Fairy Tale News New Year's Bumper Edition: Food and dining

• Young Chef's Academy will be hosting a Princess & the Frog themed event (& themed cuisine course too) on January 23rd in Warren County, Cincinnati, USA.

• What to feed a princess and a castle full of people after a 100 year nap - Cecelia Myers has put together a great first banquet for Sleeping Beauty's waking castle, complete with recipes so you can indulge and feast in your own castle. A Royal Awakening comes with stories and recipes to delight your mind and body. This is one of the awesome new offerings from new blogazine Enchanted Conversation.

• "Human, It's What's For Dinner", "Yum: Cannibalism", "I'll Take Cannibals for $200, Alex","Garden of Eden and Fairy Tales" - all student guest posts (links take you to each article separately) at Diamonds and Toads on the darker side of eating in fairy tales. Very interesting range of writing and ideas! (My apologies if I missed a post.) Please note: there are many other excellent guest student posts worth reading too - take some time to browse and go back a few pages to see the range of topics.

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Alice In Wonderland Cupcakes!

These are completely adorable, perfect for a Mad Hatter's tea party... and there's no way I could ever eat them.I love the presentation with the Mad Hatter's Hat too - gorgeous.
Natalie Bode a.k.a. Obliviousfire on Flickr is the 'cupcake artist' has a lot of cupcakes on their Flickr photostream, including these lovely Christmas ones below. The Alice and the Christmas ones are her most recent cupcake themes and were posted this week, but she has many more - all beautifully made.You can see many more lovely cupcakes, including more close-ups of the Alice ones, HERE.

12 Days: Snow Queen Vodka

I was searching for drinks on a fairy tale theme and found this lovely looking bottle called Snow Queen Vodka. Apparently it's a multi-award winning 'distill' (I think that's the right word) and people are raving about how smooth and fine it is. It's also, so I'm reading, not marketed in any normal sort of fashion - the company relies on word of mouth, which keeps it from being well known and ultra commercial- exactly what the company wants (apparently). Although it's classed as a luxury vodka it's not priced like one (you can find 750ml bottles for around $30), which is very nice.Here's a little story I found to go with it:

Once upon a time there was a vodka called Snow Queen. She was born in the far-away land of Kazakhstan. Her father was the finest organic wheat and her mother was the purest water that flowed through the snow-capped mountains. Soon, Snow Queen became known as the smoothest, most beautiful vodka of them all. (FTNH edit: 'she' actually won the Gold Medal last year at the Vodka Masters.) Experts came from far and wide and were amazed that such a perfect drink existed. They showered her with prizes. Gold Medals. Awards and Diplomas. But what is the secret of her beauty? It was quite simple. Unlike any other vodkas, Snow Queen had been distilled not once, twice, thrice, not even four times. She had been distilled five times. That's what gave her such a unique, smooth, velvety taste.

(FTNH edit: here comes my favorite part) But, of course, as happens so often in fairy tales, her beauty carried a terrible curse. For whoever put Snow Queen to his lips was condemned to fall in love with her for the rest of his life.

Love it. I'm a sucker for products that have a story developed to go with them, I'm afraid - especially if they're fairy tale themed.The official website is HERE (aim the target at your country for your language) but you can buy bottle online all over the place, all over the world.

NOTE: As usual, please note I am not affiliated with any of these stores or products. I do not receive any commission from any visit to the site or any purchase. These are just items I thought may interest people as fairy tale themed gifts for the Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yuletide/Holiday Season. :)


Don't forget the "Pursuit of Happiness" Giveaway!

Entries close IN ONE WEEK on December 20th, so be sure to email me before then.
(A preview of the prize is coming in the next couple of days too.)

Details for the giveaway are HERE and the wonderful London Particulars (who are making this giveaway possible through their generosity) can be found HERE.

12 Days: Nesting Dolls Measuring Cups

This makes complete sense and is sweet and fairy tale-ish too: nesting dolls that are actually measuring cups.

The cups measure 1 cup, 3/4 cup, 2/3 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/4 cup. The only drawback is they're plastic and not ceramic or porcelain as I initially thought when I first saw them.You can find them HERE (but be sure to shop around as I don't think the is the only place offering them).

NOTE: As usual, please note I am not affiliated with any of these stores or products. I do not receive any commission from any visit to the site or any purchase. These are just items I thought may interest people as fairy tale themed gifts for the Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yuletide/Holiday Season. :)

Don't forget the "Pursuit of Happiness" Giveaway!

Entries close December 20th, so be sure to email me before then.
Details for the giveaway are HERE and the wonderful London Particulars (who are making this giveaway possible through their generosity) can be found HERE.

12 Days: Stone Soup Kit

This is a delightful idea - gardening - then cooking - on a fairy tale theme. The kit is based on the story "Stone Soup".

The Stone Soup Kit includes seeds for beans, cabbage, peas, carrots, tomatoes and onions. It comes in a little burlap bag with instructions for each type of seed, the Stone Soup recipe and, most importantly, the all important stone. ;) Here are the seed details:

• Organic Red Acre Cabbage Seeds
• Organic Little Fingers Carrot Seeds
• Organic Mammoth Melting Pea Seeds
• Organic Evergreen Bunching Onion Seeds
• Organic Roma Tomato Seeds
• Organic Blue Lake Pole Bean Seeds

This product appears to have been discontinued, though there are still a few kits floating around in different places such as HERE, HERE and HERE (I suggest you shop around a bit - I've noticed the prices vary and change.)

By the way - Wikipedia has some very interesting notes on this story. It's the first time I've seen all these references in one place. Worth a peek HERE.

NOTE: As usual, please note I am not affiliated with any of these stores or products. I do not receive any commission from any visit to the site or any purchase. These are just items I thought may interest people as fairy tale themed gifts for the Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yuletide/Holiday Season. :)

Don't forget the "Pursuit of Happiness" Giveaway!

Entries close December 20th, so be sure to email me before then.
Details for the giveaway are HERE and the wonderful London Particulars (who are making this giveaway possible through their generosity) can be found HERE.

Baba Yaga's Beer

There's a new beer out which is:

"inspired by Eastern European folklore, by woodland, streams, cold dark nights and woodsmoke."

It's called "Babayaga" and is being made for the Winter season by Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. They even have a little poem that goes with it:I'm not a beer person (although I love a lot of the label designs people are coming up with these days) but I admit this one makes me curious.

And if you think this is interesting wait till you read about their 'Baby Tree' beer.
You can find out more about the beer (and the unusual, creative and fun brewing company) HERE.

Snow White Scenes in Apples

Making the rounds on Twitter yesterday was THIS slideshow here from the BBC News. I recommend clicking for a larger view so you can see just how the apples were used to create these scenes - it's quite amazing.

To celebrate the release of Snow White on Blu-ray, UK food artist Prudence Staite was commissioned by Disney to portray iconic scenes from the movie in food - specifically (and appropriately) apples. Considering all the news is coming from the UK I'm guessing this is to coincide with the UK Blu-ray release as it's already out in the US.

From Boxwish UK:

Staite and the Food Is Art team produced six iconic images from the movie, including the dwarves off to the mine, the Wicked Queen disguised as a hag tempting Snow White with the poisoned apple and the Prince kissing the sleeping heroine for the happy ending. Staite was commissioned to create the innovative art by Disney, who are drumming up interest in the animated classic in the build-up to its Blu-Ray debut and reveals that 14 different varieties of apple were employed for the art attack.

You can read the rest of the article HERE.

I can only find four of the six images mentioned and am only comfortable showing the ones I've found on other blogs, so be sure to click on this link HERE to see all four at a decent resolution. Hopefully the last two will surface soon.

I can't find any information on where or when in particular the scenes were done but I have this vision of photographers standing by and holding their breaths, waiting to start clicking as soon as the last apple slice is placed, before any browning begins. Then what? A healthy feast to celebrate? I don't think I could bring myself to take the first slice.

Or perhaps they've been preserved (via something highly toxic to humans) to stay in their perfect fresh state forever... under glass...

You can find more of Prudence's creative culinary concoctions at her website HERE and at her gallery HERE.