Bart’s King-Sized Book of Fun

by Bart King

  Pretzel Logic

  I think pretzels are fun, and here’s why: they’re sort of tasty, and they have an interesting shape.

  Hmmm, that’s a pretty weak argument.

  Okay, how about this: fun-loving kids helped invent them! About 1,400 years ago, the famous ruler Charlemagne made it a law that bakers had to make bread that included the shape of a cross. (Charlemagne was a Christian.) So at first, bakers just made their loaves the usual way, but then they rolled two “snakes” of dough and crossed them on top of the loaves.

  But kids liked to pull the cross off and eat it, so the bakers started making the cross by itself and then rolling a circle around it so that it held together. One of these was called a pretiola, or “little reward.” (The pretiola came to be known as a reward for kids, and from that came the pretzel!)

  Cake Fun!

  Did you know there’s an unusual European dessert known as “spit cake”? It’s a tall, narrow cake that is made on a spinning rotisserie, which is known as a “spit.” (What, you didn’t think they put saliva in it, did you?)

  Eating with Your Hands

  I have two possibilities for good finger food. First up, Kentucky Fried Fingers! Actually, they’re not fried—you bake or boil them. Just get some sausages and sliced almonds. Cook the sausages, and after they’ve cooled a bit, jam an almond into the end of each one so that they look like fingernails. Ha!

  The next recipe, the Hand of Meat Loaf, is a little more complex. I’m going to assume you know how to make meat loaf. (If you don’t, it’s easy, and there’s someone at home who can help you.) The beauty of meat loaf is that you can shape it into anything you want. The fact that people always shape meat loaf into something as boring as a loaf has always disappointed me.

  So, you’re going to make a meat loaf shaped like a big hand! The problem will be that the fingers will be so skinny, they’ll want to detach from the palm of the meat loaf. To prevent this from happening, make your hand with webbed fingers. In other words, the fingers can be spread out a bit to look like a hand, but they should all be attached to each other. There should be a little bit of meat between the fingers.

  For fingernails, put cut pieces of onion on the ends of the fingers. If your family cooks meat loaf with some sauce or cheese on top of the loaf, feel free to do that. (Covering the loaf with ketchup before baking will also work.) But leave the sauce off the fingernails.

  For the final touch, freak out your meat loaf eaters with a punch that has a human hand floating in it! Just fill a rubber glove with any colored fruit drink. Put a rubber band around the end of the glove and then put it in the freezer. After the glove is frozen (and the punch is made), run some warm water over the glove and then pull it off the ice hand. And into the punch the hand goes!

  Fun Comes in All Flavors

  If you’re ever in Smithfield, Virginia, don’t forget to pay a visit to the world’s oldest ham. It dates back to 1902. People line up to see it!

  Cheesy Adjectives!

  I love cheese. And I love going into cheese shops. The finest cheese shop in New York City is called Murray’s. When people visit, they are amazed at all the different types of cheese there are. So to help people talk about cheese, Murray’s provides a handout with useful words!

  The beauty of Murray’s cheese list is that you can also use it to describe your friends. In fact, I just did this, and it made me laugh so hard, I dropped my cheese!

  Looks: smooth, snowy, rindless, bright white, fluffy, furry, brown mottling, blackish, straw-colored, shiny, orange, rough, moldy, cloth-bound, craggy, glossy, pudgy, punctured, waxy, veined

  Smell: citrus, milky, hay, ammoniated, stinky, barnyardy, pungent, bodily, wet dirt, straw, nutty, grassy, herbal, leathery, fruity, wet stone, mushroomy, earthy, cave

  Flavor: peppery, milky, lactic, tangy, lemony, mushroomy, buttery, milky, bacony, fruity, meaty, salty, grassy, earthy, dates, hazelnuts, caramelized onions, butterscotch, metallic

  Feeling: dry, dense, thick, creamy, pliable, runny, bulging, curdy, firm, elastic, hard, flaky, oozing, soft, high moisture

  Make Your Own Curds? Yes Whey!

  To make your own tasty cheese, all you need is some milk, plus some lemon juice, a thermometer you can stick into a hot liquid, and some cotton fabric called muslin.

  Pour some water into a large pan and then place a bowl into the water. (The bowl should be one that can get hot, and its sides should stick ABOVE the waterline.) Put the pan on a stove on high or medium heat. As the water starts to bubble, pour a pint of milk into the bowl.

  As the milk warms, check it with the thermometer to see when it reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it does, turn off the stove and carefully take the bowl out of the pan.

  Add some lemon juice to the milk. Stir the whole concoction, and you’ll see the milk start turning into curds. (The curds are the chunks; the whey is the watery liquid left behind.) Add more lemon juice if this isn’t happening! Then leave the mix alone for fifteen minutes.

  While you’re waiting, line a colander or sieve with the muslin. After the fifteen minutes are up, dump your cheese mix into the muslin and then tie the corners together. You have a cheese ball!

  You need to let the cheese ball drain in the colander or leave it hanging over the edge of the sink for an hour before it’ll be ready. Once the cheese is dry, get out some bread or crackers. Then unwrap the cheese, add whatever you want for flavor (herbs, salt, pepper), and have at it!

  Mom, the Cheese Is Scaring Me!

  Once upon a time, there was a common English cheese known as “Suffolk cheese.” It was a REALLY hard, smelly, and horrible cheese. Sailors took Suffolk cheese out to sea because the stuff lasted forever. This cheese could never go bad because it already WAS bad! Plus, if you ever lost your anchor, you could just tie a chain around a block of Suffolk, and that would probably be a good replacement.

  How bad was this cheese? Well, the saying went that Suffolk cheese was so scary and inedible, “pigs would grunt at it, dogs would bark at it, but none dared bite it.” Wow!

  Oatmeal Cannonball

  There’s a good reason to eat oatmeal: the empty cardboard container makes a perfect air cannon! Just cut a hole in the bottom end of the container big enough to fit your finger. Then get a rubber band and a large balloon. Stretch the balloon across the open end of the container and wrap the rubber band around its edges. Now pinch the skin of the balloon, pull it back, and let go! Out the other end of the oatmeal container will come an air cannonball. Even though the cannonball is invisible, it will shoot across a room, table, or countertop, amazing onlookers...just before it blows them away!

  How to Survive a Food Fight

  I clearly remember the day I was sitting quietly in the school cafeteria, playing with my Jell-O, when suddenly a burrito went flying by my ear. Someone yelled, “Food fight!” and then the air was filled with milk cartons, pizza crusts, and doughnuts! Every single food item in the room was catapulted into the air.

  That was surprising. It was even more surprising when a quesadilla flew through the air like a Frisbee and landed on my head...with the melted-cheese side down. Rats!

  Afterward, as I tried to pull the melted cheese out of my hair, I thought about why people have food fights. Sometimes these are just one-on-one battles, like when the gladiators of ancient Rome warily circled one another with banana cream pies. (If people in the Colosseum stuck out their thumbs, it meant they wanted to taste the pie.) And sometimes, as in the cafeteria, a food fight can be an unplanned, chaotic free-for-all.

  If you get in a food fight, remember to never, ever throw an item that might hurt someone. The Jell-O on my plate would have been a good choice, but the giant pineapple I had in my lunch bag? Bad call. Throwing hot chocolate in someone’s face is obviously a horrible idea. But don’t bother throwing food that’s completely harmless. If you’re flinging pieces of popcorn at someone armed with a bologna-and-pickle sandwich, you’re in trouble. Big trouble.

  When consider
ing what food items to throw, consider these factors:

  Throwability: How easy will it be to chuck this item? Sure, spaghetti would be a cool food to throw, but it’s not really practical to grab a handful of pasta. More of it will get on you than on your target! Likewise, anyone armed with a salad is at a disadvantage.

  Stain Ethics: If you’re throwing liquids, water and even milk aren’t going to cause permanent stains on someone’s clothes. Grape or blueberry juice, however, are brutal!

  Creativity: Think outside the bento box! Is there a large spoon nearby that you could use to launch some mashed potatoes? And what about a squeeze bottle of mustard or ketchup? I bet that could fire a good stream!

  Explosiveness: The perfect item should offer a combination of throwability and explosiveness. A raw egg has terrific explosiveness, but it would be too hard to hit someone with. (And that’s why hard-boiled eggs are out of the question.) Ooh, I have it! A calzone has a crust around it, but if thrown with enough force, it might break open and reveal its meat and tomato filling!

  Finally, remember that you always need to have an exit strategy. If you think a food fight is about to break out, stay away from the middle of any room. Also, don’t sit with your back to anyone. Once the food starts flying, remember the motto of the hyperactive kid with a Scotch tape roll who sat next to me in first grade: “Stick and move, stick and move.”

  Coolest Sentence of the Century!

  In 2004, a group of politicians in Taiwan sat down to have lunch together. It didn’t go very well, as an argument led to a massive food fight! Afterward, one food-covered politician shouted, “My whole body smells like a lunch box!” Yes!

  Pan con Tomate

  Although a lot of the recipes in this chapter are more for fun than for food, I wanted to include one meal recipe that is simple and absolutely tasty. You might think from the heading that it’s fancy. But the Spanish just translates to “bread with tomato,” and as you’ll see, that’s almost all you need.

  Ingredients:

  A good, juicy, ripe tomato

  Bread

  Olive oil

  Salt

  Optional: Garlic

  First, toast the bread. Then get a bowl and start grating the tomato over the bowl. Discard the tomato skin as it gets torn off.

  Put the toasted bread on a plate and drizzle some olive oil on it. (If you have garlic, put it on the bread before you add the olive oil.) Then get a spoon and scoop some tomato on the bread. Sprinkle a little salt on it, and you’re done. Think of pan con tomate as a quick, healthy pizza. If you want cheese, sprinkle some Parmesan on top!

  Veggie Phobia!

  A person suffering from lachanophobia suffers horrible dread upon seeing a head of cauliflower. That’s because lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables! (So if anyone ever hands you a plate of flaccid Brussels sprouts or limp lima beans, pretend you’re a lachanophobe!)

  In an Eating Contest? Read This!

  I’ve never thought of professional eating contests as being all that fun. I mean, do I really want to see a guy shove sixty hot dogs into his mouth? Hmmm, maybe! But he’ll also be soaking sixty hot dog buns in water and eating their soggy remnants. Blech!

  However, amateur eating contests can be fun, if you follow these steps. First, don’t choke. Seriously! I’ve choked on food when I wasn’t even IN a contest...I was just hungry! To avoid choking, breathe through your nose the whole time you’re eating. This will help keep things simple: air to your lungs, food to your stomach.

  Also, never have an eating contest with a hard–to-chew item. Meat? No! Bread? Forget about it! And certainly no bread-and-meat combinations—that’s just asking for trouble! Instead, stick to soft things like cake, pie, oatmeal, or meatballs.

  Try to avoid taking big bites. The key to eating safely and fast is to take lots of small bites, chewing quickly and swallowing often.

  Finally, never take part in more than one eating contest a year, because more than that is just unhealthy. Happy chewing to you, and break a leg! (But not a tooth.)

  * * *

  [26] *nom nom nom*

  Amazing Mazes

  I once took two kids named Evan and Alaina to a giant cornfield maze. It was going to be fun, as long as we stuck together. This maze was really huge and complex.

  Handing each kid a map, I said, “This will be fun, as long as we stick together. This maze is really huge and complex—”

  “I like mazes!” shouted Evan. And with that, he ran into the maze entrance, his map fluttering to the ground behind him.

  Sighing, I trudged alongside Alaina, and together we entered the maze. We were immediately hemmed in by tall cornstalks. As we moved through the maze, we checked every turn and dead end to see if Evan had gotten himself trapped. It took forever, but finally we emerged at the exit of the cornfield—and we still hadn’t found him!

  We decided to wait for Evan to come out. He had to be in there somewhere! Sure enough, twenty minutes later, the little corn sprite stepped out of the stalks with a smile on his lips.

  “That was awesome!” Evan said.

  He was having so much fun, I didn’t have the heart to get angry. “Yeah,” I said, “but you’re supposed to—”

  “Let’s do it again, backward!” he yelled. Despite our shouted cries, Evan plunged back into the maze, leaving me holding out a map.

  And if I blinked back a tear at that moment, I’ll never tell.

  A Bad Sign!

  If you see a sign for a cornfield maze that says anything like “What a Maize!” or “It’s Amaizing!” be sure to complain to the proper authorities.

  The popularity of corn mazes is fairly recent. The beauty of them is that you can plant, create, and destroy them in just a few months. But the old-school version of these mazes came about in the 1500s. At that time, gardeners began laying out hedges in patterns that would more or less stay put for decades, and even centuries. The idea behind these “puzzle mazes” was that you could exercise your mind AND body while going through them. And if that’s not a fun idea, I don’t know what is!

  Before hedge mazes existed, there were labyrinths. The earliest examples of these were not actually mazes at all. First, you weren’t hemmed in on your sides. You could see where you were and where you were going! In other words, a labyrinth didn’t usually have a bunch of dead ends. Instead, as the path turned and twisted, all you had to do was stay on it and you’d eventually reach your goal (which could be a dead end!).

  Have you ever heard the famous myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth? It’s really about a monster that lived in the center of a maze, not a labyrinth. I know this because in the story, there’s a big deal made about how the hero, Theseus, manages to figure out a way through the labyrinth to kill the monster, rescue the girl, and escape.

  But if the Minotaur was hiding in a labyrinth, ANY applehead could have gotten to it!

  How to Get Out of a Maze in Four Easy Steps!

  Don’t bother with trailing a ball of string or leaving bread crumbs behind you. This never actually works. Other people will just trip on the string. (And really small people will trip on the bread crumbs.)

  The Golden Rule: Consistently turn left (or right) every time you come to an intersection. That way, you may go down some dead ends, but you’ll probably get out of the maze just fine. (Hey, look out for that bread crumb!)

  If you’re in a really complex maze, the Golden Rule won’t necessarily work because some parts of the maze won’t be connected to outer walls. So I guess Rule 2 isn’t really that golden after all.

  Don’t panic! You probably won’t die, or even suffer, if you get stuck in the maze for a while. (Probably!) And trust me, there’s nothing more pitiful than the person who comes lurching through the cornstalk wall of a maze with a scared expression. What are you going to say to the semi-disgusted people out there? “I panicked”? Take it from me, that’s not going to impress them.

  To prevent this embarrassment, get a map for your maze and put it in
your pocket. Then if you get lost, pull out the map...only to realize that you have no idea where in the map you are! Then remember that you brought a compass. (You did bring a compass, right?) If not, then panic.

  It’s easy to create your own labyrinth. Just follow these handy instructions! First, you just need to draw a cross. Then draw an “L” shape in each corner, and stick a dot in the middle of each one.

  Now draw a loop from the top of the cross to the top of the “L” to its right. Then, as the illustration shows, move two lines to the left and make another, higher loop over the one you’ve just drawn. Keep going!

  But remember, it’s not final until you put a Minotaur in the center! (In a pinch, this could be the neighbor kid with a Spiderman mask.)