nonedible nonfood

Not since the heady days of my mother's infamous creation "hot dog soup" have I been so frightened by the appearance of something purporting to be dinner. Well, there was also Doctor Zabdiel Boylston's Honeycomb Pudding, which had too long a name not involving food products that I should have been suspicious well before making it, but I was young, my dad was the head chef that day, and all I know is that the name was only descriptive if either the good doctor or a honeycomb generally resemble the title creature from the Blob. And can move by it's own willpower. Yeah, it really did that. Right off the cutting board and across the counter. I still get nightmares about it.

But I digress, which I do a lot, because, well, probably because I've got a serious and undiagnosed attention deficit disorder. Or because I've killed enough brain cells with alcohol, stress, and other such nonhealthy nonsmartening pursuits, that I'm incapable of staying on point for more than the first four or five words of a given sentence. See?

So where was I? Oh yes, I was being disturbed by food. Which is hard. I'm the kind of gal who actually seeks out such generally frightening dishes as sweetbreads, tripe, salt cod, and pickled fish. Hell, I ate a wide array of unidentifiable floral and faunal squiggly items in Japan without flinching. I ate fish face, eyeballs and all. So, you know, I'm hard to freak out when it comes to food. Unless, of course, the food in question is hot dog soup which is just sick and wrong, or something called Fluffy Mackeral Pudding which is even sicker and wronger. Yeah, the name is scary ok, but not half so scary as the image of "onion sauce" which really looks more like A Fish Named Carrie if you ask me.

What the hell? That's what you're thinking, isn't it? Well, I mean, unless you've already seen this site and know what the deal is. But basically, some guy posted all these recipe cards that Weight Watchers put out back in the '70s with amusing commentary, which couldn't have been that hard to come up with because, well, the cards are pretty fucking disturbing on their own. I mean, do you really need someone to tell you that anything called inspiration soup would be anything but to the tastebuds, or that rosy perfection salad must have been created by someone who understood the meaning of the word irony much better than Alanis Morissette?

Now, I'm a fan of Weight Watchers. I recommend them like crazy because, well, you know, they kind of saved me and all, got me back on the straight and narrow, or at least, thinner, and I never really thought of them as some weirdass "Here drink this...uhm...Kool-aid" kind of an organization that pulls you in and exerts weird mind control over you, but these cards are kind of making me wonder if Jim Jones didn't go on to take over their culinary design division after making such a mess in Guyana.

Posted by paulette at March 25, 2003 05:29 PM | TrackBack