Swans on Tea

What the crappy treats you give out on Halloween say about you
Part of the harm is that they’re not the victim, really–you are. You, your house, your cars, your trees, your pets. But mostly, your reputation. What you dole out speaks for you, for better or worse, so here’s what some legendarily crappy Halloween treats [...]

Pasta: Edible Geometry and Italian Genius
In the world of cooking there are around 350 different types of pasta, and probably approximately four times as many names for them. They can be divided into few groups: long shape, flat pasta strands, short shaped and tubular pasta, small pasta for soup, stuffed shape, Asian type. Certain shapes [...]

When bacon isn’t enough, add butter and blue cheese
Why use plain butter when it’s so easy to make your own compound butter? My latest combination is real bacon and blue cheese, perfect for topping a fresh-off-the grill steak. The butter keeps in the refrigerator for about a week. If you’re not a fan of bacon [...]

Pancake sorter
You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

No, no, not that finger.
The Finger Test to Check the Doneness of Meat
Can’t personally vouch for the veracity, but it’s neat if it’s true.

There’s a fairly well-known science question which asks
How does the amount of energy per gram of TNT compare with the energy per gram of a chocolate chip cookie?
I’ve discussed before why I think the answer should be, “About the same,” if you’re doing a first-order approximation, and depending on what options you give for [...]

Volume Packing of Breakfast Cereal
With Raisin Bran, I tend to fill the bowl with cereal, then add milk, and when I finish the cereal, there’s only a small amount of milk left. With Cheerios, on the other hand, after I finish all the cereal from a full bowl plus milk, there’s still rather a lot [...]

The AHT Guide to Hamburger and Cheeseburger Styles
This is styles, rather than recipes. It includes the guberburger
Burgers with a generous dollop of melted peanut butter ladeled on.
and the cheese-stuffed burger
If you’ve ever tried to duplicate one at home, it’s trickier than it would seem. You’ve got to seal in the cheese securely so you [...]

I don’t recall how the conversation arrived on the topic, but I was explaining that one could use explosives to tenderize meat to some colleagues recently, and had to go find the story on the interwebs. And so I share with you:
Ka-Boom! A shockingly unconventional meat tenderizer
The idea of bombing meat came to [...]

Of Car Crashes and Snickers Bars
Pop quiz, hotshot. Using the caloric energy content of a candy bar (e.g. Snickers, at 250 food calories), what is the kinetic energy of a two-ton behemoth SUV traveling at about 70 mph? A first-order approximation is fine — no need to worry about more than one significant [...]

Making a Crunchy Frog. But if we took the bones out…
Or, how to avoid prosecution for not saying, “crunchy raw unboned real dead frog.”
Since gummy frogs normally come boneless, you’ll have to add them back in manually. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. Conventional confections employ nuts, puffed rice, wafers, [...]

Company Denies its Robots Feed on the Dead
In response to rumors circulating the internet on sites such as FoxNews.com, FastCompany.com and CNET News about a “flesh eating” robot project, Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. (Pink Sheets:CYPW) and Robotic Technology Inc. (RTI) would like to set the record straight: This robot is strictly vegetarian.
Sure, it’s vegetarian, now, [...]