[food] ‘One of the most disgusting meals I’ve ever eaten’: AI recipes tested… A look at the unwelcome rise of the AI Cookbook. ‘I have an even better time with Teresa’s The Ultimate Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook for Beginners. Here I am reminded why proofreaders exist. Something in the AI processing for this book took objection to the word “and”, turning it into “&;” in every instance. It inadvertently leads to beautiful phrases such as “h&ful cori&der” and “using an immersion blender or even by “h&”. We know that AI struggles with hands, but this is ridiculous. The Japanese hotpot I attempt – not obviously anti-inflammatory, like all the other recipes – is one of the most disgusting meals I have ever eaten.’
[food] The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets … How all-you-can-eat buffets operate and why it’s harder to beat the buffet than you might think. ‘Each year, Ovation Brands, the owner of multiple major buffet chains, serves up 85m dinner rolls, 47m pounds of chicken, and 6m pounds of steak – 49.3B calories in total. It is estimated that between 5% and 25% of any given dish will be wasted, either through the buffet’s miscalculation of demand or the diner’s overzealousness. Waste reduction is a key focus of any successful buffet and a frequent tactic is reusing food. “Buffets have always been a landing spot for food scraps,” says Chef Britt. “They call them the ‘trickle-down specials’ – day-old vegetables or beef trimmings can be repurposed into a soup or a hash.”’
[tags: Food, Xmas][permalink][Comments Off on Jay Rayner’s Christmas Food Commandments]
14 December 2021
[xmas] ‘It looks like fresh sewage!’: We taste test Christmas dinner flavoured foods – from soup and crisps to sarnies … Stuart Heritage reviews festive food. ‘Costa sells mac and cheese boxes all year round, and they generally taste like something that gets slid underneath prison doors during budget cuts. But now that it is Christmas, Costa has unveiled its pigs in blankets mac and cheese, which is – brace yourself – regular mac and cheese, but with some cocktail sausages balanced on top. First, this isn’t remotely Christmassy. It’s the sort of thing that restaurants put on children’s menus for kids who don’t yet know how to chew. Second, eating it made me so miserable that my soul gave up and left my body. Thanks a lot, Costa. How nice is it? 1/5’
[tags: Food, Xmas][permalink][Comments Off on The Guardian Reviews “Christmas Flavoured Foods”…]
13 December 2021
[xmas] The Christmas Sandwich Reviews … Feeling Listless is reviewing pre-packed Christmas sandwiches and it reads like a much more personal, tougher (and expensive!) blog project than I ever might have imagined. I think how he feels about festive sandwiches at the end of this will be interesting. ‘When I told the check out person that I’d travelled all the way from Liverpool to visit Booths near Burscough (I’m terrible at small talk) and she gave me the requisite bemused interest, I knew it was probably a good thing I didn’t mention it was just to buy a sandwich because that would have been silly. But nevertheless for the purposes of this survey I did indeed travel to Ormskirk then walk for three quarters of an hour to a non-descript retail park just off the A59 in order to taste what this particular supermarket had to offer in the way of a festive butty…’
[tags: Food, People, Xmas][permalink][Comments Off on Feeling Listless Reviews Christmas Sandwiches]
20 August 2021
[food] Meat-rich diet of 14th-century monks caused digestive issues, research finds … Important historical research into medieval monks laxtative recipes. ‘There is a laxative recipe featuring various fruit extracts. Or a monk can perhaps feel better if they “take a pese of soepe, make hit smale and putt it yn youre fundamewnt and then rest upon your bed”. Carter said he had no intention of trying out the recipes, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were highly effective”.’
[tags: Food, History][permalink][Comments Off on Monks Digestive Issues and 14th-century Laxative Recipes]
30 June 2021
[ldn] Why is central London suddenly full of American sweetshops? … ‘If you walk from Kingdom of Sweets towards Marble Arch, you’ll pass American Candy Land, Worldwide Candy: The House of American Candy and, four doors down from that, the words ‘American Candy’ printed on a blue banner covering an old shop name. Look over the road: there’s Candy Surprise. If you walk back towards Tottenham Court Road, you’ll pass Candy Shop, American Candy, American Candy World, and – if you pop round the corner on to Charing Cross Road – Candy World. That’s nine American sweetshops in just two kilometres. More than one every 250 metres…’
[tags: Food, London][permalink][Comments Off on Why is Central London Full of American Sweetshops?]
18 November 2020
[food] Map of European Culinary Horrors … ‘Europe is littered with disturbing domestic meals. There’s a vast selection of fermented fish in Scandinavia, offal stews on the Balkans, deep fried pizzas in Scotland, sadistically squashed birds cooked under pressure in France, and a variety of dishes made from animal blood across the entire continent. The top spot is reserved for Sardinia, where a special type of sheep cheese, infested with semi-transparent insect larvae, will tickle all your senses in a way you won’t forget.’
[tags: Food, Funny][permalink][Comments Off on Map of European Culinary Horrors]
15 July 2020
[cthulu] Worm found in tonsil of Japanese woman with sore throat … 🙠LOVECRAFT WAS RIGHT! Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! 🦑 ‘The worm was identified as a nematode roundworm – one of several parasites that can infect people who eat raw fish or meat. The 25-year-old patient confirmed that she had eaten assorted sashimi five days before the worm was removed. According to the journal, doctors said the worm was a fourth-stage larva of the worm, adding that the infection had been caused by its younger incarnation as a third-stage larva that was present in her sashimi dish.’
[food] British Food Generator … ‘Ploughman’s Egg
Eaten at breakfast time black pudding recipes vary from place to place, some common choices include fried eggs, sausages, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, bread, tomatoes; options include kippers, baked beans.’
[xmas] Mince pies tasted by baker Alice Fevronia: ‘It screams Christmas’ … Mince Pie Reviews … ‘Very quickly our dynamic reveals itself. Alice loves minces pies – “They’re a pretty integral part of my Christmas,” she admits – whereas I tend to see them as dry and boring and far too much work. She nibbles carefully at the pies, savouring each morsel; my technique is basically to stuff the whole thing in my mouth and then feel sick.’
[pizza] I Staked Out My Local Domino’s to See Just How Accurate Its Pizza Tracker Is … Some quality journalism on an important issue. ‘7:08 p.m. – “PERFECTION CHECK COMPLETE” No, there’s no perfection check. You just put it in the oven ONE MINUTE AGO!!! 7:12 p.m. – The Domino’s Employees Grow Suspicious of Me…’
[tags: Food, Life][permalink][Comments Off on How Accurate is the Domino’s Pizza Tracker?]
21 December 2018
[xmas] How drunk can you get on Christmas food? I breathalysed myself to find out … Stuart Heritage eats himself drunk. ‘With a nice buzz going, I crack open a brandy-loaded Frosty Snowflake iced fruit cake. The report says two slices will get me over the limit – so I hack off a quarter and stuff it into my face as fast as I can. My breathalyser reads 1.2% BAC. Booyah! I am hammered, and it is only 9.47am. You know what? Let’s keep this party going.’ [via Feeling Listless]
[tags: Food, Xmas][permalink][Comments Off on How drunk can you get on Christmas food?]
10 May 2018
[tech] Go Watch The First Pizza Ordered by Computer in 1974 … ‘The first call went to Dominos, which hung up. They were apparently too busy becoming a behemoth. Mercifully, a humane pizzeria — Mr. Mike’s — took the call, and history was made.’
[tags: Food, History, Tech][permalink][Comments Off on Go Watch the First Pizza Ordered by Computer]
7 March 2018
[pizza] How mozzarella became the perfect pizza cheese … A look at the science behind pizza toppings.
‘To investigate, the team sprinkled grated mozzarella, cheddar, colby, edam, emmental, gruyere, and provolone on pizza crusts and baked them in an oven for a set time. Then the pizzas were shunted under a camera to be photographed for computer analysis. The software quantified the colour uniformity of the cheeses, with high uniformity meaning that there were no browned spots. Each cheese was also put through its paces in a standard panel of cheese tests, assessing its stretchiness, moisture content, how much oil it releases as it melts, and at what temperature it melts.’
[tags: Food][permalink][Comments Off on Why Mozzarella is the Perfect Pizza Topping]
23 February 2018
[food] How the sushi boom is fuelling tapeworm infections … Oh, Dear God, Tapeworms! ‘The patient had complained of abdominal pain. During a bout of bloody diarrhoea, reports Bahn, “he says: ‘I look down and I look like there’s a piece of intestine hanging out of me.’ What’s racing through his mind is he thinks he’s dying … He grabs it and he pulls on it and it keeps coming out. ‘What is this long piece of entrail?’ And he picks it up and looks at it and what does it do?” There is a dramatic pause to enhance the horror. “It starts moving.” Bahn said that the tapeworm had probably come from the patient’s daily intake of salmon sashimi. “He told me he was freaked out, but I guess when you think you’re dying because your entrails are shooting out your bottom and you find out it’s not you, but something else, that’s probably a good thing.” The story has attracted attention all over the world, as these things tend to do…’
[food] David Lynch cooks Quinoa … ‘Quinoa is something that I like to have for dinner every chance I get. Start with a pan. And this pan is unbelievable – it’s super heavy and lined with copper. It’s such a good pan. I’m going to go over now and fill this pan at the sink with some fresh water…’
[tags: Food, Movies][permalink][Comments Off on “Start with a Pan…” — David Lynch cooks Quinoa]
[tags: Food, History][permalink][Comments Off on “Ham in Aspic” – Horrendous Vintage Recipes]
2 March 2016
[food] More Realistic Meat Substitute Made From Soy Raised In Brutally Cruel Conditions … ‘“Our vegetarian entrées and meal starters are the most authentically meat-like available on the market, because we make sure our soybeans are raised in filth-caked, overcrowded growing troughs in a windowless facility where daytime temperatures regularly exceed 120 degrees,” said Greenwood Farms marketing director Michael Latimer, adding that the beans’ rich, savory flavor is enhanced by the unsanitary conditions and the regular spread of disease and infection through the crop. “We also make sure our soybeans are pumped so full of a variety of powerful hormones and antibiotics that their growth is boosted far beyond what the plants are capable of naturally, giving our product the same delectable consistency as meat you find at your local grocery store.” “When you sink your teeth into one of our veggie burgers, you’ll know this is the kind of flavor you can only get from soybeans that have never seen actual sunlight,” he added.’
[tags: Food, Funny][permalink][Comments Off on On Making A Realistic Soy Meat Substitute]
22 January 2016
[sweets] Sugarless Gummy Bears Are Not Safe for Humans … how to disrupt your bowels with a few mouthfuls of Gummy Bears … ‘The beginning of the end. The bears opened my lower pod bay door and a gummy hell sprang forth. I made it to the toilet, just barely. My watery shit looked like a blend of bile and egg flower soup.’
[tags: Food][permalink][Comments Off on Sugarless Gummy Bears Are Not Fit For Human Consumption]
15 April 2015
[cheese] Cheese changed the course of Western civilization … How cheese was discovered 9000 years ago by lactose-intolerant nomads. ‘With the discovery of cheese, suddenly those early humans could add dairy to their diets. Cheese made an entirely new source of nutrients and calories available for adults, and, as a result, dairying took off in a major way. What this meant, says Kindstedt, is that “children and newborns would be exposed to milk frequently, which ultimately through random mutations selected for children who could tolerate lactose later into adulthood.” In a very short time, at least in terms of human evolution-perhaps only a few thousand years-that mutation spread throughout the population of the Fertile Crescent.’
[food] Ten of the most impressive food heists … ‘In 2009, a man and woman in New Zealand were arrested after being caught with boxes containing 20 1kg blocks of vacuum-packed cheddar, stolen that morning from a train. As the police chased the couple, cheese was flung out of the vehicle on to the road, in what will probably go down as one of the more bizarre car chases in history. It is said that cheese is the most stolen food type. One report in 2011 went so far as to label the product “high risk” after finding £4.9m of it was stolen in the UK that year alone.’
[tags: Food][permalink][Comments Off on Ten Impressive Food Heists]
[tags: Food, History][permalink][Comments Off on Titanic’s Third Class Food Menu]
14 March 2013
[weird] So Ben & Jerry’s has an actual Graveyard for their Discontinued Flavours … ‘Surrounded by a white picket fence on a grassy knoll, lie the headstones of especially beloved flavours or particularly despised flavours, some that were introduced as early as the late 1970s when the ice cream company was founded, but sadly met their untimely fate. The folks at Ben & Jerry’s are pretty good at word play and each flavour has its own poetic epitaph…’
[tags: Food, Weird][permalink][Comments Off on Ben and Jerry’s Dead Ice-Cream Graveyard]
4 April 2012
[food] The 10 Most Disgusting Foods in the World … some of these have to be seen to be believed… Enjoy! … ‘Balut is a fairly common and unassuming street food available in both the Philipines and Vietnam. It has also earned a widespread reputation as one of the all-time grossest ethnic delicacies. Most of the eggs with which Americans are familiar are unfertilized eggs. The balut, though are fertilized duck eggs, incubated or allowed to grow invitro for a certain length of time, usually a few weeks. Peel back the shell and along with a typical soft-boiled eggy interior is also the small inert body of a fetal duck-small bones, feathers, beak and all, some more developed than others. Most accounts suggest slurping it right from the shell with a pinch of salt.’
[tags: Food][permalink][Comments Off on The 10 Most Disgusting Foods in the World]
12 January 2012
[food] On the impracticality of a cheeseburger … ‘A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors-in all likelihood, a couple of dozen-and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.’
[tags: Food][permalink][Comments Off on The Impracticality Of A Cheeseburger]
28 March 2011
[food] The Greggs Adventure … one man’s epic odyssey to eat and review everything in Gregg’s the Bakers … ‘I actually ate around the bubble of lemon goo, and eventually chowed down the whole lot in one go. Yeah, that’s right. Right now, as I’m typing this, I am tripping balls. I think the comedown in about an hour’s time is going to be one for the books.’
There are many different ways to cook eggs but most of them are purely of interest to invalids, children and the feeble-minded. The correct or ‘proper English egg’ is fried with lightly browned edges in the fat left over from the bacon. At the last minute, oil is flicked over the top of the yolk to seal it. This dangerous procedure causes the yolk to form a perfect, golden, viscid capsule, the violation of which with a rough shard of toast, is the nearest that an Englishman will permit himself to unbridled sexual ecstasy.
[tags: Food, Funny][permalink][Comments Off on How An Englishman Cooks Breakfast]
17 August 2010
[food] Food Bloggers visit an Aberdeen Angus Steak House … ‘Foul, expensive food, served incompetently in dreadful surroundings, Aberdeen Angus is a restaurant with no redeeming features. But then I imagine most of you suspected that already; the really nasty surprise on Friday was just how bad, not just passively mediocre but actively wicked their modus operandi is, and just how successful they are at exploiting naive tourists…’
[tags: Food, London][permalink][Comments Off on A Visit To An Aberdeen Angus Steak House…]
[food] Dip Once or Dip Twice — a food microbiologist examines double dipping at parties as practiced by George in Seinfeld … ‘On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip. Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.’ [via Kottke]
[food] Using McDonalds’ As Pizza Toppings … ‘This is a culinary Frankenstein cooked by Bizarro, a crude combination of deliciousness into an artery-jamming fatty Voltron. The thing is, I would totally eat it. You would, too, stop lying.’ [via iamcal.com]
[tags: Food, Weird][permalink][Comments Off on Using McDonalds’ As Pizza Toppings]
12 October 2007
[food] Fraser Lewry’s Animal Alphabet — Fraser of Blogjam attempts to eat an animal for each letter of the alphabet … ‘I’m a) not allowed to use Latin names, and b) if I’m struggling to come up with an animal beginning with ‘R’, for instance, I’m not allowed to use “ring-tailed lemur” because all lemurs are filed under ‘L’. Not that I’d eat lemur, of course, because they’re an endangered species, which brings me to c) no endangered species.’
[food] Fancy pizza twice a day, every day? — the Guardian on Tony Benn and his love of pizza… ‘On Tuesday September 9 2001, his diary records, Tony Benn went shopping. Specifically, he went looking for his “favourite triple-cheese pizzas”, which had inexplicably disappeared from the shelves of his local supermarket. “I have,” he notes, “eaten two of them every day for years.” At first glance, this revelation may appear to raise important questions as to the continued health of our treasured Last Living Socialist, the only triple-cheese pizza commonly available from UK supermarkets being, as far as I can see, the Chicago Town Deep Dish Triple Cheese Pizza, which costs £1.65 for two at Tesco and contains, according to the Food Standards Agency, a healthy 30% of a person’s recommended daily fat intake per portion.’
[politics] Margaret Thatcher and Ice Cream: ‘Fans of the Mister Softee style have Margaret Thatcher [..] to thank. She was one of the team of chemists at J Lyons who first developed soft frozen ice cream.’ [via boundr]
[food] Pepto-Bismol Ice Cream — Blogjam creates a unique hangover cure … ‘I revisit the Pepto-Bismol website, where are glance at the FAQ section reveals a previously unheralded paragraph: “Some people feel refrigerating makes the dose more pleasing to take, and that’s OK. However, you shouldn’t freeze the product.” Whoa! Waddya mean no freezing? I’ve just made ice-cream!’
[tags: Food, Funny][permalink][Comments Off on Cure Your Hangover With Pepto-Bismol Ice Cream]
[tags: eBay, Food, Xmas][permalink][Comments Off on For Sale: One Cooked Brussel Sprout]
8 December 2005
[food] The London Review of Breakfasts — a guide to the best breakfasts in London… ‘We love the hungry hours of anticipation before we decide on a venue. We love the splendid taste of expertly cooked, herb-filled sausages, the aromatic texture of crispy bacon, the burst of yellow yolk as a knife breaks the surface tension. We love piping hot beans, buttered toast and squidgy grilled tomatoes. We love to wash it all down with a reassuring cup of tea…’ [Related: eggbaconchipsandbeans]
[tags: Food, London][permalink][Comments Off on The London Review of Breakfasts]
4 December 2005
[food] Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good — exerpt from Fast Food Nation … ‘[As] he opened each bottle, I dipped a fragrance-testing filter into it — a long white strip of paper designed to absorb aroma chemicals without producing off notes. Before placing each strip of paper in front of my nose, I closed my eyes. Then I inhaled deeply, and one food after another was conjured from the glass bottles. I smelled fresh cherries, black olives, sautéed onions, and shrimp. Grainger’s most remarkable creation took me by surprise. After closing my eyes, I suddenly smelled a grilled hamburger. The aroma was uncanny, almost miraculous — as if someone in the room were flipping burgers on a hot grill. But when I opened my eyes, I saw just a narrow strip of white paper and a flavorist with a grin.’
“Famed Fish Chef” Aldo Zilli: ‘You would boil it. You need the largest pot in the world. Boil it for 10 hours with lots of wine corks to tenderise the squid – and I don’t mean plastic corks, I mean cork corks – then leave it in the same water for five hours to cool down. Take it out, cut it up in small pieces – you’ll need a very, very, very sharp knife. Soak the tentacles separately in cold, salted water for a couple of hours, because that’s where the sand is. Boil those as well; red wine is a good source of tenderising, so use a couple of bottles of chianti and leave to rest in the juice. Take it out, cut it up, then sauté in garlic and chilli and serve with coriander and a nice sauvignon blanc.’
[food] Blogjam’s Garden Snail Risotto — Fraser hunts, farms, kills and eats some lovely creatures from his garden… Sounds Delicious! … ‘And into the pan they go. Reluctantly ignoring their silent snail screams, I boil them gently for ten minutes. Rather strangely, the water turns yellow, but I can’t find any reference to this on the Internet – I’m hoping it’s not some kind of toxic gastropod secretion, but only history will tell…’
[via 