This week's basket from Farmhouse Delivery was so beautiful…full of colorful not quite summer bounty. I spotted a big basket of blackberries hidden under the rainbow chard. The four cups of blackberries included were exactly the amount needed to make a Blackberry Buckle for dessert. First Buckle of the Spring/Summer fruit season — via Bless Her Heart
Are you tired of the frozen modified milk products masquerading as ‘ice cream’ in the freezer aisle of your grocery store? Yes? Then you’ll love this super easy two ingredient ice cream. It’s easy to make with REAL wholesome ingredients and you DON’T need an ice cream machine. Best of all, it’s absolutely delicious — via Instructables
Yesterday was ANZAC day, which is the Australia and New Zealand equivalent of our Memorial Day. (ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.) ANZAC biscuits are a classic cookie that myth associates with World War I (they’re still getting over Gallipoli, and rightly so). My husband is Australian, so of course I wanted to make a good batch of ANZAC biscuits for him yesterday — via CRAFT
A bottle of cheap tequila is good for making margaritas or forgetting a night out. But a team of Mexican scientists have discovered a new use for the potent liquor: forming diamonds. It just so happens that the popular Mexican alcohol is the ideal compound for creating one of the hardest substances on Earth via io9
It might not look like much, but a single strand of your hair is now enough for forensic scientists to work out where you live. The new isotopic analysis technique could prove invaluable for criminal investigations
The Hunter’s rapidly-growing boutique brewery, Bluetongue, has been snapped up by the giant global drinks company Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA). The Bluetongue brewery was launched in 2003, with assistance from the New South Wales Government’s Hunter Advantage Fund. The Cameron Park facility now employs 47 people. CCA spokeswoman Sally Loane says the local workforce can be assured there are only plans to grow the business
Caffeine may help older women ward off mental decline, research suggests. French researchers compared women aged 65 and older who drank more than three cups of coffee per day with those who drank one cup or less per day. Those who drank more caffeine showed less decline in memory tests over a four year period. The study, published in the journal Neurology, raises the possibility that caffeine may even protect against the development of dementia. The results held up even after factors such as education, high blood pressure and disease were taken into account
Neuroscientists say a recent report indicates moderate drinking may have a positive effect on the health of a person’s brain. Some of the world’s top neuroscientists are meeting in Cairns, in far north Queensland, to discuss ground-breaking research that shows brain cells continue to grow throughout our lifetime. Queensland Brain Institute director Professor Perry Bartlett says the report shows drinking alcohol does not kill off brain cells — and that drinking up to four standard glasses of wine a night might be beneficial
A new health scare erupted over soft drinks last night amid evidence they may cause serious cell damage. Research from a British university suggests a common preservative found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA. The problem — more usually associated with ageing and alcohol abuse — can eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s — via Warren Ellis
Mars has abandoned plans to use animal products in its chocolate, and has apologised to upset
vegetarians. The firm had said it would change the whey used in some of its products from a vegetarian source to one with traces of the animal enzyme, rennet. The Vegetarian Society organised a campaign against the move, asking members to voice their concerns to parent company Masterfoods. Mars said it became very clear, very quickly
that it had made a mistake. In just one week, more than 6,000 people bombarded the company, which produces the Mars, Snickers, Maltesers and Galaxy brands, with phone and e-mail complaints
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are pleased to report that their project to construct a cheap home-built three dimensional fabricator has been a success. The fabricator is fully operational and has been used it to print several large, low-resolution, objects out of pure sugar
Two Kiwi schoolgirls are worldwide celebrities after their school experiment forced an international pharmaceutical and food giant to admit it made false claims about vitamin C levels in Ribena. GlaxoSmithKline, the second-largest food and drug company in the world, was yesterday fined NZ$217,500 in the Auckland District Court after it admitted 15 breaches of the Fair Trading Act
Check out this excellent My Neighbour Totoro doughnut, baked crispy fresh in the seaside town of Hakodate, Hokkaido.
As well as producing doughnuts of interest, Hakodate is home to Isoya Yuki, who enthusiastically sang the Kenshin theme song. You know, the one where her heavyweight love soon dissolves like the sugar cube, etc.
After an 8-year-long court battle, Welsh activists have finally been allowed to released a Russian study showing an increased cancer risk linked to eating genetically modified potatoes. While the victory of the Welsh Greenpeace members in the courtroom would seem to vindicate the work of the Russian scientists that did the original research, there are still serious questions to be answered. The trials involved rats being fed several types of potatoes as feed. The rats who were fed GM potatoes suffered much more extensive damage to their organs than with any other type; just the same, serious questions remain about the validity of the findings. The Welsh group wants to use this information to stop the testing of GM crops in the UK, tests currently slated for the spring of this year
Given some jelly mixed according to standard procedures and a vertical wall, it is not possible to nail the former to the latter and have it stay there for any significant amount of time. Furthermore, these experiments were conducted by nailing the jelly to a horizontal surface which was then gradually tilted. Nailing jelly to a wall while the wall is vertical is an intractable problem in itself due to the difficulty in picking up jelly with the hands without it disintegrating — via Improbable Research
The US has banned Vegemite, even to the point of searching Australians for jars of the spread when they enter the country. The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite has been deemed illegal under US food laws. The great Aussie icon — faithfully carried around the world by travellers from downunder — contains folate, which under a technicality, America allows to be added only to breads and cereals
A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said Friday in granting the first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive. The combination of six viruses is designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, including sliced ham and turkey, said John Vazzana, president and chief executive officer of manufacturer Intralytix Inc
The Indian high court has ordered Coke and Pepsi to produce the formulas for their soft-drinks, on the back of a report that says that Pepsi contains 30 times the amount of pesticide reported in 2003, while Coke’s level has gone up 25-fold — via Boing Boing
Amazon.com has started selling groceries, a cautious step into a business that was one of the biggest casualties of the dot-com collapse
What happens when you combine 200 litres of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It’s amazing and completely insane. The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes. It’s an hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas
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