Maui is a tropical paradise- what’s not to like? It’s so gorgeous and lovely and the very nice people are so full of Aloha spirit there that I’d go even if they had sub-par food (a few of the Caribbean islands come to mind, but I’m not naming names). But they don’t! The food there is some of the best. Especially if you are like me, and enjoy eating spicy raw fish multiple times a day.

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Did you know you could buy a 25 lb. bucket of lard from Wal-Mart?

Hey, now, I might use a little lard if I’m making some tricky authentic Mexican recipe, or a pie crust (although I tend to favor Crisco for that) but regardless, I have never needed to buy it in more than 1-lb increments. I can’t imagine what you would need 25 lbs. for all at the same time. It has 105,000 calories all in that bucket. Assuming an appropriate calorie intake of 2000 calories a day, you could just eat a fistful out of that bucket once a day for 2 months and nothing else and get all of your calorie intake. GROSS.

He looks so happy! But there is a story behind all of this, of course. A story by a vegan.

No words needed. Maybe just a heavy gagging sound. Or the sound of me choking on my own vomit.

UPDATE: as a commenter noted this is not a real product, but a ThinkGeek.com April Fool’s joke. Real or fake, it’s still gag-worthy.

I have kind of been on a no sugar thing lately. However, my nephew Gus, who is is celebrating his 5th birthday tomorrow, is decidedly NOT on any such diet. I asked him what kind of birthday cake he wanted and he requested strawberry, but he’s picky so he clarified that he didn’t want any actual strawberries involved in the cake. He was talking pink strawberry cake from a box. Since most 5 year olds are simply sugar fiends as opposed to cake connoisseurs, I am completely OK with making him a cake from a box.

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I saw this lovely recipe for chocolate thumbprints filled with a delectable ganache over on Macheesmo. But I am kind of lazy and couldn’t deal with making ganache and fill the cookies, so I was overjoyed to find some dark chocolate mint UFOs at Trader Joe’s to stick in the middle instead. The cookies were fabulously chewy and tasty, and the light sugar crust added some nice texture.

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I couldn’t resist sharing these neat and somewhat bizarre foodstuffs (and food-related) stuff I found in Japan!

• single serving glass of wine with sardine-can top from the Muji flagship store

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Are you feeling nervous about your turkey-cooking abilities? Fear not, Butterball is totally high-tech and ready to help you prepare the bird this year. There are a variety of different ways to take advantage of their expertise. Which will you choose?

• The “Turkey Lovers” newsletter
• The “Turkey Talk” podcast
• The Turkey to Stuffing Ratio Calculator (including the important question “do you want leftovers?”)
• El Sitio de Butterball en Español

And if all else fails, you can always call the Butterball Hotline at 1-800-BUTTERBALL for all of your basting, stuffing, roasting, crisping, doneness-related questions.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Some supremely awesome and talented woman named Natasha MADE these sugar guys who perch on the edge of your cup- until you push them in. Brilliant. When will these be available for sale? Someone DEFINITELY needs to produce them on a larger scale.

As pointed out in the comments on Natasha’s site, the dark brown guy’s position even makes him look afraid… hilarious. I’d go so far as to say the light brown guy is resigned to his fate, and the white guy is very Zen.

See and read more about Natasha’s project at Nova Culture.

Happy Halloween! So, it’s a cute idea to put gooey candy into plastic Star Wars lightsabers, right?

Oh wait. Picture a kid trying to get the candy out. Um… creepy and perverse. Not helpful that it’s called “spliquid.”

I was looking at Halloween ideas with my 8 year old niece last night, and we thought this stuff was sooooo cool. We also recognized that we are probably never going to motivate to make anything this complex but we love the idea that somebody might.

Martha Stewart doesn’t usually do it for me, but my GOODNESS these are lovely ghost and witch hat petit-fours. They don’t look as hard or time-consuming as I expected for a MS recipe but they are still kind of a lot of work. But how cool are they? Basically the recipe tells you take a cake and cut it into circles, then pipe a big pointy hunk of frosting on it, then pour a glaze over it. So if you bought like a pound cake or a banana bread or something instead of making a cake yourself, it would be a lot easier.

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