A Welsh View

Portion Size, Then and Now

DivineCaroline.com has an article comparing portion sizes in the US twenty years ago and today.

Video: Eating A Big Mac In One Go

UniqueDaily has 9 more videos of people eating Big Macs in one bite.

Video: Mentos and Diet Coke Explosion at 1200fps

Gizmodo has posted a video showing four different Diet Coke and Mentos explosions filmed at 1200fps. They were filmed using the Casio's EX-F1 camera. At 1200fps, the camera outputs at a strange 336x96 frame size but it's still a very cool feature.

A Visit to Beijing's Exclusive Penis Restaurant

Spiegel has posted an article (along with photos) of a visit to the Guolizhuang Restaurant in Beijing where the menu consists almost entirely of penis and testicle dishes -- made from the private parts of deer, snakes, yaks, horses, seals and ducks, among others.

Video: Cadbury Airport Trucks Race Advert

Looks fun but I think I prefer the gorilla advert. [via]

Video: 20 Cool Ways to Open Your Beer Bottle

No bottle opener? Here's 20 cool ways to open your bottle of beer.

[via]

World's Most Disgusting 'Ice Cream'?

Anyone for bangers and mash in a cone? This weird combination (bangers and mash in a cone not bangers and mash) was created by British food manufacturer Aunt Bessie. I'm not sure if they are actually going to sell it. The Metro were lucky enough to taste it. [via]

Fishing - Nigerian-Style

According to this site, the photo above, along with many more, are from Nigeria.

The Bacon Bra

The Bacon Bra - tasty and functional! [via]

Alaskan Fisherman Earn $500,000 In An Hour

It's common knowledge that fisherman can earn a fortune but giant haul made by a group of Alaskan fishing boats last week surprised fishermen, regulators and seafood processors alike.

In just one afternoon, 8 to 10 boats hauled 10,000 tons of sac roe herring and at $550 a ton it works out at around $5.5 million dollars. That's $500,000 per boat! Link

Hot Cross Meatloaf

And shrouded in bacon. Mmmmm.

The 20 Worst Foods in America

These Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing weigh in at a heart-attack inducing 2,900 calories, have 182 grams of fat and no doubt taste pretty damn good. It's the worst food out of this list and this very similar one.

Anti-Fois Gras Adverts

Another one here.

Comparing Foods With Their Package Photos

A German website has taken photos of over 100 German food products and compared them with the photos found on their packaging. [via]

The World's Most Expensive Foods

A selection of the world's most expensive foods including potatoes that cost €500/kg, tea that costs $3,000/kg and a beer that costs £500/bottle. [via]

The Art Of Pouring A Perfect Pint Of Guinness

As today is St. Patrick's Day, here's a guide and video to pouring a perfect pint of Guinness.

Hotel Chocolat Easter Egg Review

Easter has come early at AWV. The lovely people at Hotel Chocolat have sent me a luxurious extra thick Easter Egg. This time they let me choose from the entire range. Being a Libran trying to decide which of the equally good eggs I should pick was no easy task. I decided to go with the Rocky Road to Caramellow which according to Hotel Chocolat is "a cookie-textured and caramel and milk chocolate extra thick egg filled with hand-made chocolates which follow the themes of crispy texture and gorgeous caramel flavour notes."

As with all of Hotel Chocolat's products, the egg was beautifully packaged and came with a well-produced guide to the hand-made chocolates. On surprise I had when opening the egg was the fact that the two shells were different. One half was cookie textured whilst the other was coated in a thick layer of caramel.

I don't think I've ever had an Easter egg that contained 'extra bits' like cookies and puffed rice. It added some texture to the egg and made it more enjoyable than the standard thin Easter eggs you buy from a supermarket.

Like other Hotel Chocolat products I've tasted, the chocolate is extremely rich which for me means that not only does it taste far superior to other chocolate, it will last me a long time. I've had the egg for a few days, have shared it with a few people and there's still half left.

For some, the price of the egg will be off-putting (it costs £19 or around $38) but you get so much more than just chocolate. There's a whole different experience surrounding Hotel Chocolat's products. You admire the packaging, read the tasting guides, take time to taste all of the chocolates and share them with friends and family. To me, you are paying for both delicious chocolate and an experience you don't get with other chocolates. However, if you are not after an experience you can go for the cheaper Engraved Easter Eggs.

Don't forget, you can win an Extra Thick Easter Egg in the competition that I am running. The competition is open until March 18th.

Video: Vegetable Musical Instruments

This talented guy has more vegetable musical instruments here. [via]

Chefs Create 13-Tonne Biryani

Sixty Indian chefs have created giant biryani at a stadium in New Dehli. It weighs in at 13-tonne (28,600 pounds) and they hope that it will be entered the Guinness Book of World Records.

Three cranes dumped 3,000 kilos of Basmati rice, 85 kilos of chilli peppers, 1,200 litres of oil and 3,650 kilos of vegetables into a giant vat at a New Delhi sports stadium in the presence of a Guinness observer.

The steel vat was mounted on a three-foot high furnace while the chefs clad in fire-resistant outfits perched on a platform to stir the biryani -- one of South Asia's most popular dishes -- with oar-like ladles.

The cooks threw "a pinch of salt" weighing 86 kilos into the 16-foot (4.87-metre) deep steel vat, organiser Gurnam Arora said.

The sponsors used a hose to pour 6,000 litres of water into the vat and sprinkled 10 kilos of exotic spices and aromatic condiments to prepare the tangy biryani, Arora said.

Link

Review: Hotel Chocolat Mother's Day Chocolates

Twice a year, Hotel Chocolat challenges it's chocolatiers to create a new collection of chocolates to reflect the feel of that part of year - in tune, well balanced and fresh.

They certainly have excelled themselves this year. The Season 2008 contains "36 gorgeous hand-finished chocolates with a balanced selection of fresh, seasonal flavours, including mint & strawberry, white rum, fruit & nut, red currant, melon martini, salted caramel & more…"

I received a box on Friday and whilst I haven't had a chance to sample all of the chocolates yet, I've had a good try (along with the help of a few others).

Almost every chocolate in the box is unique, something you wouldn't find in a box of Thorntons or Cadbury's.

There's the White Night - "a deep ganache softened with a generous splash of West Indian Rum". Notice the emphasis on generous. A few of these could easily make you feel tipsy.

The Raspberry Refresher is an "uplifting natural raspberry and cream ganache with a hint of mint". The addition of what tasted like natural mint is something I've never experienced in a chocolate but complimented the raspberry.

No box of Hotel Chocolat chocolates would be complete without some truffles and this Edition comes with some bite-sized Kir Royal Mini Truffles that contain a mix of blackcurrant punch and champagne.

I could go on but all this chocolate talk is making me want to open the box again.

If you are curious to know just what's inside, here's an image of the very well produced and much larger than normal tasting guide that outlines all of the chocolates in the Edition.

Whilst slightly more expensive than chocolate you can buy from a supermarket or Thornton's, The Season 2008, or any of the other boxes of chocolates that Hotel Chocolat offer make a great Mother's Day gift. And if you enter the Easter egg contest that's currently running you can get a free shipping voucher.

Win A Hotel Chocolate Easter Egg

A Welsh View has teamed up with Hotel Chocolat to offer you a chance to win some of Hotel Chocolat’s extra special, extra thick Easter Eggs. To enter the contest you must hunt around the Hotel Chocolat website to get a code.

You can find more information about the contest here.

Note: Every successful entry in the Easter Egg Hunt will qualify for a free shipping voucher.

Win A Year's Supply Of Kinder Bueno

The lovely people at Kinder have donated a prize of a year's supply of Kinder Buenos (a box of 52). The contest runs until the end of February and it will be drawn on March 1st. Unfortunately the prize is only open to people in the UK. It's simple to enter and you can find out how to enter the contest here.

Funeral Dinner On A Subway

A band of young Ukrainian students found an unusual way to commemorate the death of one of their countries most brilliant surgeons, a doctor Pirogov, who apparently, revolutionized national medicine. They organized a funeral commemorative dinner in one of Kiev’s subway trains inviting everyone to commemorate the carrier and accomplishments of their hero.

In true Russian style, the vodka was flowing.

More photos here. [via]

Wall Of Bananas

On display @ Deitch in NYC until February 23rd, this wall of 7,200 bananas was constructed by Stefan Sagmeister. Unsurprisingly, the room stinks of bananas. Link (more photos) [via]

Restaurant Customer Returns £18,000 Bottle Of Wine After Claiming It Was Fake

A customer dining at the swanky Michelin-starred Zafferano in Knightsbridge, London sent back an £18,000 bottle of Petrus 1961 - regarded as one of the finest wines ever made - after he claimed it was a fake.

Upon opening the wine the customer refused to touch it because the cork was not stamped with the standard mark of provenance proving where and when it was made.

Zafferano's general manager Enzo Cassini admitted it was an awkward and unprecedented situation.

"The bottle was perfect, there was nothing to think it wasn't genuine. I tasted the wine and it was off anyway. It was a big disappointment for the customer because he had brought over a friend from Italy.

[The] restaurant was so alarmed by the possibility that it was the victim of a fraud that it called in the 'Pétrus police' from Corney & Barrow, an upmarket City wine bar chain who also act as agents for Pétrus n Britain.

The company has accumulated photographic records of every surviving bottle still stored at the 28-acre vineyard to counter the growing phenomenon of wine fraud.

The allegation was regarded as so serious that Corney & Barrow despatched its managing director Adam Brett-Smith to investigate.

Although there was no evidence the bottle was a fake, Mr Brett-Smith was unable to provide a definitive answer.

The company said: "What we told the restaurant and later confirmed in writing is that it is impossible to confirm 100 per cent the authenticity of a wine pre-1964."

The customer, still intent on spending a small fortune on a bottle of plonk ordered a magnum of Mouton Rothschild 1945 at £20,000. Link

Scientists Create 'No Tears' Onions

Scientists in New Zealand and Japan have created a "tear-free" onion but as with most progresses in science, we won't see them for another decade.

The research institute in New Zealand, Crop and Food, used gene-silencing technology to make the breakthrough which it hopes could lead to a prototype onion hitting the market in a decade's time.

Colin Eady, the institute's senior scientist, said the project started in 2002 after Japanese scientists located the gene responsible for producing the agent behind the tears.

"We previously thought the tearing agent was produced spontaneously by cutting onions, but they proved it was controlled by an enzyme," he told AFP from his home outside Christchurch.

"Here in New Zealand we had the ability to insert DNA into onions, using gene-silencing technology developed by Australian scientists.

"The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it doesn't produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn't produce tears."

Link

Vitamin Beer

Billy L Lalang, an inventor from the Philippines, has created a beer that is fortified with vitamin B - the type most commonly lost through heavily drinking. His 'prophylactic for drinkers' is currently in the concept phase, but it has already won a gold medal at the Genius Europe competition. [via]

Bacon Vodka

Instructions on how to make bacon vodka. Is there anything bacon can't do?

Hotel Chocolat Secrets & Desires Review

The nice people at Hotel Chocolat have been kind enough to send me a box of 'Secret & Desire' chocolate to sample. Here's what I thought of them (well think of them - the box is huge and it'll take me a while to get through all the chocolate).

The Secrets & Desires box of chocolates is impressively packaged with the 'different levels' of chocolate individually wrapped in paper and the champagne truffles (alcoholic chocolates are always good) and satin blindfold (didn't get to use) individually boxed. There is also an expensive looking glossy guide to the different chocolates.

The levels of chocolate are beginner (white and fruity), Curious (smooth & milky), Daring (spicy & spirited) and Hardcore (dark & dangerous). Each level contained two different slabs of chocolate.

White chocolate is my favourite so choosing where to start was easy and kept things in order. The chocolate contains swirls of strawberry which actually tastes fruity. The way the chocolate is made means that you can either have pure white chocolate, pure strawberry chocolate or a mix.

Next up was the milk chocolate made with 38% and 48% South American cocoa. According to the guide the chocolate is full of red fruit flavours and a refined smoky finish. My chocolate tasting skills haven't been perfected yet so I couldn't pick up either of these tastes but the chocolate still tasted great.

I was a little bit cautious of tasting the next level of chocolate. The first was a single origin chocolate that had a tasted of red berry fruits and the second was a chilli recipe. I had seen Lindt chilli chocolate before and had avoided it but decided to try this one. I was pleasantly surprised by its taste. The chilli taste was very subtle and helped it give it a more robust and long lasting taste. You don't taste it at first but after several seconds you begin to taste the chilli and it lingers long after swallowing the chocolate. If you haven't already tried chilli chocolate I recommend giving it a shot.

The final level, hardcore, contains dark chocolate made from 75% Tanzanian cocoa and 85% Ghanaian cocoa. I'm not a huge fan of very dark chocolate and I think these are about my limit. I have tried 99% dark chocolate from Lindt which tasted disgusting but these weren't that bitter. If you love dark chocolates you'll like these.

Secrets & Desires is available now and there are also plenty more Valentine's gifts available to suit all budgets.

Someone Tastes The Cheeseburger In A Can

Someone tastes the cheeseburger in a can that I recently posted about. [via]

Cheeseburger In A Can

You just know that this is going to taste like crap. [via]

The Nutritional Values Of Coffees And Snacks At Coffee Chains

Which? has compiled a report highlighting the nutritional value of coffees and snacks at Starbucks, Caffe Nero and Costa Coffee.

I rarely drink coffee but on the rare occasion that I visit Starbuck I either have an espresso or a large white chocolate mocha. Not anymore. Well, I'll have the espresso but not the large white chocolate mocha. If you have one with whole milk and whip it weighs in at 628 calories - more than a quarter of your daily recommended calorie intake.

World's Biggest Fish Finger

The world’s biggest fish finger at one meter long was created to announce the new range of fish products from 100-per-cent sustainable cod sources by Youngs Seafood. The London company uses line-caught Pacific cod from an Alaskan fishery. Link [via]

Chewing Gum Art

Works of art constructed entirely from chewing gum.

Clever Beer Adverts

A selection of clever beer adverts (pictures and videos).

Meat House

How to make a meat house complete with delicious bacon roof. [via]

Some Beer Links

A poll has shown that the average British bloke will drink 44,000 pints of beer before popping his clogs. This is based on a man drinking 402 drinks a year for an average 60.5 years of his life.

Police in Utah, are searching for two men who allegedly stole beer from a grocery store after trying to pay for it and being rejected. They were refused because it was after 1am and after asking if they could steal the beer, showed a pistol, then took the beer and left $9 on the counter. Link

Researchers in Germany say that a cancer-fighting substance found in hops could be enhanced to brew a special anti-cancer beer. One day when you hold up a glass and say, "To your health," you would actually be toasting a triumph of the brewer's art over disease. Link

Food Art

This landscape photo is amazingly made almost entirely from food. It was created by artist Carl Warner, 44, who combines several images to create the amazing scenes, including a broccoli forest, bread mountains, cheese village and smoked salmon sea. The dad-of-four plans to turn the photos into a book to encourage kids to eat more healthily. Link (w/ more images)

Walmart Cake

Taken from this LiveJournal blog...

Walmart Employee: "Hello 'dis Walmarts, how can I help you?"
Customer: " I would like to order a cake for a going away party this week."
Walmart Employee: "What you want on the cake?"
Customer: "Best Wishes Suzanne" and underneath that "We will miss you".
Walmart Employee: "Dat all? Okay, Bye."

[via]

Woman Has Wedding Cake Made That Looks Like Her

Chidi Ogbuta of Texas has always wanted to have a doll modelled after her has had her dream come true by having a wedding cake made that looks just like her.

Judging by the photo above, the groom can't wait to start dining on his 'wife'. The bride doesn't seem too happy though. CNN has more photos.

Video: Man vs 2 Million Scoville Sauce

Two Million Scoville Hot Sauce Shot - Watch more free videos

Video: How To Eat Watermelon

Petey Greene teaches black people how to eat watermelon. [via]

KitKats Of The World

I didn't realise that there were so many different flavours of Kit Kat. Above is a chestnut flavoured Kit Kat from Japan.

Monster Roast Contains 12 Different Birds

It serves 125, takes eight hours to cook and is stuffed with 12 different birds - Turkey, Goose, Barbary duck, Guinea fowl, Mallard, Poussin, Quail, Partridge, Pigeon squab, Pheasant, Chicken and Aylesbury duck. Created by chef Phillip Corrick, the monster roast contains a whopping 50,000 calories! Link [via]

Hotel Chocolat: Selection of the Season

The lovely people at Hotel Chocolat have been nice enough to send me an early Christmas present in the form of a big box of chocolates. The box is title "Selection of the Season" and is described as "mellow, warming chocolate recipes that perfectly capture the changing of the seasons". The 'warming' refers to the generous helpings of alcohol that can be found in some of the chocolates (Rum Ganache and Rasberry & Prosecco Truffle)

The offerings that I've had from Hotel Chocolat in the past have been delicious and this box is no exception. There's a huge variety of alcoholic/non-alcoholic, nutty, fruity, creamy chocolates (around 15 different varieties) and are very different to the offerings from Cadbury's and Thorntons.

My favourites so far has to be the Lemon Truffle which is incredibly 'lemony' and the Praline Filled Acorn, which actually looks like a real acorn.

I would point you to the Selection of the Seasons box but I can't seem to find it on the Hotel Chocolat website. The section appears to be empty. They still have plenty of other chocolates that you can still order before Christmas.

Video: Huge Bubblegum Bubble

[via]

Hotel Chocolat Christmas Competition

Tis’ the season to be chocolaty. As Christmas time approaches, Hotel Chocolat is reaching out to A Welsh View readers in search of the finest Yuletide themed chocolate recipes.

Do you have the best Christmas chocolate-chip cookies in town? Is your Christmas chocolate log simply to die for? Then why not put your recipe to the test against the rest of the country.

All you have to do is submit your recipe – the more original the better - and you could win a host of luxury chocolate goodies.

The lucky winner of the A Welsh View and Hotel Chocolat Christmas competition will also be automatically entered into the Hotel Chocolat Grand Prize recipe competition and could win even more seasonal chocolate goodies!

Do you think you’re the finest chocolate chef in the land? Well there really is only one way to find out…

Like previous competitions, it is only open to those living in the UK.

What's Worse Than Getting Free Beer For Life?

Getting free beer for life when you are 109!

That's what has happened to 109-year-old Harry Patch, Britain's last surviving First World War veteran, who has been awarded free beer for life for the rest of his life by his local pub.

The Rose and Crown in Limpley Stoke, Somerset, made the offer after inviting Harry to open the pub after a refit.

Harry, who was injured in the 1917 Passchendaele offensive which killed half a million men, drank in the pub when he was a young man.

''I must be the envy of many a younger man, being offered free beer in a pub. It's like being a child in a sweet shop. The beer is very good here too.''

Link

World's Largest Bottle Of Wine

A man stands next to a 490 litre Grande Cuvee TBA NV No.7 2005 of Austrian wine maker Kracher during its presentation in the small Swiss town of Rehetobel, some 40 km (26 miles) from lake Constance, November 28, 2007. The bottle, certified by Guinness World Records as the world's largest bottle of wine, holds the equivalent to 640 regular bottles, or 69,000 glasses of wine. Link [via]

Game: The Booze Test - Name That Alcohol

How well do you know your booze? I scored 86% which is either good or bad.