A Diamond Ain't Never Been Rougher: Feel Good Foods Mac & Cheese Bites with Shaun and Kristen (Ep 75)

-
Seventy-five episodes deep, and this one earns every bit of the title. A brand-new kitten in the cables. A gong-loud tissue box. Bites…no, balls…no bites. This week's recording had it all—including, eventually, Feel Good Foods Mac & Cheese Bites. Or is it balls after all?

The story: Vanessa Phillips founded Feel Good Foods in Brooklyn after her celiac diagnosis, determined to bring back the comfort foods she missed. She built the company with her husband, chef Tryg Siverson, into a full gluten-free frozen lineup—and this isn't the Bros' first trip to the Feel Good freezer.

Plus: a Wisconsin baseball team goes full pizza. The Iceman Cometh in Chicago—well, sort of. Summer cocktail recipes. A gluten-free bagel complaint with a happy ending. Cheesecake Factory 1390, and just how old mac and cheese really is.

In the closing segment: a brand-new game debuts, and it does not go smooth as ice. Swallowed cubes, muted mics, and a whole lot of not guessing "jeans."

WATCH THIS EPISODE

FROST BITES

Bites, Balls, and Broken Links. We're not the only ones who can't settle this. Try to visit Feel Good Foods' own "Mac & Cheese Bites" product page and (as of this posting) you'll land on a listing that says "no products were found matching your selection," so the bites page is effectively dead. Go looking for the product itself and the working link redirects you straight to a URL that still says "mac-cheese-balls." So the company that renamed the product apparently never got around to renaming the page. We’ll continue to follow this ball-breaking story.

Cascabel, Batman Smells. The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers have worn a lot of hats over the years, and one of the more clever ones is retired now: Los Cascabeles, a Copa de la Diversión (Hispanic Heritage) identity. “Cascabel" is Spanish for a rattlesnake's rattle, but it's also the standard Spanish-language title for Jingle Bells. The name was retired in 2025 and replaced by Los Granjeros (The Farmers), which leans into the dairy angle instead. Wisconsin: never short on frozen puns, not even at the ballpark.

Last Call at Harry Hope's. The Goodman Theater’s Iceboy! musical takes real liberties with how Eugene O'Neill actually came to write The Iceman Cometh, but the seedy bar at the center of the real play wasn't invented out of thin air. O'Neill based Harry Hope's saloon on a real Greenwich Village dive called the Golden Swan, nicknamed "the Hell Hole" by its regulars, where O'Neill drank through the winter of 1915–16. The bar was torn down in 1928 for subway construction. Today the spot is a small park called Golden Swan Garden.

America's First Bite of Mac and Cheese. Thomas Jefferson gets the credit in many casual retellings, but the dish's real American ambassador was James Hemings, the enslaved chef Jefferson brought to Paris to train in French cuisine. Hemings is widely credited with bringing macaroni and cheese back to America and helping popularize it at Jefferson's table, including a documented 1802 White House dinner. And, by the way, that “macaroni” in Yankee Doodle’s cap? That was 18th-century slang for fashionably flashy and over-the-top!

The Diamond Standard. Seventy-five is the traditional Diamond Anniversary (at least according to Hallmark), which means we just crossed a major milestone. There’s a great ice connection buried in that celebration too: "ice" has been slang for diamonds since at least the 1980s, thanks to the way a diamond's clarity and sparkle echo the real thing. Looks like we’re officially kicking off our diamond era!

 
YOUR COLD CUTS


Bites or balls? What would you call them? And what's your go-to sauce for a fried mac and cheese anything?

Would you make the trip to Wisconsin for one night to see the Frozen Pizzas? We might.

Hit us up on the Let's Chill page and let us know!

Hit us up on the Let's Chill page and let us know!

ENJOYING THE POD?

BUY US A COLD ONE

Your support means the world to us and keeps our freezer stocked. Every tip and donation helps us discover more frozen finds, cover production costs and improvements, and continue bringing you weekly episodes. Thank you for being part of Froze Nation!

And if you like us, RATE US WHERE YOU LISTEN—and TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

Fro yo' later!

Popular posts from this blog

Deep in the Heart of Glasgow: Deep Indian Kitchen Chicken Tikka Masala (Ep 62)

-
Image
We’ve been thinking about this one for almost a year. (Thinking’s hard, bro.) This week, Darren and Max finally review Deep Indian Kitchen Chicken Tikka Masala —roasted white chicken, creamy sauce, cumin basmati rice—and it was worth the wait. Before they dig into their meal, they dig into the history: a dish whose origins are genuinely up for grabs. Did chicken tikka masala begin on a stormy night in Glasgow when a Pakistani chef poured a can of tomato soup over a bus driver's dry chicken? Or is that story all wet? Whatever the history, a New Jersey family founded Deep Foods in 1977 when a mom started making Indian snacks in her home and selling them to neighbors. The company was named for son Deepak, and deep means lamp and enlightenment in Hindi. Almost 50 years later, every purchase benefits a foundation supporting over 35,000 children in rural India. Plus: The recalls keep coming. A listener has a frozen waffle emergency with a relationship hanging in the balance. The People...
Read more

Fool Me Once, Feed Me Twice: Tina’s vs. El Monterey Beef & Bean Burritos (Ep 60)

-
Image
The Bros are back—and we've got burritos. April Fools, Froze Fam! The fake breakup is officially cancelled, the freezer aisle is open for business again, and we have some words about what just happened. This week's face-off pits two of the cheapest frozen burritos against each other: Tina's Beef & Bean vs. El Monterey Beef & Bean . One of these brands claims to be America's number one selling frozen burrito. So does the other one. Somebody's lying—or maybe nobody is. Either way, we dig into the histories: a family that fled the Mexican Revolution and built an empire on Grandma Rosie's recipes, a mysterious company called Camino Real Foods that invented a mascot who doesn't exist, and a brief but unavoidable detour into why you may have heard the name "Tina" in a completely different context. In the closing segment, Darren unveils Stick Figuring—a game where Max tries to identify famous moments in frozen food and Froze Bros history from Da...
Read more

Dane Good Balls: Feel Good Foods Gluten-Free Buttermilk Pancake Balls with Shaun and Kristen (Ep 61)

-
Image
We’ve got a full table this week. Returning guest Shaun brings along Kristen as the show's official Gluten-Free Correspondent, and the team reviews Feel Good Foods Buttermilk Pancake Balls —certified gluten-free, Danish-style, dippable, and poppable. We get into the company's origin story, the surprisingly deep history of the pancake ball, and whether the Danish really deserve credit for this. What exactly is an æbleskiver? And did Vikings seriously cook them in their dented shields? In the news: the Ajinomoto/Trader Joe's glass recall keeps growing. The source has been identified, and sufferin' succotash it's the carrots! Also: a Norwegian man once brought his grandfather's frozen body to Colorado. "Tuff shed," you say? Well, the town threw a festival about it. Plus: the gluten-free tax is real, the sog factor is realer, a serving size of two balls is a joke, Shaun brings a brand new game called Tip of the Iceberg, and that's just the—well, that...
Read more