“What if we wrap the pancake AROUND the sausage!?”: The Fine Art of Food Convergence

con·ver·gence When media devices with multiple functions are combined in order to form one device with all functions.

You know, like the iPhone.

But convergence is no longer confined to the realm of hip gadget geekery! No, it’s coming to a supermarket near you, as I learned today while on a trip for groceries.

I give you, sausage inside of a pancake:

And look, they put it on a stick for added convenience!

Kidding aside, this is one of the more disgusting items that the junk food business has managed to invent. I mean, who the hell would eat this?

“I want to enjoy a tasty breakfast before leaving home for my place of work and/or enrolled education, however, I have neither the time nor patience to sit down and consume the traditional morning time meal or pancakes and sausage links. I know! I’ll break out my Jimmy Dean Pancake & Sausage on a Stick™! Not only does its handy presentation fit my on-the-go lifestyle, but I’m able to push more food into my mouth at once! If only they could find some way to eliminate the problem of having to breath between bites!”

And this isn’t the only example of food convergence.

The KFC Famous Bowl, the target of much ridicule and scorn from my cousin and I since it was introduced:

The Famous Bowl is described by KFC in the following manner:

We start with a generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes, layered with sweet corn and loaded with bite-sized pieces of crispy chicken. Then we drizzle it all with our signature home-style gravy and top it off with a shredded three-cheese blend. It’s all your favorite flavors coming together.

The inherent horribleness of the actual concept is only underscored by The Famous Bowl’s quite infamous reality. Here’s what they actually look like (WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PHOTOGRAPHS MAY BE CONSIDERED DISTURBING BY ANY READERS WHO INTEND TO EAT ANYTHING EVER AGAIN.):

Yeah.

If I’d not been told that these were “KFC Famous Bowls”, I would’ve merely assumed that a morbidly obese man had eaten a full KFC meal, vomited it back into a bowl, and posted it on the internet for others’ entertainment.

Which is about how I imagine it to taste. I refuse to allow The Famous Bowl to come within twenty yards of my mouth and have considered filing a restraining order against it just to be sure, but others are braver than I. Like Patton Oswalt.

The hilarious comedian has been doing a bit about it for a while:

There is no more apt description of a Famous Bowl than “a failure pile in a sadness bowl”, but it turns out that he’d never actually tried one. The A.V. Club convinced poor Patton to try one and the results were what one would expect:

The Famous Bowl hit my mouth like warm soda, slouched down my throat, and splayed itself across my stomach like a sun-stroked wino. It was that precise combination of things, and so many other sensations that did not go together. At all.

The gravy, which I remembered as being tangy and delicious in my youth, tasted like the idea of blandness, but burned and then salted to cover the horrid taste. The mashed potatoes defiantly stood their ground against the gravy, as if they’d read The Artist’s Way and said, “I’m going to be boring and forgetful in my own potato-y way!” The corn tasted like it had been dunked in fake-corn-flavored ointment, and the popcorn chicken, breaded to the point of parody, was like chewing a cotton sleeve that someone had used to wipe chicken grease off their chin.

The cheese had congealed. Even in the heat and steam of the covered Famous Bowl, it had congealed. I stabbed it with the tines of my spork and it all came up in one piece. I nibbled an edge, had a vision of a crying Dutch farmer, and put it down.

What has America come to? There is no greater sign of the decline of Western Civilization than the indefensibly stupid notion that piling multiple food items into a bowl and shoveling them into your mouth is a good idea.

It’s great to know that we can count on the food industry to create new and inventive ways to make Americans look like disgusting idiots.

God bless America!

- Sean, almost as Famous as The Famous Bowl, but covered in far less gravy.

May 08