The Brohemian Kitchen

Rick Ross Interviewed by Bon Appetit

14 Ridiculous Sugar Cereals

Remember when mom wouldn’t let us have sugar cereals growing up so we had to go to our friend’s house because he smokes with cigarettes and his mom let him see Rated-R movies and ride a skateboard with no helmet? These entitled millenials and their lenient parents have ruined this tradition by taking sugar cereals for granted, but there was once a time when sugar cereals were for Christmas and when you snuck them into the shopping cart. My goal is to honor that beautiful memory. It’s fun to do bad things so let’s get some cavities.

Sprinkle Spangles

This may be the only cereal I can provide tasting notes for. Similar to the aesthetic this cereal’s flavor profile is a firework display of fructose, preservatives, red 40, and puffed rice. Cocaine:crack::Cap’n Crunch:Sprinkle Spangles. Very American colors and theme though I believe genies are of Eurasian origin. I will concede it’s very American to try to shamelessly cash in on obvious trends. Bonus factoid: the genie was voiced by the poor man’s Robin Williams:

Dom does deserve some huge points though. When he died he was working on a cookbook called The Pizza Challenge. We can only dream of the secrets contained in that lost codex.

Croonchy Stars

A cereal presumably created by the best Muppet, Swedish Chef, which means we can assume he made liberal use of singed eyebrow hair (who’s texture is IDENTICAL to saffron FYI). I asked myself, is this character iconic enough to merit his own cereal? Maybe not, but it’s fitting he has a Firefox add-on that translates pages to Bork. And yes, fuck that, there’s no way I’m figuring out how to add umlauts to the section header.

Baron von Redberry vs. Sir Grapefellow

What does a young lad in the 1970s fancy himself as he plays with his action figures? General Mills bet such a child would be familiar with World War I military aviation and would choose either an archconservative Teutonic fighter pilot with the requisite upturned moustache or his dapper British counterpart. Needless to say these cereals lasted less than a year.

All I know is there is a HUGE opportunity for a rap duo based on these cereals. I’m thinking Redman and Method Man could put out a concept album about The Great War, which actually wouldn’t be too far from past collabs where they impersonate stodgy white people. First single will be “Sweet Grape Starbits vs. Sweet Berry Starbits (featuring Tyga).”

Nintendo Cereal System

Fruity vs. berry, a flavor battle so epic that surely its medium must be cottonmouth-inducing rice puffs. My main problem with this cereal is there are no mushrooms floating in it that make you 3x bigger. Also it’d be tight to eat breakfast while riding Yoshi.

Reptar Crunch

I nearly disqualified Reptar for being too millennial for this rigorous list (I consider the introduction of Dill Pickles to be unacceptable New Testament BS to allow the rugrats to age with their massive audience of baby boom children), but I decided Reptar was definitely cool enough to join the crew and I’m really digging the Balzac purple on teal color scheme. The two downsides are i) why not just make Reptar bars like on the show and ii) what about Rocko’s Marshmellow Life?

Nerds

Look how fucking stoked this kid is.

I’d be this stoked too if I had convinced my mom to let me eat straight candy for breakfast. Big credit to the Ralston people for including separate packaging for each flavor so you could mix and match as you see fit.

Donkey Kong Jr. Cereal

The people who made the Nintendo cereal system were too old-fashioned. They thought they could make some cereal, slap a video game character on it, and call it a day. Donkey Kong Jr. cereal takes the sugar cereal to the next level by putting real true-blue candy in the actual box. That’s Pez, a stick of compressed sugar, just chilling among banana bunches or whatever else was floating in that glucose jungle. It’s so genius it’s sickening. Jungle JAPES up in hurr.

Slimer and the Ghostbusters

A couple of questions about this tremendous box artwork:

• Why is Slimer designed after that crack head I drive past every day in the Tenderloin?
• Why did Slimer ejaculate over all the members of the Ghostbusters?
• Were the Ghostbusters ahead of their time by excluding tropical oils from their cereal?
• Why are these the REAL Ghostbusters? Were there imposters?
• Is that a real diploma that ten-year old has?
• WHAT COLOR CRAYONS????

Fruit Brute + Yummy Mummy

Few people realize that General Mills released 5 monster-themed cereals, not just the feared and delicious Count Chocula, Boo Berry, and Franken Berry. Short-lived were Fruit Brute (1974-1983) and Yummy Mummy (1987-1993). I know what you’re thinking. With every teenager in the world right now getting consumer boners for anything Twilight, why not reintroduce the werewolf-themed Fruit Brute with a celebrity tie-in with Taylor Lautner transforming into delicious lime marshmellows. Well General Mills doesn’t sense the pulse of American teens like the readers of The Brohemian Kitchen do so we’re going to have to settle for their Yummy Mummy revival timed with the depressing but inevitable release of The Mummy 4. As a consolation prize GM has released some official Fruit Brute merchandise since the cereal bit the silver bullet. From the Wikipedia page, “ in recent years both a resin model kit and a bobblehead statue have been sold in his image.” Nothing goes better than monster cereals than resin hits.

Gremlins

This cereal looks like a shitty corn pops rip off but I put when you pour milk on it the cereal grows puckishly evil but delicious marshmellows.

Mr. T

I’ll save everybody the pity-the-fool puns so we can focus on Mr. T’s ouevre of sugary product endorsements. Long before he was in the cereal biz Mr. T did some endorsements for Kool Aid. This is remarkable, not because Mr. T is known for attaching himself to saccharine commercial vehicles (re: Clubber Lang), but because my dad is a BALLER and hung out with Mr. T while working on the Kool Aid ad campaign in the late 80s. Also my dad is strong and can beat up anybody.

Urkel-Os

Much like the marshmellows dispersed among too many flavorless rice puffs, sometimes you save the best for last. Unfortunately Urkel’s campaign to be the first black president lost steam when Family Matters got cancelled.

Did I do that?

Brisket and Biscuit Redux

At the request of our grandpa, my brother and I brought back the award winning pastrami sandwich team for a father’s day special. After a day of rifle-shooting, ATV-driving, and flag football, the fam settled down to some grade-A sandos.

Vivisection

Plating

Kumchi

Pastrami

Hella days ago I teamed up with my brother for a Bonavina-sponsored potluck competition and WE WON. I smoked a 22-hour pastrami and made some mustard and he baked sour cream-enriched, bacon-flecked rolls for the ultimate barbeque reuben. For some reason I forgot to post the pics but now that I’m making another pastrami, this time for father’s day / my Poppy’s 6-month delayed 87th birthday, I figured I’d finally make a post.

Flavor cube

Some maniac cuts meat

Getting faded, faded

Clean and dope like heroin soap

Thanks to Scott Lieberman of Bonavina for the frighteningly hi-res pics.

Get Weird Barbeque - Recap and Photos

It had been too long. It was time for the kitchen to reopen with the aid of aspiring affineur and entomophagist Claudio “The Bodio” Nunez. Think of it like this. One day you and a buddy are watching a series of TED lectures on ‘innovative’ cuisine and this half-Dutch, half-Frankenstein dude wearing a novelty shirt comes on the stage and starts talking about eating bugs. The obvious conclusion: let’s trick all of our friends into doing this with us.

Menu

• Indian-spice cured goat bacon with raita
• Cricket pad thai
• Smoked cricket forcemeat wontons with homemade pickles
• Homemade yogurts and butters
• Goat Fat-Fried Miscellany
• Fried Apple Pie
• Durian

Crickets were purchased at The Animal Connection on the recommendation of an article. Because they are only allowed to sell insects for animal consumption I pretended to be a leopard gecko. The pet store feeds them a high-protein, high-vitamin diet so they’re efficient for reptilian consumption so we let them live off of apples and carrots for 24 hours (for flavor) before freezing (to make them less agile) and boiling (sanitation). From there Claudio added his half to the goat bacon that was already smoking. End results were processed with egg and steamed inside wontons. My half was less interesting and elaborate but fried in peanut oil and added to pad thai is still a POWER MOVE.

Wild card inspiration of the night came from youngmoney Jackson, who made an eggdrop and wonton chips with the goat fat. So decadent, so wanton.

After purification

Mousseline before processing

Rad thai

Pre-fry

Volumes

Note the garnish

Dippin dots

Eggdrop

So wanton

Chefs’ hats