It hasn't been such a good week for New York City pizza makers named De Marco. First came the shooting rampage that started at De Marco's Pizzeria and left four dead. I've enjoyed a slice and the occasional bowl of linguine puttanesca at this West Village spot, which is owned by Dominick Demarco Jr., the son of the pizzaiolo behind Brooklyn's legendary Di Fara Pizza. I wish De Marco's all the luck in the world, but the idea of eating there anytime soon creeps me out.

Thankfully, the second mishap to befall the De Marco family this week is not nearly as grave. Di Fara Pizza has been swept up in all the commotion caused by rats in my fair city's eateries. It seems that as of yesterday afternoon Midwood's temple of pizza artistry had been temporarily closed by the Health Department. As a fan of this spot I'm not surprised that it's been shuttered, though I am glad that it wasn't for anything nearly as serious as vermin. It's long been a dirty little secret that Di Fara's is a tad unkempt, but only because they're so insanely busy. I gave them a ring this morning and the maestro himself answered. He told me that they're closed for a few days for "little things." I felt a sense of relief wash over me as I pondered eating several perfect slices there in the very near future. [via Slice]

With Brooklyn-style pizza on the brain after last week's New York Times piece on the stuff, I couldn't help but notice this slice of pizza (two slices, actually) at 2 girls in the kitchen. First off, it's a great shot of a fairly ordinary looking subject. What really makes the photo a standout, however, is learning what someone raised on New York-style pizza, like this one, went through to get it: Randi was down from Ontario, Canada in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, when she stopped in to a pizzeria run by some ex-pat New Yorkers. Many of them gravitate towards Fr. Lauderdale for some reason, so the NY staples - pizza, Chinese food and bagels, apparently - are well-made and plentiful. Randi wasn't sure that she could manage to take the excellent pizza back with her on such a long trip, but at the last minute, she packed up the frozen slices and took them safely home to her freezer, bringing a little taste of NY to Ontario, via Florida.

It appears that this time it wasn't a K-9 unit, but rather a police officer, that did the nose work. After a pizza delivery woman reported being robbed at knife-point, Bartholomew County Sheriff's Deputy Jimmy Green canvassed the Columbus, Indiana, neighborhood to investigate. Green apparently noticed the distinct aroma of sausage and pepperoni at one residence. A search of the house turned up the missing pizzas and cash, a knife, and a phonebook still open to the pizza section, according to The Associated Press. Two young men believed to be the robbers were arrested at the house.

[Via Slice]

The butter slicer we saw a couple of days ago might be helpful when you're baking and are trying to cut off just the right amount for your recipe, but its not the most practical tool to have around when you just want to butter your toast. The One Click Butter Cutter is somewhat unnecessary if you own a knife, but is a useful gadget in its own way, not to mention that it's fun to use. With the push of a button, it dispenses one standard "pat" of butter - slightly less than 2/3 tsp, so you get 5 pats per tablespoon of butter. You can store a stick of butter in the butter cutter in the refrigerator, so it is always ready to go.

The gadget could come in handy at breakfast or when you're cooking and need to grease the pan, just for sheer convenience. In addition, it is a great way to consistently use portion control with butter, since you know exactly how much you're going to get from each slice without having to measure it out yourself.

[via book of joe]

To cut up a melon, I usually take the following step: slice it in half, scoop out any non-edible innards, place cut side down on a cutting board and remove the rind with a sharp knife. Once the rind is removed, I proceed to slice and serve the melon.

But removing the rind can be tricky, especially with larger melons or for cooks who don't have a sharp knife at the ready, so the Melon Ease melon slicer offers an alternative method of melon preparation. Once your melon is sliced in half and has the seeds removed, the slicer is inserted into the melon and it cuts the melon into even segments. With a simple twist of the top handle, the slices are separated from the rind and ready to eat.

This doesn't seem like a "must have" gadget for most homes, and I won't even get in to the fact that it will be difficult to store, but if you eat a lot of melon, you might just get a lot of use out of it.

Sometimes you just want to eat your pizza with a knife and fork, especially jumbo-slices or those weighed down by extra toppings, which can be impractical to eat out of hand. But isn't using a fork AND a knife a hassle? Why not combine the two implements into one pizza fork?

Officially, the product is called a Nyfork ($12) and it can be used to cut anything you might normally use a knife for, including veggies and meat, leaving your other hand free. The package notes that the fork was "kept secret from the American public for years" (no doubt as some sort of two-handed cutlery conspiracy), but also has a warning that the cutter wheel is very sharp, and caution should be used when eating from the fork.

I'll give it points for aesthetics, but I'll stick to using a regular knife and fork for my pizza - or anything, for that matter.

We already heard about the world's largest pizza party, but this gallery has pictures of some of the biggest pizzas in the world. It's not complete, since we don't know what some of you are doing in your homes when the record keepers aren't there to measure your creations, but it definitely gives you a reference point the next time you walk into a pizzeria that serves unusually large slices.

The world's record for largest pizza belongs to a 122.6-ft. pizza that was made in Norwood, South Africa in 1990. This monster pie used almost 10,000-lbs. of flour, 3,968-lbs. of cheese, 1,984-lbs. of tomato puree and 200-lbs. salt. For perspective, 4 cups of flour is the equivalent of one pound, and that would make plenty of dough for a large pizza. That means that the record setting pizza could have fed a slice or two to at least 40,000 people.

Not all single-purpose kitchen gadgets are useless, but slicers are getting out of control. There are slicers for avocados, tomatoes, eggs, butter and mozzarella, just to name a few from Williams-Sonoma. While the avocado slicer has a slightly different look, the other four have the exact same design in slightly different shapes. And you don't need any of them. All of those foods are exceptionally easy to slice through with a sharp knife and the scooping function of the avocado slicer can be replicated with a spoon.

If none of your knives can handle tasks like slicing tomatoes or hard-boiled eggs, you don't need a gadget. You need a new knife. Trust me - you'll get a lot more use out of it.

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.

 Slice NY, the blog that revolves around pizza, has featured an excerpt from Ed Levine's Pizza: A Slice of Heaven. This particular excerpt concerns the existence of the pizza belt, that swath of America along which the first and best pizzas in the country originated. Essentially, the "belt" seems to have spread along patterns of southern Italian immigrants, coming into Ellis Island in New York and gradually spreading over towards Boston. Stretching over a 33 year period, the American pizza timeline clearly shows the launch of some of the mainstays of pizza-dom. Slice also has a textual account of the history of pizza in America, contributed by Mr. Levine.