Welcome to Off-Menu, where we’ll be rounding up all the food news and food-adjacent internet ephemera that delighted, fascinated, or infuriated us this morning.
News
- Remember back in September when Fox aired footage of a woman named Alexa Greenfield, who was attending the US Open with her nephews, dipping chicken tenders into her soda? Of course not. Why would you? Doesn’t matter. The point is that she just released a song in which she raps about…dipping chicken tenders into her soda (not well! and inexplicably in Spanish for a few bars). I can’t in good conscience recommend that you spend two minutes of your fleeting and finite time on this Earth watching what is a surprisingly high-production-value video, but if you do, @ me. I can’t stop thinking about it.
Videos by VICE
- And if you happen to live near wherever they filmed this racecar-and-chicken-finger fiasco, remember that authorities warn against eating chicken fingers off the pavement. (OK, fine, that was in response to an unrelated chicken truck accident that spilled tenders all over a road in Alabama—but the advice still applies.)
- Should researchers engineer a spicy tomato? asks Science Daily. Sure, says I, a person who would like to be able to describe something as “that’s a spicy tomato!”
- Are people of smartphone-having age, regularly forgetting to close the door to their refrigerator, thereby necessitating one that will alert you via an app if you leave it open? Or are refrigerator engineers just bored?
- Bon Appetit ran a fiery take about pricy pizza wherein writer Alex Delany wonders why anyone would purchase cheaper, lower quality pizza when instead they could spend more money on better, more ethically produced slices. Perhaps because of the systemic, self-perpetuating income inequality in America?
Not News
Some companies offer free snacks or even full meals as an employment perk, and the Times Is On It. There’s nothing new on the overarching concept here, if you’ve read anything about cool company trends since the dot-com bubble (and no attempt to interrogate the economics of these food freebies), but some of the specifics are fun and quirky to find out about. Three whole pints per person at Ben & Jerry’s!
Something Nice
Buy This Bucket
Honestly, you should buy a bucket of KFC because we have talked a lot about breaded-and-fried chicken this morning and it’s almost lunchtime.
