It's the afternoon, and you deserve a break. Sit back, pour yourself a glass, and enjoy these food stories from around the Internet.
The Links
Strange though it may be, a new set of studies has found that singing "Happy Birthday" might actually make your cake taste better. The same goes for other rituals, too, and even following instructions on how to eat a chocolate bar made it taste better to study participants. We knew there had to be some point to table manners! [Salon]
When it comes to some bar equipment, it's hard to tell if it's the ritual of the thing or the actual product that makes a difference--looking at you, fancy ice machines--but the Flux Capacitor, the complicated carbonation regulation system at the extremely nerdy Brooklyn beer bar Torst, has science on its side. [Serious Eats]
More a question of food packaging than the food itself, but Modern Farmer investigated the question of whether a sheep's wool will grow forever if left unshorn, using the always-entertaining case study of Shrek, the New Zealand sheep who successfully avoided six annual shearings in a row by hiding in a cave. [Modern Farmer]
More like SILLY-con Valley! One venture capital bigwig sunk $10 million into Melt, a chain restaurant that only sells grilled cheese and was founded by the guy who invented the cheap Flip camera. In this video, he explains why this might have been a good idea. [ValleyWag]
In better business idea news, a Florida man is making his own bottarga--salt-cured blocks of mullet roe--and it's quickly becoming a favorite of high-end chefs like Chris Kostow, even over the old-school Italian imports. [NYT]
What do banh mi, vindaloo, Jamaican patties, and ramen have in common? They're all secretly fusion foods, the results of age-old culinary culture-crossing. [Smithsonian]
The Drinks
If you don't have a Flux Capacitor on hand to perfectly carbonate your beer, don't worry--once you throw a can of beer into the freezer to make a Beer Popsicle, all that science kind of stops mattering.