Pinguino’s Newtame Reaction Video:

Dave’s Newtame Reaction Video:

Afterwards, everything tasted sweet for hours. No matter what I licked.. my arm after I’d washed it.. the wall.. a glass of water.. it all tasted like sugar. Eating salsa and chips was pretty weird and terrible. We tried a bunch of random foods around the house. My taste buds rebooted by the time I woke up in the morning.

I did not get a crazy sugar rush from Newtame. It was an exciting taste experiment though!

The cake part was vanilla-orange and chocolate layered in chunks. They didn’t really stripe as much as I wanted, but the colors looked fantastic. The frosting was a cream cheese frosting that I colored black. The tigers were made of fondant and I drew them with food coloring markers. These were for Laurence’s going away party.

and some penguins with the leftover fondant:

More pics are on my flickr (including the stripey interior)

We started with the pork feet gyoza, which was good, flakey, and didn’t taste like feet at all. Not that I know what feet taste like!

This is the oxtail and truffle oil ramen that Dave and Chris both got. They liked it, but I didn’t as much. It had an overpowering smokey taste that I wasn’t into. I stole an egg though. Yum!

Erin and I both ordered the Foie Gras Ramen and loved it. The broth was incredibly rich and exploding with smokey flavor. The noodles were slippery and crinkley. The foie gras simply dissolved in your mouth, and they gave you a giant chunk of it, too. It was an amazing experience, and if I had the chance to get it again, I would. It’s probably a good thing that this place is only around for a month.

The religion behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster was created in 2005 as an argument against the teaching of intelligent design in schools as an alternate to evolution. It was presented to the Kansas Board of Education. It became an internet meme.. and now appears in cupcake form (for Paul’s birthday). I made these last February and forgot to post about them.

Noodles = frosting
Meatballs =  hazelnut candies
Eyes = bits of Pocky mounted to chocolate chips
Marinara = strawberry jam mixed with thawed frozen strawberries
Stalks = Pocky (original flavor)
Cheese = shredded white chocolate chips
Cupcake base flavor = vanilla.

(Above: Rickmond and Paul enjoy FSM cupcakes at The Rustic Spoon)

Eliot’s Birthday! Me and my friends went over-the-top with strange and sometimes edible art projects. First, Erin (readiness) and I made hacker cupcakes out of fondant. It’s the first time that either of us had messed with it. First we sketched out wii-style heads of our friends:

Then we cut shapes out, either freestyling with a knife, or using cookie cutters, and ended up with these:

Dave’s idea was to make Eliot some Laser Boob Cupcakes, based on a business card design he’d been using lately. We took two cupcakes and jammed laser pointers into them, with the “on” buttons taped permanently to “on.” Then, I covered the cupcakes in pink icing and added some red around the center.

Which brings us to the last art project. Jeans Top Hat (though it looks like a Dr. Suess hat). This hat is in response to a twitter. It took me 2 hrs to make, out of jeans, a grocery bag, duct tape, a clothes hanger, and safety pins.

from sweetums:
Things that should be denim: jeans. Things that shouldn’t: everything else. #denimbustiersrsly?!

Careful what you twitter around your birthday.

More pics and the hacker drinkup party at Rick’s Tavern are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets/72157623602392806/

Of course, I waited til last minute to make the dough, and was trying to measure out 1cm tall chunks at 2am. But the bigger problem was that the dough was defrosting fast as I was trying to build the cookies, and I was worried that it wouldn’t be smooth enough to scan.

But the cookie block did look fine the next day, and sliced easily. We laid them onto cookie sheets and baked them. In Chris’s sunny computer room, they did scan. However, the program was having problems with the contrast. Next time, add more blue and red food coloring, as well as more melted chocolate, to give your cookies more contrast.

Chris was in charge of making the code work with the cookies. He used Processing and NyARToolkit to make that happen.

I also made some onigiri rice balls with the trigger shape cut out, and some quick California rolls. The rolls didn’t trigger the software, but the riceballs did. We showcased these at Hacker Drinkup 100, at Rick’s Tavern.

I drew a bunch of mustaches that would display randomly. Here is what your options were:

Screenshots from Chris’s App: http://id.cnelson.org/augmented-stache

Eliot’s Blog Post: http://www.robotskirts.com/2010/05/27/augmented-reality-mustaches/

My Flickr Set of Hacker Drinkup 100: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets/72157624155168304/

I think we’re a bit obsessed with augmented reality now, so expect more cool stuff from us soon!

When Chris mentioned that there was an animal out there called Toky0-X that is genetically engineered to be the tastiest animal out there, we knew we had to try it. Tokyo-X is a real, legit animal. It was created by cross-breeding Durok (US), Berkshire (UK), and Beijing Black (China) pigs together. It took seven years for them to develop this delicious animal. Tokyo-X has marbled meat, which is extremely rare in pork. It has 5% inter-muscle fat and costs twice as much as normal pork. Tokyo-X is to pigs as Wagyu is to cows.

At first, we were going to try to find Tokyo-X in Japan, but then Chris found a place in LA that served it, in Koreatown. Park’s BBQ. (955 S Vermont Ave)

Chris, Erin, Dave, Jules, Eliot, Strom, and I ventured into Koreatown to a nice BBQ spot. Each of the long tables had two grills. We ordered a few things, but were most excited about our Tokyo-X pork belly. They brought us a ton of sides and sauces, too. It was amazing. I’d like more of my food to be genetically engineered. Eliot, the vegetarian in our group, even tried it, but was oddly not impressed. Everyone else loved it, though.

Edit: we found some Tokyo-X curry. Does anyone know where to find this, in either Los Angeles or Japan?

Take all this candy. Seperate it into food groups. We did Nut, American, International, Fruit, and Meat.

Bake at 180 degrees (or whatever the lowest your oven goes) for like 30 mins til its all melty and fused. Leave in your fridge overnight. The chocolate won’t stick to the parchment paper. This is how it’ll look out of the oven:

Then make a wrapper using butcher paper, foil, and sharpies. This will also make transporting and showing off the candy bar easier.

We used a saw to cut it into pieces.

Here’s a cross section of the inside:

Overall, a successful kitchen experiment, and a memorable birthday cake!

Photos by Vissago. The rest of his awesome set, including the party trying out a bunch of KFC double downs, is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vissago/sets/72157623992971289/

Started the day off with a chocolate energy drink, and the Super Lion drink, both from Malaysia. The chocolate drink just tasted like those nestle  hot chocolate packets, way watered down, with Vitamin B added. The Lion drink tasted like Redbull and Smarties.

Century Eggs were first on the list of weird foods. While they looked horrific, they tasted pretty good.  They’re eggs fermented in clay and lime for several weeks. These were purchased at Ranch 99.

First stop: Shufeng Garden. Pig Ears in Chili. Not a fan of spicy foods. Pig Ears are crunchy, and the stripes reminded me of bacon. They just tasted hot though. Not scary.

Jellyfish Heads. I’ve had Jellyfish before; they have a snapping popping texture. I really hate onions, so for me it was much harder to finish the onions on my plate than the Jellyfish.

The event became an actual challenge when we went to a place called Ay-Chung and were brought the Stinky Tofu. It reeks. It smells like a cheese gone wrong, and a bit like sewage. The smell makes you gag and you can smell it a block away. Once you get past the smell (and cover it in soy sauce and chili), it just tastes like fried tofu. But then the smell creeps up your throat and you gag some more.

I was kinda joking to people that we’d eat turtle soup. But then I saw it on the menu at Nature Pagoda and my heart sank. I have a pet turtle, and it’s one of the animals that I didn’t really want to eat. They didn’t tell us what the soups were until after we ate them. And this was at an herbal medicinal soup place. The one on the right was turtle, and it’s good for girls on their period. The one on the right was crocodile, and it’s good for coughs. I’d actually eat crocodile; I really liked the broth and the meat (even though it had tons of tiny bones). And honestly.. turtle tasted really good. I just felt really guilty about it.

So. We took turns trying to guess what the squishy, strongly herbally thing we just ate was.. and we convinced ourselves that it was balls. Close.. ox penis. Ughhhhhhh. At least nobody liked it.

Next up were sea snails. I really liked these. They were really salty, but difficult to extract from the shells. The shells looked cool though. This was at Happy Kitchen.

Dessert.. a sundae topped with frog ovaries. There was black rice at the bottom. It was cold and refreshing, and not really that bad. One dude in our group got a ton of it to go cuz he liked it so much. This was at a place called Tasty.

Yay we did it! Actually everyone in our group did. About half had eaten really weird stuff before, including a girl who’s had tarantula. While I kinda wish there were insects on the menu, there definitely were foods I probably wouldn’t come across easily. If you’re into food challenges, I totally recommend this event. Thanks for the bday present, Chris and Erin! This might be the craziest food day ever. There are more pics on my flickr account.

Washed down the frog ovaries and the cock with some strawberries

Nym came by so I made breakfast for him and Dave – Flying Spaghetti Monsters! These were cool cuz the pasta is actually baked into the meatballs. They were also really yummy. Inspired by http://dabbled.org/2009/11/make-a-yummy-flying-spaghetti-monster.html

More pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets/72157622805693556/