What’s up, clowns?
I had an intense last week. Most of you know that I’m a staff writer at a really fun site called The Takeout. Part of my job is to nose around the internet and find cool and timely things to write about, and I’d discovered what appeared to be an unsubstantiated rumor that the Choco Taco was being discontinued.
So, out of curiosity, I called Unilever, who produced the ice cream truck classic, and they confirmed that the rumor was indeed true. I wrote about it, not really thinking about it too closely. This isn’t the first time I’ve broken news before; most of the time people don’t really bat an eye at that kind of shit. But in this case, the internet exploded and within hours, the news was everywhere. It was even trending on Twitter. Maybe you saw it too!
My piece got cited by other news outlets, including the New York Times, and suddenly your former pizza-making pal, Dannis Ree, was called a journalist, even though I’ve never really seen myself as such. I mean, you guys know me as the clown who constantly talks about shoving food up his ass on a dumb newsletter, and you all know better. I love it.
This week’s idea is brought to you by my friend Ruby, who asked on Facebook whether or not “Caprese Sun” was a thing.
If this doesn’t immediately click with you, Ruby is referring to Capri Sun, the kids’ juice drink that comes in a pouch. She is also referring to the delicious summertime dish, caprese salad, which simply consists of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil, and salt. Drinkable salad? In a pouch? Where do I sign up, dirtbags?
(Also, you can’t see him very well, but Mr. Bee is in fact behind the tomato in that photo. If you look carefully, his antenna is poking out.)
The most important part of a caprese salad is the tomatoes, so I purchased some heirlooms.
It is easy to assume I got these heirloom tomatoes from the farmer’s market. But no, I do not like to wake up early on the weekends and, like, go outside. I got these heirloom tomatoes at a big supermarket.
Admitting you did not get an heirloom tomato from a farmer’s market is illegal in food circles. In fact, by writing this now, a team of culinary assassins have been released, and I am now in hiding. If you notice the newsletter hasn’t shown up for a while, you know that they got to me with their mandolines and dull steak knives.
Instead of using plain fresh mozzarella, I decided to buy some burrata, because burrata is like a cheese Gusher (which is another childhood treat).
I mean, some genius came up with the idea of wrapping cheese around wet cream and more bits of cheese. Juicy cheese, how could I pass that shit up?
I dumped the burrata and the heirloom tomatoes into the Vitamix (which is quickly becoming my new best friend), along with a couple of basil leaves plucked from our neighbor’s plant in the backyard.
I mean, did you guys know basil comes from plants? That people grow? And not from a clamshell at the grocery store? Unbelievable.
One very important component of a caprese salad is some good extra virgin olive oil.
I had just the stuff, too. I’ve got this really terrible bottle of olive oil I got from Aldi that I’ve been trying to get through. I am not an expert at olive oil but I do not think it’s supposed to taste so bitter that you immediately get angry at it.
Good olive oil is something really magical, however. You must pay $40 bucks for a bottle, try it, tell your friends it tastes peppery and fruity even if you do not know what you are talking about, then let it sit on your counter for years and get rancid.
I let my Vitamix do its thing and let it pulverize the caprese salad.
I thought I was going to need some additional liquid to get it started, but the tomatoes were so juicy that it just turned into a puree right away. The cats got scared and hid because when the Vitamix is at full blast, it immediately becomes the most terrifying thing in the apartment. To humans too. What I’m saying is I cried in terror the whole time the Vitamix was running.
Once the salad was turned into a smooth velvety mash, I ran it through a strainer to get to its essence.
After all, Capri Sun is as smooth as my hairless buttcheeks. If your Capri Sun is chunky for some reason, you should probably stop drinking it. Unless you’re me, in which case, down the hatch, fool!
Based off its appearance, I was not particularly excited about imbibing Caprese Sun.
It was a vomitous milky orange color which did not look very appealing. I don’t really enjoy eating vomit all that much in general.
Considering we do not have a cool manufacturing plant inside the apartment that can seal juice into pouches, I used the next best thing I had: a snack-sized Ziploc bag.
I didn’t quite trust it to hold liquid since it was the cheapest kind I could find at the store, but I was committed at this point.
The gang inspected the pouched liquid salad (which sort of looked like Velveeta) suspiciously, as if it was going to attack them in some way.
Pepper poked at it with her nose and when the bag jiggled a little all three of them hid behind the couch. I joined them immediately.
I initially thought about cheating and drinking the Caprese Sun by sneaking the straw into the zipper thing, but I realized the sack was sealed well enough that no liquid came out once I held it upright.
This was awesome. Holding the bag vertically immediately gave the whole thing a true Capri Sun vibe, and I tore a small hole on top and snuck the straw in.
Honestly, man, Caprese Sun was pretty good.
Despite its scrumptious regurgitated appearance, the overall flavor was spot on. The heirloom tomato came through cleanly, the burrata added a silky smooth element that killed the acid of the fruit, and you could taste the basil plain as day. Even though Davida was busy playing Dungeons and Dragons with her friends over voice chat, I pestered her anyway and handed over the juiced salad sack.
Davida indicated that she wasn’t interested in it but I gestured that she should try it. Reluctantly, she took it from me and tried a sip. Then she made a “Huh, this isn’t so bad” expression and went back to playing games.
I kept sipping on it until I realized I couldn’t put it down. I don’t mean that it was so good that I couldn’t put it down, I mean, I couldn’t physically put it down. If I did, the contents would shoot out the top and my life would be over!!!
But then I realized since I bought heirloom tomatoes at the supermarket and not directly from a farmer, my life was already over. I put the Caprese Sun down, put a colander over my head like a helmet, and sat in the darkness wielding a butter knife.
I’m still here, waiting.
Thanks again to Ruby for today’s inspiration! I’ve ingested many things in the duration of this newsletter, but liquid caprese salad is new territory. Don’t forget to share the newsletter on social media since this keeps the newsletter alive and well:
And here’s where I highly recommend you sign up for the paid version of the newsletter. You get exclusive editions that free subscribers don’t (last week’s was egg salad Dippin’ Dots, which were actually pretty incredible), plus you unlock access to all the former content at foodisstupid.substack.com.
There’s three years worth of content now and plenty more to come, so if you’ve been waffling, now’s your chance.
I’m still mulling over some ideas, so it’s very possible I’ll be hopping into your inboxes later this week. As always, I love you all, and don’t forget to get some nice tomatoes from a nice farmer and tell everyone on the internet all about it.
I mean, it's kinda like gazpacho with cheese? Sounds good to me.
I don't know what's up with unilever these days. Between Ben and jerry's and choco taco, they seem to be giving ice cream lovers the brain freeze treatment.