mizchef

Oh, my god. March 5 is National Cheese Doodle Day! Can you believe that? Remember munching on an entire bag of cheese doodles and ending up with orange hands? Those were the days. For some of you, it was today. That’s okay, we all have our weaknesses.

Whether you prefer Wise’s Cheez Doodles or Frito Lay’s Cheetos, or those little, round orangy balls that they sell in those gigantic plastic tubs and try to pass off as cheese doodles, this is a snack food that seems to live on and on. It’s associated with kids’ parties and backyard barbecues, and if you serve it at a party, it’s considered (pardon the pun) cheesy. Yet, we can’t help ourselves, can we? I don’t know about you, but I find it impossible to control my hand when it reaches for the bowl of the bright orange oddities. No matter how good my intentions are when I go to a party, no matter how determined I am to stick to the crudites and fruit salad, my hand just moves away from my body and makes a beeline for those cheese doodles. Damn hand! It’s all your fault I have weight issues!

Personally, my favorite kind are the crunchy ones. Sure, I like the puffy kind now and then. But put those crunchy things in front of me and I’m in trouble. And if I’m PMSing, those suckers don’t stand a chance around me.

How are cheese doodles made? It has to do with pushing the ingredients through an extractor, thereby adding air to it. But that leaves the question of crunchy cheese doodles open. Hmm. I’ll have to investigate that.

Let’s face it, cheese doodles have become part of our culture. I’m not sure why, but they have. I think a generation of kids have grown up thinking that cheese is spelled “cheez.” And that Chester Cheetah over at Frito Lay is one bad ass, huh?

Have you ever seen a cheese doodle sculpture? Has it ever entered your mind to do a cheese doodle sculpture? Probably not. But it did enter the mind of artist Philip Greenspun. So, he did it. And it was displayed at the Lapides Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, in 1994. Check it out.

Courtesy of Philip Greenspun

Wanna see a Cheetos portrait of Conan O’Brien? Here’s the artist in action:

Check out this cheese doodle compilation. It’s weird but fascinating: Tribute to the Cheese Snack

So, another week has gone by  and so has another month. I hope everyone has a great week ahead. And in the immortal words of Eric Cartman from South Park, “I want some cheesy poofs!”