Lee Price’s work speaks to food obsessions.

I can relate to her beautiful pieces.  Not that I’ve ever eaten in the bathroom, but the pastel palettes she uses in her paintings only serve to highlight the isolation of her female subjects.  They are alone in a tub surrounded by food.  Talk about comfort eating or eating to fill a void.  The empty feeling is so palpable. 

Blueberry Pancakes I & II and Lemon Meringue, all oil on linen.

Commissioned by the Arisia Sci-Fi Convention in Boston, Amanda Oakleaf Cakes made a life-sized Stormtrooper cake that stood 6 foot 4 inches tall and weighed 300 pounds.

It was served to 600 attendees at the event and took Amanda, and a team of nine, two weeks to design, create and assemble.

Wonder how this sucker tasted. I’m a lost cause when it comes to cakes, mind you. This creation isn’t all cake, though. The legs were made out of Rice Krispies to keep the dude from toppling over. Amanda’s cake blog also mentions that they had to invent new ways of making sure the fondant held vertically over time. They also figured out how to put it together in modular, more manageable pieces. Jeepers.

Sweet Play is a concept design project by French designer Elsa Lambinet where she adapts modular design principles to allow you to build your perfect bite of chocolate depending on your mood.

Basically, you have three choices to make. First, you decide if you’d like the base to be dark, milk, or white chocolate. Now each chocolate base has a little slot in the side. So step two, you’ll choose what goes into that slot. Choices include a wafer, caramel or nougat, each of which slide neatly into that slot. Lastly, you choose from a variety of nuts, fruits, jams or even liquors, which then go into those holes you see on the top of the chocolate base.

The green (radish) soup is by far the healthiest dish I’ve had whilst in France these past three weeks. Notice, of course, the whiskey aperitif accompanying it. I’ve also been sampling the traditional southwestern regional produce and thanks to daily café gourmands, I now have a pot belly. Vive la France!