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Bazooka-Joe's Incoherent Ramblings

Monday, October 17, 2005

Gooberdillas On The House


Traveling around the country like a rock star…before you’re actually a rock star, comes with its share of quirks and expenses. One of the challenges my band and I faced was streamlining our food costs. As every good bachelor knows it’s the food line item in the monthly budget that gets sacrificed to pay for the next great toy. It’s the same way with a band. “So how are we going to get home now?” In Denver, CO we needed a few spark plugs replaced. We went to the cheapest mechanic we could find that (almost) spoke English. But apparently, after replacing them he laid the plug wires across the exhaust manifold and we made it all the way to St. Louis before the completely melted. Money for a new vehicle inevitably comes out of nutritional expenses. So we learned to get by on less and come up with ingenious ways of keeping our taste buds from rotting out of boredom. But a traveling band has some additional concerns. The food must:

A. Be cheap.
B. Be easy to prepare from the backseat of a van pulling a trailer on a curvy dirt road at 65mph.
C. Meet the allergenic requirements of all partakers.
D. NOT be taxing on the gastro-intestinal tract.
E. Be cheap.
F. Not be difficult to eat with one hand on the wheel.
G. Have a cute name that’s fun to say over and over and over again.
H. Preferably something that will not go bad after being left for weeks in a hot van.
I. Be cheap. (Get it? I. Be Cheap? Get it?...nevermind.)


This week’s affordable flavor extravaganza….is the “Gooberdilla”. The Gooberdilla is beautiful in its awe-inspiring simplicity. Here’s how meals in a van somewhere on I-70 after a week of touring works:

Me (driving): “Hey it’s like 2am…shouldn’t we eat some lunch?”
Drummer: “Tina, you fat lard, come get some ham.” [w/Napoleon Dynamite voice]
Keyboardist: “Today I’m having a giant pile of salt!” [w/King of Town voice]
Singer: “Dang it Napoleon, Make yerself a danged gooberdilla.”
Bassist: “That is what I have been saying.” [w/Inspector Clouseau voice]

After about day 3 in the van, nobody uses their real voices anymore, we all just look for ways to interject our favorite quotes from movies or other pop culture influences. Talking like this for days on end, usually leads to a Pavlov-like detoxification process when we get home to our wives (it involves slapping upside the head whenever one’s voice reverts back to that of a comical character of one of the aforementioned forms of media).

After about another twenty minutes of Napoleon, Strongbad, Pink Panther, Office Space, and Tommy Boy quotes, we finally get down to actually talking about eating.

Drummer (backseat): “Well, let’s see. We have Gooberdilla fixings and…more Gooberdilla fixings. It’s all that’s left. Inspector Clouseau ate all the jalapeño jerky and cheese & cracker packs. There’s a clump of M&M’s that melted and stuck together and some leftover jo-jo’s from Kansas City.”

What you’ll need to follow along at home is one (1) jar of Smuckers brand Goober (peanut butter and jelly in the same jar - $0.99 at your local grocer), a pack of flour tortillas and a utensil to distribute the goober. If you’ve ever tried to ‘spread’ Goober, then you know it’s a little less frustrating than Arrow’s Impossibility Paradox. It basically just clumps in certain spots. Don’t try to spread it, you’ll only hurt yourself. Get enough clumps on your quesadilla to have decent coverage, roll it up like a burrito and pass it to the front of the van (each person takes a bite on its way to the driver usually).

Goober, we’ve come to find out, can survive being left in a hot car for multiple summer days with the lid only partially screwed on. Chip off the top layer of crusties and you have a perfectly edible substance again. I’m pretty sure in the event of nuclear holocaust that cockroaches and Goober are going to be the only left on the planet. A good side effect is that Goober tends to stop most people up pretty good if you eat it two meals a day for a week. Sure it leaves you in stomach cramps but it also means the driver doesn’t have to stop every day for a bathroom break either.

Gooberdillas also work when camping. Although, when camping, I highly recommend the alternate route when it comes to food (find yourself a good woman that can and loves to cook even on a camp stove, marry her and buy her lots of cook books for the avid camper). But for you bachelors and the camping inept check out Dan’s blog for some more great camping tips.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 2:05 PM

7 Comments:

  • At October 17, 2005 7:07 PM, Blogger Dan added:

    LOL, I've eaten Goober sandwiches with your drummer, but it was on I-15. It's so true that guys in a car for an extended time will start speaking in character. Our last trip was in the pre-Napoleon era, so we had to improvise with SNL characters, and some of our own creations. (I think that most of our characters were either derived from local characters or the warped idea of adding WWE-style wrestling to the Olympic games to be included as our national cultural sport. That sport of course would include the pre-match smack talk to the camera in front of the blue screen segment.)

    Funny stuff. I can almost taste those nasty sandwiches now. :-)

    V-Word: PTBGI - a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich minus the jelly and including some other available ingredients. |  

  • At October 17, 2005 11:21 PM, Blogger Michael added:

    Goober is definitely a road tripper/hiker/camper's food of choice. And come to find out its one of the very few foods that will remain edible after sitting in the back seat of a Plymouth through a couple days worth of 120 degree Mojave heat. It’s a space age product all right. |  

  • At October 18, 2005 1:18 PM, Blogger Daniel added:

    I have never seen it in Canada. I hope I am not missing out.

    By the way, the Arrow's Paradox link is incorrect.

    Vword: uffojra - Norwegian for euphoria. |  

  • At October 19, 2005 12:33 PM, Blogger Bazooka-Joe added:

    Thanks Daniel. I've fixed it. For the most part, you're not missing much on the Goober front. Though it can come in handy in a pinch when traveling or camping or looking for particularly painful ways to kill someone slowly. |  

  • At October 20, 2005 5:30 PM, Blogger Daniel added:

    I purposely looked for it today at the grocery story - just in case it had been there and I missed it (my wife will be the first to tell you that I often miss things I am not looking for...)

    But nope - no goobers. The closest thing was a mixed hazelnut and vanilla spread - which I almost bought (don't go and do this when you are very very hungry!). |  

  • At October 28, 2005 5:14 AM, Blogger Daniel added:

    Don't get me wrong - I love this post to death... but ... it is time for a new one :-D |  

  • At October 28, 2005 2:35 PM, Blogger Bazooka-Joe added:

    Work, work, work. I'm crazy busy right now. I making a promise to myself to get to it early next week. But this weekend is swamped!

    Dan and I are going to the Petra Farewell concert tonight. Should be a hoot. |  

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