The layout is really fun if you have an interest in the personalities behind the products: Each gorgeous picture of a particular cheese, like, say, the Cinnamon-rubbed butter jack from Bass Lake Cheese Factor, is paired with a mini-profile of the cheesemaker. In the case of the butter Jack, for instance, we learn that Bass Lake’s Scott Erickson looks really artsy, and once made gelatinous lutefisk (a Norwegian holiday dish of lye-cured codfish) for a living. It’s interesting to know just who goes into the old-fashioned business of making small-batch cheeses and how each cheesemaker got there, because who hasn’t fantasized about joining them?

Tootsie would love for consumers to weigh in on the new flavors and suggest others. Peppermint, maybe? Oh, and by the way, according to the Tootsie Roll FAQ, the company has received tens of thousands of letters from children claiming to know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Estimates generally run in the 600–800 licks range, but your own personal best “depends on a variety of factors such as the size of your mouth, the amount of saliva, etc.”

• One 12-pound Grade A turkey
• Three 11- to 15.5-ounce cans Green Giant vegetables
• Two 14-ounce cans Ocean Spray cranberry sauce
• Three 6-ounce boxes of Stove Top stuffing
• One 5-pound bag of red potatoes
• One 12-count package of Sara Lee dinner rolls
• One 22-ounce pumpkin roll cake

This is both inspiring and terrifying.

Not long ago, I edited a story by Nick Kosevich, a bartender whose attention to detail and interest in reviving now-too-sweet drinks (such as daiquiris) run parallel to Ms. Reiner’s; his meditation on the Old Fashioned ran for a few pages and included the following comparison of old school versus new school:

“Much of the modern-day Old Fashioned-related controversy can be blamed upon Wisconsinites. A Wisconsin Old Fashioned consists of 1 tsp of granulated sugar (usually a little white packet), 2 dashes of Angostura bitters, 1 1/2 oz of brandy, and a splash of 7Up. The sugar and bitters are added first with a splash of 7Up to dissolve the sugar, then the brandy is added, and topped with ice and 7Up to finish the drink. This version is then garnished with a flag (a bar term for an orange slice wrapped around a cherry) …

“The classic recipe for the drink is 1 sugar cube, 3 dashes of bitters, and 3 oz of bourbon or rye whiskey, not brandy, served in an old fashioned glass on the rocks with a lemon twist.”

The explosion of boutique liquors and bitters available for sale, and the press received by mixologists, may suggest that Americans are getting more sophisticated about their cocktails. But the menu at any given faux-neighborhood midrange chain restaurant is a good reminder that we still have a long way to go. Once the real mai tai has made it to T.G.I. Friday’s, we might be getting somewhere.

1. He owns a T-shirt cannon.

2. He is going on a national tour “in a bus stocked with Pabst Blue Ribbon and painted with flames.”

3., 4., and 5. “He now travels with a bodyguard to events, has bras and underwear thrown at him during cooking demos, and counts Sammy Hagar and members of AC/DC as close friends—no wonder he speaks about himself in rock-star language.”

Whoa. Visit the Hungry Beast to learn about Fieri’s other quirks, such as naming dishes things like No Can Beato This Taquito and Mac-Daddi-Roni Salad.

“8. Do not interrupt a conversation. For any reason. Especially not to recite specials. Wait for the right moment.”

“20. Never refuse to substitute one vegetable for another.”

“32. Never touch a customer. No excuses. Do not do it. Do not brush them, move them, wipe them or dust them.”

Buschel was on NPR a few days later, and he had more to say. Here he is on servers touching customers:

“I think it’s not a polite thing to do. I think a lot of people can take it the wrong way. The study that’s being quoted doesn’t mention genders. I’m sure a lot of women think that if they touch a customer on the shoulder, their tip goes up. It may or may not be true. I just think that, again, you’re invading somebody’s space. I know recently, I was standing in a restaurant waiting at the bar and somebody came over from behind and actually physically moved me, grabbed my two shoulders and moved me. And I turned around and he said, the waiter has to get past. So there are all degrees of touching. And some people may get excited and some people may be offended. So I think the best thing is just to not do it.”

Yeah, keep your paws off me!

On the topic of doughnuts, Topless Robot notes:

“It is one of the few foods you can buy a box of, bring it to a friend’s house and only your most picky of bitch friends will not find something they like.”

Not Pulitzer-caliber stuff, but, to be fair, Combos aren’t winning any James Beard Awards anytime soon.

As we say in the job posting, the best candidate for this job will make us laugh. He or she will manage a kitchen, lead a team, and want to perform in front of the camera but not clown around or be superearnest. The food editor will, above all, convey information clearly and directly. He or she will think creatively about food and online media and techniques. Will love to eat and love to learn about food, yet will be skeptical about the old ways of doing things. The food editor will have ideas about bok choy and user engagement and online communities. But won’t use words like decadent and yummy.

We have other criteria; see the job listing on mediabistro.com or CBS Interactive.

An amuse-bouche of the back-and-forth:

“Vegetarians are the worst. Can’t we round them, teetotallers, religious people and rap-metal fans up and ship them off to Iran?”

“Why do vegetarians always look so unhealthy?”

“You’re an idiot.
Ever heard of Bill Pearl?
Four time Mr. Universe?
Used to rip license plates in half to demonstrate his strength?
He was a vegetarian -- lacto-ovo, but still a vegetarian.
Your theory -- he just kicked sand in its face.”

“My ancestors didn’t work their way up the food chain for me to become a vegetarian.”

“meat carnivores are militant and defensive about eating meat. I mean, I’d agree that vegetarians are annoying, but this thread is more self-righteous and annoying than any vegetarian that I’ve ever met.”

And, of course, you can’t do this argument without quoting Jim Gaffigan:

That anecdote connects nicely with a Telegraph story about obscenely expensive bottles of old Scotch being “snapped up” by superrich customers in China and the Gulf States.

Whether the Scotches (which, unlike fine wines, don’t age once bottled) are worth the asking price or we’re witnessing another Rockefeller Center–style fleecing of the East by the West is up for debate.

From the Telegraph: “Dave Broom, contributing editor to Whisky Magazine: ‘The whiskies don’t have to be this pricey. I get the feeling sometimes that it’s more about lovely boxes than lovely liquid. That’s not to say malt whisky can’t operate in the luxury category, but some distillers are pushing things too far in my view.’”

Distillers, of course, take a different stance:

“David Robertson, head of the Dalmore brand, which released twelve bottles of The Dalmore Sirius 1951 vintage last month, said all of them had been bought within a week. ‘These are very limited editions of very old whiskies. There just isn’t much 50-year-old whisky around any more. We are lucky enough to have some,’ he said.”

If availability of great whiskey is a sign of civilizational power, the West may want to play some catch-up. And if it’s not, it’s still dashed annoying when Zipp’s is out of Highland Park 18.

Image source: Flickr member sashafatcat under Creative Commons

He was in fine form on Munchies, the new food show from VBS (see video clip below). Quick digression: I love VBS for three reasons. First, Spike Jonze is the creative director. And they have the rights to use any Black Lips song (and they make good use of it). Then there’s the cute show Special-Needs Pets, which is a real winner.

Munchies’ first episode profiles Chang. On the show, I enjoyed how candid he was, admitting he’s not the greatest chef and that he couldn’t keep up with the other cooks while working at Café Boulud. But the episode never followed through on how he actually got to where he is now, instead fast-forwarding to a night on the town with Chang and a New York Times writer who’s the coauthor of Chang’s new book. They didn’t seem to have enough to say to each other, and it looked like the producers off camera had to keep asking Chang more questions. When they arrived at Chang’s Ssam Bar, he got drunk and made some food for Chef José Andrés, who responded to a Chang condiment by saying, “Only a crazy mind would come up with a coffee-mayo bullshit.”

The whole thing felt a little uncomfortable and forced, and nothing actually happened in the unnecessarily long 12-minute video. So here’s my pitch to you VBS producers: Just get famous chefs into a tiny apartment, get them really, really drunk, and then have them cook something for you. Of course you’ll need five hot semicelebrities just hanging out at the shoot for no reason other than to try the chefs’ severely compromised dishes.

“Chris Pether, 70, was told by his local Asda superstore in Aberdeen that health and safety rules prevented the sale of more than one loose lemon, orange or grapefruit. A supervisor explained the policy had been introduced to protect the public because local youths had been throwing the fruit at people.”

There you have it: Old men can no longer buy fruit because of a prevailing public opinion that fruit is most typically used as a missile hurled by thugs at passersby. It’s not exactly clear what dystopia this comes straight out of, but a number of British science-fiction writers are increasingly looking prophetic instead of merely grouchy.

The trend isn’t limited to dedicated booze stores: “Trader Joe’s has its ‘Two Buck Chuck,’ Wal-Mart has its Alcott Ridge, and 7-Eleven has its Thousand Oaks Vineyards.” Retail chains love the private-label wines because Joe Glug-a-bottle starts to associate this wonderful grape beverage with the company that introduced him to it—and is tempted to stop by more often to get more.

Image source: Flickr member sarahemcc under Creative Commons

Mitchell notes: “The suspension of Smart Choices didn’t stop insane label claims. Far from it.” Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies are “still claiming, in giant letters emblazoned across the box, that the sugary cereal ‘[n]ow helps support your child’s immunity.’ In this worrisome time of virulent viruses, such a claim is likely to give some parents the wrong idea. But really, at any time, such a claim is at best amoral and at worst sinister.”

Whether San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera has the standing to take the company to the woodshed remains to be seen. But so long as every new product on the market (other than, perhaps, Drank) feels the need to sell itself as some kind of tasty parallel form of medicine, I’m grateful someone is working to make the marketeers back up their boasts.

Here’s the gemstone at the core of this story:

“Pret a Manger, the sandwich chain which boasts of using only ‘fresh, natural ingredients,’ rears its chickens in small farms around Marau, in the south east of Brazil, and then sends them to Perdigao for processing and freezing. The frozen, raw meat is then shipped thousands of miles across the Atlantic to be defrosted, cooked and put in sandwiches. Until Pret changed its website this week, consumers were not told of the food’s origins.”

Also to the story’s credit, it investigates working and farming conditions in Brazil, and reports that they’re not a horror show: Workers make a small but not appalling wage, often suffer from repetitive stress injuries, and work in cold, wet processing plants that lead to ill health … well, maybe it’s a bit of a horror show. The piece is a good read for anyone who ever considers believing anything told to him by a large food company, under just about any circumstances.

If you want to try your hand at making your own bitters, we also have easy recipes for grapefruit, saffron-cardamom, and cherry-vanilla, among others.

Urban Moonshine Maple Bitters, $10.99

There was a casualty in the switch, though: There are no more green Necco Wafers. No great loss. They were reputedly lime flavored, though as one commenter cracked on Slashfood, “They taste like Pine-Sol.” Slashfood also points out that the same company that makes Necco Wafers also makes Conversation Hearts at Valentine’s. Yeah. That makes sense.

Image source: Flickr member House Of Sims under Creative Commons