Tastes Just Like Chicken

Foraging the Web’s food sites, you can get that chocolate praline croquembouche recipe pretty easily at Epicurious (https://www.epicurious.com), find the perfect Peruvian lamb soup on AllRecipes.com (https://www.allrecipes.com) or get Emeril’s latest at the Food Network (https://www.foodtv.com).

But that’s just the children’s menu. There are so many more, shall we say, diverse food sites on the Net.

Let’s start at the Gallery of Regrettable Food

(https://www .lileks.com/institute/gallery). Here you can find photos and text from cookbooks from the 1930s through the ‘60s. Like frankfurters “that take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic.” Yum. Cold hot dogs floating in goop. Guess they just weren’t Vienna sausage people. Savory book titles include “Meat and Romance,” “You’re Really Cooking When You’re Cooking With 7-Up,” and “The 10 p.m. Cookbook,” with food that will send you to bed at 9. True to its name, after visiting this site you’re likely to regret having eaten anything. Ever.

After wallowing in all that aspic, it might be time for something lighter. How about food-borne illnesses, the musical? Karl K. Winder, food toxicologist and director of the FoodSafe program at UC Davis, has songs to keep you healthy at (https://foodsafe.ucdavis.edu/music.html. Take, for example, “There’ll Be a Stomachache Tonight” (that’s right, sung to the tune of the Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight”) with lyrics such as these:

On the road I found a nice cafe

With some Georgia friends

Didn’t know I’d soon be entertained

By Sal Monella and the Pathogens

Oh, professor.

We’re already losing weight, how about you? Maybe it’s time to try a few sites dedicated to old favorites.

The cereal “community” gathers at the Empty Bowl

(https://www.emptybowl.com/main.html) for reviews, brutal generic-versus-brand-name tests and various other musings from the grain crowd.

Then there’s Planet Ketchup (https://www.ketchup.wonderland.org) for all things condiment. Could have lived without the recipe for banana ketchup, though.

Canned Food Reviewed (https://web.wt.net/~wmanuel/wine/cans.html) takes a surprisingly somber tone for food from tin.

Everyone’s favorite potted meat product, Spam, has its own Web site at

https://www.spam.com. Plan a Spam party and get plenty of heart-stopping recipes. But Spam is not limited to the official site. There’s the Amazing Spam Homepage

https://www.cusd.claremont.edu/~mrosenbl/spam.html) and Spam-Ku Archive

(https://pemtropics.mit.edu/~jcho/spam/archive.html) just to name a couple of others. Sadly, the Spam Cam (https://www.fright.com/spam/spamcam.html) is no longer actively filming rotting luncheon meat.

Jell-O, the food most likely to have unidentified objects suspended in it, has an official page at https://www.kraftfoods.com/jell-o/jell-o.html. Kraft still isn’t forgiven for Vegemite. But Jell-O does win out over Spam, at least until someone invents Spam shots.

Finally, for the truly nouveau, here are a couple of sites with recipes sure to please your most finicky guests. Huang’s Bug Eating Page

(https://www.cyberbee.net/bugeat) celebrates alternative protein sources. And Iowa State offers “tasty” recipes on the other other white meat at https://www.ent.iastate.edu/misc/insectsasfood.html.

Maybe some gleaming aspic would add a little glamour to those army worms.

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