Image via Sandy Austin's Flickr

People always ask me what I like to do in Tokyo. What's fun? What's cool. Well here's my dirty secret. Most nights, I sit in my parents' living room and watch silly game shows while drinking green tea and eating persimmon.

A Lithuanian designer team has made a series of edible, wearable bread shoes that can be purchased on their site. They seem like they'd be comfy house slippers.

Bread Shoes via Dezeen

The number of people affected by food shortages is starting to rise again. Is the solution a new biotech version of the Green Revolution, or a green Green Revolution based on organic farming? The New York Times brought together six experts to address those questions. Most fall squarely on one side of the fence or the other, but I'm interested in the more balanced opinion of Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. I've done a lot of research on agriculture issues recently, both for National Geographic News and Discover magazine, and Foley's "third way" seems to make the most sense to me, in context with what I've been hearing from global agriculture experts.

Currently, there are two paradigms of agriculture being widely promoted: local and organic systems versus globalized and industrialized agriculture. Each has fervent followers and critics. Genuine discourse has broken down: You're either with Michael Pollan or you're with Monsanto. But neither of these paradigms, standing alone, can fully meet our needs.

Rather than voting for just one solution, we need a third way to solve the crisis. Let's take ideas from both sides, creating new, hybrid solutions that boost production, conserve resources and build a more sustainable and scalable agriculture. There are many promising avenues to pursue: precision agriculture, mixed with high-output composting and organic soil remedies; drip irrigation, plus buffer strips to reduce erosion and pollution; and new crop varieties that reduce water and fertilizer demand. In this context, the careful use of genetically modified crops may be appropriate, after careful public review.

Can Biotech Food Cure World Hunger, in the New York Times, via the Science and Development Network.

Mayor Mike says: "John Nese is the owner of Soda Pop Stop pop only store in LA. Listening to him rattle off what makes or breaks a good soft drink, makes me thirsty. Listening to his passion about supporting the little man in the face of large corporate pressure in the marketplace is just plain refreshing."

Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA

A thirsty gentleman with a new bottle of wine, but no corkscrew, shows his friends a neat trick. (Via Cynical-C)

As we look forward to Thanksgiving (and I already am), don't be too intimidated by the Marthas of the world. This short piece in the New York Times ends with an admission by a foodie mag editor that those too-perfect-to-be-true birds are, in fact, too perfect to be true.

"I know it seems like, hey, what could be simpler than roasting a bird? But the perfect roast bird is a challenge," Ms. Cowin said. "Turkey, as a model, is very much like a fashion magazine with fashion models. There are plump turkeys, and, I'm not kidding you, there's skinny turkeys, there are chesty turkeys, breasty turkeys, there are flat-chested turkeys." With one previous year's model, "I was like, 'I just need the breast to get a little bit higher,' " she said, then paused."We have enhanced the breasts of turkeys," she admitted.

I assume this means Photoshop enhancement, but the article doesn't say. She could easily be talking about more physical alterations. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I was a subscriber to Zillions, Consumer Reports' defunct magazine for kids, which I still mourn. (And not just nostalgically. We need more publications dedicated to introducing children to critical thinking, skepticism and the reality behind the advertainment that's targeted at them.) Zillions introduced 9-year-old me to advertising photo tricks like "ice cream" that's actually lard or vegetable shortening and fast-food hamburgers made to stand tall and proud with the help of cardboard inserts. I wish the Grey Lady had gone more into specifics like that here.

The New York Times "Coming Model of the Month: A Fuller Thanksgiving Turkey", via Barfblog.

Image courtesy Flickr user tuchodi, via CC.

The secret: It's not the creepy chemical additive you thought. A couple of weekends ago, I caught an episode of the public radio show "The Splendid Table" with soothingly voiced chef Lynne Rossetto Kasper. The topic was BBQ and I was shocked (Shocked!) to hear Lynne* and her guest recommend liquid smoke as the key to great crockpot pulled pork. In fact, Lynne seemed pretty surprised to hear herself suggest it.

But the truth, my friends, is that sometimes there is a little truth in advertising. And liquid smoke is one of those times.

*We're on a first-name basis like that. In my imagination.

Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

If you're not already planning to convert that old fridge into a kegerator, perhaps you should consider making your own cheese "cave." Why? Because cheese deserves your adoration, and you could use another hobby. I am planning to steal my husband's mini-fridge for this purpose (this is probably news to him) because it would be so appropriate for the rock star of dairy products to hang out in a unit that looks like an amp. If anyone can figure out how to effectively lower fridge temperature without purchasing a separate thermostat, I would be happy to send you some amateurish homemade cheese.

Woman's Day has a gallery of cheese sculptures that can't be missed, from this almost-perverse "Winners Drink Milk" piece, to a phallic Eiffel Tower, to a leprechaun-like Abe Lincoln made from a 1,000-pound block of mild Cheddar cheese.

8 Cutting-Edge Cheese Sculptures

The guys at Videogum found what may be the absolute most awesome "pumpkin dance" YouTube video of all time. This splendid little number, choreographed to "Ghostbusters," comes to the internets courtesy of a local news channel in Omaha, Nebraska. (via Gabe)

BB reader Felix Jung says, "My coworker Jane took this photo of a mini-pumpkin tribute to a little boy and a little balloon that had us glued to our TV and computer screens. It was entered in to a contest taking place at her husband's office, and I'm betting it wins, hands down."

Trossen Robotics forum member WGhost9 says they designed, built and programmed this creepy candy crawler in just 3 weeks.

It runs C on an Axon microcontroller. It uses all digital servos and can lift over twice its body weight. The software (soon to be given out open source) allows for 6 synchronous degrees of motion. Future additions will include foot sensors and a remote control option.

[ via DIY Drones ]

Boing Boing reader Greg Zilm sent in this photograph of a fine pumpkin homage to William S. Burroughs.

Who in their right mind could resist a meat dish prepared to resemble a human hand?

The complete recipe with lots of photos is available from Not Martha. (Thanks, Caroline!)

Susannah Breslin pointed me to Marilyn Minter 's latest video months ago, but I didn't get around to blogging 'til now. Green Pink Caviar is described as

A lush and sensual voyeuristic hallucination. Filmed with macro lenses, the video was inspired by a photo shoot where Minter directed her models to lick brightly colored candies while she shot photos from underneath a glass plate. The models' tongues mixed the colorful sugar with saliva, slurping and pushing color across the glass surface to simulate painting.

More: greenpinkcaviar.com, some viewer reactions, Los Angeles Times interview with the artist, NBC LA, and apparently there's some controversy over the billboard installation in Hollywood.

* random recipe
* yumblog
* klingon recipes
* cooking with dexter
* celebrity recipes
* cooking with christopher walken

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter.

[photo: iphone snap of delicious fruits I bought at the local farmer's market yesterday. - XJ]

Bonnie sez, "Star Wars artist Chris Trevas got hitched and had this glorious dead Tauntaun cake (complete with Luke Skywalker stuffed inside) made for the groom's cake at his wedding! The cake was made by Courtney Clark from Cake Nouveau of Food Network Challenge (and TLC Ultimate Cake-Off) fame!"

Dead Tauntaun Wedding Cake! (Thanks, Bonnie!)

Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

Meet the AutoExec WM-01 Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray. This hunk o' plastic with a fancy name must be A) brilliant in its simplicity, or B) hopelessly dumb. But I can't quite decide which. Either way, the grab bag of serious sarcastic/ambiguous product reviews is enjoyable. One customer writes, "This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving." Deadpan humor? Perhaps... or it might just be this guy.

(via Random Good Stuff)

My friend Kristie Lu Stout, a CNN International anchor, visited a number of street hawker stalls in Seoul to sample a variety of treats, including honey strings mixed with nuts, a spiral cut fried potato on a stick, and this french-fry encrusted hot dog on a stick that Kristie photographed and posted to Twitter last week.

CNN's Kristie Lu Stout goes on a street food safari

Image by zrim via Flickr

When I got a bag of chile peppers in our CSA delivery last week, I had a really hard time trying to figure out how to cook them. I tried putting them in pasta, but that turned out numbingly spicy. And then I remembered that chile peppers = togarashi in Japanese, and that they are a key ingredient in one of my all-time favorite spices — shichimi togarashi, a Japanese spice mix commonly found at home dinner tables and yakitori restaurants that is designed to enhance the natural flavors of high quality meat and veggies. For this week's Taste Test, I thought I'd share a simple recipe for shichimi and give you some tips on other ways to use it.

This article about a farmer in Ohio who grew creepy pumpkins with human faces on them was apparently in the January 1938 issue of Popular Science.

via Modern Mechanix

A couple of days ago I posted a photo of a container of "Dairy Drink," which turns out to be sugared and watered down skim milk. The above drink is just plain old milk, but did the person who came up with "Dairylea" really think it would make people want to drink it?

Dairylea sound like a gastric disorder...

If you ever feel like putting your dinner where your cliched saying is, you might first want to read up a bit on how to cook that horse you're so hungry you could totally eat. Doug Powell, Ph.D.---professor of food safety at Kansas State University, and proprietor of must-read food and food safety site Barf Blog--can help, with a story detailing the flavors and cultural history of several favorite horse-related dishes from world cuisine, including...

Pictured: A sandwich made with Dutch smoked horsemeat (paardenrookvlees), cucumber, pesto and what looks to be some kind of soft, white cheese. I won't lie. I would totally eat that. From Flickr user fotoosvanrobin, via CC.

Pastissada de Caval
In northern Italy, the traditional horse meat stew from Verona known as Pastissada de caval is made with wine and paprika. Legend has it that the dish originates from the town's inhabitants marinating the meat from dead horses in the local Valpolicella wine and herbs and spices after a battle between the Ostrogoths and Barbarians in AD489. In Italy, horse - and donkey - meat has traditionally been cured to make bresaola or carpaccio.

Alcoholic Mare's Milk
This reliance on the horse on the central steppes also means a reliance on mare's milk. Fermented, mare's milk becomes a mildly alcoholic yoghurt-like drink known as Kumis or Airag. When visiting Mongolia in 2005 President Bush was apparently offered Kumis although there is no record as to whether or not he actually consumed it.

Greg Morgan says: "My friend took this picture at an HEB in Austin. WTF is Dairy Drink?"

Robin Barooah gradually weaned himself off coffee and found that his concentration actually improved. He explains how he did it and what he discovered on the Quantified Self blog, which covers news about self-testing and self-monitoring.

As part of a separate experiment, I have been keeping track of the amount of time I spend working on projects.  I work in 25 minute intervals which I time with a coffee timer, and I mark an X in a paper journal for each interval that I successfully complete.  If I get distracted, I don't mark the X, and if I can't concentrate, I abandon it and don't mark an X rather than sitting out the timer.  I've been doing this since the end of June, so I tabulated the data and created a graph of my hours of concentration per day, and overlaid a bar showing when I drank my last coffee.

Causality is a complex issue. Obviously this is an n=1 experiment and I am intentionally doing other things that may well be improving my concentration, but one thing is very clear; the amount of time I spend concentrating has not deteriorated since I quit coffee, so I can easily reject the hypothesis "I need coffee to help me concentrate."

The false god of coffee

(click for larger image). Sweet baby Jesus and biscuits, I can't hardly believe my eyes. Above, the truly awesome cover of a 1980 issue of Wild Mook, one of many fanzines produced in the early 1980s by the late Haruo Mizuno. "Mook" refers to a type of publication that's kind of halfway between a magazine and a book. Matt Alt (who I reached out to for comment in this BB post today) says

[Mizuno was] so obsessed with American cops that he actually managed to talk the NYPD and LAPD into letting him ride along with officers. This amazing book is but one of dozens he authored on the topic. None sum up the Japanese fascination with the American power aesthetic as much as this fetish-like pastiche of uniform, hamburgers, weapons, and mountains of french fries, though.

More on Matt's blog. Man, if anyone out there has a copy of Wild Mook, please scan it and share online. I want a hard copy so bad!

A Seattle couple celebrated their wedding recently with this stylish Zombie Wedding cake, complete with a chainsaw-toting bride and bloody guests modeled after real attendees. It seems that the pair are really into zombies — earlier, the groom proposed by making a zombie movie featuring blood-spewing teddy bears in a graveyard.

noblerobinette's Flickr via Neatorama

UPDATE: Apparently, I missed that Xeni and BoingBoing Video had done this already back in April. You can check out that video, and get more information on the experiment, as performed by Popular Science columnist Theo Gray.

Saturday Morning Science Experiment continues on the vague food theme from last week, this time with a video demonstrating the energy (i.e. calories) stored in gas station-quality snack sausages. Naturally, eye protection is needed.

Tip of the hat to Ian Simmons, of the UK's Life Science Center, for suggesting this video! If you've got suggestions for upcoming Saturday Morning Science Experiment videos, send them my way!

Thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user stallio, via CC. My apologies to readers outside the US, who may or may not get the reference.

Last Saturday, I brought you a video of horrible gummi bear torture. Now, I want to set the record straight. Some of my best friends were* gummi bears. I swear.

To make it up to the gummi bear community, I present to you, their life story: From the early days in Bonn, Germany, to being an inspiration for breast implants. Gummi bears have had a full and happy life before we get to them. And don't let PETA tell you otherwise.

Pictured: Stalwart, brave gummies save their comrades from what might otherwise have been a tragic mountaineering accident. Flickr user iwona_kellie captured the event on film. Used here via CC.

*Some friends are tastier than others.

Behold the french fry coated hot dog, a Korean treat. (Via Kristie Lu Stout)

Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

According to Slashfood, an Australian brewery has reportedly set off the alarms in Disney's legal department with a Raspberry Ale ad campaign featuring Ho White, an "anything but sweet" character who blows smoke rings while reclined in bed with the seven dwarves.

Flickr user Megpi made this beautiful "impressionist cake." ZOMG.

impressionist cake (via Craft)

Photo by Josh Kucera, at True Slant: On the frontiers of commerce: Chinese watermelon sausage. And with that, I am stepping aside from the blog for a nutritious rainy-afternoon lunch, which will not contain anything resembling what's in this photo. (Thanks, Noah Shachtman)

One lingering kitchen storage dilemma I've always had is how to store my spices. I used to have one of those big rotating systems, but it took up too much counter space so I got rid of it. This zero gravity magnetic spice rack from Yanko Designs promises to change things — it comes with 12 custom spice canisters and a magnetic base that half of them will stick to, making use of vacant wall space.

Magnetic spice rack ($44)

Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

Thumbnail images can be deceiving. Whilst perusing squirrel photographs on Flickr last night, I came across a thumbnail of this image. "Aww, teeny baby squirrels," I thought to myself, foolishly clicking to get a better look. Wrong. So, so wrong.

After picking myself up off the floor, I confess that I found myself admiring how fit these little suckers are/were. Besides the feet and head (which are no longer an issue), they look like they were pure muscle. These must have been dashing-through-the-wilderness type squirrels. Or perhaps, hit-the-gym-7-days-a-week type squirrels. Not like the mangy little booger (fueled by Cheetos and Mountain Dew, no doubt) that tore a hole in my backpack years ago while trying to pilfer a candy bar.

Even with 8000+ cuddly faced squirrel photos coo over, this is the one picture that I can't stop staring at. It is called "Squirrel for Dinner." Enjoy.

Flick user and master retrogame cupcake maker Ana Fuji has a gorgeous set of delicious-looking Super Mario sweets online, made from chocolate and fondant.

trufinhas: super mario!

(via Geekologie)

I'm pleased to welcome our new guest blogger to Boing Boing: Connie Choe! I met Connie last month at Machine Project's krautfest 2009, where Connie and her mother, Granny Choe, showed everyone how to make kimchi. Take it away, Connie!

Good people of Boing Boing, I hope you appreciate the fact that this picture has been censored for your sake. I'm not flashing the camera or anything... In fact, I'd probably be the last person on the interweb to let the girls go out for a public swim. Yes, there's a good chance that I'm the most annoyingly squeaky clean, law-abiding citizen you will ever virtually meet, and if I were half as smart as I used to be, I would take advantage of this by starting a career in politics. Unfortunately, politics makes me sleepy and large crowds of people make me hyperventilate. It's a shame, really. The censorship is due to the fact that I'm wearing a big company logo and I didn't want to offend you with shameless self-promotion. 

I'm a health and culture writer whose work has appeared in Shape magazine and on LA.com. I'm also co-founder of a burgeoning kimchi empire: the award-winning Granny Choe's Kimchi Co.

For the next two weeks I'll be sharing about the little things that amuse me personally including health/psych news, the cleverness of Asians, and squirrels. 

Rachel Maddow did a segment on her always-superb show tonight about Ralph Lauren's recent bogus legal threats against various blogs -- including this one. Those DMCAs sent by lawyers for Lauren demanded the removal of a badly photoshopped ad which morphed a model into a lollipop-headed stick figure. The Rachel Maddow Show segment is embedded above, and is also here: Photoshop of Horrors.

P.S.: And here's Rob on ABC's Nightline. No embed, unfortunately!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Red Kuri. It's a winter squash — unlike its summer siblings, it's harvested at full maturity and has a very thick skin. I got this one from my CSA and fell instantly in love with its beautiful orange skin, which is hard to slice without killer knife skills.

Take a bite out of this, bitch. A mere $25,000 apiece! The very same cupcake art cars I zoomed around in for this Boing Boing TV episode are now offered for sale at upscale (and econopocalypse-beleaguered) retailer Neiman Marcus. Congrats to Lisa Pongrace and her fellow designers and builders bakers. Customized Cupcake Car (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Teen Brit ukulele sensation Rocky and Balls have a new song, called "Love Cake."

We love cakes. We love eating cakes and making cakes, so we wrote this song to sing whilst making said cakes.

The tiny Asian citrus psylid is killing citrus trees in California (High res image from UC Davis here).

Homegrown Evolution has an interesting story about Asian citrus psylid, and ant-sized insect that could spell doom for California citrus.

The Asian citrus psylid is not a problem in itself, but carries an incurable bacterial disease called huanglongbing (HLB). HLB, first reported in Asia in 1919, renders citrus fruit inedible and eventually kills the tree. Parts of Africa, Asia and South America are infected with HLB and in some regions of Brazil the disease is so bad that they've given up growing citrus altogether. HLB is in Florida and is adding to a nightmarish collection of other diseases afflicting citrus in the Sunshine State. Now California growers are panicking with the appearance of the psylid.

The State of California is taking all sorts of measures to stop the spread of the pest (including spraying dangerous pesticides), but Erik and Kelly of Homegrown Evolution are taking a Stoic approach to the problem.

Seneca [author of Letters from a Stoic] would say, do what is in your power to do and don't worry about what you can't fix. Taleb [author of The Black Swan] would advise always maximizing upside potential while minimizing exposure to the downside. My unsentimental conclusion: don't try to grow citrus. If I had a mature tree I'd leave it in place and rip it out at the first sign of HLB. Despite the state's offer to replace any HLB infected tree with a free citrus tree I wouldn't take them up on the offer. In our case we have three small, immature citrus trees that are already chewed up by citrus leafminers. I'm pondering pulling them up and replacing them with fruit trees unrelated to citrus. This follows our stoic, get tough policy in the garden. Planting a tree entails a considerable investment in time. It can take years to get fruit. Why not plant pomegranate instead and let other people worry about citrus diseases? If a pomegranate disease shows up, rip it up and plant something else. Following this approach will eliminate habitat for the psylid and negate the need for pesticides.

The end of California citrus?

American megacorp Cargill, which brought in $116.6 billion in revenue last year, is in the spotlight this week around the story of Stephanie Smith: the 22 year old children's dance instructor was paralyzed from the waist down after eating E. coli-tainted hamburger traced back to the meat supplier.

She was in a coma for nine weeks (that's her, hospitalized, in the photo below), and can now no longer walk. "Ground beef is not a completely safe product," one food safety expert in the article is quoted. Well, no shit. Snip from an extensive investigative report in Sunday's New York Times:

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties." Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources -- a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger -- allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together.

E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection (New York Times)

Rob Cockerham says: "I made a sandwich calculator which will allow people to choose bread, cheese and other sandwich toppings and find out how much it will cost to put it together at home."

On her blog, Shelley Rickey shows you how to make Bad Dog Pâté.

The grass is made out of Hummus covered in Parsley with sprigs of Chives sticking out. The Poop is made from Aubergine Pate with lots of Paprika Powder added to give it..uh, a 'nice' poop color. The flies are made out of Olives and Onions. Happy Animal Day Everyone!

I don't know about you, but I only watch videos about industrial robotic pancake production if they have an energetic techno soundtrack like this one does. (Via Cynical-C)

Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis. From Photoshop Disasters (thanks, Antinous!)

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the New York City mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, New York.


If you live in New York City or any other major city, you may have seen a store sign scream "Halal Meat" or "Halal Certified." These signs are nothing but comfort for many Muslims who want meat that's prepared in accordance to the Islamic guidelines. The whole halal-making process is very similar to the kosher-making one. In fact, many Muslims, including myself, limit their meat consumption to only kosher and halal meat since they both fall under a similar rigorous certification.

So when I get tired of tuna sandwiches and want to get my halal grub on, where do I go? Zabihah.com - it's really the authoritative guide to halal dining. It's a wiki-site created by the brilliant Shahed Amanullah back in 1999. Shahed meticulously typed in 200 restaurants himself, and now the site bolsters around 6,000 halal restaurants worldwide. Anyone can add their own restaurant and leave a review or two.

Anyone like to recommend their favorite halal eatery? Please do share!

Visit the site: www.zabihah.com

Bionic Eye is a $0.99 augmented reality app for the iPhone to help you find fast "food" chain restaurants.

From Cult of Mac:

Designed for the iPhone 3GS, Bionic Eye is an augmented reality app that overlays information about nearby points of interest over the iPhone’s camera. Hold the camera up to the building in front of you, and thanks the iPhone’s GPS and compass, the screen is overlaid with little virtual signs that say what’s inside. It also includes virtual signposts showing the way to the nearest subway station or Starbucks coffee shop.

Bionic Eye iPhone App Points the Way To the Nearest Hooters