The End of McDonald’s! (In Iceland)

It's hard to imagine that a company as world renown as McDonald's would have to close any of its stores, but the current state of the global economy is forcing Jon Gardar Ogmundsson, the franchise owner of the three branches in Iceland, to do just that. The country of Iceland is on the brink of bankruptcy and costs of importing anything, let alone the packaging, meat, vegetables and cheese for each store has doubled. Some of the population won't be sad to see the golden arches come down. But from the time of the announcement that a Big Mac will soon be impossible to buy, the three stores have seen a boom in business, with lines reaching out the doors. You can read the Yahoo News article here, but I recommend CNN's humorous Blog by Neil Curry here.

Posted By: Nethie - Sat Oct 31, 2009 - Comments (7)
Category: Food, Restaurants, Europe

Follies of the Mad Men #74

[From Good Housekeeping for December 1949.]

"Subliminal" is not the precise word I want here. Not when the coded message is in big red letters.

"Subtextual?" "Off-topic?" "Suggestive?"

In any case, promoting the maxim "husbands beat wives" in a women's magazine was one way of keeping the girls in line, I guess.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Oct 25, 2009 - Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Domestic, Marriage, Food, Violence, Husbands, Wives, 1940s

All Hail Marshmallow Fluff!

Every year the people of Massachusetts celebrate one of their most noble products, Marshmallow Fluff, in a festival called "What the Fluff." A prime component of the festival are the dancers known as the Flufferettes. Watch them below, then take a tour of the Fluff factory.

Read about the latest festival here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Sep 27, 2009 - Comments (5)
Category: Food, Parades and Festivals, Regionalism, North America

Deep Fried Butter

I don't have the calorie count, but I'm guessing this product can't be too healthy. Still, I want some. Here's the link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32665106/ns/today-today_food_and_wine/

I really want the grape flavored one.

Posted By: gdanea - Fri Sep 04, 2009 - Comments (4)
Category: Food

Tactical Canned Bacon

You now never have to worry about having bacon handy after the apocalypse with Tactical Canned Bacon. The bacon, which has a shelf life of ten plus years, is being sold over at Think Geek. The nine ounce cans contains fifty four slices of highly preserved crispy pieces of bacon.

Posted By: mdb777 - Fri Sep 04, 2009 - Comments (3)
Category: Food

Good Wrinkles

A twenty-minute cartoon about prunes? Now, that's weird!

Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 01, 2009 - Comments (4)
Category: Food, Cartoons, Documentaries, 1950s

Another Helping of Food Related Weirdness - 4

First up, let's take a moment to savour pest control, Texas Style. Farmer Skip Smith, from Dublin, TX, is so fed up with feral hogs busting in to his watermelon patch and eating his crops that he’s fighting back with the aid of night-vision goggles and a silenced, fully automatic machine-gun. “The same thing that our forces use in Iraq, we're just using them on animals," Smith said, “we shoot about 45 to 50 a week on 1000 acres." Which is a hell of a lot of free bacon (ABC).

But if there is one food that might possibly challenge bacon as the mightily meaty master of my heart, it would be southern fried chicken. So what could be better than a sandwich that includes both? Well, how about one that leaves out that pointless bread stuff and puts the slices of gorgeous bacon between two hot, fresh fried chicken fillets? That is the idea behind what some reports are claiming is the latest creation from KFC, the “double-down” sandwich. Bacon, cheese and the “Colonel’s special sauce” are sandwiched between the chain’s house-style fried chicken in a heart-stopping 1200 calorie mouthful. And the day this launches near me officially marks the end of my banana diet (AJC).



More in extended >>

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Wed Aug 26, 2009 - Comments (8)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Cops, Exercise and Fitness, Food, Candy, Guns

Badger Casserole

It's all badgers, all the time, here at WU!

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jul 28, 2009 - Comments (2)
Category: Animals, Food, Transportation

Chocolate Just Got Better!

Swiss chocolate manufacturer Barry Callebaut, who supply such companies as Cadburys and Nestlé, think they may be on to a winner after secretly developing a type of chocolate with 10% of the calories of the ordinary kind, and which melts at nearly twice its temperature. The company hopes the new chocolate, codenamed "Vulcano", will appeal both to health-conscious Western markets and to Asian and African consumers who have traditionally shunned chocolate because it melts too readily in the local climate. The new recipe stays hard up to 55°C (130°F) and has crispy, light texture according to Barry Callebaut food engineer Simone Cantz (The Guardian).

FYI: Chocolate was, as everyone knows, invented/discovered by the Aztecs. But what is less well known is that they did so at least 3000 years ago, and were probably trying to make beer. Anthropologists John Henderson, of Cornell University, and Rosemary Joyce, of University of California, discovered cacao residues on pottery vessels dating back to 1000 BCE that are believed to be from a drink formed by fermenting the pulp and seeds (PNAS).

(Image by Wikipedia.)

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Fri Jul 17, 2009 - Comments (20)
Category: Food, Candy, Nutrition, History, Archaeology, Products

Got Milk?

Let's have a vote. Is this commercial supposed make you thirsty for milk, or make you laugh milk out of your nose?

Posted By: fyshstyxx - Fri Jul 17, 2009 - Comments (10)
Category: Food, Television, Asia