Food writer Regina Schrambling says she's finally found a phenomenon even more annoying than Rachel "Yummo" Ray: Precocious kiddie foodies.

Writing in Slate, Schrambling points to some of her main offenders: New York Times' fawning coverage of 12-year-old "restaurant critic" David Fishman, the Times' new "Cooking With Dexter" feature written by food editor Pete Wells about his kitchen exploits with his 4-year-old son, and NPR's 5-year-old Chef Julian, the world's "youngest celebrity chef." These kids are not just being cooed at for their cuteness, she says, they're actually being held up as inspiration for adult chefs.

Schrambling claims that A) Kitchens are not nurseries - they're dangerous places filled with knives and boiling oil - so we encourage kids to cook only at the peril of their forearms and fingertips, B) Kids have less-developed taste buds, naturally craving high levels of salty and sweet, and therefore are less likely to come up with anything truly remarkable to adult palates, and C) The younger you are, the smaller your food memory bank, so a 5-year-old is probably not going to know a "good" burger from a "bad" burger.

"On a larger scale, the trend emphasizes the worst of the food frenzy today: the celebration of celebrity and novelty over authenticity and seriousness," Schrambling writes. "...Today chefs barely out of high school are competing on reality cooking shows, and the bar keeps being lowered, with Internet exposure for every little Thomas Keller."

I find over-precocious kids annoying in general, and I think that any parent who holds up little Ava or Aidan as a paragon of culinary sophistication is totally silly. At the same time, I think it's great for kids to get in the kitchen and learn a thing or two about food. Better than sitting in front of the X-Box eating Cakesters (I'm sure Schrambling would agree). And if having a few kiddie chefs on TV helps encourage a greater respect for food, that's great. Though I'm unlikely to be trying out any of their recipes any time soon.

For weeks now, everywhere you turn, it has been Thanksgiving as far as the eye can see. Here at Slashfood, we posted three menus, a bevy of side dishes and some excellent suggestions for wines to drink with your meals. At The Kitchn, they've been talking pie since November 1st (that's a lot of pie). Ree, The Pioneer Woman, has photographed so many Thanksgiving recipes I'm astounded she can still bear to be in her kitchen. And every newspaper section in the country has written about turkey, apples, pumpkins and cranberries ad naseum.

The thing is that for all these recipes, tips, suggestions and turkey tricks, how many of us actually vary our Thanksgiving day menu from year to year? I'm serving up a meal this year for the holiday that is very much like the one I've eaten with my family since I could first gum a couple of spoonfuls of mashed potato.

Over at Slate, Regina Schrambling has written a piece that describes just this conundrum - food sections, blogs and magazines who feel the need to reinvent the holiday each year, when most people turn to the familiar recipes they've been making for years. It's a good read that will get you in the mood to head to the kitchen and cook up your Thanksgiving favorites.

Check out this hilarious essay, in which Slate's Sarah Dickerman outfits her kitchen with molecular gastronomy tools in an effort to see whether her picky, veggie-shy 4-year-old is more likely to eat broccoli that's been turned into a gelatinized orb.

Dickerman buys a $200 Texturas kit, produced by molecular gastronomy king Ferran Adria of Spain's El Bulli, which contains calcium gluconolactate, powdered xanthan gum, agar agar, and lecithin, along with a giant syringe. She and her son mix and stir the various powders like mad scientists, producing tomato spheres and tadpole-shaped broccoli balls (pictured).

Does he like it? Not so much. Carrot juice "air" is more successful. Plus, all the weird, slippery gelatinized, foamed food, the kid's ready for some real dinner.

Slate -- my favorite web site on the internet after Slashfood -- published an article today about the possible decline of Spanish avant-garde cuisine. The article lists numerous factors contributing to the "death" of the movement, including the overuse of foam, popular demand and democracy (meaning the fact that people can recreate the culinary experiences in their own kitchens). It contends that the mainstream has caught up with the movement, rendering it no longer new or exciting.

Fortunately for those of us who enjoy this type of food, the article ultimately concludes that Spanish avant-garde cuisine will likely meet the fate as trends like Asian fusion and California cuisines: some elements will fade away, but others (like foam) will simple become part of the "culinary vernacular." Phew! Anyone think otherwise?

Last weekend, I attended a party featuring home-brewed beer. A fellow party-goer remarked that most home-brewed beer parties usually take the same form: everyone complements the brewer, then proceeds to dump the home-brewed stuff in the sink and head to the keg. But the beer at the this party was actually decent, even borderline inspiring (I swear I'd try to brew some myself if I didn't mind foul smells so much).

Anyway, home-brewing is on the rise -- and it may even be responsible for the return of mead, a honey-based alcoholic beverage. According to an article over at Slate, foodies and local brewers (home-brewers included) have spurred a renewed interest in this libation. You may remember mead from such things as the turn of the last millennium, when we all drank some during the banquet celebrating our successful pillage of the enemy castle.

Sadly, the author of the Slate article ultimately concludes that mead is unlikely to re-enter the mainstream completely, so it looks like I'm going to have seek out artisan brewers to get my berry mead. Unless anyone wants to home-brew some for me?

That's not my opinion, by the way. I love turkey leftovers. But Slate's Jill Hunter Pelletteri says that she's had enough with all the talk about what to do with your holiday turkey leftovers:

Every November, magazine editors and food writers, cooking gurus and TV personalities, foist turkey leftover recipes upon us. Unless we put our tired, picked-over turkey carcass to good use, they tell us, we're wasting some precious opportunity. But don't be fooled. Do not be tempted by that recipe for turkey and leek risotto. Those stringy last bits of gristle and meat that cling to your bird are better suited to the raccoons who rummage through your garbage. Do you really want to morph the centerpiece of your most ceremonial meal of the year into turkey bundles (stuffed with turkey, cream cheese, dill weed, and water chestnuts, among other things)?

Guilty as charged. But what's the fun of making a big turkey if you're not going to make soups and sandwiches and pot pies with the leftovers?!

Interesting piece over at Slate from Paul Levy, about the state of food writing. He says that food writing today is too "macho," and filled with too many "foodie shock jocks" who swear and write too casually (he singles out Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, and Bill Buford).

The food writing that's in vogue today consists chiefly of a bellow of bravado. It's a guy thing, sure, but (with a few honorably hungry exceptions) these scribblers mostly ignore what's on the plate. They view themselves as boy hunters and despise sissy gatherers, thrive on the undertow of violence they detect in the professional kitchen, and like to linger on the unappetizing aspects of food preparation. The gross-out factor trumps tasting good as well as good taste.

Hmmm...really? I think one of the good thing about this increased interest in food and all the food blogs is that you hear a lot of different voices. There's plenty of the stuff Levy likes still be written. Even here at Slashfood we try to mix up the voices a bit.

What do you think? Does Levy have a point?

[via The Grinder]

Controversial piece at Slate (written by a former anorexic, Kate Taylor) that compares calorie restriction diets to anorexia itself.

She links to several New York Times articles that seem to show that calorie restriction extends the lives of monkeys and mice and is now being tested on humans too.

I'm not an expert in healthy weight management, beyond the usual "reduce your calories, eat correctly, and exercise regularly" that we always hear. It's interesting to hear a former anorexic talk about how she's confused by all of the talk that a "low metabolism" might actually be good for you, though I think comparing the two is a stretch.

Here's a follow-up piece, where Taylor talks about the Calorie Restriction Society and how that might be a different kind of "eating disorder." You should also read the message boards at the end of the piece.

Yup, that's right, today is National Potato Chip Day. There's a day for everything, you know, so it's really no surprise.

I used to have a favorite potato chip when I was a kid (Lay's regular chips), but now I find myself changing the brand and the style with every meal that I have (well, every meal that requires potato chips, that is, a sandwich or a burger). I had Utz Mystic Chips last night with my frozen White Castle hamburgers (shut up, I like them). Last week I had Wise with ridges with some Hot Pockets (shut up, I like them), and a few weeks ago I tried those new Pringles Minis.

Here's a history of the chip, and here's Slate's taste test of the gourmet brands.

[via Pop Candy]

This will teach everyone to choose their words very, very carefully.

On April 7, Slate writer Daniel Gross said he was so skeptical that President Bush would name a banker to replace outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow, that if the President did indeed do that, Gross would buy a copy of the book Dow 36,000 and eat it.

Guess what happened? Yup. And now Gross is eating the damn book. You can even watch the video! He served it with greens and lots of vinagrette.

Update: As many readers have pointed out, it's John Snow, not Tony.

Toasters have been around for more than 100 years and the Slate took on the task of testing eight toasters to see which one was really the toast of the town. Using a highly scientific scale which judged toasting quality, ease of use, cleanup and value, the toasters were put to the test. After too many loaves of bread to count, the results were in. The high-end toasters like the DeLonghi Aluminum 2-Slice and the KitchenAid Pro Line 2-Slice finished with the best scores, though they were low in the "value" category. Generally, the less expensive toasters, like the T-Fal Avanté Deluxe 4-Slice and Michael Graves 2-Slice, did not perform as well as their more expensive counterparts.

Their list is a great way to start a toaster search, but Cooking.com and Amazon.com's customer reviews also provide great feedback.

Despite the title of Is Whole Foods Wholesome?, the Slate article is not about Whole Foods as much as it is about the organic movement. Essentially, the article treats the increased demand for organic goods as an overly cynical teenager would treat their once favorite band after it "sells out." The band, having joined up with a major record label and making more money, reaching a wider audience and popularizing their brand of music, is no longer appealing to the teen who feels that if it isn't small and under-recognized, it isn't worth his or her recognition.

Organic foods have had a following for a long time, though their potential value was largely unappreciated by the mainstream population of grocery shoppers. As Whole Foods picked up and popularized the organic foods market, neatly filling a growing consumer demand with smart store layouts and good timing, they had to look further to find the organic foods to fit the demand. The question that posed by the Slate is whether it is appropriate to purchase these goods when they are not grown locally. In California, this is not a problem because most of the organic produce in the country comes from the state, but New York has a more limited production of those types of goods.