HOME |
RSS | 
The Superbowl might be over, but it’s never too late to enjoy a party with some sweet Slurm and Bachelor Chow. To be fair, it’s not quite Slurm being as how it is not made from the butt of a giant slug, but it certainly looks more delicious than the original.
Via io9
But why should we wait for the Super Bowl? When you have recipes like Smokey Jalapeño Cheese Dip, Spicy Bacon Cowboy Chili Cheese Fries, Barbeque Beef Pizza, and Bacon Explosion, you want to try them out now! Shown here is the Black Bean-Habanero Lime Dip, with looks as yummy as it sounds. Link
When fantasy genre and food enthusiast Adam Bruski read the “A Game Of Thrones” novels by George R.R. Martin, he paid close attention to an aspect that i’m sure very few reading the books have even noticed-the amazing sounding recipes. So he has taken it upon himself to recreate the recipes, using only ingredients which would have been available during the Medieval period, on his cooking blog “Cooking Ice And Fire”. Bruski’s passion for food shines through in his recipes, of which there are six so far, and the fantasy food turned haute cuisine recipes range from the strange (cold egg lime soup) to the sublime (veal cutlets blanched with almond milk). With many more books and recipes to go, Adam aims to show us all what we’ve been missing while reading through the series, and how we can bring home exotic and interesting flavors from our favorite fantasy novels!
If your kiddos are getting tired of boring old regular playdough colors, then try adding some sparkles to the black dough and they can suddenly play with space playdough. If you want to make your own, Fairy Dust Teaching has a great recipe.
Just the other day, my husband asked if I like zucchini, because someone wanted to give us some. No! No way! Because I know they would bring at least a bushel, and then return with more. Zucchini is notoriously easy to grow and provides a bountiful harvest. Therefore, those who grow it have a lot to share. That’s why August 8th is Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbors’ Porch Day. Wellcat has some zucchini recipes, and a list of the top 20 ways to get rid of excess zucchini. Unfortunately, the list only has six items so far, and does not include the obvious sneaking them onto your neighbor’s porch. Here’s a sample:
1) Carefully place a dozen or more zucchini in a large, sturdy black plastic trash bag, then add a couple layers of unwanted clothing. Drive to nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army, hand over bag to nearest volunteer. Politely refuse any offered receipt. Leave quickly.
2) Look for out of the way places which have signs posted, “Clean Fill Wanted.”
3) Reserve 1/2 of the space in large, upright freezer, gather all available plastic containers & freezer bags. Drink a vat of your favorite caffinated beverage, in preparation for staying up round the clock to puree large quantities of zucchini. This can then be packaged neatly and artistically labeled: “For Zucchini Nut Bread Recipe.” These packages can be freely given, along with copies of recipe, to anyone on your Christmas list. [Ed. note: I solemnly promise that I will eventually post this recipe.]
Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user Till Westermayer)
Ramen noodles aren’t just for preschoolers and starving college students anymore! But before you select yours, consult the Ramen Rater. The Ramen Rater has sampled and critiqued 451 unique varieties of instant ramen noodles from around the world -so far! Those ratings, as well as all kinds of recipes and other information about noodles, can be found on his website, also called The Ramen Rater. Link
Ben Fry created a database of all the hacks in all the episodes of the TV series MacGyver. Click on a dot and it will display the episode, the plot, and how MacGyver managed to do something miraculous with whatever he had at hand. For example, in episode 27, MacGyver was stranded in the wilderness. He put an earpiece from a headset together with a tube and made a working stethoscope (plus three other things in the same show)! Link -via Gorilla Mask
Comments Off
We don’t often post recipes here at Neatorama, but this post is worth your time even if you never intend to cook any of these! Have you ever heard of Chinese lasagna? Lasagna cupcakes (pictured)? Bacon and egg lasagna? Deep-fried lasagna? See a dozen of these strange dishes at FoodieBlog. Link -Thanks, Danny!
The house in which the alleged orgy ostensibly occurred. Drawing by Nan Swift, Improbable Research staff.
By Corky White
Professor of Anthropology
Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
As a very young caterer in the late 1970s, I learned lessons the hard way every day. I catered for people who knew their food, and so I tried to make things I hoped they’d not yet had, to avoid comparison. Cooking off their grid and mine often meant making dishes for the first time. I took on every challenge knowing I would inevitably curdle or burn or undercook. But taking on a Roman orgy was a whole different kettle of fermented anchovy sauce.
A Harvard University professor, who will remain nameless, asked me to cater a Roman dinner, hereafter known as the Orgy. Considering the money (and not, in my innocence, the potential for blackmail), I took the job. I went to the lowest level—of Harvard’s Widener Library—and found Apicius and other texts giving clues to the foods of the Roman Empire.
Translations to 1970s Cambridge weren’t always easy. Stuffed larks? No problem: frozen quail, stuffed with a parmesan herb stuffing. Anchovies in oil with herbs came straight from Boston’s Little Italy. Nightingales’ tongues? Nowhere in our most exotic butchery were there packets of these. The smallest tongues I could find were from calves. I thought, what would a nightingale’s tongue resemble… little, slippery, wormy…snails! Periwinkles from Chinatown! With a hatpin, I plucked each of the little buggers out of their chambers and stir
An 1817 edition of the source of the recipes.
-fried them with garlic and green herbs. A nightingale sang in Harvard Square, or might have, except I had its tongue.
With no orgy cookbook in front of me, I had to use my imagination. Honey cakes seemed to epitomize the evening, and I made them in buttocky shapes drenched in a nut-honey mixture.
I had thought about what to wear as costume, and summoning up dignity, decided to dress as a caterer in my long black apron. I carried the boxes of delicacies through the Doric columns of the host’s Victorian Cambridge home. The neighborhood brings together quite different styles: Olde Englande Colonial and New England clapboard, both decorous to a fault, making the fantasy of an orgy all the more titillating. The house had been swept free of furniture, the floors laid with oriental carpets and strewn with pillows. Incense wafted from standing brass braziers in which little electric bulbs were hidden. I took the food into the kitchen. Our host said, “Oh, just leave directions for the servers,” and I swore inwardly: surely you’ll let me just watch? At that point, the doorbell rang, and I opened the door on a pair of perfectly matched and fetchingly attired male undergraduates, wearing tiny chitons that barely covered their toned bodies in draped cloth. They even sported Demetrius and the Gladiator sandals, trussed up the legs.
There was a guest list near the door and I caught a peek: they were all male faculty whose names I recognized from the Classics and English departments. I left soon afterwards with instructions to return by noon the next day to pick up my dishes. (Noon? What low expectations he had! Surely orgies go on for days!)
I came back at about 11 the following day, a tad early, expecting (or hoping) to find the floor littered with sated or expired bodies, spilled wine and pieces of clothing. It was disappointingly empty and clean, and our host, clad in monastic old-school pajamas and robe, had a bowl of Cheerios breakfast cereal in his hand.
Was the orgy a bust? Perhaps Cambridge was not ready for deeply researched classical debauchery. Perhaps I neglected to add some crucial ingredient to the nightingales’ tongues. Come on, are Cheerios the tail of the dog in the Playboy Penthouse? Well, there’s no meal you can’t learn something from. Next time I’ll leave out the saltpeter.
A Note About Apicius
De re Coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking) is a Roman cookbook from the late 4th or early 5th century C.E. The author is unknown, though the word “Apicius” which appears to be a made-up name, is associated with the text. The word “Apicius” has come to be associated with a decadent passion for food.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the May-June 2010 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Linda Monach has embarked on a culinary adventure and is chronicling it on the blog Burgers Here and There.
A couple of years ago my parents moved in with us to help take care of our daughters as my husband and I juggled two stressful careers. My dad likes simple food and struggles with some of my more adventurous meals. This year, at Father’s day I made him his favorite dinner of hamburgers and pork and beans. That’s when inspiration hit – could I take the beloved burger and make it the vehicle for introducing my dad to new flavors? Indeed, looks like I can!
So, here’s the goal…create one burger recipe for every country in the world.
Monach is not trying to recreate the hamburgers of the world, but trying to put the flavors of the world’s traditional cuisines into each hamburger meal. She’s got several nations covered so far, all beginning with A. Link -via Metafilter
Comments Off 
Some mixed drinks are designed to taste bad, others are given gross names. Why? That’s just what happens when people try to be funny in their mixology experiments. The result is something that you might not want to try unless you’ve already had a few drinks. Warning: the linked post may be considered NSFW or NSFLunch. Link
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
How many of these pasta shapes can you name? How many can you use in a recipe? This is a small sampling of the pastas listed at The Geometry of Pasta. Click on a shape and find out what to call it and how to use it in Italian meals. There are recipes as well. Link -via the Presurfer
Why serve a cheese ball when you can serve Steve Jobs’ head on a platter? Ken carved this from mozzarella cheese for his iPad launch party! See the process in pictures at The Cook’s Den, with recipes for the other foods served with the Apple “head cheese” (strangely, I see no apples, but you’ll find iPad Thai). Link
I always have to laugh at the reactions when people discover the awful recipes of the 1950s and 60s. At the time, many women stayed home with their time-saving appliances and and used that spare time to save the money they didn’t make in the workplace. Industry helped by publishing new and bizarre recipes that would stretch a family’s budget and sell newfangled food products like Spam and Jell-O. Behold, the Pickle-stretcher Salad.
“The Pickle Stretcher Salad gave me the most visceral reaction I have ever had to a food-like item. I love olives, dill pickles and just about anything limey, but combining the three left me with a shiver that wouldn’t stop traveling my spine. One bite, and I’m sure I will never, ever forget the texture of slime and crunchy, the taste of ammonia and acid.”
The pickle salad was chosen as an example here because it was the most appetizing picture in the post. Read about twenty such recipes and the reaction they get from modern diners. Link -via Digg
Bunchland Magazine, a digital magazine that features awesome and
creative families from all over the world, received this submission for
our food section, called Munchland. In this section, families send us
videos of themselves cooking or talking about food.
This video, entitled The Dessert of Frankenstein, came
from dad Eric Woolfe, a brilliant playwright/actor who creates
deliciously macabre horror-inspired puppet shows.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Factorbot.
Maybe bacon as an internet meme has jumped the shark, but it still makes all kinds of food taste fabulous!
Fine, the bacon lube and bacon bras are a little creepy. Maybe we’ve gone too far when we’re literally trying to screw bacon. But I steadfastly refuse to stop eating it in every form imaginable. So to celebrate the endless survival of bacon, I’ve compiled this handy chart of 100 Ways to Use a Strip of Bacon. From bacon apple pie to bacon guacamole, bacon pickles, bacon marshmallows, and yes, even bacon-wrapped tofu, here are the 100 most glorious ways to enjoy god’s greatest gift to tastebuds.
Click on a picture at Endless Simmer to go to any of 100 recipes from all over. Link -Thanks, Brendan!
A sign of a tightened economy, ramen noodles are more popular than ever. Still, they can get boring after a while. From Rasmussen College, here are 50 ways to dress up ramen noodles in salads, soups, main dishes, breakfast, and even desserts. Link -via Geek Like Me
Tastespotting is a community-driven visual potluck with irrestitible photos. You can sign up and submit photos and recipes, or just browse the tempting site.
The photo here shows Creamy Scrambled Eggs and Asparagus on Toast, submitted by Sarah. She found the recipe and photo on the New York Times Health & Fitness page, so it’s good for you too.
Photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
Yummm. Delicacies include Bean and Mushroom Salad, Fluffy Mackarel Pudding, Caucasian Shashlik (I don’t know either), Snacks on a Stick, Jellied Tomato Refresher, Mackerelly and Melon Mousse. Oh, and maybe my favorite: Frankfurter Spectacular.
In Orange County, California in the late 80′s Todd Wilbur received a copy of the notorious Mrs. Fields Cookie Recipe Chain Letter that had been making rounds across the nation. Trying the recipe led to disappointment. This was certainly no “secret formula.” The results tasted nothing like a delicious Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookie!
“Fake! Phony!” he cried. And then he wondered, “Just who are the goofballs passing this off as an authentic secret formula and how is it that such a bad knockoff recipe becomes so crazy popular?”
Todd had an idea. Since he had way too much free time on his hands, he got to work on a recipe for a cookie that had the flavor, texture and appearance of a real Mrs. Fields cookie. How hard could it be? Batch after batch the clones came closer to the real thing, until one day, it happened. The cookies came out chewy and delicious, with crispy edges and that strong vanilla aroma. Bingo! The first Top Secret Recipe was born.
Link: Top Secret Recipes
