In celebration of what would have been Julia's 100th birthday, PBS released a celebratory remix, featuring her from her earliest days on television onwards.

Like their Mr. Rogers or Bob Ross remixes, this one is nostalgic, slightly haunting, and really appeals the to the idealism that Julia Child embodied: you can do it yourself, all it takes is enthusiasm, there's nothing to lose in trying.

Have you donated to your local PBS station recently?

Trivia hound Ben Schott has a new piece in the New York Times explicating some of the more family friendly terms and codes used in the restaurant trade.

The list dwells on lingo specific to certain restaurants, and my personal favorites on the list include Union Square Cafe's "with a story," meaning lots of conditions on the order, the understandably unattributed "artichoke," an attractive female diner, and The Dutch's indiscriminate use of "the guy" for any object, as in "take the guy (the broom) and sweep the floor."*

The supercomputing sofa makers at Cray have teamed up with scientists from the University of Edinburgh to attack a slippery problem in modern physics: modeling the behavior of soft matter like ice cream.

...and the makers of Qmilk put out this, ah, fascinating promotion.

And for those fretting about why we would want to make a silky chemise, instead of silky cheese, never fear:

Our suppliers use only milk that doesn't meet dairy milk regulations and should not be used for food.... Every year about 1.9 million tonnes of non-marketable milk will be discarded by agricultural enterprises in Germany alone.

Sustainability is so hot.

Also...

In Saturday's New York Times, Mark Bittman tells the story of his heartburn, and how quitting dairy helped him lick a lifelong case of acid reflux. Turns out, after leaving off cow-juice for just a day, he found total relief.

I mentioned this to a friend who had the same problem, tried the same approach, and had the same results. Presto! No dairy, no heartburn! (A third had no success. Hey, it’s not a controlled double-blind experiment, but there is no downside to trying it.)

Bully for him. Some cheap self-experimentation sounds a lot better to me than a lifetime of antacids. But he should have taken the whole "it's not rigorous science" thing to heart, because the rest of his column is filled with bad arguments about dairy, and milk in particular, propped up with some highly dubious "experts".

YouTube user k0re uploaded this nice little video of a cheese robot plying its trade in an aging facility in the Swiss town of Gruyeres.

I wanted to see the Giger Museum and Bar in Gruyeres about an hour away from Montreux. The driver Pascal suggested the cheese factory and took me on a mini-tour of how they make gruyere and how the cows are treated, etc. after an afternoon of absinthe and grotesquerie.

Judging from the location and signage, this robot was made by Sugnaux Electroméchanique, a Swiss robot manufacturer we profiled a couple years back. Robots have taken the industry by storm: gently turning and cleaning hundreds of 80-lb. wheels of cheese a week without machine power is a grueling task.

Boska USA, purveyors of fine cheese gadgetry and upholders of great European cheese traditions, recently sent along a sweet set of photographs of an event they'd held with the help of Jason Sobocinski, host of the Cooking Channel's The Big Cheese. Now, besides looking overwhelmingly delicious, the photos got me thinking—especially this one:

Scandal is brewing in the British bar world, with liquor conglomerate Diego Diageo (maker of such familiar brands as J&B, Smirnoff and Guinness) apologizing to independent Scottish beermaker BrewDog for pressuring organizers to withhold their Bar Operator of the Year award at the very last minute. According to the Scotsman,

BrewDog, the Fraserburgh-based company which has gained a reputation for its handcrafted ales was voted top bar operator at a ceremony in Glasgow on Sunday. However, executives from Diageo refused to hand over the award – and tried to give it to another operator – even though BrewDog’s name was written on the trophy.

And the winner is...

Evan Kendall, of Carlisle PA!

It was a tough call, and judges were divided on the sandwich itself. While I waxed nostalgic for the Frankenfood of my own college days, at least one of our panel felt the soup/sandwich/condiment combo was "kinda gross."

Despite this, the general consensus was that Evan showed clear enthusiasm for the great American grilly (as befits a self-described beer & cheese geek), and significant ingenuity in raising the culinary level at the Dickinson College cafeteria. It was this bold and hearty spirit, as well as his bearded punim, which finally won our hearts.

Plus, of all the entries, he was the one most clearly in need of help.

I just saw this clip of a "new" outrage in the meat industry: inferior cuts bonded together to form decoy filet mignons and other more spendy items. The magic happens with transglutaminase, a naturally-occurring enzyme that goes by the charming moniker of "meat glue":