"weird recipes" news and stories

The idea behind most food websites, food blogs included, is to write about good food. Good recipes, excellent restaurants and tasty products are among the things frequently written up on these sites. Wild Recipes has a slightly different goal, however. The site is dedicated to the weirdest, most outrageous - by which they usually mean disgusting - foods that people actually eat.

Old fashioned scrapple, Rocky Mountain oysters, head cheese and brains are all included on the site, but there are far stranger dishes than the ones that simply involve cooking the less appetizing bits of animals. For example, how would you feel about a Spam milkshake (pictured) with anchovies, mustard and beer? Or would you be likely to put a few slices of Cheddar cheese in your morning coffee then "slurp down the glob of melted cheese" once you've finished off the liquid? Granted, the cheese coffee is unappealing in a way that is different from the "oysters," but that doesn't make it any less disgusting.

Most of the entries have recipes should you be so inclined to try them and there are seven pages of dishes to choose from, and just about all of them are accompanied by a story describing how the submitter first came across the dish.

[via neatorama]

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 PeepBlog is a blog that keeps up with all things in the world of those tasty marshmallow critters. Some people, as it turns out, use them when showing off their car decorating skills, but Peeps are meant to be eaten. PeepBlog has a whole recipe section dedicated to cooking with Peeps. Beginning with how to select the appropriate Peep for your purposes, the cooking section covers basic techniques, including baking, frying, grilling and poaching. Once the basics have been mastered, PeepBlog suggests that you move on to more complex recipes, like Peep Salad and Peep and Sour Sauce, which - apparently - is perfect for kicking up a stir fry.

Is there any end to the usefulness of the Peep?

Looking through older cookbooks is always entertaining. There are almost always lots of interesting illustrations and the recipes themselves even have entertainment value. Betty Crocker’s New Dinner for Two cookbook has some good recipes and some ones whose popularity didn’t last beyond 1964.  The book is geared for anyone who is a "bride, a buisness girl, career wife, or a mother whose children are away from home," so all the recipes serve one or two, with a few large-scale ones thrown in for entertaining purposes. This is the first edition of the book, those subsequent versions were released into the 1980s.

Perfection Salad made me laugh out loud, with a combination of pickles, pimento, celery and cabbage, suspended in lemon-flavored gelatin and served with mayonnaise. I wasn’t tempted by that one. Peanut Crunch Slaw and Tuna and Chips Casserole were not likely to make my mouth water, either. Strawberry Shortcake, Ham and au Gratin Potatoes and Grapefruit and Avocado Salad all sounded fine, though, and I think that I might even be persuaded to try the Pineapple Marshmallow cream.

Seven new "superfoods" have been added to the original list of 14 by Dr. Steven Pratt, the founder of the superfoods movement. Superfoods are generally defined as foods that are incredibly nutrient dense, more so than any other foods. In his new book, Pratt describes the nutritional properties of these foods in detail, as well as naming similar foods, or "sidekicks", which have similar properties. Pratt's seven new superfoods are:

• Pomegranates
• Apples
• Kiwi
• Honey
• Cinnamon 
• Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Dark Chocolate

I wonder if there are any recipes that involve all the superfoods. These new ones seem as though they might be combined into some sort of dessert, but once you have added beans, blueberries, salmon and soy from the original 14, your dish will start to look very unusual, not to mention fairly unappetizing.

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