The Skarfing Material Project

September 1985

2010-05-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Chester, VA, about 2 hours away from Virginia Beach. When I was a Thrasher-aged kid, I would occasionally get to go visit Mt. Trashmore, the giant skatepark built on a mountain of garbage. I could only imagine that is why this episode of Skarfing Material has Chef Boy-Am-I-Hungry in Virginia Beach. There's no other reason I could imagine wanting to go there (The last time I went, I got carjacked by a crackhead, for real).. and I can certainly see the police there not being too cool. If you want a good picture of the place he's talking about, dig out your copy of Future Primitive and watch the Trashmore segment. I'm glad I don't live in Virginia anymore.
CRAP SANDWICHES
They say that a turd with glitter sprinkled on it is still a turd, and I'm going to add that a smore with sunflower kernels sprinkled on it is still a smore. Call it a crap sandwich if you like, but it's juust a goddamned smore with peanut butter and sunflower kernels. What's the deal with the sunflower kernels, anyway? They added no flavor or texture to the dish. But yeah, it's just a smore.

ingredients for CRAP SANDWICHES

about to put the lids on..

READY 2 SKARF!

March 1986

2010-05-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a couple weeks since I updated. Truth be told, doing this project made me gain ten pounds. I've gone on a diet since then, and now I don't really get the opportunity to make as much Skarfing Material as I'd like. Don't worry, I'm still gonna finish this project, it just might take a while, I'm not racing against the clock like Julie did in the movie (I heard in real life she got REALLY fat and her husband left her), so I'm gonna just take it slow. It probably won't hurt to start up again with something a little healthier, like the
TORTELGAGGA-NAG-NAG with a zesty NO IF, AND, OR BUT SAUCE
Chef Boy-Am-I-Hungry really likes to give cool-sounding names to boring-tasting food. This wasn't even that boring, the sauce was pretty good, if a little watery. I used whole wheat tortellini because it's probably healthier, I guess. At the end of it all I had a very decent pasta dinner.

everything you need to make TORTELGAGGA-NAG-NAG with a zesty NO IF, AND, OR BUT SAUCE

and the completed dish

July 1986

2010-04-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

MEXICAN TUNA
It didn't really taste mexican at all, only a tablespoon of taco sauce kinda blended in to the rest of the salad and you couldn't even tell it was there. Overall, it was a pretty decent tuna salad. I tried it on my finger, on bread and on tortillas. I liked it on bread the best.

ingredients for MEXICAN TUNA

here it is in a bowl...

...and on a bit of finger

SCRATCHEDDAR NOSE-DRIP-DIP
I'm assuming that by "Cheddar-type cheese" they mean Velveeta. I sure hope so, cuz a pound of real cheese costs twice as much as two pounds of Velveeta. Anyway, I've made Velveeta-and-Rotel queso dip millions of times, but always in the microwave. Now I know why, melting it in the frying pan kinda cooked it into a solid cheese pancake. The garlic and lemon gave it a different kinda flavor than queso, but it worked pretty good with the french bread. It was extremely dense and filling, I only ate a few mouthfuls before it went in the fridge. As to whether or not I'll finish it, it looks doubtful.

How could you go wrong with these few simple ingredients?

oh, like this. Note the hole I made in the solid cheese pancake when I dipped the bread in it.

June 1987

2010-04-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

DEAD SKULL SURPRISE
Surprise! This was gross! I get the idea of what was supposed to happen, the butter and boullion were supposed to slowly cook and seep into the fibers of the onion to flavor it, not a bad idea in theory. The recipe of course never explicitly said how long to cook it. I let it sit in the oven for about an hour, and it was pretty tender when I pulled it out, but the buttery boullion hadn't really done its job, so I ended up with a pretty bland cooked onion with an INTENSE flavor explosion in the middle. so intense that it was inedible. I cut the whole thing up with a knife and fork and smeared it all around the plate, mixing the flavoring with the onion. After I did that, it wasn't too bad, just a kind of chicken-flavored onion. I would not eat this again.

supplies for DEAD SKULL SURPRISE

here's how it came out.

OREOS ALAMODE
I guess they don't make Oreos like they used to because I couldn't get them to separate and leave all the cream on one side, it was pretty equally split onto both sides for each one I tried (5 of them), but whatever. The cherry/coconut side tasted very much like a wedding cake. Not a birthday cake, but a slightly fancier, grown-upper wedding cake. It was okay. The peanut butter side was fucking excellent! The donut sprinkles were kind of just for show, as they didn't add to the flavor or texture at all, but overall these cookie things were pretty good.

let's make some OREOS ALAMODE

delicious!

February 1987

2010-04-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

That was a pretty cool apocalypse mad-max skate rider story. Did you ever see the movie A Boy And His Dog? It's from the late 70's, a post-apocalyptic story about a dude (pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson, to be exact) who scavenges the nuclear winter wasteland, looking for food. The movie has an INCREDIBLE twist ending that will totally blow your mind.

The NITRO EGG did not blow my mind. Like always, the instructions weren't very specific so I ended up putting way too many vegetables in it. It was supposed to fold over like an omlette but there wasn't enough egg to keep it together so it just became this big lumpy gross mess. However, it tasted great. Any time you mix chili, cheese and eggs, it's gonna be good, no matter what. This certainly wasn't the worst material I've ever skarfed.

ingredients for NITRO EGG

here's how it came out.

January 1986

2010-04-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

Read that story and imagine that it's actually referring to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson when the rock is mentioned. It gives the story a whole new meaning.

ROCKLESS OMELETTE
This was actually a good recipe. I was pretty proud of myself for actually making the omelette correctly and even flipping it without fucking it up too bad. I really liked the cottage cheese, It worked with the egg to give it a creamy goopiness, and I was worried the raw onions were gonna be too strong but they actually softened up pretty well. If I had ordered this at a restaurant, I wouldn't send it back. I wouldn't tip very well, either.

ingredients for ROCKLESS OMELETTE

and the finished product.

December 1986

2010-04-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

I listened to both Tammy Wynette and The Ramones while cooking these.

BUCKY'S WEENIES
This hardly counts as a "recipe", it's just cut up hot dogs with some sauce dumped on them. However, I've been to Tulsa, OK and I can understand how someone there might consider this to be good. What else are you gonna do with Lost Lake beer besides pour it on hot dogs?

ingredients for BUCKY'S WEENIES

adding a little Pabst while they cook...

the finished product.

BROWN BLOOD SLAMCAKES
I dunno if you read those ingredients right, but it calls for a HALF A POUND of M&Ms. That is a lot of M&Ms. This recipe made 5 pancakes, all with WAY too much chocolate in them. I put chocolate syrup on them be cause I am, indeed, that kind of person. It was just too much chocolate, I couldn't even finish two of them. This was a nightmare to clean up.

this is all you need for BROWN BLOOD SLAMCAKES

a chocolate holocaust.

TORTUNA
I'm guessing that Chef Boy-Am-I-Hungry is a few years older than me, and therefore was probably a little too old to get down on Return of the Jedi, for had he been a fan, he would've most certainly called ths recipe Bib Tortuna (at least he should have) but anyway, I wouldn't really consider this to be an actual "recipe", but I went ahead and made it anyway. This is just tuna salad in a flour tortilla, something every stoned kid has come up with on their own since probably 1975. It works, it's not bad. They probably sell this at McDonalds as a "fresh wrap sandwich" or some shit.

ingredients for TORTUNA

tuna salad

a "ready-to-eat" TORTUNA.

December 1985

2010-04-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

I definitely remember hearing about the Achille Lauro on the news when it happened, although I was 11 years old and didn't really understand what was going on. Quick history lesson, the Achille Lauro was an Italian cruise ship that got hijacked by Palestinians. They killed an American passenger and demanded to be taken to Syria. After a bunch of negotiating, the Egyptian government managed to get all the Palestinians on a plane to fly them to Tunisia and deal with them, but ol' Ronnie Reagan wouldn't let them get away. He ordered US troops to intercept the plane and forced it to land in Sicily at a NATO airstrip. The Italians were pissed, the Egyptians were pissed, and America ended up having to apologize. It's kinda reassuring to read this twenty-five years later and realize that the president has always been an asshole and other countries have always hated us. The one time I went to Italy, it wasn't too long after 9-11 and everyone in Europe hated americans because George Bush was such an asshole. I totally know how Chef Boy-Am-I-Hungry felt.
Anyway, with that in mind, here's some shitty food...

MUFFLER BEARINGS
This wasn't too bad, it was pretty much an omelette with WAY too much shit in it. Maybe I used too many veggies and not enough eggs. These recipies are pretty unspecific sometimes, so I'm sure if you tried to make this at home it would come out totally different from mine.

MUFFLER BEARINGS going into the kitchen...

...and coming out.

HUB CAP GASKET
Oh man, this was actually really good! By far the best recipe I've made so far, it's a variation on the sandwich that killed Elvis. I used homemade wheat bread (my girlfriend made it, not me) and jalapeno-jack cheese; chunky peanut butter and strawberry jam. I had to eat it with a fork, it was rich like a cheesecake, with melted cheese/jam mush that gave it a cheese danish kinda feel. This would be a killer dessert, especially if you used a sweeter cheese and maybe sprinkled some powdered sugar on it. Chef Boy-Am-I-Hungry did alright this time.

ingredients for the HUB CAP GASKET

...and the finished product

finally, the PISTON RETURN SPRINGS. We're on a roll, these little guys were really tasty! Basically they're just little taquitos (I think in California they call 'em "rolled tacos"), I was expecting them to be bland because Chef Boy-Am-I-Hungry apparantly has a grudge against spices of any kind (hey dude, ever heard of this stuff called "salt"?) but they actually came together really well, the melted cheese with the tortillas, and the veggies really just added texture and a bit of moisture to tie it all together. I can just picture Lance Mountain cooking up a mess of these for the rest of the Bones Brigade at his backyard ramp jam.

stuff to make PISTON RETURN SPRINGS

ready to eat!

April 1986

2010-04-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

It's a short column this week with only one recipe...
The PINHEAD ABSTRUSE CASSEROLE actually wasn't too bad. It was pretty bland, as the recipe never mentioned anything about any seasoning of any kind. I put a little Sriracha on it and it was palatable. The veggies cooked up nice, except for the bell pepper which remained hard and crunchy. In the context of eating eggs and rice, the bites of bell pepper looked and felt like sweet corn, which was weird. I bet actual corn would've been better. It wasn't terrible, I wasn't hungry anymore after I ate it.
I'm debating whether or not to write to the address with a check for $9.65 for the T-Shirt. There's no expiration date listed, you think they still have any left, twenty-four years after the fact?

Ingredients for PINHEAD ABSTRUSE CASSEROLE

out of the oven...

...and into my mouth

November 1987

2010-03-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

Since this was the first issue of Skarfing Material that I remember actually making when I was a kid, I felt it was only fitting to start this project with these recipes. They were every bit as horrible as I remembered.

First up was the BLOOD AND GORE DIP, which was pretty simple and actually rather tasty. It's just cream cheese and picante sauce, so you can't really go wrong. I mashed it up "real good" with a fork, but it was still kinda lumpy and there were big chunks of cream cheese. Still, it was definitely the most palatable of these three recipes.

The ingredients for BLOOD AND GORE DIP

...and the final result

Next I made SPUDS MACSKATER. First attempt was a failure, as the instructions didn't clearly say to bake the potato first. I got another potato and baked it for almost two hours before I commenced with the recipe. Cutting a "hot dog shaped hole" in the potato proved to be tougher than I thought, and the potato broke in two. I did the best I could to hollow it out and put it back together, then let the Bud Light soak in. After the 20 minute cooking time, I was left with a pretty bland baked potato with a hot dog and some gross runny yellow liquid that tasted like neither cheese nor beer. The recipe never said what to do with the hot sauce, so I added it at the end. It didn't help much.

Ingredients for SPUDS MACSKATER

...and the end result

Finally, it was time for OLLIE EGGS. The recipe calls for "hickory sauce". I have no fucking clue what hickory sauce is, and neither does Google. I finally settled on KC Masterpiece Hickory and Brown Sugar BBQ sauce, mainly because it was the only thing in the store that had both the words "hickory" and "sauce" on the label. I followed the too-simple directions and ended up with a lumpy yellow slop that had the consistency of oatmeal. The brown sugar in the BBQ sauce really threw everything off, giving the Cheez-Whizzy eggs a sickly sweet, almost vomitous flavor. I was able to choke down a few bites before I gave it to my dog, and even he ate it with reluctance.

Ingredients for OLLIE EGGS

...and the end result

Peeber "enjoying" some OLLIE EGGS

Let's do this!!!

2010-03-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm pretty sure this will be the only blog in the whole world that takes equal parts inspiration from Thrasher Magazine issues of the mid-80's, and that horrible Julie and Julia movie. The idea is simple, if you were a fan of Thrasher in the 80's, you undoubtedly came across the Skarfing Material column, which usually was one page long with a weird story or something, followed by "skater food" recipes, which were always really disgusting. The column was written by "Chef Boy-Am-I-Hungry", which I believe was a pseudonym for Mofo, the guy that did a lot of the work on the mag in those days.
I work in a video store, and when the movie Julie and Julia came out, I watched it, because that's what I do at the video store, watch shitty movies. Around that same time, I found a couple of old issues of Thrasher in a box of junk, I flipped though, remembered Skarfing Material, and it all hit me...

I'm going to make every Skarfing Material recipe, and write a blog about it.

Let's do this.