Month: March 2010

Shut Up Bacon, Part Deux

I’m fairly certain most of us, especially those weather-weary souls from the Oregon Trail, know the beauty of bacon.  Bacon is pretty great, yes.  Bacon as an internet meme, an “I Can Haz Cheezburger” phenomenon, well, not so great. Actually pretty annoying.

In the same vein as hipsters desiring praise for running errands, the bacon realization movement is just lazy, and subsequently, overdone. Bacon marmalade, bacon ice cream, chocolate-covered bacon, bacon cotton candy, bacon tattoos, bacontoday.com, bacon songs, ironic t-shirts with bacon on them, “I wonder if they can make bacon-flavored bacon,” bacon bras… STOP IT.  STOP IT ALREADY.  What the hell is next?  A massive internerd following of salt?  SALT IS SO GREAT.  LET’S SALT EVERYTHING!  HERE’S SOME SALT UNDERWEAR!

I just feel for the little piggies.  I’m sure there is someone out there, designing a Chick-Fil-A-esque “Eat Less Bacon” sign?

Cupcakes and Gender Essentialism

I feel really bad that until now I didn’t realize men are afraid to eat cupcakes for fear of appearing girly. Poor men! Sure, they make more money than women, but what good is privilege if you can’t have a cupcake with it?

Thankfully, Butch Bakery is here to help. There is no risk of pastry feminization when you are snacking on cupcake flavors like Jackhammer, Driller, or Beer Run. Honestly, I’m kind of in awe at how they’ve made good on their promise to “stay far away from the cliché.” Nothing says “manly” and “not clichéd” like a Home Run cupcake, described as “more fun than getting to third base.” BTW, the Home Run contains: bacon. Which is also not a cliché.

Why not go all the way, Butch Bakery? There you are at third base, when you could have hit it out of the park and called them mancakes. It’s so obvious that the “cup” in “cupcakes” refers to bra size and we all know only ladies wear bras. I’ve lost faith in your entire enterprise at this point.

Also, what the hell are trans folks supposed to do? WHERE ARE THEIR CUPCAKES/MANCAKES—TRANSCAKES?

—Snacktime

PS My favorite part of the website is where they say they cannot guarantee their products are nut free.

Bully for El Bulli!

Dinner at El Bulli: The Greatest Restaurant in the World – The Amateur Gourmet

I’m sorry, multiple-year waiting list, $1000 meal, and flying to Barcelona? Dear dude, your privilege makes me want to puke. 30 courses of tiny little plates, half of which are leaves or flowers? SERIOUSLY? I could make you that on the walk to the subway from my apartment. Maybe I’ll open a restaurant…

Submitted by Sleepswithbooks.

-Julia Childless

The English Major Cheese Shop

I like the Bedford Cheese Shop, I really do. The people who work there are really nice and they have many expensive snack foods that I enjoy looking at and even occasionally buying. That said, their famed cheese descriptions have gone from cute to dear-god-just-write-your-novel:

“If this cheese were a person, it would be a cigar-smoking, loud-mouthed, high-stakes roller with poor bathing habits”

“Gives your mouth the sensation of licking a damp carpet of grass.”

“This is the cheese of rodeo cowboys, professional wrestlers and other American heroes. And you too will feel like an American hero when you eat Vermont Shepherd Reserve.”

“Smells like a drunken sailor on shore leave, and it’s just as randy.”

Worst of all, they attract the kind of clientele who appreciates such descriptions and so when I do go in there I am forced to stand in line behind some guy who needs to taste 25 cheese in search of one he ate on spring break from Brown that tasted like virgins and strawberries, with a touch of dirty youth hostel linens.

—Snacktime

I Scream

So, we started following some foodies on Twitter, you know, to become part of the community and also have fodder. Bad idea. After reading a post about someone making black pepper and veal stock ice cream—no, really—I foolishly clicked on its accompanying link. Why? What did I expect to find? A mother cow and her baby, not knowing that soon her milk and his congealed essence would soon be frozen together and ingested? (Yes, I am the vegetarian of the Foodie staff.)

However, what is worse than misguided meat eating is fucking with ice cream! There are 478,563,478,563,498,756 kinds of ice cream out there. At least. Throw in ice milk, sherbet, sorbet, soy ice cream, raw ice cream, rice ice cream and god knows what else, and you could probably eat a new flavor every day until you die. There is no need to make ice cream edgy.

And yet, here are recipes for such “innovative” flavors as bacon ice cream (if you are playing the SUF bacon drinking game, drink now), caviar ice cream,  and one flavor whose only ingredients are water, sugar, low-sodium soy sauce and orange zest. This sounds like something they would eat during the famine portion of The Good Earth.

Here is my ice cream recipe. On a hot day, go get a scoop of ice cream.

—Snacktime

Sour Grapes and Even Croquet

     

The Sonoma Grape Camp will allow 30 lucky foodies to pay $3,500 per couple ($1,900 for singles) for three days and two nights of picking grapes and blending wine. From the website:

It’s about a deeper understanding of wine’s DNA. It’s about food pairings, cheese making, even croquet.

If the event is fully subscribed, the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission (SCWC) and the Relish Culinary School will gross more than $50,000.  It sounds totally worth it!

You’ll get hands-on experience working in the vineyards. But grape camp has so much more to offer—the sparkle in a winemaker’s eye, the insider secrets of using a pruning shear or harvest knife, the crisp, clear days working in the vineyards, and the sense of accomplishment and wonder as you see your work come to fruition right before your eyes.

I feel like I should add a materialist analysis here about how alienated we all are from the means of production and how this is possibly not the way to rectify that, and that as long as we use consumption as part of our search for authenticity we’ll never really find it, but I think I will have a drink instead. A glass of wine from God knows where!

—Snacktime

Stunt Food

                       Evel, we miss you

Electric Flowers: “This reporter is having a hard time keeping the use of exclamation points to a minimum!”

Miracle Fruit: Contains a protein called miraculin.

Fugu: “With the possible exception of the illicit liver, no part of the fugu creates quite the same flutter of excitement among blowfish lovers as the fugu sperm sac” (NOTE: This is a 5,000 word article about one meal.)

I miss Evel Knievel

—Snacktime