If you’ve only seen the first movie, you probably know that the people in The Hunger Games are pretty hungry (unless they’re living in the Capitol), but you might not realize just how food is specifically mentioned in the books to illustrate the difference between the impoverished people living in the many districts and the wealthy urbanites in the Capitol. In fact, there are even a few cookbooks written about these foods.

If you’re ready to go check out The Hunger Games: Catching Fire premiere this weekend, consider getting in the spirit before you hit the theater with these delicious recipes inspired by The Hunger Games. I’d like to give a special thank you to Fictional Food, which specializes in recreating recipes from popular fictional sources.

Burnt Nut Raisin Bread

Easily the most famous food mentioned in The Hunger Games is the burnt bread Peeta gives to Katniss –even the movie showed this scene. Fictional Food has a great recipe for recreating these loaves, but you might want to skip the burning step unless you really want your food to be accurate to a fault.

Fish Stew

The day before the reaping, Katniss goes out fishing, foraging and trading, returning home to a stew of fish and greens. She adds the strawberries and bread she collected while out to the meal, which makes Fictional Food's picture all the more authentic -and the recipe looks pretty accurate too.

Basil-Wrapped Goat Cheese

Only four pages into the first novel, Katniss’ sister, Prim, makes her a special treat for the reaping ceremony –basil wrapped goat cheese. Fictional Food’s recipe doesn’t just show you how to wrap basil around goat cheese (that would be way too easy), but also how to make your own goat cheese from scratch just like Prim.

Creamy Orange Chicken

Imagine living your whole life barely getting enough food to survive and then meeting with a stylist (Cinna) who pushes a button on a table to reveal this impressive spread. It’s no wonder Katniss immediately wonders “What it must be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button?”

While we might not be able to push a button and make our food appear, we can at least head to the store and buy all the ingredients for this luscious, creamy chicken and orange dish served with green peas and pearl onions and pudding the color of honey. In fact, the hardest thing for the chefs at Fictional Food to master was shaping the roll like a perfect flower.

Lamb Stew With Plums

In Katniss’ interview with Casear, he asks what impressed her the most since she arrived in the Capitol. When she answers “the lamb stew,” the host and audience laugh and Casear agrees that he too adores the stuff. This recipe by My Burning Kitchen adapted a Julia Child’s recipe to create this delicious-looking delight.

Roasted Rabbit

(Photos: Car News China)

The WitStar is a Chinese-built concept car that premiered at the Guangzhou Auto Show in Guangzhou, China this year. It’s a self-driving car. You don’t have to look at the road. Instead, you can look at pretty fish inside. There’s a functional aquarium built into the backseat armrest.

There would be some logistical issues with the fish, such as excessive heat and cold, as well as the need for fresh water. But if you can afford this car, you can probably afford to deal with those problems.

-via Jalopnik

Facade

Beowulf

The Goddess

Time Machine

Fergus Mulvany

Carl Jara goes far beyond sandcastles. This Cleveland-based artist who also goes by the name Grain Damaged sculpts sand into astoundingly complex and surreal images.

The journey to the incredible creations that you see above began with a chance encounter in high school. Mr. Jara was working on a stage crew with Tom Morrison, a master sandcastle builder. While attending art school for illustration and graphic design, he became involved with a thriving community of sand sculptors. After receiving critical acclaim for a 15-foot sand sculpture that he erected in the student gallery, Mr. Jara switched crafts.

You can see many more works at his Flickr photostream.

Content warning: artistic nudity.

-via Twisted Sifter

It was only the second time through this comic from Lunarbaboon that I saw the eyebrows and the time-shift, which makes it a lot more meaningful. Your outlook on everything is changed when, as someone once told me "your heart is now walking around outside of you." In some instances, it makes you braver than you ever thought you could be.

And don't think this sort of thing doesn't occasionally happen in real life.

Love donuts and barbecue? How about both at the same time? Thanks to Gourdough's Donuts in Texas you now can. While the image above might look like some sort of strange Buffalo chicken and blue cheese concoction, it's actually the Boss Hogg donut -a cake one covered in potato salad, pulled pork and BBQ sauce. 

If that doesn't suit your fancy, maybe the Mother Clucker will. This monstrosity is a cake donut topped with two fried chicken strips and honey butter. 

Of course, if you like boring old non-meaty donuts, maybe you'd enjoy the Funky Monkey that is topped with cream cheese icing, bananas and brown sugar -essentially a banana foster donut. Bourbon and Boots has descriptions and photos of these delights and more.

A barn cat goes to see a horse. As adorable as this is, it's only one of a sequence of pictures. A little nuzzling ends with the cat realizing just how much bigger and more powerful a horse really is. See the rest of the photos at Livin' the Peanut Butter Life. -via Buzzfeed

Miles Scott is a 5-year-old boy who is battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia, diagnosed when he was only 18 months old. The Make-A-Wish Foundation found out what Miles' dream was -he wanted to be Batman. So they made it happen!

With the help of thousands of volunteers, they transformed San Francisco into Gotham City, and asked Miles to save their city from various super villains and criminals. Today was the day. Accompanied by a full-size Batman, Miles saved a damsel in distress, rode in the Batmobile, rescued the San Francisco Giants mascot Lou Seal, foiled the Penguin and the Riddler, and even received the key to the city from the mayor. All accompanied by the cheers of thousands of fans, many who wore Batkid t-shirts that were sold with proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Miles received his last round of chemotherapy in June, and his cancer is in remission.

See more reports of the event at Warming Glow.

And even more pictures at the Make-A-Wish Bay Area's Twitter feed.

(Images credit: Make-A-Wish Bay Area)

Iron Man

Iron Bender

Ghostbusters

Bugs Bunny

Marge Simpson

If my kids ever learn that other parents prepare lunches like this, I'll be in trouble! We've seen a lot of lunch art prepared for kids by creative parents, including on bags and napkins. I'm not up to competing with any of them.

The two boys in the Kirby family are fortunate to have both parents as artists. Every day, they make entertaining cartoons on napkins for the boys' bagged lunches. You can see their complete gallery here.

-via Visual News

(YouTube link)

Look at these adorable new babies! They are twins, but obviously not identical, as one has a full head of hair. Watch them snuggle with each other as they get a therapeutic bath called the Thalasso Baby Bath (Thalasso Bain Bébé), a technique developed by French pediatric nurse Sonia Rochel.  -via Daily Picks and Flicks

If super heroes had part-time jobs, what would they do? They might each go into something they are uniquely suited for.

Artist Chow Hon Lam (Flying Mouse 365) took that idea and ran with it in his series of illustrations called Part Time Job. Each job is perfect for the talents each comic book hero has to offer. Continue reading to see more of them.

Peacay, the guy behind BibliOdyssey, also has a Tumblr blog, where he posts extra content with less in-depth research -because there are more great pictures from literature of the past than there is time to prepare them! Today, he posted some watercolors he's saved for ages from a Marine Atlas dated between 1820 and 1840, by by Mori Jiang Yuan Shou. See more of them at BibliPeacay.  

Thor is arguably one of the most manly Avengers, so it seemed all to appropriate to celebrate the release of the new Thor movie with a roundup of something decidedly less manly –crafts. Here are some of the best crafts dedicated to our favorite Norse-god-turned-comic-book-hero.

My Little Thory

These days, anyone who is anyone in the pop culture world has inspired a My Little Pony version of themselves and Thor is no exception. Here is DeviantArt user EatToast’s take on Thor as a resident of Equestria.

OctoThor

Prefer your heroes in cephalopod form? Then you’ll certainly enjoy Etsy seller Lizzabella1’s octopus Thor plushie. An octopus growing a goatee might seem strange to you humans, but in Asgard, it’s a pretty common occurance.

Thor Who?

There are actually a few owl-versions-of-Thor crafts out there, but I’m a particularly big fan of Jill Tow’s owl Christmas ornament, not only because she also did other Avengers, but because she used his feathered helmet in such a clever and cute way.

The World’s Slowest Superhero

Apparently, people love seeing The Avengers imagined as different animals. As cute as Etsy seller Fallendesign’s amigurumi Thor snail is though, I have a hard time imagining him declaring war on anything other than a garden.

Miniature Amigurumi

Black is such a powerful word because it conveys darkness, extremity, and the unknown. We've added the descriptive word to many subjects, sometimes to denote its color, but often to convey danger or mystery. It's time to shed some light onto those subjects.

Neatorama is proud to present excerpts from entries in The Book of Black: Black Holes, Black Death, Black Forest Cake, and Other Dark Sides of Life, the newest book by author and Renaissance man Clifford A. Pickover. Like his previous books The Math Book, The Physics Book, and The Medical Book, The Book of Black has a page on each topic, with a full-page illustration to accompany each one. Unlike those previous books, this one covers a wider range of topics, from history to philosophy to science and the arts, all with one thing in common -the word black. They are presented in chronological order from the Black Diamonds that formed millions of years ago to the distant future when the universe fades to Black. Let's look at a sampling of just a few of the 100 topics in The Book of Black. The images are much higher resolution in the book, which also contains the figure descriptions and credits.

Black Widow Spider (c. 250 million B.C.)

Spiders with spinnerets (silk-spinning organs) at the end of their abdomens came into existence more than 250 million years ago. When an insect is trapped in the black widow spider’s web, the spider wraps the prey and then injects its victim with venom from its chelicerae, or fangs, to paralyze the prey. Males are less venomous than females.

The phrase black widow spider often refers to the three North American species known for their dark bodies and red hourglass patterns on the females’ abdomens.  The male spiders are sometimes less than half the size of the female and have hourglass markings with a variety of colors. The brightly colored markings may have been evolutionarily advantageous because they warn predators to avoid the spider. For example, if a bird eats a black widow, the bird usually does not die but becomes sick and may begin to associate the sickness with the spider’s coloration.

Contrary to legend, the female only rarely eats the male after mating. “Husband cannibalism” was indeed observed in studies from the 1920s when females and males were kept together in small containers. However, in more natural settings, the male is usually able to safely leave the female’s web after mating.

Black Pepper (1213 BC)

Ramesses II  (reign 1279–1213 BC)

1213 BC is a special date in the history of black pepper because we have definitive proof that black peppercorns were jammed into the nose of Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, immediately after he died during this year. The peppercorns may have helped the mummified nose retain its shape and also served as a preservative.

Pepper was used in India since prehistoric time, and virtually all of the black pepper found in Europe during the Middle Ages came from India. Through history, pepper was sometimes viewed as sufficiently valuable as to serve as a form of money.  We owe the discovery of America by Europeans to the value of pepper and other spices, and the desire to find a new route to India.

Spice expert and researcher P. N. Ravidran writes, “It is difficult for us now to appreciate the extent or influence that pepper and other spices had on nations and people during the chequered history of human civilization.  Wars were fought, kingdoms were built and demolished, cities grew, flourished and declined—the density of humankind was influenced so much—all for the sake of spices.”

Black Holes (1783)

You might remember the strange Chinese meme of dogs wearing pantyhose. Cats were jealous, and decided to get in on the act -but a cat wearing human clothing doesn't have quite the same effect. After all, the average cat is way too short to wear our tights. Which is actually a good thing, because most cats don't care for tight-fitting clothes. This may not be as sexy as the dogs, but still funny! See lots more pictures at the blog meowtfit of the day. Yeah, it's all the same cat. The other cats of the household are presumably not into this sort of thing. -via Joanne Casey

Once I read that caption, I just had to post this image from Turning the Book Wheel, the tumblr blog of the Smithsonian Libraries. It’s an illustration by Theodor de Bry (1528-1598), a master engraver and illustrator from what is now Belgium.

In 1590, he published Wunderbarliche, doch warhafftige Erklärung von der Gelegenheit und Sitten der Wilden in Virginia, a collection of images showing life in America. As you can see, little has changed over the centuries.