letting them sit in a strainer. I thought they would enhance the milk like tea leaves. I added the eggs and sugar, cooked off the salmonella, and cooled the mixture before tossing it into the ice-cream machine. I woke up the next morning hardly able to contain my excitement. I was ready to taste a piece of my lost childhood. And my lost childhood tasted like when you drop ice cream into a pile of dead leaves and then pick it up and eat it. - - - - Chinese Nitro Reproduction Sweet Potatoes Submitted by Aaron Gilbreath When Mother Nature designed the sweet potato, she could not have envisioned it processed as a poor man's Twinkie, sold for pocket change in a red plastic vacuum pack next to squid strips and Pocky. I grew up with the sugar tuber like everyone else, but until my recent trip to a Phoenix Asian market I remained oblivious to its overseas popularity. Golden, orange, white, purple, frozen, fried, mashed, dried, dehydrated, powdered, random-cut, sold as paste, preserves, and little dried sticks—I wandered crowded aisles amazed by the variety. But my eyes bulged when I found how technology and China's exploding economy had turned this one leafy plant's energy reserve into a convenient, fun-sized, gelatinous confection. The package simply said "Sweet Potato," and the smiling Buddhist monk on the label suggested wholesomeness, yet when I asked the cashiers if they'd tried it before, they just stared. I silently hoped that, on their side of the cultural divide, silence wasn't the same as laughing at the idiot. I laid my money down and returned to my car, where the foil-lined bag released its injected nitrogen ghost. Produced by the fractional distillation of liquid air and as an industrial byproduct, nitrogen preserves packaged foods' freshness by delaying rancidity. Which is funny, since the word "fresh" never came to mind. Logs of Ipomoea batatas, if that is indeed what they were, rolled into my hand. Dusted with flour yet gummy as caulk, these treats more closely resembled misshapen mini-loaves of unbaked bread than the original tuber's tapered spears. While credit must be given for an attempt at formal replication, the snack yams were merely various wads, lumps, and tubules of yellow mass, though, in a less generous mood, I'd call them the spilled organs of a bleached fetal pig removed from formaldehyde. Sure, they were sweet—potatoey even—but the masticated starches coated my tongue, plastering narrow gaps between my teeth. And the taro-flour dust shellacked my fingertips, leaving dark gummy beads of the sort kindergartners carry from repeated nose-pickings. Chewing these refined, leached carcasses, I couldn't help but reflect on humanity's need to destroy Nature only to reconstruct her in inferior imitations. Shaped by machines into little finless rockets, separated from their skins, packaged sweet potatoes are the gustatory equivalent of a wave pool, what mountain-meadow-scented fabric softener is to the High Sierra. These potatoes are mere psyllium husk, bran separated from germ separated from stalk and sold back to us as a second, value-added item, some nutritive germ to be shaken into degermed, enriched, whitened wheat cereal. Studying the nitro-potato's striations and pitiful pallor, one can hear the dystopian philosophy of a cyborg god: "Why allow sweet raw material to wallow as a side dish when underpaid Shandong-province drones in facemasks can brush off the dirt and turn starch into a new Hostess empire?" I say, "Dear God: you must first create a more lifelike potato." - - - - Egg-on-a-stick Submitted by Betsy Finesilver Food-on-a-stick is a good idea. As a kid, I loved food that was served on sticks, like corn dogs and Popsicles. As an adult, I see more advantages than just the excitement of holding a stick stuck into something edible. Food-on-a-stick has the benefit of utility. For example, I recently visited the Illinois State Fair, where one can participate in all sorts of amazing rural adventures, such as milking a cow. However, these adventures make your hands dirty. Thankfully, the majority of food at the Illinois State Fair is available on a stick, and therefore you do not even need to worry about washing your hands before eating. At the Illinois State Fair, I received two free eggs-on-sticks when I purchased a salad. This was by far the food-on-a-stick I was most interested in trying. Had they offered me a free hard-boiled egg sans stick, I probably would have said, "Eh, no thanks." But hard-boiled-egg-on-a-stick sounded so intriguing I couldn't say no. Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed. Eating the egg-on-a-stick was very pleasant. In fact, in some ways, the egg-on-a-stick was superior to an egg-not-on-a-stick. Namely, the ability to rotate the egg via the stick enabled me to salt the outside of the egg evenly without resorting to rolling the egg in salt I'd sprinkled on a plate. In the end, the friend I shared my eggs-on-sticks with reviewed this food in a very accurate way. "You know," he said, "egg-on-a-stick doesn't really taste any different than egg-not-on-a-stick." Technically, he's right. Whether a hard-boiled egg is on a stick or not, the white part will be rubbery and slimy, while the mustard-colored yoke will be crumbly. Yet the refreshing addition of the stick made eating the egg a much more exciting experience. What will be next? Chicken-on-a-stick? I can only hope so. Or maybe chicken-on-a-stick came first. - - - - GT's Synergy—Guava Goddess Submitted by Zoe Toffaleti When I took my childhood friend to my favorite café, I can't say I wasn't surprised that she grabbed a nice bottle of pink-dyed fermented mushroom juice. I was a bit surprised, however, when she opened it and informed me with a look of astonished disgust that it smelled like rubbing alcohol with traces of vinegar that had been used to dye Easter eggs. "That's fermented mushroom juice. I thought you knew," I said. "I never touch the stuff." Nevertheless, with two books to read and three essays to write in the next two days, I figured I could probably use some of the superfood that purportedly rejuvenates, restores, revitalizes, replenishes, and regenerates your digestion, metabolism, immune system, liver, cell integrity, and body alkalinity. Oh, and it also may have cured breast cancer. So I took the abandoned bottle and mixed it, half and half, with my ginger ale. It tasted a bit like ginger ale mixed with vinegar that had been used to dye Easter eggs. But I drank the whole thing, because no way in hell was I going to waste that ginger ale—it had cost me $1.62. It continued to taste like ginger ale mixed with vinegar, but it was a nice pink color, and when I burped it tasted like guavas. But I certainly don't feel regenerated. Just a little repulsed. - - - - Mayonnaisey Bagel (With Fruit and Nuts) Submitted by Bonnie Scott Last night, my ex-girlfriend asked me if I would please come over to her house while she's at work this week and clean her cat's ears, because I'm the only person who knows how to do it. Our cat. He was our cat. I guess I have responsibilities to him. This afternoon, I go over to her house and take with me an iced coffee and a bagel from the Whole Foods across the street. In the store, I'm excited. I'm thinking about this 75-cent bagel and this 50-cent (because I bring my own cup) coffee and how it's a great value. A "meal deal." I even pick one of those healthier bagels, with fruit and nuts and whatever in it, in order to increase this stupendous value I'm getting. I'm excited. I forgo the purchase of butter or cream cheese, thinking I'm about to walk into a house that has butter in it. I do not need to pay for condiments. Value, added value. So I'm in the house and I clean the cat's ears and then I'm in the kitchen with the bagel. I think of toasting the bagel, in the lovely toaster oven I bought for my ex-girlfriend. I think of a warm, crunchy bagel with melted butter on it. Then I think that I shouldn't be interacting with the house so intimately. I shouldn't be spending so much time with it, "using" it. I'm a guest here now. Guests aren't so familiar with their hosts' kitchens. So, no toasting. I go raw. Then I'm slicing this bagel with the same knife I'd always used to slice bagels before I was only a guest here. I'm terrified of the familiarity of it. I know without looking in the drawer exactly which knife I want. I use this knife as if I own it and then realize too late what I'm doing and the knife is screaming, "Who touched me?" There's a thing in the Bible like this, about a bleeding woman who touches the cloak of Jesus and is healed but then won't confess to having done it. I try to erase my using of the knife, wash it and dry it and replace it in the drawer where I found it, the point facing in the same direction it was facing before. "Who touched me?" Oh, no. Not me. You can't blame me for this. Lastly, there's the issue of the butter. I won't eat a dry bagel—what's the point? So I take the tub of butter out of the refrigerator. It has plenty in it. But you couldn't say it's full or even half full. Let's say there's a decent hunk in there, and I may have even been the one who bought this tub of butter, before I was evicted from this house, but there isn't enough to make me feel safe buttering both halves of the bagel. I worry that my ex-girlfriend will notice the missing butter, that she may even demand that I buy her more butter. If I take enough for both halves, she'll certainly know I've overstepped my boundaries as a guest in her home. So I take enough for one—less, even, than I think I would normally use. But what to do about the other half? I don't want her hydrogenated peanut butter. I don't want jam. It has to be something with fat in it. So I'm looking in the door of the fridge, and I notice the nice, big jar of mayonnaise. She has plenty of mayo. I guess she wouldn't notice if I took enough mayonnaise to spread on half the bagel. So I take it. And I spread it. And then I'm standing in the living room. Standing, not sitting, so as not to mess up the blanket my ex-girlfriend has covering her couch. Talking to the cat and eating this cold, mayonnaisey bagel (with fruit and nuts) and thinking that I really don't know what my station in life is anymore, and I don't know what the future holds, and I certainly compromise too much. And the taste? The taste is not entirely unpleasant. - - - - Chontaduros Submitted by Yesi Mills They don't export chontaduros, so you'll probably never have one. You'll have to take my word for it. The chontaduro grows wild on palm trees on Colombia's Pacific coast, home to the largest crops of cocaine in the world, along with tremendous poverty and violence. Around 10 years ago, these factors drove many of the coast's residents to look for new homes in more hospitable places, in a trend referred to as desplazamiento, or displacement. Most of them came to the cities in search of work, bringing with them the chontaduro, as well as its juice and oil. The chontaduro is a mix between a squash and a nut. Its shiny skin ranges from bright shiny orange to red. In Bogotá, they're sold in giant rolling carts. You can buy them raw with the peels, precooked with the peels, or cooked and peeled (the most expensive). Your vendor will offer you salt or honey as a condiment. I've heard that in Cali they serve them with lime and mayonnaise at bars, although I never saw it while I was there. They can rarely be found in supermarkets or even in green markets (plazas). The first time I ate one was the day after I spent the night with the woman I would live with for the next year. An Afro-Colombian with white hair tucked under a leather cap stood standing next to a red cart stacked high with chontaduros. He turned toward us, perhaps sensing that I was already sold on trying the waxy orange heart-shaped fruits. "Do you want to try one?" he asked me. A glutton like me? I don't think I even answered. I lifted my hand toward the old man's cutting board. He picked up a peeled chontaduro and placed it in the palm of my hand. I munched on it, trying to savor it and decide whether or not I liked it. Before I could evaluate it, I had nothing more in my mouth than the slippery pit. I didn't know how to describe it, whether I could eat a hundred or never eat one again, only that it was distinct from any other food I had eaten. The woman I would live with told me that sometimes the chontaduro vendors sang to women. She explained to me that in Bogotá they say that the chontaduro improves sexual prowess. Most of the chontaduro consumers here don't even like the flavor. The women who line up to buy its juice bring it to their husbands. She slapped me on the back and said, "You don't need it for that." My adopted Aunt Isabela also told me that the success of the chontaduro in the capital proved the ingenuity of the Afro-Colombians. "Twenty years ago, you couldn't get a chontaduro outside of the coast. When they came here with no money, they figured out the best way to sell them: right into the bed." - - - - Arlin's Mac 'n' Cheese Bites Submitted by Becky Adnot They serve these at a bar that I go to with my friends after class, an unassuming joint nestled in the charming red brick in Cincinnati's Gaslight District. You can get a pitcher of Miller Lite there for six bucks and a grilled cheese for $2.75, from a lady bartender who makes you feel that she's doing you a favor by taking your order and who then barks at you when your food is ready in a way that makes you feel pretty guilty, like you've kept your mother waiting to serve you after she's cooked you dinner. Especially if your mother was a butch, angry type who served different varieties of burgers and fried cheese for dinner. Anyway, it's a little taste of home. I moved to Cincinnati to go to grad school and to be with my boyfriend, who was born in this part of the country and is accordingly immune to what I like to think of as my uniquely Floridian tastes. "I miss seafood," I moaned. "I miss the beach. I'm becoming an ugly, pasty Midwestern girl." I threw myself onto the couch and wept, ignoring his gentle reminder that I am from north central Florida, that I actually only used to make the two-hour drive to the coast exactly twice each summer. To distract me, he took me to Arlin's and fed me an order of Mac 'n' Cheese Bites, to which, after seriously considering the mozzarella sticks—the theme of the menu at Arlin's seemed to run along the lines of YOU WILL EAT CHEESE AND LIKE IT—I sulkily agreed. He shushed me soothingly when I tried to argue that the copy on the menu—"Can't even describe these; just try 'em!"—was a rhetorically weak command, and poured me a plastic cup of Miller Lite. The Mac 'n' Cheese Bites were triangular clusters of macaroni and cheese that had been battered and deep-fried, the resulting product nestled in a bed of limp lettuce leaves arranged in a red plastic basket that was lined with an obligatory sheet of wax paper, transparent in its mission to soak up the grease emitted from the basket's contents. I decided to, momentarily, put aside my reservations about the Midwest; I pulled one of the Mac 'n' Cheese Bites from its lettuce nest and took a bite. They tasted like mac and cheese that had gone where no mac and cheese had ever gone before. They were crispy on the outside and wonderfully gooey and cheesy on the inside, congealed clumps of macaroni fried to artery-clogging perfection. They tasted like I was going to eat cheese and like it. I took another bite and offered the basket to my boyfriend, who was suddenly looking a lot more attractive. Our hands touched as I reached into the basket for another. The Mac 'n' Cheese Bites tasted good. They tasted like I was going to like the Midwest. They tasted like I was falling madly, irreversibly in love. - - - - Kiwi Berries Submitted by Jeremy Griffin I'd like to think that the kiwi berry was the result of a cross-pollination accident between a kiwi and some sweet New Zealand berry. I hope it happened on its own in nature's strange glory, by adventurous bees or brisk spring winds. A more likely scenario is that the kiwi berry is the result of bored and overpaid New Zealand genetic-fruit scientists tampering with God's plan. The grape-sized lime-green fruits have all the punch and vigor of a kiwi fruit wrapped in the convenience of a berry. Gone is the coarsely haired rind and in its place is an edible skin not unlike that of a muscadine. The interior is reminiscent of the color and texture of a kiwi, only with tinier black seeds around a tinier white starburst. The taste is far less tart, though—somewhere between a fig and a blackberry. I imagine the mutation process providing many failed attempts before the current result. Surely somewhere there's a laboratory filled with nightmarish atrocities of fruits misshapen and foul. Like the scene in Alien Resurrection with all the horrifying failed Ripley clones, the kiwi berry, too, must have had several botched representations—each with a more grotesque and testicular appearance than the last. The kiwi berry might only be a gateway experiment, though, only a step in a process that will eventually lead to the discovery of some sort of über-fruit, which will no doubt look like a peach but taste like a cheeseburger. - - - - Wrap-itz Omega-3, Calcium,* Submitted by Bree Barton One day, I realized I was sick and tired of eating boring tortillas. When I grilled a quesadilla or made a healthy lunchtime wrap, I didn't want it to be average; I wanted it to be exceptional and exotic. I wanted—no, needed—a tortilla for the new era, an era of cultural pluralism and identities that are ultimately flexible. Tia Rosa was dead to me. It was the package that first caught my eye, a colorful conflation of graphics, text, and so many exclamation marks I felt instantly enthusiastic! There, behind the overwrought plastic, was a tortilla unlike all the rest. In fact, it wasn't a tortilla at all; it was a Wrap-itz Omega-3, Calcium, and Fiber White Wheat Wrap by ¡Tam-x-íco's! Overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, I bought a package. Tammy Young, founder of ¡Tam-x-íco's!, is evidently in the throes of a midlife crisis. Like many other middle-aged women, she's suffering from a major identity meltdown. But, unlike other frustrated forty-somethings, who express their rage by inflicting injury on husbands, luxury cars, expensive wardrobes, and small children, Ms. Young has turned her fury onto her tortillas. The result? Tammy's tortillas are confused. It's their confusion that makes Wrap-itz Omega-3, Calcium, and Fiber White Wheat Wraps by ¡Tam-x-íco's! so endearing. They are obviously bearing the brunt of many impossible questions. Are they white? Are they wheat? How the hell can they be both? Just as I find comfort in Tammy's tortillas, I find inspiration in ¡Tam-x-íco's! Tammy. She continues to reinvent herself. Someday, Tammy's legacy will reach across the nations, beyond drug lords and child prostitutes and border patrols and mariachi bands, past the great gulf and the Rio Grande, until the very name of Tammy is forever joined with the great country of M-x-íco itself. On that glorious day, Tammy will perform pure linguistic fusion, uniting her identity with that of Mexico in perfectly punctuated, admirably accented harmony. * As much as an 8-ounce glass of skim milk. - - - - Barbecue-Flavored Mealworms Submitted by Darrin DuFord Have you ever been to a zoo where you are encouraged to peek into the monkey cages and then, at lunchtime, the cafeteria serves you flame-grilled monkeyburgers? That's the kind of perversely confident "we're at the top of the food chain" outlook that the Montreal Insectarium exercises once a year at their annual insect tasting. I figured that, since I've kissed lipstick made of crushed-up cochineal bugs (like it or not, most lipsticks are made from them), over the years I've been priming myself for a dish of honey-roasted crickets or caterpillar ceviche. But how do I pull off a wine pairing without looking like an unrefined slob? Fortunately, the insectarium spared me such dinner-table anxiety, because they canceled this year's tasting. I had to settle for a box of dried, barbecue-flavored mealworms from the gift shop. Such a setback was like expecting roast suckling pig and ending up with a bag of fried pork rinds, although the literature inside the box promised that its contents occupied a loftier place on the gastronomic totem pole: "Mealworms are the stars of our insect tastings and can be prepared in lots of different ways. They are generally used to replace nuts, raisins or chocolate chips in many recipes." Before I threw them into cookie batter, I felt I should sample a few straight from the box. They were weightless and resembled Cheetos that forgot to puff up. So wispy were the mealworms that I needed three or four in my mouth at a time to actually feel like I was chewing on something, and that's when I met with a fiery saltiness followed by a surprisingly luxurious finish of tobacco. Perhaps an up-and-coming competitor to Nicorette? - - - - Generic-Brand Nicotine Polacrilex Lozenges Submitted by Whitney Collins I spend a lot of my precious time telling people what not to tell me. Don't tell me Kentucky's not South. Don't tell me we're out of beer again. Don't tell me a dog that's lost its hind legs and has to use an ass-cart to wheel around the park isn't embarrassed. And please, people, don't go telling me that generic-brand nicotine lozenges aren't food. Because they are. You could easily congeal them in a nice tomato aspic. You could pour a few hundred in a Ziploc, add some raisins, and whammo: trail mix. Why, you could even wrap them in bacon and pass these delicious little fuckers off as diver scallops. When I quit smoking seven years ago, I got on the Nicorette and never looked back. Sure, I spent three or four years of my REM sleep dreaming about Camel Lights and Marlboro Mediums and 35-foot-long menthol Capris, but I never took a puff in my waking hours. No, I just chewed from the moment I got up until the moment I fell asleep, sometimes even waking with my beloved matted in my hair. That was until I developed a bad case of TMJ, and what felt like a peptic ulcer, and also got knocked up. Then, for 10 solid months, I was nicotine-free. It was cute for a while. But don't tell me that a new baby won't make you think about smoking. Crack? Maybe. Weed? Likely. Parliaments? Definitely. And that's how I met the lozenge. Tired of having enough jaw power to chew my femur free from a grizzly trap, I went to Walgreens with a screaming baby on my hip, passed by the gum, and grabbed a box of generic lozenges. Genius on my part. Warning: The first few you try will taste slimy, mossy. Like an Altoid plucked from the bottom of a horse trough. But after a day or two you'll go back to Walgreens and ask if they sell these things in an I.V. drip. Whatever you do, do not buy the name-brand version. Commit is awful. Nothing more than an aspartame disk with a few flecks of junior-varsity nicotine. The generic is a true smoker's delight: like a pig-in-a-blanket. Except, instead of a biscuit, the blanket's an R-rated peppermint. And, instead of a cocktail wiener, the pig's a cigarette butt. Dee-lish! - - - - Popcorn-Soda Combo Submitted by Mandy Durham To keep my energy up after returning from maternity leave, I decided to start keeping healthy snacks at work. I bought a giant box of 94 percent fat-free Orville Redenbacher's butter-flavored microwave popcorn and brought it today. I decided I would eat a bag around 3:30, after I went to pump my boobs. I was really looking forward to eating the popcorn. At 3:15 I pumped and then I went to the break room to use the microwave. Directly over the microwave, someone had posted an article entitled "Microwave Popcorn Linked to Lung Disease." There was a picture of a shelf lined with Orville Redenbacher popcorn. I decided not to read the article. I popped the popcorn and ate part of it, but then I felt very thirsty and I think my lungs felt itchy. I wanted a cold A&W root beer. I went back down to the break room with a dollar bill to get the root beer. The machine would not take my dollar, even though it was very flat and crisp. I tried at least eight times. I went across the hall to ask the computer-services guys if they had change. Daryl gave me three quarters and Rick gave me one. I tried to give them my dollar bill, but they wouldn't take it. It was kind of awkward. I went back across the hall, but when I put my quarters in the machine they just came right back out the slot at the bottom. I only tried three times, because it seemed apparent that the machine was broken. I felt pretty pissed. I went back across the hall to give the quarters back to Daryl and Rick and told them the soda machine wouldn't take my money. Daryl asked me if I liked Dr. Pepper, which I do, not as much as root beer, though, so I said yes. He reached under his desk and handed me a can of Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper. I noticed the can said "Limited Edition." It was warm, because it had been under Daryl's desk. I said thanks and opened it and took a drink. It was gross. I was not surprised. - - - - The Half-Dill Pickle Submitted by Michael Dickerson Has there been a food trend in the past 10 years lamer than the "half-dill" pickle? Partially cured, comprehensively flawed, it is an abject failure in both concept and execution. Served primarily at upwardly mobile sandwich shops hellbent on becoming bistros, the half-dill betrays the pretensions of its purveyors with all the subtlety and manufactured ambiance of icicle lights at midday. Leaving aside the inherent cowardice of such an enterprise—its unwillingness to commit, its existential flip-floppery—let me address the thing itself. Cucumbers are delicious. As are pickles. One fresh and full with the bloom of youth, the other seasoned and spry with the spice of a life well lived. The half-dill, on the other hand, is a man without a country. Neither bracing nor briny, its flavor exists only in an indefinite quantum state—with a finish more elusive than Sasquatch—and, ultimately, satisfies nobody. Taxonomically speaking, it is more abomination than appetizer. A cuke divided against itself cannot stand. Even when compromise works well and everyone leaves the negotiating table having been fed, no one is fully satisfied and all have a bad taste in their mouths. The taste is similar to that of the half-dill pickle. - - - - Mache (Lamb's Lettuce) Submitted by Marco Kaye For far too long, arugula held a bitter stranglehold over our salad bars. Then frisée entered and quickly exited our lives as the latest trend in roughage. Now there's a newcomer, with a name that rhymes with squash. It's mache, also called lamb's lettuce. Mache attempted a debut five years ago, on NPR, but the green hasn't caught on until now. The reasons for this are twofold. First, many of us were blindsided by the watercress takeover of '05 to '06 (which was met with a resounding "I guess just dump them into the microgreens" attitude). Second, mache-cultivation techniques have improved a lot. As each successive movement in art is a reaction against the previous mode, mache represents a collective shift away from the tart greens that populate those mesclun mixes. It tastes sweet and just slightly nutty. The tiny green leaves are attached seven or eight on a stem. It looks like several children's mittens tied together. And it's just as delicate and airy. It plates beautifully as well, the way a discarded child's mitten creates a forlorn oasis of humanity in a city street. I first tried mache with crab, cornichons, and preserved lemon. Obviously, I was not in my house. I didn't know it that night, but I had a feeling. I'd been waiting for a new lettuce. Could mache be it? The next week, my girlfriend found bags of the stuff at Trader Joe's. We tried it with chicken, capers, olives, and carrots. The chicken crushed the small, childlike "hands" of the mache, but it was still a successful salad. Mache has found its place in the sun. I predict it will go mainstream within the year. To those who have been waiting for the next hot salad green, put down your heads of Boston lettuce and gracefully pick up some mache. - - - - Phillips Pasteurized Crab Meat, Handpicked, Claw Submitted by K. Kraft After several consecutive late nights of drinking, I'm fairly fatigued and my heart is in my stomach. She's really been confusing me as of late. She loves me, but fears that I'm going to move away in a year and break her heart, and for this we should end our relationship now. I talked her off the ledge, but I feel like we're coasting in a sort of purgatory. We've known each other only two months and have moved the relationship along too rapidly. I think she's rebounding. Today is a Sunday. Sundays, I use Phillips Crab Claw Meat effectively as a vehicle for Old Bay, breadcrumbs, whiskey, and other crab-cake filler. It's good. I once attempted to eat an entire one-pound can of Phillips Pasteurized Crab without any accoutrements. By itself, the crab-claw meat exhibits a sharply diminishing marginal utility. Sex with her is great; we've always had strong chemistry. She's beautiful and super-fun when we've been drinking. Naturally, the kids complicate matters. - - - - Sugarless Tropical Twist Submitted by Sam de Silva While browsing through old journal entries, I came across this snippet from Monday, September 26, 2005: The expectations of my family are more suffocating than I thought they would be. On a brighter note, Tropical Twist Trident gum now comes in an "E-Z close" pack ... It's the little things. Seriously. This stuff is superb. - - - - The Hot Brown Submitted by Kristen D. Erickson The Hot Brown, Louisville's culinary claim to fame, was first created at the Brown Hotel in 1926. And anyone who has had a chance to sample this Southern not-so-delicate delicacy is no doubt still clutching his or her stomach in anguish. It starts with toast. Thick toast. And then about a pound of turkey piled high. Next, the Mornay sauce, which is part cheese, part roux, and all thick and gooey. In an attempt to health this thing up, tomatoes are added. This is all put under the broiler until browned, and then it is served hot with bacon on top. At first, you enjoy it. The cheese sauce, glistening, bubbling, calls to you. The bacon? How can you resist its tasty goodness? You dive right in, making sure to get a bit of everything in one bite. But this is not a sprint—it is a marathon—and, about halfway through this ginormous monstrosity, you hit a wall. A wall of cheese. You will crash. It will not be pretty. - - - - Penne à la Vodka Submitted by Larissa Williams You know how it is when you meet your roommate's mother. At first, you're like, "It's so great to finally meet you! You two could be sisters! You're so much like your daughter!" etc. But then you're all, "I forgot that I really don't like your daughter, and having two of you around is about as fun as eating glass." And then the shards of glass criticize your hair and the new curtains you put up in your bedroom. So your roommate's mother throws a dinner party at your house. She knocks on your bedroom door and asks you to come out and "be social for a change" and maybe "put on something a little less casual." So then you join a contingent of your roommate's friends and relatives for some bullshit pre-meal board game, but what you really want is to take the pot of boiling water and tumbling penne noodles off the stove and douse the next person who says "Ooh, I rolled doubles!" Instead, you hang sulkily in the kitchen and watch cup after cup of your own (expensive!) vodka get dumped into some sloppy red paste bubbling away on the burner and think, "Does all that alcohol really burn off, or will this evening devolve into a belligerent charades matchup?" Then you sit down at the table, and there is a sprig of thyme deftly balanced atop each person's pasta heap. (The pasta is served in bowls bought in real-life Italia, your roommate's mother crows.) But the thyme is from the garden out front, and all those herbs have the lingering midpalate tang of cat pee. You eat your first mouthful of penne à la vodka, a mob of noodles and sauced sauce, all the while trying to surreptitiously leave the table and turn down the thermostat from its (un)comfortable home at eighty-fucky-five degrees. With their eyes rimmed gooey black with makeup and their fondness for unnerving heat, your roommate and co. must be descended from ring-tailed lemurs. After dinner, some light reading. Your roommate's mom does the aforementioned reading aloud to a room of rapt guests, who have "never heard of this David Sedaris. What a funny guy! Too bad about the gay thing." You silently reflect upon this hell of your own making. Her mother leaves in three days. You have enough leftover penne à la vodka for a week: they've filled the fridge with portions individually wrapped in tinfoil with the date written out in script—"August Thirteenth Two Thousand and Seven," in purple marker, for Christ's sake. "But only eat one at a time, dear. You don't want to get too sexy around the hips." - - - - My Son James's Favorite Snacks Submitted by Lisa Domby "This place doesn't have a name. It's in the old Johnny's Sporting Goods, but they don't sell crickets here anymore." Takis Fuego (rolled corn chips, fire flavor): "These things taste way crunchier and way spicier and way awesomer than Doritos. The guacamole ones smell good, but they don't taste good." Paleton Patolin paleta de malvavisco (chocolate-covered marshmallow with gummy eyes and mouth): "This thing looks like a weird clown, but it tastes pretty good." Duvalin Avellana/Vainilla dulce con leche descremada (hazelnut and vanilla skimmed-milk candy): "Mom, what do you think is in this stuff? It feels like melted chocolate." Paleta de vainilla (vanilla popsicle): "This thing has a good flavor, but why did they put three raisins on the top of it? They should be chocolate chips. Or I thought they would be vanilla beans. Can you bite the top off? But don't take too much, because the other stuff is good." Jarritos Toronja (grapefruit soda): "This isn't made out of real grapefruit, because I hate grapefruit, but I love this." Hall's Chela Limón (beer-and-lime-flavored cough drops): "They don't have this flavor at CVS. That's why I like to get them here." Babidinos Paletadinos sabor tamarindo enchilada (tamarind lollipop): "This is my favorite thing to get. This thing is really chewy and spicy. You can't eat the whole thing, because it's too spicy, but you can save it in the refrigerator for a really long time. If you don't put it in the refrigerator, ants will get on it." - - - - Green Figs Submitted by Audrey Harris Their price varies based on the weather and how vulnerable you look at the time you stop by the Pakistani fruit stand at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 14th Street. This rainy morning, with no umbrella and only a twenty in my wallet, a basket set me back $3.99. With bright yellow-green skin and stubby stems, they look like pert baby-alien heads. Their brains are soft and strawberry-hued and pornographically sweet. Recipe for green-fig tartlets: Cut store-bought phyllo dough into rounds with a cookie cutter. Sprinkle with sugar. Top each round with a green-fig half, pulp side up. Smear a little goat cheese on the fruit. Roast for 15 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Top each fig with a roasted, salted almond from the handy bag in your pantry. - - - - Dwight Yoakam's Chicken Fries Submitted by Jonathan Holley A product of the Bakersfield Biscuits Brand, Dwight Yoakam's Chicken Lickin's Chicken Fries come approximately 12 to a box, which costs just a dollar. These are similar to the chicken fries available at Burger King, but of inferior quality. The bright red, orange, and yellow packaging of Dwight Yoakam's chicken purports that they are "inspected for wholesomeness" by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The packaging is evasive regarding the results of said inspection. Were these fries deemed wholesome? It seems impossible. In my 1997 analysis of the chickenesque, I famously hypothesized that Nabisco's Chicken in a Biskit crackers would forever maintain position as lowest rung on the chicken continuum. Today, Dwight Yoakam offers irrefutable counterevidence and collapses my former worldview. - - - - Naked Submitted by John Zackel The Walk of Shame, as it used to be called back in the 20th century, is typically defined as one's walk home after a sexy night spent at a lover's. The "walk" part of it is pretty self-explanatory, but the "shame" part comes in because you don't take a shower in the morning. Your breath, as Vonnegut so nicely put it, smells like mustard gas, and you don't have any deodorant, and your hair looks like one part Flock of Seagulls and one part wet dog. During this Walk of Shame, your chance of encountering a distant relative, a TV news reporter filming stock footage of homeless people, or, more likely, every person you've ever known, increases inversely with your attractiveness at any given moment. "Hey, So-and-So," someone might say from across the street, waving you over. "You look like shit!" You quickly try to smooth out your hair. "Thanks, Father Thomas," you might answer. He'll sniff the air as you approach. "Have you been having relations before marriage, So-and-So?" "No, Father Thomas," you'll answer, crossing your fingers behind your back. "I have to say, So-and-So," he'll say, "you smell like booty." "No, sir!" you'll pipe up. "It's just this Naked All Natural Antioxidant Juice Smoothie I have with me." And you'll hold up the Naked All Natural Antioxidant 100% Juice Smoothie you purchased for a whopping $4 (!) at the gas station across the street from your lover's house. "Well, I'll be a monkey's grandson! That Juice smells like a [slang term for a horribly vulgar sexual act, named after a city in Ohio]!" You'll nod aggressively, unscrew the plastic cap, and take a swig of antioxidant goodness. You'll make a satisfied sound, then hold the plastic recyclable bottle up to the light of day. "Just juice!" you'll shout. Father Thomas, or whomever you might be talking to, will gladly accept your fervor, pat you on the back, and ask you why your generation is so accepting of homosexuals. Before you offer an informed, convincing explanation of why Father Thomas is a bit of a hypocrite (if you know what I mean), you'll take another swig from Naked All Natural Antioxidant 100% Juice Smoothie and decide right then and there: Healthy Never Tasted So Good. - - - - Dongpo Rou Submitted by Benjamin Gaulke This pork dish, literally "Dongpo's meat," is named after the great 11th-century Song-dynasty poet Su Dongpo, who, as a bureaucrat and engineering genius, was responsible for the construction of a causeway across the West Lake, in Hangzhou. Supposedly, he fed the workers his eponymous delicacy in order to give them strength and energy. The other, probably apocryphal, genesis story of this dish is that Su one day was bored and decided to stew some pork. He then got distracted by a game of chess and left the pork in the pot for too long. He returned to find the meat incredibly tender and succulent. This was a benign disaster matched only by Louis Pasteur's failure to cover the petri dish where he subsequently discovered penicillin. Every Chinese person I have ever eaten Dongpo rou with has insisted that it is very healthy and good for me. Considering that it is a solid cube of pork and more than 50 percent fat, I completely disagree. Dongpo rou is the most disgusting and delicious food I have ever eaten. Timid Americans often refuse it, which means more for me. I have pounded down three of these 3-inch cubic, greasy delights in a row. A friend of mine claims that Dongpo rou tastes like brownies. If so, it is the perfect combination of meat and dessert. I marvel at the sophisticated origin of such a seemingly philistine dish; it would be like discovering that Einstein invented the Hot Pocket. Su Dongpo was a truly great man. - - - - Listerine Whitening Quick Dissolving Strips Submitted by Micki E. Grover From the company that single-handedly taught America that your mouth ain't clean till it tingles like hellfire comes the best new candy in years! Listerine has taken the modern obsession with vanity and given it the stick-to-your-gums charm of a Butterfinger. Imagine a Listerine-flavored Jelly Belly that whitens, too. The strip is as delicious as it is functional, and, by placing on it a four-week maximum-usage restriction, Listerine has cultivated the "get it while you can" hype of short-lived edible oddities like the McRib or the Cadbury Creme Egg. Only one element in Listerine's marketing campaign confuses me, and that is the claim that the strips dissolve within 5 to 10 minutes. I'm still finding sweet, sweet morsels from yesterday's strips; why not take a hint from your friends in the gum business and call them "longer-lasting"? Listerine, you silly fools, people want more for their dollar, not less. Great for getting paper-white chompers on the go, freshening your breath after your midday hummus break, or just swallowing directly, Listerine Whitening Quick Dissolving Strips are the only thing I have to look forward to during the slow afternoon hours at work. I just hope nobody calls. I can't swallow my saliva when I have these things in my mouth. - - - - Odwalla Strawberry C Monster Fruit Smoothie Submitted by Jacob Barron In their quest to supply lonely office workers with a weapon to combat the threat of weather-weary immune systems, the Odwalla juice company seems to have forgotten to remove the stems from any of the strawberries before juicing them. - - - - Kasugai Muscat Gummy Candy Submitted by Scott Sand The package states, "Its translucent color so alluring and taste and aroma so gentle and mellow offer admiring feelings of a graceful lady." I don't even know what that means exactly; I'm just glad the candies inside the package are wrapped individually, the only thing preventing me from devouring the whole bag in two big handfuls. The package also says "Muscat 100%," then something in Japanese. I don't know what they mean by that, either. The third ingredient, after sugar and corn syrup, is concentrated Muscat juice, but they also contain artificial Muscat flavor. I wish I could read Japanese. At least I can read the English, like "contains milk ingredient," which is in a bold font. Too bad for the lactose intolerant, because these rule. - - - - 4C Sugar-Free Totally Light 2Go Submitted by Max Zaenglein The idea is to rip open the tiny packet and pour this fine powder into your water bottle, giving your water flavors that regular water can only dream about. Having only recently discovered that a pomegranate is a fruit and not something one treats with medication, I was curious, to say the least. It tasted like a liquefied Fruit Roll-Up, and left a sticky coat on my teeth I had experienced only once before, by eating 50 or so packs of Nerds candy. Although I was disgusted, my curiosity was again piqued: what did this stuff taste like before it made contact with water? Not fully brave enough to pour it directly onto my tongue, I took a quick sniff at the now almost empty packet. The remaining powder shot up my nose and I can only assume that it exploded, because I had to close my eyes to prevent them from shooting out of my skull. The taste is nasty, but snorting it is fuckin' awesome, if you can handle the ride. - - - - Luna Bars Submitted by Nicholas Markman For my 21st birthday, the Clif Bar company sent me the recently introduced Luna bar, "the whole nutrition bar for women." That's what it said right above my printed name. I understand mistakes. Maybe if my name were Alex or Pat or Sam I could have shrugged it off. But my name isn't Alex, Pat, or Sam. It's Nicholas, and I have never known a female Nicholas. Did I really need to be singled out like that? Couldn't they address the bar to "Current Resident"? My birthday was teetering on disaster. How did I get on this list, anyway? Did I accidentally buy women's deodorant while using my Safeway Club Card? Is it because I used to shave my legs before swim meets? Was it the drag performance I did at 4-H camp? Regardless, I am considering sending a long and irate letter to the CEO of the Clif Bar company. That aside, the Luna bar was delicious. I would recommend Luna bars to anyone looking for a meal that delivers quick calorie intake and hormonal balance. - - - - Kellogg's Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops Submitted by Isaac Marion I've always been a big fan of Corn Pops, or, as they're now called, Pops, having modernized by dropping that old-fashioned "corn" from the name, and changing their tag line to "Big Yellow Taste!" I have no idea what "yellow" is supposed to taste like, but Pops taste pretty good. So, I was delighted and curious when I saw Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops at my local Safeway. I took home a box and immediately poured a bowl. What's this? The Pops aren't in their usual puffed-corn-kernel shape; they're all perfectly round spheres. This can't be a good sign. I take a bite, and, instead of the soft, gently pliant crunch that I'm expecting, the spheres shatter between my teeth like little balls of peanut-buttery pumice. Apparently, the addition of the chocolate-peanut-butter flavoring necessitated a complete change in the basic composition of the cereal, because what I was eating were not Pops at all; they were slightly larger-than-average Cocoa Puffs, or maybe even bits of Cap'n Crunch—the ultracrunchy polar opposite of sweet, gentle Pops! The antithesis! And I have the scarred gums to prove it. How does Kellogg get away with a switch-up like this? Why would they call this cereal Pops when it is so clearly not Pops? Now I'm waiting nervously for the day I open a bottle of "New, Improved Taste!" Pepsi only to find it filled with Lil' Smokies. - - - - Celestial Seasonings Submitted by Janis Butler Holm I brew five or six cups of this drink every day, each one sweetened with a packet of Splenda. Though I can't really identify the rooibos, the sweet orange-mango flavoring makes my taste buds sing. One of the websites devoted to rooibos claims that this South African tea is good for asthma, colic, eczema, hay fever, headaches, hypertension, insomnia, irritability, and nervous tension. Mercy! Rooibos, the site goes on to say, has "significant amounts" of polyphenol antioxidants, which makes it a good choice if you're worried about cancer, stroke, or heart disease. Another website says that rooibos contains the following beneficial flavonoids: aspalathin, chrysoeriol, isoorientin, isoquercitrin, isovitexin, luteolin, orientin, quercetin, rutin, and vitexin. Isn't that nice? And recent studies suggest that rooibos may reduce brain damage from age-related diseases. While it can't make you smarter, it may help you stay smart longer. Of course, black teas and green teas offer equally impressive health benefits—but rooibos doesn't contain caffeine. You can drink it all day without overstimulation. (No flying around the ceiling when it's close to your bedtime.) And it doesn't have the acidity/bitterness of other herbal teas. (Are you paying attention, Celestial Seasonings?) But, whatever you do, don't spill this drink. Though it looks red in your cup, Celestial Seasonings rooibos (I can't speak for other brands) will dye your clothes yellow when you slop it down your front. It's a bright, happy yellow, but it won't make you glad. - - - - Golden Flake Crisp & Crunchy Cheese Curls Submitted by Jackie May As a recent transplant from the Midwest to the South, I'm doing my best to assimilate. I walk by the towers of shrink-wrapped hog jowls at Wal-Mart without shrieking or taking pictures on my camera phone, I've said "y'all" once or twice, and if a waitress asks me, "What kind of Coke?," I don't hit her. And, when faced with a vending machine that offered both Cheetos and Golden Flake Crisp & Crunchy Cheese Curls, I went for the Golden Flake. Golden Flake Cheese Curls would appeal to both extremes of the cultural spectrum—at one end, New York Times food writers, say, or Harold Bloom; on the other, people raised by beavers. These curls taste classy and authentic. They taste like food assembled entirely from recognizable ingredients, like cornmeal batter cunningly infused with actual cheese and fried in oil by cheerful people wearing hairnets. They don't turn your fingers orange. For those of us in the middle of the cultural spectrum, for whom a bag of Cheetos contains neither the shame of downward mobility nor the nightmare glitter of an incomprehensible new world, Golden Flake Crisp & Crunchy Cheese Curls just taste really weird and wrong. They make me want to hop a flight to Minneapolis. - - - - Surprise Zombie Sundae Submitted by Megan Baker At the Omega Restaurant & Pancake House of Downers Grove, Illinois, after grubbing up such entrées as GRILLED CALF'S LIVER, NORWEGIAN SARDINE PLATE, and HOBO BANQUET, you may find your taste buds overwhelmed. You may lean back in your seafoam-green seat, pat your stomach, take a deep breath of secondhand-smoke-filled air, and say, "Hey, you know what? After munching on that week-old bread basket featuring sesame-seed rolls, wheat buns, croissants, Italian-looking breadsticks, saltines, and a banana-nut muffin and downing those POPPERS (JALAPEÑO) , I think my tummy is about to bust." That's what the TUMMY BUSTER is for. It's only the "Largest and Most Beautiful Sundae You Have Ever Seen." But you're up for something wilder. Something unexpected. Something ... from the crypt. Something by the name of SURPRISE ZOMBIE. It's the "World's Largest Ice Cream Soda." It's $8.95. It's obscene. Your waitress, Lezlee, must enlist the help of a co-worker to both prepare and carry the monster to your table, cursing you all the while, you little shit, you who have the nerve to order 60 ounces of ice cream at 1 in the morning, just to see what's so surprising about an ice-cream soda, other than the fact that it's associated with a resurrected corpse. Surprise! It tastes terrible. Like a good ice-cream soda that has died and returned as a mutant dessert, perhaps. Once you pick out the eight or so drink umbrellas (surprise!—it's a tropical zombie), random clusters of maraschino cherries, and stale Oreos, you meet a foamy mass of whipped cream that is not so much sweet as it is sudsy. By the time your spoon has scraped through the froth, a glacial ceiling has crystallized atop the float. You must chip, chip away if you ever wish to explore the murkiness that lies beneath. What will your excavation reveal? Surprise! Zero flavors of ice cream that go with root beer. From the depths of the cloudy beige waters, you pull strawberry, mint-chocolate-chip, butter-pecan, coffee, cookie-dough, and rainbow-sherbet scoops. If you dare to taste the dessert-creature, you will find that each and every bite tastes like chilled Wite-Out. But you don't care at this point. It's Lezlee's brains you're drooling for now. - - - - Chipsters Submitted by Steve DiPietro In the late '70s, there was a snack food like no other. I still don't know if it was corn- or potato-based. All I know is that it was the greatest-tasting snack in the world. Salty and somehow tangy, every single bite was pure bliss. My mom would bring home a couple of bags from every trip to Stop & Shop, but they would be gone in a day. There was never a half-empty bag in the cupboard. If it was opened, it was finished in one sitting. The perfect food had been created. Life was good. It didn't last long. Soon, my Chipsters disappeared from the shelves, and not only from Stop & Shop. Star Market, DeMoulas, and even the First National Food Store stopped carrying them. Inexplicably, the only place that carried them was Moe Black's, a hardware store four towns over. My joyous intake was thus drastically reduced, as my mom didn't share my addiction and didn't see the need to, as she put it, drive halfway across the universe for chips. What she wasn't understanding was that these weren't chips. These were Chipsters, an entirely different breed. Luckily, my dad would make a trip to the hardware store every couple of months. I would scurry off to the basement, away from my siblings, to slowly savor my lost love, wondering what kind of world could make such a great snack treat and then make it so hard to obtain. I was about to find out that the world could be even more cruel than I'd first imagined—the hardware store, like so many stores before it, gave in to the forces of evil and stopped carrying Chipsters. Twenty years later, I found them again. I was in a small convenience store in Italy. I saw a picture of what looked like my beloved Chipster on a box labeled "Cipsters." My friend told me that, in Italian, the C is pronounced as a ch sound. That was all I needed to know. I threw a handful of lire at the clerk, ripped open the box, and was transported back to my childhood. Language barriers, the Atlantic Ocean, and even time itself couldn't keep me from my destiny. The world was once again a good place. I stocked up on several boxes and savored them for the rest of our trip through Europe. It was a short-lived reunion, but one that I cherished. Six years later, I got married. Naturally, our honeymoon was in Italy. I plan on moving there soon—whether my lady comes with me or not. - - - - All-You-Can-Eat Crab Legs Submitted by Briana Newton Until recently, I had never planned on eating crab legs. I had long ago stopped eating meat, and only ate seafood that didn't resemble any sea creature in particular. Things like tuna salad or clam chowder were acceptable. But crab legs were far too lifelike. I was scared off by their witch-finger appearance, disgusted by the thought of tearing into them with my bare hands and those awful metal shell-cracking tools. And then one night my sister and I were at one of those casino all-you-can-eat buffets. While waiting to be seated, I thought about the mashed potatoes and the salad bar, and hoped for some mac and cheese. But none of the people returning to their tables from the buffet seemed to share my enthusiasm for side dishes. Instead, I watched one person after another pass by with urgency in their step and a protective hand over the massive tangle of crab legs on their plate. I wondered if I was missing out. My sister felt the same way. We decided to try them. After we'd been given a table, we ventured to the buffet, which was actually a whole separate room of food. On the far wall, a mob had formed around two steaming kiosks overflowing with crab legs. Empty plates clutched to their chests, the other diners impatiently waited for their turn to help themselves to the bounty. Occasionally, someone would load a plate too fully, earning dirty looks that said, "Now there won't be enough for me and I'll have to punch you." I stood around, unapologetically staring at everyone, while my sister went in for the kill. She returned with one sad little serving (half a crab) for us to try. But first we had to get the requisite plastic cup of melted butter, which was dispensed from a 10-gallon steel drum with a spout on the end. Getting the meat out of the crab leg was a challenge. I pulled, I cracked the shells, I made exaggerated harrumphing sounds to prove just how hard I was trying. In the end, I freed a sizable red-and-white section from a leg. And then the rest of the dinner became a sort of competition: Who could yank out the biggest intact piece of meat? In the end, I left the table with tiny crab chunks wedged under my fingernails, butter running down the backs of my arms to my elbow, and an uneasy camaraderie with the rest of the buffet patrons. It tasted OK, but it was probably the only dinner I've ever had that left me with a sense of accomplishment. Also, I discovered the tendon inside the leg that, when pulled, makes the claw open and close. Neat! - - - - Poi Submitted by Nathan Adkisson I was recently on the island of Kauai for a vacation with some distant, middle-aged relatives. We decided it would be a good idea to go to a luau, because—well, why not? We were tourists. At the luau, we saw some good fire dancing, heard a mediocre cover of "Tiny Bubbles," and were served roasted pork with something called poi, "a traditional Hawaiian condiment that has been part of the natives' diet for several millennia," we were told. I took issue with this statement. Poi is wallpaper glue. I believe that fact precludes it from being hailed as some kind of historical local delicacy. Just how gullible do they think we are? As soon as they put the bowls of the thick paste on the table, I thought I was back in the orthodontist's office getting my braces removed, the taste of the adhesive thick on my tongue. I read in a pamphlet at the table that poi is made from the "corm of the kalo plant (known widely as taro)." I have a few things to say about that. I have supreme confidence that there is no such thing as a kalo, and even if there is, why would it be known as taro instead? And "corm"? It's like they didn't even try to come up with a word that would fool us. Perhaps if they'd thrown in some apostrophes and some double vowels it might have worked. Coo'rm, perhaps, or maybe ka'irmi. Instead, we were all able to see right through the ruse. I am positive that poi is in fact rubber cement containing a recently introduced food coloring known as Gray No. 5. I may have been a tourist, but I know authenticity when I eat it. - - - - Yogurt With Granola and Fruit Submitted by Eric Karjala I had been living in a marriage of convenience to cereal and its low cost and satisfying taste. I found it presumptuous when a cereal billed itself as "part of a complete breakfast," because it implied that I had the time and resources to procure a bran muffin and a Carmen Miranda hat's worth of fruit every time I was hungry. For me, cereal alone could constitute an entire lunch or dinner. The problem was that it's hard to feel like an adult when you're scooping up soggy mouthfuls of flakes from where they bob like driftwood in a sea of backwashed milk. This is probably because cereal is for babies. Some roommates recently turned me on to plain yogurt and its special versatility. Plain yogurt is kind of like the "fruit on the bottom" yogurt I'm used to, except on the bottom of plain yogurt there is only more yogurt. It is far more elegant to add in the fruit yourself. Aggregate fruits like raspberries or strawberries offer a compelling counterpoint to yogurt's natural sourness. True customizing comes with your choice of granola. Grocery stores specializing in natural and organic products offer a wide selection of granola, sold in bulk at reasonable prices. Maple granola, pumpkin granola, cranberry granola, vanilla granola—I don't care which you choose; you're the hero of this story. Dump your granola and berries into a bowl half-filled with yogurt and then stir until you've got an even distribution of fruit and a doughlike consistency. The resulting taste is as decadent as gelato, yet more healthful and fulfilling. More importantly, nobody looks at you askance when you eat your treat of yogurt and granola. You're no baby: you're a health-conscious adult with a fondness for expediency and a penchant for constrained variety. These are the things I kept telling myself, but the other day I looked down at my overflowing bowl of yogurt and granola and blackberries and saw nothing but a wet mound of self-deception. It was time to admit to myself that I was basically eating cereal, only with less viscosity. Not regular cereal, no: cereal in slow-motion. Still, this should buy me another two years before I have to learn how to cook. - - - - Gatorade A.M. Submitted by Chris Olwell The bottle says Gatorade A.M. helps put back the fluids and energy you lose during a full night's sleep, to which I reply: "It's about time." Finally, someone has engineered an athletic drink for people like me, Athletes of Sleep—people for whom it is less physically taxing to be awake than asleep. I had to try it. So recently, after a thoroughly exhausting night of sleeping, I woke up with orange-strawberry. I quickly regained all the energy I lost by sleeping so hard. Sleeping like I do drains fluids from the human body at an astonishing rate. But after drinking 20 ounces of Gatorade A.M., I had fluids to spare. I peed three times in three hours! Four times in four hours! I, and the scientists of the world, remain confounded by the fact that any one of those pees would've filled two 20-ounce Gatorade bottles. Easily. Plus, Gatorade A.M. also works in the afternoon and early evening if that's when you wake up. A-fucking-mazing. - - - - Bimbo Conchas Submitted by Bradley Smith I'm a simple 33-year-old. I weigh 297 pounds. I am an obvious expert on all things sweet. Hailing from Ohio, I am also worldly. I recently drove with my wife and daughter on a whirlwind tour of Texas: 63 hours, 3,300 miles. With a 5-year-old. Thank God for portable DVD players. Texarkana, Midland, San Antonio, Houston, Galveston. Upon refueling near the junction of I-10 and some other God-awful Texas state highway, I found them: Bimbo-brand conchas. The English portion of the label explained that they were fine pastry. There were other terms I have since sent to SETI for examination: "Ahora mas grandes y ricas!" I dismissed these as complete gibberish and, breathless, ripped open the plastic two-pack. Why? Ever had a hamburger bun with cinnamon "icing" stripes spanning the 4-inch expanse of crust? This bun wasn't even sliced! And I'm not wasting a delicious pure-beef patty on one of these. Come on. Get real. My daughter's face crinkled. After my first bite, I just looked at the concha. Two weeks later, I still haven't eaten the second portion. - - - - Carnival Flavor Skittles Submitted by Benjamin Strauss I loved carnivals as a kid, the loudness, the excitement. Skittles has taken my favorite carnival foods and made them easier to eat. Who wants the fun of twirling cotton candy around your fingers and stuffing clouds into your mouth when you can pop a pill that tastes nothing like it? Who wants a caramel apple that tastes like caramel or apple? Who wants a slushy that contains cool refreshing ice that creeps down your throat? Not Skittles. Skittles also doesn't want you to have fun whipping around your licorice whip before you eat it. To Skittles, a carnival would be better as a capsule. To me, that's the shape of a desolate future. - - - - Jelly Belly's Ant Bully Sweet Rocks Mix Submitted by Neil Graf My girlfriend works in an optometrist's office in a strip mall. The shop is right next to a video store. Video stores receive tons of promotional swag, and last year the store received a boatload of these 1.6-ounce boxes of gourmet jellybeans. So many that they were unable to sell or give them all away. I'm not sure how The Ant Bully did in the rental market, but it's an animated movie that features the big-chin voice of Bruce Campbell. Long story short, the video guy gave my girlfriend about 10 boxes of these things. That's a whole pound of Jelly Bellys—not bad for free. According to the manufacturer's text, "the 20-flavor mix features classics like Very Cherry, Watermelon and more as well as four new flavors inspired by the movie: Alka Root, Lawn Clippings, Caterpillar and of course, Ant Hill!" Yeah, about that last one, Ant Hill—it's a fucking dirt-flavored jellybean. I kept waiting for the crunch of little rocks on my teeth, but it never comes. It just tastes like dirt. Even if you mix it with another bean, even a handful of them, the dirt shines through. I'm embarrassed at the way I kept eating them, and complaining, and eating more. I favored them over more traditional Jelly Belly fare. Now that I reflect on these events, I think I wanted to be face down in dirty sugar. On the plus side, the Lawn Clippings beans taste amazing. - - - - Pine Sap for the Savage Soul Submitted by Kendra Langdon Juskus When I was 9 years old, there were big pine trees in my backyard, and my friends and I would rush around beneath them in the imaginary Costa Rican heat, fighting fabricated jungle maladies among fictitious rainforest tribes. We gathered white, frothy sap from the trunks of the trees and folded into it different blends of dirt, pebbles, and leaves. Then we fed our concoctions to the imaginary tribal elders who humbly volunteered to risk their lives for the advancement of science and the good of their clan's health. Some of them died for the cause, necessitating elaborate funeral proceedings and much dressing up. But others survived, their throats and gullets coated with bitter white sludge and their ailments markedly improved. These were our victories. Their sticky smiles spurred us on to make viscous sap soup by the plastic bowlful, dishing it out graciously to the jungle masses anxiously awaiting our deliverance, and helping mankind, generally. - - - - T.G.I. Friday's Jack Daniel's Glazed Ribs Submitted by Ter McDermott This may be a Jack London story line, I'm not positive, but here's the gist of it: There's an Eskimo who kills a polar bear by feeding it what is basically razor wire wrapped in some meat. The bear wolfs it down whole, and as it's digesting the meat, the metal slowly unravels and starts tearing viciously, slowly, at the bear's guts. The Eskimo follows the subsequent blood trail until he comes across the dead bear, its insides fully laid waste, all ignominious and red, upon the snow. The story went something like that. All right. Now envision that story with my wife and me playing the role of the polar bear, T.G.I. Friday's playing the part of the Eskimo hunter, and their Jack Daniel's Glazed Ribs as the seemingly delicious meat that tears apart our guts. Postscript: We split those ribs. Surely it would have destroyed us altogether had we ingested an entire portion each. - - - - Emerald Cove Spicy Nori Snacks Submitted by Jake Ruiter The label's idyllic scene of a tropical ocean cove is a dead giveaway that these treats come to us from the first place you think of when you think of authentic Japanese seaweed snacks: Asheville, North Carolina. Their texture is not unlike that of a Communion wafer. But the flavor, by Jove, is immense, and indubitably spicy. For a moment, there's the sense that you're traveling out on some rusty-bottomed trawler with the alcoholic fishermen of Asheville, chugging rotgut until one of you (maybe you. Why not you? You're a smart person) strikes upon the idea of dredging up kelp and Irish moss to add to the chum bucket and then drinking the mixture by the mugful for nutrition's sake. - - - - O'Coco's Organic Baked Chocolate Crisps Submitted by Melissa Sampson Last Monday, exactly twenty-six 0.7-ounce bags of O'Coco's Organic Baked Chocolate Crisps were bestowed upon me by two obnoxiously cheery sample-passer-outers who wandered into my store from off the street. "Only 90 calories! Just 2 grams of fat!" they chirped, while rapidly shoveling little pink-and-orange bags onto the counter. They took my picture in front of the pile before waving and prancing out the door, leaving me in a confused daze and with a shitload of organic chocolate crisps. I shoved the twenty-six little packages into a shopping bag and put them in the break room for anyone brave enough to try some. A few hours later, with lunch all too far away, that brave person was me. I mean, chocolate is delicious, and organic stuff is good for the environment and all that jazz, and these are certified USDA organic. Combining these elements and adding a delightful crunch has got to create a halfway decent snack, right? These flat, oblong-shaped crisps have a texture that could be described as Wheat Thin–like but more bubbly. They're sprinkled with what appears to be sugar, but sugar isn't listed as an ingredient. The ingredient that most resembles sugar is salt. So I'm fairly certain they're sprinkled with salt. Brown, organic salt. When you bite one, the texture seems less like a Wheat Thin and more like a crunchy piece of cardboard. They taste like cardboard sprinkled with cocoa powder and brown organic salt. "Perhaps this choco-cardboard is an acquired taste," I thought as I tried another. I eventually finished all six or so crisps in the little bag, but they didn't get better. The reactions of my co-workers have been varied, ranging from "These really suck" to "These kinda suck." - - - - Amish Friendship Cake Submitted by Mele Stemmermann I have befriended a retired seventyish man named Charles. If you are female and a buddy of Charlie's, he gives you gifts of food. Each time I see him I am given gobs of homemade peanut-butter fudge wrapped in red foil or "fun size" candies from his warm, linty pockets. Once, he even gave me some frozen venison steaks, which are still in my freezer, just in case the Dust Bowl days return. And, a few months ago, I was gifted with something he mumbled was Amish friendship cake. I polished it off in two days flat. Upon further questioning, he followed up, the next week, with a huge jar of sickly pink "starter" juice, which he said I'd need to make my own Amish friendship cake. This cake is produced by steeping canned fruit in this sweet, yeasty concoction for about a month. You have to "feed" it sugar and more fruit every 10 days or so. Being a former baker looking for a minor challenge on that front, I took on the monthlong investment with some excitement—watching a glass jar full of semi-rotting fruit bubble and foam on my counter was not to be missed. It stank like fresh barf and jail hooch, but I remained cautiously optimistic. Now I have three cakes that no one at my house or job wants to eat. They tasted fine at first, but five minutes in, my stomach started roiling and spitting in protest. Somehow old Charles was able to coax digestible food from his starter, but mine just made me feel ill. Why the hell did I waste all that time and flour and emotional investment on something best left to the Amish? My cats will eat well this week, if they like rotting fruitcake. - - - - Parle-G Biscuits Submitted by Sneha Goud There are always some kids who seem smarter than the rest. Ever wonder how they got to be that way? If you had to think real hard for the answer, then probably you've never eaten Parle-G. That's from the website for Parle-G biscuits. My dad buys a package of them every few months from the Indian grocery store. He'll eat a few when he gets home, after ripping away their insufficient paper wrapper, which is no substitute for a sturdy American box. Then they sit in the back of the cupboard for a few more months until someone throws them away. The grinning, genderless toddler on the front always looks so unaware of his fate. Parle-G biscuits taste like sawdust. The crumbs get stuck in your teeth. I have no idea how to pronounce the name, probably because I didn't eat enough of them as a kid. - - - - Salsa Golf Submitted by J. Ryan Stradal I can't get a straight answer on this and I can't read Spanish very well yet, but I believe that Salsa Golf is one-third ketchup, one-third mayonnaise, and one-third something that's possibly more off-putting than a mixture of the first two ingredients. Without looking, I'm guessing either high-fructose corn syrup or a byproduct of beef production. That's what has earned the impressive-sounding name "Golf Sauce" in South America. For the budget traveler, Salsa Golf is damn near impossible to avoid. It occupies a space in Argentina's cheaper restaurants right alongside ketchup and mustard as the most misunderstood and mysterious of the triptych, sort of like the Holy Ghost if the triune God were a condiment rack. People in Buenos Aires seem to love it. In fact, the Argentines claim to have invented it. However spurious a claim that may be, I cannot imagine any nation-state rising to dispute it. The stuff is heinous. It's the condiment equivalent of flat 7UP, a vague gustatory souvenir of its once-proud components, a product less than the sum of its parts. Yet for weeks I have been intrigued by it. It's like a downtown roller rink: I never use it anymore, but I'm glad it's there, gratifying the perverse tastes of the easily thrilled. Be careful where you ask for Golf Sauce. It's not to be found in finer restaurants. I once asked for Golf Sauce in a white-tablecloth establishment and was met with a tired sneer. "Oh, that," my waiter said, and returned with a handful of ketchup and mayonnaise packets. "If you must have it, mix these together, they're the same thing." He was so wrong. - - - - Burned Frittata Submitted by Meg Gregory I was trying to make a wholesome and tasty dinner that allowed me to mix ingredients in a bowl, pour them into a white, oval ceramic dish, toss the dish in the oven, and forget about it while I did the dishes before eating like the Italians supposedly do: leisurely and luxuriously. A frittata. Yes, that sounded perfect for a crisp, windy spring evening. Eggs, part-skim ricotta, scallions, orzo, artichoke hearts, red bell pepper, Italian parsley (so inexplicably underrated!), a touch of crème fraîche, salt and pepper. Done. Bake for 25, broil for 5. It was the broiling that did it in. When I opened the oven door, billows of menacing smoke parted to reveal a black-topped frittata. As it cooled on the counter, the overcooked proteins pushed water up through the black surface. A kind food scientist might say, "Syneresis!" and then feed me some bullshit about mistakes and learning opportunities. But I hadn't invited any scientists. Deflated but hungry, I scooped some up and tucked in. - - - - Orbit Mint Mojito Gum Submitted by Mary Turner Having bought it by accident at a gas station and being too far down the highway to consider returning to swap it out, I unwrapped the gum and tried a piece. It does taste like a mojito, if instead of rum one used dog-ear medicine, and if instead of lime one swirled a green Dum-Dum around in the glass and left it to sit by the side of a highway. It tastes enough like a mojito that if I were nauseated from drinking too many mojitos and my friend gave me a piece of this gum, I would punch her in the tits. Hard. - - - - Swanson's Hungry-Man Meals Submitted by Mike Petrucelli I don't think there's much that's new about these, judging by a quick look at the box. A bright yellow flag trumpets: "Over 1 lb. of food!" Not "More potatoes than ever before!" or "Now double meat!" or "A bigger brownie-looking thing." Just "food." More than a pound of it. Is that the best they could do? Would Jerry Bruckheimer crow about "Over 37 minutes of fire"? Would Hugh Hefner be content with "Over 20 sets of boobs"? I worry that uninspired marketing will erode the excitement and joy of eating conveniently packaged microwavable processed foods to the level of joyless face-stuffing. - - - - Vlasic Lime-Flavored Kosher Dill Spears Submitted by Lydia Williams In general, I am suspicious of cucumber variations. In particular, I am suspicious of the Vlasic jar, which features a cartoon stork smoking a pickle. Nevertheless, I love all things lime. Even now, I am chewing strawberry-lime gum. So I bought a jar of the lime pickles, and then I invited my picky Korean friend over for a pimento-cheese sandwich on toasted wheat. When she arrived, I offered up a dill spear, all innocence, and told her to try it. One sour look from her and I'd dump the whole jar. But she loved it, so we ate pickles and pimento until our lips puckered. - - - - Sweetened Papaya Spears Submitted by Mike Brenot The Don Post werewolf mask I played with in childhood tastes better than this. As I chew, the mouth feel strikes me as fluffier than its hefty weight suggests. By "sweetened," they must mean that an enormous amount of low-grade corn syrup was used, then somehow leached out. Needless to say, this product of Austin, Texas, won't be joining the other dried tropical fruits in my cupboard. Its place, instead, is next to a box of comb honey from the mid '90s. - - - - Soymilk Submitted by Kathleen Hawk I couldn't believe it when I read an article in one of Martha Stewart's magazines that said that "experts say" that if you like soymilk, you'd better get your calcium elsewhere. And besides, they added, why not just drink milk, since it's so good for you? The article's many expert opinions were clearly obtained from the Dairy Council. I envisioned all these guys with rubber shoes covered with grass and cow poop, pointing to a big udder and wiggling their eyebrows at me. I love soymilk. Every time I pull the carton out of the fridge, I warble, "You know how I feel about yooou." It's a phrase I found on my ex-boyfriend's answering machine, left by some starstruck girl who hadn't yet gotten over being tied up in my bed while I was out of town. I've never been able to say it to a guy with a straight face, but it seems the right thing for the blue half-gallon container with "MORE OMEGA-3s" plastered across it in big red letters. I love those omega-3s. So I wrote Martha a letter to say how disappointed I was that she'd published a badly researched article. My soymilk says clearly that it's been enriched with as much calcium as milk, and along with those omega-3s it has a lot of vitamins, too. Not to mention all those phytoestrogens, which I credit with keeping my boobs bouncy and full long into my 50s. So what gives, Martha? I got a letter back from some administrative lackey, telling me, "Your comment has been forwarded to the editorial staff." And I waited for a letter from Martha. Or someone. Finally, weeks later, I wrote again. Martha, I said, I supported you through all the years when people didn't understand how wonderful and smart you were to make a big business out of teaching people to make their lives more gracious. I'm a woman. I get the charm of milk-glass cake plates, grapevine baskets, and walls painted to look like they're a hundred years old. And good for you, making all that money. I even supported you through that nasty insider-trading scandal, because there must be a million rich people who do that sort of thing. If I had a private financial adviser, and he called me to tell me "Quick, you need to sell this stock," I'd do it. Who wouldn't? But this is over the line. You misled people into thinking that sucking off cow udders is better than drinking the juice of little ground soybeans, all the while paying your big mortgage with the advertising loot from the Dairy Council. Did I mention they're advertisers? I mean, it's a matter of choice. But, hell, Martha, you lied. Maybe not you, but the journalist working for the editors that you hire. While you take home the cash. You know, it's not the grab-and-run '90s anymore. I would have thought your stint in prison might have made you more thoughtful about these things. She never wrote back. Not one word. Her loss. I splash soymilk in my coffee, anticipating that sweet and creamy taste rolling across my tongue, thinking about my boobs and Martha's, and how in this small way my life is more gracious than hers. - - - - Swiss Chalet's Spice It Up Special Submitted by Phil Wolters Was it shocking when Swiss Chalet announced a spicier alternative to its traditional rotisserie chicken? You bet it was. I had grown up on the traditional chicken, had eaten it for years and years, and never, ever anticipated that it could be changed, that it could be improved, y'know? But there it was, staring me in the face: a new and improved version of my lifelong favorite. Would its spicy kick bring me into a new world of taste that I'd been missing all my life? Or would the New Coke effect take hold? The anticipation built. Oh, how it built! I had promised a friend that I would never eat at the Swiss Chalet in our hometown again. She had worked there for a summer and had been terrorized by the management to such an extent that she one day erupted, her quiet resentment exploding into a fountain of rage, leaving in its wake a broken fridge door and some hurt feelings. To make a girl who had worked patiently in food service for most of her life go off like that, those Swiss Chalet people must have been pretty damn antagonizing. So you can see the dilemma. And, as you can probably guess, I went anyway. It tasted like betrayal and heartache. I skipped the bill. - - - - Shepherds-Who-Want-You-to-Be-Healthy Pie Submitted by Katelyn Sack In Raynaud's phenomenon, fingers and toes turn white as if dead or deadly cold, and sensation and mobility decrease or disappear altogether. My sense of touch departed as I was crossing the street in front of the medical-school library, where I had been researching my mother's maladies. My dear sick mother lost her fingerprints to Raynaud's, and the texture of mine began to change that day. It had to be stopped. Warm water and massage are your first thoughts for treatment, followed by sun and hot foot powder. These are merely quick fixes. What you need is shepherds-who-want-you-to-be-healthy pie. Brown ground beef over medium heat and blend in cinnamon, nutmeg, honey, dried bilberries (for their capillary-buoying anthocyanosides), rosemary (for diosmin), parsley (for apigenin), thyme, and sage. Pile the meat into a casserole dish, then add greens, then mashed potatoes. On top, sprinkle patches of celery seed, buckwheat, and wheat germ. Lastly, add olives and more honey everywhere. Cook pie until apartment and mashed potatoes are toasty. Serve hot to your dear sick mother, who notes that there appear to be twigs sticking out of her dinner, and that the cold is making her Raynaud's act up. Crank the heat and crack a window to speed global warming. - - - - Popsicle's Long Lasting Slow Melt Pops Submitted by Mike Balzer Could someone just tell me what bees use to saw their wood? The suspense is fucking killing me. - - - - Ohio State University "Deli Style" Roast-Beef Sandwich Submitted by Chad Rutan This attempt at a sandwich was given to me secondhand by a visiting speaker who had specially requested it and then decided for some reason not to eat it. The Ohio State University "deli style" roast-beef sandwich comes with not only the tattered remains of what used to be romaine lettuce but also a slice of tomato that borders on being a variety of red Jell-O. At the right angle, the "deli style" roast beef gives off a disturbing iridescence. All this mashed between slices of a decent wheat bread. I cannot complain about the bread. - - - - Chocolate-Dipped Altoids Submitted by Rebecca Bowen Half the fun of Altoids is tossing them in the glove box, forgetting about them, and reuniting with the candy two months later while checking for a map and flashlights, only to remember you've never used the glove box appropriately. But whatever, you have Altoids! You're so happy, you give them away to just about anyone. Chocolate-dipped Altoids do not work in this scenario. You will open your glove box to find twice the sadness: not only did you fail at storing practical, life-saving items in your car, but there's also melted chocolate all over the fucking place, which is impossible to remove without coming out of there looking like you've got shit all over your hands. And if you try to offer what's left of them to anyone, let's say to the person you're asking for directions because you don't have a goddamn map, you'll probably get pegged as a fecal perv and stay lost forever. - - - - The 4-Alarm Spicy Chicken Sandwich From Wendy's Submitted by Peter Scott Bartsch Apparently, Wendy entered into a partnership, or perhaps just a one-time joint venture, with Satan and Ra, the sun god. This sandwich's ingredients must have been harvested in hell (presumably by Satan's minions, whose very fingertips shoot flames) and then sent directly to Ra's headquarters, where he plunged the ingredients into the center of the sun for final processing. From there, the blistering ingredients were probably transferred to the Wendy's distribution center in Wichita, where they went out for delivery to various Wendy's establishments. Upon arrival at my local Wendy's, the ingredients were assembled, by a kitchen worker named Todd or Becky or Ramón, while completely submerged in a vat of boiling hot sauce and tequila. The final product was then dried under a 1,500-degree heat lamp, promptly wrapped in foil paper, and handed to me with my vanilla Frosty and an insidious grin. I cried a little, and couldn't taste anything for a long time. - - - - Doritos X-13D Submitted by Mark Parker The best thing about Doritos X-13D is the way your vegetarian girlfriend tries one before she looks at the package and sees that these chips contain beef tallow. - - - - Amazing Candicraft Delicious Ink N' Paper Submitted by Elizabeth Gumport We write checks to people we owe money to. We write notes to our friends in class. We write letters to people whom we should have stopped loving a long time ago. We are always writing to someone. The Amazing Candicraft Delicious Ink N' Paper, however, urges otherwise. The letters written on the thin wafer of sugar are letters that long to be dissolved. To write with this strawberry-flavored gel is to write words knowing they will not last, that they are to be savored instead of saved. "Eat your words!" the stuff insists. When you do, they taste bitter, as you always suspected they might. - - - - My Brother's Entry for the LongShot Submitted by Joseph Love When he was about 10, my brother put milk in a Popsicle tray. How bad could his beer be? He canned the stuff in antique Mobil 1 cans, the tops soldered with a coat hanger and a car battery. Though submissions weren't to be canned, I kept quiet. The can he set aside for me had been spray-painted with a stencil to say "Joe's Brew." "How do you open it?" I asked. He stabbed two holes in the top with a screwdriver, Hawaiian Punch–style. Once, when I was mountain-biking in Indiana, a friend asked me, "Man, do these woods smell like semen to you?" I sniffed. Those woods, mushroom cellars, and my brother's beer all smell like semen. Maybe his wife, irritated, shook the can, because thick bubbles began to creep slowly through the holes. They advanced like snails made of foam. We took the can to the sink. After five minutes, we had something that looked like a giant head of black broccoli dripping into the drain. I scraped the foam into the sink and drank. It tasted like the grease trap that hangs under charcoal grills. Charcoal, of course, was the dominant flavor, with a follow-up of beef and pork. There were hints of chicken and burnt kabob vegetables, especially sugary onions. The tannins were well-developed, though unexpected, and I could have done without the ashy aftertaste. Also, swallowing was a bit difficult, not something I'd expected from a liquid. "Um, what kind of hops did you use?" I asked. "Is beer a hops?" he asked. "Not ... um, no." "Well, I just poured a 24-pack of Miller High Life into a bucket of molasses. Anyway, I hops it wins." When he played T-ball, he'd wrap his bat in aluminum foil and step up to the plate shouting, "Let's play FutureBall!" Once, I admired his creativity. Now, it seemed to be giving me the gout. - - - - Baby Mum-Mum Rice Rusks Submitted by Bridget Brier Nothing makes you feel more like an animal than having a child. Cleaning up your son one morning, you will nonchalantly pick a wet, partially ingested Cheerio from his chin and eat it. You will be mildly horrified by your action, so, to assuage feelings of confusion and shame, you silently praise your resourcefulness. You waste nothing. Because this happens again and again, you care more about the quality of your child's food. (You also care about his well-being, of course.) Most of the food marketed for babies is someone's sick idea of an introduction into the world of edibles. You make your own baby food. But you get curious when it comes to the packaged snacks for your budding gastronome. Gerber Veggie Puffs? They contain food coloring and preservatives. How about Baby Mum-Mums? They seem wholesome enough. With five ingredients (rice, sugar, skim-milk powder, salt, and calcium lactate), they're not exactly health food, but they'll break the monotony a little. They arrive two to a package, which really just suggests that there's one for you, too. While you give one to your 10-month-old to distract him from the books, which he's been pulling off the shelf for the last hour, you ponder what to do with your portion. You nibble. It's sweet, with a little crunch, and ever so airy. It tastes like a Rice Krispie. You dip yours in peanut butter and think about what to make for dinner. - - - - Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans Submitted by Joel Gunz Safeway has it on sale this month: 10 cans for $10. I consider simply getting five for $5 or even one for $1. They'll let you do that at Safeway. Instead, I put the Tofutti Cuties back in the freezer and load up on the full 10. In the pot, Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans retains the shape of the can—a monolith of beans and rust-colored gravy that looks suspiciously like dog food—until I demolish it with my spoon. I am reminded of The Electric Company's cartoon parody of the giant black slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey. An hour later I come down with a fierce gas attack. One down, nine to go. - - - - Confectionery Lane Spiced Jelly Beans Submitted by Steve Thorngate When people insist that Christmas is a Christian holiday, what they really mean is that some of those who celebrate the six-week holy feast of reciprocal generosity take a short break to remember an unrelated story about a baby. Easter is culturally somewhat less absurd, its consumerist trappings limited mostly to pastel baskets, stuffed bunnies, and obscene quantities of cheap and delicious candy. Protestants tend to conceive of Lent—which culminates in Easter Sunday—in positive terms: instead of denouncing bad habits, we pick up good ones. Last Lent, I picked up a fantastic Confectionery Lane Spiced Jelly Bean habit. Starting on Ash Wednesday, the drugstore across from my office devoted the better part of an aisle to Easter candy. Inexplicably, half of this shelf space was taken up by a huge inventory of Confectionery Lane Spiced Jelly Beans. Because I was always the only kid who preferred the spiced beans to the fruit-flavored variety, my ingrained sense of duty seems to have interpreted the store's bounty as an obligation to personally buy and eat the majority of these off-brand, nutritionally vacant treasures. I'm very into healthful, sustainable, delicious food; I'm also very into the church. Here is a typical lunch during the church seasons of Advent, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost: Mixed greens (w/o dressing) And here's a typical lunch during Lent: Mixed greens (w/o dressing) I'm feeling jumpy, bloated, and more than a little penitent. My teeth hurt. I await the joy, renewal, and changing retail priorities of the Easter season. - - - - Dannon la Crème Submitted by Emily Benjamin You know those la Crème commercials where the woman savors her yogurt like a Nebraska housewife in her wasted prime would savor the immaculate placenta from the Holy Grail? That's pretty much how I, too, eat la Crème. Provided a few crème-colored candles offer the only available light, I lay my world-worn self down and curl up at roughly 135 degrees in that holy intersection of the arm, seat, and back of the couch, my left arm draped across my stomach like some overstuffed patrician's. Then I let my spoon circle along the inside edge of the cup to cloak it in the perfect amount of crème. I lick clean what has clung to its bottom and draw the rest into my mouth with trifling suction, punctuating my bites with a light smack of the lips. After each spoonful, there's an involuntary fluttering of the eyelids and a sigh. I am ready, now, for Dannon to strike between my legs with his indurate acidophallus. Lord knows I am ready. - - - - General Foods International Suisse Mocha Submitted by Sara Sligar Suisse Mocha comes in a small tin whose color I always think of as red, although only about 10 percent of the surface area is actually red. The rest is covered with pictures of European-looking chocolate beverages and an "International Recipe" that involves the phrases "flavor destination" and "indulgent recipe." I will translate this quintessentially European text into American for you: "Mix with hot water." Over winter break, aided by my mother and her MasterCard, I procured several tins of this magic stuff, intending to carry them back to my dorm room once school resumed. And carry them back I did. Traveling from the wild plains of the Midwest on the wild planes of American Airlines, I spirited my bounty back to New England. Ecstatically, I cleaned a mug. Breathlessly, I heated water. Filled with incandescent hope, I drank. And it was magnificent. Nothing can equal the delicious blend of coffee and hot chocolate that is Suisse Mocha. Staring out my window at the winter-stripped tree branches and the icy ground, I mentall |