On The Side: small bites during the month of January
My favorite smaller food-related news stories and products that made it in under the radar:
Comical Flowchart: You dropped food on the floor. Do you eat it?
Funny McDonald’s job application.
Coca-Cola “Happiness Machine” (2 Minute Video) – swap the Coke for Pepsi & it’s a regular afternoon at my house.
‘Willy Wonka’ Characters: Where Are They Now?
The 9 most terrifying attempts to improve popular foods.
How long past the expiration date is food safe?
Waffleizer, a blog completely devoted to waffles.
The McNugget meltdown—and 6 more fast-food freakouts.
100 Cupcakes Game – how many can you get right?
Need to dry out your cell phone? Try uncooked rice.
How to get a man excited about chicken: It’s the presentation.
A lot of death: Taco Bell founder at 86, McDonald’s Quarter Pounder creator at 81, and Pez exec at 87.
Food Product Find: Animal-Themed Chopsticks for Kids.
Food Product Find: Now your kids can eat the crayons. And you can, too – Luxirare’s Edible Crayons.
Food Product Find: Mix Stix, if you like music and mixing food.
Food Product Find: Hanger Tea, teabags in t-shirt shape with tiny clothes hangers.
Food Product Find: Herb-Saver, keeps herbs fresh for 3 weeks.
Food Product Find: Helvetica Cookie Cutters.
The Coke video was great, and the job application had me laughing out loud through the whole thing. Hilarious!
Fun links! A coworker and I retched over ‘The 9 most terrifying attempts to improve popular foods’. Humans willfully EAT this stuff?!
The expiration date article was intriguing. There’s something absurd about the sentence, “In Pennsylvania, a network of Amish stores sells deeply discounted expired foodstuffs.”
I won’t eat it if it’s a day past. But my frugal and (so far) healthy mother will consume dairy WAY past the expiration. A generational thing perhaps? Or is she buying from the Amish?
Another fantastic round-up that will occupy and entertain me over the weekend. I especially like that you listed all the food product finds at the end, and grouped together.
Jen – I think I also posted both of those on Facebook. Totally my favorites, too.
Jude – I think my Nan lived to be 94 because she ate everything past the expiration date. Maybe moldy food= longer life span.
Helen – Yea! I’m glad you like my new (subtle) formatting. It made more sense to me.
These are so much fun Amy, really. I am going to spend my day reading all of them. And not doing any studying. You enabler, you!
But seriously I think I will check out that herb saver. It could be very very useful.
Loved the Coke vid and the job app, and am amazed that anybody had that much time to come up with a flow chart for food dropped on the floor. As for how long after the expiration date is food safe, it’s what you have eyes and a nose for: if it’s blue and should be green, throw it out. If it’s green and has turned blue, it might be freezer burn, but throw it out anyway. If it smells like cheese, but it’s meat, throw it out. If it smells like meat, but it’s a liquid, throw it out. If it’s sushi, throw it out. Sushi expired before it was caught and/or prepared.
The reason that Dave Bell, Al Bernardin, and Curt Allina lived to be in their 80s is that, once they made their fortune inventing this stuff, they never had to eat it again – except for Allina who proved that the future was in plastics.
I’m sorry, but the FDA has decided that all chopsticks are hazardous to your kids’ health, and should be discarded by returning them to the manufacturer so that jewery can be produced without lead or cadmium.
And as for edible crayons, everyone over 2 knows that they always have been.
Loved so many of these, especially the Coke, Job application & Comical Flow Chart. Food expiration brought back so many memories of conversations with Nan! She kept things FOREVER. I’m convinced it added years to her life but am afraid to follow her lead. I must admit I find things in my cabinets that are so old it’s embarrassing, but do end up throwing them out. My students would love cookies with their initials. Very clever. The herb saver looks interesting, too. Now I know I’m getting old, because I couldn’t identify most of the cupcakes. Heavy sigh…. All in all, this was a great post.
You know how much I love, love, love your Small Bites. I have something akin to ADD though ~ not a short attention span, but I click on a link then something there reminds me of another site, so then I go there. Then I think maybe you (and/or someone else) may like it, too, so I open another tab and go back and forth between the site and email so that I can include the links. Then that reminds me of something else, so I open another window to go to yet another site, and then…… Well, you can see that (a) I have a problem and (b) it takes me days to check out all of your links! :P I loved every one this month. One highlight for me was the whole chicken in a can. *snort* & *eeewww* I LOVE everything at the site that you linked to for the chop sticks! I think I may have to get myself a talking Moo-Mixer. Er, I mean get one for my “grandkids.” I also like how you group the food products together. The Herb-Saver looks great! Okay, I’ve rambled on long enough. Just so you know, I want to retweet the link to this post again, but I’m staying off Twitter right now so that I will do things like laundry. I will be doing it as soon as I go back into the Twitterverse. Thanks for taking the time to compile this list for your readers, Amy. You rock! *hugs*
Mom & Dad – there were definitely some goods snippets this month. The coke machine video and job app were everyone’s favorites.
Dani – LOL. I have ADD, too…in the tangent sense. Can they make a flowchart for that? You should actually see how long this list is before I start eliminating some of the links!