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Food Crime: Frosty the Slawman

so a while ago, I saw this photo going around on tumblr:

at first, I thought this was photoshopped. I mean, "welcome new man in your life"? that feels like a translation error, or someone being silly on purpose.

but guess what! turns out, Frosty Slaw Man is real!

and soon...he will be mine. let's get cooking

(full disclosure: I crafted this snowman and took notes about it over a year ago. and then, like with many things in my life, I forgot about him, and let him drift into the ADHD void of Things I'm Not Currently Staring At, where object permanence is tentative and largely unrealized.

but here we are! and here he is: the slaw man. it's time to share him with you, so that you can suffer as I have suffered, and/or rejoice in my gelatin creation!)

so this recipe photo originally came from Mid-Century Menu (archive link), a blog that seems like one after my own heart, and which once tried to make the Slaw Man (with not much success; but we'll get back to that)! but it's not just that blog that has copies of this ad. I also found it on reddit, and in a few different places on ebay!

lookit that guy! he's a real guy!

both the reddit post and some of the ebay listings say that this is from 1963 (though I haven't been able to figure out which magazines it was printed in, to confirm this for myself). but in looking this up, I discovered something else fun! there's another version of this ad!

Best Foods is what Hellmann's stuff is called on the west coast, and the "this is no place for second best" thing makes a lot more sense when you consider that the ad was probably made for Best Foods first, and then just reused and rebranded for the east coast

the more you know!

anyway the benefit of finding this alternate ad is that the scan on this image is a lot clearer, and so the recipe is more readable! and in looking at it, I've realized something important:

when Mid-Century Menu tried this recipe, they got an ingredient amount wrong.

when they made their beloved Slaw Man, they had the water amount written down as 1/4 cup, but looking at this scan up close, it is actually 3/4 cup of water! something that might make a significant difference, considering we're working with gelatin!

(there's also another change I want to make compared to what they did, when I do this recipe. but we'll get into that in a sec.)

for now: we begin

so. there's no way I'm making a Slaw Man this large. I am just one person, and considering the ingredients of this, I don't think I'm going to be able to consume that much Slaw.

two entire heads of cabbage? three pounds of cottage cheese, a thing that I don't even like to eat? no. that's a bad idea.

so I'm starting small here and making this 1/3 the size of the original:

2 packets of unflavored gelatin 1/4 cup cold water 1 cup mayo 1 tsp salt 1lb cottage cheese 4 cups shredded cabbage

surely this will result in a reasonable amount of Man

...okay, I started chopping the cabbage thinking it would be easier, but I've given up and pulled out a grater. this is much better! and somehow more violent (affectionate)

the recipe says to soften the gelatin in cold water, and then stir over hot water until it's dissolved. I'm going to assume "stir over hot water" means a double boiler, so let's do that

hmmm, the gelatin is very foamy? it’s melted, but the bottom of the pot feels really....sticky

okay. after a couple minutes more and no change, I’m calling this good enough.

so one thing that others who have attempted this recipe have not taken into consideration is the cottage cheese. you see, the others used normal cottage cheese, but the recipe says to use "cottage cheese, cream style"

I’ll be real, I’m not 100% what that means, since we don’t have that here. but I can take an educated guess! so let’s blend the cottage cheese!

(with an immersion blender. I am not willing to wash an actual blender because of this)

mmm, yes. very smooth

...actually. why isn't all cottage cheese like this? the thing I hate about cottage cheese is the texture, so why isn't it all smooth and creamy like this?? I could eat this!!

a new discovery is made every day in this house.

okay, time to start mixing things together.

ah, frosty. I opened a whole new thing of mayo for you! do you feel special?

(I'd make a "pre-dinner snack?" joke, but sometimes I think I'm the only one that remembers Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time)

okay, the mayo, cottage cheese, and salt have been added to the gelatin. but as this cools, the texture is getting...hmm. less than appealing.

lastly: the cabbage

oh. oh this is not very nice

next it says to pack the "salad" into a one pound container, and two six-cup bowls, but since I made this recipe so much smaller, I'm going to uhhhh. uh. find some bowls that seem like they'd be correct...snowman? proportions?

ah. this bowl is too big.

hey, these'll work!

now I just have to let them chill for a while, and continue another day.

(edit from current!me: ahhh oh my god I forgot this was pretty soon after we adopted Jackie! look at these cat pics that I took while I was food crime-ing!

look at them having their little interactions! Knuckles was trying so hard to be friends with her! I love them)

hello! two days later and we are ready to assemble the slawman. and my sibling has started referring to him as "frosty: attorney at slaw", so that's fun.

I've done a thing where, as these set, I flipped them around in the bowl so that hopefully they'd be more round. we'll see if they actually stay like this.

I have also made some decorations for him out of peppers, olives, and carrots!

let's build our boy

oh he's so heavy. and wobbly

no no no he almost fell over!!

okay. he's fine. but more skewers were needed.

and...okay. he is complete.

behold!

gaze upon my beautiful man!

(he is not structurally sound! he wobbles unsteadily as I rotate him! there are already cracks forming in the gelatin around where his arms are! don't worry about it!)

 now it's time to stab him

and...to devour him

this tastes like...a bland coleslaw? and not even that. it's just sort of a salty, cottage cheese-y cabbage. the ingredients don't combine to become something greater, they simply...sit there. like this.

and the texture is...mmm. it's not a jello kind of texture, but it is a bit squashy in a way that's mildly strange.

it's very creamy once it softens in your mouth.

...I don't like this!

and look! taking just that one chunk from him was enough to destabilize him entirely :(

RIP frosty. now I just have to see if I can eat all of you before you go bad.

(note from current!me: I could not.

 I ate maybe half of him over the course of many days, often adding other stuff to him to try to add some flavor: bacon, frozen peas, cheese, etc. but even with that, I just couldn't stomach him.

after a while I stuck what was left of him in the freezer, hoping that maybe I'd find the will to consume the rest of him some other day.

do you know what a frozen-and-then-thawed mixture of cabbage, cottage cheese, mayo, and gelatin looks and tastes like?

bad. the answer is: bad.

I threw him out pretty quickly after thawing him.

do not try this recipe at home)

i love how its kinda canon that he likes snakes and scorpions ^_^

Japanese!AU

I did it!

OK OK OK WAIT

ccquackity sent out a tweet that cquackity is just "chilling in las nevadas", implying that cquackity is the sole survivor of the dsmp finale , or at least for the people that were presently on the server

cwilbur went to utah and somehow managed to avoid all of that bullshit.

imagine. cwilbur goes to utah to heal but always feels like something is missing. empty. he checks his communicator every day for a message from tommy, from phil, from anyone. as time passes by he begins to give up. time must have passed on without him, they must have all healed and gone down their separate ways. he's happy for them, really; the gaping hole in his chest is inconsequential. meaningless. just like he was. the entire time. really, had he ever even mattered to any of them? moods swinging from depressed, to angry, to numb about the whole ordeal -he should really get medicated- he begins to wonder when things got so complicated. he missed home. he thought he'd be going home by returning to utah, but as time passed, he began to realize home wasn't a place. it had been people. and he- he had left them all to die. his home was tommy, and he'd abandoned him. the growing pit of guilt left him feeling heavy, filling his stomach and making it hard for him to eat most days. it was fine. he was fine! he was getting better. but then- the paranoia strikes up again, telling him that maybe it wasn't all fine, maybe tommy wasn't okay, he never should have left in the first place. after all, a mad man was on the loose! he could have hurt- could have killed- his little brother, and he never would have found out. it eventually becomes too much for him and, late at night, in a panic driven haze, he grabs a few of the things he'd managed to earn here in utah and goes back. his blood freezes. he stops, frozen in time, looking at what happened, feeling... nothing. or was it too much? he feels like a puppet who's strings had been cut, like he'd never really escaped from the narrative at all, like he was right back at the head of the story, witnessing himself in an out of body experience. the server was gone. and he'd never know what happened. he would never get closure. he falls to his knees and weeps.

then, you have cquackity. the sole survivor. cwilbur disappeared and everyone else- everyone else died and forgot him. he has nobody left, he's alone, with not even cfoolish there to help him now. the country he built for his fiancés is empty, as it always was, but now it's the most populated place on the server- it has him. the legacy he fought for, clung to with his broken, bloodied fingernails, is now witnessed by no one but him. he's numbed to it over the years; nobody is coming for him. why would they? even if they did remember- even if they did remember, he wasn't exactly the best person. why would anyone come back for him? he would be left to rot, in this man-made desert, in this city of smoke and mirrors that rose from gilded dreams of a man and would crumble with him. he was fine with it, he decided. there was no use crying about it to anybody, especially since there was nobody to cry to. he goes throughout the motions of life emptily, attempting to fill the silence of the city all by himself, trying to carry on tasks day to day as normal. he talks to himself, boisterous and loud like he did when times were... simpler, back when he had no scar on his face and when love came to him so easy. but there was nobody left to love, and nobody left to love him, and over the years the silence suffocated him. stifled him. he stops talking, and eventually, he forgets how to use his voice at all. he feels like a puppet who's strings have been cut, like it's not him living day to day, and he wonders if he had died years ago. if he had ever really been alive at all, and if so, when he'd forgotten how to live.

after cwilbur returns to the smp, and finds it gone, blown to smithareens (he would never know what happened) just like l'manberg. and really, wasn't that fitting? what goes around, comes around. it always ends with an explosion. always. he picks himself up after a while, beginning to wander around the perimeters of the explosion. he resists the urge to wander into the thick of the crater and begin picking through the wreckage, looking for corpses. he doesn't think he has it in him to handle if it was the face of anyone he cared about.

after what feels like days of ceaseless wandering- and maybe it was, god knows that cwilbur knows what its like to wander endlessly, it was just limbo, he had never really left, he was never really alive- he comes up upon a place he never thought he'd see again. and he laughs, maybe, shock and disbelief that turns to a sort of bitter anger. because of course, of course it was las nevadas, of course it was quackity. it was always quackity. quackity was the sun, in a way, a star with things always centering around him.

but if quackity was the sun, wilbur was a blackhole.

wilbur marches into las nevadas, head held high, faltering at the emptiness and state of disrepair. even if quackity was still here- and, wilbur realizes, fear panging his heart, that the idea of quackity being gone is so much worse than quackity having miraculously survived that- he hadn't been able to do everything himself.

cwilbur searches. by god, wilbur searches. he tears the city apart, brick by brick, looking for the man that had the answers. or not. wilbur honestly wasn't sure what he wanted with quackity- to fight him? he knew what had happened last time. but quackity was one of his biggest what-ifs, maybe in another life, another time, they could have been more.

but he might have been too late.

as wilbur was beginning to lose hope, beginning to consider collapsing to the ground and screaming his lungs out, the unthinkable happened.

he was going through one of the many casinos, checking in every room, no stone untouched, all nooks and crannies searched. he had just been finishing up, opening the door and stepping forward when he walked into something.

no. not something. someone

and god was it so fucking good to see quackity. wilbur. wilbur felt like he could breathe again, air filling his lungs. "quackity?" he asked, voice cracking. you're here. you're here. you're alive. i'm alive. i-

cquackity looked... confused. is this a trick? quackity thinks. am i hallucinating him again? this isn't funny. you're not funny, XD. but his voice had left him years ago, and he couldn't even tell the hallucination plaguing him to fuck off. figures. he scoffs and tries to shove past it, freezing when he realizes it is solid. no. can it be? but he could just be- imagining- is he dreaming?

wilbur grabs his wrists. "quackity?" he inquires again, voice fading off. that was one thing quackity had trouble believing. wilbur had looked so happy to see him- wilbur would never look that happy to see him. it just wasn't possible. "quackity, i'm talking to you." irritation shot through quackity. i can see that, asshole. god, he'd forgotten how fucking annoying wilbur was. whatever- whatever this was, it really wasn't messing around. "talk to me!" wilbur barked, shoving quackity into one of the nearby walls, pinning him. quackity was stunned, head hitting the wall behind him. that- nothing had ever done that. all his hallucinations over the years, they'd only been out of reach, whispers at the edges of his vision or they'd solely been there to mock him. and this felt mocking, god, it felt like life was spitting in his face, but it felt real. more real than anything had in years.

quackity shook his head, trembling. he couldn't. he opened his mouth and closed it, aware of how foolish he looked, but he hadn't needed to speak in a long time, and now, he couldn't remember how. distantly he was aware of a thumb brushing his face. "quackity, you're crying," wilbur's voice distantly reached him, and oh, oh. when had he started to do that? that didn't feel right. but he was, he was crying, and wilbur was alive, and god, he wasn't alone anymore.

distantly, he was aware of wilbur leading him to a chair, babbling on about something, the words not quite reaching his ears. but he relished in the sound of his voice, in his touch, god he missed being touched, and he slumped in the seat he was put in.

he was startled back to reality at harsh tapping on the table, flinching and blinking at a pen and paper that wilbur had gone and scrounged up. oh. smart. quackity wouldn't have thought of that, but to be fair, he was in shock. "can you speak?" wilbur asked. quackity shook his head. "right, then, uhm, use this paper to communicate."

quackity nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off wilbur as he reached forward tentatively, afraid wilbur would dissipate like smoke, and he'd be left with nothing. alone. again. but nothing happened, and he had the pen, and paper. he stared down at it numbly, not sure what to write. "what, can't remember how to write?" wilbur teased. "little baby can't pick up a pen? come on, q, you're not a kindergartener."

quackity scowled. he changed his mind. he'd rather be alone. he hated wilbur, the stupid asshole. hands shaking, he wrote a shaky: fuck you. and then, as an addendum: hi :]

wilbur grinned, a genuine smile spreading across the man's face. "oh, ever so eloquent. hello to you too, big q."

quackity smiled back.

they'd be okay.

Humble king 👑

The Pirate King of the North

Main Themes: Villain Sanji, Alternate Universe, Zosan Ship

Sanji-centric AU from a reality where Reiju didn't have emotions.

Warning: Long post ahead and some One Piece spoilers. Contains strong language and explicit content.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 (Special) | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

Young Zoro hates the fucker but those scars and piercings are doing a number to his soul.

Old Sanji's story goes like this:

He didn't experience compassion from anyone else aside from his mother, who--you know what happened.

Judge kept him locked away until he was 13. He had him released when he was deemed too broken to do anything, and he was apparently a waste of space. As far as the world was concerned, he was already dead. He gets left behind at some random pirate town in the North.

His swirly brows were recognized by the pirates who took him in--only for him to be enslaved because people would pay a lot to have their way with royalty.

He picked up some skills from the other slaves and became cunning af--because he had to be.

At 17 he started a revolt against the slaver pirates, effectively taking over as their new pirate captain.

He became the feared "Mr. Prince" and his words are as sharp as his bite.

He's underweight because he doesn't give two shits about good food.

"The All Blue? It's nothing but an old fishwive's tale," he says.

He used his cunning mind and new pirate crew to hunt down and kill his own father from the shadows.

He enslaved his own siblings and becomes the new ruler of Germa Kingdom. Over the years, he used them for warfare and expanded the territory of the North.

His heart is a bottomless pit for power and control.

He had a fling or two or several with is closely allied with Doflamingo because god damn they're both mad like that. The alliance eventually lead to direct connections with Celestial Dragons.

Sanji gains more power and becomes the notorious "Pirate King of the North"

Meanwhile at the other side of the world, Luffy didn't make it as far as he could have without a good cook.

Luffy would have recruited one from Baratie but the restaurant was absolutely destroyed before the smaller Straw Hat crew could make a difference. Some of the staff didn't make it.

Zoro left the crew when it fell apart at some point.

Due to Zoro's reputation and bounty that he had occurred during his limited time with Luffy, he was offered a position as a Warlord, ultimately taking over the late Jinbe's old role. He accepted and served for several years before he was assigned a job that he didn't know would be the most challenging one yet.

The Celestial Dragons didn't like the fact that Sanji had started to have more worldly control over their own, so Zoro was quietly assigned to hunt down the great Pirate King of the North. Zoro accepted because he felt that he needed more experience before he could take on Mihawk again.

Zoro quickly realised that this mission is not a walk in the park.

Sanji loves toying with the Demon Warlord so he insists on taking him on by himself.

It becomes an endless game of cat and mouse. Sometimes Sanji chases and sometimes he runs, sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses.

They're at each others' throats everywhere in the world. Any person, city or being of any kind that gets in the way usually gets torn apart in the chaos. The hunt goes on for a lifetime. They're currently in their 40's.

Zoro severs Sanji's left arm during one huge fight.

Because of this, Sanji relentlessly tries to get Zoro to marry him to use him in so many ways he can think of--both as an asset and under the sheets--oh the things that he wants the swordsman to do and beg for.

Sanji likes to refer to the tiniest scar on his lip as "Zoro's love bite"

He was about to get a nice fresh one on his chest when some fuckers teleported him away.

Hearing old Sanji's backstory was a bit much. It was young Zoro's turn to have a nosebleed that day.

----------

Oh yes I had fun drawing old silver fox, damaged Sanji. I wish I have the time to colour it up. I've also been very much into reading AU stories, especially soul brand ones. Keep them coming, you beautiful people.

Edit: Woo! I finally decided to make my own AO3 account. It's about time. Link here for the story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60686077

tntduo pride week 2022 - day 1 (moonlight)

im gonna be honest i didnt understand todays prompt so uhhh just take what ive got i guess

"Isn't this nice, Big Q?" Wilbur said, taking a sharp inhale of his cigarette. He chuckled a cough at the end of his sigh. The contents of smoke leaving his smiling mouth.

They lay in an open field. The moon above them dimly lit up the area, creating the perfect ambience. The cold, fraying patches of dark green grass softly poked at them, but neither of them minded.

"No, it isn't. You're such an asshole." Quackity side-eyed him, his top row of teeth gritted down harshly on his bottom row.

"You know you love me." Wilbur slyly said, rolling over on his side to face Quackity, and taunt him further.

One of his hands was holding up his head. His other rested on the grass. Quackity rolled his eyes at this taunt. Only the moonlight and Wilbur's cigarette illuminated the night.

"I don't, actually." Quackity's arms folded in annoyance.

A part of him deep inside knew that there was possibly a sliver of himself that actually was fond of Wilbur. But, surely not, right?

Wilbur smiled pridefully. "I'll grow on you one day, Q. Just give me a shot."

"I am giving you a shot right now. And you're..-" Quackity paused, his heart beating quickly. He swallowed harshly. "You're alright, Wilbur."

Wilbur's face tinted a light pink at this sudden change, surprised that his remarks were actually getting anywhere at all. He smiled, rolling back on his back.

"You're cool too, Quackity." He said, staring up at the small stars scattered across the night. He gently rested his cigarette in between his index and middle finger.

Quackity wiped his face briefly with his hand. "T-This doesn't mean you c-"

"I know what it means, Quackity." Wilbur hushed him, a reassuringly soft tone followed. Not a hint of jokes filled the air. "Listen, you don't have to tolerate me- at all. I-I mean just laying here tonight with you is enough for me. If you want, I could really just stand up and walk out of your life. But, I'm glad that you consider me 'alright.'"

Quackity turned his head over to look at Wilbur. A thick silence suffocated the air. "I... I enjoy having to tolerate you."

Wilbur looked at him with a wide grin on his face. "And I enjoy you tolerating me."

Who knew that they'd actually get along under the moonlight?

6-14-22

art and a fanfiction?!?!? ayoo???

speedpaint n some other stuff under the cut :)

6 hours and 30 minutes

74 layers

yeah

ESTE SEPTIEMBRE EN KARMALAND VOTE POR NUESTRO PRESIDENTE!