Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro is Scottsdale, AZ gained some small notoriety when it became the first restaurant that Gordon Ramsey gave up on in his show Kitchen Nightmares, in which the restaurateur helps failing businesses reform their ways. The Ramsey segments show the owners of the restaurant, Samy and Amy Bouzaglo, screaming obscenities at customers, taking servers' tips, and generally behaving very badly.
But that was just for warmup. After the episodes aired and showed up on YouTube, the Bouzaglos took to Facebook to condemn their critics on Reddit and Yelp with a mix of profanity, Bible-thumping, spurious legal threats, and, finally, a claim that it wasn't them at all, all the crazypants stuff had been the work of hackers who took over their Facebook account.
In a world with innumerable social media hissyfits and bun-fights, the Bouzaglos' meltdown stands out as a world-beater. Truly, this is an exceptional episode of bad behavior.
After spending $250,000 worth of anonymously donated money, Mark Post from Maastricht University is ready to go public with his first vat-grown hamburger, which will be cooked and eaten at an event in London this week. Though they claim that it's healthier than regular meat, one question not answered in the article is the Omega 3/6 balance -- crappy, corn-fed, factory-farmed meet is full of Omega 6s and avoided by many eaters; the grass-fed, free-range stuff is higher in Omega 3s.
Yet growing meat in the laboratory has proved difficult and devilishly expensive. Dr. Post, who knows as much about the subject as anybody, has repeatedly postponed the hamburger cook-off, which was originally expected to take place in November. His burger consists of about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post, who has conducted some informal taste tests, said that even without any fat, the tissue “tastes reasonably good.” For the London event he plans to add only salt and pepper.
But the meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf serum, used as a medium in which to grow the cells — that eventually would have to be replaced by similar materials of non-animal origin. And the burger was created at phenomenal cost — 250,000 euros, or about $325,000, provided by a donor who so far has remained anonymous. Large-scale manufacturing of cultured meat that could sit side-by-side with conventional meat in a supermarket and compete with it in price is at the very least a long way off.“This is still an early-stage technology,” said Neil Stephens, a social scientist at Cardiff University in Wales who has long studied the development of what is also sometimes referred to as “shmeat.” “There’s still a huge number of things they need to learn.”
There are also questions of safety — though Dr. Post and others say cultured meat should be as safe as, or safer than, conventional meat, and might even be made to be healthier — and of the consumer appeal of a product that may bear little resemblance to a thick, juicy steak.
A chain of Osaka cafes sells a crazy parfait, topped with a ginormous piece of cake:
On a recent day out in Osaka, our reporter stopped by a café and ordered a truly hard-core parfait. It wasn’t that the parfait was so big, and no, it didn’t contain any shocking ingredients. What blew our minds about this parfait was its topping.
It was a slice of cake, and it was so big it wasn’t even trying to fit into the glass.
Our reporter had this sweet-tasting tag-team at the Semba branch of Osaka-based café MIOR.
A friend of redditor BigBoppinBill forgot some pizzas in the oven for "a few weeks." The result? A kind of glorious fungal jellyfish.
This calls to mind the timeless wisdom of the Jazz Butcher's classic, loony, over-the-top song, Caroline Wheeler's Birthday Present: "Do you know what happens when you leave a fish in an elevator?/You don't?/Well, here's a clue/Fish is biodegradable/THAT MEANS IT ROTS."
It appears that you can make delicious (and fantastically high-carb) bread by mixing melted ice-cream with self-rising flour and baking it. I'm willing to believe that this is totally yummy but I'm not going to try it:
1 Preheat oven to 350 F
2 Let ice cream soften at room temperature for 10-15 minutes. <
3 In the bowl of your mixer combine ice cream with flour until the flour is incorporated.
4 Evenly distribute sprinkles in the bottom of a greased Bundt pan and scoop batter evenly on top.
5 Bake for 35 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
6 Invert and allow to cool completely.
I am a committed Tabasco Sauce fiend. It is neither too hot, nor too mild, nor too vinegary -- I put it on pretty much everything. I'd use it for contact lens solution if I could. My life was radically transformed by my discovery of tiny, individual Tabasco sachets that aviation security X-rays don't identify as liquids, which means I can carry Tabasco with me at all times without worrying about getting stopped at airports for not having a stupid baggie with my liquids in it.
I found this video describing the production of Tabasco absolutely riveting. The fermentation process, the salted barrels, and let us not forget le petit baton rouge.
EFF is celebrating the new inductees into its Takedown Hall of Shame with a new cooking show! In this episode, EFF staffer Parker Higgins bakes a "Mean Spirited Censorship Pie" -- which is what all have to call the classic Southern dessert formerly known as "Derby Pie," now that Kern's Kitchen in Louisville is threatening to sue anyone who posts a family recipe with that name.
It's sarcastic, carbtastic, and informative -- delicious!
Canadian artist/photographer NicoleWilliam created this cell model cake for her BIOL330 class in 2010. I hereby grant her a retrospective A+. It even comes apart!
Tama-chan is a portable watermelon refrigerator on wheels. The Japanese device retails for 19,950 yen (about $200) and can handle watermelons or similarly shaped comestibles, such as poultry, roasts, or severed heads. The device itself weighs 6.3kg, and charges from a car lighter socket.
SFMOMA's cafe is now serving "Rothko Toast," spread in a manner reminiscent of Rothko's "No. 14, 1960."
Behold: Rothko toast, the latest artsy menu item SFMOMA's café on Third Street. Like the work that inspired it ("No. 14, 1960") the toast features two tones of color (apricot butter and wild blueberry jam, in this case). Unlike Rothko's priceless piece, this toast will probably only run you a couple bucks and comes mounted on Acme pain de mie, rather than canvas.
The sheer awesome filtration power of the OKO filter is on display here as a fellow from Japan's RocketNews24 uses it to separate the clear, relatively benign H2O out of the Black Waters of American Imperialism. If it can turn Coke into water, the entertainment industry should consider using it -- after all, they've spent the past 20 years trying to get the food coloring out of the swimming pool. In any event, I wonder how you dispose of the sludge that remains in the bottle?
Planning a weekend brunch? You're in luck! The new Mountain Dew Kickstart is a crowdfunded highly caffeinated pseudo-juice that PepsiCo is marketing as a great breakfast drink. Then, swing round to your local county fair and get Chicken Charlie to sell you a nice takeaway package of his deep-fried cereal to accompany things, and well, you've got yourself a(n insulin) party!
Francesco sez, "A Japanese company has released a plastic figure of a tuna fish. The figure is 33cm long and features a working table and the traditional 'Maguro bōchō' knife to cut the tuna. This figure costs ¥29,000 (USD292) in Japanese hobby stores."
I love that it's themed for the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, which may be the most memorable place I've ever visited.
These album art cakepops were made by 
Planning a weekend brunch? You're in luck! The new 
Francesco sez, "A Japanese company has released a plastic figure of a tuna fish. The figure is 33cm long and features a working table and the traditional 'Maguro bōchō' knife to cut the tuna. This figure costs ¥29,000 (USD292) in Japanese hobby stores."
