A girl is dating her way to top restaurants

A 23-year-old struggling actress from Canada is trying to prove you don’t have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to enjoy the finest cuisine Toronto restaurants have to offer. With a predestined name like Erin Wotherspoon, this Canadian foodie is on a mission to date any rich men who can afford to satisfy her appetite for gourmet food.

Burgers and fries? That’s not this girl’s idea of a fine meal, and to make sure she gets the best food money can buy, she goes out on fancy dinner dates with unsuspecting men and then ditches them. She wines and dines every night of the week with different gents and then spills the beans on her blog where she writes snippets of her usually-bad but sometimes-good dates. “I’ve got a pretty face and a pretty extensive Urban Spoon wish list. We all know that getting what you want in life can be tough. Which is why I’ve decided to let someone else finance my dreams. My dream? To eat in pretty restaurants without costing me a penny,” the introductory message on her site reads. Erin likes to chew and tell, and confirms that there is no such thing as a free meal, suggesting that readers should “follow me to learn who I screw over, bang and love as I navigate Toronto’s diners, drive-ins and dives.”

She also writes about her “victims”, who are usually unattractive men; A date with a unibrow-sporting gentleman and particularly bad dinner conversations are on Erin’s list of negative experiences, but it seems there’s nothing this girl can’t stomach in order to fulfill her ultimate goal – to sink her teeth into juicy, delicious elk tartar, foie gras or her favorite oysters. She finds her dates on various dating websites where she likes to take on different fictional names, depending on what type of men she wants to lure in. The actress even has an account on J Date – a Jewish dating site. “Willing to convert to Judaism for a good meal? umm YES,” she writes. Like taking candy from a baby.

Now that her secret is out, Erin Wotherspoon is really walking on thin ice, as some people have expressed their burning desire to dine and dash, leaving her with a huge check to pay. Something similar actually happened to her and it’s all documented on her blog. A man who she actually found interesting asked her to split the bill after showing her a picture from her site reading “Date Night! Oh wait, that’s every night…” But you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs and even after she paid her own bill, the two hit it off and made a night of it. Still, this serial dater has learned her lesson and says that from now on she plans on only going out with “guys who are fresh off the boat & literally have no friend based established in the country yet.” So, emigrants beware!

[Source]

World's Biggest Burger Fan

For 57-year-old Harry Sperl of Daytona Beach, Florida, burgers are not only a tasty fast-food treat, but also representations of American popular culture that deserve a shrine. “They taste good, they look good and the hamburger is an icon of the United States of America”, explains Sperl. This is the reason why for the last 23 years, this burger enthusiast has been adding hundreds of items to the “Burgerbilia”, the world’s first (and, so far, only) burger museum, located in Sperl’s own home.

Sperl has been using burger memorabilia to decorate his house: he has a hamburger phone, a cheeseburger lamp and even a custom-made hamburger bed with little hamburger pillows. He also has custom carpets with hamburger designs, hamburger-shaped music boxes, erasers, clocks, trays and lots of magnets. Sperl’s passion began when he purchased some hamburger items from a toy store. From that moment on, not only did he start collecting items for the Burgerbilia from flea markets and garage sales, but he also designed his pride and joy – the Hamburger Harley, a unique hamburger-shaped tricycle, with onion wheels and pickle handles. He originally thought of using a Volkswagen Beetle, but he decided he didn’t like the sound of the air cooled flat 4 engines. Sperl then considered a hamburger dragster or a cheap go-cart, but in the end his love for Harley Davidson got the best of him.

[Source]

Lose weight with this sausages and beer diet

What if you could eat your favorite food every day and still be able to lose weight? Believe it or not, such a thing is very much possible, and Evo Terro, and average guy from Arizona, is living proof. Despite stuffing his face with sausages and drinking cold beers all day, he is actually shedding his extra pounds.

Terro’s miracle diet consists of consuming only sausages and drinking up to six beers a day for the entire month of October in celebration of the popular Oktoberfest. Evo discovered the offbeat diet three years ago and has been using it to shed extra weight ever since. Last year, he managed to lose about 6 kg (14lbs) by munching on his favorite bratwursts and gulping beer – which add up to about 15,000 calories per week. “Most of it was body fat,” Terry Simpsons – his doctor, says. “His cholesterol went down by a third.” To make sure the diet is not harmful in any way, Terro’s health is being monitored by the supportive doctor. “We will do the labs to make sure your liver is doing fine, your lipids aren’t out of wack and your cholesterol is fine, blood chemistries are fine and I thought that was good supervision. We knew if something bad happened we would just shut it down,” the doctor explains.

[Source]

Here's a scientific proof why you should eat popcorn in the cinema

A study by researchers at the Cologne Institute has determined that eating popcorn makes moviegoers at least somewhat immune to advertisements—for example, those godawful commercials that you’re forced to sit through before the movie starts. “Thank you for watching Regal FirstLook” my tuchus. Not like I have a choice, Regal.

The idea behind the study, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, is that whenever we hear a new name our tongue subconsciously practices its pronunciation, and that’s how commercials manage to imprint brand names onto our brain. But if we’re eating popcorn our mouths are already moving, so that process is interrupted. The researchers invited 96 people—half of whom got free popcorn, half of whom only got a small sugar cube that dissolved instantly in their mouths, poor guys—to watch a commercial/movie combo. The ads left no psychological impact on the popcorn group, but the sugar cube group found themselves with warm, fuzzy feelings toward Coke or Toyota or whatever the ads were for.

“The mundane activity of eating popcorn made participants immune to the pervasive effects of advertising… This finding suggests that selling candy in cinemas actually undermines advertising effects, which contradicts present marketing strategies. In the future, when promoting a novel brand, advertising clients might consider trying to prevent candy being sold before the main movie.”

[Source]

Silent Dining Restaurant in New York

Do you remember how you always had to be quiet at the dinner table when you were young but never understood why? Now that you’re all grown up, with children of your own, you probably wish you could have just one more of those quiet dinners. If quiet is what you seek, you’re in luck, as now you can enjoy a four-course meal in complete silence at the Eat restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn where you have to be quiet and enjoy the food, whether you like it or not.

Nicholas Nauman, head chef and curator of the silent-dinner experience, got the idea for the event during a trip to India where he admired the Buddhist monks having their breakfast every morning without uttering a word. In a competing market where restaurant owners are coming up with the most unusual concepts to attract customers – such as dining in pitch-dark, the 28-year-old thought this idea would gain popularity. “It’s just an opportunity to enjoy food in a way you might not have otherwise,” he says. This way, he hopes to “reconfigure the relationship between a space and food” by forcing customers to focus on their plates rather than on the countless distractions that occur while sitting at the dinner table.

The restaurant has already held two such monthly events which were fairly successful. When talking about the first experience, Nauman says “The energy of the presence of the people involved was really palpable and motivating to make the food really good. I didn’t know if afterwards people would say ‘Woah, dude – that was weird’ or be displeased and not want to pay.” Nobody really knew what to expect from this test run but Nauman was somehow positive everything would go well. The customers didn’t break the silence; one man even left the room when he felt like sneezing which is understandable since they were told they had to finish their meals on a bench outside if they didn’t respect the strict no talking rule/if they made so much as a noise. Furthermore, some customers found creative ways of communicating such as using facial expressions. “It’s kind of like a meditation,” Jordon Colon, the owner of Eat, says. “The silence speaks for itself.”

[Source]

Smell Like Breakfast with Eau De Toast

This toast perfume comes from The Federation of Bakers who made the special limited edition scent for London Fashion Week. The idea was to challenge the notion that bread isn’t good for you and to encourage people to once again put toast on the table at breakfast. All their free samples are gone, so you’ll have to be content with toasting up a few slices of the real thing and rubbing it all over your body.

[Source]

Cheeseburger-Stuffed Crust Pizza in UK

These days, it seems everyone’s trying to have their cake and eat it too. Can’t decide if you want a salad or ice cream? No problem! Donut or croissant with your coffee? You got this. Pizza or Burger? Cheeseburger-Stuffed Crust Pizza, duh.

Pizza Hut UK is getting a limited-time Cheeseburger Pizza Crust featuring soft crust pockets filled with mini beef patties fixed with mozzarella cheese. The new item comes with a side of ketchup dip and can be covered with your favorite toppings.

If this novelty pie is giving you déjà vu, it’s because you seen it before. Last year, Pizza Hut locations in the Middle East got their own “Cheeseburger Crown Crust” pizza. Both versions are pretty similar, the only main difference being that the Middle East’s came drizzled in the chain’s “special sauce” and also offered a chicken fillet option.

[Source]

BentoShock: BioShock Lunch Box

{Source]

The Next Culinary Trend: Living Food

Is this the future of culinary experiences after Molecular Gastronomy? This project explores new culinary experiences through developments in synthetic biology, and finds its lineage in haute cuisine and molecular gastronomy.

The food behaves like a living creature, entertaining us through an empathetic connection: what if food became alive like a fictional character? What if food was able to play with our cutlery and create hyper-sensations in our mouth? Synthetic biotech has already started to create artificial life in organic forms, so breathing life into artificial digestible forms is not merely a fantasy.



[Source]

Awesome Nacho Cookies

Nacho cookies complete with frosted jalapenos? Count me in! Oh Sugar Events created these adorable concession stand-style treats for a baseball-themed bar mitzvah, but they would also be great for any sports party -especially the football parties soon to star up this fall.

[Source]

Cat Doughnuts

These adorable cat donuts were inspired by one Nya hup, an anime series which features adorable doughnut-shaped cats. They are available starting August 15th but only in Japan and only for a very limited time.

[Source]

The Ramen Burger

Get ready to line up extra early at Smorgasburg this Saturday because the Sun Noodle stand will be selling burgers with ramen "buns" to the first 100 souls willing to face the world before noon on a weekend. Noodle master Keizo Shimamoto is bringing his Ramen Burger creation to the waterfront market as a kind of trial run for a potential restaurant in the future.

The burger consists of a 75-25% blend patty, a generous slathering of shoyu sauce, peppery arugula and a scattering of scallions. In lieu of bread, Shimamoto griddles discs of Sun Noodle ramen noodles in sesame oil until they are crisp, then stuffs the "buns" with the burger and fixins. He'll employ the PleatPak, an innovative burger wrapper, to ensure all the soup-y goodness from your burger doesn't leak onto your Urban Outfitters Minor Threat T-shirt.

Shimamoto ran Bassanova Ramen in Tokyo and was slated to be part of the NYC expansion until he revealed on his blog that he was no longer involved. Instead, he'll focus on getting his Ramen Burger plan off the ground, starting with this weekend's soft debut.

[Source]

Fun Food Art for Kids

If you are looking for a little inspiration today, head over to creative mum Samantha Lee’s Instagram feed for a dose of adorable food art.

With about 223,000 followers on the photo-sharing app, it is apparent that we are not the only ones who love looking at her awesome, home-cooked kids’ meals.

Lee first started putting together these too-cute-to-eat meals to encourage her elder daughter to eat independently—while some of these meals feature well-known cartoon characters like Hello Kitty and Snoopy, others depict original creations, including a cowboy and a magician.

[Source]

If books turned into ice cream

To celebrate National Ice Cream Month, QuirkBooks made this series of ice creams inspired by books. They’ve got One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, War and Peace, Clockwork Orange, Harry Potter, and Oliver Twist themed ice creams. YES. This is the best thing to happen to reading since Book It!

[Source]

Magical Harry Potter Cookies

Not even a magic spell could create Harry Potter cookies as cool as these! Honeycat Cookies has been studying hard in the sugary creations classroom and come up with some fun designs from the series. It takes serious skills that most of us wish we had.

[Source]

Despicable Me Minions and TARDIS Cake

The minions ARE the phone box, or at least one of them is. The others seem to just be sitting around watching. This delightfully geektastic mash up cake was brought to you by the Bunny Baker.

[Source]

Bacon Weave Choco Taco

Nick from DudeFoods created this bacon weave Choco Taco using, as the name suggests, a Choco Taco, which he describes as “one of the best desserts in the entire world” – but obviously it needed bacon.

[Source]

Mario 1-Up Mushroom Pizza Roll

Chris-Rachael Oseland, aka Kitchen Overlord, is pretty amazing at taking your favorite geek icons and making them into adorable, delicious treats, particularly breads and stuffed rolls. These 1-Up mushrooms might be her cutest creation yet, and seem surprisingly easy to make considering that they look exactly like the ones that you find in the Mario franchise.

[Source]

Tank Sushi

It looks kind of like a tank. Well, one covered with dead fish. It does. See?

This is "Sensha sushi" (戦車寿司), or "tank sushi". As pointed out by Naver, a sushi restaurant called Kurisakiya began offering a tank sushi in honor of Japanese anime Girls und Panzer. The military girls anime is set in the town of Oarai in Ibaraki Prefecture, which is where Kurisakiya is located. Thus, tank sushi!

[Source]

These Doctor Who cookies are just too pretty to eat

Aren’t these the best looking Doctor Who-themed cookies you’ve ever seen? Kudos to Cookie Cowgirl who apparently isn’t just an accomplished baker, but she’s an amazing artist as well.

[Source]