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  • There are Worse Chefs than You: Avoid these Food Abominations

    There are Worse Chefs than You: Avoid these Food Abominations

    There are worse chefs than you, no matter how bad you think your cooking is. How do we know? There seems to be a lot of nostalgia for the 1960’s that floats around above pop culture. Unfortunately, a lot of it is way overblown. The time period that brought us the Vietnam War, rampant cigarette use and mass-marketed processed foods might not be the best one to romanticize.

    What does that have to do with food abominations? Trust us, we’re getting there. You see, there are worse chefs than you out there: 1960’s era cookbooks make that plainly clear. If you’ve ever wondered what dishes were popular in the middle of the 20th Century, we’ve got you covered. Here are some of the worst food abominations from the 1960’s.

    There are Worse Chefs than You

    Prune Whip

    One of the nastiest-looking things we’ve seen in a 60’s cookbook is prune whip. So, get this: start with raw whipped egg whites and then fold them into a prune puree. Now, let’s think about this: we’ve got uncooked eggs that could cause salmonella and we’ve got prunes, pureed, which have well-known laxative-like properties.

    How did anyone survive the 60’s eating crap like this? What’s next, guys, steaks with cigarette butt garnish? No wonder people used to keel over in the mid 50’s.

    Asparagus Macaroni Loaf

    Any food item that ends in the word “loaf” goes straight into the garbage can. This particular dish was a popular choice in the 60’s among suburban moms and macaroni lovers. Whoever told them that asparagus belonged with macaroni in a congealed loaf mess was absolutely wrong, but, hey, what can you do.

    At least this dish is a bit better than meat crammed into loaf form. Meatloaf is also a perennial favorite of this era and we still don’t understand who exactly enjoys that dish.

    “Circle Pups”

    Dishes that include hot dogs were really, really popular in the 60’s. The companies who produced these processed foods had a really good marketing department, because just looking at dishes like the “Circle Pups” dish from Better Homes and Gardens Meals in Minutes makes us lose our appetite.

    The Circle Pup in particular is a pair of hot dogs on a slice of bread with rice and mustard. Which is just… why? What’s wrong with the hotdog bun? Why is there rice in the mix? Well, what can you expect from the era that brought us American “cheese.”

    Dad’s Denvers

    This heart-stopper is created by spreading deviled ham on a French roll. Oh, you haven’t heard of deviled ham? Good, it’s terrible. Avoid it like the plague. Next, make an omelet in bacon fat and add green onions. But this on top of the French roll and top it with sliced tomato and broil the whole mix.

    Okay, if you survived cooking this thing without dying of a heart attack then you can now attempt to eat this monster. You’ll probably get a few bites in before you start to black out from the amount of trans fats flooding into your blood stream.

    Pickle-Stretcher Salad

    In the 60’s there was a weird trend of making tons of salad that didn’t include fresh vegetables. Let that sink in. Macaroni salad? Cool. Potato salad? Awesome. Caesar salad? Absolutely not, throw that to the animals.

    One of the most nauseating “salads” from this era is the Pickle-Stretcher salad. It was so named because it allowed the maker to stretch a few pickles into a meal that could help the whole family projectile vomit. This monstrosity has olives of both green and black varieties mixed in with diced dill pickles and probably with a heaping on vinegar just for good measure.

    Do you want acid reflux? Because this is how you get acid reflux.

    Jellied Chicken

    I don’t really know what else to say about this dish that the name doesn’t already give away. It’s like Jell-O but with chicken. The cookbook this particular nightmare is from is entirely based on cooking with blenders.

    I mean… guys. I know it was the 60’s, but it wasn’t the dark ages. Why was anyone cooking with exclusively blend-able recipes?

    Conclusions

    Take it easy on the fried food, the processed stuff and the canned foods. If your meat comes out of a can, if you can’t name what part of the animal it’s from and you can’t imagine it served in a nice restaurant, maybe you should avoid it. And thank goodness the 60’s were fifty years ago, because some of these dishes are giving me diabetes by proximity.

  • Brava Pure Light Oven Feature Roundup

    Brava Pure Light Oven Feature Roundup

    There’s nothing that can ruin a good vacation faster than a sunburn. It’s hard to believe just how much you can be cooked by little more than light. Well, what if you could turn the cooking power of light from your skin to your dinner? That’s the concept behind the Brava Pure Light Oven. Today, we’re taking a closer look at this innovative gadget and rounding up its unique features. Let’s get cooking!

    It’s Not Magic, But It Seems Like It

    Brava’s biggest draw is the light-powered cooking it brings to bear. Using specialized bulbs and sensors, the oven tracks what type of food is in it and adjusts accordingly. As such, when you put a type of food in and tell the oven how to cook it, it responds with light energy. The wavelength of the light emitted allows the oven to penetrate deeper or hit the outside of the food. Things like searing and frying can be done equally well, as the Brava uses physics to bypass the normal issues with cooking.

    Physics Make This Oven Smart

    You don’t even need to watch food with a Brava. You simply pop it into the over, tell it what you want and let it go. The smart oven will then send light energy directly into the food. Not into the air around the food, or into the pan underneath it, no. The Brava Pure Light Oven sends the energy directly into the food you’re cooking. That means that the food will be cooked in a fraction of the time it would normally take to cook it. You don’t have to wait for anything to heat up, and you’re not transferring energy. As such, the food will be cooked faster, automatically, and perfectly every time. That’s revolutionary.

    Brava Pure Light Oven Pricing and Release

    The Brava oven will be available this November for around $1,000. That might sound steep, and in fact you might be thinking about similar premium kitchen products that have flopped in recent memory. Juicero, for instance, the $700 juicer that sank like the Titanic, comes to mind. Brava’s makers, however, are confident that their oven will find its market. And why shouldn’t they be? Their oven can cook a meal for two in minutes for less power than it would take to preheat an oven. That’s no mean feat! Expect the name Brava to be on everyone’s lips come November.