Funny Food Cookbook: Just Imagine the Election Year Breakfast Table Fun

Sure, the intended audience for Funny Food: 365 Fun, Healthy, Silly, Creative Breakfasts, to be released later this month, is a few decades younger than we are. But hey, we could all use a little more food fun in these days of infinite online cassoulet critics, no? And it is pretty funny how those two fried eggs sporting a crazy kale toupee and that topless sunbathing strawberry lounging in a pool of steel-cut oatmeal look an awful lot like your (lovely) new neighbors.

Breakfast Fun; Credit: Welcome Books

There are a handful of trains, farm animals and other breakfast creations directed at the elementary school oatmeal crowd, but the focus is primarily anthropomorphic — the fun part, at least for those of us still pining for daily office recess hours. If you've ever wasted ungodly airport layover hours staring at people passing through the airport, you know what we mean. The human face is fantastically ripe with fascinating dill hair plug and gigantic dried apricot ear potential.

But what we love is this is truly a cookbook, not just a sensationalized photo gallery as similar books tend to be. Which is not to say the photos aren't great. Authors Bill and Claire Wurtzel — photographers, really, as the book is almost entirely a collage of Bill's photos, with a few simple cooking tips in between — have a creative eye for that (edible) Mr. Potato Head effect.

The idea behind dressing up Mona Lisa in plums and Shakespeare reinvented as a red delicious apple stemmed from the couple's desire to get their daughters to eat healthy foods, which in turn became Funny Food workshops to encourage other schoolkids to eat healthier food. And so the facial backdrop for each is a healthy breakfast choice like a bowl of oatmeal, two sunny-side-up eggs or a plate with dollops of yogurt.

Sides like turkey bacon, fresh fruits and veggies are the accents to give your morning yogurt a Michelle Obama-inspired red bell pepper tank dress. Or sure, if you prefer, a lemon rind “swoosh” in honor of Callista Gingrich's bob. Because we all want to start our sunny day off with a hearty serving of hairspray and politics, don't we?

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