KFC seems to rotate between keeping their brand identity classic and coming up with silly and totally original ways to stand out in the fast food crowd, with their funny and unique ad campaigns winning by a mile.

They cast Norm MacDonald, Vincent Kartheiser, Jim Gaffigan, Rob Lowe, Billy Zane and George Hamilton (among others) to play The Colonel, teamed up with DC to create a two issue Colonel Corps comic, and now they've launched their new Zinger chicken sandwich into space.

(YouTube Link)

To be exact they launched the Zinger into the stratosphere (about 60,000 to 80,000 feet above the surface) inside a bucket-shaped satellite that has a mechanical flag waving arm and plays a cassette of the Colonel talking about chicken.

The chicken has landed. Welcome home, brave #spacesandwich. You’re just in time for sparklers. #IndependenceDay pic.twitter.com/iDoKqmKPef

— KFC (@kfc) July 3, 2017

Now if that don't say 'Murica I don't know what do!

-Via The Mary Sue

We have previously bemoaned what hipster restaurants have been doing to food, but there are so many terrible things restaurants have been doing with their presentation that it cannot possibly be limited to just one post.

Over on Bored Panda, you can find a list of over 180 absurd restaurant serving ideas and each one is more groanworthy than the next.

Even the ones that look delicious still look impossible to eat.

So see the full list of absurd food presentations over at the link.

Across the country, enclosed malls are going out of business or else struggling. The huge food courts that have a variety of familiar fast food chains are struggling or dying along with them. A new generation of foodies is rejecting the cookie-cutter recipe for eating on the run, but a new style of cluster dining choices is taking its place: the food hall.   

What makes something a food court, and what makes it a food hall? One is the most discredited concept in 20th-century dining, while the other is the hottest new idea of the 21st: an open floor plan; fresh food prepared in front of your eyes; a post-industrial space, or at least one with high ceilings, exposed wiring, and hanging air ducts. Good-looking people hunched on long benches over small plates or perched on stools around dozens of tiny countertops. The accidental flash of a bad Instagram. The places brim with noise—perhaps even a kind of working sound, an occasional butcher’s chop, something left over from a more utilitarian period, or at least the roar of an espresso machine.

Reduce this concept to the basics—a dozen quick-service restaurants sharing a space, a landlord, and maybe a seating area—and you have a food court. A food hall, in contrast, is a drafty and austere moniker for an age of raw interior design. No pleather or plastic here. What separates the former from the latter is “authenticity,” according to Matthew Fainchtein, a senior director for real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield in Los Angeles and a guy who makes food halls, not courts.

While it seems the food hall is a completely hipster concept, it is actually a resurgence of the traditional public market. For example, they are not limited to malls, but are catering to neighborhoods by opening in office buildings and residential buildings in addition to shopping centers. Read about the development of the food hall at Slate. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Shinya Suzuki)

Situation comedies sometimes feature ridiculous recipes that are good for a laugh …but how would they taste in the real world? Loryn Stone of Cracked was determined to find out, so she prepared some of the most egregious joke foods found on TV, starting with Moon Waffles from The Simpsons. It's a waffle made with pancake mix, caramel, and liquid smoke, wrapped around a stick of butter.

The liquid smoke, a substance apparently made from the runoff from an extinguished house fire, wafted into my eyes, burning them to tears. And just like in the TV show, the mass started oozing out of the sides. The caramels, in fact, started leaking into the mechanical components of the waffle iron, and I wondered for a minute if this was going to be my last time using that machine. Then the caramels started falling out of the waffle iron, jizzing all over my counter.

Right as the burning smell really permeated my kitchen, the waffle iron's green light came on. I knew this had to cool for a while -- those melted caramels looked like little globs of lava that would burn right through my tongue. I let it hang out while I scraped caramel emission off the counter and charred residue out of the maker with a skewer.  

Then she wrapped it around a stick of butter and ate it. That's just one recipe. She also made Breakfast Spaghetti, Seven-Layer Salad, Milk Steak with Jelly Beans, Peanut Butter And Clam Pizza, and Rachel's English Trifle. She is a brave woman. Read her accounts of all of these cooking adventures at Cracked.

Game Of Thrones fans adore Kristian Nairn because he did such a great job playing Hodor and because he's actually a cool and likeable guy in real life, an actor from a hit show who still has a sense of humor about himself.

And it's a good thing he keeps on smiling no matter where his acting career takes him- because in his latest role he plays a fast food worker dealing with the lunch rush in a commercial for KFC UK and Ireland.

(YouTube Link)

Chicken and rice instead of chicken and fries- I did not see that twist coming!

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Your eyes are deceiving you. This may look like a hamburger, but it's really dessert. KinkyKittenHeather made two dozen baked "hamburgers" for a family Fourth of July party. The ingredients are all sweet.

Cupcake bun, brownie "burger," coconut dyed green as lettuce, and red icing as ketchup.

Edit: The cheese is yellow marshmallow fondant.

She promised to report back and let reddit know how the burgers go over with the family. See more pictures at imgur.

One of the top three priorities in any survival scenario is the need for food, which is often in short supply when the s#%t hits the fan.

Which is why you may have seen recipes for hard tack, aka survival bread, floating around on sites like Pinterest- it's a must-have during a disaster scenario and the stuff has a shelf life of around a year or two.

Plus, survival bread is made with just three ingredients- water, flour and salt, which makes it ideal for dire situations where the crops are gone and food is hard to find.

#survival #survivalbread #outdoors in a grapefruit for flavour

A post shared by Backyard Survival (@backyard_survival) on Feb 22, 2015 at 12:33pm PST

Survival bread can be baked over a campfire inside a grapefruit or coconut, you can sub in sugar, oats and mixed fruit to give the bread a little flavor, and if you add olive oil to the mix the bread becomes way more palatable.

Read Here's The Deal With The Survival Bread That's All Over Pinterest at BuzzFeed

Every year for the Fourth of July, Southern California burger chain Slater's 50/50 introduces a new version of their outrageous 'Merica burger that always includes a 100% bacon patty. In the past, that has meant adding bacon to the bun, cheese, sauce and any other place they could squeeze in a little extra smoked pork butt (including in coleslaw and baked bean toppings). This year though, they decided to work in the old expression "as American as apple pie" while creating the new 'Merica burger and the result is a 100% bacon patty topped with bacon apple pie filling and bacon American cheese all topped with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream (though you have to wonder why they didn't just go ahead and make bacon vanilla ice cream). If that sounds like too much bacon for you, then you can always try the bacon apple pie dog, which is made of a half beef/half bacon frank also topped with bacon apple pie filling and vanilla ice cream.

Find out more about the burger and where you can get it at Slater's 50/50

This Canada Day will mark the country's 150th anniversary. To celebrate, Tim Hortons' will be introducing a poutine doughnut -though, oddly, the savory and sweet treat will only be available in America. "Our new Canadian-inspired treats are a great way for Americans to get in on the 150th celebration of their friendly neighbour next door," said a representative in a statement. Canadians do get some treats to celebrate though, including maple Timbits, a white and red velvet muffin, a Dutchie doughnut and a Nanaimo bar doughnut.

You can read more about the restaurant's celebratory menu over on CBCNews 

You may think you know a lot about bananas because you've eaten them all your life. Even if you do, you'll learn more in a list chock-full of banana facts, all with links for further reading. Did you know…

8. The so-called "banana tree" is not a tree at all. In fact, it is the world's largest herb.

9. Walmart sells more bananas than any other item.

10. Banana fibers can be used to purify water.

That's just a small taste of the bananas …I mean, banana facts. Check out all 29 banana facts in a list that's just plain bananas at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: tecking)

The staff of the New York Times taste-tested ten hot dogs, most of which are available at your local grocery store. The ten were all-beef franks, so they will cost a little more than average, but you should get some idea of what you're looking for from their descriptions, in case you're hosting a picnic for the Fourth of July.

First, the hot dogs would be cooked on a gas grill until well browned.

Next, each would be tasted plain to evaluate the intrinsic qualities of the hot dog: seasoning, beefiness, snap, texture.

Last, each would be eaten in a bun with the judge’s preordained condiments — the same for each dog, to keep the flavor profile consistent.

This important final step would allow us to assess the melding of meat and bread, sweetness and spice, salt and juice that makes up a perfect hot dog. The bun should hug the hot dog closely; there should be enough juice in the hot dog to keep the whole package together; condiments should complement the hot dog, not overwhelm it.  

If you ask my opinion, any hot dog is great when it's cooked on a grill outdoors in summertime, served with mustard and some potato salad (or even just chips) while you eat outside. I guess that's why they didn't ask me to be a judge. Read the results of the taste-test here.  -via Digg

(Image credit: jeffreyw)

For a long time, I thought the only difference between olive oil and standard vegetable oil was the price. But would you ever find yourself dipping bread into plain vegetable oil, even with spices added? Olive oil is special, and Reactions, from PBS Digital, is here to tell us why.

(YouTube link)

In this video, we get a chemical explanation for olive oil's benefits, plus glimpse into the manufacturing process and some advice on using your oil. My advice: Start any meal by sautéing onions and garlic in olive oil. After that, it really doesn't matter what you add, it will be good.

IKEA furniture has become an essential part of many homes, and since pretty much everything they sell is extremely affordable people are filling their homes with IKEA's household goods too. 

Customers like the price but they also like the simplicity of IKEA, which is something the Swedish company has strived to bring into our lives by making it simple to furnish our homes with easy to build furniture.

So since they're known for their simplified assembly instructions IKEA Canada and marketing company Leo Burnett created Cook This Page- a set of illustrated recipe posters people can actually use to cook a meal.

All you have to do is fill in each blank on the page with the proper ingredients, roll the recipe page up with the ingredients inside and pop it into the oven. Now you're making dinner the IKEA way!

-Via Bored Panda

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Weird, Weird World: EPIC.

Whether five-alarm or just smoke-alarm, there's nothing like a bowl of Texas chili to fill a belly up.

NO BEANS ABOUT IT

If you know beans about chili, allow us to tell you something really important: Texas chili has no beans. Not a one. Maybe in other states you’ll find a bean or two. But in Texas, chili is just a fiery molten stew made of beef, onions, tomatoes, spices, and lots and lots of chili peppers. Everybody has a special recipe, but no true Texan would add a legume to the mix.

CONSIDER THE SAUCE

Chili’s past is a little bit shady since nobody quite knows who invented it or when. Some say it was invented by cattle drivers and trail hands during long cattle drives. Others speculate that chili’s origins go much farther back in time to the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. Still others give credit to Canary Islanders who started immigrating to the San Antonio region as early as 1723. They were known for concocting tasty dishes using local peppers, meat, onions, and most important of all, cumin.

During the era of French colonialism, the Vietnamese took coffee and made it their own. Now everyone in Saigon drinks coffee, which is made one cup at a time, with a generous amount of ground coffee, and not in a hurry.

The Vietnamese like their “cà phê” sweet. Real sweet. As if spoonfuls of sugar weren’t enough, they also add sweetened condensed milk. This habit developed because canned condensed milk was easier for the French to import into the country than fresh milk, and the Vietnamese have just rolled with it.

I never sweeten my coffee, so I’ve had a hard time adjusting… Oh, what a liar, I don’t know why I even typed that! It took me like thirty seconds to adjust.

As they prepared to leave Saigon, Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell wanted to learn the secrets of the coffee they had grown to love. They got a barista at their favorite local cà phê shop to teach them how to make their own Vietnamese coffee. And armed with the proper coffee press, they are ready to move on. Where will they live next? Only time, and their first post from a new location, will tell.