At the height of our holiday elation/frustration, we found our mixed feelings perfectly expressed in Alan Sailer’s incredible photos of exploding Christmas ornaments. Now, Designboom points us to yet another series of the photographer’s gorgeous detonations. Using a pellet gun and homemade camera equipment, Sailer documents all sorts of food being blown to pieces. See a chocolate bunny’s head cave in, Smarties burst into a beautiful, powdery pastel rainbow, and a lychee nut transform into a watery bomb after the jump; then visit Sailer’s Flickr site to check out a whole lot more of his work.
Ever since “Hansel and Gretel” came on the scene two centuries ago, gingerbread houses have been a staple of the season — whether or not the Brothers Grimm are directly responsible, or just fueled the trend with their cautionary fairy tale, is still up for debate. But regardless of their origin, these cookie cottages have come a long way since they first appeared. Before you set the oven to 350 degrees this year, you might want to consider giving your classic construction with a more modern update. Check out some of our favorite pop culture homages in gingerbread, which range from an ode to surprisingly adorable miniature version of CBGB to a delicious looking take on Doctor Who’s TARDIS, after the jump. Read More »
If like us, you woke up this morning suffering from a bit of a food hangover, then Pamela Michelle Johnson’s paintings of piled up hamburgers, stacks of Oreos, and mounds of cheesecake are probably going to make you feel a little sick to your stomach — and possibly help you from spending the entire day picking over leftovers. You’re welcome! Johnson’s photorealistic, large-scale work, which we spotted over on MoCoLoco, is meant to be a commentary on what she calls the “insatiable American appetite.”
“Through my work, I strive to invoke reflection on a culture focused on mass-consumption and mass-production, where the negative aspects of overindulgence are often forgotten or ignored,” she writes. “The work questions a culture that equates fulfillment, pleasure and happiness with what we consume.” Click through to see a few of our favorite pieces, and let us know what you think of it in the comments. Read More »
File under: funny because it’s true. Grant Snider, of the wonderful Incidental Comics, has mapped out the typical Thanksgiving dinner. Feast your eyes on the Republic of Turkey and its adjacent Cranberry Sauce Bog, and those mountains of stuffing and sweet potatoes bordering the vaguely frightening Untouched Casserole Wilderness, all surrounded by a massive Sea of Gravy. Now that we’ve seen this, we’re pretty sure we’ll be entirely unable to stop picturing it tomorrow, when our plates really are loaded with four kinds of pie. [via Laughing Squid]
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so obviously we have something very important on the brain — yes, food. But not only food: this time of year, when we make the pilgrimage to our childhood homes, also makes us think of the books that delighted us as kids, still waiting for us on the shelves, beaten up as they are from many reads. So in case you’re feeling like a literary feast tomorrow, and in honor of nostalgic reading and home-cooked meals on this most belly-stuffing of holidays, we’ve re-created one of the original Redwall feasts — Abbot Mortimer’s Golden Jubilee. Warning: these recipes have not been tested, so take them with a grain of salt. A Redwall Cookbook does exist, but it’s slated for grades 3 to 7 — not a serious chef’s read. Consider this us clamoring for an adult version! Click through to see the famous dishes and recipes of good old Redwall Abbey, and let us know if its fictional feasts have ever inspired your own culinary ambitions. Read More »
Thanksgiving is a time of coming together, of enjoyment, of abundance — in a word, of food. For centuries, the meal has been an American cultural centerpiece, a moment of epicurean indulgence and familial togetherness. And while we remember the feasts of our childhood with heartwarming nostalgia and salivating mouths, the feasts that have the most power over our imagination are the ones we’ve never actually attended, experienced only through the mind’s eye and the magic of editing. Perhaps it’s because they’re unattainable that they’ve become the focus of our hedonistic fantasies. Or maybe it’s because multimillion-dollar studio budgets went into creating them. We’re too hungry to keep contemplating, so while we raid our fridges, feast your eyes on the most delicious meals in movie history. Read More »
Every culture has a street food tradition all its own, but unless we travel overseas (or watch a lot of Anthony Bourdain), we rarely get to see what it looks like. That’s why we’re so excited about Austrian photographer Stefan Fürtbauer’s Eiterquellen series, which capture the fluorescent-lit food kiosks of Vienna against the dramatic blackness of the city at night. In a statement about the project, Fürtbauer explains that these “wurstel diners” date back to the 19th century and have become both “the place of the distinctive Viennese working class” and a last bastion of resistance against multinational fast-food chains. He also points out that their steel, chrome, and neon architecture bears some resemblance to American diners of the ’60s. Page through a gallery of photos from the ongoing series after the jump, then visit Fürtbauer’s website to see more of his work.
Our mothers always told us not to play with our food, but perhaps she would sing a different tune if she knew that we could earn money by making logos out of food and posting the results to a blog. Although, chewing gum and spitting it out to make 8-bit portraits of Mario still involves playing with chewed gum, so maybe Mom was right after all.
Even so, it’s still fun to look at Foo-Gos impressive food creations, even if you don’t want to make your own food art after all. There are more behind the jump, but if you just can’t get enough, be sure to check out his extensive Flickr stream.
As you chow down your lunch today, ponder this: How many french fries did you eat this year? What’s your pizza to veggies ratio for the month? New York-based designer Lauren Manning has culled this project from “two years of meticulous life documenting,” adding each logged morsel to the grand opus of data visualizations, mapping her frequent dining spots across Manhattan, studying her seasonal consumption of ham with relational circle charts and presenting her yearly food intake as vibrant, pictorial infographics.
“I was inspired by Nicholas Felton’s Annual Reports but also interested in exploring the shortcomings of human memory and trying to push beyond what we can remember on our own,” Manning has explained. And why document her food consumption, as opposed to something else? “Instead of just quantity, the food had many layers of information that I could work with additionally like location, imagery, time, experiences, relate-ability to the viewer and other elements.” She served up the resulting 730 days’ worth of data forty different ways; click through for some of our favorites.
Like most people who spend their days behind a desk, we love our coffee. Last year, we were even inspired enough to make a mixtape about it. And if there’s one thing we know about people who feel strongly about coffee, it’s that they can also be really selective about it. While the world has been overrun with ubiquitous coffee-shop chains, it hasn’t shut out the best local businesses — the special breed of independent coffee house that draws loyal crowds with its style, charm, quirky staff, and often something more.
This month, we got our first taste of new Coffee-mate Natural Bliss — the all-natural way to add a splash of flavor to your brew — and it reminded us how much we appreciate the simplicity of coffee done right, the old-fashioned way. That’s the inspiration behind our roundup of some of the best coffee shops in the nation. We’ve got you covered from coast to coast with our list, but if you’re like us, you probably have even more favorites that we missed. Tell us what they are in the comments!
