Oddly Comforting: Concoction
What could the four ingredients pictured above possibly combine to create? Only the most ghetto fabulous comfort food ever.
Now, I’m not sure exactly how far back this recipe goes, but I’m going to have to say that it must be connected to Jesus or perhaps some kind of saint, because what emerges when you combine cabbage, tuna, potato chips, mayo, and a secret ingredient (a tiny bit of onion) can only be described as heavenly. Or Concoction ™.
Just joking… kind of. I grew up on this stuff. My grandmother used to make it all the time. It’s delicious. But convincing anyone else to eat it has been problematic. Which leads me to this new column on TunaCupcake.com–Oddly Comforting. You send along your recipes for the weird comfort foods/concoctions you grew up with, and I’ll make them. Your part of the bargain: make mine (and the others we post over time) and tell us what you think. So first up… Read more
White Castle: Adventures in Food Safety
Every Canadian knows of a wonderful, magical place that can cure all your ills, and fill you in a way no other fast food restaurant can or wants to. It is a place worthy of an epic journey, a la Harold & Kumar.
“It” is White Castle.
Last month, I had the good fortune of spending a few days in beautiful Northern Kentucky, famously (mis)marketed as the South Side of Cincinnati (The mis-marketing is a topic for another time and place. Let’s leave it at: I’d never be happy living someplace that built its identity in relation to a bigger, better place. I know, I know, Canada… but here we are). It is also home to a vast array of liquor and tobacco shops, a “main strasse” (I don’t know why they pulled out the German there) and a White Castle. Read more
Weird Drinks: Cucumber Drink
Look! Cucumber flavoured drink (or green pumpkin, according to the ingredients list, the only thing in English). Awesome! I thought this was another exciting gem like the Basil Seed Drink from my local Korean food store (even though this one is made in Taiwan).
Or, at least that’s what I thought until I opened the can and took a sip. First warning that boredom would ensue: it was brown. This is never a good thing. I expected it to be clear or milky, like a cucumber. And maybe have some delicious bits of cucumber. Nope. Second warning: it was sweet! Since when is cucumber sweet? And not gross sweet, just boring plain old sweet. Like sugar mixed with burnt water. How do you burn water? I don’t know, but they figured out a way.
It’s so underwhelming, I can’t even think of a snappy line to end with.
UPDATE: R has kindly informed me that this is in fact winter melon flavour, not cucumber. I guess this could’ve made it even more exciting, since I’ve never tried winter melon, but it doesn’t change the fact that it still takes like burnt!
Weird Drinks: Basil Seed Drink with Honey
I’ve recently become obsessed with drinks that have crap floating in them. It started when I had a bizarre craving for aloe vera drink, the kind with floating bits of aloe vera. Mmm. Since finding it in Perth at a Korean grocery store, I’ve been drinking it by the litre.
Anyway, I was in Sydney last week, and while buying vegan Thai lunch in Newtown I spotted a few bottles of Basil Seed drink for sale next to the Coke. It stood out for obvious reasons - the bottle looked like it was full of mini floating eyes that look at you while you drink them. Yum! It tasted like melted popsicle, and the basil seeds were kinda crunchy and slimy at the same time. But in a good way.
Then, the other day I went on a midnight mission to procure some of my delicious aloe 
juice and was super excited to see that they too had the Basil Seed drink, although a different brand (apparently this drink is so popular in Thailand that its made by a bunch of different companies). But, I was disappointed when I took my first sip. It tasted like melted popsicle like the last one, but the basil seeds in this version tasted like dirt.
The dirt taste raises some questions. Is this actually basil seed or something else? While gulping down my first bottle in Sydney (it was a very hot day), I briefly imagined that I was drinking a weird blob creature, made entirely of eyeballs, that feeds on the filth at the bottom of some remote lake. A creature that was put in that by the thriving eyeball-blob-creature-bottling industry in Thailand. And it’s only by some badly translated mix up that Australia gets bottles of this stuff labeled “Basil Seed Drink.” Or maybe that second bottle I got had just gone off.
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