Digital Food Photos Wants Your Best Food Porn Photos

Starting on January 1, 2009 until February 16, 2009, Lou Manna over at Digital Food Photos will be holding a contest for the puuuurtiest food pix on the internet called (trumpets please): Best Looking Food of 2009!!

So, what's at stake?

The winner will receive an Olympus Digital SLR camera kit with Kingston memory cards, a Calumet lighting kit, and complimentary admission to a Digital Food Photography for Food Bloggers Workshop with Lou Manna.

And, if your canapé is especially sexy (who knows?) you just might get a centerfold!!

 

Dinner In The Sky, Las Vegas - Dine At A Table Dangling From a Crane!

Soon Las Vegas diners will be putting a whole new meaning to haute cuisine.

Las Vegas Event Planner (which, I'm guessing, is an event planning company located in Las Vegas) just announced a rather unique event just in time for New Years Eve ... Dinner In The Sky:

Dinner in the Sky is a high-flying Sky Box that takes 22 guests to a viewing height of up to 180 feet. The 22 guests are each comfortably strapped into a leather seat that is secured to a dining table. The dining table and seats are connected to a crane, which then performs the lift. The Dinner in the Sky experience is set to last for approximately one hour per session. The center of the dining table has a walking platform that can accommodate up to 5 service personnel for the purpose of serving food, beverages, picture taking, conducting a meeting or product launch presentation. 

According to their press release, the innaugural 'flight' will be tomorrow night, Wednesday, December 31st... In other words, New Years Eve.

Click here to see a menu of the food items you'll probably be seeing twice in one night, especially if you're acrophobic.  Curiously, many of the selections appear to be on the lighter side (fish, poultry, mousse, etc.), perhaps that was done on purpose given the circumstances?

Then again, if you're dangling 13 stories in the air you'd probably be more concerned for your well-being than being well fed.

Food for Thought

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.

- Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD)

News Sips

Pistachio Fruit Cake

(via Cake2Thailand.com)

• How about a Christmas pizza this holiday instead?
  
  
• Food Editor Sarah Moulton poured over hundreds of cookbooks.... so you don't have to!! Recently, she was on Good Morning America to present the Best of 2008 and here are just a few:
  
  
  1. "300 Sensational Soups," by Carla Snyder and Meredith Deeds
  2. "Urban Italian," by Andrew Carmellini
  3. "Fish Without a Doubt," by Rick Moonen and Roy Finamore
  4. "Cuisine Latina," by Michelle Bernstein
  5. "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea," by Martha Hall Foose
  
  
  
• If you’ve been busy frying up holiday treats too, you might be wondering what to do with all that used oil and rendered fat. Fortunately, Examiner.com has lots of solutions!
  
  
• Raymond Akira of DollarSeeds.com goes over the finer points of Japanese cuisine. "Japanese food is not only a must try, but an adventure in itself. There is much more to Japanese food than the traditional, but no less tasty, sashimi and sushi. To the uninitiated, any experience of Japanese cuisine often leaves one wanting more."
  
  
• G. Franco Romagnoli, who with his wife, Margaret, helped introduce Americans to authentic Italian home cooking on the 1970s PBS series "The Romagnolis' Table" and in a series of best-selling cookbooks, died Monday in Boston at the age of 82.
  
  
  Fruit Cake with a Twist!
  
• Slashfood.com comes up with eight ways to put that stale ass panetonne to good use. "As a result of my panettone obsession, I tend to buy a lot more than I can eat before it goes stale. Fortunately, there are several ways to cooking panettone even after it loses its delicious soft texture. For example, it makes a distinctive fruity french toast and bread pudding."
  
  
• Don't store your cheese in plastic wrap or wax paper!! According to Sarah Christine, "when the cheese in wrapped in plastic wrap, it suffocates and becomes laden with ammonia and is no longer palatable. A common problem with wax paper is that the cheese dries out to fast; wax paper is not easy to seal and is often exposed to too much air." Her suggestion? Cheese paper... the perfect stocking stuffer!!
  
  
• Last Sunday, former Top Chef contestant, Spike Mendelsohn demonstrated latke cooking, gave out the recipes and all was done with the assistance of his sous chef ... his mom. "It was clear to see where Spike’s outsized personality comes from. Spike’s mother Catherine largely stole the show from her son. The two play off each other like a pair of pros who’ve honed their stage act after weeks on tour. Spike can’t even outshine his mom with his headgear. While he is rarely seen in public without his branding signature—a hat on his head—his mom was resplendent with ruby red hair."