Cru Jones Society

Never being ones for convention, here we are only four weeks into the Monday Confessional and we’ve already moved it to Tuesday for just this week. We’re iconoclasts, I tell ya’! And judging by the responses to this week’s question, most of you all are too. We received many excellent/stomach churning food combinations in response to last week’s question: What are the weird food combinations that you (and it seems like only you) like? As always, CJS Staff answers lead us off and yours are below. Next week’s question is at the bottom. Let’s do it.

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E Dagger: There’s nothing quite as unnerving as revealing one of your food idiosyncrasies to someone new. You never know how they’re going to react. That’s why when I sat down on our semi-wretched couch in college with my bag of pretzels and cup full of ketchup, I braced for the worst. First, a little backstory: When I was in high school for a year down in Texas, they sold soft pretzels for only $.50, but they fucking sucked. For a while complimentary cheese came with it, but they axed that leaving me without a proper condiment to douse this dry-ass twisted piece of cardboard with (it was the most affordable thing in the cafeteria, and I was hungry and had little cash). Since I loathe mustard, I experimented with ketchup, and before long it stopped tasting weird and unsettling, became a regular friend, and soon I was ready for the taste to put a baby in me. So, once I got to college and was broke as hell, I would buy a gigantic bag of pretzels for like $4 and add some nourishment easily with a bit of ketchup paid for on a rotating basis by the roommates. Cost effective and delicious!

Of course, once they asked me what in the blue fuck I was doing, I had to relate the story above, to which they informed me, “That doesn’t make this alright, y’know.” I knew. But at that point I was like an NBA player who grew up putting water on his cereal and still did so even though he could now afford milk, but continued with water anyway. I just plain old liked it. I love ketchup and will put it with many things. Hot Pockets, sometimes scrambled eggs or grilled cheese… but I’m too terrified to try it on my mac n’ cheese like that dude in college, or to dip my pizza in it like one of my aunts. Both sound breathtakingly delicious. I definitely don’t want to be that guy though. I got enough problems already without being the dude who’s squirting ketchup into his mac n’ cheese or dunking his pizza in it. Because I would almost certainly be that guy.

Lee S. Hart: During those broke ass college years we have tried to stretch as much taste out of our dollars. I was no exception. I would buy the inexpensive Ramen noodles and felt that I needed to spice it up. I was capable of doing just that with the bounty of Fire Sauce packets that we would take from the local Taco Bell. I didn’t get looks and guffaws from my roommates, but when I would squeeze the sauce onto my noodles at work, that’s when I got the half confused half disgusted glares.

I haven’t done this one in years. When I was younger there was a pizza shop across the street from where I lived. Usually we would get the pizza/salad buffet deal. I always started with a salad. The usual lettuce, tomatoes, carrot shreds, onions, some croutons, and topped with ranch dressing. No big deal there, but this pizza shop also offered various topping like bacon bits and crispy noodle things, like the ones used with chow mein. But the creme de le creme for me was their offering of sunflower seeds and raisins. Raisins in the salad really gets a negative reaction. But then again raisins in a lot of things get a negative reaction.

In fact that still sounds good. I’m going to go see if I have any raisins.

Senor Limon: My weirdest food quirk isn’t so much a weird combination as it is a contradiction.  I hate tomatoes but love nearly every tomato product, and indeed several things that actually have chunks of tomatoes in them.  There are few things in this world I revile as much as the sight of a fresh tomato.  The mere thought of a fresh slice of tomato getting its disgusting juice all over everything around it is enough to make me want to avoid even picking off the offender and eating the food anyway.  I wonder how many hours in my life I’ve wasted away simply picking tomatoes off of hamburgers, because it just isn’t worth the hassle ordering a fast food burger without tomatoes since it always takes longer to arrive, and roughly 50% of the time the food ends up with tomatoes on it anyway.  This said, I love ketchup, tomato sauce, pizza and even salsa provided the chunks of tomato in it aren’t all that big.  Go figure.

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Augie takes the god spot again this week with a response so unexpected/mildly terrifying, we spent a solid four days wondering if this weekly feature was worth the potential psychological damage we’d reap from learning the oddities of our readers. We resolved to at least consider the questions a little more fully before proceeding next time. So, enough fucking around. Take it away, Augie!

Augie.maestas: Well there are many that I have, however, the one that most people think is weird is my enjoyment for Pickles and Chocolate Fondue. Yes, that is correct, you read that right. The combination of salty and sweet does it again. Pickles and Chocolate Fondue. It is like eating popcorn and drinking soda. Or like eating popcorn with M&Ms mixed in. If you don’t understand the salty and sweet mixture, why doesn’t someone eat a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. Same thing. I have tried many different foods together and it would make sense because I am not a small guy. French Fries and Frosty, French Fries and Ranch, French Fries and BBQ Sauce, French Fries and Chili and cheese. Potato Chips and baked beans. Toast, butter and jelly. Toast, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. Shrimp and Hot Sauce. I have also tried many drink combinations as many of you have also. White Russians are the weirdest as I can’t understand the mixture of Milk and Alcohol, but it tastes good. When I was in middle school, my friend Adam and I used to drink Dr. Dews – Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew mixed. It was so good back then. Well, that is pretty much all I can think of. Thoughts?

As if that wasn’t enough, he sent us a follow-up email later in the week:

Augie.maestas (pt. II): I just remembered that I always get funny looks for this. For breakfast, if you add an egg to your leftovers, it makes it that much better. Ya ya, you’re Mexican, adding an egg makes what you are eating Juevos Rancheros. Nope, you are wrong. I add eggs not only to enchiladas, but to spaghetti, ravioli, goulash (sp), Steak, ham, pork chops, mashed potato patties, etc. Just a thought, but people should not knock it before they rock it. Like menudo, it is delicious once you get over the fact you are eating cow stomach.

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Our very own Lee S. Hart used to eat weird stuff for money, or simply for the sake of our amusement. And one time after a Rockies game, the CJS Staff along with reader keithage proceeded to drunkenly eat the condiments on the table at the restaurant we ended up at. Why do we tell you this? We’re just happy to know that we’re not the only ones who have done this type of thing.

Brad: I don’t know how crazy mixing peaches and cottage cheese is, but it seems to throw some people for a loop. But the ultimate is this one time where I drank half a bottle of old honey to pay for a sandwich! I don’t know how bears do it, but the following 8 hours of my life were absolutely miserable.

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The remainder of our responses seemed to focus on condiments, which is like the Fertile Crescent for the generation of weird looks from people while you’re eating. Yankees3950 joins us for the first time with one of the most hilariously scathing off-handed slams we’ve ever heard. And we finish rounding the bases with regulars Gutter and Tron.

Yankees3950: I myself do not have any strange food combinations worth mentioning. However, a friend of mine from school actually mixes mayonnaise and ketchup together then puts it on his fries, then puts his fries on his pizza and then proceeds to fold the pizza over the fries and eats it. Also my dad (being the fat piece of shit he is) dips his oreos/chips ahoy in a cup of diet coke, that’s right, not milk, diet coke. I thought these were funny, hope you get a kick out of them too.

Tron: I’m going to have to go with my favorite french-fry dip on this one.  Ranch Dressing mixed with Tabasco sauce.  It’s so good but nobody ever even wants to try it, and I’ve gotten more than one weird look while mixing it up at a restaurant.

Gutter: My strange food combination is steak with ketchup. I don’t find this odd at all, people put A-1 on their steak all the time. But when I pull out the ketchup and dip my steak into it people look at me like I just kicked their dog.

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It’s never our goal to single any one out, and we’re in no position of moral authority given our own responses to this question, but seriously, Gutter: Steak in the ketchup? What are you? Eight? We’re of the opinion that you need a better cut of meat which will render the ketchup pointless. But on the other hand, if it makes you happy, you can slather ketchup all over your steak, put it in your salad, and mix it with your wine for all we care. Do what you like, buddy.

Now, on to the business at hand. The Grammys are next week. Normally we’d ask you something about handicapping the winners, but since we don’t generally listen to pop music, we couldn’t possibly care less about any of this music. Instead, we want to know what is the best song to blast in your car? More importantly, why that song? This can be at a stoplight, before a night out, or on the way to work – wherever. In short, what song do you just fucking crank and why? Send your responses in a relatively short, well-written paragraph to staff@crujonessociety.com and we’ll  put ‘em right here next week. At which point: Let’s get retarded in here!

Dagger, Hart, and Limon