No. No, it cannot be.

I quote the Book of Revelations:

And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold: a pizza vending machine.

Yes, that's right. Some mad Italian scientist saw fit to make a vending machine that sucks in dollars and spits out piping hot, 9" pizza pies. If you look at the gallery on the site you'll see two critical facts:

1) The pizzas are cooked by an open heating element, meaning they aren't just microwaved.

2) The pizzas actually look somewhat appetizing.

They spent 5 million bucks in R&D creating this thing! It spits out a fully cooked pie in about two minutes, with three varieties per machine and a crispness setting controlled by the machine's operator. Now I can finally get that crisp rising-crust flavor at the Des Moines Greyhound station!

Okay, okay, this is actually really cool, but I have a good reason to panic. When convenience reaches this level, it won't be long before we're living in a grim world where robots do all the work and slowly learn to rebel. When that day comes, all we can do is hope Will Smith is still around to save us*.

*Initial title of this post: "AW, HELL NAW"

Cooking Disaster Carnival (How Macabre)

All the bloggers here at Chew on That love to eat. For example, after a trio of spicy crunch maki on Monday night, I couldn't turn down two-dollar wings with my beer at the nearby bar. But, we don't all claim to be master cooks. (Well, maybe Max does when none of the other bloggers are around...I've heard things about her risotto) Learning to cook is also about experimentation (and, um, food), and that means things occasionally go terribly but hilariously wrong. I tried to make falafel from scratch once with a mixture that stubbornly refused to remain balled, and ended up with oily muck.

It's especially fun to hear about these cooking disasters from our fellow food bloggers (some much more seasoned than we).

So, send in your crazy cooking disaster stories for what will be a very amusing blog and article at recipe4living.com. I'll be sure to give you some nice link-love at both locations.

Mail me at: caleywalsh at gmail dot com