Forums

Posted: 01-05-2013 09:23 Post subject:

Bacon-flavoured chocolate, anyone?
Love chocolate? Love bacon? Then the Makin' Bacon bar is for you.
By Andrew Baker
12:24PM BST 30 Apr 2013

Is the world ready for bacon-flavoured chocolate?
The concept of a breakfast bar takes on a whole new meaning when you bite into Makin' Bacon, a confectionary concept that could also double as a slow-acting murder weapon.

The bar – which costs £3 for 100g – is the brainchild of mother-and-daughter team Lucy and Andrea Huntington from Leighton Buzzard, whose boutique chocolaterie Creightons (named after Andrea's great granny) specialises in amusing and wittily presented bon-bons. They have only been established for a couple of years but already their products are to be found at the chocolate counters of some of the nation's smartest stores.

Some of these bars are good fun and taste good too – witness their droolworthy and insanely calorific Peanut Nutter, the popping-candy laced Exploder bar and their popular chocolate moustaches.

But with Makin' Bacon, which combines milk chocolate with salty bacon bits, they have come up with a concept that is probably most politely described as "unforgettable". It's not difficult to see how the idea occurred, since chocolate and salt can make very good partners (Lindt do a decent dark bar with sea salt) and bacon is certainly salty. But its is also – even in the form of the "bacon-flavour pieces" employed here – greasy, and the result – to our palates at least – was hard to relish.

The British have a tendency to embrace challenging dishes and then export them defiantly to the world – Marmite and HP Sauce spring instantly to mind, though not on the same piece of toast – and it could be that Creightons are on to an unlikely winner here. But is is hard to see the combination toppling Fruit n' Nut any time soon.

It is also difficult to banish the notion of what Makin' Bacon is doing to your arteries on the way down: makin' blockages, like as not. Chocophiles love to quote the good things contained in their favourite substance – the antioxidants and beneficial theobromine – but know in their hearts that it is not good for their hearts. So combine milk chocolate (not the virtuous dark) with bacon and you have a recipe for homicide: death by chocolate indeed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/10027537/Bacon-flavoured-chocolate-anyone.html

Posted: 05-05-2013 03:31 Post subject:

The excellent Man Bites Man has an entry on geophagy (earth-eating), ascribing it to (among others) the "Bongos", who are described as 'A tribe of equatorial negroes'. The article is chiefly concerned with German geophagy during WWII. I could probably dig it out and type it up if anyone's really interested, but I think I've covered the basics in this post.

Posted: 27-07-2013 08:22 Post subject:

'Ray Mears' beach food bid by Paul Yendell

For the next four weeks a man from Cornwall will be catching his own food and living in a tent on beaches in the south-west of England in a bid to raise money for charity.
Paul Yendell, from Launceston, says he has quit his job and sold all his "worldly belongings".

To survive, he plans to eat seaweed, limpets, mussels, catch fish and use a pump to filter water from rivers.
Mr Yendell says he is raising money for Greenpeace.

He plans to walk between beaches in north Cornwall and Devon and hopes to visit Tintagel, Sandymouth Beach and Bideford.
"I'm starting in Bude because I'm fairly sure I can catch mackerel from the breakwater.

"I'm carrying quite a lot of equipment including, burners, fishing tools, nets, pots and pans and I've spent the last month researching how to live off the food I should find."
He said he hoped to live "Ray Mears-style" for all four weeks.

On Mr Yendell's fundraising page he said: "I will not be claiming any benefits and will be living from the grace of Mother Earth just as all life on this planet was intended to be.
"I'm not a trained survivalist and I've never caught a fish before."
He plans to finish his attempt on 24 August.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-23471152

I wish him well, but I suspect he won't make it... Confused

Posted: 28-07-2013 17:05 Post subject:

They used to say that thrifty folk used every part of a pig except the squeak.

It seems the Chinese have a dish called Three Squeaks

Live baby mouse. Not for the squeamish. It seems to be real. Confused

Posted: 28-07-2013 18:15 Post subject:

Whenever I go to a deadicated tuna restaurant, they always serve a selection of better cuts sprinkled with gold leaf. There's no taste, but I wonder whether I ought to be eating (precious) metal shavings.

Posted: 28-07-2013 18:40 Post subject:

Gold is mostly chemically inert. If you do choose to eat gilded foods you can tell people that they can polish your turds and they'll shine.

Posted: 28-07-2013 20:23 Post subject: