Shon Arieh-Lerer goes public with his love for the industrial food-processing videos on YouTube. (Slate)

Read the rest

The perfect accompaniment to your home-made poop emoji peeps: a marshmallow Jabba the Hutt. Read the rest

Just in time for Easter, an easy recipe for making your own marshmallow poop emojis! Read the rest

Pittsburgh's Sugar Bakers preserves gorgeous edible flowers in clear lollipops: root beer daisies, blueberry stained glass, candied pink rose-petals, watermelon violas, giant ice pansies and many more, in wrapped six-packs for weddings and such. Read the rest

Not for the squeamish!

What might human flesh taste like? It's apparently illegal to eat people, even yourself, so Greg Foot of the BBC's Brit Lab settled for having a tiny morsel of his own thigh removed and cooked so he could sniff it, and speculate. (Brit Lab, thanks Sean Ness!)

Read the rest

London chocolatier Chocolatician has made a custom Benedict Cumberbunny for Easter, available in milk, dark and white chocolates, dusted with gold- or bronze-coloured finishes (£50), or with a 22 carat gold bowtie (£70). Read the rest

Oona Tempest is an apprentice sushi chef at New York City's Tanoshi Sushi. I do love my sushi, but I definitely wouldn't have the fortitude or filleting-skills to be trained as a chef. (Eater)

Read the rest

Atelier a Pates, a small artisanal pasta shop in Thiefosse, France, has a booming business in radiatori, fusilli, spaghetti and penne made from seven percent pulverized crickets and grasshoppers. From CTV News:

Four years on with the addition of insect flour to the mix, "it's working so well that we will soon be able to hire a second person," (proprietor Stephanie) Richard says, proud of her weekly production now at some 400 kilos (880 pounds).

And she does not plan to stop there: she is working on a new recipe using Maroilles cheese from northern France, and plans to start making stuffed pastas.

At a little over six euros ($6.60) for a 250 gramme (about half a pound) package, insect flour pastas are more expensive than standard kinds, but Richard notes that they can replace meat for vegetarians -- or for people who prefer crickets.

"People with iron or magnesium deficiencies will also eat these products," she says.

"Crafted from a 2-foot-long gummy worm, Haribo gummy bears, black licorice string, yellow sprinkles, and rock candy crystals! A scene from the great science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert. Here we see the giant gummy worm on the desert planet of Arrakis. Ridden by the powerful gummy bear Paul Atreides as he seeks to control the prescious "spice" melange, which gives those who ingest it extended life and some prescient awareness. Muad'Dib!" Read the rest

Get this man to Gilroy, STAT! (The Food Surgeon)

Read the rest

Kriszti Bozzai, a Hungarian maker who sells on Etsy as Copypastry, will turn your photos into a line-art caricature, extrude it into the third dimension, and 3D print it, so that you can bake cookies that look like you. It's about $50, including the custom art. Read the rest

Troy Walker of Farmington, Utah was cooking dinner for a church function when she opened a can of green beans and discovered a snake's head inside!

“As I got closer to lift it off the spoon, I saw eyes," she told 60abc.com. "That’s when I dropped it and screamed."

The manufacturer, Western Family, promised to investigate.

I'd like to remind the reader that Walker was making food for church and that a snake is a symbol of the devil. Just sayin'.

Read the rest

Who cut the cheese? FDA inspectors investigating that very question raided a popular parmesan cheese supplier, and discovered they had indeed been cutting the cheese liberally with wood pulp.

Read the rest

Writer/editor Scott Edelman is legendary in science fiction circles for organizing outings from conventions to spectacular, out-of-the-way restaurants where the food is cheap and mind-blowing (I've eaten some very memorable dim sum with him in Philly, for example). Read the rest

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

I saw the sour plums on the cover of Preserving the Japanese Way calling out to me from the highest bookshelf at teeny-tiny Moon Palace Bookstore, Minneapolis. As the Master Food Preserver for my county, I’m a sucker for beautiful books on food preservation. Angela, the owner, clapped and oohed as I plunked it down. “I love this book. I can’t cook, but this book makes me want to eat!”

I’m authorized by the State of Wisconsin to teach the safest scientifically proven methods of food preservation. In my teaching, I’ve heard lovely stories of immigrant grandmothers and their favorite recipes and the joy keeping these traditions alive brings to people. This connectivity to our shared and adopted cultures is one of the most compelling aspects to Preserving the Japanese Way. Nancy Singleton Hachisu is a wonderfully opinionated ex-pat who embraced rural Japanese culture with her marriage to a Hokkaido farmer nearly thirty years ago. Her notes and recommendations are informed by her American “keep trying” attitude, coupled with the Japanese concept of perfecting a singular thing.

Hachisu follows her insatiable curiosity in discovering the old ways. Her vignettes of meetings with artisanal makers are entertaining and informative. Her explanations and definitions of very specific Japanese ingredients are profoundly useful; for the first time ever I understood the nuances of soy sauces. She also acknowledges that artisanally made food is expensive. She recognizes that not everyone has the monetary luxury of purchasing small-batch regional soy sauces and offers accessible and easily available substitutes. Read the rest

Melt chocolate into slabs, coat with blue candy-melts, and stud with broken oreos and edible googly eyes and voila: it's as though you blenderized a thousand Cookie Monsters, rolled them flat, and baked them. Read the rest

New York City's Ivan Ramen proprietor/chef Ivan Orkin gives pro tips on noodle slurping.

Read the rest