B52 on ice. Photo: quinn.anya, Flickr

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Instead of grabbing that blue-gelled cold pack for your little cooler, make some all-natural ice packs.

With a little forethought, ice cubes can be more than just rapidly melting beasts that dilute your drinks.

On a recent trip to Singapore I fell hopelessly in love with the unholy, neon-colored love child of a Sno-Cone and a Jell-O salad, also known as the ais kacang.

The ais kacang is wildly popular in Singapore and Malaysia (where it's sometimes called an "ABC"), served in outdoor food centers and in mall food courts countrywide. In its most basic iteration, it consists of a scoop of roughly shaved ice drizzled with varicolored sugar syrups and evaporated or condensed milk sitting on a nest of corn kernels, red beans and cubes of herb jelly or gluey sago pearls.

It's the hyperstimulating carnival of desserts, with every texture -- Crunchy! Chewy! Icy! Glutinous! Creamy! -- and dozens of flavors exploding in your mouth all at once. Some versions even include a scoop of ice cream or a pile of fresh mango or (eeek!) durian. More is more, right?

Never mind that it's still 45 degrees and raining here; I've been craving ais kacang as if it's midsummer in Southeast Asia. So I decided to make my own. I simply ground up ice in my food processor and doused it with Torani raspberry syrup (the kind you use to make Italian soda) and a milk syrup I'd made by cooking evaporated milk with brown sugar. I omitted the corn and beans, but next time I'll try adding some sago pearls or chopped fresh berries.

Well, it seemed like we may as well get the obvious punchline over with right at the beginning. Mocha, a UK company with a eccentric home gadget line--specializing in items like Swarovski crystal egg crackers and mugs with built-in cookie holders--now offers these tres barbarique drink coolers. The Nordic Rock stone ice cubes are genuine chunks of "pollution-free base rock" mined in Sweden--who else would invent this but some kind of Viking?

Just pop the Nordic Rocks (in their charming leather pouch) into your freezer (or igloo) for an hour, then drop two or three into your cocktail. On the practical end, they help conserve water and prevent your precious booze from being diluted. Impractically, you get to walk around drinking from a glass full of rocks--whether you use the opportunity to play practical jokes or share your best Hagar the Horrible/Kirk Douglas in The Vikings impersonation is up to you.

If you've ever wanted to learn how to write about food and turn that knowledge into a career, then Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) has introduced just the thing for you. They've created the Center for Food Media, which offers a range of professional development classes dealing with food and media.

The Center for Food Media offers classes on all aspects of food writing (recipes, blogs, restaurant reviews), food history and pop culture, podcasting, and food styling. You can also learn about writing cookbooks and how to deal with agents, and how to be a TV chef. Coming next year will be classes on wine writing and recipe testing. Classes start at $75 (for a one session class), which is a quite reasonable amount to learn some things that should help further your career.

[Via Eater]

Have you ever stashed a Coke in the freezer, hoping to chill it quickly, then forgotten all about it, only to have it explode all over your frozen peas?

I'm always cold. My mom worries that this is do to some circulatory problem. I think this it is due to me being a woman.

I have often wondered why ice comes in every drink I order. In the winter I've typically just come in from the outdoors and I'm freezing. The last thing I want is ice. In the summer, air conditioning is often so strong that I'm freezing indoors and again I don't want ice.

I'll tell you when I want ice - when it's hot! I like ice when I'm working or playing outside and sweating.

Mark Twain was quoted as saying, "The only distinguishing characteristic of the American character I've been able to discover is a fondness for ice water."

Do you like ice? Why do you think Americans like their ice so much?

I hardly ever freeze anything. I mean, yeah, I freeze that I buy frozen and are supposed to be put in the freezer, like ice cream, frozen dinners, and, um, ice. But I've just never been the type of guy who freezes leftovers or freezes foods to be used for another day. I guess I'm a cook-it-and-eat-it guy.

AOL Food (from Real Simple) has a guide to everything you need to know about freezing though, including tips on how to prevent freezer burn (you can eat food that has freezer burn, just make sure you cut off the part that has the discoloration).

They also have a list of foods that should never be frozen, including cake batter, raw celery, corn on the cob, garlic, and mayonnaise. Though I can't even think of why you'd want to freeze mayonnaise. "Frozen Mayo" is a great name for a band though.

Ice isn't just ice. At least when it comes to your cocktails. If you're going to be using premium spirits and premium mixers, then you should think about your ice as well. Ice has become a topic of much discussion by top mixologists and cocktailians around the world. Designer ice is becoming the rage.

The first thing to consider is what type of water? Filtered, spring, mineral, etc. Many high end bars are using premium bottled water like Fiji water. Others are using filtered and triple distilled water.

The next is the size and shape of the cube. Crushed ice melts fast and is great for soda, but not in a cocktail. Hand chipped ice is great because you can control the size of the chips. Larger pieces melt slower and also can help with muddling citrus or mint into the drink. Also it looks great as it sparkles and reflects in the drink. Some places are trying different shapes such as large cubes and spheres. These have large surface area, but melt slow, so they chill the drink but don't water it down too fast.

So it all depends upon the purpose you plan to use the ice for. Small pieces for cooling fast and watering down the drink. Middle size pieces for tall drinks like a G&T or for shaking in cocktails. Large, regular sized and shaped pieces for a fine spirit on the rocks, so it chills it but doesn't water it down too much.

Legos are an icon of childhood for most of us, whether you were the one building elaborated fantasy worlds or your children are/were. Like just about every other product you can think of, Lego seizes just about any opportunity for merchandising that it sees and has moved out of the playroom and into the kitchen. Earlier this year, we saw some Lego Eggos, but now the company is offering us real kitchen gear, like ice cube trays shaped like Legos and salt and pepper shakers shaped - somewhat disturbingly - as Lego-men heads. They also have a Lego Apron, which is not made of Legos, but features the classic body of a Lego person on it, a set of Lego coasters and Lego corkscrews for opening wine (probably not something you want your kids to see in case they mistake them for toys).

All this Lego gear is a lot of fun to have around and definitely gives a new twist to playing with your food. The only way that this stuff could be more fun is if the ice cubes were stackable, though it should only take a little water to get them to stick together long enough to build a small tower. You'll need more than one tray for a fort.

Salad-On-Ice is not a failed icecapades routine. It is a well-designed bowl that might just be the perfect salad server.

There is nothing worse than a bowl full of lettuce that sits out at room temperature too long and looses its crunch. Salads should be crisp and refreshing (although some might be a little worried about eating lettuce at the moment), but you can't keep running back and forth to the refrigerator for seconds and third helpings, especially not when you are entertaining. Salad-On-Ice is a bowl that has a hollow stand designed to be filled with crushed or cubed ice to keep salads cold and fresh throughout an entire meal, even during a hot summer barbecue. It is made of shatter-resistant acrylic and comes with a lid and a pair of serving utensils.

The bowl would also work well for fruit salads, pasta salads or even chilled desserts, like trifle.

[via cribcandy]

Pumpkin season is coming up and without getting in to GMO pumpkins and the nutritional value of ice cream, let's get imaginative and make some pumpkin ice cream, served in a creative way.

• You'll need an ice cream maker (there are even ball shaped models that can be kicked around at partie, though I have never tried one) and a good pumpkin grown for its meat, rather than just its appearance.

• This can be a family endeavor-- messy. In this typical ice cream recipe I would add two cups of good and mashed pumpkin meat. Not too stringy. Make the ice cream and then serve it the carved out pumpkin, lid and all.

Shaved ice doesn't seem to be quite as popular as it once was, perhaps due to the huge surge in popularity that ice cream enjoyed when the concept of mix-ins became popular. After all, you can't really mix smashed up candy bars into a bunch of ice and get the same effect. Shaved ice is still a great summer treat, though. A pile of ice doused with flavored syrup is tasty, cooling and (in what seems to be a huge selling point for kids) will often turn your tongue different colors. This electric ice cream shaver allows you to make shaved ice at home, quickly grating ice cubes into fluffy ice shavings waiting for flavorings.

The biggest drawback to making this treat at home is that it can be hard to find syrups. Torani syrups can be used to make great snow cones and come in over 50 flavors. Get watermelon and root beer for the kids and something more grown up, like creme de cacao or amaretto, for yourself. You can also try making shaved ice without syrups using a fresh berry topping or a vodka-spiked flavoring.

And we're not talking about diamonds. This is water that is being sold in pre-packaged "trays" to be frozen into ice.

Nicole mentioned before that pre-packaged ice cubes were hitting the market - Ice Rocks is a company out of Canada that sells water that is already packaged into "trays' that you stick in your freezer to...well, make ice.

Now another company has the same idea with a product called Aqua Ice.

In the end, it averages out to about ten cents per ice cube, but the makers aren't touting it for convenience. They say that the packaged ice tastes better because they are made from filtered or purified water. Most people, they must assume, make their "homemade ice" from tap water. Thus, they reason that people who care enough to drink bottled water should be using pre-packaged ice. But then again, I thought most people were drinking bottled water for convenience.

Oh well, if people are willing to pay $4/gallon for gas and $2/bottle for water, $0.10/cube for ice doesn't seem so bad.