Hi, clowns!
Davida and I are back and settled in after our short vacation to Wisconsin. We went to Milwaukee and Madison for a few days, saw some friends, and ate some good food (you can see what we ate on my Instagram feed). I’d say the highlight of the trip was when we checked into our motel and realized someone had left an entire toilet brush sitting in our toilet. Also, everything in that room felt damp for some reason.
I’m not even bothering with a segue.
Do any of you remember Dippin’ Dots? You know, that weird ultra-cold ice cream that’s shaped like tiny little frozen pebbles? It was sort of fun to have when I was a kid; the rapidly changing texture was always interesting for the first few spoonfuls. Then I grew up and all of life lost all of its magic. Everything became hell. All I could see was darkness and fire and I could only see visions of future wars against these weird robots called “Terminators.”
Just kidding. I totally forgot about the stuff in general. I mean, Dippin’ Dots are not exactly easy to get. You might be able to find them at a theme park, a mall, or a movie theater, but I mean, I barely step foot out of the house, so they just dropped off my radar.
Until recently, that is.
Davida and I found this children’s Dippin’ Dots kit a while back at the store, and I’d stashed it away, trying to decide what to do with the thing.
Since everyone else on this earth is funnier, smarter, and more clever than I am, I decided to crowdsource an idea and I polled Twitter with a question:
I received some terrific answers. Dust bunnies, peanut butter and mustard, peanut butter and liverwurst, black licorice (multiple people suggested this), Bengay, a football. But one person’s answer had me straight up laughing my ass off.
Toothpaste and orange juice. Ah yes, a classic combination. The French say that this is the most divine combination of flavors in the world.
I had to start by figuring out this needlessly complicated Dippin’ Dots children’s toy.
There were all sorts of little shitty things to put together, like molds, a weird liquid dispensing bottle, and a stand. Why are children’s toys so complicated? The Snoopy Sno Cone Machine was bad enough. This world-weary 41-year-old doesn’t have time for this kind of shit when the Terminator war is coming.
You’ll see. You’ll all see.
First, I poured orange juice into the Dippin’ Dot liquid reservoir.
I asked Davida to help with this photo since my hands were full. It’s my favorite photo because only the background is in focus and there’s stuffed animals laying on my cluttered kitchen island.
That bottle I filled with orange juice is supposed to pour a small stream of liquid into a cup positioned above the Dippin’ Dot mold.
The tap on the bottle was, as far as I could tell, broken. I couldn’t get any goddamn juice to come out of it no matter how hard I pressed on the lever. I simply could not get this thing to work, so in a fit of rage, I just manually poured orange juice into that little cup, which evenly dispensed the juice into the tray.
My orange juice spheres were ready to go into the freezer, so I jammed them into a spot on the shelf.
Since I was already mad at the stupid dispenser for fucking up the orange juice, I decided to manually squeeze a bunch of toothpaste into the next Dippin’ Dots mold.
I didn’t fill the entire mold, however.
First of all, the entire mold could seemingly hold a whole tube of toothpaste, and I figured I probably shouldn’t be eating a whole tray’s worth of toothpaste anyway. Plus, toothpaste is expensive! If this were a smart newsletter, here’s where I would go deeply into a discussion of inflation, supply chain issues, and why products are so expensive right now. But it’s not a smart newsletter, so I’m just going to say the first thing that comes to mind. Anus.
I jammed the toothpaste-filled mold into our freezer next to the orange juice-filled one and decided to play video games instead of paying off our hotel bill from last weekend.
The next day, I opened up the orange juice Dippin’ Dot mold and marveled at the fact that they’d come out pretty well.
The sight of all those little spheres nestled against each other was oddly satisfying.
After I finished patting myself on the back over the orange juice situation, I excitedly peeled open the toothpaste mold.
Fuck. Apparently toothpaste doesn’t freeze well. I don’t know which one of you needed to learn this today, but you’re goddamn welcome. Davida quickly suggested I freeze mouthwash instead, but that’s silly because who would eat frozen mouthwash when there’s all this perfectly good toothpaste left to eat? God, Davida!
I took one of the baby-sized spoons from the kit and filled it up with frozen orange juice spheres, along with a swipe of icy toothpaste from the other mold.
Then I offered some to Harvey, who was covered in lint, and immediately got toothpaste on his leg. He refused to eat the frozen orange juice and toothpaste, and now he won’t even look at me. Our relationship is ruined forever.
Depressed, I ate the spoonful of frozen orange juice and toothpaste and winced as the frozen juice shot needles straight into my teeth. It’s not often this newsletter causes me actual pain, but after having Harvey get upset at me, nothing mattered. I braced for that bitter flavor you get in your mouth when you have orange juice right after brushing your teeth, but then I realized something. It wasn’t happening.
That’s because the orange juice melted before the cold toothpaste could smear itself across the inside of my mouth. I have solved the toothpaste and orange juice issue. Perhaps…you should drink orange juice before you brush your teeth. What a breakthrough! But even if I won the Nobel prize I deserve for this research, nothing mattered because Harvey still wouldn’t speak to me.
So to cheer myself up, I decided to take another suggestion that my friend Taffy gave me on Twitter.
I did a Dippin’ Dot bump off the back of my hand with some toothpaste, just like she requested. Fancy people eat caviar off the back of their fists, but in my home, we eat spheres of orange juice and smears of toothpaste. It made me feel better.
Also I remembered that Harvey was a stuffed animal and he generally doesn’t say much to me anyway so he couldn’t be that mad.
Orange juice and toothpaste are a match made in heaven. Don’t forget to share my dumb (genius) newsletter on social media (pretty please), because I can always use the boost:
If you enjoy the free version of the newsletter, you should really sign up for the whole thing (all of you should!). You’ll get extra exclusive editions per month, all to yourself, plus you’ll unlock access to the entire archives, including previous paid-subscriber-only content via foodisstupid.substack.com.
It’s a pretty sick deal.
Next week for paid subscribers I’ll be doing another Dippin’ Dots experiment, this time based off a suggestion my friend Jonathan gave me. He’s got a great sandwich blog called Bounded by Buns (go check it out!), so naturally, this one’s sandwich related:
As always, I love you all very much. I’ll hop into your inboxes soon. Go have a fun weekend.
What's a "mall"?
I have been quoted in the newsletter of the greatest food writer of all times. My life's work is complete!
Toothpaste and orange juice is the correct flavor combination, and it looks like the toothpaste helped keep the juice dots in place. I think this went well.