As we've now mentioned several times, today is Pancake Day (Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday). Historically this is because pancakes were a good way to use up the ingredients in your cupboards that were prohibited during Lenten austerity. As with all things in this age, Pancake Day has been somewhat co-opted by society at large. Case in point? The International House of Pancakes isn't celebrating Pancake Day until next week!
Today is also Super Tuesday, which means that citizens across 24 states will be going to the polls today to cast their vote for their candidate of choice. Apparently, the fact that Pancake Day and Super Tuesday fall on the same day caused great consternation to the IHOP. They didn't want to share the date with democracy and so have announced that next Tuesday, February 12th is when they'll be celebrating National Pancake Day. It sort of defeats the purpose, don't you think?
I've always had something of a fascination with imitation food. When I was a kid, I had a plastic fried egg that I served to my parents, my cousins and my sister over and over again, until the rubbery white turned a sickly grey and bits started to flake off the yellow yoke. I loved presenting my relatives with the fake sushi at my grandmother's house. And I would stare, completely transfixed, at the model dishes at our local Chinese restaurant.
It's no wonder then that I feel compelled to share fun examples of fake food with you whenever I come across them. The image you see above is from an artist who posts images of her work on Flickr. In addition to the TV dinner you see here, she has made anthropomorphic cannoli, sandwiches, a half-open tin of sardines and a carton of milk (to name only a few. It is definitely worth taking a trip over to her page to check out all the cute crocheted food items that she has made.
Have you ever thought to yourself, "I think I'd like to build a miniature log cabin out of meat!" I have to admit that until I saw the picture above, I had never thought that personally, but now having seen that it can be done, I curse my lack of curiosity for not having thought of it sooner. There isn't a recipe on the site, but if you keep scrolling down, the pictures are a fairly good set of instructions (should you want to build your own meat house). I am curious what the medium they used to build the house into. It looks like either bread crumbs or parmesan cheese (any thoughts?).
Did you know that Arnold Schwarzenegger, current governor of California and former action adventure hero, has an apple named after him? These apples are grown in his home country Austria, in the Styria region and are purported to be delightful and have fantastic flavor. Apparently, they are also "lovingly tended by skilled and dedicated apple farmers in small to medium sized orchards, far away from the methods of mass-production."
The website devoted to the Arnold apple even has a blog written from the point of view of an Arnold apple. Arnold says, "Why waiting, why bringing me home in a flabby bag? Enjoy me in a moment, do it in public! Get the experience to have an apple as a strong and healthy alternative to refreshments like burger or chocolate bars!"
Last Friday, students at CalTech put away their high tech pursuits and joined forces to harvest all the olives that grow on the school's 130 olive trees. This is the second year they've been picking the olives and the first year that they school went all out to throw a campus-wide harvest festival, complete with three-course family style Italian meal.
It got started last year when the university president spotted two students picking some of the olives. He promised them a home cooked meal if they could devise a way of making oil from the olives. They came up with a mechanism and the campus interest grew. The rest, as they say, is history. For those of you live in the area and want to try out some of the CalTech olive oil, it will be available in their bookstore in about three weeks.
USA Today recently collected a
list restaurants with high Zagat ratings near major U.S. airports. Their top pick was Chez Nous, less than 15 minutes
away from Houston's George Bush Intercontinental. While the list offers one or two
recommendations for about 20 U.S. airports, Zagat was stumped for good places near the terminals in Philly, Orlando and
Detroit. On a similar note, Ask Metafilter today featured a thread
about which airports around the world have the best food. So far, it doesn't look like anyone has mentioned Miami
International's La Carreta, an excellent Cuban cafeteria in
Concourse D.
Back in October, I posted
about sculptures of Darth Vader and Yoda made from roughly half a ton of butter. Today, boingboing featured a post about food sculptor Jim Victor. I don't believe that Victor is the one
responsible for the Star Wars butter sculptures, but his portfolio of sculptures made from butter, as well as cheese,
chocolate and pasta, is pretty impressive.
MetaFilter also has several links to other butter sculpture
sites, including some great photos of butter sculptures done by Tibetan monks (right). Butter, a noble medium
indeed.
Yesterday there was an Ask Metafilter thread about the differences
between regular, kosher and sea salt. Although the thread did, at times, degrade into discussion of surface area and
human origins in the sea, it did produce a few useful resources.
Slate ran an extensive review of several types of salt, from Morton to Maldon, last
spring. Gourmet Sleuth also has a great rundown of different
types of salt, as well as a salt FAQ. In print, there are some good salt discussions in Jeffrey Steingarten's It Must Have
Been Something I Ate and Robert Wolke's What
Einstein Told His Cook. And, of course, here's a transcript of the Good Eats episode about salt.
Perhaps the most
definitive and useful thing to come out of the discussion: coarse salt is better for margaritas.
Back in October, I 
Yesterday there was an 
What Can I Get You Folks? - Eating Out for Thanksgiving
In Defense of Guy Fieri
'Top Chef Vegas' - And Then There Were Five
