Back in February, when the first TV Gourmet appeared on this very website, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I got around to this very post: making food and drink exclusively from “The Simpsons.” With much thanks to SNPP, possibly the single greatest hub of information in the entire world, I—along with photographer Nadia, dairy-consumer Will, and was-just-kind-of-there Joe (Adam from last time couldn’t join us because he was watching preseason football, preseason Rams football; neither could Matt, who’s too busy wearing Rastafarian hats and getting called a narc)—chose five recipes that have been made, featured, and gorged upon in Springfield, including the granddaddy of them all. It’s the post I was born to write, baby.
And please feel free to do some gratuitous quoting in the comments section. I’ll get things started: “The only danger is if they send us to that terrible Planet of the Apes. Wait a minute…Statute of Liberty…that was our planet! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!”
Tom Collins Pot Pie (From “$pringfield”)
What you’ll need: pie crust, cloves, Tom Collins mix
1. Unsure of what actually makes a Tom Collins, we went by what The Internet said and used the following ingredients: ice cubes; 2 oz. dry gin; 2 oz. lemon juice; 1 teaspoon sugar syrup; soda water; slice of lemon; and 1 colored cherry (we actually didn’t include the cherry).
2. Pour the drink into the pie crust
3. Then add a sprinkling of cloves
It…it was bad. I mean, look at that picture below. It looks we caught some dragon flies, dried them up, and then sprinkled their corpses into a pool of vaguely-alcoholic water, all held together by a cheap pie crust. That’s pretty accurate, actually. The crust and drink were fine—together, even with the sogginess of the graham cracker crust, it tasted pleasant(y), with, in the words of Peter King, a nice hint of citrus—but the cloves were tooth-chippingly hard to chew. The look on Homer’s face, the same Homer who once enjoyed a hot dog with band-aid on it, says it all; even he couldn’t have more than a bite.
64 Slices of American Cheese (“Rosebud”)
What you’ll need: 64 slices of individually wrapped pieces of cheese
1. Unwrap cheese, then consume
I’ll let my friend Will, who did the actually cheese-eating (sans surrender-monkeys), take it from here:
“Mmm, sixty-four slices of American cheese.” Apparently Josh wouldn’t spring for Kraft Singles with the whole glass of milk. [Ed. Note: I bought the “cheese” I eat every day for lunch, the kind that costs $.99 for 16 slices.] What he got instead were “American Accent Individually Wrapped Pasteurized Process Sandwich Slices” with “modified potato starch,” “casein,” and “malk.” As a matter of fact, the word “cheese” does not appear anywhere on the packaging for this substance, not even in one of its bastard forms such as “cheese food” or “cheez.” And I strongly doubt this stuff was made anywhere near America.
About 10 slices in, I was pretty sure I could taste the nondairy-ness of the product I was consuming. After 17, I was pretty sure I could taste the “oleoresin paprika color.” After 23, I was pretty sure I was done eating. It didn’t take all night; it was over in about an hour. And—the biggest disappointment of all—Mr. Burns and Smithers did not fall from the ceiling at the end. I was just left with a stomach full of gurgling viscous semi-solid orange goo and perhaps a few precious shreds of my dignity.
Worcestershire Soft Drink (“Homer Goes to College”)
What you’ll need: Worcestershire sauce, clear soft drink
1. Fill glass with soda (we used Sprite)
2. Pour Worcestershire sauce into glass, putting enough in that the previously clear liquid looks like soy sauce
The commercial for Worcestershire Sauce Soda ends with a voiceover exclaiming, “Ah, steaky!” Not quite. For a second or two, when you drink the concoction, it doesn’t taste that bad—then you actually have to swallow the liquid. That’s when things get rough. It was extremely spicy, and the carbonation only increased the odd/awful sensations my taste buds were experiencing. It tasted unsavory and bitter, not unlike Dean Bitterman’s aborted attempts at stopping Chugalug House’s bra bomb. Here I am, looking I just bite down on a lemon-shaped rock:
Corn Nog (“Hurricane Neddy”)
What you’ll need: Creamed corn, egg nog
1. Pour creamed corn into a cup
2. Add egg nog
Turns out, you can buy egg nog in the middle of August. Who knew? The sweet cinnamon smell of the egg nog was overpowered by the garbage water-smell of the canned vegetable, and the drink’s texture was too chunky for my taste. Or anyone’s taste, assuming they don’t enjoy eating cat vomit.
Vaseline on Toast (“Lisa’s Date with Destiny”)
What you’ll need: Vaseline and bread
1. Toast the bread, making toast
2. Spread Vaseline on the former piece of bread
According to Wikipedia, “Milhouse liking Vaseline on toast was based on a child from [“Simpsons” writer/showrunner] Josh Weinstein’s school days, who everyday would get on to the bus with a piece of toast, which had Vaseline on it.” I learned something new: it’s OK to eat Vaseline (I’m aware of the Flaming Lips song, but would you trust this guy when it comes to ingesting things?). And frankly, it didn’t taste awful. It didn’t really taste like anything actually. The toast could have coated with cheap margarine and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
