In honor of Shark Week, thought I'd post this. Thanks, Jerry, for sending it along!:

Two great white sharks swimming in the ocean spied survivors of a sunken ship. "Follow me son" the father shark said to the son shark and they swam to the mass of people.

"First we swim around them a few times with just the tip of our fins showing." And they did. "Well done, son! Now we swim around them a few times with all of our fins showing." And they did. "Now we eat everybody." And they did.

When they were both gorged, the son asked, "Dad, why didn't we just eat them all at first? Why did we swim around and around them?"

His wise father replied, "Because they taste better without the crap inside!"

Not to be one to spread rumors, but The Faster Times has an interesting look at who's providing some of the products under the Trader Joe's brand. Lots of high quality suppliers on the list, and despite rumors of the dubious quality of Poland Springs bottled water, it's my personal favorite.

To my knowledge, none of these are confirmed by Trader Joe's at this time.

I know, it's not Friday. It's not even close, but funny is funny, and these are funny. Thanks to Larry for sending this along.

Teh funny is in the extended entry... enjoy!

I actually agree with most of these, though a few are a bit unfair. Just because a chef does have fish that needs to get sold, it's not necessarily bad, he's just trying to move through his inventory. Prime rib becomes beef sandwiches, becomes beef vegetable soup, etc. Dovetailing your menu is a good thing...

If you tip on your ticket price after you've used your two for one coupon, and not on the full price, you're a weasel, plain and simple.

(Photo: In & Out's Double Double, which I miss horribly.)

I got an email from my old friend Chuck, and I'm still not sure if he was tormenting me, or trying to be supportive. The link he passed along was to a Serious Eats post that recently took on the challenge of recreating my favorite burger in the world, In & Out's Double Double.

I've eaten a multitude of these over the years, and while I really enjoy Steak & Shake's burgers, a Double Double with grilled onions just hits all the right notes for me. Looks like they did a great job with the attempt, and I hope the greasy glory that ultimately resulted was worth the effort!

It sounds counterintuitive, but an interesting article in the Times quantifies something I've noticed myself, that adding water to a beverage can, as opposed to 'watering it down', positively affect the final result:

"It seems silly, debating decimals," Mr. Hoffmann said, "but it makes a big difference to the flavor." A tablespoon of water more or less can shift the extracted solids by a perceptible amount. It also matters how the coffee solids are extracted. Mr. Hoffmann told me that concentrated brews are often made palatable by using a lot of coffee and reducing the brewing time or the temperature to extract only the easy-going portion of its flavor materials. The result is intense but one-dimensional. More fully extracting a smaller amount of gently roasted, high-quality coffee, as Mr. Hoffmann and a number of new-wave brewing advocates are doing, brings out its full range of tastes and aromas.

The story covers a number of alcoholic beverages, but I'm not sure I'm ready to start watering down my Bordeaux collection. I have been using about a third less coffee in my grinder for the last few years, and I've enjoyed the results.

You're probably asking yourself, "What the !@#$ happened to this guy!?!" This site used to be full of ribs, steaks, and other porky goodness!

Trust me. These are good, too. We're trying to eat a bit healthier, and maybe, just maybe, I'll lose a few pounds in the process. A low-carb, Paleo-type diet seems to work best for me, but these are doing a nice job of serving double duty to fill the snack/dessert void in my daily meals. Only 2T of oil, and 1/2C of brown sugar for a dozen muffins, with some applesauce to make up the moisture and sweetness. I'm using whole wheat flour, rolled oats, and some milled flaxseed in the dry mix- still carby, but more low glycemic than a typical muffin.

They really are good. Between these, the bread I've been making, and some homemade granola, I'm doing more baking these days than I've done in years. Saves money, healthier, and WAY better than store bought stuff.

I'll be posting more meat stuff soon. Promise!

I stumbled across a very Jetson-like contraption today at Inhabitat, which looks like a cool site, via a link from Hot Air. While geeky, cool, futuristic, and cutting edge, I'm not sure sure I'd ever want to eat anything out of version 1:

Cornucopias' printing process begins with an array of food canisters filled with the "cook's" foods of choice. After a meal selection has been made using the device's multi-touch translucent screen, users are able to see their meal being assembled while simultaneously manipulating real-time parameters, such as calories or carbohydrate content. Each ingredient is then piped into a mixer and then very precisely extruded, allowing for very exact and elaborate combinations of food.

I really do applaud the effort, the technology could lead to lots of cool things down the road, but I think I'll wait for version 15, or so.

Someone really put a lot of time into this, thanks to Julie for sending it along! For a full-sized version that's zoomable, click the link.

What does 19 slices of bacon and an egg get you? A 1/3 pound pure bacon burger, of course, Click over to see the picture of the finished patty, which looks pretty darn good, and a video of him eating it.

Way to take one for the team, Geekdad! Science marches on.