Chef Boyardee

That Chef Boyardee is a great guy. Not like that chef I once worked for who called me Jewboy and when I was late for work would yell out to me in the kitchen, "I get up early like a good German officer. What's wrong with you, Jewboy?" Last I heard he was serving up slop in a casino buffet line somewhere in Sudbury and pleasuring himself on the sneeze guards while refilling the salad bar. Chef Boyardee would never say anything like that even though in his early days in Italy he may have cooked for Mussolini a few times. But you can't hold that against him since those were probably tough times and to say no to Il Duce, like for example, "I'm sorry Il Duce but I cannot possibly cook for you any spaghetti and meatballs today after what you did in Albania," would certainly get you a fry pan across the face. A chef had to be more careful in those days but through sheer perseverance Chef Boyardee mastered the pasta arts and with a twinkle in his eye and sauce encrusted in his mustache he landed on North American shores ready to make his mark. In a strange twist of fate after setting up his spaghetti factory in Cleveland he was called upon to produce canned rations of his famous meatballs, pasta and sauce for American servicemen fighting Hitler's armies overseas and winning him the affectionate nickname, "Chef-Boy-Have-I-Ever-Got-Diarrhea." But it wasn't only diarrhea that his good food provided. It was also said to give both strength, nutrition and endurance to all who consumed it in the great nations of the Americas including the Arctic Circle where it soon outweighed seal meat as the staple food of Sunday brunch and Wednesday Seal Taco Night. And to this day as people sit on toilets everywhere humming the Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee theme (see second video below) and pooping nutritious ravioli debris we have one man to thank. Even in his old age, his palsied hand barely able to lay the dollops of savory reconstituted meat into the little ravioli dough wrappings, it never stopped him from bringing joy to people's stomachs everywhere and with his innovative Beefaroni creation his pantheon of pasta was complete. You can do more than just whistle Dixie with those Beefaroni noodles. They can also be used as breathing tubes in case you need to hide underwater in a pond while being chased by Nazis, something Chef Boyardee knew only too well. Where is the Chef these days? Well, unfortunately he's dead and turned to just so much Beefaroni beneath the earth but his legacy lives on, not just on can labels but in the form of his son, Chef Boyardee III who, although living in a trailer park and with numerous restraining orders against him, has finally lost the house arrest ankle bracelet and is currently experimenting with some delicious methamphetamine meatball recipes that are sure to be a hit with both kids and adults alike. Because as those in the Chef Boyardee family know, you can only rest on your laurels for so long before the food world passes you by if you don't keep up with the times. A mustache and a twinkle in your eye will only get you so far and if you're unable to grow a mustache and your twinkling eye is bloodshot or, worse, yet, been whapped with a baseball bat in a biker bar and people can't see the twinkle around the bruising and swollen skin tissue then innovation is the key, something the Chef ingrained in his progeny except for his daughter, Ludmilla who turned her back on the Boyardee name and instead opened a salamander breeding business that went belly-up when the salamander craze died out. But as the great Chef used to say, "Molto bella funghi il mio amico, molto bella funghi." Boy, he was such a great and funny guy and you couldn't pull the fungus over his eyes.