Raw Dangerous Cookie Dough

I have a question for you, has raw cookie dough always been dangerous? I ask because I've been eating cookie dough for a long time. In fact I can't remember the first time I've ever tried it, and I can safely tell you that I don't think a year of my life has gone by without eating cookie dough. It just seems like in the last few years people have had to make special cookie dough for me to eat. When I was a kid, I would just eat the stuff right out of the bowl, or tube as the case may be. I never thought about raw eggs being dangerous, I guess I figured mixing it in a bowl made it safe?

Check out my fun review featuring very safe cookie dough.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook too.

While you're looking for something sweet to do, why not pick up my book called Treats and Beasts?

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Candy News

I love candy and snacks, but I'm not sure if I love them enough to have them permanently embedded on my skin.

A food tech company has discovered that the best way to take the edge off of cocoa may not be milk or sugar, instead it's mushrooms.

It appears that Mars is going to increase the price of their chocolate, but don't worry, many smaller companies are not following suit.

Summer is here, and that means state fairs and carnivals are happening, and that means food like this is available.

Trendy foods are both good and bad.  They're good because they can promote creativity and innovation, they're bad because you find yourself in line for 30 minutes just to eat a crappy donut.

Last week I mentioned that I wanted to try this new "raw chocolate" trend, well this week I've learned that maybe I don't.

Dark chocolate keeps gaining in popularity, it's no milk chocolate yet,  but some day it might be more popular.

Apparently Chupa Chups are branching out into clothing, I wonder if they have special pockets to hold lollipops?

In the 1900s a German chocolate company decided that they would distribute cards depicting what the year 2000 would be like with their chocolate. The results are awesome.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be traveling a lot, and I'm not really sure how well I'll be able to keep up the weekly Candy News posts.  I will however be updating the Twitter feed as regularly as I can, so you can still keep up with the news there. The news feed should return to normal in about 6 weeks.

If you want to keep up with all of the daily candy news that we come across as it happens, follow us on Twitter.

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Stuff I Want To Try

Raw Chocolate - Various Companies - This is the way chocolate can become a health food. - Click here to learn more about this treat.

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Fistiki Fest (Pistachios Everywhere)

Last weekend I visited a festival on the Greek island of Aegina called the "Fistiki Fest".  For those that don't speak Greek "fistiki" is Greek for pistachio.  I love going to festivals, and I particularly love festivals based on foods.  The best kind of food festivals to go to tend to be based on ethnic foods (like a Greek food festival, or a Chinese food festival) or food festivals based on a particular harvest, like this one.  I was really looking forward to this festival because it was celebrating the harvest of my favourite nut, and I wasn't disappointed at all.

Festivals can really be hit or miss in my opinion.  I've been to festivals where they're supposed to be celebrating one thing, but most of the vendors and entertainment have nothing to do with the namesake of the festival.  Who wants to go to a rib festival and buy potpourri, or cat T-shirts?  I've also been to some festivals where they don't work with the environment around them.  Local festivals are the best when they include the locals and local business.  This festival really celebrated the pistachio, and it also celebrated the community where pistachios grow.

The first thing this festival got right was the premise, pistachios.  It's a simple premise, the nuts are harvested at this time of year, and now is the time to try them as fresh as possible.  There's no side ideas or extra events in the Fistiki Fest, just pistachios.  Since the community is such a big producer of these nuts there are plenty of people in the area that can cook with them, and show them off.  It's also nice to know exactly what you're in for; Fistiki (Pistachio) Fest is pretty clear what they're celebrating.

When walking along the main festival street you're hit with one particular theme during this festival, pistachios.  While there were a few non-pistachio businesses on the route, I would have to say that at lest three quarters of the booths at this festival sold pistachios or pistachios related products.  The great thing about pistachios is that they're a very versatile nut that you can use in liquors, baking, soaps, and even just on their own.  Fortunately the people of Aegina (particularly those that set up this festival) know the versatilities of this nut, and know that a festival is a great place to show it off.  If you had dropped me off at this festival and not told me what the main theme was, I could have easily figured it out.

As I've said above, the fact that this festival was celebrating a local crop, that many of the local people depend on for a living, makes it a better festival.  You can see the pride that everybody in the town has over their crop, and they really love the idea of showing it off.  Since it's a small town the festival is not that big, but since it's so tied into the local people, you can find pistachios throughout the town, and it becomes an extension of the festival itself. If you walk about 30 minutes towards the outskirts of town you'll even come across many pistachio farms (freshly harvested).  Even many of the restaurants use pistachios in their cooking, so off the beaten path you can celebrate this awesome nut.

This was by no means the biggest festival I've ever been to, but it was one of the best.  Unless you really hate pistachios I highly recommend you stop by Aegina around the middle of September.  You'll not only come to a fun festival with all kinds of great ways to sample pistachios (I tried complete raw/fresh pistachios for the first time), but you'll also see a community that is proud of their harvest.  Everyone we met was very friendly, and the desserts where spectacular.

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Do You Want Healthier Chocolate?

Well then eating dark chocolate isn't good enough, neither is eating straight up roasted cocoa beans.  Apparently, according to this article, if you want the most nutrition out of your cocoa, you have to eat the beans raw.

Click here to read more.

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