By Pervaiz Shallwani
We're big proponents of buying local when possible and just spied some curious data about 5,500 iPhone users buying a $3 Locavore app (created by a Slashfood friend) in a mere month. It tells iPhone addicts what's in season, what's en route and where nearby farmers' markets are located.

Whoa. We wondered what other yummy things we could do if we got with the times and finally embraced an iPhone for our foodie needs. Boy, were we shocked. There are hundreds of free and paid downloads including one for beer, one for soda and a fast-food meal calorie counter.

Not only are food nerd darlings Serious Eats, Food Network and Yelp at our fingertips, so is the FDA with food recall news (though their freebie Twitter also works), a guide to finding cheap or free kids' meals at nearby eateries and Twecipe, which matches the dregs of those fridge contents to a recipe.

All this edible ammo available at the touch of a button makes us wonder whether Googling our munching needs is becoming just so 2008 and whether we should cave to the iFeed – er, iPhone -- trend. Have you?

Always on the cutting edge of innovation, Google has done it once again, attempting to make drunken emails a thing of the past.

Equally dangerous for making your friends think you are a bad speller or a lush, drunken emails can be especially devilish since, unlike a drunk dial, a drunken email will forever linger in your sent items folder for you to read and re-read. Even worse, they can be embarrassingly forwarded to other friends or your sponsor.

So here's the deal: You enable Mail Goggles in Gmail, you choose the days and times you are most likely to be intoxicated (sorry, no "select all" button) and you choose a difficulty level. Every time you attempt to send an email during your specified hours, you'll be prompted to answer a series of math questions to verify your sobriety. Cool, huh?

Next up, a program to keep you from throwing your computer across the room when you can't figure out what 37 + 19 equals.

[via the Official Gmail Blog]

My mother has a term for any food product that she deems unhealthy. She calls it an "instant coronary." It can refer to anything from a mound of onion rings to a big, juicy steak. When I first saw this picture, I immediately heard her voice in my head, labeling these Krispy Kreme cheddar bacon cheeseburgers as such.

I've seen other instances in which a Krispy Kreme is used as a bun for a burger. However, never before have I seen one that is also piled high with bacon and cheese. It seems so wrong that in its deviance, it becomes right once again.

These particular Krispy Kreme burgers were made at the Google NYC cafeteria, so they weren't wildly available. However, did any Slashfood readers get to try one? How were they?



[via Hopeless Geek]

One of the (many) perks of working for Google is that they offer free gourmet meals to all their employees at 17 different cafes across their sprawling network of offices. One discerning Google employee has made something of a name for himself within the company through his regular food recommendations and reviews that he posts to an internal email list for the culinary edification of his co-workers. He's become so well known in the Google community when it comes to food that he was asked to join the committee responsible for hiring the chefs.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published an article about Thunder Parley, this notable Google food reviewer, in their workplace section. It's a fun read, not only for his story, but also as a peek into the world of free Google food.

[via The Morning News]

Google is known for providing their employees with lots of perks, including good food for lunch. The Google cafeteria is quite well known at this point, offering everything from childhood favorites to top quality gourmet entrees. It is safe to say that prepacked sandwiches on either stale or slightly mushy bread will never make their way into the mouths of Google employees during lunch time.

If you're curious as to what exactly the Google employees are eating on their breaks, take a look over at the Google Food Photo Blog, a collection of snapshots that chronicle the continually impressive eats at the tech company. Breakfast or dessert might be house-made yogurt and house-made granola, while lunch could be anything from Baby Bok Choi Sandwiches with mushrooms and a baby beet salad to kebabs and naan with mango lassi.

You might not want to check it out before your own lunch break, though, just in case you decide that suddenly your own lunch looks a lot less impressive.

[via growabrain]

I love Krispy Kremes, bacon and burgers, too, but I've never tasted the abomination, er, delicacy, pictured here. But only because until today, I didn't know any place nearby to sample this artery-clogging, waist-broadening wonder. After all, I ate a hot, unglazed Krispy Kreme for an article I wrote about the company years ago. I wouldn't recommend it. Talk about heart-stopping.

If I lived anywhere near a certain minor league baseball park or was friends with a certain R&B vocalist, I'd surely have tried one of these things by now. This miracle of modern griddle work is now being served at Google's New York City cafeteria. Now all I need to do is find a good cardiologist and get a job with Google.

Have you ever had an IT'S IT ice cream sandwich? The all-caps treat has been a San Francisco favorite for almost 80 years. It sandwiches a scoop of vanilla ice cream between two soft oatmeal cookies, and the whole thing is dipped in chocolate, making one of the finest ice cream sandwiches you can buy.

The version that you can't buy is even better, though.

Google had their chef, Nate Keller, work with IT'S IT to make a trans-fat free version that is all natural and made with locally sourced ingredients. This Google version went on sale is free in the employee cafeteria, complete with Google logo on the wrapper.

Perhaps we'll all get to sample this new version in the future, but for now we'll have to content ourselves with the classic. You can order them online from the factory, and get overnight delivery anywhere in the US. If you can get ahold of them and you ask nicely, maybe the Google cafeteria would be willing to ship their version, too.

I was Googling a few recipes when an unexpected thing came up on my screen: new search boxes. As you can see from the screenshot above, Google has created a neat way to search for recipes by ingredient and cuisine.

It turns out that this is just an updated version of Google Base, which Andrew mentioned some months ago when the program was still in its infancy. I didn't find this feature to be nearly as helpful as Cooking with Google. My search for "beef" and "american" gave me a bunch of links to Epicurious, so it really would have been more useful to go right there, while "beef" and "usa" turned up results from www.fooddownunder.com for some reason.

The problem is that, even though there is an option to search by "course," you can't really narrow your options down at all. The "ingredient" category is limited to one option and it is one of a preset drop-down menu. All things considered, the system needs a lot of refinement to make it user friendly. And to set it apart from existing resources, they might want to consider indexing less-accessed sites that have a lot to offer, such as food blogs.

As if we didnt have reason enough to love/hate the infinite empire, Google, the company's headquarters in Mountain View has opened Cafe 150 to feed its droves of employees.

Google has taken corporate cafeteria's to the next level by providing healthy, organic, non-cafeteria-ish food in a cafeteria setting. Service is still on trays. Head Chef Nate Keller named the cafeteria "150" because he is dedicated to sourcing ingredients for everything on the menu from within 150 miles of the Google campus. It is google's way of supporting the ideas of sustainable, local, and organic that is so important to the Bay Area food culture. Chefs are encouraged to be creative with menus, which may have up to 100 different recipes a day.

As if we weren't already envious of the free food that comes out of Google's cafeterias, today's SF Chronicle features a story about the internet giant's latest eatery, Cafe 150. Apparently, the "150" comes from the restaurant's pledge to source all of its ingredients locally, within 150 miles. Aside from being a plus for Google's employees, rumored to number around 4,000, the new restaurant may also be a welcome addition as a buyer from local organic farms. The Chronicle goes on to give a thorough background of Google's food-service program, including the fact that it was spearheaded by the former caterer for the Grateful Dead. Where are the Google goo balls?

[Photo: Craig Lee/Chronicle]

Steve Petusevsky tells the story of an "unusual" hiring process at Google. No, he wasn't asked to recite three dozen decimals of pi. He was asked to cook a full-course meal for 35 "Googlers" at the corporate cafeteria. Kind of a not-for-TV Silicon Chef. He was "blown away" by the vastness of the kitchen, with amenities that included a walk-in just for condiments.

His menu: "edamame hummus, Bahamian chicken chowder, sun-dried tomato agnolotti with roasted mushroom fra diavolo sauce, Indonesian seared rock shrimp salad with Asian slaw, Ligurian stuffed petrale sole, giant baked stuffed portobellos with asiago cheese, baked tofu with mango-macadamia crust, streusel stuffed plums with candied ginger and balsamic pomegranate reduction." He posts the recipe for his edamame hummus - I can't wait to see if he progresses to the next stage in the competition! [via A Full Belly]