Geezus... The Virgin Mary ... and the Holy Toast
Finally Tonight, Jesus...
Under the Impression
Amid the many gifts and trinkets sent to me, by the friends and family who know my love for the nostalgic and the terminally hip retro... I received that one gift. Simple, yet with that nibbling humor. You know THAT humor... squirmy, yet too damn funny, but still flavored with that uncomfortable "so wrong" feeling? A gift that has it's teeth and roots cutting into a nerve that is known as the holy apparition found in food. A phenomenon that has seen the holiest of the holy of recent appear in images on food... usually of the dough and pastry variety.
Made by a company simply call "Fred," I have the power to preform the miracle of creating HOLY TOAST, not to mention other off-shoots like the Glorious Grilled Cheese, the Pious Pizza, and the Righteous Tortilla... just to name a few ideas that are racing through sacrilegious, foodie mind. Any product whose tag-line is, "In the beginning...there was bread. Ho hum. Make that boring bread an inspiration by embossing it before you toast!" and,"Our easy-to-use HOLY TOAST stamper always makes a good impression." Deserves my devotion to create gastric delights worthy of the temple that is the human body.
Besides breakfast being the most important meal of the day... what else could have been the inspiration for Virgin Mary toast or Jesus grilled cheeses? Do you remember the "PopeTart?" or the $28,000, 10 year old toasted cheese sandwich that had the image of the Virgin Mary (which was purchased by the almighty on-line casino, from the religious artifact auction site known as eBay?)
Just like my HOLY TOAST maker, some religious images on food have been purposely created as part of a scam, to fraud some religious believer who will camp-out in front of our house hoping to witness some kind of miracle, or at least a psycho-sematic, crowd hysteria healing due to the power of the divine pastry. One of the best "hoak'ems" claimed later to be an artistic statement after an investigation into the holy food phenomenon was the famous toaster pastry of John Paul II aka the "Pope Tart." The "Pope Tart" was a hoax apparition created by Karen Stollznow in 2005 as part of an iinvestigation for the magazine "The Skeptic" in Australia
Most famously, was in 2004 when the decade-old toasted cheese sandwich said to have the blessed image of the Virgin Mary was sold on the famous auction website for $28,000. The winning bidder was an Internet casino, which proudly confirmed it had purchased the sandwich, claiming it had become a "part of pop culture". The online gaming site claimed it would take the sandwich on world tour before selling it and donating the money to charity.
The original owner of the miracle sandwich,Diane Duyser, from where else but the Mecca of oddities...Florida, said that the sandwich had never gone moldy... that in itself could be considered divine intervention... come on the sandwich was made in 1994, and still stayed mold-free! Know that's a testimony... from Zip-Loc baggies.
Just in case you were wondering... by the close of the sandwich auction, the sale had received over 1.7 million hits on the auction site.
Another incident that received a lot publicity was in 1996, known as the "Nun Bun." The face of Mother Teresa was claimed to have been on cinnamon bun at a coffee house in Nashville, Tennessee. Needless to say the coffee house jumped quickly on the marketing wagon by selling T-shirts and mugs.
Rumor has it that on Christmas Day 2005 the bun was stolen during a break-in at the coffee house.
Other divine food images regularly reported is of Jesus Christ. Apparently Jesus prefers to appear on Cheetos, Tortillas, and Pancakes.
Again, some of these items have been offered for sale on Internet auction sites, because I believe that some people are confused between the words PROFIT and PROPHET.... but at least I know what I'm making for lunch. A Virgin Mary pattiemelt seems to be in order.
