EDIBLE ART By:Takashi Itoh. Know you know why its called culinary ART I thought this was incredibly beautiful, plus imagine the discipline and PATIENCE it had 2 take. The artist uses watermelon, daikon radish, mango... Every chef has their beautiful twist when dressing the table but Mr.Takashi Itoh..this is definately inspiration 4 ME 2 up my presentation game! Normally i'd add a wise crack 2 my own watermelon post..but this is visually insane. Since yaw know my moves are aimed @ Japan I'm studying the culture on a daily. Thankx 4 joininq me. Q1: Which tool do you use, when you carve a watermelon? A1: I use a carving knife made in the kingdom of Thailand. (The following photo) Check out more views @ --> FRUIT CARVING | also Japanese veg & fruit carving

The Top Earning Celeb Chef Is A Woman: OF COURSE!

Say what you will about Rachael Ray, and most days she erkx me, but I have major respect 4 the sister. but the jaunty chef-next-door knows how to build a brand. She began winning audiences with catch phrases like "EVOO" (for extra-virgin olive oil) on her first Food Network show, 30 Minute Meals, in 2001. Today, she has four Food Network programs, including Tasty Travels and $40 a Day. Her nationally syndicated, Oprah-backed talk show, Rachael Ray, is averaging 2.6 million viewers this season, and her Every Day With Rachael Ray magazine has 1.5 million readers. She endorses Dunkin' Donuts too--all to the tune of $18 million a year. More established chefs also know how to play her game. Wolfgang Puck pulls in $16 million a year. The Austrian-born patriarch of celebrity chefdom got his start with the ritzy Los Angeles restaurant Spago in 1982. That hot spot, once frequented by Orson Welles and Sidney Poitier, now counts Brad Pitt and Jamie Foxx among its regulars. Today Puck owns 15 other fine-dining brands, including Chinois, Cut and the Source, and he also sells sandwiches to weary airport travelers at Wolfgang Puck Express. He's got Wolfgang Puck Bistros in suburbia and sells soups in the grocery aisle and cutlery on the Home Shopping Network. In Depth: Top-Earning Celebrity Chefs Others of their sort include Paula Deen ($4.5 million), Alain Ducasse ($5 million) and Mario Batali ($3 million). Ducasse's empire includes 22 restaurants from Tokyo to Paris. The French chef's first New York spot shuttered in 2006 after critics said the food was too fussy; he opened two humbler joints there this year. Deen, (my heroine)the queen of Southern cuisine, serves up butter-drenched casseroles and motherly charm on two Food Network shows. Her loyal audience laps it up, and her cookbooks, memoir and magazine are all bestsellers. And Batali, a culinary school dropout, is now a master of Italian cuisine who owns 13 restaurants in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Reservations at his New York spots Babbo and Del Posto are especially hard to get. Small-Screen Standouts Branded television shows play a big role in the success of many of the chefs on our list. Anthony Bourdain's Travel Channel show, No Reservations, *my favorite show (((period))) not just because he's a sexy, creative,insane chef, plus an arrogant alcholic, but his realistic attitude towards life gives me the "bumps", anyway.. he explores delights like roasted warthog rectum, has become the network's top hit. The Food Network's female fans swoon over Bobby Flay's Southwestern cooking. He hosts Throwdown!, Boy Meets Grill and The Next Food Network Star. And Tom Colicchio is a judge on Bravo's Top Chef cooking competition. But none can beat Ray's network gig. Her 2.6 million viewers undoubtedly think it's Yum-O via:forbes

What WOULD'NT You Eat?

This article comes from the newsgroup Alt.recipies. It was written in the early 90’s and The email addresses of the posters have been edited out. So if you see “I” its not me. Good reading and eating. I HAVE A THEORY that many (all?) cultures invent a food that is weird or disgusting to non-initiates as a sort of a "marker." The kids start out hating it, but at some point they cross over and perpetuate it (perpetrate it) on the next generation. Then they nudge each other when foreigners gasp. Many cultures pride themselves on their alcoholic drinks, as in "white lightning," mai-tai, tequila, pulque, chong, vodka, schnapps, and so on. You are accepted if you can match their prowess. Sometimes one group disparages another for their eating habits, as in the word "Eskimo" (eater of raw meat) resented by the people whose name for themselves is "Inuit." I believe the food laws of Middle Eastern cultures have more to do with distinguishing your group from the neighboring groups than with health concerns or sacred scriptures, which adapted to the cultural norms. Foods don't make it onto this list just because they are generally unpopular. President Bush hated broccoli. So what? Foods on this list have some status as a cultural marker. Sometimes it's a tough call. For example, "donuts" (doughnuts, originally "oly cakes") are distinctly American, and I've met many French people who despise them. Americans are actually unusual in eating so few parts of an animal, so the fact that, say, the French eat brains isn't really a cultural marker. The marker is that Americans don't! Don't bother to respond "But lots of people like X"... that's exactly the point. That's why "X" is ON the list, not off it. See also the entry below for FRUITCAKE. Don't bother to respond "But this food is also located in..." Yes, important food immigrates even faster than language. Chile peppers and potatoes are are nearly ubiquitous, now. Here's the list so far. it's arranged roughly geographically, going east from longitude 0 England warm beer, blood pudding, jellied eels, Spotted Dick (LMAO), liver and lights, kidney pie, brawn Scotland - haggis, Irn Bru Sweden - sylta (head cheese) Denmark- yule brod (ale brod) skipsol Norway - lutefisk Netherlands - salted horsemeat sandwiches, raw salted herring, peanut butter sauce on french fries France - escargot, tripe, frog's legs, bleu cheese, roquefort, steak tartare, brains, truffles, camel's feet, boudin Spain - criadillas, morcillas European Jews schmaltz, gefilte fish, kishke Germany - limburger, bierkase, blutwurst Italy - Cynar and Campari liqueurs, carpaccio, cibreo, song birds, gorgonzola Greece - retsina Sicily - ricci di mare Sardinia -(?) maggot-cheese (I want none) Mediterranean - Sheep's head. The whole thing, cooked and skinned. Includes the eyeballs. Cheese (what a concept!) octopus, cicada, octopus and squid in ink Russia - borscht, kvass, caviar Africa - blood fresh from living livestock, grasshoppers, okra, fufu, gari Central Asia - kumiss (fermented mare's milk), yogurt, sheep fat China bird's nest soup, sea cucumber, jellyfish, rat, snake, drunken shrimp, jelled blood, bear paws, cho do fu, tiger testicles, owl soup, thousand-year eggs, sa kuo yu toe, fish flotation bladder, bao bing (shaved ice), pork uterus, camel (and cow) tendons, oyster sauce Tibet - yak milk (rancid), tea with yak butter Southern India - blazing curry Burma - a MAE oo, ngapi-jaw Hong Kong? - monkey brains Southeast Asia - durian, fermented fish-paste, dog meat, snakes, ngapi-jaw, bull penis, sour candies Thailand - kapi, grasshoppers Indonesia - blachan, dog-meat restaurants Malaysia - ice kachang (SHAVED ICE) Philippines - baalut, bagong (fish paste), diniguan Australia - Vegemite, Marmite, kangaroo, witchety grub, beetroot Papua- New Guinea sago worms Korea - kim chee, silk worm grubs Japan - fugu, natto, sashimi, shiokara, tofu, miso, uni, mountain potato, seaweed, takosu, takoyaki, tempeh, crickets, unagi Hawaii - poi, SPAM Musubi Alaska - blubber, stinkheads U.S. in general - Spam, chewing gum, iceberg lettuce, bread, beer U.S. Northwest - geoduck clams U.S. West - prairie oysters, fried pork rinds, blood-rare steak, rattlesnake U.S. Midwest - White Castle Sliders, Jell-O Salad, fruitcake, American Cheese Food Product, such as Velveeta, in Fried Cheese Balls, Cincinnati Greek Chili U.S. South - grits, crawfish, hog maws and snouts, etc dropped fowl, chicken feet, chitterlings, iced tea, ramps, turkey deep-fried whole (fried EVERYTHING) chicken-fried steak U.S.- East souse, pork loaf U.S.- Northeast scrapple, cod liver oil, pumpkin pie, raw oysters, lobster, fiddlehead ferns Canada - sugar pie, poutine, orielles de Christ Mexico - tequila worms, menudo, habanero & jalapeno peppers, mole, chichirrones (CHITTERLINGS), ceviche Brazil - gari Agentina - Morcillas Iceland - hakarl

"Hurry..Get Your Obama Chikken..RAAT NOW!!"

Say what you will… but YES, there are Obama-Fingers on sale in Germany. The Chicago Sun Times a rep for the company tried to explain market slash scheme. “It was supposed to be a homage to the American lifestyle and the new U.S. president,” sales manager Judith Witting told Germany’s Spiegel Online. All I know is I am starving right now, hope your not offended? If so ...Pass the Frankx.... cry me a river..and then build a bridge and get over it hahaha,,, Thoughts?