Borrowedmind

Photograph: Beautiful/Decay

The Japanese are known for giant monsters and cute things; this sculpture by artist Kozoo combines the two in this sculpture, SmileCake,HappyCake in Roppongi, Tokyo. The yellow cake topped with an enormous strawberry is accompanied by an equally large fork; good thing, now when Godzilla stops by he'll have something to eat with. Additional pictures below.

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Photograph via 9gag.

Out west, they start 'em young: SFGate's parenting blog The Poop somewhat oddly, somewhat awesomely has a review of the new 7-Eleven beer, Game Day. Oh, goody, what words of wisdom does SFGate have for Bay Area parents to bestow upon the drinkers of tomorrow?

• "It was once strongly suggested by my bosses not to drink and update our Twitter/Facebook accounts."
• "I felt weird paying with a five dollar bill. Next time I buy Game Day beer I'm definitely dropping a handful of nickels, dimes and pennies, a crumpled up dollar and a subway token on the counter."
• "In short, Game Day is a great beer to drink if you're going to drink more than 11."
• "Would I have bought this when I was 21 years old and just sold a few compact discs and a pint of my blood so I would have money to get drunk on the weekend? Sure."

SFGate: looking out for America's youth.

—Paula Forbes

Jamaica, or Hibiscus calyces for tea. Photograph: Reed Spirito

Last night, I went to see Diana Kennedy, self described "ethnogastronome" and author of many seminal volumes on Mexican cooking, speak at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas in Austin. Part of a series on Mexican Foodways celebrating the Mexican Bicentennial, the talk was titled "Unknown Gastronomy of Mexico" and was based on her research for her new cookbook titled Oaxaca al Gusto (buy it), out in September.

I know I shouldn't beat myself up about this too much as the talk was on "unknown" dishes, but having lived in Texas for four years, I humored myself I knew a little bit about Mexican food. I can make salsas that doesn't use tomatoes! I have a kick-ass carnitas recipe! I made tamales, once! Turns out, I know absolutely nothing; jokes about things like atoles and epazote were met with dull ears (mine) and appreciative laughter (everyone else). My education in the real Mexican cuisine begins, in addition to some choice quotes from Ms. Kennedy, below.

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This is the sort of salad to make when you come across the tiniest of baby carrots. Carrots that fall somewhere between a chopstick and a pencil in thickness, certainly no thicker than a Sharpie pen. You typically find these carrots at farmers' markets, bushy-topped and tied in bunches. I'm the person picking through the table to find the bundles with the most little guys.

This particular salad came together on a whim. A friend was visiting from New Zealand, and we decided to make savory crepes one night. I felt like we needed something vegetable-centric to go along side, and after a few minutes of grabbing for this-and-that, we ended up with slender, barely-cooked asparagus and carrots alongside lots of deeply toasted almond slices. All tossed with a jalapeno-cilantro drizzle.

A few tips...Don't overcook the carrots or asparagus, you want them to remain bright and vibrant with a bit of crunch. Also, do your best to get all the carrot and asparagus pieces roughly the same size - both length and thickness. Carrots seem to take a tad bit longer to cook then asparagus, so keep that in mind. Also, in the instructions I recommend spinning the vegetables in a salad spinner after they cook to get as much water as possible off before tossing with the dressing. It's an annoying step, but really does make a difference - the dressing ends up clinging to the vegetables better and the dressing doesn't become diluted.

This is the simple version, and I genuinely don't think it needs anything extra, but we were saying that a bit of crumbled goat or feta cheese could be good. I was also thinking a good dose of lemon zest thrown into the almond/olive oil pan after toasting would be nice.

Continue reading Carrot Almond Salad...

Photograph: Ben Seidelman

Welcome to Wine, Spilled, a weekly column in which EMD's Justine Sterling shares the myths, legends, tall tales, and short stories of the wine world, and recommends a couple bottles that won't break the bank. Today's wine: Grüner Veltliner.

The wine industry has a reputation for consisting of stuffy, boring, bow-tie wearing men discussing the benefits of old vines, telling the hilarious tale of that one corked bottle at the Duke's Spring gala or bragging about a bottle of Chateau Something-Or-Other they just purchased at an auction and have no intention of drinking. But sometimes events happen that shake up the wine world and are worthy of a story, like the Diethylene Glycol Scandal of 1985. (Cue thunderclap and dramatic organ music). Let’s set the scene.

It’s a sunny Spring day and you’re heading to an outdoor get-together. This could be a barbecue, it could be a garden party, it could just be that your friends have recently found some folding chairs in the basement and have decided to make use of them in their weed-ridden yard. Whatever it may be, we all know that the newly arrived sunshine is best enjoyed with a glass of crisp, refreshing white. Wait! I see you reaching for that Pinot Grigio. No, take your hands off that satisfactory yet uninteresting Sauvignon Blanc. Let me guide you towards a dry, minerally, elongated bottle of Austrian white wine - namely, a Grüner Veltliner. Yes, the bottle does resemble that of a typical Riesling bottle. That's actually the perfect segue, because when you show up, cold, green bottle in hand, you’re going to have a tale of intrigue and danger on the tip of your tongue that happens to involve our dear friend Riesling and why you're drinking a dry Grüner rather than its sweet cousin. You’re going to tell the tale of the Austrian wine scandal of 1985.

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Photograph via The Hypothetical Library

What kind of wedding present do you get for the couple who has everything (or whose wedding you forgot about)? You can do what poet Jennifer L. Knox did and give them a copy of Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything (buy it) with Bittman's name scratched out and your own name written in with a sharpie. And if you're as awesome as Knox, you could also glue in a new introduction telling an inspirational, heartwarming story, which features throwing acid in bears' faces, Partridge Family tattoos and nude bowling on acid.

See the rest of Knox's handiwork (including the introduction) after the jump:

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Illustration by Laura Williams

Welcome to Top Of The Food Chain, a column from Eat Me Daily's meatiest columnist, Ryan Adams. Every week we'll attempt to demystify the options available in your supermarket, breaking animals down piece by piece so that the next time you find yourself staring at endless Styrofoam containers, you'll be able to make an informed purchase. This week: Short Loin.

Ah, the Short Loin primal. Maybe it's not as sexy as the Rib primal, but the Short Loin is the workhorse of the primals, accounting for up to eight percent of the carcass's weight while being among the smaller sections of meat on the cow. Home to various steaks that we all know and love — the Delmonico, the Porterhouse, the T-Bone — all of which are among the most tender, popular and expensive cuts of beef, this dense primal is a meat eater's playground.

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The restaurant industry is rife with fully employed chefs and waiters, busboys and dishwashers lacking health insurance; now suddenly food professionals may have an edge. Sue Lowden, a Republican challenging Harry Reid for his Nevada Senate seat, recently suggested bartering for health care saying "in the old days [patients] would bring a chicken to the doctor." And she's not the only one - Tennessee state representative Mike Bell suggested bartering with vegetables.

If this is what Republicans are promising should they prove victorious in November's mid-term elections, Dan Barber and Alice Waters may be all but guaranteed the best health coverage in America. Even Stephen Colbert's on board, on last night's Colbert Report the host suggested "just go for where they sell live chickens, they go for about $8... and when a doctor wants to charge $40,000 to put a stent in your heart, offer him the chicken." Video below.

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A week ago, the annual World Pizza Championships (website is only kind of in English) were held in Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy. Along with taste tests, speed trials and an event called "The Longest Dough Stretch," there are freestyle pizza throwing competitions. Below, we've collected a handful of videos from this year's competition, in which pizza is thrown between legs, behind backs, juggled and spun in time to music. Italy's Lanza Luca took top honors, a repeat win from last year. Careful, stare at these too long and you'll start to get veeerrrry sleeeeeeeepy...

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Still from commercial via McDonald's

Why can't McDonald's in America be as awesome as it is overseas? From teaming up with the Italian government to use local products for its McItaly burger, to a complete ban of beef and pork products from its menu in India, McDonald's is surprisingly sensitive when it comes to infiltrating and usurping the culinary identities of myriad cultures of the world. Plus some of the stuff they come up with in the process sounds like I want it in my mouth.

So it's no surprise to hear that McDonald's has created the "Swiss Weeks" campaign in Switzerland, a country that incorporates three different cultures — Italian, French and German. Not only is McDonald's creating a different burger for each of the three different cultural regions — the McBärn, McRomandie and McTicino — but it's also producing commercials for each burger in the language of its region (all three commercials can be seen here). Each burger utilizes local brands and ingredients exclusive to the region, such as Emmi Kaltbach-brand Emmentaler cheese and a hashbrown patty for its German-inflected McBärn burger, pictured above.

—Rachael Oehring

Photograph: superiphi

Welcome to Natural History of the Kitchen, by EMD's Stephanie Butler. Each week, Stephanie explores the background of an appliance, gadget or product that helped to make cooking what it is today. This week: Popcorn.

Since last week we took a look at microwaves, it seems right that this week the spotlight shines on a product that folks know mainly in microwaved form: popcorn. It's been much more than a movie treat for thousands of years, used as currency, for soup and beer, packing materials, and jewelry. Whether you take yours with extra salt, light on the butter, or au naturel, there are popcorn facts for all tastes in this week's Natural History of the Kitchen.

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Still from Lunch.

Ready to watch something pretty weird? Famous for his stop-motion animation, Czech director Jan Švankmajer's 1992 short film Food depicts three restaurant meals and the diners who eat them. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner feature people dying and coming back to life, eating non-food items like utensils and tablecloths, and practicing cannibalism and self-mutilation. Švankmajer originally conceived the project in the 1970s but feared the tempestuous political climate of the time. Prepare yourself for some heady, Eastern Bloc weltschmerz below. (warning: Lunch is slightly NSFW, Dinner is definitely NSFW.)

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Ham from The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, 1950. Scan: Eat Me Daily

The 1950s were a crossover period for cookbooks, when graphics were about half hand-drawn illustrations and half super-saturated photographs, such as the one above. If the aesthetic appears rather commercial to you, that's no mistake: many of the cookbooks from this era were produced by companies to promote their products, most famous of which is the Betty Crocker series for General Mills. Below, we explore the colorful world of 1950s food imagery. (Warning: image heavy post.)

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File under recipes we never thought we'd see: chef Anissa Helou samples camel hump while in the United Arab Emirates. The fatty cut of meat is rubbed with spices and roasted over charcoal with cuts of lamb. Something of a delicacy, camel hump is usually reserved for the guest of honor. Fun fact about eating camel humps: you need to buy an entire camel in order to acquire one, which in Halou's case meant purchasing a baby camel. The final verdict? "It was good but I cannot honestly say that I will be obsessing about it any longer." [via Neatorama. Photograph: Anissa Helou]

—Paula Forbes

During Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, writer John Mulaney made the case for Girl Scout Cookies being sold year-round. "It would be like if they only sold Coca Cola in July and you could only buy it from the Knights of Columbus... You are much more than a once a year type of thing. You are not candy canes and you are most certainly not the McRib." But while truer words have never been spoken, you can't always trust the fake news. In Seth Meyers introduction he announced the Girl Scouts are in the middle of their annual cookie drive, yet as a quick check of the Girl Scout cookie site proves, you're as likely now to find a box of Thin Mints as you are a Shamrock Shake. Video below.

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The farmers' market up the street from my house just started again. It takes place one night a week, now through early fall. Last week a stroll through the twenty-some booths revealed a bounty of fava beans, strawberries, local micro-climate honeys, pea shoots, mandarins, king trumpet and lion's mane mushrooms, artichokes, and English peas. In the midst of all this, I stumbled on a farm I'm particularly excited about, Fifth Crow Farm - new to me. They were selling organic wheat berries, heirloom popcorn, farm fresh eggs and leeks. I picked up a couple bags heirloom Sonora whole wheat pastry flour (grown at neighboring Pie Ranch), and set them on my kitchen counter when I got home. I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to use it at the time. This flour is a bit coarser than the pastry flour I typically use, flecked with tiny hints of brown and gold.

If I leave something in my field of vision for long enough, ideas start to percolate. I had a the flour sitting on the counter top, and a good amount of leftover cooked quinoa in my refrigerator at the time. It occurred to me to attempt some sort of rustic quinoa skillet bread. A relatively simple idea that actually took a couple tries to get right. My first attempt was terrible, and by that I mean, not at all what I had in mind. It was flat, too dense, ugly, and on and on. But the second go-around more than made up for my original misstep.

Back at the drawing board (after my initial failure), I kept looking at the flecks of germ and bran in my new flour, which triggered thoughts of cornmeal. One of my favorite recipes in SNC is the quinoa and corn flour crepes. And one of my favorite cornmeal recipes of the past year is Marion Cunningham's Custard-Filled Cornbread. My neighbor brought it to a Halloween potluck (to much fanfare), and it occurred to me it was the same cornbread Molly writes about in A Homemade Life. Everyone in my family now loves this cornbread, and it has shown up at nearly every family gathering since its debut at Thanksgiving. It is one of those recipes, so spot-on, I thought I'd never change it, tweak it, or make it any other way. There was no need. Keep it simple, leave it alone.

But I thought, maybe, if I took the general approach for the Custard Cornbread and introduced a cast-iron skillet and a few of the other ingredients I had on had, it might make for something unique and special in it's own way. And wow, did it ever work out. I hope you'll agree, the results are impressive - a rustic, minimally structured, custard-topped, crusty-edged, herb-scented corn-quinoa skillet bread. Enough for a small crowd, each piece is dense and heavy, rich with ribbons of varying texture. Let me know if you try it out - it's perfect for picnics, potlucks, family meals and the like.

Continue reading Quinoa Skillet Bread...

Photograph: Adam Robb / Eat Me Daily

Eight works of modern art served as Jennifer Rubell's inspiration for the meal at last night's Brooklyn Ball. Following the food artist's Futurism-inspired Performa 09 dinner, this time she provided guests with everything from a Champagne tinkling take on Dadaism to a crushing self-portrait of a pop art icon. Abstract expressionism, minimalism, post modern and performance art were all made palatable in an interactive meal that transformed galleries to banquet halls and diners to players as guests indulged in nearly every genre of 20th Century art. (Warning: Image heavy post.)

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Still via Yanko Design

This Kitchen of the Future that designer Michaël Harboun envisions is definitely way cooler than that spinning refrigerator imagined by designers in the 1950s. Harboun has created a design for a kitchen with elastic walls that can turn into whatever you need in order to cook a dish, from a faucet to a stove to a colander.

The best part about this imagining is that it's founded on real technology: Claytronics, which is currently being researched at Carnegie Mellon University, is based on millions of tiny nanorobots that act as a giant, moving mass to create different shapes. Yeah, way cooler than a see-through oven. Video below.

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Photograph: 2create

Welcome to Wine, Spilled, a new weekly column in which EMD's Justine Sterling shares the myths, legends, tall tales, and short stories of the wine world, and recommends a couple bottles that won't break the bank. Today's wine: Carménère.

Say you’ve been invited to a dinner party. Being the polite, caring person that you are you asked, “What can I bring?” “Oh, nothing,” replies your host. “Just your sparkling personality.” While you do indeed have a sparkling and engaging personality, you know that’s not going to be enough. You need to bring a bottle of wine. But you’re not about to bring over a Chateau-Neuf-du-Pape or some cult California Pinot Noir (we'll get to those later). You’re going to bring something reasonable but also tasty. Suggestion? Why, thank you for asking. May I recommend a Carménère?

Medium-bodied and round with dark berry fruit and a tiny kick of spice on the end, Carménère is a great value wine. It’s not hard to find a quality bottle for under $15, but that’s not what you want to tell your hosts when you plonk down the bottle. If you can’t impress them with a label or a year, then impress them with a story.

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The Andy Warhol Pinata before his beating. Photograph: Adam Robb / Eat Me Daily

Last night at the Brooklyn Museum the worlds of art, food and fashion united to celebrate High Style with a dinner curated by Jennifer Rubell, whose food-art installations have redefined benefit dinners. Below, we dish on who was there, what they did, and most importantly, what they ate.

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