I’m rehashing another post from the old tumblr blog. I realized that I hadn’t yet devoted a post to foods commonly found at an 11 year old boy’s birthday party and that had to end.
You know… the good stuff. It tastes good at least. It has to, because most of it comes with compelling reasons humans should just say no. Everyday food staples of modern life, the brands we’ve all been brainwashed to find delightful by decades of pervasive advertising and the food scientists in their laboratories making them so delicious in the first place. Soon the food pyramid people will just say fuck it and put Snickers on top
Anyway, you may notice some chronosynclastic inconsistencies here and there. Things out of place time-wise is what that means, and haven’t you read Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan?!? He covers all this in great detail well before Mrs. Rumfoort is being brutally assaulted, sexually, on Mars.
I’ve been waiting 30 years for the movie but not even a rumor since the 70s I think. Too bad. It’s hilarious, has fun and believable aliens, and what’s not to love about a dog time traveler?
I could see any one of the Apatow stable of actor/writer/everything elsers in the lead role of Malachi Constant. It could be bigger than The Hangover if done right. Whoever makes it now has to pay me! That’s how that works, right?
Yikes! This is supposed to be about Cheez Whiz! Here you go, just remember I wrote this in late 2014 so things were different. Covered wagons, the whole deal… Adjust accordingly! Can’t sue me! Enjoy!
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I was all set to do a nice easy piece today on the wonders of Cheez Whiz, an admittedly unhealthy but at least tasty semblance of cheese in a nicely spreadable form that is (or was) a fine ingredient in recipes too. So I had bought a jar of the orange sludge a few weeks ago and sampled the stuff for the first time in years the other day. It ain’t the same… Not even close! Some quick Googling reveals that the food scientists (not a scary or repellent term at all!) at Kraft decided to replace what little cheese was ever in this stuff with dozens of other multi-syllabic and probably climate change-inducing ingredients. Now I’m pissed!
See, Cheez Whiz used to be a favorite of mine as a kid. You could make a sandwich with it (on Arnold white bread if possible), spread it on those bacon crackers they used to make, put it in that handy indentation in celery and then eat it and try to get the dog to eat the celery part… A fun food!
Mom even used to make this Welsh rarebit crap with it, which we really didn’t like but was at least edible. But now Cheez Whiz doesn’t even taste the least bit like cheese. Closer to foam rubber in gel form or maybe congealed butane. It’s inedible! I can only imagine what it does to one’s innards, and even I’m not brave enough to find out. If it still tasted good maybe…
The worst aspect of this is that it ruins the one family recipe that’s been handed down to me, the one item I used to be able to fantasize about impressing girls (AKA women) with in a culinary way.
Back in the olden days, I’d imagine that a loaf of crusty French or Italian bread, some garlic powder and a jar of Cheez Whiz was a ticket to an evening of possible possibilities. I’ve always had a vivid imagination when it comes to processed cheese products but this recipe really kicked it up a notch. So delicious!
And if you get it right it’s a textural wonderland too. To this day this recipe comes to mind when anyone mentions cheese garlic bread. I’m here to tell you that none of the available frozen options are even close, and restaurants mess it up too.
And it’s so simple to make! Just mix up the garlic powder and Whiz, spread it on the halved loaf of bread, pop it in the oven at any temperature above warm, wait for golden brownness to occur, and deliciousness and perhaps more fantasy time is in the bag. Not anymore! Read on…
The new “improved” Cheez Whiz tastes so awful that I don’t even dare try it with the cheese garlic bread “recipe”. After doing some reading about how they’ve changed the stuff and people’s reports of the consequences of ingestion, I’m afraid to even let it take up space in the fridge for fear that it might infect other alleged food items.
This one guy was sayin’ how he’s been getting cramps for years and now he knows why. I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I’ve done the cheese garlic bread thing. Sadness…
The most startling thing I read was of how the inventor of the product (it’s been around since like 1953), one Dean Southworth, now retired, noticed the change a few years ago and told ‘em what’s what:
“I said, ‘Holy God, it tastes like axle grease.’ I looked at the label and I said, ‘What the hell did they do?’ I called up Kraft, using the 800 number for consumer complaints, and I told them, ‘You are putting out a goddamn axle grease!’ ”
You know the world’s gone crazy when the inventor of Cheez Whiz can’t enjoy the fruits of his painstaking cheese labors any longer. I feel sorry for the poor guy, but mostly I just wanna be able to make cheese garlic bread again.
So fuck you Kraft! It’s bad enough that you own the goddamn Patriots and have aided and abetted the orange fella, but now you gotta ruin a perfectly nice, just mostly artificial food product by making it even more so, and taste bad too?
I mean, I couldn’t care less about how much actual cheese is in the stuff. I just need it to taste good. It does not. And hey, another fuck you for making so goddamn many varieties of this crap now (Italia? LIGHT? WTF?) rather than paying for the real ingredients necessary to keep it from tasting like partially liquefied couch cushions.
I really hate it when treasured food items from my youth disappear or become inedible. Remember Campbell’s Scotch Broth, Pepper Pot, Turkey Noodle, Old Fashioned Vegetable or Chicken Dumpling soups? Mystic Mint cookies? Kaboom cereal? The Milkshake candy bar? Mug-o-lunch? Patio frozen Mexican food, especially them little tacos? Man those were good… All staples of my youth and even adulthood in many cases.
Why can’t they just leave things alone?!? Why must food scientists and America’s supposed demand for healthier convenience products ruin it all for those of us genetically disposed to being able to handle this delicious crap? I’m tellin’ ya… if you know a food scientist, key his or her SUV, won’t you? Or better yet, make ’em eat some Cheez Whiz!
I guess it’s all part of getting old. It’s bad enough that I have to set the wayback machine to enjoy music most of the time. Food’s different. You can’t find beef noodle Mug-o-lunch on a peer to peer networking site and happily stash it away for a lifetime of happy eating.
And the old favorites aren’t being replaced with delightful new ones, at least not often enough. Maybe I’m not adventurous enough, but it’s been a long time since a new convenience or plain old junk food product wowed me, Vanilla Coke notwithstanding.
No, what we get instead these days is entire aisles worth of brand recognition bullshit. Like 75 different flavors of Oreos. Does the world really need green apple or fruit punch Oreos? I say fuck no!!!
And Reese’s. There must be dozens of different Reese’s products now, none of ’em nearly as good as the original. Snickers too, not that the original there is anything great, unless you enjoy waxy yet still somehow melty chocolate How do they even do that?
Ooh, and all the light or “lite” product variations taking up shelf space once reserved for actual food. If people want or need to eat healthy, they probably ain’t buying Cheez Whiz Lite!
I could go on all day here, but I think I see someone on my lawn, so it’s time to grab that jar of Cheez Whiz Italia and make friends. They’ll never know what hit ’em…
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I just spent almost 20 minutes watching old ads for Cheez Whiz on YouTube in hopes of finding one that was funny or stood out in any way. I found a few that had people who went on to become D list celebrities in them but not much else of interest.
The guy that played Screech on Saved by the Bell didn’t even get a speaking part in his! And I’m pretty sure the guy in a whole series of 80s ads was on the sitcom Wings. He may have been in the one with Screech! It’s a bit of a blur honestly, but I finally settled on this one due to the crab recipe, which they show in vividly drippy detail more than once.
As a seafood hater living among crab-crazed yokels and yokelettes – I almost passed out at my first Maryland “crab feast” – I found this especially repellent and I hope you will too:
Crab dip for the holidays! You’re welcome!
A fun element of some of these ads is that they often showed mom or whoever handling the heated Whiz with giant oven mitts, reminding you that it may not be that much different from nuclear waste…
I haven’t tried Cheez Whiz since I wrote this originally in 2014. I do crave the cheese garlic bread but I’m frightened of what might occur if I were to ingest it. That food scientist mentioning axle grease killed a lifelong love affair with the orange sludge. Probably for the best….
I’ve come to understand that the words Cheez (a fake word! call Fox News!) and Whiz (another fake word, but sometimes used as a synonym for piss when not capitalized!) can be interpreted as “the stuff you get when a processed cheese food product pees into a jar”. You’re welcome again!
Do you have a Cheez Whiz story? Why not? You a commie or somethin’? Tell us below in the comments, still not active enough for me. I need hustle and bustle! Step it up dear reader or skimmer or picture looker atter! Mars needs healthy volunteers! (not an alien! I’ve been monitoring!)
Music and more with claudecat17 (aka Chris Davlin)! 
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