Vsauce! Kevin here.
We’ve all heard the term starving artist but even artists at some point have to eat.
Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí published a surrealist cookbook in 1973. Filled with
lavish illustrations, strange musings and of course recipes. Like, “Frog Pasties”
- frog legs sautéed in garlic and parsley and served fried underneath a chilled yogurt
whipped cream. Despite featuring Dalí’s unique paintings, his cookbook didn’t sell
many copies and today it’s considered quite rare. But this is actually pretty good. Maybe
it should’ve sold more copies. That yogurt thing is amazing. The frog legs are a little
chewy but the topping makes up for it. I’d probably eat this topping on a shoe, it’s
really delicious.
Lord Byron is considered one of the greatest British poets to ever live. But while studying
at Cambridge, he became obsessed with losing weight and only ate biscuits, water, and potatoes
covered in apple cider vinegar. He lost over 60 pounds and apple cider vinegar became the
first fad celebrity diet. That’s uhhh… That’s vinegar-y. I can see why he lost
some weight eating nothing but this. He probably didn’t smell very good either. Old vinegar-y
Lord Byron.
In 1976, Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll went to a restaurant that knew all about
his love of peanut butter. They recommended the Fool’s Gold Loaf—a four-pound peanut
butter, bacon and blueberry jam sandwich named for its lofty price tag of $49.95. Elvis loved
the sandwich so much he once flew his private jet from Graceland to Denver just to eat it.
To make a Fool’s Gold Loaf, start with French bread covered in butter, and bake at 350 degrees
until the bread is golden brown. Slice it in half, hollow out the insides, then fill
with peanut butter, jelly, and 450 grams of cooked bacon. It feeds eight to ten people,
or one King of Rock and Roll. Oh man. This is amazing. This is what being the best tastes
like. No! Bring that back! I need more Fool’s Gold Loaf.
Sylvia Plath was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, novelist, and author of The Bell Jar,
a book loved by many academics, including my friend and favorite Youtube scholar, Sparky
Sweets PhD.
Thanks, Kevin. Sylvia Plath also loved to bake and often used cookin’ as a way to
turn writer’s block into a blockbuster dinner. Girl used food imagery in her writing, and
had even planned to write a short story called “The Day of the Twenty-Four Cakes” before
she died. But her favorite thing to bake was a tomato soup cake, which is supposedly delicious
but sounds like something a fancy hobo eats out of an old pair Air Jordans. Back to
you, Kevin!
From her personal journals, we know that Plath wrote the poem “Death & Co” while baking
a tomato soup cake. Which aside from tomato soup features cream cheese frosting, cinnamon,
nutmeg, and raisins. Tastes like carrot cake. I’m lookin’ for the tomato soup. There’s
the tomato soup. It’s good - it’s cake.
Charles Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution. He also wanted to eat basically
every animal ever. As a student he started the Glutton Club to eat unusual animals. And
during voyages he ate iguanas, rodents, ostriches, and puma. But perhaps Darwin’s strangest
snack of all was the armadillo, which once taken out of its shell he said, “taste and
look like duck.” And as always..thanks for watching!
This… I don’t know about this. I think I got a bone. I’m gonna eat more of it,
though. I mean, it’s like eating really dry, dark meat. I’m not gonna open an armadillo
restaurant tomorrow is all I’m saying’.
Special thanks to Dr. Sparky Sweets and the gang over at Wisecrack. Seriously, go subscribe
to their channel. I actually made a video for them talking about my favorite book. So
check that out. Subscribe while you’re there. I’m gonna go brush my teeth four hundred
thousand times.