Cooking The Simpsons: Nuts and Gum - Paste Magazine

Cooking The Simpsons: Nuts and Gum

I’ll be honest. After making moon waffles, I wasn’t sure where to go from there. Once you’ve hit a simultaneous high and low, nothing’s left but the boring old middle, right?

Lucky for us all, The Simpsons is a nearly endless pot of simultaneously disgusting and delicious dishes. Many of these (like said moon waffles) come from Homer, who will eat just about anything (“If you need me, I’ll be in the refrigerator.”), and this month is no exception.

Our latest Homer eatscapade comes from “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy,” a Season 5 classic episode from the “Lisa vs.” series. This time, Lisa’s mad at the makers of Malibu Stacy for filling the latest talking doll with sexist dribble. When no one will take her seriously, she tracks down the original Stacy herself (voiced by Kathleen Turner) and they create their own doll called Lisa Lionheart.

Meanwhile, Grandpa Abe Simpson is feeling mortality closing in, and decides to act younger. When that doesn’t work out (Buzz cola burns his tongue and he’s thrown from a joyful bicycle ride), he gets a job in fast food and is a terrible employee. He realizes that he can’t change who he is, and should just enjoy being old… but not before spewing lots of classic Grandpa Simpson nonsense:

We’d always have walking bird on Thanksgiving with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we’d all watch football, which in those days was called “baseball.”

Good old Grandpa. Now, on to the food. Lisa and Abe are feeling despondent sitting together at the kitchen table. No one will listen to Lisa because she’s a kid, and no one will listen to Abe because he’s old.

In comes Homer: “I’m a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.” He then reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a can of “Nuts and Gum” sporting the slogan “Together at Last,” and proceeds to chow down.

Nuts and Gum! Two great snacks that sound completely horrific together. When do you stop chewing? And do you swallow it? Part of it? How do you know what part?

To answer these burning questions, I whipped up a batch of homemade Nuts and Gum and politely begged a few friends to try it and tell me what they thought. I used a combination of classic salted peanuts and bubble gum flavored gum, since wintergreen and nuts sounded especially wrong. Here are the results:

Dan: I almost like it. It’s kind of like peanut butter and jelly. [Pause] I almost want more. It’d be perfect to take to a party where you want to tell the host: “Meh.”

Ryan: Mmm. Hmm … It’s not bad? But now I don’t know what to do with it. Because you’re not supposed to swallow gum, right? [a minute later] I swallowed most of it.

Joe: Why is this happening? The nuts are breaking down the consistency of the gum. It’s just mush. I can’t swallow any of it; it’s not safe.

Conclusion? The taste really isn’t bad. Salty crunchy nuts with soft, sweet gum. It’s got that whole salty and sweet thing going on. But the texture? I’ve never had gum — or anything, for that matter — do that in my mouth, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Therefore, it’s just like Homer said: a dumb idea. It’s so dumb that even Homer called it dumb (granted, he said it right before he ate a handful, but still). Just in case you are still tempted to try Nuts and Gum for yourself, I will leave a photo of Homer from this episode right here. Just to remind you who thought up the idea in the first place.

Laurel Randolph is a food and lifestyle writer hailing from Tennessee and living in Los Angeles. She enjoys cooking, baking and candlestick making. Tweet at her face: @laurelrandy.

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