The Narrowing Food Tree

(Source)

The Elvis Burger

The States By Famed Foods

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The Logical Follow-Up To Cherpumple

Foodie blog Chow provides the cooking instructions for the Turkey Cake: layered sweet potatoes, stuffing, and turkey loaf. Add a mashed potato icing and top with browned marshmallows. Follow that up with a lovely cherpumple and you've got your entire Thanksgiving feast in two easy-to-carry boxes.

(Tipped by JMG reader Jeff)

Cherpumple - The Turducken Of Desserts

Cherry pie + pumpkin pie + apple pie = cherpumple, the "turducken of desserts." Its inventor says his creation "both intrigues and horrifies." Blech. Turducken, on the other hand, is delicious.

Daily Grumble

Why do this weekend's NYC Bacon-Palooza and NYC Pickle Day have to be so far apart? They're both downtown, but logic demands they be on the same block. Bother.

Five-Second Rule Flow Chart

(Source)

Sorry, No McNuggets Until 11AM

And somebody really doesn't like that bit of news. CNN ran this every five minutes last night. No audio.

(Clip via Towleroad)

Pop-Tarts In Times Square

Pop-Tarts has joined M&Ms and Hersheys with its own storefront in Times Square, where brand marketing is more important than actual sales.

The focal point of the store, which opens Tuesday, is the cafe. It will serve about 30 snacks and desserts. The menu includes the Fluffer Butter, marshmallow spread sandwiched between two Pop-Tarts frosted fudge pastries; the Sticky Cinna Munchies, cinnamon rolls topped with cream-cheese icing and chunks of Pop-Tarts cinnamon-roll variety; and Ants on a Log?, which is celery, peanut butter and chunks of the Wild Grape version. And then there’s the Pop-Tarts Sushi, three kinds of Pop-Tarts minced and then wrapped in a fruit roll-up. “We did an internal tasting here at the building, and it was the winner,” said Etienne Patout, senior director at the Pop-Tarts brand, part of the Kellogg Company. Visitors can also build their own Pop-Tarts, starting with a basic pastry and asking servers to add frosting, toppings (coconut, sprinkles) and drizzle (caramel, raspberry). They can take their pastries frozen, toasted, microwaved or uncooked, but there will be no self-serve.

The store will feature a six-story billboard above the entrance. Times Square billboards often rent for more than the actual stores beneath them.

Afternoon View - Real Poutine

This is for the purists who dissed yesterday's poutine post.

Evening View - Poutine!

Evening View - At Garde Manger

Tonight my able homo-guide to Montreal treated me to dinner in Old Montreal at Garde Manger, a highly-regarded place recently made more famous because of a reality show starring its owner, which is now running on the Food Network in Canada. I recommend the halibut. And the scallops. And the bartender. Definitely the bartender.

The Lasandwich

Just hitting the shelves of the UK-based supermarket chain Tesco is the lasagne sandwich. And you thought KFC's Double Down was gross. The Guardian's food blogger has a field day.

The first thing that hits you on opening the packet is a faint but distinct whiff of tuna, an inauspicious start for a beefy sandwich. Biting down, the texture is soft and claggy, the cheesy sauce acting as a lubricant to bring the cotton wool bread firmly into contact with your dental enamel from where it refuses to budge without the aid of a fingernail. The diced beef is beefy in the way that a cheap beefburger is beefy - redolent of the artificial flame-grilled flavour favoured by certain fast food outlets and devoid of any garlic, oregano or other identifiable attempt at Italian-ness. Quite where the pasta sheet in the middle disappears to is a mystery - it's there when you bite down, and gone by the time you swallow. Overall, the effect is of a saladless, cold, lightly pre-chewed beefburger.

Something something, British cuisine, something.

Poisonous Veggieburgers?

Mother Jones reports that some brands of veggieburgers contain a poisonous neurotoxin.

In order to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers, manufacturers of soy-based fake meat like to make their products have as little fat as possible. The cheapest way to do this is by submerging soybeans in a bath of hexane to separate the oil from the protein. Says Cornucopia Institute senior researcher Charlotte Vallaeys, "If a non-organic product contains a soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, or texturized vegetable protein, you can be pretty sure it was made using soy beans that were made with hexane." If you've heard about hexane before, it was likely in the context of gasoline—the air pollutant is also a byproduct of gas refining. But in 2007, grain processors were responsible for two-thirds of our national hexane emissions. Hexane is hazardous in the factory, too: Workers who have been exposed to it have developed both skin and nervous system disorders. Troubling, then, that the FDA does not monitor or regulate hexane residue in foods. More worrisome still: According to the report, "Nearly every major ingredient in conventional soy-based infant formula is hexane extracted."

Hit the link for the brands that have hexane in them. The one brand I can bear, Boca Burger, is on the list, of course.

UPDATE: Readers point to this Boing Boing story debunking the Mother Jones piece. Does this mean I can go back to enjoying my delicious Boca Burgers? Mmmm, hexaney.

Turning Moths Gay To Save Crops

The larvae of codling moths destroy millions of dollars of fruit crops every year. Scientists have begun treating their larvae with female pheromones, "turning the male moths gay" and preventing reproduction.

A Sainsburys spokesman told the Daily Express: "Codling moths have the ability to devastate entire crops if left uncontrolled. The new technique means males are attracted to males, disrupting the breeding cycle and reducing dramatically the number of eggs able to produce baby moths." He added: "Pheromone is a natural substance and, unlike other chemicals, is safe to use on both conventional and organic crops." Alan Stubbs, chairman of conservation charity Buglife, said ­said he approved of the method. “Using a technique to protect crops that does not rely on sprays which affect other species is the safest way to control a pest,” he added.

Four Nutritional Servings In Every Scoop

From the makers of Bacon Salt, BaconPOP, Baconnaise, and Bacon-Flavored Mmmvelopes (for mailing your will to your lawyer, one presumes.)