April 21, 2009
Play With Your Food
The best way to eat Bugles. Courtesy Flickr user V'ron
There were some bags of Bugles lying on the table in the break room the other day, and I was sorely tempted to take one. Not because I actually wanted to eat them—too salty—but because I had a flashback to childhood, when I used to stick one of those strange funnel-shaped snacks on each finger, creating what looked like corny claws. I always figured I was the only person weird enough to do that, but two coworkers passing by had the same reaction: Bugles! Finger snacks! I remember when…
Pringles can make you look like a duck. Courtesy Flickr user Jeffisageek
That got me thinking about other foods I liked to play with as a kid. Duck lips made out of Pringles; what about Twizzler straws (just bite off both ends and stick it in your soda)? Skittles or M&M flowers? Or that gross-but-giggly camp game called “Chubby Bunny” which involves seeing which kid can stuff the most marshmallows in their mouth while still articulating those two words?
Not that it has to be junk food to inspire play, of course. You can turn broccoli into a poodle, celery and raisins into “ants on a log,” or strawberries into mice.
Today I discovered something that seems to have been invented just for me, combining my love of word play, cheesy snacks, and general goofiness: Scrabble Cheez-Its. (As the Endless Simmer blogger so aptly puts it, “Have I died and gone to heaven?”)
What foods did you play with, or perhaps still do?
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I remember, Black Olives didn’t last long in a dish at thanksgiving before they found their way onto little fingers..
-chicklets that doubled as buck teeth
-marshmallow snowpeople (held together with toothpicks
-oreo checkers
-broccoli trees of course (with grammys world famous cheesey sauce)
-trying to make a new word out of the floating letters of alphabet soup, and all you could find was r’s and l’s and the occassional x..
it’s all i got for now, but more will come to me.
Two things immediately spring to mind, neither of which have I found anyone else who can relate to.
- I used to love blintzes and applesauce. I’d unwrap the blintz and scoop up the cheese filling with my fingers, then dunk my fingers in apple sauce and eat. When the blintz wrapper was empty I’d make little burritos out of the wrapper and apple sauce. Incredibly messy and in retrospect I can’t believe my parents let me eat like that.
- I loved (still do) goldfish. To pass the time in classes I’d have one on one fights between goldfish where I’d push two fish head on until one cracked apart (b.t.w. these were the crackers, not real fish). The one that broke was eaten, while the reigning champion would go on to his next match, until it too broke. To this day I still eat goldfish by breaking them in half lengthwise with my teeth – something doesn’t seem right about just eating them any old way.
Thanks for including a link to my candy flower on flickr. I appreciate being used by your blog. Any future use please contact me and let me know first though. I would like to know when my stuff is being used
[...] are usually admonished for fooling around with their food, be it making duck lips out of a pair of Pringles or claws from Bugles corn chips. (Although big [...]