Next Tuesday is Mardi Gras. One traditional way to celebrate on the Gulf Coast of the United States is by eating a king cake with friends. The king cake is a traditional brioche cake shaped like a ring. It’s colored inside and frosted with the traditional colors of Mardis Gras: green, purple and gold. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America describes its origins:

The tradition of the king cake arose from Catholic cultures in Europe. In celebration of Twelfth Night, families would share a cake into which a bean had been baked. The person who found the bean was made King or Queen for the day, the finding of the bean commemorating the Wise Men discovering the baby Jesus. Colonists from France and Spain brought the tradition of the Twelfth Night cake to America, and the bean was soon replaced with other trinkets, including coins, amulets, and porcelain babies.

In the United States, the trinket is usually a plastic figurine of a baby. The person who finds the baby in his or her slice must provide the king cake next year.

Food Drunk, a catering service in New Orleans that offers “alcohol influenced cuisine,” made a burger fit for the occasion.

-via Foodbeast

Yelp! has released their list of the 100 best places to eat in America, and it’s not like any such list you’ve seen. The ratings site relies on reviews from everyone, from self-styled critics to tourists to you and me. In this list, pricy Michelin-rated restaurants don’t have an advantage over the local crab shack. And guess who’s on top?

It’s a tiny seafood haunt wedged into a condominium complex in Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island. It’s called Da Poke Shack, and in Yelpers’ eyes it’s pretty much perfect: an average of five stars on 612 customer reviews.

Aficionados swoon for its poke bowls—salads that combine Japanese-inflected spices and greens like seaweed or kimchi with generous chunks of still-floppingly fresh, raw Ahi tuna.

That’s not the only surprising result: New York City’s highest-rated eatery is a food truck. Read more about the list at Slate. -via Digg

(Image credit: Russel K.)

(YouTube link)

What’s the secret of Sriracha sauce? Pepper, of course. This video from The American Chemical Society explains why chili pepper is so delightul to our senses. But it’s not the only ingredient. Enjoy your Sriracha, but use it sparingly. After all, it has very little chance of going bad.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

SPAM is a lovely bit of meat product in a can that is detested by some and beloved by Hawaiians, and those who know a great tasting cube shaped meat product when they see one, although there’s no accounting for taste in this age of quinoa fetishists who love slathering vegan butter on their gluten free toast.

Those that know the simple pleasure of SPAM know that meals which incorporate SPAM into the mix can come out looking downright sexy to those who love a slice with their eggs, or on a Hawaiian roll.

Check out this list of 21 Sexy Ways to Eat Spam and see if these recipes don’t get your mouth watering and your heart racing. Lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM!

If you think that the humble pancake can't be an artistic medium, then keep watching Nathan Shields. Every time we feature one of his creations, he keeps getting better. Breakfast by breakfast, he's refining his craft. Eventually, he'll be ready to create the pancake equivalent of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Except that it will drip syrup on your head.

(Photo: Anna Jofre)

Because I've got two young kids, this doesn't really freak me out. Poop is just a part of life and it gets everywhere. But in my food? I may pass on the offer, even though it kind of makes sense.

Human infant feces contain two bacteria common in probiotics: Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. Scientists at Catalonia's Institute of Food and Agricultural Research conducted a study on a means to infuse these bacteria into sausage. They took 43 fecal samples from babies and used the bacteria to ferment fuet, a type of pork sausage.

Tasters who sampled the sausage said that they tasted just like regular fuet, which is what the scientists want. They envision the sausage as an alternative probiotic food for people who can't consume dairy products. There's just one problem:

No companies are currently interested in commercializing these sausages, Jofré noted.

-via VA Viper

(Photo: Yvonne Ruperti)

I love this idea! Serious Eats has a recipe for a grilled cheese sandwich that is practically a breakfast. You can make the Cheerios stick by sprinkling grated cheese over the toast, then adding the cereal once the cheese has started to melt.

This recipe uses cheddar, ham and Cheerios, but I think that I'll make mine with Fruity Pebbles and Swiss cheese. And since I have some ground venison the freezer, I'll add some of that, too.

(Photo: Gorgona)

Gorgona is a small Italian island in the Ligurian Sea. It's a lovely place with scenic rocky cliffs and abundant sea birds. It's also home to a prison with some of Italy's most savage criminals. 50 inmates grow grapes on a farm there. They turn these into a crisp white wine that has a fine reputation among wine connoisseurs.

Winemaker Lamberto Frescobaldi sees the project as an opportunity to rehabilitate the prisoners by giving them meaningful skills:

“The rate of repeat offenders is 80 percent for prisoners who do not find work,” he says. Frescobaldi has also committed to hire some of the workers once they've paid their debt to society.

So far, the prisoners have produced 2,700 bottles of wine. 1,000 of them are coming to the United States.

-via Foodbeast

How would you like your ramen today? Previously, you could have it as a grilled cheese sandwich, a burger or a pizza. Or, you know, as ramen.

But thanks to Kyle Marcoux, the foodblogger also known as the Vulgar Chef, you can now have it as a taco.

You want to talk about an ubusual hobby? Try recreating album covers in pastry! The Twitter account Album Pies posts home-baked pies with record album cover designs in the top crust. Since it’s a British account, the albums are mostly British and the pies contain meat. I’m sure if they ever do the cover to American Pie, it will have cherries inside. See all the pies so far in a list at Buzzfeed. Shown above: The Division Bell by Pink Floyd.

The Birds Eye frozen food company is ready to roll out a new product: potatoes cut into the shapes of hashtags, asterisks, emotions, and the @ symbol. The product will be called either Mashtags or Mas#tags, depending on what works with your search engine or spellchecker. Now telling your kids to put down their phones at the dinner table will not leave them totally without a link to their electronic lives.

"The addition of Mashtags to our food range is an exciting development for Birds Eye. Social media is all about conversation and we’re confident Mashtags will resonate across various groups of people," said Pete Johnson, senior brand manager at Birds Eye.

"We’re constantly looking for ways to innovate and inspire consumers and hope that Mashtags will get people talking around the table and help to make mealtimes more enjoyable."

Mashtags is expected to be in grocery stores next month -but only in the UK. They will taste similar to Birds Eye potato waffles. -via Laughing Squid

I love this baking idea! I've seen berries and fruit slices baked inside cakes, but never entire pears. Deanna Segrave-Daly made this cake with Meyer lemons, a variety of that plant that is increasingly popular with chefs in America. She made her batter with Greek yogurt, a whole vanilla bean and whole wheat pastry flour.

She poached 3 Bosc pears in sugar water. Maybe she did this to keep the pears moist, which I expect would be a problem when baking pears inside a cake. Segrave-Daly sliced the bottoms off the pears so that they could stand upright in the baking pan, then poured the batter in.

-via Tasteologie

Cecile Beaud's striking sculpture is completely edible! There's no glass inside, but its form mimics the tones, lines and textures of stained glass. Ariel's hands and hair project out the surface of the cake.

-via Between the Pages

This happens every time you eat popcorn! Don't tell me you don't relate. It's more likely to happen with the thin skins that come off the kernel, though.

The same thing also happens to me with rye bread and steak, and a lot of other foods. I guess my teeth are spaced a bit funny. If nothing else, the experience forces me to get out the dental floss -and once you floss one tooth, you may as well floss them all. (It's mighty hard for me to correctly type dental floss instead of mental floss.) This comic is from the Awkward Yeti.

Valentine's Day has come and gone, but that doesn't mean that you can't pick up the librarian of your dreams. The Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University created three valentines to promote an event called "Dirty Books and Longing Looks," a program that appears to be an exhibit of erotic and romantic literature. You can view all of the Valentines here.

-via Turning the Book Wheel