More in The Year That Was.
Video game characters bento box from Anna The Red
Food that looked like other stuff turned out to be a theme of 2008 on Serious Eats and on other blogs. Plain loaves and rolls were apparently boring. Baked goods with more interesting shapes, like piggies, bunnies, lobsters, and mummies ruled the day. Similarly, people transformed plain cupcakes into popcorn, poodles, nursery rhymes, and corn on the cob.
Bento boxes were everywhere, getting facelifts as popular album covers, video game characters, and Sanrio characters.
Does meat work well as an art medium? Hell yes. Who wouldn't want to look at a Meatscape? Meat sneakers and meat electronics may not be useful, but they still look cool. Non-meat substances also work well in art, such as these elaborate fruit and vegetable carvings, "paintings" made with produce, and landscapes made with all kinds of foods. On a smaller scale, there's the simple tree hidden in a tangerine skin. And in the "neither fruit nor vegetable" category, we have chewing gum art.
Photograph from Biggie* on Flickr
It turns out hot dogs also made good octopi and disposable containers made nice lamps.
Photograph from cakespy on Flickr
And for the final round of Food As Other Stuff: It looked like a cupcake, but it was really ice cream. It looked like a turkey but was an ice cream cake. It looked like a salad but was candy. It looked like a car but was cake.
More of The Year That Was
Pizza
TYTW on Serious Eats New York
Movies
Food in Space
Food Media
Food Shortages, Scares, and Rising Costs
Videos
Science
Starbucks
Bacon