​Almost surreal in its whiteness, plain cottage cheese tastes better than plain yogurt. But who ever heard of eating plain yogurt, which lends itself to all sorts of post-culture processing.

No dairy product has sunken lower in the popular estimation than cottage cheese. Can you name a fancy restaurant that has cottage cheese on its menu? Is artisanal cottage cheese available at any bistro or gastropub? Is cottage cheese sold at farmers' markets, or have you ever seen a speck of it at Smorgasburg, say?

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​Where am I? Blind Tiger? Rattle N Hum? D.b.a.? (Click on image to enlarge.)

It wasn't that long ago that if you wanted to get a six-pack (I'm talking beer, not abs) around Union Square, you had to make do with Bud Lite or Colt 45 in cans. Then the beer revolution occurred, and suddenly every bodega was selling Racer 5 in bottles and Sixpoint in tallboys. Now, beer is taking the next step. If you're like me, maybe you have some doubts. If great beer is available everywhere, where's the fun in it?

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​Once a pie shop and café

Routinely, monthly roundups of restaurant openings and closings show twice as many openings as closings, as we mentioned in our recent pessimistic assessment of the challenges facing restaurateurs today. We're apparently in a huge hospitality bubble, wherein any place that debuts with enough hype seems to attract crowds and make money. But how long can this boom continue?

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A face only a mother could love

​There's been a lot of talk today about the identity of Ruth Bourdain, the James Beard humor-award-winning Twitter account that deftly mixes up Ruth Reichl platitudes with Anthony Bourdain's attitude, being our very own Robert Sietsema. But is this true? We asked Robert to elaborate.

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​I'm sitting on the edge of my seat wondering who the next Times restaurant critic will be. It's significant that Sam Sifton bailed after only two years, rather than the usual four or six -- especially since the general public was just growing to love him.

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​Should I squirt it in the sink, or sprinkle it on my steak?

Folks wealthy enough to shop at Williams-Sonoma have dishwashers, right? So it seems somewhat strange that the temple of mercantile foodism would stock a line of liquid soaps for hand-washing dishes in the sink. Are the customers of the Chelsea retail store buying them for use at vacation houses upstate? Or is there a certain unstated pleasure in rolling up your slerves, putting your arms up to the elbows in dishwater, and saying a final goodbye to the scraps and grease stains from your last gourmet meal?

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​There have long been food-themed toys -- such as the Easy-Bake Oven, which allowed kids to bake tiny cakes using only a lightbulb, and Victorian tea sets that encouraged them to stage afternoon parties with their dolls and Power Rangers. These toys permitted children to mimic adult food rituals in a context that assisted them in becoming socialized adults.

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​How much did you say you paid for that hot dog?

We've been sitting on the edge of our seats for the last three years, wondering about the effect of the economic downturn on the restaurant industry. But, as anyone who reads Eater knows, the number of big-ticket restaurant openings continues to outstrip the closings. How can this be?

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flickr/mugley

​Yesterday, with the kind assistance of @mattlehrer and @michelehumes I set off in search of rubber vomit, which I thought would make a nice illustration for a piece on words for "puke." Unfortunately, I failed, after checking out five places that did have things like rubber dog turds and baby diapers with poo in them. So I must apologize for exposing you to the above picture, but it is kind of artistic, isn't it?

It is said that the Inuit have 97 different words for snow, reflecting the primacy of the white stuff in their lives. English speakers are obsessed with quite a different set of words...

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When our Albany correspondent Jan Galligan sent us a link to an article in the Chicago Tribune detailing the 10 most mispronounced food words, we decided to do them one better. So we scoured the web (thanks to Yelp and Serious Eats, among others), and our own gray matter, to come up with an expanded list. The list is not definitive, of course, and from time to time we'll add to it.

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