But what does it taste like?

I have never quite understood why fancy Chinese meals are supposed to taste better if they are accompanied by a bird carved out of a carrot, or elegant meals are somehow more elegant if the butter is shaped like a rose.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but be impressed with things that people with food in the name of art and have posted examples before – http://cyberslacker.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/do-play-with-your-food/

I can’t say that I much like these watermelon carvings by Francesco Scravaglieri but I do at least admire the endeavour.

Polymath

Now we are getting somewhere! Having looked at music and maths, art and food, art and science I have finally found a trio – art, maths and food.

George W Hart is a sculptor and mathematician with a special interest in geometric scupltues. He is the author of the online Encyclopaedia of Polyhedra, in case you are interested in exploring the exciting field of Stellations of the Rhombic Triacontahedron and other such delights, and is a research professor in a computer science department.

So, art and maths. But what about the food?

Although it is hard to see in this picture of a mobile entitled  ‘No Picnic’ , these three pieces are made of plastic knives, forks and spoons

Cute huh?

How do we manage without these?

Yes I love ridiculous devices. Last year I was captivated by the stupid products at Archie McPhee. My new delights can be found at Stupididiotic which describes itself as “a trademark brand of unusual and peculiar products”. Many of the products for sale here are totally useless. For example, for $24 you can buy a DVD rewinder.

Of course it has no function, but then neither does the $5 tin of dehydrated water.

On the other hand, there could be some use in the underwear repair kit.

or the Viaga carrying ring  

How about tattooed sleeves?

or a crime scene scarf 

On the subject of useful gadgets, there are the various pizza cutters you didn’t know you needed. These thanks to design blog Toxtel.

But wait there’s more. Thanks to Trendhunter magazine, we have some wonderfully weird food to go with the gadgets.

Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in sushi

A house made of breadsticks

A chocolate foot

And many more.

Food maths

What could be better than something which combines cooking and maths? (Don’t answer that question. I know that there are large number of answers to the question. Possibly even an infinite number). Let me rephrase that. What a delight – cooking and maths in the one project.

I don’t know about the father of fractal geometry Benoît Mandlebrot’s culinary skills, but his as name means ‘almond bread’ I am sure he would be impressed with the idea of these biscuits.

The wonderful Evil Mad scientist Laboratory features an article this month on how to make fractal biscuits, including even a link to a recipe for the dough!

As I often ask of such things. Why not?

Thanks to Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival for this.

Do Play with Your Food

These are from a Russian website called Snowfall. I can’t find any hint as to who is the creator of these wonderful photos (or any other of the photographs on the site). They are too good not to post.

An Interesting Dilemma

This picture appears on a blog on the photo-sharing website – Foxsaver. It is a great photograph and one that invites interesting speculation about it. I fear that is exactly what ‘labellaluna’ has done. I won’t repeat the story that accompanies the picture, because frankly I don’t believe it.

Why not?

a) It sounds preposterous.

b) Searching the web has not turned up a corroborating source.

So here it is. A photograph apparently from 1958. Presumably a promotional picture for the Black Cat wine cellar.

Nice picture though.

Corgi, yum

According to performance artist Mark McGowan, the corgi he ate in protest at the RSPCA not taking action against Prince Philip for fox hunting tasted terrible. Well what did he expect? There is clearly a good reason for not including dog in our regular diets.

It brought to mind a book I have, entitled ‘Extreme Cuisine’.

This is a wonderful book that catalogues (with many gruesome photos which I chose not to reproduce as a matter of good taste) virtually everything that is humanly possible to eat – with recipes! I haven’t tried to make “Fried Locusts with Salt” or “Mango Urine Lassi” and I don’t intend to try. This book certainly suggests that another favourite of mine – The Man Who Ate Everything is not strictly true. Former Vogue USA food writer, Jeffrey Steingarten writes with great wit about overcoming his own distaste for various foods, as well as conducting some interesting food tastings and experiments.  

But as adventurous as he is, Steingarten has clearly not eaten as many weird things as Jerry Hopkins, author of Extreme Cuisine. Hopkins describes water beetles as tasting ‘nutty’, fried snake having many small bones but tasting like chicken, and rice-paddy frogs as tasting like “meaty sort of sawdust gone slightly sour”.  Then again, he is very dismissive of Vegemite so can we trust his sense of taste? 

By the way, Mark McGowan’s next project is to be “buried in a box, a David Blaine-type thing, in Dublin underneath a metre of mashed potato.” so one might question his judgement too.

Musical food

Stumbling around the web this morning turned up this photo of a drum kit made of cheese – Gouda to be precise.

That got me wondering what other food based musical instruments I might find. I know about gourds being used to make musical instruments but what else could I find? Before long I was visiting the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra;

Perth based Flutenveg;

Fellow Australian Lindsey Pollak via the wonderful World Carrot Museum;

And finally to prove that you don’t have to be a vegetarian to enjoy making music – the charango – a guitar made out of armadillo shell;

Where have all the flowers gone?

Joni Mitchell summed up the hippie commune atmosphere of Laurel Canyon in 1970 in her song Ladies of the Canyon.

Trina with her beads and drawings and lacework. Annie making babies and brownies and gathering flowers. And Estrella making music.

Doing my usual daily cyberslacking, I find myself in a large loop of links to (mostly) women of a certain age in various countries who write about fruit and flower growing, painting and handcrafts. Clearly the hippies never died, they just started writing blogs. Peas Corner is as typical as any, with a fair list of links to other such delights.

Take this quote from A Growing Delight

“Have you ever stopped to wonder just how many different flowers there can be in the world? How come each tiny seed or bulb can produce its own unique plant, with flower and seeds? It may be as tiny as a crocus or as huge as a Californian Redwood, and every size in between, each has its own characteristics.”

Don’t tell me that doesn’t belong firmly in 1970!

It is sometime hard to avoid the religious and the sentimental, but there is much to be enjoyed from the Bloggers of the Third Age.

While wallowing in the photos of flowers, I notice there are also recipes to try. Unfortunately, it would seem that the one hippie virtue that has not survived in the USA is the idea of quality fresh ingredients. I am astonished how unapologetic the American recipes are about using commercial pre-prepared ingredients – frozen cookie dough, packet soups, spray cheese etc. There may be some wholesome fresh food recipes to be found, but by-and-large they have eluded me so far. I’ll stick to my tried and true recipe sites, but that is for another blog on another day.