kinda like found-object art, but with food. if you don’t have the right ingredients for what you want, sometimes the wrong ingredients can be close enough. sometimes. you win some, you lose some.
CHALLENGE: cheese dip for soft pretzels
DISH: no, we do not have cheez whiz or any other dip-like cheezfood product on hand. however, we do have cream cheese. melted with a little milk, it has a cheez whiz consistency, and with half a bag of macaroni and cheese cheezfood powder thrown it, it has a cheez whiz color, too.
RESULT: win! it even tasted exactly like cheez whiz. the five-year-olds were happy.
EXTRA CREDIT: the leftovers are pretty damned good eatin with a hefty splash of sriracha. it made a bag of tostitos its bitch. and a certain two-year-old. i know, i know… it’s some hot shit. it’ll make a poor baby’s head catch on fire. which is why i kept it away from him, i swear. i distracted him with his own bowl of tostitos and a little bowl of actual cheez whiz… which was actually in the back of the fridge the whole time. oh well. but after i put my the bowl in the dishwasher (aka, MonkeyBeef’s Jungle Gym) i turned around to find him hanging from the top rack like a lemur, his face smashed into the grid, tongue rather effectively slurping out the last drips of the super-spicy cheezfood mess he knew damn well smelled way better than the bowl i had given him. he didn’t complain, exactly, but apparently he noticed the party on his tongue afterwards, because he spent the next 20 minutes or so running to the box of baby wipes, pulling one out, swiping it on his tongue, and then throwing it back in the box (i figured there wasn’t much point in trying to explain to him how unhappy his ballsack was going to be about this particular brand of recycling at the next diaper change, so i just hoped i’d remember to throw those away later.)
CHALLENGE: it’s -20 degrees outside before you take wind chill into account, and you’ve just run out of milk.
DISH: three boys can just have a diet caffeine free soda with their gogurt tubes for the night. but one boy cannot be trusted with either a squishy tube of brightly colored slime or a can of soda. so… that box of powdered milk that’s on the shelf for that one candy recipe? that swears it tastes like milk when reconstituted properly? yeah. mix some of that up with twice as much vanilla carnation instant breakfast powder as usual, put it in a sippy cup, and hand it to the thirsty two-year-old.
RESULT: fail! two-year-old drops cup after one sip, headbutts mommy, and runs and hides behind sofa. daddy puts on his coat and boots. when he’s done laughing.
EXTRA CREDIT: getting the two-year-old to drink the real milk 20 minutes later. he came out long enough to take the cup. held it for a while, scowling at mommy and daddy. threw it on the floor. got down on hands and knees and studied it closely. picked it up and shook it. sniffed the spout carefully. licked it once. put it back down and studied it suspiciously some more. kicked it once. picked it back up and took the tiniest slurp he could manage… and finally hooted with relief and pounded it. went over to the counter where the cup of evil fake milk had been put, reached for it, screeching in distress til i handed it to him, and ran over and threw it in the garbage.
