November 4, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
Not a fan of sushi? Then check out Sooshi — a new sushi-style treat from New Zealand Natural ice cream. Though it may look a lot like your neighborhood rainbow roll, these sweet snacks are made purely of real fruit and ice cream. Instead of the outside ‘nori’ sheet, Sooshi sports a green apple flavored strip. Rice is replaced with vanilla or fruit ice cream, and rather than vegetables, the center’s filled with lemon, apricot, raspberry, or blackcurrant fruit puree. Though word on the street is that it’s already super sugary, those with a real sweet tooth can top it off with a squirt of chocolate ‘soy sauce’. So next time you’re out for a sushi dinner, consider skipping the California roll and heading straight to dessert.
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November 3, 2009 | New Design | by Caitlin Zaino |
So here’s the theory: happy cows produce better milk. And from this concept comes Japanese-based dairy company, Forest Milk. Rather than locking their cows down, Forest Milk’s lot are free to roam the woods 365 days a year. The freer, happier cows then produce tastier, fattier milk. At the same, they maintain the forest by noshing on unwanted grass and weeds. The sweet packaging with its simple green trees, charming typeface, and old-school tissue paper cap make for an overall delightful creamy treat. So mOOOve over factory farming, Forest Milk is here.
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November 2, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Caitlin Zaino |
Having been raised a proper Italian-American girl in New York, I was taught from a young age how to spot a good cannoli: those tasty desserts made of hollowed fried dough stuffed lovingly with creamy, sweet ricotta and topped with a marvelous dash of powder sugar. Yum. These tiny Southern Italian treats are not the stuff of nouvelle cuisine. Or are they? Enter Stuffed Artisan Cannolis. Read more
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November 2, 2009 | New Design | by Caitlin Zaino |
From straightforward and colorful, to complex and ominous, 1800 Tequila’s bottles are sporting a new look — for a limited time, at least. The recently released creative, vibrant illustrations adorning the glass bottles are part of 1800 Tequila’s second annual Essential Artists collection. Inspired by art and the want to support emerging talent, this now yearly contest challenges users to create designs for the company’s tequila-filled bottles. Read more
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October 29, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
Michel Bras is one of the world’s best chefs and his renowned restaurant in the Aubrac region of France continues to top must-visit lists for any gastronome. The food is stellar – unreal even – drawing heavily on Bras’ obsession with the region and the local, humble ingredients it produces. Read more
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October 23, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
Check out these brilliant origami-inspired Green Berry Tea bags from Russian-based designer Natalia Ponomareva. While the tea seeps, the bag gradually expands into a poetic and delicate paper crane. The design hasn’t made it to store shelves yet but the concept is so impressive that it deserves sharing.
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October 23, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
If you’ve ever known the mouth-watering appeal of well photographed food, then the Eat the Art exhibition now on in Boston may be the place for you. This lip-smacking exhibit brings together a smorgasbord of food as art themed pieces from more than forty-two artists. Using various media, artists showcase everything from a miniature cocktail dress made out of the skins of clementines to flowers made of jelly beans. One of the highlights includes several of Andy Warhol’s iconic food-themed pieces. Eat the Art is on now until the month’s end. Read more
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October 21, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
Like its name, Beast is straightforward and simple. This Portland-based restaurant offers up prix-fixe six-course menus of uncomplicated yet refined dishes. Each week the cuisine changes according to apparent inspiration from the fields, forests, and moods of the owner and her culinary team. Foie gras bons bons may share the menu with pork, pork liver, and sour cherry pate. Read more
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October 17, 2009 | Cool Websites | by Caitlin Zaino |
Cake Wrecks is a seriously addictive, mostly hysterical blog that is perfect for those hours of procrastination. From sad to silly to creepy, the site is all about cakes gone wrong and ‘finding the funny in unexpected, sugar filled-places’. Cakes branded with shockingly bad spelling, missing words, absent punctuations, and horrific decorations, cram the blog to create a photo library full of cringing — though hilarious — blunders. Read more
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October 16, 2009 | New Trends | by Caitlin Zaino |
Tweet this: Twitter is launching its own wine label. And that took only 41 characters. Now for the story behind it all. In an effort to help make a positive impact, Twitter says, they’ve teamed up with San Francisco-based non-profit Room to Read, which helps brings libraries and literacy to the world’s poorest countries. Read more
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October 13, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
Sitting on the foothills of Perth in Western Australia is High Vale Orchard, an epicenter for biodynamic apples and fruity delights. A frontrunner in sustainable farming, here, certified organic, locally grown, and locally sourced produce is turned into deliciously natural ciders, juices, and preserves. The purity of the product is reflected in the clean, simple, and sophisticated labels branded against the clear bottles — the cider in particular. High Vale’s scrumptious goods are available in fine bottle shops around Australia or, better yet, at their cellar door.
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October 12, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
What do you get when the head of a creative agency obsessed with chocolate, conceptualizes, designs, and opens his very own chocolate boutique-cum-cafe? In the case of Singapore’s Chocolate Research Facility, the answer is an exotic wonderland of dripping chocolate from the walls, tables resembling chunks of chocolate, and a plethora of chic, stylish stacks of eclectically packaged bars. Designed by Chris Lee and his Singaporean-based design firm, Asylum, the Chocolate Research Facility is an inspired shop with over 100 flavors of tasty chocolate from honey melon and cassis to longan and pumpkin seeds. The fun packaging is full of quirky subtleties too, like identifiable clues that hint at flavors, such as a blurry photograph to suggest alcohol content. Together, the creativity of the concept, combined with scrumptious chocolate dolled up in clever packaging, is not only generating a lot of adrenalin-filled chocolate buzz in Singapore, but around the world, too.
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October 8, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
When two exceptional New Zealand-based wine makers — one Kiwi, one French — set out to free themselves of professional conventions and pair up for a personal project, the result was an unexpected, artisanal creation: Dada Wine. Reflecting famous artistic and literary movements based on irrationality and the negation of traditional values, Dada Wine echoes the obsessive attitude of the winemakers and the wine itself. Read more
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October 5, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
Cupcakes are to urban eating today what sundried tomatoes and pesto were in the 80s. The fad took over in leaps and bounds a few years back and it remains a steadfast part of any stylish city dwellers diet. Perfect then that Lola’s Kitchen in London not only delivers soft, fluffy, just out of the oven cupcakes, but they do so in chic packaging that oozes as much style as their icing does sweet indulgence. Read more
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October 3, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Caitlin Zaino |
In Geneva, Switzerland, where the weather is just beginning to hint at cold, the time for indulging in hearty fondues is around the corner. And for a real authentic fondue experience, bypass the fake chalet-type restaurants and head straight for the Buvette des Bains. Set on a pier in the middle of Lake Geneva, this summer beach hotspot is transformed into a local fondue-eating institution during the chillier months. Here, rowdy locals pack long communal tables, next to wood burning stoves, where the very pungent aroma of melted cheese pierces the senses. Read more
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I was feeling kind of picky this morning, searching for just the right thing to itch that Monday morning scratch. The beautiful origami like collages of London illustrator Kate Slater really did it. The fact that they’re 3D makes you convinced that you might actually be able to crawl inside one of them and reclaim a small bit of your childhood dangling delicately from marionette-like strings and casting shadows like a still from a puppet show.
With Lungfish guitarist Asa Osborne’s latest project, Zomes, he continues to explore loops and cycles with endlessly repeating musical phrases, this time played on circuit-bent keyboards. The resulting tracks sound at times like medieval court music at others like the soundtrack to a Hal Hartley movie.
Whether a torrent of abuse flows in my direction or not, I’ll bite my lip and say that Four Tet’s Rounds is perhaps the greatest electronica album ever released. Read more
Anything goes in New York, even a white peacock in the middle of Manhattan. Yes, a white peacock! Who says the Upper West side is ‘upstate?’ Come visit one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in New York, which host the famous Cathedral of St. John The Divine (112th St. and Amsterdam Avenue). Read more
Having originally sprung from the Shaky Isles (otherwise known as New Zealand), I can appreciate the humour in the New Zealand cartoon series, Bro Town, the first homegrown animated series to screen during local prime time. It’s simply brilliant, a real play on the ‘thuck’ accent and small town ways of our Kiwi brethren.
The Virtual Shoe Museum was initiated by Liza Snook in 2004. Once the idea was born, a long search began for designers, photographers and publishers connected to shoes. New friendships developed and their mailbox filled with loads of material on fantastic shoes, art and design on shoes. The Shoe featured above is the Electric Light Shoe by Strawberry Frog.
This website hosts a nice collection of quirky, sometimes mind-boggling, sculptures from around the world. There’s a certain Dali-esque feel to a lot of them – those surreal, dreamy hallucinations turned into a warped reality. I’ve always been a sucker for art that really catches you out for a few seconds, and these certainly do that.
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Richmond-based graffiti artist Chip7 has a style that is at once urban and also vaguely tribal with their crude lines and rich patterns. Read more
Alex Passapera’s dizzying pen and ink drawings are cascades of images melting into one another, often looking like contorting, mutating creatures spewing blood-like ink splatters. Read more
With the recession still biting, it may be time to whip out the glue and the cardboard and make your next pair of cool kicks. Don’t know how they’d manage in the rain though? Read more
There is not a medium that UK illustrator Lizzy Stewart cannot wrap around her little finger to make the most beautiful, whimsical images. Read more
Almanac Market in Philadelphia is slightly pricey, but you definitely get what you pay for. Offering fantastic bread, cheeses, produce, and cured meats such as sopressata and pepperoni, it was a great pit stop when my band played in town, and definitely more economical and tasty than hitting a greasy spoon for road snacks.
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
Junior Massive is a newly launched Australian boutique t shirt label making limited edition tees using only Australia cotton. It’s street meets indie; design meets durability; edgy fashion meets edgy fashion. We have them for sale in the Lost At E Minor online store. Read more
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