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If you live for celebrity food and beverage lines, then you’ll love Mental Floss’s list of 10 Celebrity Refreshments.
Personally, I’d like to mix some of The Situation’s Devotion vodka mixed with some of Rush Limbaugh’s Two if by Tea. It might not be the most delicious drink, but the conflicting celebrity endorsements must give it a great kick.
We recently featured a microwave that was hacked to play YouTube videos while it cooked food, but for those who want their kitchen hacks to play a direct role in their food preparation, here are ten ideas to get your food-related geek-juices flowing.
While “sous vide” has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the cooking world for the last few years, those of you who don’t work in kitchens or read cooking websites would be excused for not knowing the term. Sous vide literally means “under vacuum” in French and that’s essentially how this food is prepared –vacuum sealed food is placed in a low heat water bath and cooked very slowly. The cooking method generally allows for foods to cook more evenly, retaining a better texture and its original appearance.
Unfortunately, a quick search on Amazon will show you that a sous vide cooker will run you a minimum of $200. Then you’ll need to buy a vacuum sealer, which will add on at least $30, and non-reusable plastic bags for the sealer that can quickly add up too. All of this is a pretty big investment –especially if you just want to check out the process before you commit.
To hack yourself a cheaper option, Serious Eats suggests using a beer cooler, a thermometer and a few Ziplock bags, which will cost less than $25 total. Just add hot water to your cooler until the temperature is a few degrees above your target cooking temperature, then add in your bagged food, close the lid and let the insulation do the work for you. As for how well the beer cooler holds up to the real deal: in tests, the beer cooler worked every bit as well as a quality $450 cooker.
Most electric yogurt makers only incubate the product, leaving out the critical heating and sterilization process. That’s why Chris Reilly of Make Magazine opted to hack his own yogurt maker out of a Crock Pot that automates the entire process. He call it the “Yobot.”
While the process is pretty involved, for those with the tech skills to pull it off, it seems like a great way to go through the yogurt making process. As a bonus, since you’re already programming a temperature gauge into the Crock Pot, you could easily tweak it just a bit more and make a combination Sous Vide cooker, yogurt maker and Crock Pot in one…now that’s a useful appliance.
If you’re sick of leaving your hotel without a home-cooked breakfast, Natalie Tran has a solution. In this video, she shows you how to make oatmeal or soft boiled eggs with a coffee maker, and bacon and fried eggs with aluminum foil and an iron. It might not be the most delicious food in the world, but it’s better than nothing –which is what most hotels offer.
They hardly needed to put the name on the pot -just about everyone knows what they’ll be drinking from it. Link
Who knows? It might be the same restaurant where the cold drink dispensers are labeled with pictures as well.
You know what you never hear people say? “I really love the taste of whiskey, but I sure wish it didn’t get me drunk.” Yet, from the annals of incredibly stupid ideas comes ArKay, the O’Douls of whiskey.
Link Via Geekosystem
If you love Jell-O and Harry Potter, these might just be the ultimate adult party treat. The recipe sounds delicious, as it includes amaretto, vanilla ice cream, Bailey’s and chocolate liquor. If that’s not enough for you, they also have a link to a butter beer Jell-O shot recipe with cream soda and butterscotch schnapps.
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This week, mental_floss welcomes guest quizmaster Hillary Buckholtz of the blog I’m Remembering for series of nostalgic Lunchtime Quizzes! Today you are challenged to remember bygone drinks. This coffee drinker scored miserably -only 40%. You will do better! Link
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If you like chocolate, berries and booze, then you’ll love these amazing strawberry shot glasses seen on Sweet Tooth. Instructions can be found at the link if you want to make your own delicious treats.
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Jonathan Stark is either a marketer or someone performing a strange social experiment. Either way, he has offered up his Starbucks card for free public use. Surprisingly, people have continued to add money to it, so the card has continued to be useable for a long time now. You can even check the balance on the card before you order up a drink by following the automatically updated Twitter feed.
Link Via The Consumerist
There are so many companies that put a crown on the labels of beverages that mental_floss decided to make a quiz out of them! In today’s Lunchtime Quiz, you’ll be given a picture of a crown, and you try to match it with the drink it comes from. Simple? No. I scored horribly, but you might ace this one -you won’t know until you try it! Link
If you’re throwing a Halloween party this month, don’t let it be a regular old costume party. Instead, spice things up by adding some of these Halloween-themed recipes into the mix. Whether you opt to have a full dinner party or just have a few spooky beverages and snacks, these creepy cocktails and frightful foods are sure to set the perfect mood.
Every party has to have drinks and here are a few perfect brews for O Hallows’ Eve, including one virgin punch that is perfect for kid’s parties.
Perhaps the most beautiful Halloween cocktail is this Morphing Martini that changes colors from blue to fuchsia and has an impressive layer of fog over the top thanks to the addition of dry ice.
Alcoholic brain Jell-O is one of my own concoctions that involved the wonderful brain mold from the Neatorama shop. It’s delightfully sweet, looks creepy and the addition of Knox made it sturdy enough that guests were able to take slices from the brain a mess on their hands. If you replace the alcohol with water, this could also be a great kid-friendly dessert.
Swamp Juice is a fun, kid-friendly cocktail made with gummies, tapioca pearls, seltzer water, lemonade and some food coloring. Aside from the spooky look, the strange texture is sure to be a hit with kids too.
If you’re throwing a full dinner party, many of these can be repurposed as side dishes to round out your main course, but these snack-sized treats are also perfect creepy canapés.
While the potential messiness of roast tentacle au jus makes it a little intimidating for a party setting, the pure awesomeness of an alien tentacle complete with bones makes it worth buying a few party plates and forks.
If you’re throwing a geek party, you’ve got to have geeky refreshments, like these ten Star Trek-themed drinks, with recipes included.
With names like “Beam Me Up Scotchie” and “Phasers on Stun Punch”, there’s no possible way to go wrong if you mix these at your next “Trekker” party… unless the borgs decide to show up of course. Then having a “successful” party is probably the last thing you’ll care about.
I don’t know which tastes best, but I love the name “Vulcan Death Grip” for a cocktail! Link
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.
I’ve never had fungus tea, the cloudy juice left from the fermentation process of kimchee, or fermented dandelion and burdock roots, but I would be willing to try it. Some look downright tasty, like the cinnamon aroma of Guaraná Jesus from Brazil, or the ice cream soda from Pakistan, Pakola.
Almdudler is the brand name of a popular Austrian soft drink. The original Almdudler is a sweetened carbonated beverage flavored with herbs; its flavor is similar to ginger ale or elderflower cordial but with a somewhat stronger and more complex flavor. Almdudler has been called the “national drink of Austria”. Its popularity in Austria is second only to Coca Cola; 80 million liters of the beverage are produced yearly.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by notoriousnicholas.
A man stands next to a 490 liter Grande Cuvee TBA NV No.7 2005 of Austrian wine maker Kracher during its presentation Rehetobel Switzerland, some 40 km (26 miles) from lake Constance on November 28, 2007.
The bottle itself has been certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest bottle of wine which holds the equivalent to 640 regular bottles, or 69,000 glasses of wine. Yum!…”hic”
Who want’s wants one for Christmas?
Link: Yahoo News
