Guys, listen up. If you are wondering what to get your girlfriend / wife / significant other for Feb 14, this is my own personal recommendation. This month Spas everywhere are offering deliciously sinful facials, wraps, and other treatments made with food and beverage ingredients familiar to Valentine's Day.

As an example, The Arizona Biltmore Spa is offering a Strawberries & Champagne facial, which is actually a masque composed of pinot noir champagne grapes among other ingredients, with strawberries on the side for her to munch on. Another, Tamarindo, is offering their signature "Chocolatl" treatment which, in essence, is having specially formulated chocolate products slathered all over your body.

If you love the idea but don't want to spend hundreds (and hundreds) of dollars for a professional spa, you can always make her one of the many home treatments that we have highlighted here in the past.

(Spa info via AOL Travel)

Nicole recently posted about fingerprint scanners used by school cafeterias to ensure that kids are eating healthy meals. Well, some graduate students have now used similar technology to make getting junk food easier. An engineering professor at the University of California San Diego started the "biometric soda machine" project and students in his department have since outfitted a regular snack machine with thumbprint and facial recognition, as well as a bar code scanner, CR80 News reported. The goal of the project, known as SodaVision, is an easy, debit-based system where people can walk up to the machine, be recognized, choose their snack and walk away. A visit to the SodaVision site also has examples of the machine's interface, which looks like a screen from Star Trek.

[Via Pure Pedantry]

I used to eat bananas like a monkey, but aside from being an ingredient in pancakes or other baked goods, I stopped in recent years because suddenly the texture was too slimy and mushy for me. However, I'm thinking about bananas again, this time for my skin, rather than my stomach.

Bananas have been used throughout history for their moisturizing and skin-nourishing properties. They contain minerals like magnesium, potassium, iron, zinc, iodine, and vitamins A, B and E. Even companies like the Body Shop, known for their naturally based beauty products use real bananas in their products.

For an exfoliating mask, mash together 1 barely ripe banana, 1 Tbsp. honey, and 1 egg yolk. Apply to face, rest for 20 minutes, then rinse off with warm water. To make it a "banana bread" facial, you can add a few Tbsp finely ground oats.

Previous spa foods not to eat, but to treat:
Avocados are moisturizing
Cleopatra's secret: honey
Miracle Whip and Mayo: Miracle moisturizer
Two in one: eggs

It's a good thing Nicole highlighted avocadoes as an major player in the Super Bowl of food, because it's also the first food I'm talking about in a totally irregular, sporadic series of posts dedicated to feeding your face - the skin on your face that is, along with your hair, and maybe even your nails. Food certainly does wonders for your body from the inside when you eat it, but it certainly works natural miracles on the outside, too. Haven't we already seen a French toast facial?

Avocadoes, as we all know, taste good because they contain a lot of fat. Not to fear the freaded F-word! Even though it can be up to 25 grams per avocado, it's good fat for your body, and it's this fat that make avocadoes an amazing moisturizer. Alone, avocado can work as moisturizing mask, and mixed with a few other ingrdients, can be used as a cleanser, and even to remove under-eye circles. Just don't make guacamole with it once your face feels refreshed!

To make an all-avocado face mask, all you have to do is puree a quarter, or up to half an avocado (depending on the size of the avocado, and the size of your face), and apply it, by itself, to your clean face. Let it work its avocado-magic for 15 minutes, then rinse off.

This weekend, the Wisconsin State Journal ran an article about the growing popularity of chocolate-based spa treatments like massages, facials and body wraps. Many spas claim that the treatments have slimming effects in addition to their relaxation benefits. The State Journal article quotes several authorities who refute these weight loss claims however. Other supposed benefits of chocolate on the skin included exfoliation and moisturizing.

To me, the idea of paying someone upwards of $100 to slather me in chocolate for an hour is hard enough to swallow, let alone to think I'd come away slimmer. I'm willing to believe that it certainly could have some relaxing effects, however.

[Photo: Craig Schreiner - State Journal]