Did you ever wish you could create the chocolate of your dreams? A German company named chocri allows people like you and me to customize chocolate bars, not only by determining which name is printed on the packaging, but more importantly by combining a base chocolate (dark, milk or white) with your choice of more than 90 toppings. The toppings can be dried fruit and nuts (what we would expect), but can also be crazy, like chive rolls, jalapenos or real gold flakes. The chocolate is fair trade, organic, and sales benefit kids on the Ivory Coast.

One percentage of our revenues goes directly to the organization DIV Kinder, which supports and protects children on the Ivory Coast. The Ivory Coast is the biggest exporter of cocoa beans on this planet. Our customers also get a chance to donate a small amount at checkout. Together, we’ve already raised thousands of Euros to benefit the children.

Chocri is expanding their sales into the United States beginning in January. Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by papillonc.

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

Preparing food is probably a mere child’s play for master chef Julia Child, so here’s something a little more challenging: cooking up a batch of primordial soup.

This delightful video of Julia Child in her kitchen boiling up a batch of primordial soup was made for the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and shown in Life in The Universe gallery from 1976 until the exhibit closed.

Julia Child explains primordial soup

This brain cake looks terrifying, but the process to create it is pretty cool. The brain folds are simply made of frosting and the blood is only food coloring. I think a simple way to make things even more delicious would be to used a raspberry puree in place of food coloring.

Link Image Via kiffakitty

The picture above sure looks like a minuscule watermelon doesn’t it? Just imagine biting into it, skin and all, to discover it is entirely tomato-y though. That’s because the adorable creation is actually made from a green zebra tomato shell filled with tomato gel and topped with black sesame seeds. It might not be the most productive way to spend your time, but the effect is certainly fascinating.

Link Image Via Playing With Fire And Water

Someone alert This Is Why You’re Fat, because this sexy dessert certainly will help you pack on the calories…but oh man does it look delightful. I must admit, if I were to choose the next food trend after bacon, I’d totally chose s’mores –although s’mores with maple bacon would be good even with the current food trend.

What would you guys choose for the next food trend?

Link Image Via Annie at Annie’s Eats

Here comes October, which means it’s close to pumpkin carving time.  But if you’re reluctant to let go of summer, head on over to Takashi Itoh’s and check out some wonderful watermelon carvings.  Takashi says it only took him three weeks to become skilled at it.

Link

These visually striking eggs are produced by hard-boiling an egg, cracking the shell, and then steeping the egg in a flavored tea or broth.  The batik-like marbling effect is more prominent when teas with high levels of tannin are used; the duration of the second boiling will influence both the color of the marbling and the degree to which the tea or broth flavor penetrates the egg.

Link (and photo credit), via Sharp as Teeth and Stars.

These flags made out of food were created to promote the Sydney International Food Festival. Each national flag is illustrated with food associated with that country: Greece has black olives, India features curry, South Korea has kimbap, etc. Guess which country is represented by the flag pictured. Link -via b3ta

London’s Borough Market, which specializes in fresh gourmet food, held a banquet for 500 in which all the ingredients for the featured dishes were scrounged from what supermarkets throw out!

This bin banquet was staged to highlight the scandalous amount of food waste in the UK. Each year, we throw away 20million tonnes of food.

Every day, that equates to nearly three million tomatoes, five million potatoes, 4.5million apples, seven million slices of bread and one million sausages.

What we demonstrated was that so much of what we discard is, in fact, perfectly safe to eat.

No one got ill; no one said anything about the food tasting anything but 100 per cent fresh.

But a lot of people got angry when we reeled off the figures about how much we waste, and the fact that each family in Britain throws away more than £400 worth of perfectly edible food a year.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Rossy21.

You’ve seen square watermelon and even heart shaped cucumbers, but Buddha pears? They are made with a cool plastic mold that is attached while they are still little. I’d love to say more about them, but I don’t speak Spanish Portuguese, so I can’t read the original site. Any of you Neatorama readers care to help translate?

Link Via BoingBoing

Allergic to tomatoes? It’s more likely than you think – up to 16 percent of people are sensitive to tomatoes, adding extra complications to life in a world of free-flowing ketchup, tomato sauce and burgers with the works. It’s not tomatoes themselves that are at fault, it’s a small protein called Profilin. By silencing two genes responsible for Profilin production in tomatoes, scientists can create non-allergenic fruit that are otherwise completely normal in taste, texture and appearance.

Link

Previously: 7 Intriguing Genetically Modified Fruits and Vegetables.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by scaryman.

Do you have a special connection with bacon? Can you get it to pose for you in sexy positions? The Official Bacon Contest at Mr. Baconpants might be your chance to win all kinds of glorious bacon prizes. Categories include:

Most Creative: This is a photo that shows a creative way to use bacon. Think bacon AK-47 or Waken Bacon.

Funniest: This is a photo that incorporates bacon that will make us laugh. Think Lol Cats or Fail photos.

Sexiest: This is a photo of bacon that will make us drool for two reasons. Think bacon babes.

To enter, send your photo to jmosely@mrbaconpants.com and use “photo contest” as the subject line.

Link

Looks like America is not the only country that needs to be weary of fast food. While not many outside the US can see the appeal of
a Big Mac, people in Morocco just love the McArabia.

This new sneaky tactic of adapting global fast food chains to the local palette is happening all over the
world from squid topped Dominoes pizza in Taiwan to KFC’s vegetarian Chana Snacker, a chickpea burger topped with Thousand Island sauce, in India.

Watch out global obesity! I see a plot for a Super Size Me sequel.

Walk into a McDonald’s in Morocco and you’ll find a sandwich you can’t get anywhere else in the world: a cumin-spiced flatbread creation called the McArabia Tagine.

“Honestly it tastes Moroccan,” said Noor El Ghoumari, 34, a man who had just paid 53 dirhams, or about $6.60, for a meal with one of the ground beef sandwiches in Rabat on a recent afternoon. “This is a local McDonald’s and obviously they have to adapt.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by CherryBomb.

Fans of the book will love these delicious cupcakes. They’d be great for any kids party, but that doesn’t mean adults won’t enjoy them too.

These are texas-sized snickerdoodle cupcakes. For frosting and decorations I used chocolate ganache (Moishe), canned vanilla frosting (Max), sprinkles, store-bought gumpaste eyes, and fondant colored tinted by hand.

Link Via Al Dente

Someone in Australia has robbed over $10,000 worth of cucumbers in eleven separate robberies over the last three months.The latest robbery of 50 bags of pickles is the largest of the heists so far.

“The issue with the cucumber is how do you and I tell who owns a different cucumber?,” SA Police Chief Inspector Kym Zander told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

“We’re having difficulty establishing where they (the cucumbers) are going.”

What do you think? How can they track down the cucumber thief?

Link Via Al Dente

If you wondered how people actually made some of the cakes in the Threadcakes contest, previously featured on Neatorama, then you’ll love this time-lapse video of a Threadless tee shirt being made into a cake. The process is so detailed and so fascinating.

Link Via Good

I know they’re bad for you, but some of them are so tasty! I’m talking about deep fried foods of course, and Now That’s Nifty blog has pictures of many of the most fattening and delicious deep fried treats:

All countries deep fry food, it’s an easy way to cook, and it is tasty. Of course, deep frying food is also very bad for you. It is even worse for you, when the food was unhealthy for you to begin with. Is deep fried food terribly unhealthy? Yes. Would I try most of these anyway? Yes. Below is a deluge of diabolically delicious, deep fried dishes:

Deep fried pizza. Mmmm.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ninigoat.

Did you know frozen peaches and peas can actually be healthier for you than fresh ones? Were you aware that Chicken McNuggets actually contain beef extract?

There’s a whole lot most of us don’t know about the foods we eat every day and HowStuffWorks is here to fill us in on some of that info. Of course, I don’t recommend reading this if you’ve just ate -particularly if you just ate canned mushrooms.

Link

A Bean By Any Other Name

Because beans are grown all throughout the world, it’s common for certain species to have multiple names. In fact, at least 11 types of beans have four names or more and certain species like the fava bean and navy bean have over 10 names. Other names for the fava bean include broad bean, butter bean, Windsor bean, horse bean, English bean, fool, foul, ful, feve, faba, haba and habas. The navy bean is also known as Yankee bean, white pea bean, pearl haricot, Boston bean, Boston navy bean, pea bean, haricot blanc bean, small white bean, haricot bean and fagioli. You may have thought you never tried a type of bean and actually just heard one of its alternate names.
Source

Beans Kick It Old School
These fruits are one of the longest plants to be cultivated by humans. Broad beans have been planted and grown since at least ancient Egypt and common beans were harvested over six thousand years ago in the Americas. Most of the beans we eat fresh come from the Americas and were first discovered by Christopher Columbus.
Source

They Really Are Somewhat Magical

Or at least, magical enough to be involved in folklore. There are multiple folk tales that involve magical beans growing all the way into the clouds –the most famous of these is, of course, Jack and The Beanstalk. There is also a Grimm’s fairytale that describes a bean that laughs at the failure of others so hard that its sides actually split open.
Source

They’re Often Considered Lucky
Multiple cultures associate eating or planting beans on certain days with good luck. Certain areas of Europe consider it to be lucky to plant beans on Good Friday. In Nicaragua, newly weds eat a bowl of beans for good luck. New Year’s Day involves a number of superstitions, in the Southern U.S., Malta, Brazil and Italy eating beans or lentils is considered to bring increased prosperity in the next year.
Source

Attack of the Killer Beans

Certain beans, especially those that are red in color, contain harmful toxins that can only be removed through cooking. Strangely, eating these beans when they are undercooked may be more toxic than eating the beans raw. Sometimes the undercooked beans will still taste and smell fine though. The toxicity will usually not result in death, but in severe nausea and diarrhea.
Source

Ever Wonder What Makes Them So ‘Musical?’
It’s widely known that beans and cabbage can make you fart. The reason is that many beans have the same sugar molecules found in cabbage. Because a certain enzyme that humans don’t have in their body is needed to digest these molecules, bacteria in the large intestine digest the sugar. This digestion produces increased gases as a byproduct. Soaking the beans in water for a few hours can help reduce this problem, so will the induction of certain other enzymes, like those found in Beano.
Source

Hold the Beans Please

The followers of Pythagoras had a lot of dietary restrictions, on top of being vegetarian, they also refused to eat beans. The reason is unclear, but many people believe it was due to flatulence, while others believe it was because they look like female genitalia. The most commonly accepted reason though is that the beans and humans were said to be created from the same material.
Source

Link

Yummy, classy and fat free. These Jell-o jewels have real gold powder in them. They’re part of a Jell-o mold competition in Brooklyn. The cheeseburger and shishkabob ones are fantastic, along with the oyster pearls. It’s all worth a look.

Link

This painting, commissioned by a jam and preservative maker, was painted using only the products made in their factory!

Artist Lindi Kirwin was commissioned by F. Duerr & Sons a British Jam Maker to create a work of art to raise money for charity.

Sadly seeing as not many people have ever painted with jam and mint sauce before they have no idea how long it will last, so the winner will also get a full sized canvas print just in case.

Black current jam trees, marmalade pavements, mint sauce buildings and a tartar sauce sky all feature in a mouth watering new painting set to raise funds for The New Children’s Hospital Appeal.

F. Duerr & Sons, makers of jam, marmalade, sweet spreads and condiments commissioned local artist Lindi Kirwin to capture the iconic Central Library building in Manchester using the products available from their factory.

Named ‘Manchester Preserved’, the vibrant and creative interpretation, created at Lindi’s studio in Vernon Mill, Stockport and due to be unveiled at Broadstone Mill, Stockport, is being auctioned on ebay. Duerr’s hope that the painting will raise more than £1,000 for the charity.

Link – via lindi-kirwin

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

Summer is almost upon us, and with it, comes the strange and wonderful food festivals around the country. Cheese, watermelon… pierogi?  I’m all over that one. Yum, pierogi!

Brynn Mannino of Woman’s Day has a list of 12 of the most spectacular summer food festivals in the States. Take, for instance, the Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana:

Celebrate everyone’s favorite potato dumplings at the Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana, beginning July 24th. What started as a way to honor the Eastern European heritage of many in the nearby communities has grown into an event that has been featured on The Food Network and in the pages of Bon Appetit magazine. Fun-filled activities include a pierogi eating contest, a pierogi toss and a polka parade! Last year’s festival even featured the “World’s Largest Pierogi,” which was made with 27 lbs of flour, 18 eggs, 58 potatoes, two gallons of water, “too much” butter and “lots o’ onions.” Total weight? 92 lbs!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ahammel.

Have you ever seen a neighbor’s fruit left unharvested, all those fruit wasted? Think there’s a better way? Though neighbors trading apples for plums isn’t exactly new phenomenon, the Internet is changing the way and fueling growth in the "underground economy" of trading fruit.

Kim Severson of The New York Times has an interesting article about this trend:

All over the country, the underground fruit economy is growing. At new Web sites like neighborhoodfruit.com and veggietrader.com, fruit seekers can find public mulberry patches in Pennsylvania and neighbors willing to trade blackberries in Oklahoma.

In Royal Oak, Mich., a woman investigated how to start a fruit exchange modeled after Fallen Fruit (fallenfruit.org), an arts group that designs maps of accessible fruit growing in Los Angeles neighborhoods.

In Alaska, cooks used Facebook to find willing donors of backyard rhubarb, the first dessert crop that grows after the long winter. In Columbia, S.C., university students pulled spare peaches from orchards and donated them to a local food bank.

Supporters of this movement hold two basic principles. One, it’s a shame to let fruit go to waste. And two, neighborhood fruit tastes best when it’s free.

Link – via squealingrat

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by squealingrat.

Tell her if she finds SPAM to buy it at once!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by notoriousnicholas.