Irvine Robbins, the co-founder of the ice cream chain that boasted of "31 flavors," has died at age 90. Robbins died yesterday in Rancho Mirage, CA.

The first Baskin-Robbins ice cream store (called Snowbird) opened in Glendale, CA in 1945. Robbins and business partner/brother-in-law Burton Raskin wanted to give American more flavors to choose from than the usual chocolate and vanilla. They wanted a new flavor for every day of the month (that's how they came up with 31). Some of the flavors they've had over the years include Beatle Nut (for the Beatles invasion in 1964), Lunar Cheesecake (for the moon landing), Chocolate Mint, Plum Nuts, Jamoca Almond Fudge, and ChaChaCha.

Also check out the Baskin-Robbins quiz and see how much you know about the flavors.

So many of us are lactose intolerant these days, but there are so many milk substitutes that it's difficult to know where to turn! Find out where to go, and how to incorporate these substitutes into your cooking.

We might start feeling the squeeze on savings accounts, but we all know that there's an entirely separate account for ice cream!

Even still, Baskin Robbins is reducing the price on its single scoop tonight from 5-10 PM from whatever $1+ price it is (it's probably different everywhere) to a mere $0.31!

The 31 Cent Scoop Night is to honor America's firefighters, so grab your change purse, hurry over to your nearest Baskin-Robbins, and order a scoop of Jamocha Almond Fudge (that's what I like, but you order what you want).

The shelves in Japanese supermarkets that normally hold butter are turning up bare these days. There is currently a shortage of milk in Japan, which has resulted in dearth of butter (since butter obviously comes from milk). Prices of imported butter are also rising, which means that the butter that does arrive in the country is very expensive.

There are a variety of factors that are playing a part in the butter scarcity in Japan. As shifts in global eating patterns occur, the demand for butter increases, so exports that used to arrive in Japan are now landing in Russia, China and India. Also, milk has gotten a bad rap in Japan over the past few years, leading to declining consumption and the slaughter of dairy herds.

To read more about the butter shortage, go here and here.

[via Boing Boing]

There is still a little time to get your free Ben and Jerry's cone. However, if you missed it, you can get a thirty-one cent cone tomorrow (Wednesday) at Baskin-Robbins. Busy tomorrow? Head to Carvel on Thursday a free arctic blender or blended coffee.

Thursday is my birthday and free birthday ice cream would sure be nice, but the only Carvel near me is at the airport. The ice cream is no longer free when you have to pay for airport parking.

On an unrelated note, does anyone else find this Carvel creature creepier than clowns? We don't get Carvel TV ads in St. Louis. Can anyone tell me what this thing is supposed to be?

[via Scoopalicious]

Earlier today, Bob Sassone posted here about his milk gone bad. Anatomic Factory together with artist Bombo were thinking about the same subject. They created these bizarre milk carton shaped lights. They look like plain milk cartons, but they reveal a weird world of mold playing in the carton when you turn them on.

I choose to dump my old milk and not think too much about what might be going on in there. However, I must admit that these would make for really cute kitchen lamps.

What's next? A light designed to reveal the mold on an apple juice glass left out on the counter for too long? Umm.. wait... that happened in my house, no art light needed.

You've probably had this happen to you. You've just made yourself a nice cup of tea or coffee and you go into the fridge to get the milk and you open it and it has gone bad. So you have to put on your shoes and jacket and head out to the store to get more.

That's what happened to me today. My fat free milk went bad and smelled like...vinegar or something else that milk shouldn't smell like. So I had to go out into the rain and walk up the street to the convenience store.

I'm still not sure why it went bad so quickly. The date on it was May 2. My roommate has a jug of 2% milk with a date of May 1 and that's still fine. Does milk go bad quicker if it has less fat in it?

If there's heat wave where you are like there's a heat wave where I am, (it was over 90 degrees in some parts of southern California), then you'll appreciate the perfect timing of Ben & Jerry's annual Free Cone Day, which takes place tomorrow, Tuesday April 29, 2008. If you're not sure where there is a Ben & Jerry's shop near you, head over to their website and look one up!

If I have it me, I'll definitely making my way over for a free cone, though I do recall that last year, lines at some stores were circling blocks.

I am normally something of a yogurt snob. I typically stick to unflavored greek-style yogurt or local stuff made by either Seven Stars Farms or Pequea Valley. However, during my recent stint on the South Beach Diet I found myself needing a sweet treat. I turned to Dannon's Light & Fit yogurt for that snack and was surprised to discover that it was actually fairly tasty.

I had an opportunity recently to check out their newest product, the Dannon Light & Fit 0% Plus and I was impressed at the flavor and quality. I liked the Vanilla flavor the best, it was nearly like pudding (albeit, fat and sugar free pudding) in its flavor and consistency, with Peach coming in a close second. The cool thing about this yogurt is that it packs a nutritionally dense punch in a fairly small package, which makes it good for people who want healthier options in the traditional grocery store.

It's still no substitute for Fage with a fresh summer nectarine, but it does nicely in a pinch.

Sensitive to peanuts or eggs? Scientists may have found a new antidote.

People who are allergic to, say, pollen or animal dander can receive allergy shots, in which they are injected with small amounts of the substances that make them itch and sniffle.

Similarly, researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center are feeding small amounts of the proteins from peanuts and eggs to the allergic patients, to see if their immune systems can tolerate the food. They will consume increasing amounts of the proteins until they get to a "maintenance" level (much like how allergy shots work).

The researchers' hope is to eventually find an actual preventative treatment for people with peanut and egg allergies, instead of just telling them to try their best to avoid the foods that might make them react. And for people with serious allergies like these, this will hopefully be encouraging news.

I've heard of people trying crazy things to get more productive, but I'm not so sure this is one of them. I thought it sounded weird when I first saw the headline, but when I actually read about the practice, I had to admit it made sense.

Apparently some dairy farmers in the UK have started practicing Tai Chi in order to get more out of the cows. And put like that, it does sound a little odd. Really though, the Tai Chi is to relax and de-stress the farmers, so that they don't pass on that stress to the cows that they have to milk. The farmers do think that they get more milk from the cows now, but I personally think that's a pretty hard thing to quantify.

These are small organic dairy farmers, so they need to be in touch (literally) with their cows and be mindful of everything that affects them. I wonder if this could work for a large, machine run farm. Probably not, since I think that mechanical milkers wouldn't really transfer stress. It's a nice thought, though.

I guess I missed this over the summer, though I can't imagine how something so strange could have slipped through my Google Reader! Apparently, a dairy farm in France offers cheese made from human breast milk.

I'm not entirely sure that I believe this, but a web site for the farm, Le Petit Singly, does exist in French. There's a post about it on Why Travel to France from last June, as well as a mentioning of that post here on Serious Eats -- but neither confirms the existence. According to a Wikipedia post, breast milk was sometimes consumed in the ancient world in fertility cults, and it's thinner and sweeter than milk from other mammals.

So if it does exist, there are certainly some questions to address. Firstly, would you taste it? And how would you eat it -- plain? On crackers? Would it mean an entire line of human breast milk products are on the horizon?

It was several years ago that I started thinking more carefully about the butter I was using in my cooking and baking. I switched to unsalted for baking and tried to get my hands on locally produced, organic butter for toast topping and sauce-finishing. These days I am positively addicted to the cultured butter from Vermont Butter and Cheese (not particularly local, but the best I've found around Philly).

Miss Ginsu has taken butter-tasting to a level far above my own measly explorations. Last week, she headed out on her bike and bought nine varieties of premium and imported butters, all unsalted (at least that was her intent, she did end up with salted Kerrygold butter unintentionally). Working methodically through all of them, she rated them on a graded scale. The winner of her test was Elle & Vire, an imported French butter.

What's your favorite butter?

[via Serious Eats]

This is a really weird holiday. I'm fine with the "chocolate" part of it, but I can't imagine eating this without getting tiny hairs or a tail stuck in my teeth.

Oh, it's chocolate mousse. I had an Emily Litella moment there.

It's National Chocolate Mousse Day. Whenever I hear the words chocolate mousse I think of a work lunch I had years ago. The boss was paying for the meal, and when the waitress came around and asked if we wanted dessert, one of my fellow employees said "chocolate mousse for everyone!" without even asking the boss if it was OK, since he was paying. It was quite delicious.

Here's a recipe for Chocolate Mousse at AOL Food, and here's one for White Chocolate Mousse from Betty Crocker.

"Milk In the Land: Ballad of an American Drink," a documentary about the ubiquitous white beverage, has shown at several film festivals across the U.S. and is now hitting Philly. Directors Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum show us the ins and outs of the cow's milk industry, revealing its interesting past. But don't expect a thoughtful retrospective on the Great American Drink - this film unearths often grimace-inducing secrets about milk, questions its nutritional value, and spotlights the milk extraction process in farms run by agribusiness corporations.

The film features several theatrical elements, including testimonials by industry professionals and stop-motion animation, to explore the drink inside and out. It has been called "fascinating" by some critics, but one FilmCAN reviewer was pretty disappointed, saying the film lacked detail and that the interviewees provided stuttered, unconvincing arguments.

Despite the occasional bad review, Milk sounds pretty worthwhile - similar to the string of string of recent documentaries on the underbelly of the food industry, even if the film itself isn't the best, you'll undoubtedly walk out of the theater with some newfound food and business knowledge under your belt.