"odd" news and stories

I think this package says it all. I picked up a pound of maple sausage, the delectable links that my family has always called "breakfast sausage" without allowing a title to limit our consumption. No, we eat it from dawn 'til dusk, despite its moniker.

Evidently, Fred Meyer (our local grocery and part of the Kroger gi-nomerate) is worried that the name "breakfast sausage" will limit more conservative families to (horrors!) eat it only during breakfast. They've changed the label so it reads, "maple flavored sausage" and "delicious anytime!"

Thank you, Fred Meyer, for freeing us -- and our sausages -- from the shackles of breakfast.

The Japanese have had square watermelons for a while. Due to lack of space, the most pragmatic thing to do to a watermelon is, well, to square it. These edgy melons come at a price of $82 each. I'm not sure on what occasion I would buy a watermelon if it were that expensive, but it sure wouldn't be for a quick snack!

Now, the Japanese have innovated again with pyramid-shaped watermelons. I'm a little confused about the practical applications of this--perhaps one could stack more watermelons in a given space by interleaving them.

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A Japanese sake company noticed that its master brewers always had such nice skin! So Ozeki asked 11 employees to drink sake (270 millileters, to be exact) and measure the moisture in their skin before and after. Moisture content of their arms grew by 30%, compared to no change when drinking another alcoholic beverage.

The employees may have gotten sloshed, but it was for a good cause! Now several Japanese companies are developing sake-based skincare products. Evidently, there are 36 active substances in the sake-derived extracts produced by Yushin-Brewer, which contains koji mold, lactic acid bacteria and yeast. Yushin-Brewer is also making an anti-ulcer product. And I have no idea how that relates to having moist skin, but there you go.

I think I'd rather just get the lovely skin effects from drinking the sake. You?

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It's hip to eat savory ice creams, and if you go to a food festival you're bound to see something in the creamy, cold category no matter what the topic - even, yes, garlic. But octopus, that's an ice cream I've never either (a) tried or (b) cared to try. Jason from Damn Interesting agrees, and says: "damnit, we have to draw a line, and Octopus Ice Cream would have to be on the far side of that line."

Watch Iron Chef and you're bound to see some strange ice creams. Sure, sure, that's a spur-of-the-moment exercise in bizarro creativity. But this is a packaged variety available commercially. Does it sell? Has anyone tried it?

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