just like buttah

Have you seen the new online Chow magazine? It's snappy and fun, and yes, I'm writing for them. See what's keeping me in butter money, here, on the Grinder, and DO NOT miss the video link (or the outtakes). Everything you ever wanted to see on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair. Plus, butter sculpting! (As for Chow, I believe you have to register on Chowhound.com--just a sign-in name and password--in order to access Chow, for now.)

When I worked at Chronicle Books, we put out a lot of goofy single-subject books. But the all-time favorite was Butter Magic. Butter Magic, covering the fabulous trend-of-the-moment of butter sculpting (we had, after all, just put out Snowman and Sand Castle) was an in-house spoof that probably could have become a real book if anyone had really wanted to get behind it. I still remember the picture in Saveur of the life-sized cow carved in butter and kept in a refrigerated glass display room at the Wisconsin State Fair. Writes my now-Minnesota-dwelling sister, "Butter sculpting is HUGE out here!" It is so huge, in fact, that the busts of Princess Kay of the Milky Way, the beauty queen of all things dairy (not to be confused with Alice in Dairyland, who fufills the same role in Wisconsin, according to B.), and her court are carved lifesize out of butter and put on display throughout the 12 days of the fair. Don't believe me? It's on Flickr, honey. See the future of the medium.