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I hope I’m not the only person on the planet who cannot understand why dining at one’s home or apartment has to be so complicated. Personally, my favorite meal situation is when I am sitting on a large boulder near timberline looking at chipmunks and pine trees, while eating a sandwich, an orange and a candy bar. The flat part of the boulder makes for an adequate table. That is my idea of dining “out”.
The act and process of preparing food, dining, and then cleaning up seems to entail too much work and too much equipment, like it was designed for the needs of a regiment of soldiers, or for a family on a large country estate in England which employs kitchen servants. Typically, a standard kitchen with cupboards, drawers and refrigerator includes redundant and special-purpose items. There are large knives, small knives, large-size stainlessware items for serving food, small spoons, forks and knives for personal dinnerware, tiny stainlessware for olives or cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving dinners; there are various sizes and shapes of pots and dishes, microwavable containers and refrigerator storage containers; there are table mats and napkins; there are scouring pads, sink drain cleaning chemicals, dishwasher and/or dishwashing soap, sponges (ranging in texture from smooth to multi-surfaced artificial pads for coarse scrubbing), metal polish, stainless steal pan cleaners, sink scrubbing powders or bricks, dishwashing gloves, storage racks, bins, drawers and cupboards. And there is food: Condiments, mayonnaise, salad dressing, olive oil, vinegar, jams, jellies, frozen foods, canned foods, microwaveable foods, fresh fruit, dried fruit, milk, diet drinks, cereals of many types, coffee or tea, alcoholic beverages.
There is often wine or beer to help deal with the stress of dining.
At times, I have wondered whether food itself should be made simpler. In a gag, comedian Steve Martin once referred to an imaginary uni-food, a single substance that is all one would eat day and night, year after year. The simplicity of such an idea appeals to me. Above, I have depicted a future dining event involving seniors who eat either refurbished or uni-substance foods.
But seriously, I would be happier if the process of eating and cleaning up after a meal required as few steps as possible. Eating is, after all, simply a body function necessary for its maintenance. If I could don some type of hat and suit that fed me, wiped my mouth, caught my crumbs and drools, I imagine I would be happy. Or, instead of having a dining suit, I would be happy having an automatic one-stop dining machine.
Mira Grant, author of the zombie novel Feed, shows how to make adorable braaains cupcakes for the zombies in your life.
So you’re preparing your ultimate zombie-themed dinner party, and you’re stuck for a dessert. Or you’re entertaining a zombie who’s recently gone vegetarian, and is jonesing for those good old days of gray matter and the delicious taste of human brains. Whatever your reasons, you need a brainy treat that puts the “sweet” back into “sweetmeats.”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Have you ever considered putting a little Star Wars in your kitchen? How about a lot? Over at NeatoGeek, Jill has quite a collection of Star Wars-themed kitchen accessories and gadgets that might make your favorite chef smile -and then pull out a light saber to toast your marshmallows for you! Link
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Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that the ability to cook food contributed to human evolution:
“Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.”
He continues: “The extra energy gave the first cooks biological advantages. They survived and reproduced better than before. Their genes spread. Their bodies responded by biologically adapting to cooked food, shaped by natural selection to take maximum advantage of the new diet. There were changes in anatomy, physiology, ecology, life history, psychology and society.” Put simply, Mr. Wrangham writes that eating cooked food — whether meat or plants or both —made digestion easier, and thus our guts could grow smaller. The energy that we formerly spent on digestion (and digestion requires far more energy than you might imagine) was freed up, enabling our brains, which also consume enormous amounts of energy, to grow larger. The warmth provided by fire enabled us to shed our body hair, so we could run farther and hunt more without overheating. Because we stopped eating on the spot as we foraged and instead gathered around a fire, we had to learn to socialize, and our temperaments grew calmer.
Wrangham also asserts that cooking strengthened the bonds within early hominid communities and established lasting gender roles.
Link via Choice | Photo: flickr user flowcomm, used under Creative Commons license
From Raytheon’s radar business to your breakfast of leftover pizza, the story of microwave cooking is an interesting read. Like computers, they took off when the size (and price) came down.
The 1947 Radarange was a whopping six feet tall, weighed nearly 750 pounds, and required its own 220 volt electrical line and a dedicated water line for the cooling tube. It sold for $2000, or nearly $22,000 today. Not yet an appliance for the home cook, Raytheon marketed the behemoth appliance to high-volume, quick service restaurants. Busy diners, ocean liners and hospitals all purchased their own Radaranges, cooking hamburgers and sheet cakes in less than 30 seconds.
Link -via Boing Boing
A simple but elegant solution to a common household problem: you have raw bacon, but you have no frying pan with which to cook it. You do, however, have a machine gun. All you have to do is wrap the bacon in tin foil, tie it around the barrel of your Rheinmetall MG 3, and fire off about 150 rounds (250 if you like it crispy). Step-by-step pictures at the link.
Link via Say Uncle | Photo: redditor Oelund
If you love Futurama, then you’ll certainly appreciate these adorably gross brain slug cupcakes. Just hope they don’t take over your mind after you eat them.
Flickr Link Via Craftzine
The Science of Cooking is full of great information for curious chefs, children learning to cook, or anyone who ever wondered what was really happening when you turn sugar into candy.
When you cook up a batch of candy, you cook sugar, water, and various other ingredients to extremely high temperatures. At these high temperatures, the sugar remains in solution, even though much of the water has boiled away. But when the candy is through cooking and begins to cool, there is more sugar in solution than is normally possible. The solution is said to be supersaturated with sugar.
Supersaturation is an unstable state. The sugar molecules will begin to crystallize back into a solid at the least provocation. Stirring or jostling of any kind can cause the sugar to begin crystallizing.
Explore the science behind cooked eggs, rising bread, preserved pickles, and more. Recipes are included. Link -via the Presurfer
Which is better, a fresh apricot or a dried apricot? The way they argue, nothing will be settled. This is just one example of a series of talking food ads to promote the Supercooks program from the British Food Standards Agency. See sausages, potatoes, nuts, and more discuss their virtues at Eat Me Daily. Link -via Everlasting Blort
It appears that this started out as a ordinary instructional cooking video, and then someone overdubbed it with basic nutritional information. She is careful to caution that her recipe is “not your conventional macaroni salad.”
Where else but in Japan do you see the ultimate combination of robot and ramen? Instead of (puny) human chefs, a restaurant in Japan has programmed industrial robots to cook the perfect bowl of ramen, each and every time with precision.
Take a look – it’s riveting!
– via gruvix
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by origen2007.
The Art of Manliness has a wonderful post on 5 classic cocktails that all men should be familiar with and how to mix them for maximum effect.
There’s been a trend lately to get back to the old way of doing things, especially when it comes to things we ingest. This trend has also entered the world of libations. Drink menus around the country are starting to have more of the old classics included on them. Many mixologists are using these cocktails as starting points for newer versions that take advantage of the plethora of products out there today. Recipe books from classic bars such as the Old Waldorf-Astoria, The Savoy, and the Stork Club are available in reprint editions for the new generation to use. And who can forget Old Mr. Boston? They’ve been printings those books since 1935 and still do to this day.
But you don’t need a recipe book to get started mixing up some of the classic cocktails men have been drinking for decades (and in some cases, more than a century). Here’s how to create the 5 classic cocktails every man should know.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by msaleem.
Pink salt from the Himalayas has been used for seasoning by chefs at fancy restaurants … and now, you can cook food directly on the slabs of the stuff!
The thick 8-by-11-inch piece of solid salt can be placed directly on a stove burner and heated gradually; it will not melt. Lightly brushed with butter or oil, it will fry eggs that come away with quite enough salt. The same goes for jumbo shrimp, fish steaks or fillets, thin slices of beef and portobello mushroom caps.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
91-year old Claire shows how she cooked meals during the Great Depression. Nothing special – potatoes and hot dogs – but her commentary does make today’s problems seem less intense.
"I had to quit high school because we couldn’t afford socks…we couldn’t afford anything to wear."
– via consumerist
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
If you love Star Wars as much as I do, you’ll love Robert Saccenti’s culinary creation, “He’s No Guac to Me Dead.”
If only Luke Chipwalker could stop by and help unfreeze him by gulping down all of that delicious lime-loaded guacamole. (He added extra lime juice to make it thick enough to stand like that.) It took him about a day and a half to get the creation together:
The body was created using a plastic torso I found at a used mannequin/store display shop downtown. It only went down to the top of the thigh, so I had to build out the rest of his legs to the knees using molded chicken wire. The hands were tough… If I knew used male mannequin hands would be so tough to find on a whim, I would’ve used eBay. Given that I was running out of time, one hand was made using one of those articulated wooden artist’s hands you can buy at an art store, and covered it in papier mache. The other hand, not nearly as nice, was foil covered in papier mache, and had to do for now. The boots were old work boot toes I cut and epoxied to the board. [...]
Emily made the guac with 50(!) avocados, garlic, cilantro, salt, pepper, a little onion, and lots of lime. We spread it on, hoped it would stick, and, well… behold: Han Solo in Guaconite.
These cucumber growing molds from Japan are so fun! They would be great for bento boxes or in salads and sushi. I bet you could also use them for zucchini. I want one!
“Slice an onion, separate into rings, and stack it to make a cone. Then
fill with oil and water, and get annoying restaurant patrons to lean in
really close with their cameraphones to see what percentage of their
eyebrows you can remove. Optionally, add soy sauce for lava.”
- via videosift
Julian Kreusser has his own TV show on Portland Community Media called “The Big Kitchen with Food.” Justin wanted to cook on TV since he was four years old -which was only last year!
Viewers love him, says Portland Community Media executive director Sylvia McDaniel. The station wants to include more young people in its shows and Julian was a particularly good find, she says.
“It even has potential to be a national program,” she says. “It’s a wonderful show. We’re just thrilled. He actually understands what he’s doing. He’s not just following orders.”
Link to story (with video). Link to another episode. -Thanks, Rosalyn!
This is adorable, Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg are Bonding through mashed potatoes. My favorite part is Snoop demanding black pepper instead of white pepper.
Link Via BoingBoing
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