Hell Baby (p.48)

According to today's Achewood, it would appear that Roast Beef has died. It's a long story, and I'm not sure I understand it yet. It involves Williams & Sonoma, a creepy character named Cartilage Head, sapphic erotica, and something called the Lash of Thanatos. Granted, Roast Beef has died several times before, but who knows where this will lead. In any case, it makes for a good introduction to the Hell Baby.
This is basically an arrangement of breakfast foods designed to look like a baby that came from hell. Mission accomplished. Once again, not really a recipe (it didn't tell you how to cook an egg or bacon), but it made for a good "breakfast for dinner" meal (there's a lot of breakfasts in this book, by the way). A fried egg for the head, ham steak for the body, sausages for the arms, and bacon for the pants. The recipe notes that toast triangles could be used for shoes, but that Roast Beef feels this makes the baby less hellish. I agreed. Plus, the baby's legs were already hanging off the plate, so there was nowhere for shoes to go. The ham steak I bought was giant. It appeared in the recipe diagram like you should use a whole one as the body, but if it was drawn to scale, they were using a much smaller steak than mine. I cut it in half. It was a very nice ham, though, and not too salty. Melissa even ate most of hers and she doesn't usually eat ham or pork. I was so proud.

I also had a couple of extra sausages, so I made the baby a walking stick. In my head, I thought that an old man baby that needed a cane (like Benjamin Button) would be appropriately hellish and evil (like Benjamin Button-the movie, not the character). I considered making the sausage a hell baby penis, but got embarrassed when I realized people in my family would read this. Of course, I went ahead and mentioned it anyway, so I probably should have done it. To complete the macabre display, I added a personal touch to my baby - cheese grits (this was the other meal overpowered by the sharp cheddar, if you're keeping score). I didn't like grits when I lived in the South, mostly out of principle, but now I find that if I mix some cheese or bacon bits in they can be a pretty tasty breakfast. So, I made my Hell Baby vomit up some cheese grits:
One more thing I'd like to mention- Roast Beef says that "traditionally" the Hell Baby's pants are made of tripe, but that it's not a fashionable meat so he substituted bacon. I literally had to look up to make sure this wasn't a traditional dish somewhere. This is something that Achewood is very good at- creating back stories, histories, and traditions and making them seem like something everyone should have always been familiar with. It really makes the world of the comic feel real, and it's a very nice touch.

This is the last recipe I'm trying this week, but it's worth bringing up that I will be eating Achewood again before I return. We made Pat's Fool's Rice again for a stir fry last night, and tonight we're repeating the Toasted Nut Orzo, since we had so enough of all of the ingredients left over. That's all for now, see you all next week! (Unless something fun or exciting happens before then, in which case I'll post a regular, non-Selzer & Smuckles entry).

Cheers,
Eli