Comic Strips

i don't know who hurt that person, but I feel like food innovation is at an all-time high. Constantly I see new stuff being experimented on and new combinations of food items. plant-based/vegan popularity has really elevated those food innovations as well, with ever more plants being used to make new foods. Just yesterday I made myself a vegan omelet with vegan cheese. And it was amazing.

Yeah, this just isn't the case, there's a metric fuckload of experimenting going on, most people just aren't willing to try any of it.

Just this year, Oreos made a Sour Patch Kids Oreo. It was terrible, but don't pretend like there aren't people out in the world committing food crimes. Taco Bell is committed to lowering the bar on what humans are willing to eat, don't disservice their hustle.

If you wanna go back to tuna mayo and olives gelatin aspics from the 60's go right ahead.

We make new kinds of sandwiches all the time...

I mean realistically humans have been perfecting two things for at least a hundred thousand years.

Killing and cooking.

This is the spot to share with everyone the viral trend of vanilla ice cream with olive oil and sea salt.

I'm going to follow this to glean interesting food combinations, as it seems they're being posted below. 🙂

I think the comic doesn't account for all the food experimentation going on in the world. One bias -- people only post their wins. Not their many, many "L's".

For example, I eat cottage cheese as part of my diet. I also consume this supplement called Zena 'Supergreens'. One night, I thought hey...cottage cheese gets paired with fruit. Why not pair it with this fruity Supergreens powder, see what happens? Nasty, gloppy, with clumps of overly sweet coagulated powder. Do not recommend.

Anyway I'm sure people all around the world are doing wacky experiments just like that every single day. And if we're lucky, they post good ones on the internet & we can all try it out. 🙂

Anything is a sandwich if your poor enough.

My wife makes sandwiches out of cheese and honey. She insists it's a flavour combo that works, but I just can't support it.

I tried a new food combo as a kid. I liked Nutella, and I liked tangerine slices in syrup. So I combined them.

Mom made me eat it.

A lot if what we as a society have settled on is also because of economy at scale logic. There are many things that are delicious but won't keep well outside of a small window in specific conditions. Or have less yeild than common alternatives. And sadly many clients simply don't want to try new things.

I suggest for anyone that can, try your hand at fermentation, especially if you have room for a garden. There is so much you can do from making your own koji to lacto-fermenting Nasturtium berries. There are many new flavours for you to discover and share with friends.

Another idea is to learn more about local foraging and seeking out local Mycological societies to learn about mushrooms in your area.

Watch Ordinary Sausage on YouTube. He is a pioneer in developing new and exciting foodstuffs.

Depends on the culture and time if you ask me.

I mean, just never. What people eat is a function of what is available/cheap/tasty/trendy at any given time, and I doubt the availability of both ingredients and "ideas" (recipes and techniques globally, trends for better/worse) has ever been higher globally, let alone in "developed" countries.

Just get on TikTok. Those goofy kids constantly make weird food combos. Sometimes they're actually good!

My wife's been really into foraging lately and I've learned you can eat so many random weeds found all over the place.

try bbq'd cheese-stuffed peppers wrapped in bacon.

peanut butter, hot sauce, fried egg, cheese, and mayonnaise sandwich

I do most of the cooking in my family, and I'm one of those people who will often look at recipes when I'm doing something new, but mostly just do simple dishes and wing it. I'll often try and incorporate things we have. All of which is to say, there's a nontrivial amount of experimenting, which isn't always a good thing.

I remember serving a noodle casserole, and there were some scrunched up faces around the table. My wife asked what the fuck the chewy things were, and I said smoked oysters (which the family loves). They've made fun of me for years on that one

In all honesty, I thought it tasted pretty good.

Only tangentially related, but the cheapest (by weight and per unit) type of hamburger patties at my local Costco this month are Impossible Burgers.

If you’re not familiar with these, they’re completely vegan, made from soy protein, but the texture and flavor is almost identical to beef. They cook like beef, taste like beef, and “bleed” like beef. And (for a few weeks, at least) they’re cheaper than beef.

That’s a new and exciting sandwich IMO.

If you travel, you'll find very interesting combinations of flavors. As a few modest examples, I recently came upon paprika flavored and cheese and onion flavored Pringles, and awhile back i had sake flavored kit kats.

Travel more! Plenty of flavor experimentation going on