"This is nice, ma, everything's fresh...including Vinnie!"
November 14, 2023 9:22 AM Subscribe
Dom DeLuise in "Eat This! The Video"
In the late 1980s, actor/comedian Dom DeLuise produced a series of cooking videos to promote Eat This…It’ll Make You Feel Better!—a book of Italian home cooking dishes inspired by his mother’s recipes. The food all looks delicious, but the real draw is Dom himself—a bottomless fount of ebullience, laughter, and generous good humor—whether preparing a recipe alongside his adoring (and adorable) wife, helping his 80-year-old “mamma” select a nice pork sausage at the neighborhood meat market, or just clowning around with the local workers and residents of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (the very streets where he was born and raised.) A lighthearted, nostalgia-inducing snapshot of a bygone era.
Recipes include: Mama's Lemon Chicken, Escarole Soup, Stuffed Artichoke, Mama's Happy Birthday, Anniversary, & Wedding Cake
But why stop there, when you can…
“Eat This Two!” (featuring a few of Don's showbiz friends: Carl Reiner, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Ruth Buzzi, and Burt Reynolds)
Recipes include: Broccoli with Rigatoni, Frittata, Homemade Sausage, Dom's Mom's Eggplant Rolls
“Eat This! III”
Recipes include: Mama's String Beans, Gnocchi, Shrimp & Calamari, Lasagna
“Eat This! IV”
Recipes include: Easy Does It Chicken, Stuffed Mushrooms, Lucy's Pasta, Dom's Mom's Meatballs
In the late 1980s, actor/comedian Dom DeLuise produced a series of cooking videos to promote Eat This…It’ll Make You Feel Better!—a book of Italian home cooking dishes inspired by his mother’s recipes. The food all looks delicious, but the real draw is Dom himself—a bottomless fount of ebullience, laughter, and generous good humor—whether preparing a recipe alongside his adoring (and adorable) wife, helping his 80-year-old “mamma” select a nice pork sausage at the neighborhood meat market, or just clowning around with the local workers and residents of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (the very streets where he was born and raised.) A lighthearted, nostalgia-inducing snapshot of a bygone era.
Recipes include: Mama's Lemon Chicken, Escarole Soup, Stuffed Artichoke, Mama's Happy Birthday, Anniversary, & Wedding Cake
But why stop there, when you can…
“Eat This Two!” (featuring a few of Don's showbiz friends: Carl Reiner, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Ruth Buzzi, and Burt Reynolds)
Recipes include: Broccoli with Rigatoni, Frittata, Homemade Sausage, Dom's Mom's Eggplant Rolls
“Eat This! III”
Recipes include: Mama's String Beans, Gnocchi, Shrimp & Calamari, Lasagna
“Eat This! IV”
Recipes include: Easy Does It Chicken, Stuffed Mushrooms, Lucy's Pasta, Dom's Mom's Meatballs
Very cute and fun - I also find it interesting that the channel publisher may be his son, which makes me want to say "double-awwwww"!
posted by rozcakj at 9:40 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by rozcakj at 9:40 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ruth Buzzi!! I'm in!
posted by supermedusa at 9:51 AM on November 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 9:51 AM on November 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yeah, Michael Deluise is one of his kids, he's one of those "it's that guy" actors from the 90s and early 2000s.
In fact, quite a few (Edit: apparently only 3) of Dom's kids went on to acting, so much so that my wife have a game where if we see a sturdily-built guy on TV with a friendly demeanor we jokingly ask "Which DeLuise is that?"
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:58 AM on November 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
In fact, quite a few (Edit: apparently only 3) of Dom's kids went on to acting, so much so that my wife have a game where if we see a sturdily-built guy on TV with a friendly demeanor we jokingly ask "Which DeLuise is that?"
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:58 AM on November 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
I was trying to search up a skit scene satirizing Dom, Burt Reynolds, and Johnny Carson hysterically laughing on cocaine. But even better than finding that video, Google offered up as a search prompt, "Were Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise lovers?" Now I'm shipping that. AI is the future, people.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:12 AM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:12 AM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Abehammerb Lincoln: based on your description, this 1991 SNL sketch immediately leaped to mind
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:26 AM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:26 AM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I loved Dom Deluise! He was so funny!
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:50 AM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:50 AM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m fully convinced that this is the reason I used to get Dom Deluise confused with Paul Prudhomme when I was a kid.
posted by brand-gnu at 11:18 AM on November 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by brand-gnu at 11:18 AM on November 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
Favourite Dom DeLuise memory is of him doing a cameo on All My Children. For some reason, the show was spending a week on Barbados or something, and Dom appeared as a traffic control cop. A donkey appeared, and wouldn't go with the flow of traffic. So here's Dom, yelling over and over "GET YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE!"
For daytime teevee, late eighties, that was pretty ballsy. And funny.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:32 AM on November 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
For daytime teevee, late eighties, that was pretty ballsy. And funny.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:32 AM on November 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
I don't know how or why I would have thought about Dom DeLuise any time at all in the last 20 years but this morning a fully-formed thought popped into my head that if I drew a Gartner graph with Thelma & Louise on one axis and Dom & Sub on the other axis, I would only know how to fill out one of the quadrants.
I didn't write that down or anything, I don't know what spurred it, the idea just sat their somewhat unwelcomely in my head, but now I've opened Metafilter and here's a Dom DeLuise thread, and I'm finding this whole experience alarming.
posted by mhoye at 11:40 AM on November 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
I didn't write that down or anything, I don't know what spurred it, the idea just sat their somewhat unwelcomely in my head, but now I've opened Metafilter and here's a Dom DeLuise thread, and I'm finding this whole experience alarming.
posted by mhoye at 11:40 AM on November 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
100% plan to put lemon juice behind my ears in case someone comes up behind me to suck my neck.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:46 AM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:46 AM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
These are great! My favourite memory of Dom was from a weird supernatural show he hosted in the late 90s, Walking After Midnight. Basically it was just cheaply shot anecdotes of celebrities describing encounters with the supernatural. Very much middle of the night filler TV. But at one point Dom tells his own story which was that he moved into a new house and was spooked out by the strange sounds of his new home. That's it - a charmingly daffy man telling an audience he was scared of an unlatched shutter.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:52 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:52 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
100% plan to put lemon juice behind my ears in case someone comes up behind me to suck my neck.
My favourite memory of Dom was from a weird supernatural show he hosted in the late 90s,
New headcanon: he decided to move away from his cooking show and start a show about the supernatural because of an inexplicable number of bewildered vampires in his life.
posted by mhoye at 12:22 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
My favourite memory of Dom was from a weird supernatural show he hosted in the late 90s,
New headcanon: he decided to move away from his cooking show and start a show about the supernatural because of an inexplicable number of bewildered vampires in his life.
posted by mhoye at 12:22 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just found this clip and figured I have to share it here:
Dom tries to make a banana cream pie with the help of a particularly mischievous sous-chef, Max the chimpanzee
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:35 PM on November 14, 2023
Dom tries to make a banana cream pie with the help of a particularly mischievous sous-chef, Max the chimpanzee
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:35 PM on November 14, 2023
We have this cookbook, somewhere in my wife's massive library of cooking references. It was quite a trip. I seem to remember we used it quite a bit for a while and then it got put away for a move, now lost to the archives.
Peter DeLuise's name is among the hallowed in this house for his involvement in the series of historical documents known as Stargate SG-1.
posted by Ber at 2:05 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Peter DeLuise's name is among the hallowed in this house for his involvement in the series of historical documents known as Stargate SG-1.
posted by Ber at 2:05 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Bonus DeLuise material: The opening theme song and closing credits for Lotsa Luck, the quintessential Great Inflation-era sitcom. During that heyday of U.K.-origin-->Americanized sitcoms, this was based on the British series On the Buses.
posted by the sobsister at 2:21 PM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by the sobsister at 2:21 PM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
An early acting credit for Peter DeLuise is the crazy 80s sci-fi adventure movie Solarbabies, possibly the biggest flop Mel Brooks ever produced.
posted by JHarris at 5:42 PM on November 14, 2023
posted by JHarris at 5:42 PM on November 14, 2023
Dom sent his 3 boys to public school, and I was in high school with two of them. Peter was a loudmouth in the most hilarious way in our math class. I wasn't popular enough to be among his buddies but I remember him making the whole room laugh with his asides. Michael was considered an ultra-cutie; all my girlfriends had a crush on him. And David was younger, I think just getting into high school as I was leaving. At any rate, of course I remember Dom being there for school events -- loud and hilarious and taking up a ton of attention. But also delightfully normal, and wow, of a different era -- sending his kids to public school?!?
As a bonus, when Peter was horsing around in that math class, he was most often horsing around with JJ Abrams.
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:55 PM on November 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
As a bonus, when Peter was horsing around in that math class, he was most often horsing around with JJ Abrams.
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:55 PM on November 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
My only memory of Dom DeLuise was of seeing him do a very funny Ziploc commercial back when I was a kid. I had no idea who he was, but I remembered an older member of my family saying, "Oh, that's Dom DeLuise." I searched YouTube for it, and found it, and it seems he did a whole series of such commercials: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. I must say they are the best Ziploc commercials ever.
posted by orange swan at 9:56 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by orange swan at 9:56 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Dom had a wife. She famously played Harriet Van Johnson, declaring the governor to be 'the leading ... in the state.'
posted by zaixfeep at 3:49 AM on November 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by zaixfeep at 3:49 AM on November 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I remember the TV ads for this video.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:26 AM on November 15, 2023
posted by SoberHighland at 6:26 AM on November 15, 2023
I was trying to search up a skit scene satirizing Dom, Burt Reynolds, and Johnny Carson hysterically laughing on cocaine.The original.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:16 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
A question for people with a modicum of culinary knowledge: does traditional Italian (or Italian-American) cooking not use a lot of salt?
I've noticed that in several (if not most) of these dishes, Dom never uses salt (or at least, if he is adding it, he doesn't mention it.)
Which is markedly different from what I see in modern-day cooking shows like Top Chef or Master Chef, where it's practically a biblical commandment that salt is the most important ingredient, and if a dish is under-salted, the judges will practically spit out the food in disgust.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:32 AM on November 17, 2023
I've noticed that in several (if not most) of these dishes, Dom never uses salt (or at least, if he is adding it, he doesn't mention it.)
Which is markedly different from what I see in modern-day cooking shows like Top Chef or Master Chef, where it's practically a biblical commandment that salt is the most important ingredient, and if a dish is under-salted, the judges will practically spit out the food in disgust.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:32 AM on November 17, 2023
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posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 9:35 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]