Hong Kong Shop Unveils “Tear Gas” Flavor Ice Cream in Memory of Recent Protests

A Honk Kong entrepreneur has come up with an ingenious way of keeping the semi-autonomous city’s recent protests for democracy alive in people’s memories – by introducing a pungent, throat irritating ice-cream flavor reminiscent of tear gas.

The shop owner, who preferred to remain anonymous, told reporters that he created the new “tear gas” ice cream flavor as a reminder “of the pungent, peppery rounds fired by police on the streets of the semi-autonomous Chinese city during months of demonstrations last year”. After trying several ingredients and combinations, including wasabi or mustard, the owner settled on black pepper, both because of its pungent smell and the way it can irritate the throat, just like actual tear gas.

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Vietnamese Province Attracts Worldwide Attention for Its Giant Loaves of Bread

Believe it or not, the Vietnamese province of An Giang, in the Mekong Delta, is less known for its breathtaking natural attractions than for the giant loaves of bread that went viral online a couple of years back.

It all started in 2018, when lifestyle and entertainment website Brightside published a list of the world’s strangest foods, including a giant loaf of bread that was supposedly very popular in Vietnam’s An Giang province. There were those who claimed the accompanying photos of the bread were either photoshopped or shot from a certain angle to create the illusion that they were much larger than ordinary loaves, but then other photos and videos of the unusual bread started going viral online. Vietnamese media started giving the giant loaves a lot of attention, and soon the whole world knew about the now famous giant bread of An Giang.

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Japanese Mom Creates the Most Adorable Anime-Themed Bento Boxes

A Japanese mother-of-two has been getting a lot of attention on social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest for her incredibly detailed and colorful anime-themed bento boxes.

If you’re even a little familiar with Japanese culture, you probably know about “kawaii”, the people’s affinity for all things cute, and the attention to detail present in almost every aspect of daily life. Food is no exception, not even the school lunch Japanese mothers prepare for their children every day. While some just patiently arrange rice balls, sliced rolls or pickled veggies nicely in a box, others spend extra time creating an entire ensemble, complete with rice balls shaped like panda bears or sausages carved to look like octopuses. And then you have mothers like @ryiuyuda, who take the process of arranging a bento box and turn it into an art form.

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The World’s Toughest Cheese Is Hard as a Rock, Turns into Chewing Gum

I understand that the title reads a bit strange, but then again this is no ordinary cheese we’re talking about. It’s the hardest cheese in the world, and yes, it can be chewed like gum for up to two hours.

Chhurpi or Durkha is a traditional Nepalese cheese that has been a means of survival or many remote communities for centuries. Made out of the milk of yaks, or chauri (the cross of a yak and a cow), chhurpi comes in two varieties – soft and hard. The soft stuff is usually consumed as a side dish with rice, as filling for traditional dumplings, or ever as a soup. But it’s the hard variety that makes chhurpi famous all over the world. You may think you’ve tried hard cheeses before, but trust me when I say that this Nepalese staple puts them all to shame. It’s as hard as a rock, so you can’t even bite into it for at least an hour or so.

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Finger Lime – The Rare and Super Expensive Caviar of Citrus

Shaped more like a like a jalapeno pepper than a citrus fruit, the small finger lime yields tiny caviar-like pearls that burst with flavor when you bite into them.

Originating from the lowland subtropical rainforests of coastal Australia, Citrus australasica, or the Australian finger lime has become one of the most sough-after ingredients by Michelin star restaurants around the world. It’s not that they taste radically different than regular limes or lemons – in fact their flavor is described as a combination of the two – but the texture of their pulp really makes all the difference. Somewhat similar to the pomelo, these tiny citrus fruits contain caviar-like pearls that can be used to garnish posh dishes, ensuring a burst of acidic flavor when a person bites into them. Hence the nickname “caviar of citrus” and the crazy price tag that comes with it.

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Baker Takes Bread Art to a Whole New Level

When it comes to making bread that’s almost too good to eat, few bakers even come close to Hannah P, a North Carolina food artist who has taken Instagram by storm with her intricate bread designs.

From loaves of bred decorated with plant-inspired designs hand-carved into the dough, to pastry creations adorned with colorful fruits and vegetables, Hannah P.’s works are nothing if not eye-catching. Using a razor blade attached to a kitchen utensil the name of which escapes me, the artist posting on Instagram under the name “Blondie + Rye” takes bread art to a level that I for one have not seen before. Sure, there are lost of talented bread artists showcasing their creations online these, days but Hannah is definitely one of the most talented ones, if not the best.

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Cake Artist Creates Mind-Boggling Optical Illusions

Ben Cullen, a former tattoo artist turned food artist extraordinaire, has been getting a lot of attention for his amazing cake illusions, which range from desserts disguised as fruits and vegetables, to treats shaped as realistic human hands.

Looking at Ben Cullen’s mind-blowing cakes, you would think that he has been baking all his life, but in fact he only got into cakes five years ago, when a client he was tattooing showed him some cake decorating models she had made, which he found to be fascinating. He felt like he needed to give it a try himself, an as soon as he did, he became hooked. He had no previous experience or even the faintest interest in making cakes at the time, but as soon as he saw what other food artist were capable of, he felt like he needed to master the craft.

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Startup Creates World’s First 3D-Printed Meatless Beef Steak

It used to be that if something looked, felt and tasted like beef steak, it was probably beef steak, but with the advent of 3D-printing technology as well as meatless meats, that’s no longer the case.

Spanish startup NovaMeat claims to have created the world’s first 3D-printed plant based beef steak, which allegedly has the same texture and appearance as a real beef muscle cut. The Barcelona-based company was reportedly able to achieve this by “finely tuning” the structure of plant-based proteins at a microscopic level. The novel plant-based meat not only matches the unique texture of beef steak, but also its color, which should make it more appealing as a sustainable alternative to real beef steak.

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Volkswagen’s Best Selling Product Isn’t a Car, It’s a Sausage

The Volkswagen Golf has historically been the German car maker’s best selling model, but surprisingly it’s not the company’s best selling product. That title goes to the uber popular and reportedly delicious VW sausage.

VW has been producing sausages at its car plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, for nearly 50 years. The traditional wurst is such an important part of the company culture and history that it even has its own car part code,  199 398 500 A. Sausage production at VW began in 1973, and was originally supplied exclusively to company cafeterias, to feed its staff. Over time, however, Volkswagen started selling its sausages at stadiums and in German stores, and people loved them. It’s said that because the wurst was originally created for company staff, it is of the very best quality, and it has actually won several awards at national food fairs and exhibitions over the years.

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Man Eats McDonald’s Menu 14 Months After Burying It in the Ground

Matt Nadin, a father of three from Barnsley, in the UK, wanted his 40th birthday to be special, so he celebrated it by eating a McDonald’s Big Mac menu that he had buried in his friend’s backyard a year before.

Just before his 39th birthday, Nadin came up with the “McDonald’s 365” challenge, which basically involved buying a Big Mac menu – burger, fries and a milkshake – put it in a plastic container and bury it for a year in his friend Andy Thompson’s garden. He had intended to dig it out on his 40th birthday, in November of last year, as a special way of celebrating, but only found time to retrieve the container earlier this month. The food didn’t look great, and tasted even worse, but Matt stuck to his guns and got everything down despite a lot of burping and gagging.

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Belgian Man Has Been Eating Fries for Dinner Every Day for the Last 32 Years

A 45-year-old Belgian man claims that he has eaten only potato fries and a fricadelle – Dutch hot dog – for dinner every day ever since he was 13.

Rudy Gybels, a resident of Schaffen in Belgium’s Flemish Brabant province, has had the same food for dinner every evening since he was a teenager. It all started when he was 13, when his mother, desperate to get him to eat more fruits and vegetables, came up with a compromise solution. Rudy would eat healthy food at lunch, and he was free to enjoy his favorite food – potato fries – for dinner. And he has been sticking to that deal ever since, eating only fries for dinner every evening for the last 32 years.

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Indonesian Bakery Makes Delicious-Looking Cakes Out of Instant Noodles

The cakes below may look perfect to satisfy your sweet tooth, but they’re actually not desserts at all. They’re made of instant noodles and topped with stuff like chicken gulai (curry stew), opor (coconut milk stew) and rendang (beef simmered in coconut and spices).

The people at Tot Aw (short for totally awesome) bakery in Jakarta, Indonesia have getting a lot of attention lately and it’s all due to their unusual cakes. Instead of sweet sponge and sweet cream and toppings, they are made of Indomie noodles shaped as tiered cakes and topped with all kinds of foods, like meatballs, chicken or salted cuttlefish. The squiggly creations are apparently quite popular at weddings, birthdays and other events.

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Bacon-Scented Patch Aims to Help Vegans Resist Meat Cravings

A professor of experimental psychology recently unveiled a wearable patch infused with bacon flavor that is supposed to help curb meat cravings.

Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, teamed up with plant-based food company Strong Roots to create a patch that, when scratched, produces a smell similar to that of cooked bacon. The idea behind this strange invention is that the human mind is connected to our senses of taste and smell, and that certain smells can significantly reduce food cravings.

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Japan’s Craziest Soft Drinks Company Comes Up with the Weirdest Flavors

If you thought Coca Cola Vanilla was weird soft drink, the flavors developed by Shizuoka Prefecture-based company Kimura Beverage will probably blow your mind.

When it comes to new and completely unexplored soft drink flavors, Kimura Beverage is considered somewhat of a pioneer in Japan. Remember, this is the same country where limited edition flavors for popular soft drinks – like sakura Pepsi or Coca Cola Apple – are pretty much the norm. What sets Kimura apart from any other drinks company is the originality of their flavors, which range from pickled plums to fish eggs and potato chips.

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Restaurant Owner Busted for Lacing Food with Drugs to Keep Customers Coming Back

Rather than improve his noodle recipe, a restaurant owner in China’s Guangxi Province would lace his noodles with opium to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more.

The restaurateur’s dirty trick was uncovered by mistake, after someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Automonous County tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t vouch for was a bowl of noodles at a local restaurant. That’s how police ended up making a surprise visit to the noodle shop in question, where they took a packet of snail powder which tested positive for morphine.

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