Meet The Team / Joe DiStefano

In an effort to stop the recent horrific incidents involving kitten sandwiches, confectioner Cadbury Adams has issued the following instructive poster encouraging those who enjoy eating kittenwiches to think twice and have a nice, chewy Swedish Fish instead. I've never been a real big fan of the gummy treats, and, no, I've never had a kitten sandwich.

Nor have I had any of the other bizarre meals that Cadbury created for its "A Friend You Can Eat," adverstising campaign. The others include a shot of a dude with hamburger dressings sitting on top of his head and a teddy bear panini. The web site also has a cool photo tool where you can upload a shot of yourself to be featured as one of the ingredients in the three bizarre meals.

Even though I'm no fan of Swedish Fish, I'll take one over a kitten sandwich any day. Hopefully this campaign will help keep kitten sandwiches out of Halloween goodie bags on Friday. On a side note, blogger The DoughyGuy says his cat does not like Swedish Fish.

[via Boing Boing]

By the time McDonald's introduced Happy Meals, I was too old to enjoy them. I've always felt kind of gypped by the whole Happy Meal thing. Now that the fast-food giant may discontinue the Pasta Zoo Happy Meal in its Australian restaurants, I'm even more disappointed. Actually that's a lie, I've never even heard of Pasta Zoo until today. It sounds like the pasta version of animal crackers.

Pasta Zoo was introduced back in January, but after poor sales, McDonald's is seriously considering replacing it with something else. The animal-shaped pasta with dipping sauce was part of the company's efforts to provide healthier Happy Meals.

This isn't the first failed product for Macca's, as the chain is known Down Under. Last spring the chain tested several dinner items, including spaghetti Bolognese and beef rendang, that were dropped from the menu. As a fan of Malaysian food, I don't whether to be happy or disappointed that one can no longer get a Big Mac with a side order of rendang in Australia.

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This election year has seen all manner of cooking and food related products ranging from Hop Obama beer to Hillary and Obama aprons. I suppose those Hillary aprons might have some value for collectors. But except for a Japanese confectioner offering lollipops, I've seen precious little campaign confections out there.

Then I happened on this pair of presidential Pez dispensers from Herobuilders. I've never been much of a Pez collector, though I do own a Homer Simpson dispenser. Herobuilders is offering its presidential "Candydates" for the whopping price of $19.95. I don't plan on buying one, but I do know who I plan to vote for pezident, er, president. No word yet on whether Herobuilders plans to cash in on all the hoopla surrounding Joe the Plumber by making a dispenser bearing his likeness.

Take a good look at this reproduction of the Mona Lisa. Don't worry, you're eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Those are slices of various sausages and luncheon meats in the background. In fact, the whole painting is made of meat. It was part of a show put on by six Russian artists to celebrate the 100th birthday of Tavr a meat processor located in southern Russia.

The artists spent three days fashioning the meaty museum of classic paintings, which also includes reproductions of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers and Pablo Picasso's Girl on a Ball. They used 40 pounds of meat to create these canvasses fit for a carnivore. Visitors to the show were offered fresh Tavr sausages.

What's it like for artists to work with meat? Well, Aleksandr Solomko likes ham as a medium because it's soft and flexible. "The biggest trouble was to stick the sausages to the canvas. Gelatin turned out to be the best solution. It's perfectly natural and doesn't affect the taste. However, we had to rework some parts of the picture, when it started to darken after the meat spent some time in the air."

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On Wednesday 1,500 cooks in Iran unveiled an attempt to smash Italy's Guinness Record for the world's largest ostrich sandwich. The event took place in Tehran's Mellet Park. At 4,920 feet, the humongous hero, which contained 1,543 pounds each of ostrich and chicken meat, easily beats the Italian record of 4,521 feet, set last May.

There's only one problem though. The sandwich was devoured in minutes by a hungry crowd before Guinness officials had a chance to measure it. The organizers are hoping that Guinness will accept video footage to authenticate the record.

It's a shame that something which took two days to prepare was gobbled up in mere minutes. The hero contained a mixture of ostrich and chicken meat with mustard and spices. The gigantic sandwich made from gigantic flightless birds was the brainchild of Tehran's city council along and a group of ostrich farmers. Ostrich meat is renowned for its flavor and is high in protein and low in cholesterol. Iran is the world's third-largest ostrich breeder behind South Africa and China.

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