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I've already written about Recession Foods, but in doing research, I was led to a video that needs to be seen. Director Alexander Kao's "E.Z. Recession Meal" series on YouTube has blown my mind.

It's not that the foods are particularly odd. They actually look good, and are relatively cheap, quick and easy to prepare.

But it's the execution of the videos that we find disturbing, as if we shouldn't be watching.

Ingredients for an "E.Z. Recession Meal" video:

  • Unnecessarily long, grammatically poor introductory text
  • Clip art
  • Repeated Wal-Mart plugs
  • Very loud thrash-metal
  • Robotic narration
  • Awful audio
  • Snuff-film quality graininess
  • Eastern pop music during credit roll
Sprinkle in a little about real-time cooking (always crucial to a video no one will want to sit through) and -- voilà! -- you've got yourself an E.Z. Recession Meal masterpiece.

Episode #2: Beansprout With Bean Curd: