Slashfood Ate (8): Friday frito mixto

It's Friday afternoon. It's August. I, for one, would rather be at home doing something interesting with the quart of blueberries that have been patiently waiting on the bottom shelf of my fridge for the last week than sitting behind my computer. However, someone must hold down the internet, and so I carry on, doing a little work for my real job and searching the internet for tasty bits to keep you Slashfood readers salivating.

1. Of the many things I love about the city in which I grew up, one is that fact that people are permitted to keep chickens in their backyards inside the city. Tour de Coups is an annual neighborhood tour of the coops in which those chickens live. How I wish I could have gone!
2. My cousins Dan and Sabrina are just weeks away from the arrival of baby #2 and the whole family is waiting excitedly. This week, both The Kitchn and The Wednesday Chef have asked for tips on good foods to take to new moms. I'm bookmarking both posts for near future inspiration.
3. A week doesn't go by without someone doing something new and clever with bacon. This week heralded the arrival of the Bacon Alarm Clock and the Chocolate Covered Bacon Cake.
4. Loobylu tells the story of her mother's chocolate cake and how she never seemed to be able to make it correctly. A baking session with her mom revealed that her mom had given her a recipe that wasn't quite right. Cake sabotage!
5. A clever tip from Not Martha about how to preserve your beer bottle cap when opening, thus enabling you to put it back on the bottle and save the balance of your beer for another time.
6. College cafeterias go trayless to save on food waste, a nation of undergrads wonders how they'll carry five plastic cups of juice now.
   
7. The New York Times Paper Cuts blog features the The American Cookbook Project and I lose a half a day in productivity.
8. Kristin at Cookthink shares how she learned to pan roast a piece of fish so that it stays tender, flavorful and delicate.