Gag Reflects is a podcast about the horror show recipes in vintage cookbooks. We'll explore the historical context of each cookbook, as superficially researched by us, and you'll get our real-time reactions to discovering the true nightmares Americans used to eat when America was "great."
Lookit, this stuff is gross, so we're going to swear a whole hell of a lot. Just FYI.
Naama is an avid Regrettable Food cookbook collector, an expert on genocide and mass atrocities, and a human/civil rights advocate living in Los Angeles currently working to end hunger (not with these recipes, though). Jessi is a former opera singer, current television stage manager and future cult member (specific cult TBD--always open to suggestions) living in New Jersey. Neither of us is an expert on culinary history or a professional chef by any stretch of the imagination, but both of us hope our shared obsessions might serve as adequate proxies for expertise. Also, we're fu***ng funny.
WHAT THE F**K DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?
In Season 1: Magic Bullet Cookbooks, we're doing a deep dive into advertising and promotional cookbooks that insist one product can go in anything, even where that product clearly doesn't belong. In each episode, you'll hear about delights like bananas with sweet pickles and mayo from the Chiquita banana cookbook, or ketchup cherry ice cream from the Heinz Ketchup cookbook (that's it for spoilers, though). Tune in for our weekly Taste Test mini-sodes, where Jessi and Naama inexplicably dare each other to make and eat a recipe from that week's cookbook.
WHAT THE F**K IS THAT MUSIC?
That amazing and hilarious intro music you hear is thanks to the equally amazing and hilarious Dave Greenberg. You should subscribe to his youtube channel.
WHAT SHOULD I F**KING DO NOW?
We're so grateful that you're listening! Would you do us a favor and hit that little subscribe button right there, and maybe leave us a review? Thanks!
Also: Are we getting something wrong? Missing something? Is there a cookbook or recipe we should know about? Do you have an idea of how to explain ourselves to our spouses and children, who can't understand why we just made/ate that? We wanna hear about it.
