Food can be healthy, dangerous, expensive, political, fresh, simple, fancy, and most of all, food is obsessed about in modern culture in one way or another. But in this collection, food will be just plain fun. We'll be making silly and even sometimes delicious things, looking at custom and chemistry, experimenting, documenting how we play with our food.

Periodically we'll sneak up behind someone and put something gelatinous in their hair.

This collection was inspired by two things: playing in the kitchen with my daughter, and working with Jeff Potter on a book called Cooking for Geeks (makes a great after holiday shit-I-forgot-everything gift!). Cooking for Geeks looks at the useful and strange science of food for everyday cooks, and that's a lot of what we'll be doing here.

In Playing with Food, we'll post fun recipes, useful food chemistry tips, random experiments, and colossal failures.

You'll hear from me regularly, and Jeff on occasion. This collection will also accept submissions from our friends. General submissions are welcome, but to be sure we include them, contact me first.

Articles will be playful entries about food science, edible chemistry, and mostly (though not entirely) kid friendly. Submissions should be the same. Recipes are welcome, but only with a twist -- how did making it go? How does it work?

So thanks for reading, and please, play with your food!