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Cheez-Its are the world's best snack food. It's been proven by science. You may have a different opinion about this, but your opinion is wrong.

Not those blasphemous alternate flavors, though, like ranch and barbecue. Please, don't insult the Cheez-Its legacy by even mentioning those in the same breath with real, original Cheez-Its. Those "improvements" are like hanging a velvet clown painting in the Taj Mahal, or sticking truck nutz onto the back of a Lamborghini. Perfection needs no enhancements, and Cheez-Its are perfection.

Like most deeply held beliefs, this conviction was bequeathed to me by my forefathers. My grampa wasa Cheez-Its fanatic. He liked nothing better on a lazy Sunday than to sit in his recliner, eat Cheez-Its, and watch golf. He always had an ENORMOUS box of Cheez-Its that seemed like it was half my size.

Since he lived next door to me, I was provided ample opportunities to invite myself over and partake of this bounty. My mom didn't really have snacks in the house (for either nutritional or economic reasons, I'm not sure), so Grampa's house was like an island of snacking anarchy. All I had to do was ask once, and I had carte blanche to dip into his Cheez-Its supply any time I wanted.

And if there was a family party at his house, which there often was, forget it. The Cheez-Its would just be out there in huge Tupperware bowls. I didn't even have to ask permission to gorge myself! It was an orgy of unnaturally orange indulgence.

I even dipped Cheez-Its in Coke once, just to see how they would taste. The verdict: slightly sweet and soggy. I could fill a book with the crimes against food I committed at these family get-togethers, once all the pretzels and chips and soda and dips were laid out. Don't judge me. It was an experimental era, a time of tumultuous change...

You know how awesome Cheez-Its are? They barely advertise. Once in a blue moon, you will see a commercial for Cheez-Its, or a page in a magazine. Why? They don't need to advertise. Why would you need to run a 30-second spot for HEAVEN ITSELF?!

That may be why the Cheez-It box has remained virtually unchanged all these years. The color scheme is the same, the font is the same, even the little Cheez-It mosaic in the background is the same. If ain't broke, don't fix it, and there's nothing broken about Cheez-Its.

One item has been altered since I was a kid, however. The back of the box used to have several delightful suggestions about how you could spice up an ordinary meal with Cheez-Its. Drop them in your tomato soup! Place them lovingly next to a sandwich, or maybe even put them in your sandwich!

But the most intriguing suggestion called for using Cheez-Its to bread chicken cutlets. They even showed a picture of a chicken cutlet, radioactive orange, with jagged peaks of ex-crackers protruding from its surface.

This seemed like a no-brainer to me. I loved chicken cutlets and I loved Cheez-Its. Deductive reasoning dictates that I would double-plus love Cheez-Its-covered chicken cutlets. Unfortunately, my mother was not keen on the idea, and lacking any cooking ability of my own, the experiment went unconsummated.

Then, last week, The Wife texted me at work to say we were having chicken cutlets for dinner. This is a common item in the Meal Rotation (mainly because we can cut them up and tell The Baby they're chicken nuggets), but for whatever reason, the mention of "cutlets" brought back Proustian memories of the back of the Cheez-Its box.

ME: OOOH! Can you make chicken cutlets with Cheez-Its, like you used to see on the back of the box?

WIFE: ....Why?

ME: Because I always wanted to try it.

WIFE: If you can find me a recipe, sure.

This inspired a wild google chase, trying to find said recipe. But the internets gave me nothing. Nothing! A lot of people apparently make fried chicken with Cheez-Its, but that's not what I was looking for. Fried chicken?! You people must be mad! Your quest is crazy and mine is not for many complicated reasons I can't get into just now!

So I emailed The Wife and told her to just forget this crazy scheme, but when I got home, she had actually done it! She'd made chicken cutlets with Cheez-Its breading, and there they sat, glowing on the kitchen countertop, finally ready to be eaten. It was a moment that, subconsciously, I'd been waiting for my entire life.

But when I took that first bite, I realized that this was a dream that was best left unfulfilled. The food wasn't bad, just weird. The Cheez-Its and the chicken did not mix. They were not united as one meal, but remained two separate food items. I tasted the Cheez-Its and the meat separately, as if they were two opposite charged magnets that could not touch one another.

And the Cheez-Its half of the equation didn't come through the cooking process too well. Some of the crust was soggy, other parts slightly charred. It reminded me of The Simpsons where Lisa attempts to make fish sticks. ("They're burnt on the outside, but still frozen on the inside, so it evens out!") Since my wife is normally an amazing cook, I knew the blame lay squarely on the ingredients. This was a union that was never meant to be.

I thanked The Wife for giving it a shot and promised I would never make her cook this again. She in turn thanked me for promising that.

The lesson here is that pursuing things you really wanted as a kid is kinda stupid and will inevitably lead to disappointment. Except for that palace of Cheez-Its I plan on building, because that will totally happen and make me happy forever and ever.

This morning, I purchased some coffee from one of Brooklyn's many breakfast carts. Upon first sip, the taste brought to mind bacon. Like, a lot.

Though I enjoy the (very) occasional strip of bacon on an egg sammich or a hamburger, I wouldn't call myself a bacon enthusiast. However, I know America is full of bacon enthusiasts, if levels of obesity and heart disease are any indication. And I also know America loves to smash one food into another food. Peanut butter into chocolate. Mustard into mayonnaise. Sausages into pancakes, onto sticks.

So for a brief moment, I thought to myself, "I'll start working on bacon-flavored coffee! It's two great tastes that go great together! The public will flip for it! I'll be a bazillionaire!"

Do I know the first thing about making coffee? Of course not. I think you broil the beans, and then shell them, or something, but that's the limit of my knowledge. No matter. The awesomeness of my idea would trump piddling details like my total lack of expertise.

But my dreams were quickly snuffed by Google. A search for "bacon coffee" yielded this result: a company called BocaJava that produces a flavored coffee called Maple Bacon Morning.

Reminiscent of a hearty Saturday morning breakfast around the table, this sweet, savory coffee delights the senses with the smell and taste of home! Maple Bacon Morning has a base that's full-bodied and complex, and it's a delicious way to rise when the rooster crows!

I should have known someone would beat me to the punch. Bacon-flavored coffee was too good an idea to go unexploited for so long. But at least it's a small gourmet coffee company doing it, and not McDonalds unveiling a new breakfast sandwich. "It's the new McSlammer! We took a McGriddle and squished it into a half-full cup of coffee!"

But I can still pursue a parallel idea: coffee-infused bacon! My plan is to inject slices of bacon with a freshly brewed Kona blend. So when you bite into a crunchy slab of bacon, it shoots a stream of java into your mouth. I'll just have to some market research to see if the human tongue can withstand coffee once it's been heated to bacon-frying temperatures.

"Fried pizza: one bite and you'll actually hear your arteries scream in horror!"

What's more amazing: the fact that fried pizza exists, or the fact that this pic was taken in Brooklyn and not the Jersey Shore? As Tom Scharpling once said, when you go to the Jersey Shore, they just assume whatever you want, you want it fried.

If you told someone from Naples that there was a place in America named after their city that sold deep-fried pizza, they'd probably beat you to death, just on general principle.

Who do we have to thank for deep fried pizza? The British, of course, the same people who brought you deep-fried Mars bars and deep-fried mac and cheese. Apparently deep-fried pizza is a popular chip shop snack over there. I know Masterpiece Theatre makes us think the English are all sophisticated and proper, but trust me, they have a junk culture over there that makes American pop garbage look like the Algonquin Round Table.

I'm not sure why a place that specializes in British junk food is in a Puerto Rican neighborhood. But the joint is in a prime location, right down the block from Woodhull Hospital. So you're within walking distance of the ER for the inevitable stomach pumping that will follow.

With The Big Game (c) (r) almost upon us, Scratchbomb welcomes Tram Woodreaux, host of the popular cooking show Off the Rails! on The Grub Network and owner of the popular Galveston restaurant The Whee!house.

First off, how do I pronounce your restaurant's name?

It's like "wheelhouse", but you make sure you add some extra zip on the first syllable. We like to do things a little nutty down at the Whee!house. We got this poster in the kitchen that says, "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!" That's a joke, of course. We don't hire actual crazy people. Not after what happened last time.

I'm sure you heard that there's a wing shortage right now. So say you can't get wings for your Super Bowl party. What's the next best thing?

I think you can't go wrong with a couple of Hostess Suzy-Q's, arranged on a sporty football shaped platter, and covered with Kraft Cheez-Whiz. I call 'em Touchdown Tortes!

Yuck. That sounds completely awful.

Oh, you gotta be kidding me! You should see how fast my Touchdown Tortes go at my parties! Almost as fast as my Cornerback Kickoff Nachos!

What's in those?

Three bags of Doritos brand tortilla chips, two cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, a sack of Nabisco Chips Ahoy, a big ol' soup ladle...

Please tell me you don't eat the soup ladle.

Of course not! You use the soup ladle to smash the ingredients together, mix 'em up, and pour out the mixture into ice cube trays. Stick toothpicks in the goop and two hours later, you've got little gooey nacho-sicles for everyone!

Todd Grunfeld, proprietor of Winger's, just emailed me because he's heard there's a possibility of a wing shortage. With less than a week before the Super Bowl, such a shortage could have some catastrophic results for the snacking public and America's growing ranks of mobility scooter owners.

Todd wanted me to assure my readers that all of his Winger's locations will be well-stocked with wings in plenty of time for the Big Game. He told me that he's ordered a special shipment of 17 truck containers of emergency wing rations at great expense from a chicken processing facility in rural Manitoba. Their safe arrival will be guaranteed by armed mercenaries on loan from Blackwater.

And I am only passing along this info because Todd promised me that if I did, he'd find some way to rid my site of that awful, awful ad.