Sundae bloody sundae

happy holidays!

Greetings to the greatest clowns on Earth (that’s you)!

Today’s newsletter was supposed to be for paid subscribers, but, it’s the holidays, so a lot of you get a freebie today. And just so you know, Davida was the one that wanted me to send this one out on the house. You can thank her for the little surprise (paid subscribers, you’re still getting an extra one very soon). Be sure to shout out to her in the comments section, I’ll make she sees them.

Plus, today’s newsletter subject was her idea.

If you learned anything from the previous edition of the newsletter, hopefully it was about sundae (it’s pronounced “soon-dae”), which is a type of traditional Korean blood sausage. You may have also learned from the newsletter that cold peanut butter and jelly hot dogs are gross, but I feel like that is something most of you would have figured out on your own, without having to try it.

Not too long ago, while we were sitting on the couch probably staring at our phones as usual, Davida shouted, from her side, “You should do a sundae sundae!”

“Oh, that’s good,” I said. So I said, “Dannis Ree, as the greatest food writer in all of history, you should steal Davida’s idea for the newsletter and make everyone think you’re more hilarious than you actually are.”

Then Davida said, “I can hear you.”

I figured just putting Korean blood sausage on ice cream was a little boring by itself, so I thought I’d kick this shit in the nuts by adding one more bloody element: Dinuguan.

Dinuguan is a Filipino dish consisting of slow-cooked pork in blood and seasonings. To make the idea more palatable for younger ones, the dish was nicknamed “chocolate meat.” Sorry, children. That chocolate is blood. That’s sort of a fucked up way to trick kids into eating it (let’s be real), but dinuguan is in fact, delicious. I barely know anything about Filipino food, but what I do know is that it is absolutely awesome.

I’ve shown this ice cream scoop on the newsletter before, but every time I use it, I have to show it off again.

Here’s Harvey and, uh…Scoopy posing for their album cover. Together, they comprise a Carpenters cover band.

I deliberately picked this cheap strawberry cheesecake ice cream flavor because I thought the strawberry bits would look like streaks of blood.

Turns out I was totally right. Ever cackle while scooping ice cream out of a tub?

I've always felt like sundaes need some form of chocolate on them, otherwise they aren’t a complete sundae.

Maybe that’s just me. Chocolate syrup or fudge just feels necessary (unless you’re making tragic shell, which is my version of magic shell, but way dumber).

As you can see, Harvey’s in the background of the photo taking a nap while Mr. Bee stares at him. Harvey is technically an invertebrate, so he can’t really do much on his own. So if he’s down, he’s stuck. Then Mr. Bee laughs at his ass.

I spooned an enormous piece of dinuguan meat along with some cooked blood and put it on top of the chocolate syrup and ice cream.

Have you ever put blood on ice cream before? It makes for a really uncomfortable holiday party small talk subject.

Afterwards, I microwaved some of the sundae (the Korean version) and placed a couple coins on top.

If you’re keeping track, this is two different preparations of blood on the bloody-looking ice cream now. If you think that putting a little bit of blood on ice cream is a weird subject of discussion at a holiday party, then try explaining two kinds.

This is going to sound really stupid, but I…did not realize strawberry flavored syrup looks like costume blood.

I started laughing when it drizzled out. For some reason I had it in my mind that it was opaque and thicker, maybe like more of a pastel pink? It sort of feels like Hershey’s just said “fuck it,” put dye in corn syrup, then mixed it with cough medicine and crushed old scented markers.

I appreciated the fact that the real blood looked like chocolate and the strawberry syrup looked like blood.

Most of the time when I’m doing stuff for the newsletter I put my brain on autopilot.

Not this time.

A spoonful of this felt like a kind of mortal reckoning.

Blood. Chocolate. Strawberry syrup. Sounds like the end of a horrific (awesome) party. Seeing it swirl around in the same spoonful was a really interesting spiritual experience. Before I could think about it for too long, I just shoved a bunch of it in my mouth, all in one go.

Okay.

I gotta say, the liquid components of the bloody sundae made me feel really weird. Not that it tasted bad, necessarily, it just tasted like two people who are married who shouldn’t have even been friends to begin with. Like, on their own, I understood the joy of the individual components. Dinuguan is rich and mineral-like, with a slight vinegar kick, and then there’s ice cream, which is big and sweet yet not complex. But neither belong in the same room together, you know?

The chocolate and strawberry syrups were interlopers, like they weren’t even invited, and then I rolled around on the floor and started crying. Weird.

The sundae seized up a bit once it hit the cold ice cream and became rubbery.

I can’t say I enjoyed chewy bloody rice with a cacophony of sweet, creamy, and tangy shit. Then I grabbed the big-ass hunk of pork and just bit right into it.

How you say in English… ”no?”

No. That’s the word. I don’t need to get into the technicality of it all, of the ordinarily wonderful tender meat in a complex sauce, or the joy of a cheap sundae. This relationship was just doomed from the very beginning.

I guess it’s good I don’t have any holiday parties to attend to at the moment. Because if I brought this up as small talk, I probably wouldn’t be invited back.

---

Don’t forget to share this post on social media, fellow juggalos! Tell people you know some nasty-ass idiot who eats bloody ice cream. It helps grow the newsletter and repulse even more people.

And do yourself (and me) a favor by signing up for a paid subscription. I know I go through this spiel every week, but your subscriptions pay for these ingredients and rent for Harvey, Mr. Bee, and Pepper, along with the cats, who are all a bunch of freeloaders. Otherwise, they’d be out on the street. You’ll get extra content and access to all the previous extra timeless content at foodisstupid.substack.com.

Don’t forget to thank Davida for the freebie, everyone! For the paid version (which will come out early next week), I’ll be tackling yet another unfortunate sanguine pairing: The Bloody Mary Float.

Love you all, and enjoy your time off. You deserve it.