I have been knocked out of commission because of a cold and have spending my days incubating.

It should be duly noted that:

Egg drop soup + Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Sauce + Bacon Salt = Panacea of the Gods

Bacon salt is a vegetarian, kosher, fat free, wonder of science and Zeus that was formed by two guys, Justin and Dave who had a dream of making everything taste like bacon without all the trouble of actually of having to cook anything. The most interesting part of their story is that their initial financing was achieved when the three year old son of one of the self-proclaimed “Baconpreneurs” won $5,000 on America’s Funniest Home videos. You can see the winning video here.

From the site:

Several months ago, we launched our flagship products, Original, Hickory, and Peppered Bacon Salt. There will be more variations to come, we promise, but we think you’ll really love what we’ve started with on a variety of everyday food items. Whether you’re a regular griller or a gourmet chef, are counting calories or are a vegetarian who craves mouth-watering bacon taste without the bacon guilt, this is what you’ve been waiting for. Read More

As far as I can tell, Bacon Salt is Bac-os, salt, dried garlic, paprika, and dried onion all mashed up into a fine powder. What interests me is that I’ve heard stories of people replacing bacon with Bacos in recipes and ending up with soy-mush nastiness after it comes out of the oven. It seems, however, that you can use Bacon Salt as you would a regular spice and from my small bits of experimentation, it seems to work excellently and tastes great. There are a bunch of good recipes on the site, which you can check out here.

Anyhow, I’m hooked, and I can’t wait to try the Hickory and Peppered flavors. While there is no substitute for the real thing, this is by far the best I have tried and a great addition to any spice rack.

During my undergraduate studies in NY, I had a friend whose father owned a pineapple company in Hawaii. We often referred to her as the “Pineapple Princess.” I remember going to Maui and visiting her and her family on their compound on the foothills of Haleakala and taking a tour of the farm, where people engaged in the backbreaking work planting and picking the sweet and prickly beasts.

Our tour guide informed us that they often employed the use of prisoners on work-release programs to do the picking. Little did these prisoners know (or perhaps they were acutely aware) that picking pineapples can actually increase one’s ability to live a life a crime.

It turns out that pineapples have a chemical in them called bromelain, which is a mixture of protein-digesting enzymes. As your body itself is a whole mess of proteins, legend has it that, over time, pineapple cutters exposed to bromelain will suffer a complete obliteration of their fingerprints–the perfect asset to any criminal mastermind or evil Kevin Spacey.

A blogging Brit, Thomas Scott, was intrigued by this idea and decided to see what he could do to remove his own fingerprints using store-bought pineapples, a blender, and a lot of time.

His results are as amusing as they are painful! Check out a video of his adventure here.

(from deisgnboom via geekologie)

Designboom recently held a Dining in 2015 contest where people could submit design ideas for the kitchen hardware of the future. One of the entries that tied for first was Din-Ink, a set of biodegradable cutlery pen caps for eating in at the office, from a design team from Italy.

From the designers:

Turn your favorite office tool from your desk in a common cutlery…this is din-ink. A set of pen caps, including a fork-cap, a knife-cap and a spoon-cap, that replaces the normal pen cap during lunch time! All caps are made by annually renewable resources, like natural starch and fibers, to be 100% biodegradable and atoxic, warranting the best alimentary use. Dispensing each set in a compostable packaging the whole set is designed to respect the environment. Now give your office ballpoint pens a good excuse to be gnawed by your teeth: use them for din-ink.

I think this an example of one of those excessively kitschy innovations that just about evens out on being simultaneously useful and a pain the butt. I always lose pens so I could imagine having to root around the office supply room every time I had to eat. Also I think it wouldn’t be so much fun when one of the pens break and you have blue #7 ink all over your mashed potatoes.

In the end, it would probably just make sense to store a whole mess of biodegradable utensils and be done with it. But I have to admit, Din-ink is still pretty cool.

Last night marked the opening of the Oceanaire Seafood Room on 40 Court Street in Boston right by Government Center. For those not familiar, the Oceanaire Seafood Room is a chain of ultra high-end seafood restaurants with locations all around the US. Think of it as the debonair offspring of Legal Seafoods and McCormick and Schmick’s.

From the site (with excellent use of Zuegma in the first sentence):

Some menus are written by the whims of a chef. Ours by the moods of the sea.

Nowhere else can you overdose on luxurious ultra-fresh seafood, bask in exceptional service, and lose yourself in a classier era of Americana. From the moment you enter the Oceanaire you feel a sense of place and time akin to a classic 1930s ocean liner. No detail is left to chance. From cocktails in the lounge, to our raw oyster bar, to a main course of ultra-fresh fish, a rendezvous at the Oceanaire is the perfect occasion to indulge your unfettered senses.

The Oceanaire is housed in a spacious bank-vault of a building, which is vivaciously lit and gives the ambiance of class without stodginess. It even injects a sense of humor. The men’s bathroom sports the great Joycean quotation, “The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.” on the wall. I should have asked if there was anything similar in the Ladies–maybe something about the ocean’s fertile womb?

The food I sampled was all superb, including treats such as triple smoked bacon, buffalo shrimp with blue cheese dressing, as well as classics like lump crab cakes, oysters Rockefeller, and clams casino. Not to mention the amazing oysters from the massive circular raw bar which serves as a major aesthetic focal point for the restaurant. All of this I washed down with a remarkably subtle and delicious cucumber mojito. The servers were friendly and knowledgeable, and were each equipped with an arsenal of alligator-clipped chains for assistance should the need for the donning of a lobster bib arise.

While priced handsomely with main dishes running from about 30-60 dollars a pop, the Oceanaire seems like a great place for a special occasion, or even just to sit down at the bar for a glass of wine and an appetizer. Right now, the Oceanaire is open for dinner, with lunch service coming along in the Spring. Let’s hope they follow the lead of The Great Bay and offer a weekday bar menu!

(via cnn)

A Korean artist builds structures with ramen noodles: