So as I was saying yesterday, this last weekend at Willis Wonderland we aKitschionados from The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch saw the light of Fluff!

For a quick recap if you were too lazy to click on that link, many of us are converging on Somerville, MA. September 24th to attend the fifth annual Fluff Festival to celebrate the marshmallow food topping in the city it was invented in. aKitschionado Rusty suggested that we first convene at Willis Wonderland in LA, the physical arm of AWMOK.com, and spend a day cooking with Fluff. Bear in mind that many of the aKitschionados in attendance had never met before and only knew each other by commenting on the kitsch they’d submitted to AWMOK. So everything served had to be a real icebreaker. As such, the first course was Fluff inspired sandwiches…:

… accompanied by Goldfish in sea foam dip vegetables:

All of which was washed down with Flufftinis…:

…an original recipe by aKitschionado iamfluff, a.k.a. Susan Olsen, a.k.a. Cindy Brady of the Bunch:

Extra points were earned for color-coordinated food, dishware and clothing:

Even more points racked up for color-coordinated lamps and other sugary Fluff alternatives:

aKitschionado Mark Blackwell scored even more bonus points for coordinating his jellybean tribute to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch with the aforementioned lamp and M&Ms.

I hope anyone reading this appreciates the importance of color-coordinated meals and accoutrements. If there’s any question at all about the importance of food and furnishings color-coordination, please refer here.

The main course was delicious and nutritious Fluffernutter cake. I know this photo’s blurry but so was my vision after the day’s 21-gun sugar salute.

If you think that cake is gooey, let me tell you that as the party hostess who had to clean up – actually I didn’t clean up at all as the aKitschionados are a very conscious and esthetically tidy breed – there were vestiges of Fluff everywhere. Like on Mark’s pants:

Slightly less lava-flowish-of-Fluff were the fried S’Mores made by akitschionado Snappy P.

Technically, there’s no Fluff in this recipe but as its fraternal twin, marshmallows, are a key ingredient the Willis Wonderland stove did not discriminate.

Many aKitschionados came bearing gifts. Doug Wood, for example, brought me a lovely kitsch-filled basket:.

One of the gifts was a practical Hostess Twinkie holder:

Many aKitschionados were jealous of my acquisition:

Just as important as protecting your Twinkies is protecting your Pringles. Thank you, aKitschionado Windupkitty, for the lovely Pringles protective case.

By the way, a practical party hint: name tags are essential. Even if your guests know each other for a hundred years it gives them an opportunity to express what they’re feeling in name, which acts as much of an icebreaker at a party as food no one has eaten since they were 11 years old.

It also saves the host or hostess time in making introductions.

As I said, the bulk of the day’s festivities centered around cooking and eating. But aKitschionados were free to wander around Willis Wonderland to enjoy the artifacts they’ve been seeing in my posts since I first launched AWMOK.com in 2009. Many of them also enjoyed the fine reading materials scattered around.

and

That book deserves a close up:

In fact, my whole Soul kitsch collection deserves a close-up. Here’s but a few of the shelves of it:

I think Fluff is a soulful food. It recalls one’s childhood and brings feelings of peace to the mind if not the blood vessels, as aKitschionado John Zenone experiences here:

Off in my recording studio, I was showing some of the aKitschionados some more of my Soul kitsch collection:

You might want to see the front of that picture frame:

As much as I covet my James Brown autograph, I covet this bit of Soul kitsch almost as much, Sammy Davis Jr’s last stash of marijuana:

Slightly easier to see than the cannabis in that last photo are the edges of the round circle rugs that cover the floor in my recording studio. They’re there to protect the plastic that’s actually the floor surface that scratches as soon as you breathe on it. Here’s what the floor looks like in real life:

Despite signs posted all over begging aKitschionados to carefully step on the rugs, several of them found it necessary to defy their leader’s command. Bad girl, kookykitsch!

And Meshuggah Mel!

And Rusty!

And Ken!

Although it was close to 100° and muggy, we also spent time outside.  That’s where my over 200 pieces of bamboo dinnerware are.

And for anyone who missed the sugar inside, there was plenty of cotton candy floating in the pool.

Food that floats is something every party chef should consider when throwing summer parties.

So all in all, a good and Fluffy time was had by all!  Come back again soon, aKitschionados. See you all in Somerville in “September” one way or the other.

 

Photos: Allee Willis, Prudence Fenton, Mark Blackwell, Rusty Blasenhoff, Ken Dashner.

One of the best things about the 4th of July is the food one consumes as a means of celebration, and normally my Independence Day spread looks like the above. I would be eating that or any of the following recipes were I not on a plane flying back from a wedding in Kenosha and munching on a can of Pringles as we speak.

So I’m going to pretend my mouth is chewing something other than dried potato wafers as I tell you what would be on the grill at Willis Wonderland today were I home instead of packed in next to a snoring pork of a passenger on American somewhere over Nebraska. First there’s my favorite recipe of all, Bacon Wrapped Hamburger Hot Dog Turtles. Thank you, k2dtw, for submitting this beauty to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch!  Just jam three weenies through a hamburger, whack the appropriate weenie limbs for feet, shave the tail, wrap the torso with bacon and throw the reptile on the grill for perfect BBQ sealife.

Although not as pretty of a design as the carnivore turtle, the Original Bacon Explosion packs more pound-for-pound bacon punch. There’s a documented-better-than-a-crime-scene recipe for this charred-looks-like-something-else too here.

Even better, the Original Bacon Explosion comes with its own Bacon Explosion Pig-Porter!!

I would love, of course, if I was the one who turned you on to the Bacon Explosion but its fame is well-established:

For a BBQ treat slightly more obscure, how about an Ultimate Meat Lover’s BBQ Pizza?

And for dessert, how bout a flag cake? I’d go with donut holes for the white part.

Actually, I’d rather serve an ice cream cone Uncle Sam.

Any cake with color correct food coloring is also fine…

…as well as marshmallow studded kabobs:

For optimum eating pleasure, serve all of the above on appropriate BBQ dinnerware. Don’t even ask me how many pieces of this pattern I have.

Happy 4th, happy BBQ and happy listening should you be lucky enough to own this:

I shall be chewing along pretending I’m not on a plane sitting next to a man whose hairy legs are protruding from his khaki shorts making it impossible for me to enjoy my (BBQ sauce-less) Pringles.

 

This short film of my bff Charles and I baking his acclaimed Cherpumple, three pies stuffed inside of three cakes, is as much about a great friendship as it is about a brilliant and inventive edible. A frequent guest of Martha Stewart as well as a vintage slide show impresario, Charles is a kitschmeister of the highest order. We go on weekend drives a lot together, often in search of kitschifyingly wonderful foodstuffs. But recently we had an incredible kulinary adventure right here at Willis Wonderland baking the aforementioned Cherpumple.

Known for holiday delights that slide out of his test kitchen like the Astro-Weenie Christmas Tree and the Thanksgiving Tiki-Turkey Dinner, Charles created an all-year-round monster with the Cherpumple when it landed him and it on the front-page-of-The-Wall-St.-Journal a couple of months ago.

This particular Cherpumple was my birthday cake this year:

As a lover of food that would send a vegan to the funny farm, I decided it was time I learn how to make the ‘I-don’t-care-how-fancy-your-cakes-are-this-one-is-better’ cake, so Charles headed over with 3 boxes of Betty Crocker, three Sara Lee pies, 6 cans of frosting and a vintage Sunbeam Mixmaster.  I set the oven to 350.

I learned many valuable things during the fabrication of the Cherpumple. For instance, I never knew that a hole in the middle of a pie meant that it was a cherry pie.

I also learned to check the dates of food that sits in your cupboard for years so it doesn’t spit out brown tree rot when you open it and ruin your clothes like one of our cans of frosting did.

I hope you’re inspired to bake a Cherpumple after you see this instructional film. It’s so pretty.

AND IT’S SO GOOD!! Won’t you bake one with us now, please?:

We are blessed here at The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com to have an actual Brady in our Bunch and, as such, “Fake Jan Day” is now one of our National Kitsch Holidays! If you don’t know what “Fake Jan Day” is, Cindy Brady will explain it to you here.

Should you not decide to celebrate Fake Jan Day by dressing as a fake Jan I would suggest you simply acknowledge this most precious Kitsch National Holiday by ingesting the traditional “Fake Jan Day” food, the beloved sculptural culinary wonder known as the Cheese Ball. As far as I’m concerned, any day one has an official excuse to make a Cheese Ball is a holiday worth celebrating!

Oops, I didn’t mean those Cheese Balls.

I know the Christmas decorations are finally packed away but squirting cream cheese out of a frosting cone to enhance your Cheese Ball means that Santa gets one more closeup here at AWMOK.

It takes hardly any prodding at all to get me into the kitchen and in artistic mode to begin crafting a Cheese Ball. Were I not so lazy and overextended from holiday parties I might have even made it to the supermarket to construct one of my own so that it might serve as a veritable religious icon in the celebration of  Fake Jan Day. However, YouTube proved to be a loyal assistant here, and finding enough cheese balls, both gastronomic and human, proved an easy task.  So, if the holy fromage spirit inspires you to celebrate Fake Jan Day, wash your hands now and get ready to roll!

“Deep Fried Cheese Ball” – There seems to be a few steps missing here:

“Cheese Ball” – And now for the silent treatment:

“Corn Of Plenty Mini Cheese Ball recipe” – Don’t any of these people have heads?

“How To Make A Cheesy Spider Cheese Ball” – This is for Halloween but I’m sure it will keep til then:

“How To Make A Cheese Ball” – If the energy were any lower here I’d bottle it and take it to get to sleep every night:

“Pineapple Cheese Ball – Happy New Year”  I’m not sure if Pineapple Cheese Ball is the name of the dish or our sparkling hostess:

I never made a cheese ball of the magnitude of the following but I did make quite an impressive mashed potato ball once:

I sculpted the ball out of mashed potatoes, hit it with red food coloring, and stuck olives, gherkins and miniature corns in for a satellite effect and then fit it on top of my 1950’s Saturn shaped coffee urn for maximum presentational effect. You can see it and other impressive food ideas in my 1991 tiny short film, “Foxy’s Tips On Love – The Road To A Man’s Stomach Is Color-Coordinated”.

Whether you make your balls out of cheese, mashed potatoes or whatever ball material you choose I hope you have a very festive Fake Jan Day today!

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Unless you can’t stand to look at meat or poultry this is a cookbook that’s filled with thrilling visuals, not the least of which is of the author herself:

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I love her little Swedish meatball hair, Hostess cupcake shaped glasses, and Revlon ‘Love That Red’ lipstick that’s redder than any slab of beef that passes before her. You might be thinking, ‘Oh, is that the Margaret Mitchell who wrote the meaty “Gone With the Wind”?  I’ve seen the movie but not being a vociferous reader, I’m much more likely to have read this book by the carnivore loving Margaret Mitchell than the better known literary one by the other Margaret Mitchell where it’s Scarlett O’Hara being served up at the end rather than a nice Porterhouse steak. Though I guess they both have scarlet in common, one being the lead character and the other being the color of the meat product featured here:

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These two-page spreads of meat cuts kill me:

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Though I don’t care how pretty the pictures are, I will never be making this:

Here’s how Margaret suggests using aluminum foil:

I, however, have always had a different primary use of aluminum foil. I wrap presents in  it. Here’s a gift I’m taking to a mystery gift exchange at a high school reunion today for Detroiters who went to Mumford High who now live in Southern California:

It doesn’t have meat in it but it does come stuffed with Elvis popcorn. Which seemed an appropriate mystery gift for an exchange at a 60’s high school reunion and a blog about meaty presentations.

Elvis comes in a non recyclable plastic guitar bank. The publisher of Margaret’s book strongly suggests that your meat be popped in an aluminum pan that gives the gift of long-term toxicity to humans if ingested in large enough quantities.

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I’m hoping none of the food at the reunion will be cooked in aluminum pans though I’m sure that’s what all of us were brought up on. For now, I prefer to look at my meat and poultry in pretty pictures as opposed to them sauteed in aluminum gravy.

I always love when there’s nothing left to say about a topic by the time you reach the back cover. When in doubt just repeat the author’s name and title of the book in the shape of hangers until you run out of room.

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I would’ve preferred something a little more festive on the back cover but I guess all the money went toward the groceries on the front, as despite the raging red properties of meat the only color in Mealtime Magic is there. Frankly, Margaret, I fear your publishes didn’t give a damn.

As Thanksgiving week is upon us I will never forget the trauma of being invited to Luther Vandross’s Thanksgiving Day dinner and having to leave before the smothered turkey was ready, only to arrive at my next destination and having a plate of salmon plopped in front of me. NEVER  put a fish in front of a Thanksgiving guest unless you warn them first if you ever want to see them again! In that particular case, I developed a sudden headache and left just as quinoa and tofu were about to hit my plate and headed back across town where the table was flooded with the best holiday soul food fixins my stomach ever had the pleasure of ingesting. I bring up this story not just because I’ve learned to make sure the menu is Thanksgiving appropriate before I accept an invitation but because Luther and I often discussed the fact that Mahalia Jackson had a cookbook and how great it would be to make a total Mahalia Jackson meal.

In 1972, cousin Bennie thought so too.

Unfortunately, the only turkey in Mahalia’s cookbook is for pot pie.  But many other festive recipes abound.

All the photographs are fantastic, none of the actual food itself but, rather, of Mahalia  performing cooking tasks in excellent outfits.

We  even learn how to turn the oven on…

… and open the oven door.

The excellence of Mahalia’s bouffant is clearly evident in the photo above. As such, I wish Mahalia’s head was lit better in this photo so it didn’t look like it was part of the kitchen cabinet:

Mahalia also offers some kitchen tips, though I’m not sure how much I would trust the cook who’s concerned about either of these while cooking:

I have a lot of work to do today. Otherwise I might spend it trying to find the perfect recipe to make for the person who force fed me salmon one Thanksgiving. Maybe this…

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Here’s hoping that everyone is having a blast this Memorial Day! I hope that includes popping lots of bottles with a similar vintage bottle opener as well as eating lots of hot dogs.

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If it had a pointy metal end the hot dog’s hair gel/ketchup would look a lot like the ‘Have A Blast” cap popper.

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The ‘Have A Blast’ even  has a baby brother:

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Obviously the more popular of the two, the baby’s message is almost completely blasted off.

If you had either one of these openers right now you could pop the cap on something cold and celebrate the holiday by whipping up some Festive Hot Dog Soufflé from The New Hot Dog Cookbook, a 1968-updated-in-’83 tome of wiener recipes.

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Or if that doesn’t sit right on your taste buds perhaps you could “make your wieners Wynders”.  Trust me, this is worth watching:

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If you don’t want to drop coin on buying a Wynder’s Wiener maybe you’d like to spend this holiday tooling your own:

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However you spend your holiday I hope you’re doing what you want to do and don’t forget to:

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