Weird Eats

Eating Bugs, Bacon Cups & More

Here are some more Weird Eats type items, gathered from assorted and sundry points around the Web.

We should start eating insects, or so says Arnold van Huis, an entomology professor in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Read more about it in an article called....We Should Start Eating Insects, in Ode Magazine.

From BuzzFeed, here are a few items of interest:

Edible Martini
Bacon Cups
Savory Lollipops

From The Grinder, at Chow.com, a few more tasty bits:

Robots Taste Better than You Do (robot-tasting technology)
Mean Machines (food gadgets & machines)

Olive Oil Store, Lickable Ads & More

Things haven't been too active these days at Weird Eats, but here are a few items to tide you over until the next post.

A store dedicated to olive oil? Now that's specialization. It's called Extra Virgin, it's located in St. Louis and you can read more about it at the Gourmet News Web site.

Would you lick a magazine ad for a food or beverage to determine what it tastes like? Me neither. Welch's is trying out this gimmick - I don't think it's time has come, but I could be wrong - in ads for their grape juice. Are there many people out there who are unsure what grape juice tastes like?

For anyone who pines for more Weird Eats type news, let me once again point you to The Grinder, who tirelessly work to come up with interesting and entertaining tidbits:

My Darling, My Hamburger (hamburger phones, etc.)
I'll Take an Order of Deep-Fried Rodent
Kitchen Gadgets of the Future
The UK's Eggs-Ceptional Discovery (egg within an egg)
Burgers Blow Up

Other People's Weird Food News

Weird Eats has been on a hiatus, of sorts, as I catch up with other projects. In the meantime, here are a few links to other sites that are providing admirable coverage of offbeat food-related stuff.

The Grinder
Ice, Ice Baby (ice chewing)
Don't Get It Dipped (pizza in a cone)
Kraft Foods Kill Worms! (foods that kill intestinal parasites)
Tech Nuggets (fast food packaging innovations)
A "No More Tears" Onion?

BuzzFeed
Pickle In A Tube
Bacon Cocktails
Cheeseburger In A Can

Weird Eating At Asylum

From the good people at Asylum, who had the excellent taste and uncommon decency to link to this very site, here are a few articles that are more or less in Weird Eats territory:

Mixed Drink Recipes for the Desperate and Resourceful

Angels of the Morning: The Latest Breakfast Cereals On Our Table

Ramen Noodle Recipes to Turn Cheap Dough into Haute Cuisine

Refrigerator Voyeurs

So it's finally come to this:

"Fridgewatcher.com is a project where people open their fridges to others. Cause every fridge tells a story. We want to know yours. Send us a picture of your refridgerator."

Fridgewatcher offers us the opportunity to "watch fridges from" Argentina to Venezeula.

Can someone please shut down the Internet now?

Cat Rescued From Peanut Butter Jar

Did you hear the one about the cat that survived having its head stuck in a peanut butter jar for 19 days? No, it's not a joke. Nor is it a bizarre NASA research project. For more on the beleaguered kitty, check out this report from the Associated Press.

10 Junk Food Cookbooks

Who ever said cookbooks had to be all fancy and high-falutin'? Here's a list of works that are the perfect antidote to that sort of thing.

The Magic of Peanut Butter: 100 New & Favorite Recipes - by Skippy
The Magic of Jelly: 100 New & Favorite Recipes - by Welch's
The Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook - by Justin Schwartz
The Twinkies Cookbook - by Hostess
Brownie Mix Bliss - by Camilla V. Saulsbury
Cake Mix Cookies - by Camilla V. Saulsbury
Cookie Dough Delights - by Camilla V. Saulsbury
Complete Cake Mix Magic - by Jill Snider
Cake Mix Magic 2: 125 More Easy Desserts ... Good as Homemade - by Jill Snider
Spam: The Cookbook - by Linda Eggers

Weird Food At Mental Floss

If you've never had a chance to check out Mental Floss magazine's Web presence, now's as good a time as any to get started.

You could go with their blog post called Frankenfoods: Six Snacks Prepared In The Lab, which covers carbonated fruit, caffeinated donuts and more.

Or you could go with this post, In the Can: 6 Canned Foods We’re Reluctant to Try, assuming you can stand reading about such delights as pork brains in milk gravy.

Last of all, by way of CNN, is an article called Funky Fries and Other Foods That Flopped. Reddi-Bacon, anyone?

Caffeine Mania

By all rights, Americans should be getting very twitchy by now, with all the emphasis on caffeinated beverages and whatnot over the past few years. But caffeine isn't just for drinks anymore, as you surely must already have known.

Read more about some recent caffeinated developments in this article from the Davis Enterprise. Among the revved up items it covers - caffeinated soap, stockings (!), sunflower seeds, and mints.

Not surprisingly, the article also touches on the notion that perhaps the caffeine thing is getting a bit out of hand. Which is as good a time as any to mention the Caffeine Awareness Alliance, "a non-profit organization, has created a new online forum that addresses the concerns and issues regarding caffeine addiction."

More about the Alliance here.

Deep Fried Weirdness

I can't say that I have any particular weakness for deep-fried stuff. In fact, nowadays I pretty much steer clear of it altogether.

If you're keen on this sort of thing, here's a pair of Web pages you might find to your liking. First up is a pretty detailed step-by-step guide to making Fried Oreo Cookies. Which sounds really appalling to me, but what do I know?

Speaking of appalling, here's a page that features a photographic guide to the various stages of concocting a Beer Battered Deep Fried Bacon Double Quarter Pounder.

If you need some additional deep-fried inspiration, check out this article from ABC News about "Chicken Charlie" Boghosian, who has made something of a reputation for himself by deep-frying nearly everything imaginable.