Steve, Don't Eat it!

February 19, 2015 12:26 PM

The Sneeze column, Steve, Don't Eat It! Although most of this material was written in the early 2000's, I'm surprised when I talk about it and people look at me like I'm crazy. The Sneeze was an ambitious and funny blog full of insights about life, parenting, humor and also had solid reporting on gross food items that are still available in grocery stores. Steve ate weird and gross stuff so we don't have to.
posted by bobdow (44 comments total)

You posted about RAISINS?!!?!
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 12:27 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

raisins link. I do love and miss this blog! Thanks for the reminder.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 12:29 PM on February 19, 2015

One of my first ever MeFi posts was to this site: Just what does breast milk taste like, anyway?
posted by Space Coyote at 12:32 PM on February 19, 2015

I sympathize with his then 4-year old. I hate raisins so much that sometimes it's all I can think about.
posted by dotgirl at 12:33 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you hate raisins so much, just put them back in your food!
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:36 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I did not know you could get silkworm pupas in a can. Now I know.

And I cannot unknow.
posted by Kabanos at 12:38 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I miss the days when people just did wacky shit online for the sake of doing wacky shit online instead of worrying about monitizing their stream...
posted by Samizdata at 12:40 PM on February 19, 2015 [11 favorites]

Ah, olden tymes. I loved The Sneeze, but now it lives in the Internet Ren Faire sector of my brain, along with Defective Yeti, Cockeyed and Cardhouse.
posted by phooky at 12:40 PM on February 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

I can't stop laughing at that can of OGOD Infected Corn! I've been sitting at my desk doing that quiet wheezy trying-to-be-silent laugh that's fooling nobody. I am going to either pee my pants or get fired and it is all that corn's fault.
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:44 PM on February 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

The can of infected corn is just a can of mushrooms that have happened to grow in/on corn
posted by surazal at 12:47 PM on February 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

I still have my Sneeze t-shirt!
posted by Chrysostom at 12:49 PM on February 19, 2015

I like when he gets to the Chicken of the Woods and has a pleasant surprise. It's a delicious mushroom.

I can't stop laughing at that can of OGOD Infected Corn!

I had the same reaction. I once worked in a vegetable processing plant where I'd have to deal with corn smut (as we called it). So I've never been able to get myself to a place where I'd try it as cuitlacoche. So I guess put me on team infected corn.

Anyway, I got almost as much of a laugh out of this passage:

Don't worry, I checked the ingredients before I tasted it. "Smoker's lung" was not on there.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:50 PM on February 19, 2015

The Sneeze is also the originator of classic Tumblr meme none pizza with left beef.
posted by Gordafarin at 12:50 PM on February 19, 2015 [11 favorites]

Awesome! I met him, even, at my first-ever mefi meetup. He is extremely funny in person. (It was a meetup with lot of awesome people.)
posted by rtha at 12:52 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Samizdata: "I miss the days when people just did wacky shit online for the sake of doing wacky shit online instead of worrying about monitizing their stream..."

Like (future OKCupid founder) Christian Rudder and the stinkyfeet project.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:53 PM on February 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

I hate raisins so much that sometimes it's all I can think about.

Behind every raisin is the tragic story of a grape that never got to become wine.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:00 PM on February 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Speaking of wine, the prison wine episode -- where he makes wine out of fruit snacks and moldy socks -- is hilarious.

Thanks for the link!
posted by cacofonie at 1:25 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

If it wasn't here I heard about this site all those years ago, I have no idea where it could have been.
posted by Hoopo at 1:28 PM on February 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

I still think of the infected corn post whenever "grossest food in the world" comes up.
It's one of the few things I will never ever even try.
posted by Omnomnom at 1:31 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I actually read this series when it came out, and to this day, I don't know that I have laughed harder at my monitor.
posted by Annika Cicada at 1:36 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Steve ate things out of cans with pictures on them that still haunt my dreams. And the less said about the contents, the better.
posted by tommasz at 1:44 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fans of this kind of thing might also enjoy the Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap audio podcast (NSFW!). It's less "stunt" foods like what Steve eats (though they too have the larvae!) and more cheap, nasty convenience foods. Featuring the world-famous Hugo-award-winning Ursula Vernon (previously, previouslier).

KUEC is great background / car-travel fare, and you'll not run short as they're at 175 roughly-one-hour episodes and counting.

> I still think of the infected corn post whenever "grossest food in the world"
> comes up. It's one of the few things I will never ever even try.

Balut (trigger warning: icky images) tops the list for me.

The straight-up weirdest actual food I ever saw in person, though, was a bag of frozen goose uteri at the local market. Not necessarily "I'd never eat that!" (maybe they're good -- I'm not buying a pound of them to find out) so much as "It never crossed my mind that a goose even had that particular anatomical feature."
posted by sourcequench at 2:21 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I found the natto one sort of inaccurate. The smell is not good (it doesn't smell so much of a dumpster but rather day-old sweaty socks IMO), and the appearance is not good, he's right there. The taste though is not bad. I didn't find it particularly bitter at all. Tastes like beans with a slimy texture, pretty much. And dude, if some sketchy looking food comes to you and there's a little packet of mustard with it, you use it, goddammit.
posted by Hoopo at 2:35 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I still think of the infected corn post whenever "grossest food in the world" comes up.
It's one of the few things I will never ever even try.

A fancy restaurant near me had some sort of huitlacoche burrito. I'd gone with my parents; they didn't realize was huitlacoche was, and ordered it. I think they liked it? It was hidden inside the burrito, and *I* wasn't going to tell them what it was.
posted by you could feel the sky at 3:25 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I saw this post, I got all excited thinking he had new posts. :-(

My husband and I still shriek "Raisins?!" at each other and say, "Fine. Pickles." way more than should be allowed.
posted by artychoke at 3:30 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, he's Mefi's Own thesneeze.
posted by artychoke at 3:34 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

This blog is what introduced me to huitlacoche. And all these years later I have yet to try it. Anyone know of a good place to get it in San Francisco?
posted by MattMangels at 3:46 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anyone know of a good place to get it in San Francisco?

One of those words does not belong in that sentence.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:35 PM on February 19, 2015

nopalito serves it. (PDF)
posted by rtha at 4:51 PM on February 19, 2015

"The Sneeze column, Steve, Don't Eat It!"

I had to read that phrase several times before I was able to parse it. "There's something called a 'sneeze column', and this Steve fellow wants to eat it? But he really shouldn't?"
posted by brundlefly at 4:53 PM on February 19, 2015

i miss this blog so much. i totally did not know it was written by steven molaro, who has been a little busy as of late, i'd imagine. the blog is also how i was introduced to the art of eric joyner, which i find delightful.
posted by koroshiya at 4:59 PM on February 19, 2015

When 'none pizza with left beef' stops being funny I will know I am tired of life.

It really is evergreen. I utterly forget it exists, and crack madly up *every single time* I see it again. Hee.
posted by Space Kitty at 5:41 PM on February 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

In hell, this is all you get!
posted by ostranenie at 6:03 PM on February 19, 2015

I have never laughed harder than I did at None Pizza with Left Beef. I thought I might injure myself.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:11 PM on February 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh how I miss The Sneeze. Steve, Don't Eat It! is definitely one of my favourite discoveries through Metafilter.

The only thing that came close to replicating it was Deep End Dining's first podcast episode: Raw Chicken Sushi. Equal parts hilarious and disgusting, just like SDEI.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:13 PM on February 19, 2015

Now, you don't have to stop at just eating None Pizza with Left Beef... you can wear it, too.
posted by daisyace at 6:16 PM on February 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

TheSneeze was a brilliant slice of those awkward mid-slightly-early-years of the interwebs.
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:53 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ah, natto. I spent a summer in Japan in 2004 for college and my host mother served me some. In our introductory letters, we had been encouraged to list various foods we liked. I had mentioned that I liked eating eggs, so my host mom thought she might make the natto more palatable by cracking a raw egg over it. It was... not an improvement.
posted by TheCowGod at 8:04 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

diasyace. Just when I thought I had laughed all that I could possibly laugh about None Pizza With Left Beef, you link that necklace. That caused me to laugh to the point of tears. Good thing I was home and not at work. Thank you, I think.
posted by zsazsa at 8:07 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh and in 2007 I was at a MeFi meetup that Steve was at, only I didn't know he was the None Pizza With Left Beef guy until someone told me later that night. I was devastated that I didn't get to thank/blame him for bringing such a thing into the world.
posted by zsazsa at 8:18 PM on February 19, 2015

I have had huitlacoche several times both from a can and from the ear of corn fresh. It is a mild tasting fungus although the canned version tends to be over salted. It is an excellent condiment on crackers or toast and blends well with cheese. I would consider it a superb hors-d'ouvre ingredient. And what, Manhattan isn't awash in the stuff?

Canned meat is gross, though, I agree with him on that.
posted by telstar at 2:43 AM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

you can pry my canned corned beef out of my cold dead pudgy hands
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:58 AM on February 20, 2015

One of my first ever MeFi posts was to this site: Just what does breast milk taste like, anyway?

Oh wow. Physical nostalgia reaction; I was 14 when I read that thread, there was no computer at home so I used to read MetaFilter at school early in the morning, on a forgotten signed-in PC that bypassed the website blocking.

Me and all my 14-year-old friends reacted to the SDEI! series pretty much exactly as you'd expect.
posted by The Zeroth Law at 11:34 PM on February 20, 2015

The Sneeze is still one of my favorite things ever on the internet
posted by SassHat at 8:18 AM on March 9, 2015