Yes, I Ate It

OK, we'll get to the good stuff soon enough, but first here's some GREAT stuff. If you've been as annoyed with Blogger's new interface as I have (on Friday, I said, and I quote, "SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS.") you need suffer no longer. Innominatus, by way of Ivan Toblog, has provided useful advice. Go to the dashboard, click the little gear logo in the upper right corner, and "Old Interface" is one of the choices.

You're welcome. Now, on to more important matters.

On Friday, I promised (or threatened) to show you some video of me eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut topped with a sardine, some tuna, an anchovy, hot sauce, and a hunk of salami. Before you get to see such nauseous footage, though, you need to know why I did it (aside from the fact that I'm a gluttonous idiot.)

Every year, in Somerville, Massachusetts, there is a Fluff Festival. That sounds like a carnival for behind-the-scenes porno workers, but it isn't. It's actually a celebration of the gooey delight known as Marshmallow Fluff, a treat invented in New England.

I attended the Fluff Festival (also more correctly known as What The Fluff?) a couple of years back. I did so because I've been a fan of Fluff since my childhood. Not only did I enjoy it in the ubiquitous Northeast schoolboy sandwich known as a Fluffernutter, but I also used to eat spoonfuls of the stuff right from the jar (on those mornings when my parents were sleeping in and I felt that I could take a big scoop of it without such theft being detected.)

Anyway, I'm at this gathering and there are many Fluff-centric booths and displays. Some were serving up various treats made with Fluff. One of these featured a concoction that made everyone, without exception, say "Yuck!" when they first found out what it was, but which made almost everyone who actually tried it go "Yum!"

It was Fluff, canned tuna, and hot sauce, served on a saltine.

Yeah, I know. Yuck! But I tried it. Yum! It was really, truly delicious. Unless you're willing to try it yourself, you'll just have to take my word for it. It worked. It really did. It was as delightful in reality as it was disgusting in conception.

(If you have the ingredients handy, you should eat some now. I'm not kidding. The combination of sweet, hot, salty, and fishy, is miraculously better than it sounds.)

Having had that revelation to draw upon for inspiration, I decided to... well, first I need to give you some more background.

Here at my place of employment, we periodically have sardine fests. That is, those of us who like sardines bring in three or four tins each, throw them into a communal pile of oily goodness, and feast on them during our lunch hour. As you might imagine, this is not enjoyed by everybody in the office. It takes a particular love for stinky little fish to truly get into the spirit of it.

This past Friday, we scheduled "Sardine Fest 2012". Aside from some sardines, there was canned tuna, canned anchovies, canned smoked trout, a vicious salami, cheese that was strikingly mild and unstinky by comparison, saltines, hot sauce, and one-and-a-half leftover Krispy Kreme doughnuts from a dozen that had been in the kitchen the day before. Recalling my experience at the Fluff Festival, I decided to see if adorning one of the doughnuts with some fish would result in a treat.

[Me, giving a bad name to the Celtics. Hutch is in the background, rather seriously preparing some sardines on toast with Heinz salad creme. This is the very definition of 'to each his own'.]

I have to say it was decent enough to pass muster. And I will now rationalize my consumption of it. You think it was only vile and disgusting, but you're wrong. You see, what I did was make eating a doughnut healthier! I imbued it with all sorts of wonderful omega-3 fish oils, very heart-healthy, and rather than just swallow empty sugar and fat calories, I filled my donut experience with loads of B vitamins, calcium, and protein!

Or I'm just one step removed from a sideshow geek and I was doing MY WIFE a favor by making it much easier to collect on my life insurance. In any case, it tasted good. And I wasn't alone in experimentation. I convinced my buddy, Dan, to try the leftover half a doughnut with tuna and some of the cheese.

We are both still alive, so far as I can tell, and it's probably 50-50 that we'll eat something weird again someday. Stay tuned.

And now, considering the comments some of you made on the previous post, you should either leave immediately or get a barf bag handy. Here's the video.





OK, truth be told, a glazed doughnut is better without fish, and fish is better without a glazed doughnut (but neither is as good as a saltine with tuna, hot sauce, and Fluff) and I'll take any of the above over having to watch Toddlers & Tiaras.

Soon, with more better stuff (although I've set the bar mighty high here, you have to admit.)