On Sunday, the Food Network aired Sandra's Halloween Wonderland, an hour-long special from Semi-Homemade Cooking host Sandra Lee. To say that the program—which featured half a dozen costume changes and nearly twice as many cocktail recipes—was a train wreck would be an understatement. But don't just take my word for it! Check out the above compilation to see the special's most absurd moments for yourself.

After outlawing special last-meal requests for prisoners on death row, the Texas prison system has now gone one better: They're outlawing meals, period, for everyone.

Think of "fruits" and "vegetables" like parsley. Parsley is a vegetable. And here in America, we use fruit and vegetables the same way that we use parsley: as window dressing, as a little green thing that makes the real food (Cheez) look better.

Washington's War on Potatoes appears to be wrapping up, and... let's see here... potatoes are winning! White potatoes, those excessively salted and fried and embacon'd starch rocks that are now limited to two weekly cafeteria servings under new USDA regulations for federally subsidized school lunches, will soon be freed, as the Senate voted yesterday to "block the USDA from putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches."

Louis Cole is a man with a pleasant British accent and extremely unpleasant eating habits—the latter guided in part by his fans, who make suggestions about what he should stunt-eat next. "To Louis, anything is food," says his Facebook page; his YouTube channel, FoodforLouis, confirms this, with featuring him eating all kinds of bugs and even "blended mice." Here we see him crunching on a live scorpion—who really wants to sting him (mostly because it's cynical about Louis' motives) but doesn't get the chance. Louis nearly gags during the mastication process, but rather calmly gets the job done without serious interruption.

KFC made headlines last year with the "Double Down," which was like a grilled cheese, except with fried chicken instead of bread. Oh, and bacon. But that was 2010! The fast food chain's latest heart attack-ready meal? The "Cheesy Bacon Bowl," which improves upon the existing mush of fried chicken, cheese, corn, and mashed potatoes with gravy known as the "Famous Bowl," and adds a bunch of bacon. Because screw your stupid arteries. [via Eater]

The concerned swamp monsters over at Fox & Friends did a little profile in courage this morning, focusing on a young woman named Hannah Lucas who is saying NO to B. H. Obama's healthier school food initiatives.

In an incident similar to the Great Roommate Buttering Caper of May 2011 in terms of messiness, domestic disruption, and—perhaps most remarkably—the involvement of a woman named Dawn, a Chicago wife has been arrested for hurling cupcakes at her husband during an argument. How sweet it isn't! ("It" being a difficult-sounding marriage.)

To make your own version of the world's most expensive dessert, go to Costco and pick up a two-carat diamond, a squeezable bottle of champagne jelly (they sell an economy-sized version now), champagne caviar, bitter dark chocolate, orange, peach and whiskey-flavored Belgian chocolate, "a light biscuit joconde" (not this kind of joconde but this kind), a gold ring, some pink things, and several sheets of gold leaf.

Don't let this keep you from occupying Wall Street, because banks are still awful, but Citi helpfully lent its data to reveal the true cost of eating at expensive restaurants. Finance blogger Felix Salmon dove into anonymized credit card slips and found that people fling money around as unpredictably as wild monkeys in these places.

Speaking of the laughable campaign to make breakfast cereals like Lucky Charms "healthy," here's a nice selection of revamped cereal boxes that guerrilla-ish artist Ron English left on a shelf at a grocery store in Venice, California. Kellogg's really should release "Sugar Frosted Fat."

Bad news for those of you planning to ride out this recession on a diet of peanut butter and jelly, spread atop tiny Saltine cracker "sandwiches," consumed by candlelight in the single dry corner of your leaky urban squat, as the howls of alley cats and junkies serenade you with the symphony of the night: peanut butter is now out of your price range.

Today we did some more handwringing about how fat our kids are going to get from all that fast food. How to get them to stop eating that crap? One commenter has an interesting strategy.

The ever health-conscious French have placed ketchup on the guillotine and they aren't looking back. The beloved all-American condiment has been banned from school and college cafeterias throughout France, with one very crucial exception: when it accompanies French fries.

You may think that you're one of those "good" parents. You read to your kids at night, and you don't let them play with guns, and you stripped most of the lead paint out of the playroom. Well, according to the latest scientific study, it's safe to give up. Your kids will inevitably die of McChicken-related diabetes sooner or later, no matter what you do.

Behold, the ne plus ultra of American innovation: Pizzametry, an automated machine capable of making custom pizzas in mere minutes, while you watch TV. Let us marvel at the pneumatic glory of Pizzametry spinning dough, slicing pepperonis, squirting sauce, and sprinkling cheese.

A restaurant in Edinburgh recently held a spicy curry eating competition that wound up being a "shambles," as several people got sick and two were hospitalized.

As of Saturday, the Danish government is charging a surtax of 16 kroners per kilogram ($6.27 per pound) of saturated fat in high-cholesterol grocery items. That's almost a whole kroner per danish! The goal's to curb heart disease, not obesity.

Interchangeable pseudofood joint Chili's—intent on "spicing up its brand"—is spending millions on a new ad campaign, one part of which is summed up thusly by the company's ad genius: "How he behaves is bold, how she behaves is bold, and the food we're featuring in the spot is boldly flavored."

If you grew up on the East Coast of the U.S., you've likely dined at a Friendly's restaurant in your lifetime, and very possibly more than once. It was the depressing, suburban chain restaurant that was a little less depressing than the others, mainly because the promise of an ice cream sundae — the "Happy Ending," as their menu dubbed it, sweetly oblivious to any vulgar connotations such a term might imply — awaited you after every overcooked hamburger and soggy tuna melt.