This morning, during my daily rounds of technology news sources, I came across the following screen capture for a really interesting tool exclusive to Apple's Iphone platform. Called "SnapTell Explorer", the tool provides instant product information for any CD, DVD, book, or video game. All the user needs to do is capture the cover and the application will identify the product and find both ratings and price information online. This is, by far, one of the most useful and tell-tale signs that pervasive or ubiquitous computing is coming to pass. It also demonstrates that computer vision is improving. Nevertheless, the screen capture was horrifying. This is not because of the tool. It is because of the cookbook identified: The Twinkies Cookbook

According to its publisher:

In 2005, as part of Twinkies' 75th anniversary celebration, Hostess put out a call for recipes, asking people to share their ideas for cooking-yes, cooking-with Twinkies. Hundreds of people from across the country responded with an amazing collection of homegrown, creative, and sometimes wacky recipes. Nostalgic, colorful, and a delight for the whole family, this is the perfect book for the Twinkie lover in all of us.

Published in 2006, the "The Twinkies Cookbook: An Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection from Hostess" is currently being sold on Amazon.com for $10.36 USD. The book is also available in Canada (Amazon.ca: $12.37, Chapters.ca: $12.88).

According to its reviews on the Amazon website, the book contains recipes that include twinkie-related preparations of "pigs in a blanket" (with real hot dog wieners), twinkie sushi (with green fruit "leather"), twinkie burritos (chocolate, strawberries, and twinkies in a corn tortilla), and even a twinkie wedding cake.

According to Wikipedia, twinkies hail from pre-war 1930's and originally came with banana and not vanilla cream. Invented by baker James Dewar, they were intended to fill the product gap for strawberry shortcake when strawberries were out of season. Modern twinkies, contain no dairy. Hence, they have a long shelf-life that has been somewhat exaggerated into an urban legend. Contrary to popular belief, twinkies have expiry date less than a couple months after their manufacture.

My most recent reference to twinkies comes from an episode of Chef Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. During the episode, he and his "guides" visit an abandoned Hostess factory in Cleveland, Ohio. There, they walk up to a spigot that is connected to a series of pipes, still containing high fructose corn syrup. Chef Bourdain samples a taste. Afterward, someone narrates that even the factory's infestation of rats want nothing to do with the syrup.

Happily, a twinkie-related cookbook isn't the end of this entry.

This morning, the World Wide Web gave pause when I discovered a cookbook for twinkies. This afternoon, it also gave me relief. Apparently, a group of enterprising youths put together a website to host their experiments with twinkies. "Twinkie the Kid" (right) is its mascot. There, twinkies are shocked, burned, dissolved, and dropped; all in the interest of furthering the frontiers of science!

The researchers also feel that "twinkies" should be an acronym for "Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations."

Kudos to twinkies scientists! Perhaps the Nobel committee will take notice.



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