"custom" news and stories

Are you looking to get into making loose leaf tea blends, but don't want to spend the money buying large quantities of numerous teas and then blending everything on your own? There are a few companies these days that are willing to do the work for you.

Adagio.com and Design a Tea currently have the most well-know options for creating your own custom blends online. They arrive at your door already blended, labeled, and ready to steep, but you should keep in mind that while you're getting a custom blend without all of the work a custom tea blender has to do, you're sacrificing some of the advantages. These companies will offer a limited number of teas to choose from, you can only blend a certain number of teas, and you won't know until you've paid for and received the tea if it's a success or not (and tweaking the blend will involve an additional purchase each time a change is made).

Keeping those things in mind, making your own custom blends can be a lot of fun. The differences between the two companies I've mentioned would be quantity, price, and options. Adagio allows you create a unique tea tin label with your own image, they award Adagio points if anyone else buys your custom blend (redeemable for a certain dollar amount toward tea!), they allow up to three teas in each blend (allowing you to choose the proportions), and you receive a 4 oz. tin of your tea. Design a Tea allows one choice of tea with up to two added flavorings, there is an option for customized label text, and they provide more options in terms of size and quantity (they will also package your blend in tea bags for you).

If tea isn't your thing, I also stumbled across JL Hufford Build-Your-Own Espresso. Looks like fun for coffee drinkers!

We love toast here at Slashfood, but we think that toast is a little more fun when you can customize it. We're not referring to whether you like your toast light or dark, with butter or with Nutella, but to actually using a design for the toast itself. So far, we have see snakes on toast, pop art on toast, love notes on toast and Disney characters. None of those can top the Zuse Toast Printer, though. This wall-mounted toaster can burn - by which we mean toast - any 12x12 px image onto your toast using "a technology similar to early matrix printers," working line by line until the image has been reproduced. The toaster comes with some images already uploaded, but it sounds as though you would be able to add your own to the image inventory, too.

I have no idea what that little cube guy under the toaster is supposed to be, but I can think of at least a few designs that would make my morning toast a little more interesting.

[via SciFi Tech]

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This box of chocolates is from master chocolatier Jacques Torres' Chocolate Factory in New York. It is a heart shape that holds a wonderful assortment of delicious chocolates and will reveal a hidden Mother's Day message, once the chocolates have all been eaten. The pieces marked "XOXO" and the bottom "v" of the heart-shape are custom-molded pieces of solid chocolate and the bon bon collection is an assortment of some of Torres' best sellers, including (but not limited to):

• Alizé Hearts of Passion - A creamy milk chocolate ganache center accented with a splash of Alize and real passion fruit
• Liquid Caramel - A creamy milk chocolate filled with a unique center with a rum twist
• Almondine - Crushed, candied almonds bound together by dark chocolate
• Chocolate Mint Tea - Milk chocolate ganache steeped with premium mint tea, surrounded by more milk chocolate

The box costs $42, not including shipping. And the secret message?

"The only thing I love more than chocolate is my mom!"

Kids come up with some interesting ideas. How about a Blueberry Syrup Waffle Popsicle, or a Caramel Apple Carnival Pop? These are two of the winning flavor combinations from last year's Flavorologist contest.

If your son or daughter is between 6 and 12 and has his own ideas about what ice cream should taste like, he or she is eligible to enter this year's Nestle's Flavorologist contest. By submitting an original flavor combination for a frozen popsicle, a flavor name and description of the appearance of the popsicle, along with short "resume" describing their experience playing with foods, they could win a batch of custom popsicles! There are 10 winners and included in each prize package are a $1000 US savings bond and a school ice cream party. One grand prize winner will get a behind the scenes factory tour and an all-expenses paid trip for 4 to California.

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Menus already chock-full of details about the soil quality in the area the salad spinach was grown and the precise variety of vanilla in the crème brule are soon going to have another detail: the sire of the steak. Always looking to be on the cutting edge of dining trends, some chefs are getting involved in animal husbandry to custom breed specific, and often rare, varieties of meat for their restaurants. They feel that this gives them an edge over companies that contract with well-known high-end producers. Whether or not there is any truth to the belief that things which are rarer are necessarily better or higher quality, chefs like David Burke are beginning to do things like buy bulls and find farmers to raise what will be a future meal, according to an article (subscription required to read it online) in the Wall Street Journal.