Illustration by Laura Williams

Welcome to Top Of The Food Chain, a column from Eat Me Daily's meatiest columnist, Ryan Adams. Every week we'll attempt to demystify the options available in your supermarket, breaking animals down piece by piece so that the next time you find yourself staring at endless Styrofoam containers, you'll be able to make an informed purchase. This week: Tri-Tip.

When I was in grade school, the cafeteria introduced me to the "wonders" of low-budget eats, by which I mean I learned to deal with the slop that was put in front of me at lunch. There was, however, one standout meal that I could get excited about: beef tri-tip with gravy on toast. It was easily one of the best meals we were given during the week, beating out the anemic "pizza" easily. Even now, the thought of preparing tri-tip takes me back to those school days and the good times associated with them. Make some happy memories for yourself with this surprisingly flavorful cut.

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Photograph: Diana Schnuth

Welcome to Natural History of the Kitchen, by EMD's Stephanie Butler. Each week, Stephanie explores the background of an appliance, gadget or product that helped to make cooking what it is today. This week: Chef Boyardee.

Let's talk about guilty pleasures. What self-professed gourmand doesn't love a bag of Doritos now and again? Is there a foodie out there so devoted to the cause that they can't appreciate a bag of M&M's and popcorn at the movies? I, for one, have a deep love for Chef Boyardee beef ravioli. Not spaghetti and meatballs, not cheese ravioli, not dinosaurs or Dora the Explorer shapes in sauce — just plain beef ravioli, cooked on the stovetop (never microwaved).

You'll need a can opener for this installment of Natural History of the Kitchen.

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Photograph: estrelas

Welcome to Wine, Spilled, a weekly column in which EMD's Justine Sterling shares the myths, legends, tall tales, and short stories of the wine world, and recommends a couple bottles that won't break the bank. Today's wine: Cava

Everyone has a cause: some people fight for animal rights, others are trying to save the icecaps. Me? I try to get people to drink sparkling wine on a daily basis. It may not be as noble as other causes, but believe me, it’s worthwhile. How is sparkling wine different than other carbonated beverages? We drink beer or soda or mineral water daily and we don’t bat an eye; no one asks someone who pops open a bottle of Pellegrino what they're celebrating, and so it should be with sparkling wine. But, you say, I’m not made of money. I can’t afford Champagne every day of the week. Well, my friend, I didn’t say Champagne. I said sparkling wine, and there are many tasty, affordable bottles of it available.

On this quest to make the world a more sparkling place, let’s start in Spain, which means Cava.

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Photograph: gamespot.com

Welcome to Zoom and Pan, Eat Me Daily's food n' film column. Each week, Soleil Ho of Heavy Table tears apart a food-centric movie scene and, with luck, decipher the meaning behind all the food porn. This week: Freddy Got Fingered

The American 1900s had the Bowery boys; the 1920s, the Bohemians; the 1940s, the zoot suits. Every generation has birthed a subculture of bad boys, with distinctive styles, dialects, and ideologies. The bad boy of the late 1990s, the subject of today's Zoom & Pan, is the mook. Specifically, Tom Green in Freddy Got Fingered (buy it).

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Artwork by Laura Williams

Welcome to Top Of The Food Chain, a column from Eat Me Daily's meatiest columnist, Ryan Adams. Every week we'll attempt to demystify the options available in your supermarket, breaking animals down piece by piece so that the next time you find yourself staring at endless Styrofoam containers, you'll be able to make an informed purchase. This week: Hanger Steak.

Butchers are an interesting lot: there's the slightly morbid nature of their work, their penchant for razor sharp tools, their odd history of keeping certain cuts of ultra tasty meat to themselves. In my mind, I imagine butchers huddled behind closed doors, swapping secret butchering information. If you'd like to feel like part of this clandestine brotherhood the next time you find yourself talking to your butcher, make sure no one is watching, then ask for something they've been keeping under wraps: hanger steak.

Complicated secret handshakes may be required.

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Photograph: Indiana Public Media

Welcome to Natural History of the Kitchen, by EMD's Stephanie Butler. Each week, Stephanie explores the background of an appliance, gadget or product that helped to make cooking what it is today. This week: the Food Processor.

Making salsa for a crowd? Need a pie crust in a jiffy? If you've had to do either of these things by hand, chances are you've longed for a food processor. A kitchen tool that genuinely changed how home-cooks prepare food, it chops, slices, dices, and blends in half the time. But this reliable instrument wasn't always a busy home-cook's best friend — food processors started life as restaurant-only appliances in the 60s. This week's Natural History of the Kitchen looks at the food processor and its journey from Parisian restaurant kitchens to the American home.

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Photograph: scoop.diamondgalleries.com

The 1960s were a time of huge cultural upheaval in America. From the Civil Rights movement to the counterculture of the late 60s and the Summer of Love, the times, they were a-changin'. Unfortunately, this wasn't reflected heavily in the commercials of the time. Advertising tropes from the 50s were still reflected in the commercials of the next decade, such as black and white ads and longer commercials, but there were still some interesting changes.

Advertising aimed at children became prevalent, and characters were created for brands specifically to appeal to the younger set, such as the Frito Bandito (pictured above). Commercials were also becoming more colorful (literally), and, unsurprisingly, space was a big theme in 60s advertising. Below, some of our favorite commercials from the era.

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Photograph: Gagen Indra

Welcome to Wine, Spilled, a weekly column in which EMD's Justine Sterling shares the myths, legends, tall tales, and short stories of the wine world, and recommends a couple bottles that won't break the bank. Today's wine: Pinotage

For the most part, grapes are old things. Sure, there have been innovations in cultivation and processing, but on the whole most varietals have been around for a long time; long enough to have ancestors who were consumed by Roman emperors or Vikings. But that’s not to say all grapes are old. There’s one notable newbie: the baby of the bunch at only 85 years old, Pinotage.

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More than ten years ago, Babe: Pig in the City (buy it) came and went, and we barely acknowledged its passing. There may be, lodged deep in your memory, an image of a bull terrier grunting, "Whatever the pig says, goes!" You may have had a chance encounter with this film via its televised trailers, but odds are, you haven't seen it. Despite the fact that Gene Siskel famously proclaimed it to be the best film of 1998, the film continues to brood in obscurity.

Though this week's Zoom & Pan discusses a scene from a talking pig movie, it doesn't concern bacon or ham or a slow-roasted, wine-basted barnyard animal. No, my friends, this week we will ponder jellybeans.

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Photograph: Carl Newman via New York Times

Reading about how to make your own maple syrup, courtesy of Carl Newman of indie-rock band The New Pornographers, kind of makes me want to buy a bucket and start drilling some trees. Newman moved from Brooklyn to an artist's colony in upstate New York last year, and decided to try his hand at tapping maple trees for their sweet sap a couple of months ago. Making your own maple syrup seems to take a lot of time and effort, such as buying special covered buckets, boiling the syrup down to its essence over a wood fire and straining the syrup through a coffee filter. Maybe I'll just stick to Aunt Jemima's. [via The Daily Swarm]

—Rachael Oehring

Illustration by Laura Williams

Welcome to Top Of The Food Chain, a column from Eat Me Daily's meatiest columnist, Ryan Adams. Every week we'll attempt to demystify the options available in your supermarket, breaking animals down piece by piece so that the next time you find yourself staring at endless Styrofoam containers, you'll be able to make an informed purchase. This week: Brisket. Ryan is taking this week off; in his stead, please welcome guest blogger Matt Davidson.

Brisket can conjure the smell of a billowing smoker, the warmth of friends and family at Passover, or a disappointing cut of tough, blackened meat. It holds a firm place in varied traditions, largely because it is a large and economical cut. While often a fickle piece of meat to cook, with enough patience and a solid technique you can produce a voluminous amount of tender meat on the cheap.

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Photograph: Cool Hunting

Even if you don't care about the World Cup, or are steadfast in your belief that the only real football is an oblong brown one, this soccer ball-shaped ice cube mold is pretty cool. The mold uses heat from warm water and pressure to transform chunks of ice into 40 perfect soccer-shaped spheres an hour. Because spheres of ice melt more slowly than cubes, your drink won't get watered down while you watch Real Madrid kick around on the pitch. Or while you watch Real Housewives of New Jersey. Watch a kicky video of how the mold works after the jump:

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Photograph: Robyn Medlin / Eat Me Daily

As you walk down the steep hill to Tom Lee Park on the banks of the Mississippi River, a thick, invisible cloud of smoke reaches your nose and pulls you inside the biggest barbecue competition there is: Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Representatives from Tums shower you with packets of antacid as you clear the gates, letting you know this is a competition unlike any other.

My backyard-BBQ-warrior Dad and I had the opportunity of a lifetime to compete on a real Memphis in May (MIM) BBQ team, making this a father-daughter pilgrimage of sorts. Our fearless leaders of the SwineBucks BBQ team — whose slogan is “Too Sauced To Pork” — welcomed us with open arms into this food culture that is often invite only; while vendors sell BBQ to festival attendees, the real action is inside the tent.

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Photograph: stevendepolo

Welcome to Natural History of the Kitchen, by EMD's Stephanie Butler. Each week, Stephanie explores the background of an appliance, gadget or product that helped to make cooking what it is today. This week: Stoves.

If you're like most Americans, you probably don't think about your stove much. Sure, you know the difference between gas and electric, and you might have even passed a few stray minutes staring into the window of a fancy kitchen store, imagining yourself at a professional-grade range complete with flattop and water feature. You'd have a very different attitude if you had to hunch over a fireplace at five in the morning, or light an antique gas range before your morning coffee. This week we're taking a look at the history of the stove, from wood burning to electric.

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Photograph: Roadsidepictures

If the 1950s were a time of making food simpler and more convenient, the 1960s were about exploring the complexities food has to offer. Julia Child is responsible for much of this; Mastering the Art of French Cooking came out in 1961 was followed shortly thereafter by her television series on WGBH Boston, and both stimulated an American interest in French cooking. Suddenly, working in the kitchen was no longer a chore to be tolerated, but an art to be practiced and perfected.

Exploration was the culinary theme of the decade, and the number of places we could eat increased as barriers were broken, both social (the Woolworth's lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement) and technological (space food!). New foods became available as the Granny Smith apple and kiwis were introduced to Americans, and modern convenience foods like Doritos and Gatorade were invented. It was a time of upheaval in all aspects of American life, and food was no exception; after the 1960s, the American food landscape was changed forever. Below, we've collected important events from the era that helped shape this eventful decade.

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Photograph: Xipe Totec39

Welcome to Wine, Spilled, a weekly column in which EMD's Justine Sterling shares the myths, legends, tall tales, and short stories of the wine world, and recommends a couple bottles that won't break the bank. Today's wine: Côtes de Gascogne

It's hard to be cool; you have to be a unique individual, but you can't try to hard. You have to be accessible. You have to be easy going. You have to find your vintage, ironic Hall & Oates t-shirt at a garage sale you just happened to stumble upon. Not be pretentiously odd, but not submit to mass produced trends. Well, this week's wine fits that bill; this week's wine is cool. It's not the easiest to find (though it is attainable), but it's made with the second most widely planted grape in the world. This week's wine is Côtes de Gascogne Vin de Pays.

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Photograph via today and tomorrow

Reason 5,672 why salt shouldn't be banned: artist Meara O'Reilly uses it to create this series of beautiful patterns. O'Reilly sings different tones into a mic which is hooked up to a Chladni plate — a plate used to illustrate two-dimensional vibrations — that's covered in salt. The salt then sort of bounces into the patterns seen above. Hit the jump for more pictures of the salt patterns, and a fascinating video of how they're formed. You might want to watch the video on mute, though; the shrieking tones required to make the neat patterns get a little repetitive.

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How does one even begin to discuss Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain (buy it
)? The 1973 film's 2-hour picaresque progression barrels through postcolonial criticism, Biblical myths, Tarot mysticism, and war machines in the far reaches of outer space, stunning even the most jaded viewers with its ambition and scope. Argentinian-born Jodorowsky is immovable from his position on the throne of cult cinema; Tommy Wiseau, eat your vaguely European heart out. (So Jodorowsky can film it.)

Though there are quite a few scenes of gastronomic interest in this film, the one I'll be analyzing this week engages both psychoanalytic puzzles and the hypocrisy of contemporary religious institutions. Perhaps more importantly, it's a scene in which a man eats his own face. Which, if my sources are correct, is made of marzipan. Who knew the ego tasted so good?

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Photograph: Mike Clare

Industrial Designer Mike Clare likes to scare old people with the neato space-age technology we have these days, so he created cookies that, when held up to a webcam, pop out with a crazy 3D shape. The cookies are modeled after black-and-white augmented reality markers that do stuff when you take a picture of them with your phone that marketers are hoping will make the kids go nuts and buy stuff. New technologies are clearly better in cookie form, but the real question is, do they taste any good? Click through for a video of the cookies in action, and get off my lawn with your future food.

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