"food oddity" news and stories

On Thursday morning, residents of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina were in for a bit of a surprise, especially those who liked Doritos. A damaged tractor-trailer-size shipping container washed up on the beach, bringing with it thousands of bags of the Doritos -- Cool Ranch, Nacho Cheese and Spicy Nacho -- that it contained. Locals, from shopkeepers to fishermen, grabbed as many bags as they could carry from the water and from where they lay strewn on the sand. One person even filled up a pickup truck with them - all in the name of "helping with cleanup," of course. The chips were almost entirely undamaged, thanks to their airtight packaging.

The feeding frenzy only lasted through the morning, as the container was secured, still containing an undetermined number of bags of chips, by the late afternoon. The boat that lost the container has not been tracked down yet, although the missing shipment is sure to be noticed when the crew reaches its eventual destination.

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When you're reading Slashfood, the chances are good that any food pictures you are going to see are either tempting or , at the very least, interesting. Disturbing pictures of food items don't show up very often, and we're glad for that, but this tomato from Boing Boing deserved a mention for sheer strangeness. Those folks think that this Japanese-grown tomato, which is about three times the size of a normal "Momotaro" tomato, looks like it has a face.

My general feeling is that, while I wouldn't go so far as to say the face has any human characteristics, it does bear a slight resemblance to Audrey II from The Little Shop of Horrors. As much as I like the unusual shapes and sizes that heirloom tomatoes come in, this particular tomato is not one I would want to eat if I found it in my garden.

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They say that fruitcakes improve with age, but that may just be an excuse that non-fruitcake lovers have come up with to avoid eating them. Lance Nesta, a man in Wisconsin, found a 44-year old fruitcake in his mother's attic while cleaning out the house. The cake was shipped to him as a taste of home by his mother and aunt in 1962 while he was in the military and stationed in Alaska. He didn't want the cake (and neither did his military buddies), so he brought it home with him.

It seems like he just should have thrown it away, rather than carrying it all the way back home, if he wasn't going to eat it. Waste not, want not, I guess.... but if you don't want the cake when it's fresh, are you really going to want it after 44 years?

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Sarah may have wanted to attempt the Taco Town Pizza-Crepe-Taco-Pancake-Chili Bag that was made famous in a memorable SNL sketch, but it looks like someone beat her to it. Over at a guy named Drew’s MySpace blog, he and his friends documented their entire process of making the “taco” for Drew’s birthday. Layer upon layer was stacked up, pinned together, dipped in batter and deep fried. Since they didn’t need to take it “to-go,” they skipped the past step of trying to put it in a bag in favor of simply digging it. It actually looks like it wasn’t bad, though the guys don’t look like they felt all that well afterward.

The original SNL sketch is after the jump.

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Early Christmas morning, the Bongo Java coffee shop in Nashville, Tennessee, suffered a break-in. While the shop and register appeared to be undamaged, it's famous NunBun was missing. The cinnamon bun, discovered by the store manager in the 1996, was said to have the likeness of Mother Teresa in its cinnamon-glazed layers of pastry. The bun was preserved in the freezer until a local crew made a short film about it, after which the story was picked up by the city paper and propelled into the national spotlight. After having received so much attention, the bun was coated in shellac and put on display in the shop, where it has enjoyed attention as a local novelty for 9 years.

The shop owner fears that the Immaculate Confection may have been destroyed, since it was so clearly the target of this crime.

[Thanks to Tracy for the tip]

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