A Very Sweet Reunion for the Willy Wonka Cast

Have you ever wondered what happened to all those rotten kids who got kicked out of Willy Wonka's factory during the tour? Well now you can find out! Forty years after the movie, the cast sat down with the Today Show for a little reunion.

Check out the video here to see how all the kids turned out. (I think Michael Bollner (Augustus Gloop)'s hat is the best part!)

The Brownie Song

I should first of all mention that this clip is relatively NSFW. I should also mention that I did a little work on this back in my animation days.  It's kind of twisted and sick, but a whole lot of fun, songs also really catchy too.

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Sweet Paintings

I just discovered the spectacular paintings of Joel Penkman.  He focuses on sweet treats, in particular cookies and baked goods, but other sweets as well.

Check out more of Joel's work.

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Hoping To Get Cheap Treats This Year?

Well it's not going to happen, it appears that prices for candy, sweets, and just about any other kind of food is going to go up.  That makes me sad because I like to eat.

Click here if you want to read the boring details, however the sentence above pretty much sums up the bottom line.

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It's National Donut Day

I don't have a donut right now, but I'm going to go get one.  The folks at Friends Eat are also celebrating this awesome holiday so you can read more about how much they love donuts while I head over to this great place near the University that coats their donuts in warm chocolate.

Click here to read what Friends Eat have to say about donuts.

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Natural Extrusion

If you don't know what "extrusion" is, it's when you take a glob of candy stuff and apply a great deal of pressure at one end, and at the other end you have a little hole.  Sometimes the hole will be shaped differently, but when the candy product is forced through the hole, it makes a cool shape.  It's pretty much the same principle as your Playdoh Mop-top Hair Shop.  Well apparently until now, natural colours could not be used with this method of candy making (for reason's I'm not really sure).  But that's all changed, a candy think tank has developed a series of natural colours that can take the abuse caused by extrusion.  The thing is, no matter how much you explain it to me, if you say the word "extrusion", the word "natural" just doesn't seem to fit.

Click here to try and understand this technology.

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Not Chocolate Coffee

I don't really like coffee, occasionally I'll have a cup (like once every 3 years) and sometimes I'll eat a candy flavoured with the stuff, but for the most part I don't drink it at all. This leads to a regular social problem for me.  My friends will ask if I want to go out for a coffee and I always have to find alternatives.  Sure tea is OK, but then you have to wait for it to steep and if you're walking around you have to find a place to dump off the tea bag.  But the people at Choffy have an answer, it's chocolate that you brew like coffee.  See the clever name?  I really hope this takes off, and I hope to see it at my local cafe soon because I think it will solve many of my social drinking problems.

Click here to read more about Choffy.

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Practical Ice Cream Cone Art

An ice cream parlor in New York has developed a cone building technique that allows you to sample up to 22 flavours of ice cream with just one cone.  Best of all it looks really cool and doesn't seem like a ridiculously large amount of ice cream either, not that I would mind that, but I know some of you can't handle too much ice cream.

Click here to read more about it.

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Packaging History

Mental Floss takes a look at the history of some classic food packages including the ketchup packet, the take out box, and most relevant to this site, the windowed cake box.

Click here to check it out.

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Useful Pail?!!

What happened to the days when pails where useful.  For some reason I see all kinds of treats and snacks that come in pails, but frankly they're just not that useful anymore.  I've eaten so many pails of popcorn, only to let my pail sit in the basement for years and eventually sold it at a garage sale for a dime.  What was so different back in the old days that would make a pail useful?

Ad found on Vintage Ad Browser.

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Portion Control Is Getting More Popular

Experts are more and more agreeing that the best way to deal with obesity in the world is through portion control and not "diet" alternatives.  Even better, it appears that more and more companies are jumping on the trend and creating smaller portioned treats.

Click here to read what the experts had to say about it.

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Super Tiny Un-meltable Chocolate Chips

I just read about this new scientific invention. It's a chocolate chip like ingredient that is about the size of the head of a pin.  This chocolate like substance doesn't melt when baked.  The idea of the product is to allow creators of chocolate flavoured products to say that they're product contains "chocolate".  I can't say I'm happy with the idea of misleading consumers by saying that it has "real chocolate" when it only contains a micro amount.  However I would love to see and sample a bag of this stuff.

Click here to read more of the disappointing science behind it.

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Free Iced Tea Made Me Happy

Yesterday I had a good day.  Don't get me wrong, it started out pretty horrible.  I had a miserable shopping trip that ended with me having to go to a second grocery store and re-choosing everything I almost bought already.  This second store was much further away, and I had to go alone.  I was harassed by a group of religious people that tried to sell me trinkets on the way, and it was very hot.  I also thought I had left the stove on at home, so I was paranoid about it the whole way there.  Then a beacon of hope came from a nice young lady handing out free newspapers on the street corner.  In my hot, and grumpy state I walked up to the corner sore from carrying a lot of groceries.  The lady with the newspapers looked at me with pity.  You see, this day the newspaper had a campaign to give away a free bottle of Lipton's Green Ice Tea with each paper.  The lady looked at me, handed me two bottles of the ice tea, and didn't burden me with a newspaper I couldn't even read.  I'm not a religious man, but yesterday I met a saint.

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Beer: the Newly-Stylish Accessory

I know it might seem silly (and a bit superficial), but I think this is a brilliant idea! Carlsberg is taking style into consideration with a new beer they're manufacturing.


Personally, the bottle is the only thing I find appealing about Jones Soda. If I happen to be drinking a bottle or can of beer, I tend to share a single beer with my boyfriend so I don't get stuck holding it. This bottle is attractive enough that I might not mind too much.

Check out the new beer here.

Healthy Meal

Thinking of hitting the cheesecake factory for a healthy meal?  Well you might want to read this first.  The first two sentences of this post are typically how most people would react to a list of the most unhealthy chain restaurants.  The thing is, if you're going to many of the places listed, I'm pretty sure "health" is not the first thing on your mind.  I'm also pretty sure people are smart enough, at least I hope, to know how many calories and how much sugar is in a lot of this food.  It's a night out indulgence and that's it.

Click here to check out the list.

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Microwave Popcorn Test

The folks at Cockeyed decided, randomly, to find out if a bag of microwave popcorn weighs the same after it's popped.  The answer is both obvious and interesting.

Click here to read more.

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Happy Macaroon/Macaron Day?

There's great debate about Macaroons now a days.  Some people consider the French Macarons to be far superior to the classic Macaroon.  While others feel that the two are completely different things and should not even be compared.  I personally don't care, I like them both equally.

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A Whole Lot Of Cheese

The other day at the grocery store I made a Fromage Faux Pas (clever the use of French no?).

Although my Greek is getting better, I still make mistakes, and often those mistakes are difficult to fix, because of my poor language skills.  So while at the cheese counter at my local grocery store, I appear to have accidentally ordered one and a half kilos of mozzarella cheese, instead of a half kilo of mozzarella.  So do you want to see what a kilo and a half of cheese looks like?

Here it is, in all it's glory.  I couldn't even imagine how I was going to tell her I only wanted a fraction of what she gave me, so I took it.  I also decided that getting another 300 grams of cheddar was probably not a good idea.

So for the next week or two I will be eating a whole lot of cheese, including snacks like these crackers with mozzarella melted on them.

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How Dark Chocolate Can Help with Your Workout

This article introduces itself as "good news for exercising enthusiasts and chocolate lovers" and, as a member of both categories, I must say I like it. The findings largely re-iterate the antioxidant benefits of dark chocolate, but this is the first time I've seen someone link those benefits to exercise.

For a short, easy-to-read explanation of the study, click here.

Cookies Are Tellings Us How To Raise Our Children

Well they are in India at least.  According to a new campaign in India, Cadbury (who makes Oreo cookies) has decided to launch a campaign to promote the Oreo brand and tie it into the idea of togetherness with children.  So some how Oreos represent the bond between parents and children... I'm not sure how this is going to work, and I wonder if maybe they should focus on promoting the tasty cream between the cookies instead.

Click here to read more about the campaign.

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