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?

These days, many of the beauty treatments you can get at day spas and salons include edible ingredients. People get salt scrubs, seaweed wraps and honey facials all the time. However, have you ever heard of a ghee eye treatment?

According to Daily Candy, there is a spa in suburban Philadelphia that offers an Ayurvedic treatment called Netra Basti, in which a ring of dough is placed around the eye and the well is then filled with gently warmed clarified butter. Once the ghee has been poured, the individual receiving the treatment slowly opens their eye so that their optic nerve can get a buttery bath.

It is said to be an excellent treatment for strained vision, itchiness, dryness and glaucoma. It is also smoothes the wrinkles around the eyes. As we head into allergy season, I can see how it could be good for your pollen-inflamed peepers as well.

In the past, I have been accused of being excessively generous towards the products that I have reviewed. This is actually a fair criticism; while I try to be very honest about the foods that I discuss, I also tend to focus on the positive and sometimes downplay the negative. Beyond that, I usually only review products that I really like, going with the idea that ignoring lesser foodstuffs is probably the best possible critique.

That having been said, I feel obliged to offer an analysis of La Cucina Italiana, a slick, beautiful monthly that touts itself as "Italy's premier food and cooking magazine." Recently, my wife, who is a huge fan of Italian cuisine, bought us a subscription, hoping that it would inspire me to expand my Tuscan table offerings. As soon as I opened the first issue, I was immediately impressed: the magazine was filled with beautiful pictures, interesting columns, and intriguing recipes. Admittedly, some of the editor in chief's remarks struck me as being self-aggrandizingly douchy, but I assumed that this was another example of the "Christopher Kimball Syndrome." This disease, named for the second-rate George Will clone who publishes Cook's Illustrated, is based in the mistaken impression that editors of low-circulation cooking magazines are actually celebrities, fit to comment on the broader world. While I disagree, I can't really fault La Cucina's Michael Wilson for his misunderstanding. After all, if food celebrity has somehow oozed into the world of food journalism, the fault probably lies in the system, not the lemmings who have gotten sucked into it.

I could forgive La Cucina Italiana its smug, superior tone if the recipes were actually any good. Unfortunately, they run the gamut from moderately passable to utterly vile. The best recipe I've tried was a basic method for roasting tomatoes. While fairly generic, it was also easy and produced a flavorful ingredient that beautifully perked up pasta. On the other hand, of the two caper dishes that I tried, one looked like dog food and tasted like the sink trap at a Korean restaurant. The other was merely bland, which made it vastly superior by comparison.

Unfortunately, we have a subscription to the magazine, which means that it will continue to occupy a proud place in our bathroom magazine rack, offering beautiful pictures of meals that border on the inedible. On the bright side, if kitchen wizardry doesn't do the trick, then high-end food porn might be handy for convincing our friends that my wife and I are serious about cooking!

One of my favorite scenes in The Godfather comes shortly after Don Vito's shooting. Sonny Corleone is sitting in his father's office, surrounded by advisors, desperately trying to reach the brutal Luca Brasi. After a while, someone hands him a package containing Brasi's bulletproof vest wrapped around a huge, dead fish. In his somber voice, Clemenza tells the room "It's an old Sicilian message: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes."

While the image of the "black spot" is at least as old as Robert Louis Stevenson, food always adds an extra dash of meaning. Whether it's sleeping with the fishes or grabbing the cannoli, there's something particularly powerful about the juxtaposition of food and death. Unfortunately, however, these messages need to be delivered fairly quickly, a fact that was recently demonstrated by the offices of Congressman John Boehner, one of the architects of the Wall Street Bailout.

A couple of days ago, Congressman Boehner's Ohio office received a greasy, dripping package in the mail. Fearing that it might contain a bomb or other dangerous cargo, the staffers contacted the Capitol Police, who urged them to talk to local law enforcement. Within a few hours, a bomb squad member was carting out the envelope. After an x-ray, the police concluded that the bundle contained bacon, conveying a voter's irritation at "pork barrel" spending.

While the message was definitely powerful, there was one minor problem: bacon fat has a fairly low melting point. Since the voter sent the package from Georgia, it took a couple of days to reach its destination. Along the way, the rendered fat soaked through the wrapping, yielding the greasy mess that ultimately convinced the Congressman's office to call the authorities.

There is no word yet on whether or not the police will be tracking down the package sender and charging him or her with reckless endangerment or some other crime. Regardless, the message is clear: if you are filled with an uncontrollable desire to send an elected official a food-based warning and don't want to end up taking a one-way trip to Guantanamo, be sure to seal the package carefully, spring for a heatproof container, or invest in next-day delivery!

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.

Conventional wisdom states that a nuclear apocalypse would leave two things on the planet Earth: cockroaches and Twinkies. To this equation, however, I feel obliged to add a third item: McDonald's hamburgers. As any fan of the double arches can attest, McDonald's burgers have a tendency to hover in the stomach, undigested, for a disturbingly long period of time. That, however, hardly qualifies them for Twinkie and cockroach status. After all, between Twinkies' incredible slate of preservatives and the cockroach's ingenious design, we're probably talking about the most impressive preservation technology imaginable. How could the humble McDonald's hamburger possibly compete?

Consider this: Karen Hanrahan, an Illinois educator and nutritional consultant, has a twelve-year old McDonald's hamburger that has yet to decay. After she purchased the burger in 1996, Ms. Hanrahan removed the meat from the bun and stored both parts in a cupboard in her house, occasionally taking them out to show to her various classes. While the bun has apparently become hard, it has not developed mold, nor has it been attacked by flies, ants, or other vermin. Meanwhile, the meat is shriveled but still recognizable.

There is some question about whether the burger's impressive longevity is due to preservatives, poisons, or merely McDonalds' state-of-the-art cleaning program, which keeps bacteria out of the restaurants. Regardless, I'd argue that Ms. Hanrahan has made it pretty clear that McDonalds' burgers are likely to last for the duration!

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.

Among the many food blogs I keep up with, there are a couple of geek-oriented and pop culture blogs I also check regularly. One of my favorites is Geekstir, a blog dedicated to all things sci-if/geek/video games.

Even though Geekstir is not focused on food, there will occasionally be a post about geeky food. This post caught my eye because it's definitely something you could do on a lazy weekend afternoon. Well, maybe not the R2D2 cake, but you could make the Ewok cupcakes, as well as the Darth vader and Yoda pizza's. Have some fun this weekend, and enjoy some geeky food!

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.

Nadja.robot's lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) bentos are ready to rumble. Our luchadores El Crumpeto, the banana-faced crumpet, Los Mellizos (the twins), two angry-faced Morning Star Farms veggie patties, Arroz, the Rice Man with a fearsome nori scowl, and El Curry, the Masked Pepper. Let the best man win!

When I was a kid, a Hungarian restaurant opened in my neighborhood. As this was the seventies, and my family lived in the culinary wasteland of Northern Virginia, every new eatery was an occasion for celebration. Consequently, the mood was high as my parents took my sisters and I to consume levesek, paprikas, and other delicacies. Unfortunately, my father felt obliged to give me a bite of his appetizer, which involved smooth meaty sausage-ish things. They tasted yummy, but when my father told me where they came from, my appetite evaporated.

In the years since, I've often regretted that I didn't take more time to savor the testicle dish that my father saw fit to share with me. The Hungarian joint only stayed open for a few months, and "prairie oysters" are not particularly common in American restaurants. To my knowledge, I haven't eaten any testicles since that evening, although I've long since developed both the taste and the bal...um...the intestinal fortitude necessary to try the dish.

With this in mind, I was particularly interested in the World Testicle Cooking Championship, a yearly event that is held in Belgrade, Serbia. Boasting chefs from around the world, the Championship highlights the latest discoveries and advances in testicle cooking. Recently, in fact, Australia caused quite a bit of a stir when it bragged about the culinary charms of kangaroo testicles yet failed to field a cooking team. Apparently, testicle cookery is not for the faint of heart!

Barring a sudden influx of money, I probably won't be going to the Championship any time soon, but Ljubomir Erovic, a renowned testicle chef, has recently released Cooking with Balls, an e-cookbook devoted to testicle cooking. Featuring recipes for testicle pizza, testicles [sic] pie, and barbecued testicles, the book also has some pretty hair-raising illustrations. Seriously, one video that demonstrated how to "peel" testicles made me a little light headed. That having been said, maybe I should leave the preparation to a professional. Now, if I can only find a good testicle joint...

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.

Last week I showed you a Sakurako Kitsa masterpiece featuring a kimono-clad woman in front of a blue rice sky. Well this week I've got another lovely lady in Japanese attire, a geisha this time, captured from behind as she strolls off into a brown rice sky. Her kimono is salami with an Indian eggplant obi (sash) with kumquat and zucchini detailing. The nape of her neck, once considered the most erotic part of a woman's body, is rendered in emmental cheese, and she wears zucchini, salami and kumquat ornaments in her zucchini rind hair. In the other half of the bento are jewel-skewered edamame, kumquats, leftover korma decorated with a zucchini blossom, and a dessert of green tea-flavored Pocky.

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.