A la Rube Goldberg, this rediculous contraption dubbed "Falling Water" was built by Joseph Herscher who, by my guess, must either not be employed, be an idiot savant, not have a girlfriend, or "D" all of the above. In any case, it is really cool to watch.
This is another contraption he built in order to smash a Cadburry Cream Egg called "Cream That Egg." At the end of the video he states that the video was made, "With Support from The World's Most Tolerant Flatmates, 30 Sticks of Hot Glue, and 480 Pints."
If you haven't heard if Improv Everywhere yet, this is a great example of what they do. They are self-described as, "[causing] scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 80 missions involving thousands of undercover agents."
Here is another [non food-related] example.
Buy their book, Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere
Called a viral mini-epic short film about war, Food Fight is the work of Stefan Nadelman of Tourist Pictures. He has done many ads and short flicks, some of which can be watched on his website including spots he's done for, Saturday Night Live, Volkswagen, Maple Leaf Foods, and Mike & Ike candy.
Food Fight takes through some of the more infamous moments of WWII all the way up to the United States' current conflicts in the Middle East. Pretzels gun down matzo with their salt. Hamburgers destroy everything by shooting their pickles. Sushi rolls turn into kamikaze.
It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, but in the end Food Fight shows us how fear for food safety... well, fear for our food's safety. Stefan Nadelman is primarily in the field of motion graphics for film, music videos, and broadcast. Tourist Pictures is located in Portland, Oregon.
Pop up some popcorn and enjoy the show.
Snap, Crackle and Pop are all brothers and they are elves. They were adapted from Kellogg's radio ad and were first illustrated by Vernon Grant in 1933.
Snap is the oldest and is the problem solver, fixing what his two brothers create. Snap sports a chef's hat. Crackle is the fun-loving middle child. Crackle is also the leader of the group and the supposedly, smartest of the three. Crackle wears a red-and-white-striped hat. Pop is the jokester, youngest elf; Pop doesn’t take anything seriously and he wears a band leader's hat.
According to Mental Floss Magazine (2008) "A Second Helping of Cereal Facts" there was a fourth brother, Pow. - "In the 1950s, [Pow] was supposed to represent Rice Krispies’ explosive nutritional value. Sadly, four proved to be one cereal gnome too many, and Pow was given the pink slip."
I grew up on Rice Krispies, usually heaping three or four tablespoons of granulated sugar atop each bowl. I enjoyed the ads as a youngster, but who knows, maybe I would have enjoyed them 33% more had there been Pow...
Interestingly enough, the names Snap, Crackle, and Pop are changed from country to country in order to better fit into each culture, this process is called glocalization. Here are some of them (via the Wiki):
- Belgium - Pif! Paf! Pof!
- Canadian French - Cric! Crac! Croc!
- Denmark - Pif! Paf! Puf!
- Finland - Poks! Riks! Raks!
- Germany - Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!
- Holland - Pif! Paf! Pof!
- Italy - Pif! Paf! Pof!
- Mexico - Pim! Pum! Pam!
- Norway - Piff! Paff! Puff!
- South Africa - Knap! Knaetter! Knak!
- Sweden - Piff! Paff! Puff!
- Switzerland - Piff! Paff! Poff!
- United Kingdom - The mascots were portrayed, for a while, as cows instead of gnomes.
What's your favorite? - I like South Africa's...
From the folks who brought us the Guacamole Song, Rhett and Link, comes the BBQ song. I wish I had enough talent to write funny jingles about food... oh, that would be the life. These two are quite talented and, I believe, are even sponsored by Alka Seltzer. Brilliant!
Best quote from the song?
"Alabama has the strangest thing I've seen in my barbecue days
their barbecue sauce is WHITE, made out of mayonnaise"
The Associated Press reports that Austria's health ministry found detectable traces of cocaine samples of Red Bull Cola energy drinks... keep in mind that this is Red Bull's Cola and not their ubiquitous Energy Drink. They use the Coca leaf as a flavoring but are supposed to remove any cocaine.
Before you go out and buy a case, Red Bull Spokeswoman says that any traces are very slight and do not pose a health risk; and the company maintains that its Cola is "harmless and marketable in both the U.S. and Europe."
So how much did they find? - 0.4 micrograms/liter.
To put things in perspective, the EPA allows a maximum threshold of arsenic in drinking water of 10 micrograms/liter. That's 25 times more than how much cocaine the Austrians found.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Michael Pollan | ||||
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Author Michael Pollan goes on the Colbert Report to explain how the food-industrial complex is destroying what we eat by processing and synthesizing it. He opines on how reducing a complex food down to a single component is fundamentally detrimental to our health.
One of the tenets of his newest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Interestingly, I recently tried Häagen-Dazs' new ice cream that is actually called five. They boast that it only contains five ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks... and then whatever flavor it is. They make it in make Mint, Coffee, Vanilla, Ginger, Passion Fruit, Brown Sugar, and Chocolate and it's good!
Some of the highlights of the Colbert clip include Michael admitting to eating Yodels; how he got "busted" at the supermarket buying Fruity Pebbles, and he blasts infant formula but his mom is in the audience - and she tells him that he wasn't breast fed. Zing!
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Stephen's Fancy Feast | ||||
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Stephen Colbert did again last night, making me laugh out loud in the dark, way past my bedtime. He told America about a recent study done by the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) titled, "Can People Distinguish Pâté from Dog Food?" I think this would be perfect for an Ig Nobel Prize...
This is pure science at its finest. Taken from the Abstract:
"Considering the similarity of its ingredients, canned dog food could be a suitable and inexpensive substitute for pâté or processed blended meat products such as Spam or liverwurst. However, the social stigma associated with the human consumption of pet food makes an unbiased comparison challenging.
To prevent bias, Newman's Own dog food was prepared with a food processor to have the texture and appearance of a liver mousse. In a double-blind test, subjects were presented with five unlabeled blended meat products, one of which was the prepared dog food...
The samples included:
- Canned Turkey & Chicken Formula for Puppies/Active Dogs (Newman's Own®
We took an AMAZING trip to Italy last year and through the mastery of Animoto I was able to pull this video out of my pizza oven... One million "thank you's" to Russ and Avalon Hill for sharing their tuscan villa, Casa Helena, with us - we count the day until we can return...
I hope you enjoy it.
If you haven't heard of Clara Cannucciari yet, you will, and likely in the near future. She is a 93 year YOUNG great-grandmother from upstate New York. Thanks to her grandson/filmmaker, Clara is a You Tube phenomenon and is completely en fuego right now. With 10 videos, she has more than 800,000 views.
Maybe it's the economy that's driving her popularity. She tells us:
"The winters, they were terrible. And that's another thing. We didn't have a refrigerator, so we used to put everything, bury it in the snow outside, that was our freezer. Then we'd say, 'go get the meat, out near the fence, OK?' [she chuckles] That's sad. I'm laughing, but it was sad... Everything was terrible, but we had good food."
She is so adorable:
"I've never used a cutting board. We didn't have all the conveniences of a cutting board and stuff."
Here is one of her recipes; from Episodes 4 and 4.5:
Peppers & Eggs - "You can't have peppers and eggs without bread"
3 Bell Peppers, she uses yellow and red
4 eggs
The recipe comes from her mother. Clara says that, in high school, she once traded her 'Peppers and Eggs Sandwich' with a girl who handed her a Spaghetti Sandwich. She says, "I was so disappointed. Never again. I'm not trading with anybody."
She continues:
"The bag would get all full of oil but everybody wanted our sandwiches. Everybody would have a dry sandwich with salami or ham. We had peppers and eggs. 'Wanna trade sandwiches?' - 'No' she would say, 'we don't want to trade.'"
First you clean out the peppers, take out the seeds, and you slice them long and relatively thin. She says you should keep the seeds, dry them, and plant them so that you have peppers for next year (obviously). Fry the strips in a shallow pan with some oil, with some salt, until they start to brown.
Beat the 4 eggs together with a fork. Pour them over the cooked peppers in the pan. "Then you mix them in until they settle. and then, they're done."
Fresh bread
Flour
Warm water
Yeast
In a large bowl, make a well out of the flour, and crumble the yeast into the middle of the well. Dissolve the yeast by adding water, and knead. Continue adding water and mixing with your hands until it comes to a dry-clay consistency. Cover with a towel and allow for it to rise.
Once the first rise is done, divide the mass into loaves and put into loaf pans. Cover, and allow to rise again. With a knife, make some slits across the top. Bake at 350 until they're golden.
Jon Stewart on his Daily Show poked fun of Baconaise the other night and I was compelled to learn more. Not only is the product Kosher! - but there is a Baconaise Lite, which packs in only 3g of fat per serving, AND they have a chart that explains how using Original Baconaise instead of 3 slices of real bacon - can cut the fat content of a Turkey Club by 50%. Using Baconaise Lite will cut the fat content by more than 85%!
So I suppose the question becomes, "Can Baconaise Save You Life?"
These miracle spreads (dare I call them?) are made by a company called JD Foods. So what else is going on in the heads of these people?
Enter Bacon Salt, "a low sodium, zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and kosher seasoning that makes everything taste like bacon." Interestingly, their mission was to bring the joy of bacon to vegetarians and those who adhere to kosher law.
Is this altruism? Unadulterated genius?
I'll have to try some before I make that call. What makes their story even more bizarre is that their first set of funding came from winning $5,000 on America's Funniest Home Videos.
The salt amazingly comes in 9 flavors: Original, Hickory, Peppered, Natural, Applewood, Maple, Cheddar, Jalapeno, and Mesquite.
(from video) "Bacon needs to pace himself!" - man in bacon suit.
This famous quote by French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) may be more pertinent now than it has ever been. Several recent studies have begun to shed light on the subject of our past and how cooking may have been the single biggest development to help Mankind diverge from apes.
Last year from Wired:
"Some have proposed that it was our high-energy, high-protein and cooked diet that enabled us to fuel our big brains during our evolution," said study co-author Mehmet Somel.
More recently, Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, outlined in a meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) how he believes that it was cooking (and not simply a shift from a plant-based diet to a meat-based diet) that allowed for Homo Erectus to literally feed a larger brain.
I find his logic is sound and it follows like this. The human brain consumes up to 25% of our caloric intake. Ergo, it would require the consumption of either 25% more calories OR for us to more completely digest what we've eaten. He notes three major factors involved with the cooking of food.
- Softens food - In one study, two groups of rats were given different diets: soft pellets and hard pellets. The soft group gained 30% more weight than the hard group after 26 weeks.
- Breaks down starches
- Breaks down and denatures proteins
Quoted from Wired:
"Wrangham cited data showing that cooking increases the body's ability to digest starches (as found, for example, in bread, potatoes and bananas). Only about 50 percent of raw starches are digested, compared to 90 percent of cooked ones. The trend, and the numbers, are similar for protein: from 50 to 65 percent digestibility raw to better than 90 percent cooked."
Referencing the same meeting with Wrangham at the AAAS, the Economist states,
"[Cooking] “denatures” protein molecules, so that their amino-acid chains unfold and digestive enzymes can attack them more easily...That makes it easier to digest, so even though the stuff is no more calorific, the body uses fewer calories dealing with it."
I feel compelled to mention too, that cooking food makes it taste a heck of a lot better! Now get cooking and pass the paprika please...