Go ahead and swallow the red pill. You'll find that your whole life--or at least everything important in it--has been a lie:
When officials in Iceland began hearing about horsemeat being secreted into beef products around Europe, they decided to run tests to ensure the same thing wasn't happening in Iceland.
Icelandic meat inspector Kjartan Hreinsson says his team didn't find any horsemeat, but one brand of locally produced beef pie left it stumped: it contained no meat at all. [...]
Hreinsson said it appeared to be some kind of vegetable matter. He said the mystery pie was traced to a firm in western Iceland and the case had been handed to municipal authorities.
Nathan Shields, a master of the art of the pancake, celebrated the 109th birthday of Theodor Geisel. Whenever Mr. Shields has pancake fun, so do his kids. At the link, you can view one of them eating a Lorax pancake.
Emily made the cornflakes stick to the outside of the bread by spreading an egg and milk mixture on them. Ingenious! Oh, not that use of egg and milk. But even thinking of adding cornflakes to a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then grilling it. You can find her complete recipe at the link.
I would've answered "fleshy deliciousness" (sorry, vegetarians!).
That, or magic. But the folks at the USDA spoiled the fun by explaining
it with science.
From Taylor Orci's post over at The Atlantic:
According to the USDA, "When light hits a slice of meat, it splits
into colors like a rainbow." This is something called a "diffraction
grating," essentially what happens when light waves bend or spread
around a surface and create a pattern. It's the same thing that happens
to make rainbows on the surface of a DVD. It's understandable that folks
mistake diffracted light as a sign of spoilage, especially since the
main color created by meat diffraction gratings is green. There is a
reason why in Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, the central conflict of
the protagonist is his strong apprehension against eating green meat.
Zlil Lazarovich has solved a specific problem that you may not even be aware of. Let's say that you want to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on one folded slice of toasted bread. How can you do this with a piece of bread that has been toasted flat? With the Toaster & Knife! This gadget toasts bread in a V-shape.
Now, the next problem for the peanut butter and jelly sandwich perfectionist: icky cross-contamination from using one knife to apply both peanut butter and jelly to the toast. Now, with the double-headed spreader, you can keep both ingredient reservoirs clean and tidy.
Physicist David Neevel channels Rube Goldberg by building a machine to separate Oreo cookies into their basic elements: cookies and cream filling. Yes, it's a video by Oreo; how did you guess? -via Geeks Are Sexy
Postwar America in the late 1940s was ripe for "better living through chemistry" and new processed foods. The Jell-O company took advantage of this and developed recipes for the suburban housewife to show off her culinary skills and stretch the family food budget. How else could you explain the abominations known as the Jell-O salad and Jell-O entrees? But Ruth Clark of the site The Mid-Century Menu is willing to try those recipes out, for the sake of understanding history. Collectors Weekly spoke to her about the food, and especially the Jell-O recipes, of the 1950s.
I haven’t really heard a lot of food historians talk about this, but I’ve found that food mixed into Jell-O stays fresher much longer than if you have it by itself.
Collectors Weekly: Whoa, how long are you talking about, like weeks?
Clark: Like days. For example, Perfection Salad is basically coleslaw inside of lemon or lime Jell-O, so it’s got cabbage and carrots and all kinds of stuff. But the cabbage will stay fresh for over a week. If you take a bite of it, it’s still crunchy. My husband, Tom, tries all this. He’s a chemist, so he’ll keep tasting it long, long after I’m done with it. But if you make regular coleslaw and put dressing on it, the cabbage becomes soggy after three days. And after five days, you’re not going to eat it.
We’ve done a lot of different Jell-O stuff and noticed that freshness is basically extended when you encase things in Jell-O. We’ve done cakes covered with gelatin, and the cake would still be moist after a week and a half. We made sandwiches with gelatin, open-faced sandwiches with flavored gelatin poured over the top, which was supposed to be like mayo. I thought it was going to be disastrous. Tom wolfed them down. He’s like, “These are really good and the bread isn’t soggy.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” Two days later, they were still edible.
But she talks about a lot more than just Jell-O. Read about pork fat cake, chocolate tomato soup cake, liver and green bean paté, chicken mousse, and more. Link
Jen at Cake Wrecks posted an homage to all the films nominated for Best Picture from the 2013 Academy Awards. Some of the interpretations are a bit tenuous, as she admitted she hasn't actually seen the films, but they are wonderfully funny cakes. This one is, of course, in reference to The Life of Pi, because it has a tiger on it. At least that's what the label says, in case you couldn't tell. See the whole collection at Cake Wrecks. Link
Brooks made these sugary delights for a baby shower. First split an Oreo, add a peanut butter cup and reassemble the Oreo. Dip the entire thing in liquified chocolate, cool, then add sprinkles. My suggestion: add another Oreo layer, then dip it in chocolate again.
They're called golfeados--a unique Venezuelan take on sticky buns. They're baked with grated sugar cane, pecorino cheese and anise seed in the dough. Once they're out of the oven, the baker slaps a slice of fresh mozzarella on top. I've never had cheese in a sweet pastry, but I can certainly imagine how mozzarella would work on one.
Purim, coming up this weekend, is a Jewish holiday celebrating how Esther averted the slaughter of her people at the hands of Haman. His name survives in the triangular treat called Hamantasch (Hamantaschen is the plural), which means "Haman's pockets." Buzzfeed has links to 32 different recipes, with Hamantaschen made of fruit, meat, vegetables, candy, nuts, chocolate, cheese, and pretty much anything you might want to put in them! Link
Dominique Zamora of Foodbeast describes this ball of sugar as "a dentist's worst nightmare." I doubt it. A prudent dentist sees opportunity in this work of mass dental destruction. As the One Hundred and Second Rule of Acquisition says, "Nature decays, but latinum lasts forever."
It's soul food made portable! Instructables member Imnopeas, inventor of the deep fried peanut butter and jelly vodka shot cupcake, began by skewering fried chicken. Then she battered the chicken sticks and placed them inside a corn dog maker. Wonderful! Imnopeas suggests serving them with jalapeño vanilla breakfast syrup, which apparently exists.
The new movie A Good Day to Die Hard opened last week to harsh reviews, but was still the top movie of the weekend. One good thing to come of it is this life-size replica of hero John McClane (Bruce Willis) sculpted of chocolate! This is apparently a promotion for the film in Japan. Link
