Flickr/TBoard

Peeps

For many people, Easter means church services, maybe watching Judy Garland and Fred Astaire circa 1948 in Easter Parade, Sunday brunch, decorating eggs and orchestrating an egg hunt in the backyard. For others, the holiday is synonymous with those neon yellow duck-shaped marshmallows called Peeps.

Peeps, which were reportedly invented in the 1950s by a Russian immigrant candy-maker, are addictive little things -- and not because they taste good. They do not. People obsess over them because they come in many bright colors, and more importantly, they blow up when you put them in a microwave. Of course so do normal marshmallows, but what fun is that.

So, on the occasion of Easter Sunday, which is this weekend, we thought we'd assemble 10 of the best Peeps YouTube videos we could find. Because not only is blowing up little yellow ducks fun, but making videos of it is apparently pretty hilarious too. There are, unsurprisingly, many microwaves in these videos, but some creative stuff too. South Park. Australian rules football. The Birds. Turn the page.

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Flickr user veganfeast/

The way to a music video audience's heart, it seems, is through its stomach -- or at least that's the route these videos take, with varying degrees of deliciousness.

From rank amateurs trying to grab a little YouTube stardom to established rock stars, food is a good way to establish a connection with an audience, because we've all got to eat. And if your audience loves peanut butter and jelly, chances are decent they'll like a song about peanut butter and jelly too. Perhaps that's why most of the songs on this list celebrate everyday foods -- waffles, chicken, fast food drive-thrus.

Conversely, there aren't that many musical odes to uppity or obscure foods -- songs about items like truffle oil, pig knuckles, or foie gras seem few and far between -- but that last one could potentially inspire some passionate serenades or angry protest songs. Until goose liver becomes a rich musical genre, however, there's plenty of meat-and-potatoes music to enjoy. Turn the page.

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Inside My Kitchen

Balsamic Fig and Mascarpone

In a world where attention spans are rapidly decreasing, it's tough to stay afloat unless you have a catchy storyline, good characters and, preferably, scrumptious photography. Inside My Kitchen, a YouTube-funded web series, is doing all of that.

Launched in Sept. 2012, the Los Angeles-based production gets behind the scenes at a local restaurant each week and pushes out four to five shorts profiling the eatery. Episodes literally go inside the kitchen of local staples like 800 Degrees, Delphine, Yamashiro and -- most recently -- Coolhaus. In each feature, the restaurant chef shares the tricks, tools and recipes that makes his or her particular restaurant stand out from the crowd.

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screenshot from Kamikaze Kitchen

Eddie Lin + sign

One of our new favorite web series these days is Kamikaze Kitchen, a collaboration between Good Food and sometimes L.A. Weekly contributor Eddie Lin (DeepEndDining) and Trippy Food blog author Valentino Herrera. The comedic duo just dropped their first episode on YouTube back in September and have plans to release several more episodes in the near future.

The point of the show invovles challenging L.A. chefs to "get real weird" -- to borrow a phrase from Workaholics -- with an unusual mystery ingredient. Thus Lin and Herrera drop in on chefs at their restaurants, give them a brown bag with the secret (and very strange) protein, watch the chefs cook with it, then sample the results.

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LOUD Channel via YouTube

Four rounds of K-Town partying

Coverage of the delicious side of Koreatown has expanded past the well-tread over the years. We've learned about chic naengmyon (kudzu noodles in chilled beef broth) and gamjatang (pork neck soup). If we want Korean-style barbecue, we can distinguish places by cuts of meat and quality of banchan.

Even as our Korean food vocabulary has sharpened, the grammar that helps us form dishes into meals and rituals is still a work in progress. Enter the reality YouTube show K-Town, an unexpected source for a basic -- if not rough -- tutorial on one aspect of Koreatown dining.

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screenshot from Mixologist video

Fog and Smog, the video production company that gave you "Whole Foods Parking Lot" and other cool-eyed glimpses of California's cultural posturings, has just released "Mixologist," a send-up of the L.A. bar scene. Filmed in what might be the home office for that scene, La Descarga, the video goofs on all of the things that make the cocktail scene so wonderful and maddening: precision recipes, the obscure incredients, the preposterous names ("Salmon Nipple", "Chewbacca's Jacuzzi"), cocktail genealogies, the mixologist's wardrobe accoutrements, sculpted facial hair and other pretentions, and not least, the looonngg wait for very expensive drinks.

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Cookie Monster

We liked Cookie Monster when we were 5. We realized we loved him seven years ago when he went nuts on Martha Stewart, begging like a pitiful junkie for the cookies she hadn't finished baking, even trying in vain to pimp out Bert for a freshly iced specimen. Now there's yet another reason to appreciate our favorite googly-eyed Chaos Muppet: "Share It Maybe," an inspired, cookie-centric video spoof of Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," complete with dancing cubicle workers and a band (sort of) tapping away on kiddie instruments.

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Simone Paz

Sara O'Donnell in her kitchen

"You don't take perfectly awesome Oreo cookies, scrape out the cream filling and refill them with toothpaste," pontificates a well-lit Sara O'Donnell. She's looking into the camera, warning against the stupidity of food-related April Fools' pranks. "Here's a better idea -- why not refill them with cement? 'Oh! I broke all the teeth in your mouth. April Fools'!' "

In another video clip, she rapidly peels, chops and parboils potatoes. "Today I'm channeling my inner Napoleon Dynamite," she says wryly. "It's a little more difficult to mash these potatoes, but no pain, no tots."

O'Donnell is a new kind of food star. A pretty, cheerful brunette with a refreshingly understated wit, she operates under the brand name "Average Betty." That's meant, obviously, to conjure a nonelitist vibe, as the 35-year-old instructs from her suburban-rustic Tarzana kitchen on such doable food projects as white bean crostini, red velvet cupcakes and potato gnocchi with brown-butter mushroom sauce.

But unlike Bourdain, Ramsey, Ray, Fieri and other nationally known food stars, O'Donnell is solely an Internet phenomenon, a self-created culinary personality finding an audience without the benefit of a book deal, magazines or a TV show.
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Flickr/nebulux76

a bowl of spaghetti

When one thinks of Switzerland, one conjures images of a happy, armed and yet war-adverse people who wear chic watches, carry fussy little knives and hike in majestic mountains while eating milk chocolate bars. (Hopefully we crammed every possible stereotype in to that one sentence.) Who knew they're also small scale producers of grove to table spaghetti? And who knew spaghetti was a crop at all?

But it is, and the Swiss do it right, according to a recently resurfaced, and totally excellent educational BBC video. Check it out after the jump.

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Epic Meal Time

The Epic Meal Time crew

Epic Meal Time has gotten big. The YouTube channel boasts almost 2.5 million subscribers. High school students wear shirts emblazoned with the fatty food gross-out mavens' "bacon strips" mantra. And now, Epic Meal Time is about to be big in Japan.

According to Reuters, the Montreal-spawned show's producer, Next Time Productions, is partnering with Japanese management firm Yoshimoto Kogyo to produce episodes of "Epic Meal Time Japan" in "the Japanese market for domestic and global distribution."

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