Christmas Foods That Should Not Exist

By C.A. Pinkham | December 16, 2014 | 4:00pm

In Depth

Christmastime is upon us once again, whether we like it or not. In the spirit of a holly jolly Xmas, Kitchenette decided to bring our old standby series back out of retirement for one last go-round.* So without further ado, we give you Christmas victuals that should not be.

Figgy Pudding — I know absolutely nothing about Figgy Pudding. Is it good? How do you make it? What does it even look like? Yes, I could find all these things out with the help of a quick Google search, but frankly, I don’t want to know, because if I’m subjected to one more fucking entreaty to bring some nebulous “us” a figgy pudding, you’re going to see me on the news getting arrested for attacking a Santa’s Workshop holiday display with a tire iron. I actually feel this way about basically all Christmas music, which is why my girlfriend’s recent desire to play it throughout our apartment has driven me even closer to the brink of madness than normal. My attempts to dissuade her were less than successful**:

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Regardless, there is no Christmas song I hate more than We Wish You a Merry Christmas. At this point, figgy pudding could taste like the culinary equivalent of an orgasm in space while riding a unicorn and I’d still hate it on principle.

Candy Canes — I’d really love to see a Venn diagram of “People Who Enjoy Candy Canes” and “People Who Enjoy Candy Corn,” because I strongly suspect it’d just be one overlapping circle. Both were created in the same only recently declassified military psychological warfare experiment (Operation: Vomit Garden). I fully agree that candy, as a rule, does not need to be sweet to be good (my favorite ice cream flavor is green tea, so, yes, I am one of those people), but it also probably shouldn’t be made out of congealed Listerine.

Gingerbread Houses — I like gingerbread. It adds a pleasant spicy tinge to what might otherwise be pretty boring cookies. What I don’t like is an art installation made out of the stuff that you can’t even eat because it will have long since calcified into gingerspackle. That is less than ideal.

Fruitcake — I’m 90% certain every fruitcake currently in circulation was actually constructed (we all know “baked” is not an accurate term here) before 1917. I don’t even think that’s in debate. What I’m really curious about is what the hell was used as construction material back then, because if we had built bridges out of it, I doubt so many of them would be collapsing lately.

Eggnog — Be honest: if you didn’t know what it actually meant, wouldn’t you think “eggnog” was the name of a general of Mordor? Or at least a sergeant or something. The point is, Eggnog should be charging the gates of Helm’s Deep rather than lamely sitting in a glass looking for all the world like pancake batter. Oh man, though — if ONLY it were pancake batter. I would gladly drink a pint of pancake batter if the alternative was eggnog.

…oh, who the hell am I kidding, I’d probably drink a pint of pancake batter anyway.

Mincemeat — If you’re not aware of what mincemeat is aside from the most cliched expression in existence, it’s actually a grasping miasma of meat products, or, alternatively, actual literal animal fat (or, OK, yes, sometimes it’s made with vegetable shortening, but go with me here), dried fruit, alcohol, and spices. If that doesn’t sound all that horrifying to you, I have helpfully included an image to illustrate that it winds up looking like goopy meat jell-o. Mincemeat isn’t all that common in America, and we’re the people who eagerly consume scrapple, so it says something when a food is too horrifying for us to touch. No, to find a market for finest minced Chuck C Johnson floor leavings, you have to go to the UK (because of course you do), where they are frequently served in pies (because of course they are). To the British, “just slop some shit together and throw it in a pie” is high cuisine.

Chestnuts — Oh good, a food that actually requires you to give yourself second-degree burns as part of the prep process. Sounds like fun. You know, for all the work that goes into turning shiny wooden testicles into something vaguely resembling food, you’d figure they might taste good. You would be mistaken. Chestnuts taste like the opposite of good. They taste like a mushy burnt sponge. I don’t understand why we persistently eat these things — is it all part of some weird, ancient Martha Stewart Living cult*** hiding in plain sight? Is getting as many poor saps as possible to eat these things part of their initiation ritual?

Spiral Ham — “So, you know ham?”
“Well, yeah, it’s ham, it’s not exactly Seaborgium. Why do you ask?”
“Well, what if we found a way to run it through a magical compression machine that simultaneously gave it really weird perforations and made it taste like the Ghost of Bologna Past.”
“That sounds like something Sam Neill would’ve witnessed in Event Horizon just before he decided to perform home ocular surgery. Never, ever do that.”
“Um…”
“…you already made 2,000 tons of it, didn’t you?”
“…mayyyyyybe…”
“Fuck.”

* Basically, I got whined at to the point where it was either give in and write this or gouge out my eyes with mistletoe.

** Surprisingly, she had no interest in harking how I had hid these silver bells up my ass.

*** If you’re going to tell me it couldn’t be an ancient cult if it’s based around Martha Stewart, you can stop right now, because you’re not fooling me. I know damn well she’s an ancient eldritch monstrosity that feasts on souls and tastefully-prepared floral arrangements.

Images via Shutterstock.