You have to wonder why a restaurant would offer a super-expensive hamburger, when a $5 burger on a real plate is gourmet food to most Americans. One reason is the publicity it brings, and the other reason is that some people will actually buy them just to show off how much they can spend on one. Take, for example, the Absolutely Ridiculous Burger from Mallie's Sports Grill & Bar in Southgate, Michigan.
Weighing in at 338.6 pounds, Michigan’s 540,000-calorie “Absolutely Ridiculous Burger” features 15 pounds of lettuce, 30 pounds of bacon, 30 pounds of tomatoes, and 36 pounds of cheese. The burger takes 22 hours to prepare, and it requires the strength of three grown men to lift the patty into the oven. According to the menu, “There is ABSOLUTELY no reason for this burger. But if you order it, we’ll make it, and you figure out what to do with it!”
The Absolutely Ridiculous Burger will set you back $1,999. Not all the pricy burgers are big, but they’ve each got something that makes them unique. First We Eat has a list of seven costly burgers, ranging from $120 to $5K. -via Digg
Don't they look so cute? Kon, a writer for Rocket News 24, has step-by-step instructions for creating these flowers made of salmon. They'd be great for a romantic dinner date.
He calls them carpaccio rolls, which is actually an Italian dish of raw meat. He seasoned these with lemon, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Oh look, a lovely cake made in the shape of a bicycle seat covered in flowers! And the inscription… what? Turns out this is supposed to be a tennis racket, and the inscription is supposed to say, “You’re an ACE.” Oops. Just another day at Cake Wrecks. What do you wanna bet that the guy's name is really Jermaine or something besides Jarman?
There’s a really big weiner at the Miami-Dade County Fair. In other news, Miami-Dade County has a fair in March. This hot dog may soon be in the Guinness Book as the largest hot dog ever.
Weighing in at 125.5 pounds — the naked dog tipped the scale at 51 pounds; the rest of the heft came from a gargantuan bun and gallons of condiments — the dog was cooked for three hours on a 100-foot mobile grill that travels from fair to fair on the bed of a 27-ton tractor-trailer.
Brett Enright, founder and CEO of Juicy’s Outlaw Grill, already holds the Guinness record for largest commercially available hamburger. His 777-pound behemoth burger costs $5,000 and can be ordered with two days’ notice.
Rocket News 24 reports about a Japanese woman named Caroline who makes cute cat candies. She prepares them every year for Cat Day, a Japanese holiday held on February 22. They are called nerikiri, which is a traditional sweet made by mixing white bean paste and glutinous rice. She shapes and paints them into kitties who love to play with their food--and yours. You can see more photos of them here.
I hope that you brought your appetites because we're living high on the crustacean tonight! Here are three Bathynomus doederleinii, also known as giant isopods. They typically live in the Western Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. They're ocean critters who are usually found from 100-686 meters below the surface of the ocean.
In Japanese, they're called ogusokumushi and are, quite sensibly, food. On March 29-30, an aquarium in Yokohama is offering children the chance to learn about these fascinating creatures, then eat them. They allegedly taste like prawn or crab meat. You can learn more at Rocket News 24.
Becky McKay is The Cereal Baker, an inventor of deliciously insane recipes, including donut-stuffed cronuts and deep fried crescent roll-wrapped Girl Scout cookies. She has a special genius for conceiving of recipes that you won't find in traditional cookbooks. You can often find them at Foodbeast. Becky kindly agreed to an interview with Neatorama so that we can learn more about her work.
You’re known for combining ingredients normally not put together, such as pizza rolls stuffed inside cupcakes. What gives you the spark of inspiration to develop these recipe concepts?
Here's the basic rundown of what goes on in my head (in this case, it's pizza and cupcakes—but you could substitute pretty much any two foods): I like pizza. I like cupcakes! How can I put them together? I really enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to turn an already established idea into something new. The grocery store is also a great place to get inspiration. While I don't usually go to the grocery without a list—one that I often forget to bring with me, I pretty much always take the time to walk through my favorite aisles (yes, I have favorite aisles in the grocery store) to see if anything new jumps out or anything old jumps out in a new way.
Well, now I've got to know: what are your favorite grocery store aisles and why?
In no particular order:
Baking aisle - It's always going to have something I need in it. Most often I'm looking for chocolate chips and frosting (mix the two together and, blam, you have fudge)
Cookie aisle - It's where I get my inspiration for what kind of cookie I can mix-in to said fudge or make a "truffle" out of.
Chip aisle/frozen snack foods aisle - Both great places to find the answer the question "What can I cover in chocolate today?"
Cereal aisle - Cereal marshmallow treats, baby! Plus, my husband is a CTC fiend.
Ice cream aisle - Because I. Love. Ice cream. I even hover around this aisle to shove my opinions about Blue Bell ice cream onto anyone who seems to be contemplating buying another brand.
Store specific: Target's candy and seasonal aisles are always an awesome spot to find new and limited edition flavors.
Scotty preferred scotch. If not that, then something green would do.
(Image: CBS Consumer Products)
But Klingons? Well actual bloodwine can kill a human who isn’t careful. So this officially licensed beer dubbed Warnog has been watered down for the sake of delicate human constitutions. It’s a product of the Tin Man Brewing Company in Evansville, Indiana. Hollywood Reporter’s Graeme McMillan describes it as a blend of “rye malt with a traditional clove character.” The beer will be officially unveiled and consumed starting on March 25 at the Nightclub & Bar Show in Las Vegas.
Remember to drink responsibly. Don’t slip behind the helm of a starship after you’ve had a single drink.
Jessie Oleson, the internet’s Cakespy, names this dish a desert. But I’m in Texas, where tacos are a breakfast food, so that’s how I’ll eat mine. The taco shells are basically crêpes. She provides instructions on how to fry them so that they will harden like corn tortilla taco shells. The filing consists of chocolate ice cream, jelly beans and shredded coconut that has been dyed green with food coloring. Her side dish is a mixture of rice pudding with jelly beans in place of the traditional refried beans.
Just look at these banana dolphins! A kid wouldn’t be able to resist helping himself to these treats, even if he is one of those who’s made up his mind to hate fruit. Luz of Luz’s Unique Creations gives us all the details on making them. She made these for her son’s class. I’m sure the kids got a real kick out of that! -via Geeks Are Sexy
Forget magazine clippings and newspaper headlines. If you really want to put your finger on the pulse of American culture, just flip through an edition of the Joy of Cooking.
The ubiquity of the Joy of Cooking is staggering. More than 18 million copies have sold since the Great Depression—when a Midwestern widow named Irma Rombauer published her recipes and anecdotes in the hope of lifting America's spirits. And while the lemonade concoctions and tuna casserole recipes were delicious, the real secret of the cookbook's success isn't that it soothed stomachs; it's that it catered to hearts and minds.
The Artist of Life
Irma Rombauer's young life was uniquely charmed. She was born in 1877 to wealthy German immigrants and spent her teenage years shuttling between her hometown of St. Louis and the elegant port city of Bremen, Germany. After enjoying a brief tryst with novelist Booth Tarkington, Irma settled down and married an attorney, with whom she raised two children. Although never employed, she thought of herself as an "artist of life," a renaissance woman who aspired to live vibrantly and suck the marrow out of every moment.
When the stock market crashed in 1929, Irma's spirit was put to the test. Her husband, who'd long suffered from depression, committed suicide. But instead of wallowing in grief, the 54-year-old widow found meaning in a project—writing a cookbook she titled The Joy of Cooking: A Collection of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat. Once completed in 1931, she spent half her savings to publish the book locally in St. Louis. Friends and acquaintances tested the recipes, and the feedback was encouraging, so she began pitching it to major publishers. Five years later, in 1936, Bobbs-Merrill finally took a chance on it and agreed to distribute the Joy of Cooking nationwide.
The truth is that Irma had never been a great chef, but she was an excellent hostess. She could whip up a party at a moment's notice and keep all of her guests entertained. By infusing the Joy of Cooking's text with that same wit and conviviality, Irma set her cookbook apart. From the first page, she skipped the kitchen basics in favor of extolling the virtues of cocktails: "They loosen tongues and unbutton the reserves of the socially diffident. Serve them by all means, preferably in the living room, and the sooner the better."
Irma's German heritage also deeply influenced early editions of the book. The first Joy includes recipes for dishes such as blitzkuchen and linzer tortes and even a few rousing quotes from Goethe. Irma also exhibited an endearing frankness with her readers. Unlike any other cookbook narrator at the time, Irma admitted to her lack of expertise and joked about not having time to cook. In one section, she wrote, "The German recipe reads, 'stir for one hour,' but of course, no high-gear American has time for that." Simply stated, Irma Rombauer knew her audience.
I love this idea! Etsy seller Zuzia Zuber, a designer in Poland, makes rolling pins with unique print designs, including burgers with fries, dinosaurs, dogs, cats and text. She uses locally sourced wood from a birch forest near her home outside of Warsaw. Zuber cuts the designs with a laser engraver.
You order a few dishes for takeout, and then when you get home, you find quite a few extras. Sometimes there are more extras than there is food that you ordered! I call BS on this video -my local Chinese restaurant never includes chopsticks. Of course, that may be a regional thing. I would not doubt that fewer Kentuckians use chopsticks than people in other states. -vis Viral Viral Videos
Think of this as a diet plan. You'll get to enjoy professionally-made sushi without packing on extra calories.
10 years ago, Chef Hironori Ikeno made his first miniature sushi as a joke for a customer at his restaurant in Tokyo. He wanted to see how small he could make a proper sushi roll. A single grain of rice serves as the base for each of his creations. They typically take about 5 minutes to make, which is 4 more minutes longer than it usually takes him to make a full-sized roll. You can see more photos of these tasty little wonders at Twisted Sifter.
