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Fugu nigiri, courtesy of Flickr user selva

Aside from foraging wild mushrooms without a good guide book, or having tea with a former Russian spy, one of the most potentially dangerous meals you can have is fugu, the highly toxic puffer fish that can cause paralysis or death but is considered a delicacy in Japan. There, specialized restaurants employ licensed chefs who have undergone years of training in how to prepare the fish and remove the poison. Still, a few people die every year from fugu poisoning, mostly at the hands of inexperienced cooks.

The 18th-century Pacific explorer Captain James Cook described the effects of what is believed to be mild fugu poisoning in his journals. Also in the 1700s, the Japanese poet Yosa Buson wrote a haiku about heartbreak that is sort of the Asian version of the kids’ song about eating worms:

I cannot see her tonight.
I have to give her up
So I will eat fugu.

It is believed that the fish’s poison comes from the accumulation of the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin in the bacteria and smaller sea life it ingests. The toxin is concentrated mostly in the liver, gonads and skin. The level of toxicity is seasonal, so fugu is traditionally served in Japan only from October to March. As little as one to two milligrams of the toxin can be fatal. The first symptoms of poisoning can begin anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours after ingestion. Numbness begins in the lips and tongue, followed by nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, then spreading paralysis and a complete shutdown of the central nervous system. There is no known antidote, and death—which is the final result in about half of all fugu poisoning cases—usually occurs within four to six hours.

Sounds delicious, right? Well, to some people, that lethal potential, however slight, is part of the fish’s allure.

But now the thrill may be gone. In 2004, researchers at Nagasaki University succeeded in breeding non-toxic puffer fish by separating them from other marine life and feeding them a purified diet. And Optima Foods, in the Ehime prefecture of Japan, has recently begun selling farmed non-poisonous fugu to restaurants. Already an expensive fish, the safer version is even pricier because of the work- and technology-intensive farming process; the fish are raised inland, in fresh water with salt and minerals added.

All this is great for diners, like me, who consider a delicious meal thrilling enough. But it doesn’t look like the certified fugu chefs will be out of a job anytime soon. As one Japanese chef told the Telegraph, “It’s obviously more than a little exciting to go to a restaurant knowing that it might be the last meal that you ever eat. Where is the enjoyment in eating something that has no risk in it?”

The inventor of the Easy Bake Oven, Ronald Howes, died last week, as you may have heard. The news made me finally pay attention to those little ovens, a toy I neither owned nor noticed with any interest as a child, and I was startled to realize that baking temperatures can be achieved with a simple lightbulb. That’s because ordinary incandescent lightbulbs are inefficient; they give off most of their energy as heat rather than light. (Which is a very good argument for switching to more energy-efficient bulbs in your home light fixtures, but I digress.)

Easy-Bakes aren’t the only unconventional ovens on my radar lately. During the recent blizzards in DC, a coworker whose power went out cooked his dinner over a cluster of tealights! Well, “cooked” and “dinner” are loose terms; he heated up some frozen White Castle cheeseburgers in tinfoil. But still rather impressive.

Candle-cooked cheeseburgers, by Erik Washam

There was another option he didn’t consider (although it probably would have required too much shoveling to be worth the effort): Cooking in his car. I blogged about this concept a long time ago, but I had forgotten about my plan to try it until I listened to NPR’s The Splendid Table a couple of weeks ago. The episode included an interview with the author of “Manifold Destiny,” a jokey-but-authentic guide to cooking various tinfoil-wrapped feasts using only the heat of one’s car engine. (Sorry to say that I probably still won’t be trying this anytime soon, as I no longer have my own car, and my husband’s response to the notion of messing with anything under the hood of our perpetually persnickety Dodge Neon was, well, cool.)

If you have a fireplace at home, that’s another type of oven you may have been ignoring. The Washington Post’s food section included a fascinating piece about fireplace cooking last week, in which the author experimented with cooking and baking in her home fireplace using simple tools like a steel-framed Tuscan grill, string and bricks. Chicken turned out well; cake…not so much.

You could even put a solar oven in your backyard, as my colleague Bruce Hathaway has done—basic models cost under $150, and the fuel is free.

I’ve also read that you can steam fish in a dishwasher, though I’ve never tried it.

Maybe such things intrigue me more than the average person because I don’t have a conventional oven myself. As I mentioned last fall, we rent an apartment that’s lovely in many ways but lacks an oven—there’s only a four-burner range, with a microwave above it that doubles as a hot-air convection oven.

Many of you responded at the time that you could never live without an oven, but to be honest, it’s much less inconvenient than I’d expected. We make everything from lasagna to popovers, albeit in small batches, and can broil even smaller batches in the toaster oven. Still, now I’m thinking an Easy-Bake or two might make a nice addition to the living room…heck, even Oprah’s personal chef, Art Smith, has used one.

Have you tried any of these things, or other alternatives to conventional ovens? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments field.

Oh, how many science quizzes might I have aced if only the lessons had been delivered via, instead of a teacher’s droning voice, adorable cookies like these?

Atom cookie from Not So Humble Pie

The self-described “typical nerdy biological anthropologist turned stay at home mom” who writes the blog Not So Humble Pie has channeled her scientific interests into the creation of a whole curriculum of amusing and delicious-looking science-themed baked goods—like the Jumbo “Hostess” Binary Cupcakes, which have ones and zeros in place of frosting curlicues, and gingerbread people in containment suits, who “laugh in the face of ebola and crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever!”

Binary "Hostess" Cupcakes courtesy of Not So Humble Pie

OK, so they aren’t necessarily all 100-percent scientifically accurate. The author admits to taking a little artistic license—after all, the limits of frosting decoration, unlike the universe, are finite. But anything that gets people excited about science and learning is probably a good thing. What student wouldn’t want to memorize the periodic table of elements if she got to eat each one as she mastered it? Mmm, rubidium. We’re talking frosted cookie form here, of course. It would be counterproductive (i.e. potentially fatal) to eat straight-up arsenic or beryllium.

It’s not just the kiddies who could stand to brush up on their science, either. For the grown-ups, I found some themed cocktails that would be perfect for a gathering of astrophysicists, or just a science-fiction convention social. There’s the Black Hole, made with black sambuca and club soda on the rocks. Or the Bailey’s Comet, containing (in addition to the obvious Irish cream) butterscotch schnapps, Goldschlager and sambuca. Goldschlager, as you may know, is the cinnamon-flavored schnapps with flakes of real gold leaf in it, which leads me to another line of scientific inquiry—namely, is it safe to ingest the Au on the periodic table? Yes, according to the Straight Dope—it passes through the body undigested. And Snopes debunks the silly myth that the gold flakes cause tiny cuts in the stomach to make the alcohol absorb faster.

For the neurobiologists, try a Brain Hemorrhage, a concoction of Bailey’s, strawberry schnapps and grenadine that sounds as gross-tasting as it looks.

Finally, for the computer geeks (which means most of us these days), check out this charming low-tech (stop-motion and cardboard) video that imagines how you could bake cookies using Photoshop.

Ever tried something for the first time and immediately felt like smacking yourself in the forehead?

Sometimes, that’s because you realize it was a bad idea—for example, sticking your tongue on an icy flagpole. But sometimes, that’s because you realize that you’ve been missing out for years on something wonderful. That’s how I felt when I finally tasted the Vietnamese noodle soup called pho a couple of weeks ago.

We have a delightful feature about pho in the March issue of Smithsonian, cleverly reported from Hanoi by veteran food writer Mimi Sheraton (we also have a great video about Hanoi’s pho scene embedded here). As she notes, although most Americans pronounce the word the way it looks (“foe”), the Vietnamese pronunciation “is somewhere between ‘fuh‘ and ‘few‘, almost like the French feu, for fire.”

Sheraton explains that pho typically involves “slim and slippery rice noodles” served in a steaming broth of beef (pho bo) or chicken (pho ga), seasoned with things like fish sauce, shallots, ginger, cinnamon, chilies, basil, coriander and lime. Depending on the type, it may feature slivers of beef, tofu, vegetables, or egg, and is often served with a condiment platter of fresh herbs and mung bean sprouts to add as you eat.

“It is that contrast of seasonings—sweet and spicy, salty, sour and bitter, hot and cool—that makes this simple soup so intriguing to the palate,” she writes.

After reading proofs of Sheraton’s article, several of the editors here found ourselves hankering for a pho lunch (even though, as Sheraton learned, pho is traditionally a breakfast or late-night food in Vietnam), so we headed to a place called Pho 14 in DC’s Columbia Heights neighborhood.

I felt like a bit of a bumpkin for admitting that it was my first time tasting pho, but as it turned out, I wasn’t the only one. Most of us approached the menu with the same curious confusion, wondering aloud as we perused nearly two dozen options: Large or regular? Does “soft tendon” taste better than it sounds? And what the heck is “bible tripe?”

I chose the pho chay, a vegetarian broth featuring bright, crunchy broccoli and carrots, meaty mushrooms and tofu amid the tender noodles; a few squirts of spicy sriracha made it perfect. Most of my colleagues went for variations on beef pho. No one was eager to stomach the bible tripe (what, with all the puns in Sheraton’s piece, I can’t get away with one?) after hearing a description of it (thanks to someone’s iPhone), but the eye of round, brisket and skirt flank were popular.

There was plenty of slurping and splashing as we dove in with chopsticks and shallow porcelain spoons, squeezing limes and tearing basil with our hands—followed by groans of “oh, I can’t finish all this!” We agreed that it was much more fun than an ordinary lunch, and a steal at less than $10 a bowl.

Last week Nadia Arumugam in Slate validated my long-standing skepticism about food expiration dates. I have always operated on the assumption that if food looks okay, smells okay and tastes okay, it should be fine. I have been known to cut mold off a block of cheese and eat the rest.

Courtesy Flickr user Desiree N. Williams

As Arumugam writes, the government mandates dates only on baby formula and some baby food. The rest of the dates came about voluntarily. She writes, “In the 1930s, the magazine Consumer Reports argued that Americans increasingly looked to expiration dates as an indication of freshness and quality. Supermarkets responded and in the 1970s some chains implemented their own dating systems.” One of the problem with the dates, says Arumugam, is the lack of consistency in the terms surrounding the dates. What’s the difference between “sell by,” “best if used by” and “use by”? Even though the F.D.A. doesn’t mandate the use of them, it does offer some advice to decoding the terms. None of them, not even the “use by” date are considered safety dates. The food might not be at peak quality after the date, but it can still be eaten safely. Even the “use by” dates on baby food are related to nutrient retention and texture rather than safety. I had always suspected that the printed expiration dates on food were more about protecting the companies than the consumers. But Arumugam writes that the dates don’t even have any legal bearing. Last year, a judge reversed the conviction of a man who relabeled more than a million bottles of salad dressing with a new “best when purchased date.” This extended the shelf life of the product so he could continue to sell them. In the reversal, the judge said, “The term ‘expiration date’ … on a food product … has a generally understood meaning: it is the date after which you shouldn’t eat the product. Salad dressing, however, or at least the type of salad dressing represented by Henri’s, is what is called ‘shelf stable’; it has no expiration date.” Even though the company decided to print a date on the package, a judge dismissed the date as not having any legal worth. When it comes down to it, it’s really the consumers job to determine when to toss food. And that’s the conclusion Arumugam comes to. But she also brings up an interesting point: “Better yet, we should focus our efforts on what really matters to our health—not spoilage bacteria, which are fairly docile, but their malevolent counterparts: disease-causing pathogens like salmonella and Listeria, which infect the food we eat not because it’s old but as a result of unsanitary conditions at factories or elsewhere along the supply chain.” (Soda fountains, for instance, or slaughterhouses or turkey farms.) Unfortunately, the solution to that problem isn’t as simple as a date stamped on an egg carton.