David Lynch celebrated his 20th birthday by dropping a delightfully bizarre new short film on Netflix called WHAT DID JACK DO? The 17-minute-long murder mystery, which originally premiered at the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris in November 2017, stars Lynch as a grizzled detective interrogating a capuchin monkey named Jack.

It's weird, and wonderful, and totally worth watching. After all, it's only a 17-minute investment.

But the black-and-white footage and incongruous tonality of hard-boiled grit and strange comedic circumstances also reminded me of one of my favorite Lynchian gems: this 20-minute video of Lynch cooking quinoa.

That's it. That's the whole movie. A surreal, moody, atmospheric cooking show for something as simple as quinoa, in a way that only David Lynch could do.

WHAT DID JACK DO? [David Lynch / Netflix]

Thumbnail Image via JVoves/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) Read the rest

Boris Karloff and Vincent Price are perhaps the two most well-known horror movie actors in history. But that's not all they had in common—they were, apparently, both fans of homemade guacamole.

Karloff's recipe was originally published in a newspaper (I couldn't track the original source, but the earliest date the image appears online is from November 2013). I personally prefer a squeeze of lime, rather than lemon juice, in my guacamole, but otherwise this is pretty straight-forward—except for that little touch of sherry. I've never tried that myself, but I bet it's worth a shot.

(The newspaper article also refers to this as a "sauce," which is…not how I tend to think of my guac?)

• 2 avocados • 1 med. tomato, chopped fine • 1 small onion, minced • 1 tbsp. chopped canned green chiles • 1 tbsp. lemon juice • 1 tsp sherry • Dash cayenne, optional • Salt, pepper

Peel and mash avocados. Add onion, tomato and chiles, then stir in lemon juice, sherry and seasonings to taste, blending well. Serve as a dip for tortilla pieces or corn chips or as a canape spread. Makes 10 to 12 appetizer servings.Peel and mash avocados. Add onion, tomato and chiles, then stir in lemon juice, sherry and seasonings to taste, blending well. Serve as a dip for tortilla pieces or corn chips or as a canape spread. Makes 10 to 12 appetizer servings.

It was much easier to trace the source for Vincent Price's recipe, which was published in a cookbook that he and his wife put out in 1965. Read the rest

Merlin and Rebecca have a recipe for making Potted Potatoes in Edible Dirt. Everything in the flowerpot is edible. Next, they should make an edible flowerpot to go along with it.

It's a little odd to look at items in a market and gauge how much they look like dirt, but that's just what we did. Pumpernickel bread and dried chanterelles were obvious winners. Roasted pumpkin seeds were added in for flavor, a punctuation of salt and fat. The bits of mushroom provided that dirty, earthy taste all soil should have (right?) and, visually, it reminded us of crumbled dry leaves settling into the earth before the winter frost. Food dirt shouldn't just be edible, but also enjoyable.