Why America Could Never Have Universal Health Care (or: That's FOOD?!)

O.
M.
G.

I just ran into, via Serious Eats, Paula Deen's recipe for - get this - fudge made using Velveeta.

It involves, well, Velveeta.
And confectioner's sugar and butter and cocoa powder; formed into balls, placed on sticks;
And dipped in caramel;
And dipped in white chocolate;
And rolled in nuts.

(Here is a link to a demonstration on the Ellen show - but I warn you, do not try this at home.)

Velveeta? What!?

As the Serious Eats blog says, she's trying to kill us all.

If that isn't enough, check out her recipes for fried mac and cheese wrapped in bacon, as well as - are you sitting down? - deep-fried butter.

Or perhaps you would prefer - as she moves from desecration to merely personal insult - her banana split brownie pizza?

Now, true, she specialises in Southern home cooking, and a number of her other recipes look like interesting versions of traditional favourites. (And I enjoy well-done Southern and Soul food it must be said.) But several of the recipes, especially those mentioned, just look like over-the-top creations fuelled by a Rococo too-much-is-never-enough aesthetic, like if Liberace had a bigger appetite and a less discerning palate. I nearly had congestive heart failure just reading the deep-fried butter recipe. Makes me want to eat nothing but consommé for a week.

All of which raises the interesting question: is it possible any longer to parody the U.S.?