Tofurky, Bac-Os, Cool Whip, movie popcorn "topping" - the list of fake foods goes on and on. But why do people feel the need to create substitutes for widely available foodstuffs? There are a number of reasons, says the Chicago Tribune, in an article on the history of fake food. Money is one reason - hydrogenated soybean oil is cheaper than butter as a popcorn topping. Shelf life is another: Cool Whip and Cremora stay good a lot longer than fresh cream. Tofurky, soy dogs and Fakin' bacon serve the vegetarian market. Ritz Cracker mock apple pie and fake oysters made from corn were American frontier settlers answers to the lack of apples and oysters along the road.
But what accounts for "mock cox comb" or a faux standing roast made from Canadian sausages? The answers may be lost to history.
Australian food history blogger The Old Foodie has an interesting series on the history and meaning of food coloring, both naturally-occurring and man-made. A few choice tidbits:
- The crushed body of the cochineal insect, native to Mexico and South America, was the the original red food coloring. It's still possible to get cochineal dye, but it's expensive: It takes about 70,000 cochineal insects to make one pound of dye.
- Food coloring was sometimes used as paint for formal occasions. In 1846, renowned French chef Alexis Soyer painted a portrait of the Pasha of Egypt in pineapple cream for a state diner.
- Alfred Hitchcock once held a 'blue dinner party,' with blue-dyed soup, trout, chicken, venison, peaches, ice cream, bread and more. The guests were said to have been repelled.
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
As part of a Halloween-themed bento, Lorigami has put nori eyes to five large cooked shrimp, giving the critters a spooky, Jim Henson-gone-bad look. The shrimp appear to be emerging from a brakish pool of pesto like creatures from the deep.
Check out this hilarious essay, in which Slate's Sarah Dickerman outfits her kitchen with molecular gastronomy tools in an effort to see whether her picky, veggie-shy 4-year-old is more likely to eat broccoli that's been turned into a gelatinized orb.
Dickerman buys a $200 Texturas kit, produced by molecular gastronomy king Ferran Adria of Spain's El Bulli, which contains calcium gluconolactate, powdered xanthan gum, agar agar, and lecithin, along with a giant syringe. She and her son mix and stir the various powders like mad scientists, producing tomato spheres and tadpole-shaped broccoli balls (pictured).
Does he like it? Not so much. Carrot juice "air" is more successful. Plus, all the weird, slippery gelatinized, foamed food, the kid's ready for some real dinner.
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
Today's bento, courtesy of Japan-based Moogs, is a "real" bento - that is to say, it's from a Japanese convenience store, not homemade. It's got some sort of mixed rice, three chunks of barbecued eel, a wedge of orange squash, green beans, bamboo shoot and lotus root. You can take these bento up to the convenience store counter and have the clerk heat it up for you. You think 7-11 will start carrying these?
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
LuckySundae has created a pair of ultra-kawaii (cute) pandas, sitting snug in a green plastic bento container amidst sliced hot dog flowers, a bit of tomato and edamame salad, and roast potatoes. The pandas themselves are simple rice balls with nori faces.
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
This impeccable bento looks like it belongs on some mid-century modern tabletop in the Design Within Reach catalog. Creator Vingt_Deux has filled round, stackable bento containers with (from left to right) 1) grapes, radish and rice cubes, tomatoes, 2) tomato, Japanese cucumber and mozzarella salad with basil, and 3) white bean and chickpea spread decorated with pepper tops, along with sliced peppers and mini-pitas.
In the pantheon of "acquired tastes" - natto, Scotch, chitlins, bitter melon - salty licorice definitely deserves a throne. This northern and western European favorite, also known as salmiak, doesn't really taste like anything else I associate with the word "food." That's not to say it's bad - after years of licorice-eating, I've come around to its acrid, ammonia-laced punch. But I've only recently learned what makes it taste the way it does.
It's not salt. Well, it's not NaCl - sodium chloride - the stuff that's in our salt shakers. Despite the name "salty licorice" and the definite saline flavor, the "salt" in salmiak comes from ammonium chloride, also known as sal ammoniac, a mildly acidic salt of ammonia. It's pungent, peppery stuff - a bag of strong salmiak smells like something wafting out of test tube in Chem 101.
Just so you know, we're already in Week Four of Martha Stewart's eight-week Halloween Party preparation countdown, so if you're not already working on your indoor decorations, it's time to get crackin'! The Martha has a slew of guides to spook-ify your house - papier-mache jack-o-lanterns, candy wreathes, paper mice, and Gothic black paper curtains. She's even provided a helpful weekly shopping list, with price breakdowns. Eight-inch round wire wreath frames and protective gloves: A Good Thing.
Next week Martha will hit outdoor decor; the week after that is all about candy crafts - papier-mache candy globes with jack-o-lantern faces, candy headstones, Halloween crackers, and boiling "candy cauldrons." I'm personally psyched about Week Two, which means licorice-filled "invisible pops." But I won't get ahead of schedule. I have a feeling Martha wouldn't like that.
No, IKEA did not invent the lingonberry. Though, since the furniture giant's cafeteria special of Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam is the only time many Americans have encountered the lingonberry, it would be easy to think so.
Lingonberry, AKA cowberry, foxberry, whorlberry and partridgeberry, is the fruit of a shrub that grows across northern Europe and the colder regions of North America. They're a bit smaller than cranberries, and shinier, their color the full, vampy red of 1940s movie star lipstick. They're ubiquitous in Scandinavian countries like Sweden, hence the IKEA connection.
Since lingonberries are quite sour, they're almost always cooked down with sugar. Their deep, tart taste goes well with heavy meats - I've enjoyed lingonberry preserves on wienerschnitzel with dilled potatoes and a squeeze of lemon, and seared elk medallions with lingonberry reduction. A dollop of lingonberry jam mixed into your oatmeal or yogurt makes for the kind of elegantly spare breakfast that would seem at home on a simple blond wood table in a whitewashed Nordic kitchen. My Swedish college roommate used to keep a bottle of lingonberry syrup on her bookshelf, to mix with seltzer or hot tea. Lingonberries also make excellent pie or tart filling; heated lingonberry jam is good over rich, plain sweet cream ice cream.
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
This simple, well-balanced bento comes from Kayepants. We've got some roll-ups of flour tortilla, Laughing Cow cheese, salami and pickles - American makizushi! - along with green beans, honey-roasted peanuts and cottage cheese with salt and papper.
Writing in Slate, Jacob Leibenluft answers the question of whether kitchen sink garbage disposals are bad for the environment. For years, cities in Europe and America banned disposals, afraid they'd overtax the water-treatment system. But appliance manufacturers and restaurants have argued that disposals are environmentally friendly because they reduce the amount of trash in landfills.
Leibenluft says water-treatment systems can deal with most residential food waste, but that dumping food into the system can affect local streams and rivers. But decomposing trash in landfills emit greenhouse gases like methane. So what should we do?
First, always compost when you can. If you can't, go ahead your garbage disposal as long as you're not in the middle of a water shortage. But if your local water-treatment plant doesn't use methane-capture technology to produce energy but your local landfill does, you may want to go ahead and toss your food in the trash.
"Fear of both fried food and the act of frying means that doughnuts are strictly outsourced," writes Kelly Alexander in the New York Times Magazine. But it wasn't always so. For centuries doughnuts (and crullers, and fritters, and beignets) were staples of home cooks, who weren't afraid of a little hot lard. And there's no reason you should be either, says Alexander - doughnuts, a combination of flour, eggs and milk with baking powder or baking soda, are easy to make.
The article includes recipes for churros (Mexican stick doughnuts) with bourbon-spiked chocolate sauce, basic powdered cake donuts, and Earl Gray tea flavored donuts.
This Sunday's New York Times magazine is entirely dedicated to food. Here's the rundown:
Australian food history blogger 
Check out 
Just so you know, we're already in Week Four of 
Writing in 
New York Times Magazine's food issue
Chicken McNuggets frolic at New York City pet store
Eat your broccoli orbs! 
