The more you get into food, especially the fresh stuff, the easier it is to go a little foodie crazy and buy too much. Unfortunately, for me, it's become something of a habit. I'm a sucker for tasty, fresh vegetables, but between busyness and impromptu dinners out, I am often faced with a fridge fool of food about to go bad. But at least I'm consistent, because the fridge-cleaning meal almost always looks like the picture above.

For me, it's always a collection of vegetables, some sort of cheese, and a pesto or similar topping that really needs to be eaten. Without fail, I'll whip up a salad, some toast with topping and cheese, and pull a beer out of my beer fridge. (I realize the Mort Subite doesn't go with the meal, but it was the only bottle that was cold.)

Do you have this same problem? What does your "everything is going bad!" dinner look like?

A product that I'm lumping into the same category as Mr. Bacon Vs. Monsieur Tofu solely based on silliness factor, Tic Tac Toast gives you a new reason to play with your food.

Simply press the stamper into the slice of bread, pop it into the toaster, and out comes the most delicious tic tac toe board you've ever laid eyes on.

The little illustration shows players using jelly and peanut butter as their playing pieces of choice, but we dare you to go crazy and find wacky pairs to play with. Hummus and mayo? Nutella and Marshmallow Fluff? Vegemite and...?

Really, I mean, the possibilities are endless.

OK, this is just plain freaky. When I sit down to eat a meal, I don't want to see its eyes. It reminds me of that Nightmare on Elm Street movie where Freddy Krueger's body had all those writhing faces of his victims. In this pic, all I can think about is the little cereal pieces screaming "help us!" in a high pitched voice.

Though I can imagine the pancakes singing and dancing in an animated Disney movie.

[via Cute Overload]

Mmmmm...toast.

We've all seen some interesting ways of advertising in the past several years, from people selling off their foreheads as a billboard to whole towns changing their names for money. Now comes...Toastvertising! The people behind The Book of Spam (the food, not the annoying e-mails) have created videos to market the book, and each one has clever animation featuring Spam's best friend, toast. Check out one of the videos after the jump.

I know what you're thinking: "toast? How many ways can there to make toast?"

Answer: a lot.

It's still morning and you might want to make something to go along with your coffe or tea, so check out Dr. Toast's Amazing World of Toast. It's a blog filled with great recipes that use toast, including Cinnamon Toast, Beans and Toast, White House Apple Toast, Mushrooms Over Toast, and even something called Toast Espresso, which sounds...well, you make it and let us know how it tastes.

Really fun site. It even has a section on toasters, and you can ask Dr. Toast questions.

I've always been fascinated by how other people live their food lives. This means that I really enjoy cooking with friends, love peeking at the shopping cart contents of strangers and always wanted to check out what my co-workers brought to eat for lunch. This slightly odd trait of mine is why I'm loving a recent addition to my RSS reader.

Simply Breakfast is a site that gets updated just about every weekday (and occasionally on the weekend as well) and features a single image in each post. Every day the picture is of what Jen is having for breakfast that morning. In concept it sounds sort of boring, but Jen is an artist who seems to carefully compose her meal before she snaps the shot. The result is something that is inspiring, appealing and addictive. She's got a new book out that gathers a bunch of her breakfast images together and also has an Etsy shop where you can buy prints of her photos.

Still only existing in concept, this whiteboard/toaster could become the wave of the breakfast future someday soon. Need to leave a note for your partner, but you leave for work before they do? Just scrawl it on the toaster. If they don't see that note, then they'll surely notice it when it appears on their toast (provided they aren't following a low carb diet). I do see a couple flaws in the plan though, like the fact that the writing surface seems awful close to where the heating element would be. So you'd have to wait quite a while between toasts to write a message if you wanted to avoid burning your hand.

This isn't the first time that someone has designed a toaster that leaves an imprint on the toast. This very pink and white Hello Kitty toaster creates toast that has Kitty's image baked in and has the added bonus of being available now.

Thanks KF!

Did you know that "Rarebit" also means "rabbit?" When I was a kid I used to joke around and call the meal "Welsh Rabbit." I had no idea I was actually right.

I also had no idea there were so many variations on the Welsh Rarebit recipe I see my roommate make all the time (and by "make" I mean "cook the frozen dinner version he bought at the supermarket"). A Buck Rarebit has a poached egg on top. The Irish Rarebit is topped with onions, vinegar, and pickles. And English Rarebit has red wine added before you melt the cheese.

Here's the recipe from Alton Brown's Good Eats show. And here's one from Cuisine du Monde. I don't think I've seen two Welsh Rarebit recipes that are the same.

The simplest thing to make for breakfast (not including cereal, since there's no real "cooking" there), is toast. Even if you're using plain old Wonder white, slipping it into a toaster, letting it bronze, then watching it pop out onto a plate, a toaster makes breakfast even the tiniest bit more special.

But! Now it gets even better with fancy toasters. Forget about the silver Oster that's sitting on your counter. Manufacturers and kitchen product designers are getting into toasters, with everything from the design on the outside, to accessories that allow you to "tattoo" your toast, to a concept toaster that's made of glass. Click through on each toaster to see what it's about.

A lot of good eats start out with a piece of toast - or, at least, they can start out with a piece of toast. In On Toast, author Susanna Blake shows us that toast is a great part of not only breakfast, but of many snacks, appetizers, lunches, dinners and even desserts. She also shows us that "toast" can have a broad definition, using bagels, ciabatta, sourdough, rye and many more. Since it is so simple, it is important to start with the best bread you can find, even if it's not quite the kind each recipe recommends, to produce the most flavorful results. Melting Ham and Cheese Croissants are a wonderful option for breakfast or lunch and Eggs Florentine on English muffins area classic. Other recipes include Fresh Fig and Goat Cheese on Walnut Toast, Rare Beef Baguette with Mango Salsa and Nutty Chocolate and Marshmallow Toast for dessert.

In addition to the recipes, the book has many gorgeous illustrations, making this book hard to resist. Make sure to have a loaf of bread on hand when you start flipping through it!

One of my favorite meals of the day is breakfast (my other two favorites being lunch and dinner, of course), both because I happen to love most of the foods served for breakfast, and they always seem to be easy and simple to prepare. "Simple to prepare" however, usually means that it's not all that visually stimulating -- that is, of course, unless you can get really turned on by the artistry of cold cereal in a bowl.

However, I came across Stephanie's Bacon and Eggs and just about fell over at how aesthetically pleasing she made such a simple, everyday dish. Creamy scrambled eggs and crisp crumbled bacon lounge together on a perfect square of toast, and are topped with fragile curls of Asiago cheese.

And what else is cool about this? Stephanie is vegetarian, so while the Breakfast Bite in the photo was served to her family, she made a few for herself with "facon."

We seem to have an odd fascination with toast here at Slashfood, not the browned bread itself, but how people make the somewhat mundane morning meal into something fun. I just came across the Totenkopf Toaster, which imprints a skull and crossbones onto your toast! Sure sure, skulls were a big thing last season in fashion, showing up on everything from rhinestone-bedecked accessories to imprinted on scarves, but that's fashion. And that was also last season. Skulls on food? It kind of makes me think of....poison.

The toaster is available from a German site, so I'm not exactly sure what all the specs are, but at the very least, I do know it costs 32.95EUR.

[via: TasteSpotting]

All sorts of safety issue plague parents and children these days. Playground equipment and activities are carefully monitored and toys are painstakingly screened, especially if, unlike video games, they involve movable parts that the kids might play with too vigorously, thus injuring themselves, or eat, injuring themselves further. When it comes to food, most safety issues have to do with concerns about food allergies, but perhaps in light of the burns allegedly caused by Starbucks hot chocolate in the hands of a very small child, some groups are looking to ban hot drinks altogether, rather than supervise their consumption.

The Pat-a-Cake Playgroup, which meets at a library in Rawmarsh, South Yorkshire in England, has been "banned from serving tea and toast on health and safety grounds." The risk for burns is, apparently, far to high for the city council's liking, so the parents running the group have been told that they cannot boil water in the room where children are present, and that adults must drink their hot drinks in a separate area, far from the children, if not a separate room entirely.

As you can imagine, the parents are considering disbanding the group to escape from the oversight of the council before they demand that children be outfitted in protective gear at all times to avoid papercuts.

I have a confession to make. I don't own a toaster. It's not that I don't like toast, mind you. If I were to own one, it would probably be a chrome number with a decidedly retro feel. But only because the futuristic one pictured here may not be for sale. Not to mention that if it were available, I could neither justify nor afford the price.

Glide, as British designer George Watson calls his toaster, just won a contest called Ceramics for Breakfast over at designboom. As he puts it the bone-china device "brings life and joy to a stagnant domestic appliance." Not only that but you don't have to worry about electrocution, since there's never a need to stick a fork inside to grab your toast.

[via Random Good Stuff]

Jam and honey are the new orange - orange marmalade, that is. The slightly sweet preserve is rapidly falling out of fashion in England. It first gained popularity in England in the 17th century, when citrus fruits became common and the preservation technique used for cooking quinces was applied to them. Since that time the spread has only grown in popularity and, for at least the past several decades, could be considered to be a breakfast staple in many homes. In the last year, however, 440,000 households in Britain stopped buying marmalade. Statistics indicate that the reason for the decline may be younger consumers, as most in the under 45 age group consider it to not be sweet enough. 81% of marmalade is eaten by those over 45.

With the decline of marmalade comes the rise of jam and honey, which grow more popular every year, despite reports last year that indicated that jam, too, was falling from favor. Honey is up almost 5%, while jam is up 1.5%.

Retailers and manufacturers alike are now trying to find ways to draw more children to marmalade