Julia Child certainly could make a mean boeuf bourguignon, but did you know she could also whip up the building blocks of life?

It's kind of scary watching her describe scientific diagrams using her chef's knife as a pointer. But it's helpful for all us home cooks that she converts grams into teaspoons. Bon appetit!

[Neatorama via Buzzfeed]

Photo: miskan/flickr

A Domino's Pizza franchise in North Carolina was forced to close its doors forever last week, and its owner puts the blame on disgusting videos two former employees posted on YouTube.

"My business was off 58 percent because of YouTube," franchise owner Kevin Hendren told the Hickory Daily Record. The store closed on Sept. 22.

The franchise's troubles began when two employees of his Conover, N.C., Domino's Pizza allegedly created videos of themselves showing one putting cheese in his nose and then putting it on a sandwich, sneezing on cheese sticks and pulling down his pants, wiping himself with a sponge and then using that sponge to clean a pan. The videos were discovered in April and have been removed from YouTube.

Hendren told the newspaper he will not reopen the Domino's franchise. "I'm just living day to day right now," he told the Daily Record.

It's amazing what a couple of rabbit ears will pick up, and it pays to do a little futzing around with the remote to sample the bevy of weird and wonderful channels and sub-channels blazing through the airwaves in all their pixelated glory.

Case in point: "The Dotch Cooking Show." This little gem of Japanese pop culture may have ended in 2007, but it lives on thanks to Los Angeles' KSCI-TV channel 18.2 -- not to mention online, in countless YouTube clips and less-than-legal downloads.

America's cook-off shows seem downright sleep-inducing by comparison. As TV spectacles go, Dotch occupies a space somewhere between the loose, tipsy fun of the celebrity-studded '70s staple "The Match Game" and the free-wheeling nuttiness of "Peewee's Playhouse."

Every once in a while it's good to have a refresher course in kitchen safety. The FDA's 1996 flick "Dirty Little Secrets" does just that with a dramatic announcer, toilet paper in the fridge and a copy of "The Silver Palate Cookbook." Did they miss anything? Weigh in.

[Via Public.Resource.Org, BoingBoing]

*shudder*

Did you know there's like, an insane amount of weird commercials about Skittles? Like, really weird? Sleep-with-a-nightlight weird?

I watched them all for you. You can thank me later. For now, here are the top five. Find the videos for 2-5 after the jump!

1. Skittle Feet (above)
2. Pinata
3. Death by Skittles
4. Everything You Touch Turns Into Skittles
5. Skittles vs. Singing Bunny

I'm a sucker for TV commercials. I even think they should be put on TV DVDs, though I bet some people would hate that idea.

But it got me thinking about all of the great TV commercials we've had for food over the years. After the jump, eight classics. I'm not saying that these eight are the "best" (though some could be), but they're eight that I really enjoy.

Remember those wacky guys who made a miniature log cabin out of meat? Well, they've done it again, this time using a variety of meat products to create a seaworthy vessel to sail the ocean. This time, they've helpfully posted a list of all the products they used to bring their ship to life, so we don't have to wonder what it is. Sadly, this creation is not 100% meat, they were forced to use some pastry dough for structural support. However, the best part of all this is the time lapse video they posted on YouTube to accompany the photo gallery.

I don't eat cake much at all, but for the past week I've had an incredible craving for it. I think I might be pregnant.

To celebrate my buying of cake tonight (yellow, with chocolate frosting), here's a Duncan Hines commercial from the early 80s. I love cake without frosting too, if it's really moist (though I'll happily eat it with frosting too). Is it weird that I remember this commercial like I saw it yesterday, including all the dialogue and camera angles?

Yes. Yes it is. Full commercial after the jump!

Yes, I know it sounds like the name of some psychedelic band from the 60s, but it's actually the concept behind a new TV commercial from Domino's. If you haven't heard, they have a new dessert on the menu, the Oreo Pizza. It's a big dessert shaped like a pizza, only with so many Oreos on it that you get a mustache when you eat it.

Is it me or is the commercial rather ...off-putting? Take a look after the jump and see what you think.

Yes, I know how much we all love Rachael Ray. Or hate Rachael Ray. The fact of the matter is, one way or another, we all have a strong opinion of her. Though I feel bad for her recent marriage troubles, I do find her wildly, annoyingly over-perky. Then again, I could be just jealous of all her success.

Whatever your feelings, this minute-and-half video on YouTube of Ms. Ray making all of her tell-tale sounds of joy while eating is pretty funny.

And annoying.

What's the next best thing to drinking more than 100 beers from around the world? Putting a video up on YouTube of you drinking more than 100 beers from around the world, of course!

russa0 posted this video, a sort of travelogue of his beer adventures. Now, you don't actually see him drinking the beer. He's mostly holding them up and pointing to them, but I don't doubt he drank them all. I haven't heard of 99% of these beers, but then again, I've never traveled out of the U.S. He does have Budweiser though!

[via Gadling]

I'm not talking about the best restaurants in Las Vegas, I mean the cooking of Sin City director Robert Rodriguez.

Rodriguez has created ten short films that tell you how to cook using footage from his movies. Yeah, I know, that sounds a little confusing (if not scary), but it all makes sense after you watch the videos. Rodriguez and his crew are often up late at night (or early in the morning), so they make things like Breakfast Tacos. He even teaches you how to make your own flour tortillas.

For more recipes, check the other videos on the right on that YouTube page.

The playful antics of the rats at a Taco Bell-KFC restaurant in New York City's Greenwich Village have probably seen more ink than Taco Bell's recent E. coli outbreak. Their performance has certainly garnered tons of local TV news coverage and as of this writing has more than 800 hits on YouTube.

The good folks over at The Scoop over on the NRN Foodservice Blog reported on the story behind the story the other day via an exclusive interview with the leader of the Taco Bell rats. And quite a scoop it was. They managed to catch the leader before his appearance on Conan later that night. Among the revelations from the interview is the fact that the rats' celebrity like that of most stars was no easy task. They'd been practicing their dance moves for more than two months starting with when they were discovered by the city's Health Department in December.

As one might imagine, the leader describes living in the restaurant as a paradise chock-full of tacos and fried chicken. And he offers up a theory as to why the Health Department allowed the fast-food joint to continue to operate even though a troupe of performing rats had set up shop. They're just too busy with important matters like protecting the public from the trans-fat menace. Never let it be said that New York City doesn't support the arts.

We've all heard of the Five Second Rule, that food rule that says when you drop a piece of food, as long as you pick it up within five seconds it's still OK to eat. Anything more than five seconds then you should throw it away.

This short film (after the jump) by Sam Lehman shows the two different kinds of the Five Second Rule and how it can be misused. If you drop something on the ground, you have to pick it up within five seconds. However, even if you do pick it up within five seconds, the rule should be thrown out if that food landed in...well, you can see in the video after the jump.

By the way, if you think that a lot of restaurants don't serve you food even after a piece of food has been on the floor for more than five seconds, you're crazy.

If you had asked me 15 years ago what I thought the healthiest foods were, I probably would have said salad, pasta, bread, rice, and water. If you had asked me 35 years ago, I probably would have said Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Quisp cereal, pretzels, Pepsi, and Sara Lee pound cake.

We all know better now, of course (for example, Sara Lee pound cake should only be eaten 20 or so times a week), but do we really know what the healthiest foods are? We've talked a lot about healthy foods before, but never like what you'll see after the jump...in video form! The video isn't the best quality, and waiting 30 seconds for the next food to be listed is rather annoying, but the info is interesting. Besides, it's like a game. You can take those 30 seconds to place bets with your friends! What will be next in the video...apricots? Avocados? Broccoli? Read on...