A guy from Texas is selling his left nut on eBay so that he can buy a tractor. Ha Ha. It's a peanut. But I think I see the face of Jesus on it.

Here's another image-of-God-appears-in-food story. The BBC reports that a Swiss bar manager, Matteo Brandi, has found an oyster shell that bears the spitting image of Jesus Christ, though to me it looks more like what I imagine the Sea-God Poseidon should look like. Mr. Brandi said he found the shell when "The oyster stuck to his hand as if God was calling him." He also points out that his oyster shell is unique because, unlike the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich, it is "the work of nature." That's true. A few hundred years ago Mr. Brandi's shell would have been referred to as a Lusus Naturae. Mr. Brandi doesn't need any encouragement to sell his holy oyster shell online. That's already his plan.

I spent my Sunday night watching FoodTV's new show, Iron Chef America. I've long been a fan of the original Japanese Iron Chef, but I quite liked Food TV's adaptation of it. However, I was upset to read in this NY Times article that the 'secret ingredient' presented to the chefs at the beginning of the competition isn't that secret after all:

Both teams are readier for the challenge than most viewers realize. They have come to Kitchen Stadium knowing that they will be cooking with one of two ingredients, striped bass or buffalo, a choice negotiated in advance with the network.

Hmm. Instead of calling it the 'Secret Ingredient' perhaps they should call it the 'Previously Negotiated and Agreed Upon Ingredient'.

I've heard a rumor that some women do this, though I didn't think it was true. But what was I thinking? There's always somebody who's going to try something out, no matter how gross it is. So anyway, if you have a hankering for cooked placenta, here are some recipes, including Roast Placenta (with red peppers and a bit of garlic) and Dehydrated Placenta (that would be like Placenta Jerky, I assume).

The latest gross-out food email going around involves a Chinese restaurant in Atlanta supposedly caught accepting shipments of rats and mice. These rats would, I guess, be served to people who enjoy rodents as a delicacy. Some photos accompany the email (rats1, rats2, rats3). The email says that:

After a full search of the kitchen, authorities found, packaged rats, mice, kittens, puppies and a large frozen hawk... The restaurant has locations off Peachtree Road and Alpharetta near North Pointe Mall.

I tried googling for chinese restaurants located on Peachtree Road in Atlanta and came up with a few of them. But needlessly, since David Emery has already debunked this email by doing a news search and confirming that there have been no recent reports of rat-accepting restaurants in Atlanta. Plus, the photos come from a store that sells packaged rats for feeding snakes.

I, like everyone else, should stop posting about these miracle foods that keep appearing on eBay. It's only encouraging their proliferation. But I just can't stop myself. So here's the latest one: A Miracle M&M. The seller says:

Purchasing a handful of M&M from vending machine, I came across this very special M&M that I believe to be a likeness of Jesus with a crown on his head. This has been a life changing event for me. I am hoping that all of you see what I see.

'Big Gary' spotted this item in a year-end round-up of unlikely stories of 2004:

Israeli authorities seized a consignment of 80,000 cans of dog food disguised as gourmet goose liver pate. The Bulgarian product was originally marked as "Chicken for dogs" but was relabelled "Domestic birds' liver pate" and "Pate de foie gras". The importer had also forged a kosher certificate to fulfill the requirements of Jewish dietary law.

I wonder if anyone would have realized what they were actually eating, or if they would have figured it was just weird tasting pate.

The About.com urban legends forum has a thread going about auto-urine therapy, which translates into 'drinking your own urine'. Is there really a thriving urine-drinking subculture? Well, yes. As the poster points out, all you have to do is google 'drinking your own urine' and you get all kinds of hits. The reason urine-drinking has so many fans is that it's supposed to offer numerous health benefits, including improving the immune system, giving you nice skin, acting great as a gargle if you have gum disease, and having very powerful anti-aging properties. I think I've mentioned before somewhere on my site that I have personal experience with this urine-drinking subculture. NOT that I've ever drunk the stuff myself (and I definitely never plan to). But I do have a relative who, according to family scuttlebutt, used to do it. She was into all the new-age, alternative medicine stuff like that. In her defense I have to say that she's now approaching 90 and is still in excellent health. In fact, she could probably pass for a sixty-year old. So maybe there's something to it (though I've still got no plans to try it out). I'm actually going to her house on Christmas day for dinner. I don't plan to sample the apple juice in her fridge.

My wife is a big fan of fruitcakes, though only of the British variety. She tells me that American fruitcakes have too much weird stuff in them (maraschino cherries, etc.). But fans of American fruitcakes can find people of a like-mind at the Society for the Protection and Preservation of Fruitcakes. "The Society's goal is to protect and preserve fruitcake, not in the pouring on more brandy or rum type of preservation but in the 'spread the gospel' way. By providing information and links about fruitcake, it's hoped we can provide safe haven for fruitcake lovers and some encouragement for others to give it a try." Unfortunately the Fruitcake Society is only a society in spirit, not in fact, since it doesn't appear to have ever had an actual meeting. But still, for those who love fruitcake it's a start. In other fruitcake news, those who don't look forward to this holiday treat, but who have fruitcakes forced upon them anyway as gifts, will be disappointed to learn that Buffalo, New York does not seem to be repeating its Fruitcake Amnesty Campaign. Last year this campaign provided a home to hundreds of unwanted fruitcakes, no questions asked.

Is it true that infants have an innate sense of what food is good for them? That if left to their own devices they will naturally eat the food that their body needs? Well, in my admittedly limited experience young kids naturally gravitate towards a diet consisting exclusively of ice cream and cheerios. However, there apparently is an urban-legend-like tale floating around about a scientific experiment in which a doctor placed samples of food (of varying nutritional quality) in front of newly weaned babies. The babies were then allowed to pick whatever food they wanted from these samples without any adult intervention, and the babies chose to eat a well-balanced diet. Posters over at alt.folklore.urban tracked down the source of this tale and discovered that it does stem from a real experiment performed in 1928 by Dr. Clara Davis: 'Self Selection of Diet by Newly Weaned Infants'. However, as the article that the link goes to explains, Dr. Davis's experiment would hardly be considered 'good science' today. Doctors didn't even fully understand the importance of vitamins back in the 1920s. In fact, the entire 'babies know what's best for them' idea seems to me to be some kind of weird spin on Rousseau's concept that man in a state of nature is good, and that it's only the development of society and civilization that corrupts him (or her). So I think it's safe to say that babies should not be allowed to choose their own food. Make them eat their veggies.

Is it true that there's a relationship between the depth of a dimple in the bottom of a wine bottle, and the quality of the wine inside the bottle? Does a deeper dimple mean better wine? Australian wine expert Martin Field says that this is just a myth. But Itchy Squirrel (don't know his real name) decided to test the dimple-wine-quality theory for himself. Armed with a depth gauge he went to his local supermarket and recorded the price of a sample of wines as well as the depth of their dimples. He discovered that there was a rough correlation between dimple depth and price. Of course, his sample size isn't large enough to be definitive, but this is an experiment anyone can do on their own. I know that I'm now going to be keeping an eye out for dimple depth. I drink a lot of two-buck chuck, which is okay as an everyday table wine, but it has hardly any dimple at all. So it does fit the theory.

This story (author unknown) has been 'floating around' the internet for a few months. I found a discussion of it on alt.folklore.urban. There's an easier to read version of it here. It involves a fox terrier named Jasper who eats twelve uncooked yeast rolls that a woman leaves out to rise before baking. The yeast begins to rise in the dog's stomach, causing him to swell up like a balloon:
"He looked like a combination of the Pillsbury dough boy and the Michelin Tire man wrapped up in fur. He groaned when he walked. I swear even his cheeks were bloated."
The next day it's worse. The yeast has begun to ferment inside the dog's stomach, causing Jasper to become drunk: "the darn dog was as drunk as a sailor on his first leave. He was running into walls, falling flat on his butt and most of the time when he was walking his front half was going one direction and the other half was either dragging on the grass or headed 90 degrees in another direction."
Finally, it ends with fermented yeast burps, farts, and poops (that are rock-hard like 'Portland cement'). Now, this all sounds an awful lot like an urban legend, especially since it comes from an anonymous source. Would the yeast actually begin to rise and ferment in the dog's stomach, or would it be killed by stomach acid? I'm not sure. I'm guessing that given the quantity of yeast involved (twelve rolls), the yeast might actually cause the dog's stomach to swell quite a bit... so something like this could happen. Though whether it actually did happen is anyone's guess.