Wednesday, October 06, 2010

The Hottest New Foodstuff

Spaghetti Tacos!
On an episode of the hit Nickelodeon series “iCarly,” the lead character’s eccentric older brother, Spencer, makes dinner one night. Glimpsed on screen, the dish consists of red-sauce-coated pasta stuffed into hard taco shells. What could be more unappealing?

When Julian Stuart-Burns, 8, asked his mother to make the tacos one night, she simply laughed. “I thought he was joking,” said Jennifer Burns, a Brooklyn mother of three. “But then he kept asking.”

That punch line has now become part of American children’s cuisine, fostering a legion of imitators and improvisers across the country. Spurred on by reruns, Internet traffic, slumber parties and simple old-fashioned word of mouth among children, spaghetti tacos are all the rage. Especially if you’re less than 5 feet tall and live with your mother.  
Hot damn. Whenever I eat spaghetti at home, I'll butter two slices of bread and make a sandwich with my spaghetti, but this looks even better. And the fact that it's mere mention can bring up George Costanza only makes my heart flutter more:

Perhaps the nearest pop-culture equivalent — that is, a sitcom artifact that thrives in the real world — is Festivus, an alternative to Christmas introduced on a 1997 “Seinfeld” episode, Mr. Thompson said. Festivus now has a number of real adherents.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

me: whadyaeat tonight, dad?
dad: I don't know.... nothing. I don't remember.
me: you need to eat, dad. you need protein. a lot of it, every day.
dad; I think I ate the spaghetti that was in there.
me: did you eat the meat that was sitting on it?
dad: no.

I might try making tacos with meat.