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When Nate Thayer posted his exchange with an Atlantic editor asking him to contribute to the site for free, he sparked a huge debate over whether writers should ever be expected to go unpaid. The short answer, if you ask me and most journalists, is no. But as a writer who has written for free, the no comes with an explanation.

When I first started writing about food, I found I could land super short pieces about things like local whiskey, seasonal ingredients, and roundups of the best brunch deals. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of outlets were interested in my oddball food stories about the architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's kitchen designs, or the dead English romance novelist Barbara Cartland.

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Insatiable Critic.com

It certainly seems that way from this posting on Good Food Jobs. According to the description, a "well-known food critic/novelist/magazine writer with office in West 70s," is looking for an eager, organized, food lover to do "everything [she] would do [her]self" if there were a few more hours in the day. Greene, a former NY Mag food critic, separately announced on Twitter that she is searching for a "brilliant" aide. The onetime Elvis-lover is also a longtime resident of the Upper West Side.

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Our man Sietsema was in the studios of the Heritage Radio Network yesterday chatting up a storm with Let's Eat In host Cathy Erway. .

Listen to the interview here.

Is that strawberry jam -- or real blood?

This via Incredible Things (where else?) via Tracy Van Dyk: an artist who works in a bakery in Ratchaburi, Thailand -- a suburb just southwest of Bangkok -- has invented a product made out of bread dough that looks exactly like bloody body parts.

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Food Is the New Rock has a new podcast, and a recent episode features L.A.'s Jonathan Gold. There's a lot of fun food- and music-related chit chat, but the highlight has got to be when Gold mentions that his favorite blog in the world is The Hairpin.

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Mirko Credito, Fritture

That spot where the food and art worlds collide is a really odd place. And I find I'm always fascinated by food-related art projects, even when (especially when?) they're over the top.

You might know Brooklyn-based New Zealander Henry Hargreaves from his previous projects, like the old-fashioned typeface he created out of streaky raw bacon, or the Chuck Close-inspired portraits cobbled together with shades of burnt toast. For his newest project, Deep Fried Gadgets, he collaborated with stylist Caitlin Levin, to present food porny pictures of battered and fried iPads and Game Boys.

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Johnny Iuzzini on WhoSay

Johnny Iuzzini on WhoSay

Johnny Iuzzini reports back with pictures of wd-50's "incredible" new tasting menu, via Twitter. The pictures are phone quality, but it's fun to get a peek at the dishes nonetheless. See the rest here.

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Wikipedia

You don't need to watch Futurama* to know that in the future, our grotesque output of garbage will come back to haunt us. Or, as Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Edward Humes puts it, "We don't see the consequences of our wastefulness."

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