Hi, clowns!
Last week was my colonoscopy and it went just fine. In fact, it was easier than I thought it’d be. (I love being able to start the newsletter by talking about stuff going up my ass.)
Apparently my first words to Davida after I came to were, “I just farted,” with a big grin on my face. Just a reminder from Dr. Dannis, telling you all to keep up with your body’s regular oil changes, dentist visits, and doctors appointments, because I love you all.
I do have a community request today, however. My high school friend Justin Peters was recently diagnosed with grade four glioblastoma. It’s a devastating thing to hear, and he’s currently recovering from the surgery to remove the tumor. Justin’s a cool cat, too — he famously blew a $225,000 win on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, is a long time correspondent for Slate, and he wrote a book called The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet.
So let’s show Justin some love — donate anything at all to his fundraiser to support his living costs and treatment, and show me a screenshot, via email, Substack’s messenger, however you can, and I’ll tack a full year’s paid subscription to Food is Stupid onto your account.
Today’s edition of Food is Stupid is an homage to my former coworkers at a very famous satire site. You see, the site I’m currently a staff writer for, The Takeout, was once a sister site to The Onion. Yes, that Onion. My desk was right next to all of the writers, so we obviously sat around and talked about food a bunch, because that is the only subject I am mentally capable of talking about.
The other day, I saw The Onion post a headline that said: “Back Of Gatorade Bottle Features Recipe For Gatorade Casserole.”
This was one of those posts that only displayed a photo as the whole gag; it shows a picture of the back of a Gatorade bottle with a recipe on it, and this recipe was for something called Gatorade Casserole. It basically just lists a bunch of ingredients for your basic tuna casserole, except it also contains a whole bottle of Lemon-Lime Gatorade in it.
When the one of The Onion’s wildly talented graphic artists put this together, I am guessing they did not expect someone to cook this. In fact, I think they just slapped some shit together and called it a day. But little did they know, they challenged me, Dannis Ree, the greatest food writer in all of history, to make it. Because who knows? Perhaps it is the greatest recipe for Gatorade Casserole to ever exist, and they could potentially win every category at next year’s James Beard Awards in a stunning upset. I would be extremely angry at them if they did, however.
That being said, this is a very strange recipe.
It involves key ingredients like tuna, noodles, and condensed cream of mushroom soup (along with the Gatorade), but there’s really no instructions to it. The only direction past the ingredients is “Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes or until hot. Stir.”
I first started by chopping up the veggie ingredients, which included two ribs of celery, a small onion, and some parsley.
Now, I did feel like I should at least like, mix the ingredients together, even though the instructions don’t explicitly state this.
So I started putting everything into a large mixing bowl, praying violently.
And apparently I had chopped way more parsley than the recipe actually called for.
One tablespoon of parsley for a whole tuna casserole is some horseshit. If I wrote this recipe, I would have called for an entire quart container of it. I really need to be The Onion’s culinary consultant. Do you hear me, former coworkers? I know some of you are reading this!
Another interesting aspect of this recipe is the egg noodles.
It calls for three dry cups, or about six ounces, according to them. I just opted for the cup measurement, but the noodles I bought were so big they barely fit in the measuring cup. Apparently our cats were as excited about the egg noodles as I was, because the next morning, the bag was ripped open on the kitchen floor, with noodles scattered all over the place. Some appeared to have been munched on, too. Unrelated, does anyone here want two shithead cats? They like dried egg noodles.
I’d opted for the generic cream of mushroom soup (inflation! inflation!!!), and it extruded itself in a very entertaining way.
This soup fell out in exactly the shape of the can, with that weird wet farty plopping sound you get from moist canned goods. This was very fitting after my colonoscopy.
The recipe also calls for a whole 32-ounce bottle of Lemon-Lime Gatorade, but my stupid grocery store was out of the big bottles for some reason.
So I measured out 32 ounces of the stuff, cursing the fact that I’d purchased a whole eight-pack of 20-ounce bottles just to get this done. You guys can tell I’m obviously an athlete, and I will need to guzzle down the rest of them while I’m sweating my ass off during a workout. Aka, playing video games with Davida on the couch.
Next was the cheese.
While I was looking at this package of shredded cheddar, I immediately became enraged. Everyone jokes about shrinkflation, but Sargento apparently doesn’t give you a full two cups of cheese anymore. The label proudly says 1 7/8 cups on it, which is fucked. Can you imagine how many Midwestern enchilada recipes are now hosed because of this?
I see you, Sargento. I see you. You’re dead to me.
The last ingredients I put in the mixing bowl were the tablespoon of butter, thawed frozen peas, and a can of tuna.
The can of tuna prompted our cat Sub-Zero to frantically sprint into the kitchen.
She was upset that I would not feed her this tuna, because it came from a can, and her wet food also comes from a can. Using her cat logic, this tuna obviously should have been hers, and Daddy is a jerk.
I mixed the slop together and put it in the oven at 350°F, just like the recipe said.
I had my suspicions. This was the wettest casserole I’ve ever seen. Like, it was almost all liquid. It also smelled horrendous. I ignored that part because most of my recipes for the newsletter also smell horrendous.
30 minutes passed, just like the recipe instructed, but the casserole didn’t appear to be much different than when it went in.
There was a stipulation that you could also cook it “until hot,” so I bravely stuck a finger in to check the temperature. It was hot, but not scalding enough to warrant a trip to the hospital.
I also noticed that the individual cheese shreds had not melted at all.
So I put it back in the oven for an arbitrary 15 more minutes, hoping for a better outcome.
The results seemed to be a lot better, though the cheese was still incredibly not melted.
The noodles had swelled up, and there was much less floaty Gatorade and cream of mushroom soup in the pan. I would not by any means call this a “casserole,” however. It was more of a pan of slop, which I could see becoming a TikTok trend in the near future. I stirred it like the directions said, and slapped some on a plate.
I have to say, the results did not look appetizing.
Aside from the mysteriously non-melted cheese shreds, which gave me yet another reason to be mad at Sargento, the peas had all lost their vibrant color. Even the parsley, originally a vibrant green, was somehow tan.
I was also not prepared for the way this stuff tasted.
The noodles were overcooked to the point of being almost baby food, but that could have been an interpretation error on my part, in terms of cooking time. But as you’d imagine, Lemon-Lime Gatorade makes a horrible replacement for something like chicken broth. The drink is usually pretty mild on the sweetness when you enjoy it by itself, but when it’s reduced into a scrumptious satire casserole, it gets pretty sugary. And you know what goes well with tuna? Citrus-flavored sugar liquid.
Just kidding. It’s a fucking gross combination. Gatorade and tuna do not even belong in a stomach simultaneously. Like, most people probably wouldn’t wash down their tuna salad sandwich with an ice-cold bottle of Gatorade. If you imagine that as an aftertaste, along with the mushy starch of the noodles and the deflated caviar-like pop of overcooked peas, you now know my emotional burden. Also, the onions added a dissonant clash of flavor that made me question reality.
I can definitively say that if The Onion were to be involved in some sort of cooking contest and I were asked to judge it, I would schedule a second recreational colonoscopy. Just to make sure my ass doctor didn’t miss anything the first time. Deliver me from culinary hell, propofol.
I know some of you Onion folk are reading this right now. That’s mostly because I’m going to forward this to everyone at the old office. Thanks for nothing!!! Don’t forget to share this edition of Food is Stupid with the entire world, too. I seek attention, as the internet is a cold place.
And again, please donate to Justin’s GoFundMe if you’ve got the spare change.
Glioblastoma is a diagnosis that you never want to hear, but Justin’s a remarkable person — he was a close part of my high school friend group for a reason.
And lastly, the newsletter only exists because of you guys. Today’s not about me, so I’m not going to put up the usual bat signal. You already know the drill.
Okay, clowns, otherwise, no housekeeping notes. Be good. As always, I love you all, and I’ll hop into your inboxes again next week.
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