A word to the wise. If you've just stolen the box of doughnuts you're eating, it is probably not particularly smart to offer said doughnuts to the officers who are investigating the robbery.
A new grocery store in the Giant chain opened Willow Grove, PA yesterday that is the size of two football fields and has a babysitting center, a cooking school, an on-site nutritionist and valet grocery pick-up. Who knew that grocery stores were becoming the next place for family entertainment.
It's Leap Day, and zoos and animal organizations across the world are kicking off "Year of the Frog," which aims to highlight the impact of global warming and pollution on our amphibian friends. In honor of the cause, here's a rundown of some notable frog-themed foods (though nothing containing actual frog, that seemed a bit crass):
Freddo Frog - An Australian treat since the 1930s, this chocolate cartoon frog is made by Cadbury and comes in different flavors and fillings. Weird note: I bought an aquatic frog from the pet store when I was seventeen and named him Freddo, with no knowledge of the Australian candy connection. Guess it's just a good name for a frog. Freddo's still alive.
Haribo Frogs - the white, marshmallowy underbellies are my favorite part of these lime-flavored German gummies.
Frogaroni - frog-shaped pasta, in regular and spinach green.
Frog Cake - Little sponge cakes coated in fondant and decorated with froggy features are a specialty of the South Australian city of Adelaide.
Broccoli forests sprouting from powdered cumin soil. A cauliflower coral reef. A pea pod boat drifting on a sunset sea of pink salmon.
London photographer Carl Warner constructs elaborate landscapes made completely of food, from mozzarella clouds to an entire village sculpted from chunks of Parmesan. There's a photo gallery of his work up on the BBC website. It looks look ultra-time consuming and amazingly cool.
We clearly have a deep-seated fascination with edible landscapes - think about the candy testing room in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with its lollipop plants and chocolate river, or the lunch pail trees in Return to Oz. Or remember the town of Chewandswallow, where it rained juice and snowed mashed potatoes in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a seminal text for the (4-year old) budding foodie?
Anyway, check out the photos. They'll have you gnawing on the nearest tree limb.
When people are bored, they come up with all sorts of unusual experiments that, if otherwise occupied, perhaps they wouldn't ordinarily try. There is little doubt that this has led to some great discoveries over the years, but this particular one is probably unlikely to have widespread cultural ramifications. It involves Jello and the question of whether or not it can be nailed to a wall.
I won't keep you in suspense. Jello - or jelly if you're not from the US - cannot be nailed to a wall in its standard form. When prepared according to package directions, the amount of gelatin that gives the food its signature "jiggle" is not enough to hold it together when nailed to a board. If you live somewhere where you can purchase concentrated jelly/Jello cubes, however, you will find that it can easily be nailed to a wall.
It's something of a mystery as to where the FOX network gets some of their programming ideas, so the original inspiration for this particular segment is anyone's guess. Since Takeru Kobayshi can out-eat just about anybody, FOX decided to have him face off against a Kodiak bear - an 8-ft tall, 1000-lb animal - in a hot dog eating competition.
The clip is pretty funny, actually. The announcers treat it almost like a wrestling match and the best line is when they start to talk about the bear's technique vs. Kobayashi's. "[The bear] has a very different approach to eating. See, he looks away and he takes a break. He doesn't know it's a competition. He's just a natural eating machine." For his part, Kobayashi definitely knew it was a competition and didn't take his eyes off the bear.
Who emerged victorious? You'll have to watch the clip to find out, but I will say that someone is already eagerly awaiting a rematch.
If you're a fan of GroceryLists.org, have a look at WeirdFortuneCookies.com. Unlike the fortune cookie messages written by Penn and Teller ("That lump is cancer"), these are all supposedly real. The collection isn't huge, but it appears that its curator has been at it sporadically since 2000. The one above is one of my favorites so far, along with "A woman who seeks to be equal with men, lacks ambition. Don't touch that," and "Confucius say: you have heart as big as Texas." Oddly enough, the "in bed" rule still seems to work.
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.
Pity Robert Wood. The Scot has a problem: he cooks in his sleep. According to an
article in the Sydney
Morning Herald, Wood routinely sleepwalks, but the real problem comes when he gets into the kitchen and
starts whipping up dishes - and he's not just heating up soup. His wife, Eleanor, has caught him making
omelettes and spaghetti bolognese in his sleep. As expected, the couple is a bit worried that Rob is
gonna burn down the house. "Every night, I have to think, 'Is Rob going to cook?'" says
Eleanor. And no - no mention of Ambien in the piece.
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?
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?
Fosfor gadgets has the top 10
weirdest USB drives, which include many food shaped entries. From sushi to shu mai dim sum to shrimp, you'll
be able to express your favorite foods--USB style. A lot of this reminds me of the plastic food items usually seen on
the window displays of Japanese restaurants. So plastic-y, yet so tasty. Mmm.
We know there's always been weird food out there,
ever since man first started pounding tiny bits of grain to make a fine powder, mixing it with naturally-occurring
bacteria and warm liquid expressed from an animal, letting it sit for a couple of hours, heating it up, and eating it
(boy, bread's weird, isn't it?).
But there are some places that even we, jaded food lovers that we are, don't
imagine finding food. Let's take wounds, for one. In 2005, Slashfood discovered the Bacon bandaids. Take data storage
devices, for two. This week we learned of the strange-yet-wonderful sushi USB drives. Then, there's your
lips, who see a lot of food, on the way in. But they don't see much food, well, just sitting around healing your
wind-burned kisser. Now they can, thanks to Cheetos chapstick. You think these are weird?
That is so not all.
Nir Adar is a food stylist and artist based in New York
who has a wonderful
website full of interesting and odd food images. I especially like his series of food balls. Basically, he takes
different food items—like fried eggs, cereal, or tomatoes—and melds them together into a ball structure. I
theorize that at the center of these balls are Styrofoam, and the food items are glued on. Although, I would think some
of these items wouldn’t stick very well with glue, like the eggs.
A word to the wise. If you've just stolen the box of doughnuts you're eating, it is probably not particularly smart to offer said doughnuts to the officers who are investigating the robbery. 
It's Leap Day, and zoos and animal organizations across the world are kicking off "
When people are bored, they come up with all sorts of unusual experiments that, if otherwise occupied, perhaps they wouldn't ordinarily try. There is little doubt that this has led to some great discoveries over the years, but this particular one is probably unlikely to have widespread cultural ramifications. It involves Jello and the question of whether or not it can be nailed to a wall.
![[photo: www.coles.com]](http://www.slashfood.com/media/2006/03/spaghetti_bolognese.jpg)
Pity Robert Wood. The Scot has a problem: he cooks in his sleep. According to an
article in the 
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.
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, 
Fosfor gadgets has the 
We know there's always been weird food out there,
ever since man first started pounding tiny bits of grain to make a fine powder, mixing it with naturally-occurring
bacteria and warm liquid expressed from an animal, letting it sit for a couple of hours, heating it up, and eating it
(boy, bread's weird, isn't it?).
Nir Adar is a food stylist and artist based in New York
who has a 
DIY Foods: Making homemade sausage
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
