Meatcake

and a beloved member of the gang survives an assassination attempt

Hello, clowns!

By the time you get this, Davida and I will be safely in Wisconsin, having just ducked past the winter storm that’s coming our way. So picture us waving from the land of dairy, laying in a bed of cheese curds, and drinking milk straight from a cow’s saggy udder.

And as I mentioned earlier, this is the last piece to drop before the New Year comes in, so may you all have a happy and lovely winter holiday season. I hope you eat a lot of good food, indulge yourself in some sleep, and do fuck-all during your time off.

In my pursuit of alternative versions to fruitcake, like the vegetablecake we made earlier this week, I thought we might as well make a meatcake while we were at it.

So I gathered different types of preserved meats, such as dehydrated, processed to a point beyond recognition, and canned, all to toss into a spice cake mix, which was a culinary shortcut I discovered via food blog Let’s Dish.

And since a few of you had pointed out I forgot the hard alcohol to soak my filling in for my last piece, I bought some cheap brandy, because who the fuck doesn’t want their Vienna Sausage to light up like a candle wick?

I first started by chopping up a Slim Jim that was longer than my forearm.

Oh my God. Who needs this much Slim Jim? The answer is: everybody. I took a small bite and let the preservatives flow through me. I figure if I eat enough of them I’ll either live forever or turn into the human equivalent of ham.

Then I sliced up some Vienna Sausages, a culinary creation I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid.

My dad would sometimes bring home a whole case, and I’d eat them after school with a toothpick. If you’ve never had them, you’re missing out. They look like sausage links, but have the texture of baby food. As in, if you even look at one the wrong way, it’ll turn into mush. They’re amazing.

This is a blast from the past, but a long time ago on the newsletter, I tried making a Chicago-style hot dog version with them, which…I’ve never repeated again.

I then added some canned chicken breast.

Canned chicken is a curious ingredient to me. I’m obsessed with whole canned chicken, first of all, because it is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen (it’s sort of like pouring the contents of a grave into a pan, and then eating it).

The breast version is odd in that it looks like chicken, but doesn’t taste like it. In fact, it tastes like almost nothing. Its texture is tacky and stringy too, and at least inside the can I bought, was almost all water.

I even found a can of tiny shrimp, which one of you mentioned in the comment thread where I asked you for your family’s worst recipes.

This stuff was weirdly hard to find; it was on the top shelf almost beyond my reach. The shrimp are cute to look at, they’re these perfectly formed little guys that look almost like miniature models. Too bad they have the texture of pencil eraser. We even tried to give one to each of the cats, who sniffed them, looked at us like we’d betrayed them, then walked away.

I sliced up some beef jerky and threw it in the bowl, too, because what the fuck.

And finally, I brought out the element I’d been missing from the vegetablecake: the alcohol.

We bought a cheap bottle of brandy from Target, and I poured about a half cup’s worth into the meat. As I folded it all together, I was hit in the face with one of the strangest scents I’d ever experienced. It was this mildly sweet smell that transformed into almost a turpentine-like aroma with hints of meat in it. Obviously since there was cheap liquor involved, I could smell the straight jet fuel, but it was such a bizarre experience that I felt like I wasn’t even on planet Earth anymore.

“This smells insane!” I shouted. Davida came into the kitchen and put her face over the bowl, and her eyes got all big.

“It’s like every time I sniff it, I get a new smell.”

After I let the mixture marinate for 20 minutes and fumigate the whole apartment (this probably killed any hidden vermin), I mixed up the cake batter and dumped it all in.

What a sight to behold. Much of the shrimp had disintegrated into mush, and since everything was starting to resemble barf, I figured I only had a few minutes before I too, felt like barfing. 

I put the batter into the Bundt pan, saluted it, and let it do its thing in the oven. 

As it baked off, that strange brandy and preserved meat aroma filled our home, blessing it with an unidentifiable smell of a spice heavy potpourri, along with gasoline and sublimated nitrites. I’m sure something mutated inside us that day, which is why I woke up the next morning with five buttholes on my forehead and two missing toenails. 

Well, it looked perfectly fine when I dumped it out of the Bundt pan the next morning, but I could still smell that unidentifiable halo around it.

This version of the cake was noticeably wetter and spongier, but still pretty dense.

I took a massive bite of the top and once I started chewing, started laughing uncontrollably. Turns out, cooking Slim Jims is a horrible idea. Their sourness apparently leaches out into cake batter, and they take on a very strange and crumbly consistency. The rest of the meat was decidedly unrecognizable, and because the brandy had obliterated any semblance of flavor in it, my brain assumed I was eating foreign objects and I involuntarily stopped chewing.

I frantically waved over to Davida to come try some, and she reluctantly came into the kitchen.

“Take a bite of the top where all the meat is,” I said. She took one look at me and bit into it.

I watched her chew, and she wordlessly walked over to the garbage, opened the lid, and spit it out. That’s probably the highest compliment you can get as a chef. It means that whoever you cooked for loved the food so much they couldn’t stand to have it in their body any longer.

Well, I guess that’s a wrap on the year. I couldn’t imagine spending it with anyone other than you clowns. And I’ll bundle up the rest of this meatcake, store it in the basement, and bring it out for the next winter holiday, because there’s enough chemical solvent and preservatives in this thing to make it last forever.

Actually, maybe I should just light the whole thing on fire. The world would be safer that way.

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I almost forgot: As I was writing this, Scorpion jumped up on the kitchen counter, snatched Pepper the Raccoon, and was about to eat her when Davida swooped in and saved her life.

In other news, does anyone want the worst cat in the world?

Now, if you could all do me a favor and share the newsletter on social media or forward it to a buddy (and get them to sign up), I’d be grateful. Harvey, Mr. Bee, and the traumatized Pepper could all use some more friends:

And since it’s the holiday, I made this piece free, so merry winter and happy New Year to you all! That being said, I’d ask that you all consider upgrading your subscriptions to a paid one: You get exclusive editions almost every week, which means you get nearly double the shenanigans, plus you unlock over three years of past newsletters via foodisstupid.substack.com.

I try not to be annoying about that part; I just love writing this thing so much that I’m hoping that someday, it’s all I ever do. That’ll only happen with your support. (By the way, if every single one of you signed up for a paid subscription, that could actually happen.)

In the meantime, Davida and I will be enjoying some time with family and ushering in the New Year with the gang and our two nightmare cats, so we’d like to send a heartfelt thanks and wonderful wishes to you all. I hope the New Year treats you all well, and as always: I love you all so very much.