A Full Head

Following the meme of the Omnivore’s 100, here’s my appropriately marked version of the list.  Bold for tried, italic for “would never try.”

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream 
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini 
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong <- My favorite tea.
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers <- Roses and violets especially.
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

As I previously mentioned, more and more men are finding cooking to be fun and enjoyable as it can lead to…well, to other things that are fun and enjoyable, like relationships, or maybe just an impressive fling with an impressionable interest.

However, there may be some more dastardly impetus behind the “gastrosexual” movement and coining of the term other than just to up ratings for male cooking celebrities such as Iron Chefs, the new Food Network Star, Aaron McCargo, Jr., or traveling stomachs such as one of my personal heroes, Anthony Bourdain, or the more eclectic (and non-discerning) star of Bizarre Foods, Andrew Zimmern (C’mon…the man volunteers to eat what normally passes as vomit inducing on shows like Fear Factor).

PurAsia has registered the domain name Gastrosexual.com and even goes so far as to include their commissioned 29 page report (PDF) on the phenomena in their “pardon our construction” splash which currently inhabits the site’s frontpage.

Now…the real question is not whether or not cooking for others involves some need for ego stroking, oyster based aphrodisia, or elsewise. The question is “Who in the name of Bacchinalian revelries is PurAsia?” The short answer is that they’re a new subsidiary(?) of Mars Foods based on pushing Asiatic spices and seasonings. TalkingRetail has more info here.

There’s no denying that Asian restaurants are hot right now, nor that they make great date spots, so it’s not so unimaginable that being able to prepare the same dishes doesn’t lend a certain je nest sais quios to the chef…but I do find it a bit capitalistically troubling that a spice company is now empowering a new term for an entire subculture which in turn spans across just about every other subculture. Sure, spices and seasonings have driven economies since time immemorial, but who knows where this will lead.

Hopefully to some tasty meals shared with others at the least.

Apparently, there is a term for men like me that enjoy cooking and see it as a life skill useful for something other than…well…staying alive. That term? Gastrosexual. While perhaps not being the best word creation ever, the term is being used to delineate one simple line of thinking: Cooking is sexy, and doing a good job of it is a way to attract others.

With the appeal of the hobby / profession among men growing daily thanks to macho celebrity chefs (without strange facial hair, funny accents, and 50lbs too many), it’s not hard to imagine that cooking is no longer relegated merely to women and the French.

Come on…it involves sharp knives, fire, and when done correctly earns the chef praise and knowledge of his ability to delight, entertain, and satisfy those around him.

For more on the rise of macho cooking and its place in modern western culture, see this article at the Daily Mail.

Among the recent crop of streaming video sites, I came across this little gem: BMovies.com. The site is extremely straightforward, and has quite a variety of films across its four categories (horror, science fiction, kung fu, wild westerns), and seems to have decent bandwidth (after the first few minutes of Angel and the Badman, I never saw another hiccup in the streaming).

If you’re looking for some cheap entertainment, this is the place to go for sure. One of the best features? Fullscreening. While that doesn’t sound like such a big deal, it gets annoying watching a four inch box, and is a feature missing from other popular legal streaming sites.

It’s not often that a “best of the best” list really captures the zeitgeist of the young adults bemused by the various idiocies and intricacies of the internet, but this short animated video somehow manages to do it perfectly, and quit possibly by accident.

It’s almost disturbing how many of these the net culture references the average collegiate / yuppie internet user can identify, and I’ll happily yet sadly admit that I’m no exception. It’s a very strange perspective of the last decade and the changing winds of media and brief entertainment.

The Meth Minute 39 - Episode 1, from Frederator

On a separate note the “grape stomping lady falling on her face” video was a local Atlanta news report being held from the Chateau Elan vineyards in northern Georgia.

The person(s?) responsible for the previously mentioned StrangeMaps blog are now compiling a print edition “Atlas of Strange Maps.”

They’re looking for help.  This ranges from map selection to copyright confirmation.  Seems like a monumental project for such a large and random collection, but with the modern speed of information who knows.

This is definitely something I’d like to have on a coffee table no matter the final format of the book.

Via:  Kottke

Color matters in maps. That’s all there is to it. When I lived in Karlskrona, Sweden for half a year, I would literally have been lost without my various maps of the country. Whether it was the free map I ordered from the board of tourism, the rail maps, or otherwise, it just helped to have a guide.

The only problem? They were all in Swedish. Seems I forgot to order the English version. Thankfully, they were well designed and easy to figure out, and color was a major part of why. To be fair, I actually learned a fair bit of Svensk språk while I was away, but reading like a fourth grader only gets you so far. (I say fourth grade because in the US, most major newspapers and magazines are written at a fifth grade level, and newspapers are where I drew the line for skill.)

For an interesting take on maps and color visit either your local public transit station, or take a look at this article over at ColourLovers.

Usually when I’m at my computer, and need to look up a word, I just use the “define:yourwordhere” operator at Google. After trying out definr, however, I’ll never use Google’s dictionary again. Unless, of course, they’re the only option left at the end of the “you can’t live without us war” currently raging on the internet. You just can’t beat definr for speed, and its definitions are accurate. There’s really not much more you can ask for in a dictionary.

definr - An incredibly fast dictionary.

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Have you ever had sketchy directions drawn on a gas-station purchased map in grease pencil? How many times have you gotten directions on a napkin to go? No matter what you do, no matter how neatly you can fold the damned things, or how many of them you print crisply and cleanly from Google, you’re bound to run into some strange maps in the course of your travels regardless of where said travels take you.

The blog Strange Maps is dedicated to just this sort of thing.

Some of the maps they have on display are whimsical, some political, some pointless. At the end of the day though, they’re a great resource for amateur cartographers, artists, and information designers. Edward Tufte would probably throttle half of those involved for their poor presentations of information if he got the chance though.

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Makes for one amazing mosaic.  The below photo is part of a larger collection of images created using nothing but apples.

[Via: CuriousPhoto]