Something was cooking all right, but it wasn’t meth.

Drug agents raided a home in southern Illinois, suspecting there was a meth lab on the property.

But Laura Benson says her family was just making homemade maple syrup.

Benson explained to officers the buckets near some trees were collecting sap for their syrup operation.

But there are no hard feelings. Benson tells KFVS-TV she gave the departing agents some syrup to take with them.
Information from: KFVS-TV

A man said inhaling fumes from an additive once used to give popcorn its buttery flavor ravaged his lungs.

Read more: Source

Basins and buckets of boys’ urine are collected from primary school toilets. It is the key ingredient in “virgin boy eggs”, a local tradition of soaking and cooking eggs in the urine of young boys, preferably below the age of 10.

There is no good explanation for why it has to be boys’ urine, just that it has been so for centuries.

The scent of these eggs being cooked in pots of urine is unmistakable as people pass the many street vendors in Dongyang who sell it, claiming it has remarkable health properties.

Read More… Source: Reuters

Want a Pizza Hut Engagement?

For $10K you can get the following:

· Limo service.
· A ruby engagement ring.
· A bouquet of flowers.
· A personal fireworks display.
· A professional photographer.
· A professional videographer.
· And last but not least, a Pizza Hut $10 Dinner Box, which contains “a medium one-topping rectangular pan pizza, five breadsticks with marinara sauce and 10 cinnamon sticks with a sweet icing cup in one box.”

Read more here.

Convert your old linksys router into a wireless BBQ temperature control/monitor:

Yum!

Read more…

The world’s first bacon fragrance.

Read more here.

God Bless Hardee’s…

USA Today – A cheeseburger sold as a foot-long sandwich, with three burgers and three cheese slices, is being tested at 50 Carl’s Jr. restaurants in Southern California and 50 Hardee’s units in Indiana. That’s the same chain that introduced the world to the 1,400-calorie Monster Burger and the Monster Breakfast Sandwich, with 47 grams of fat.

“We live in a society that’s fascinated with all things big,” says Scott Hume, editor of BurgerBusiness.com, an industry trade site. “It’s inherently American to push for something bigger and better than anyone else has.”

The foot-long burger idea was hatched two months ago from a product development chef at Carl’s, says Brad Haley, marketing chief. The chain is especially eager to create products that appeal to its core customers: young men ages 18 to 24. “Obviously, the foot-long sandwich has been very successful at Subway. But we decided to do it the Carl’s way.”

That means big — and controversial. The sandwich has 850 calories with 20 grams of saturated fat. It’s served on a white sub roll, sliced in half and wrapped in butcher paper.

If it’s a hit in testing, it could be sold at all Carl’s and Hardee’s — sister chains in different regions of the country — within three to six months, Haley says.

Responds Haley, “I’d rather have a charbroiled, foot-long cheeseburger than a cold, foot-long deli sandwich any day.”

Say what you will, but I love the fact that Hardee’s is up front about their food not being the most healthy option out there.  But boy, is it tasty.  I love that Indiana is a Hardee’s test market as there is always some sort of odd creation that they’re touting.  I may have to give the footlong burger a whirl…I only wish they had a Mushroom & Swiss option.

A smoked-salmon-flavored vodka made by Alaska Distillery in Wasilla is shaking up the cocktail scene with a variety of savory drinks. It joins another meaty spirit not for the fainthearted: bacon-flavored vodka, from Black Rock Spirits in Seattle.

Read more: nydailynews.com.

A fruit company in Panama has sent its first shipment of 120 square watermelons to New York. A company official says the melons are not genetically modified. Instead, they’re grown inside cube-shaped glass boxes. They’ll cost about $75.

Source: NPR News

You could blow a week’s pay on fresh lobster, a bottle of bubbly and a quiet table with a waiter named Jean-Pierre to impress your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.

Or . . . you could surprise her with your, ah, thrift and willingness to stand out from the crowd by taking her out for the Valentine’s special at your neighborhood White Castle, where, just for this occasion, they’re offering a candlelit dinner, with tableside service and flowers.

They’ve done this before. Some people even dress up and rent a limo, says Jamie Richardson, a White Castle spokesman.

Source