Beer Cheese Soup

Ah…1948, possibly the last time it was possible to get away with selling the idea that a trailer could be your dream home, parked in a small lot on cheap land next to many other trailers occupied by like-minded individuals just wanting to get away from it all and relax without the burdensome toil of housekeeping. 

Why bother with a kitchen when all you really need is a microwave and can-opener? China plates chip over time, but paper ones can simply be used and tossed with ease. And who wouldn’t want to dine al fresco every day in the company of your neighbors, instead of having to sit bolt upright on hardback chairs around a dining table you’re afraid to scratch? You need never make a bed that folds away — or wear anything other than your most comfortable clothes because let’s face it: it isn’t like you’re going to run into your boss walking the dog are you? In Florida and the Southern States the weather is always sunny so you can do away with those bulky winter coats and shoes that take up so much closet space. Why, you can even go barefoot if you like! It’s like a permanent vacation!

Where was I? Oh yes: Beer Cheese Soup. Garnished with everybody’s favorite (and always on hand) popcorn! So easy to assemble and chances are you already have the ingredients in a box somewhere —perhaps the same box you keep the spare batteries and bandages in case of a hurricane. And if not, well it can’t be that long a walk to the nearest gas station where they are sure to have everything on hand. You, your spouse and four children can eat like kings any day of the week! 

Microwave Cooking Convenience Foods, Publication Arts, Inc., 1981

Jizzed Up Veggies

 Nothing says “healthy vegetables” like drowning them in “pasteurized process cheese spread” and bacon bits.

Kraft, the processed foods conglomerate who produced this cookbook for harried working Moms, has ensured that their products form the base for everything in it, no matter how inappropriate. As it happens, they needn’t have worried about whether people are getting their daily helping; Kraft Foods owns pretty much everything you see on a supermarket shelf. It would be harder to go a day without consuming a Kraft product.

While the caption uses the ridiculous phrase above, the actual recipe calls for what we all know it by: CHEEZ WHIZ. That’s a lot of Zs.

CHEEZ WHIZ came to the market in 1953, and consists of the following:

WHEY, CANOLA OIL, MILK, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, MALTODEXTRIN, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SALT, LACTIC ACID, SODIUM ALGINATE, MUSTARD FLOUR, WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE (VINEGAR, MOLASSES, CORN SYRUP, WATER, SALT, CARAMEL COLOR, GARLIC POWDER, SUGAR, SPICES, TAMARIND, NATURAL FLAVOR), SORBIC ACID AS A PRESERVATIVE, MILKFAT, CHEESE CULTURE, OLEORESIN PAPRIKA (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), NATURAL FLAVOR, ENZYMES.

(Translation: the stuff left over when milk coagulates, milk, casein (the dairy stuff that gives you allergies and heart attacks), soy, salt, the stuff responsible for tooth decay, more salt, ground-up mustard, Worcester Sauce, unripe rowan berry juice, milkfat, bacteria and fungi, pepper essence extracted with gasoline byproduct, Achiote tree derivative, “natural flavor”?, enzymes.) There is no cheese.

Fully two-thirds of CHEEZ WHIZ’s calories come from fat. This recipe will provide you with half your daily allowance of sodium from the CHEEZ WHIZ alone (never mind the bacon bits, chopped nuts, crushed crackers, seasoned croutons and crushed potato chips it also calls for).

CHEEZ WHIZ is just one type of "American Cheese," which is not cheese at all, but legally defined as a "cheese analogue" (hence the deliberately fake spelling). If it's called "American Cheese" (any variety) and comes in rectangular form (or in a jar or aerosol can), regardless whether you buy it from the deli counter sliced or not, it most likely grew in a field, rather than came out of a cow. "American cheese" consists mainly of soy and occasionally casein, or milk fats. 

Get this: to encourage patriotism during wartime, the sale and consumption of anything other than "American Cheese"was banned in the US in May, 1942. But people missed their real cheese and knew a ruse when they saw it — the public morale plummeted instead, causing the ban to be rescinded only three months later. 

Kraft has always liked to advertise CHEEZ WHIZ as “cheese made easy,” but what they are doing is making cheese really complicated. Actual cheese is easy all by itself. For a start, you don’t have to add anything to it for it to be cheese. Come to think of it, you don’t need to add anything to broccoli for it to be broccoli either.

Next time you want to disguise the fact you are serving green vegetables by jazzing them up, go with Jizz instead: packed with protein, only 25 calories per average helping.

Actually, skip the veggies altogether. Everyone’s likely to have a better evening. 

Weekday Survival Guide, Kraft General Foods, Inc., 1991

Also from this book: Making A Spectacle Of Yourself