Like I was going to pass up a SpongeBob-shaped chicken nugget.

Two things I hadn’t thought about in a while: SpongeBob and Kid Cuisine. Renewed awareness could have only come from mixing the two together.

I can’t remember the last time Kid Cuisine did something so heavily thematic, and I’m kinda surprised that SpongeBob got the nod. He’s long past the point of needing goofy promotions to keep his name afloat. Maybe ConAgra pleaded with Nickelodeon for the favor, using doe eyes and a comically oversized novelty check.

I don’t eat Kid Cuisine meals, but I’ve always appreciated them, more or less as edible outsider art. The regular versions are admirably wacky, but when they get their hands around a “concept piece,” they just go completely berserk. Read More…

Me and four other bloggers visited the food courts in our local malls. Our mission was to review the Chinese food joints that are always a part of those food courts.

I bet you didn’t expect me to open with that paragraph today.

We had good reasons to do this. Shopping mall food courts are bizarre and beautiful. They exist more as entities than mere “places,” and the hearts of these entities are always the Chinese food joints. Most of the establishments at food courts come and go with alarming frequency, but the ones that sell Chinese food are blessed and cursed to be a part of them for as long as they stand.

They are constants. Magical constants bathed in twenty-year-old neon lights. Read More…

Refrigerators are private places. Intimate places.

It’s hard to let strangers peek inside. I don’t want to be judged. I don’t want people to see Tupperwares full of sludge, and forever associate me with Tupperwares full of sludge. I don’t want people to know how much I like Laughing Cow cheese.

It’s also hard because my refrigerator is different from other refrigerators. Since I’ve spent so many years reviewing weird food, I’ve become someone who feels an extraordinary attraction to weird food. I dislike throwing it away. If the food in question is “limited edition,” I’m too afraid that I’ll never see it again. Instead, I’ll shove it in the back of the fridge, like a dog burying its bone. If I ever find myself single again, this will be the catalyst.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t do this with everything. There wouldn’t be room for that, and I’m generally okay with tossing stuff so long as I’ve taken pretty photos to remember it by. But some things do fall through the cracks, and I guess what I’m getting at is that there’s enough expired food in my fridge to qualify it as a biohazard.

The upside? If I ignore my shame, I can get a neat post out of this.

Here are five drinks that should not be in my fridge: Read More…