The New York Times: The fight to save a family-owned oyster bed in Northern California has thrown together some very strange bedfellows, including Alice Waters and Republicans trying to promote the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. - Patrick Farrell The New Yorker: Margaret Thatcher did not, in fact, invent soft-serve ice cream. But the myth may be a left-wing metaphor for her politics. - Melissa Clark Food Safety News: Revisiting the unsavory story of pink slime in the United States ground beef supply. New internal e-mails from the U.S.D.A."s Food Safety and Inspection Service show that it wasn't only consumers who were ignorant about the stuff; regulators were too. - Julia Moskin Southern Living: The magazine declares that Durham, N.C., has "the South's tastiest food." Via Durham News Service, and a hat tip to @applebome, a former Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, who tweeted, "Some of us remember when Bullocks was all there was." - Maria Newman Bloomberg Businessweek: No, it won't be "pork butt" anymore: it'll be "Boston roast." The U.S.D.A. has permitted the pork and beef industries to rename 350 cuts of meat, to increase consumer appeal. That icky "butt" word will depart in this upmarket rebranding, in which trusty beef-under-blade-boneless-steak will now become "Denver steak." - Glenn Collins Details: Muscle cramps? A scaly rash on your face? Numbness in your hands? Maybe you need some vitamins. - Jeff Gordinier The Washington Post: Crackers, so easy for entertaining, are also easy to make. And if you have saltines in mind, try making your own salt. - Patrick Farrell The Journal News: Student chefs will now cook for you at Westchester Community College. - Jeff Gordinier The Economist: Here's the thing about decaffeinated coffee: It produces beaucoup caffeine as a waste product, a pollutant that can kill seedlings and germinating plants. But this waste is rich in nutrients, and could now be used as animal feed and fertilizer thanks to a new decaffeination technique involving genetically modified bacteria. - Glenn Collins Salted and Styled: Whatever "food-inspired living" might be, this blog makes it look gorgeous. - Julia Moskin Afar: Noodle nirvana in Tokyo. - Jeff Gordinier NPD Group: Nationwide, after three years of alarming declines in customers" visits to restaurants that include children (called "parties with kids" in industry vernacular), such visits were flat - again - for the second consecutive year. So, five years into the recession, families with children report to researchers that it's still too expensive to eat out. (Registration required.) - Glenn Collins Elizabeth Minchilli in Rome: How to make pilaf the way they do it in Uzbekistan. First, you're going to have to get yourself a big cast iron pot. - Jeff Gordinier The New York Post: How last week's hepatitis A exposure at a West Village restaurant illustrates that no inspection system is perfect. (Some are more imperfect than others.) - Julia Moskin YouTube: "Nothing good can come out of eating something named porcupine fish," Aimee Nezhukumatathil offers at the start of a poem called "The Fugu Soup Blues." Then again, what's delicious (and dangerous) can be so tempting. - Jeff Gordinier