A website has started comparing fast food advertisements with the greasy mush that you actually receive at the counter. No surprises, but Yuuuk!

via ThomasCrampton

Ever wondered how cheese aged overtime? How cheese comes to stink, develop mold and change shape? Take a look at www.cheddarvision.tv, compressing 3 months of cheddar aging in less than 1.30 minutes. Good food takes time and patience.

Exploding corks and bubbles have long been the fun of champagne.

Napoleon's cavalrymen added to the excitement by sabering the bottles. They slashed their saber against the bottleneck to open it by breaking the glass.

While traveling in Champagne this weekend, I discovered that a Champagne house in Epernay, that exports heavily to the US and has developed a concept for venting champagne bottles before opening.

The idea is to prevent champagne spurting out and save people from receiving a cork in the eye. The inventor, Pascal Leclerc-Briant, seems to aim for profit from naive and safety obsessed Americans.

Leclerc-Briant's solution is for consumers to pull a the loop at the side of the bottle's neck to release excess carbon-dioxyde.

That sounds like a labor-intensive process to open a bottle. Isn't champagne all about spontaneity, unpredictibility and risk-taking?

Paradoxically, Leclerc-Briant also offers sabering classes (ie. the most dangerous way to open champagne bottle) at his vignoble for the steep price of 28 euros.

A recent study has shown that melting chocolate on the tongue excites people more than a passionate kiss.

As chocolate starts melting on your tongue, all regions of the brain were found to receive a boost far more intense and longer lasting than the excitement of a kiss.

I'm not convinced. The study missed a few parameters:

a. This can't be for all chocolates! As a dark chocolate evangelist, I'd love to know if dark chocolate has more powerful buzz power than the rest. As for that tasteless brown stuff the English pass off as chocolate, I'd rather kiss a dog.

b. Wouldn't the guilt parameter so familiar with women - argh, am eating chocolate and am putting on pounds - affect the so-called chocolate buzz? Kissing puts on no weight.

c. How did they evaluate the power of the kissing buzz? Doesn't it all depend on your partner. Passion for their partner might be the missing ingredient for those tested.

John Bobbit (of penis-cutting fame) had the credentials to open a great concept store, if only he knew more about traditional Chinese medicine.

But the opportunity has now been seized (pun intended) by Mr. Guo who opened the Penis Emporium in Beijing.

Delving into traditional Chinese medicine, Guo claims that animal penis is low in cholesterol and good, not just for boosting the male sex drive, but for treating all sorts of ailments. Each animal's penis has unique characteristics: snake penises (did you know snakes had two penises?) is good for potency, donkey penis is apparently good for your skin, while sheep/horse/ox/seal penis is supposed to be excellent for blood circulation.

And the Penis Emporium concept is taking off! While we don't know how much eating "regular" penises costs (and we'd rather keep it that way), some customers spend more than $5,700 (£3,000) to eat tiger penis, and order it months in advance.

The sex of his clients? Almost exclusively male.

The origin of penises? Probably from endangered animals illegally killed.

I'm Chiquita Banana, and I've come to say
When guerillas ask me, I agree to pay
They traffic and murder until the day
Where I got finally nailed by the DoJ...

Anyhow, that's the song Chiquita Banana should be singing after it was fined $25 million by the U.S. Department of Justice for financing from 1997 to 2004 of Colombian junte/paramilitary/terrorist group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia.

This, of course, comes at a delicate time, since Chiquita was trying to charm and dazzle us, with Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade certifications and whatnot, so that we would forgive her century-long track record of geopolitical corruption, monopoly practices, government overtaking, and worker abusing (among others) under the name of United Fruit Company...

Don't put that banana in the freezer, put it in the slammer.



Aux USA, il existe depuis des décennies une banana charmante, qui chante les bienfait nutrititifs et danse le mode d'emploi des bananes, une banane sensuelle... qui donne la banane (boum zing!).

Cette banane, c'est Chiquita Banana.

Mais que fait Chiquita Banana quand elle ne nous envoûte point de ses charmes ?? Et bien elle finance la guerilla colombienne à travers sa cousine colombienne, Banadex.

La Justice Americaine vient en effet de condamner Chiquita a payer 25 millions de dollars pour son financement entre 1997 et 2004 de Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, un charmat groupe paramilitaire d'au moins 15 000 personnes, qui est connu pour son traffique de drogue, ses kidnappings, ses massacres de villageois...

Tout ça, c'est pas fantastico pour la banana, surtout que celle-ci cherchait à se redorer le blason à coup de certification ecolo-éthique après plus d'un siècle de magouilles géopolitiques sous son ancien nom de United Fruit Company...

C'est vraiment une banane pourrie, cette Chiquita.

Don't you just luuuuuuuuuv Splenda ?

(psss... Splenda is the artificial sweetener that's not NutraSweet and not Saccharine)

Well if you don't, you're out of luck. Or rather, out of domain names.

You see, Johnson & Johnson, makers of Splenda, they like freedom of speech.
Well, let me rephrase that. They like the freedom of saying nice things about their products.

But let's say, just randomly, that you have something against Splenda, maybe because you've had experienced some side effects (like NutraSweet and Saccharine), well, you wouldn't be able to start a web site named SplendaSucks or SplendaKills or FuckSplenda or anything like that, because Johnson & Johnson have bought over 211 domain names of that type.

You can still have "maybeSplendaisnotsogreat.com" though, they haven't bought that one up.
With a catchy URL like that, you KNOW the traffic is just going to explode.

Via Diet-Blog

Not everybody likes billboards.
In Paris, an anti-advertising movement splatters paint on billboards to protest visual pollution.

Luckily, now there's a different way.

Thortons chocolatier made for Easter a 4.4m x 2.9m billboard from 390kg of pure chocolate in London's Covent Garden.

Ingredients included 10 chocolate bunnies, 72 giant eggs and 128 chocolate panels.

The gathered crowd became concerned that what claimed to be the world first chocolate billboard would turn into a large chocolate puddle, thanks to the warm weather and London rain.

Luckily a selfless group of 50 brownies (the girl scouts, not the chocolate treat) volunteered to help greedy passers-by climb ladders to eat the billboard. It was gone in less three hours,

It doesn't matter how you go about it, everyone can get sick from advertising.

For all those who luuuuved Lil' Jamie Foxx in Ray, Miami Vice (not so many) and DreamGirls...you may not remember he started out on In Living Color, doing such tasty and tasteful skits as Baby Got Snacks....

It's Snack Time.

PS: can you name the song which is being parodied here ?
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Ceux (surtout celles) d'entre vous qui ont adoré Jamie Foxx dans Ray, 2 Flics à Miami ou Dreamgirls, un petit retour en arrière, à l'époque où il n'était qu'un comédien parmis d'autres sur l'émission à sketch des frères Wayans, In Living Color. Ça nous rajeunit pas tout ça....

PS: même pas cap de dire quelle chanson est parodiée dans ce clip!

16 pets mysteriously died last month in the US.

Investigations by the Food and Drug Administration found this week that pet food products made by Menu Foods and sold under other brand names like Nestlé contained melanine, a slow-release fertilizer used in Asia.

That's why 60 million pet products were this week removed from the shelves.

But this is the only beginning. Vets predict more pet deaths to come.

Like humans facing food scares, pets can also avoid killer food through home cooking.

So while stressed out pet owners have no time to cook for themselves, The New York Times reports that Americans are now home cooking for their pets. (As opposed to Asians, who cook their pets.)

Amazon reports that pet cookbook sales have increased in the past month: “Real Food for Dogs”, “Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diet”, “Dr. Pitcairn’s New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats”, "The Good Food Cookbook for Dogs.” (which has sold out on Amazon)

Sophisticated recipes approved by vets include Canine Casserole (brown rice, ground chuck, carrots, broccoli and garlic) and Marvelous Mutt Meatballs (ground beef, Cheddar cheese, shredded carrots, bread crumbs, egg, garlic powder and tomato paste).

Also note the Barbecued Hamburgers recipe for dogs: “Cut burgers and buns into bite-size pieces. In a serving bowl, combine burgers, buns, tomato, lettuce, oil, potassium chloride and supplements. Mix thoroughly.” Can dogs choose their topping too?

Here in France we have another solution: We bring Fifi to the café for her own Steak Tartare.

The Virgin Mary is everywhere!

We're already eagerly awaiting the masterpiece film Tortilla Heaven, centered around the Virgin's appearance on a burnt piece of tortilla.

Seems Mary doesn't only like tortillas, but wontons too.

The Virgin Wonton blog documents that legendary piece of wonton's travels through time, from the Vatican's to Hollywood's most glamorous parties....

What could this all possibly mean ? What's the next blessed foodstuff ?

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La Vierge Marie est partout !

Déjà, on attendait avec impatience la sortie du film Tortilla Heaven, qui nous raconte les aventures d'une tortilla sur laquelle apparaît l'image de la Vierge Marie...

Mais il n'y a pas que les tortillas qui ont les faveurs de la très sainte... les raviolis chinois aussi.

Il existe un wonton légendaire à l'image de sa sainteté, et il a son blog, afin de pouvoir le suivre dans ses peregrinations au Vatican, dans les soirées Hollywoodiennes....

Quel sera le prochain aliment béni par une telle apparition ? Un éclair au chocolat ? Un hot dog ?