"My Modern" Food Porn

From mymodernmet.com comes one of the oddest articles I've ever seen on the Internet:  a photo essay about gourmet masterpieces crafted by chefs entirely out of military MREs (i.e., "Meals Ready to Eat").  

MREs from the military forces of the U.S., Russia, Lithuania, China, France and South Korea were used.  Both before (contents of each MRE) and after (the chef-created masterpiece) pictures are included.  There's even a video on the creation of these masterpieces.  

It only goes to show that haute cuisine is a matter of knowledge and mindset, not materials.

Thanks to my friend John Desmond for sending me the pointer to the article.  

Merry Christmas!

As a Christmas food statement, I will leave you with a recent video by emmymadeinjapan, which shows Emmy making a gingerbread house entirely covered, and decorated, in meat and animal products.  (Why yes, those are pieces of salami masquerading as shingles.  And a SPAM door.  And the yellow stuff is Easy Cheese.)

Not safe for vegans.  Or people who like their gingerbread houses to be pretty.  Or who have sensitive stomachs.  But it's a hoot otherwise!  (Even more of a hoot if you don't have to eat any of the "gingermeat" house afterwards.)

Just in case you are screaming for "brain bleach!" right about now, here's a link to a post by Jen of the Cake Wrecks blog, which features pictures of lovely, conventional gingerbread houses.  Gingerbread houses that most of us would enjoy admiring, and would be willing to eat after admiring them.  For something in-between the meat house and pretty gingerbread houses, here's a slideshow from GoodHousekeeping.com with pictures of 42 different gingerbread houses, ranging from a pretzel log cabin to a modern house with a palm tree.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Art Made From Food

Happy April!

I like to celebrate April Fools Day on my blogs by writing about hoaxes, or phenomena that look like hoaxes.

With that in mind, I took a stroll through the Internet last night, and found...20 Examples Of Food Imitating Art on Buzzfeed.com. These are renditions of famous works of art in various food stuffs, ranging from Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring rendered entirely in jellybeans, Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat done in leeks, Michelangelo's Creation of Adam scrimshawed onto a banana, gummy versions of the Venus de Milo, and much, much more. The works range in complexity from what have to have been fifteen-minute specials by people with talent (e.g., Munch's The Scream done in melted ice cream on a plate) to kitsch (e.g., Trumbull's Declaration of Independence done at three-quarters lifesize, carved from a single huge block of cheese) to insanely detailed mosaics (e.g., Warhol's Gold Marilyn Monroe picked out in thousands of Nestlé's Smarties).

Each of these food-imitations show impressive talent, if not first-rank artistic genius.  Enjoy them, and enjoy the rest of spring.