For those of you in the DC area:

Best Banh Mi:

Arugula Files: Is the Banh Mi the new Cupcake? (Plus the Best Banh Mi in the DC area)

Not-so-Happy Meal

Crazy ... McDonald's hamburger's don't age.

August News Round-up

Scanning the headlines ...

Meditation for a Stronger Brain. More and more evidence is piling up that the brain is just one big muscle, capable of being "trained" in ways we never imagined before.

The world's most powerful drug: Coffee. But does it really work the way we think it does?

Food Fight! Pick your favorite movie meal.

Music and motivation: does music help you work out harder, longer, more intensely?

Fruit leather vs Real food. Not quite a full serving of fruit after all.

The end of cheap food? No definitive answers but some good discussion both ways.

Sustainability: Is it even possible?

Mobile Food Carts: an urban farm in a box on wheels.

Cooking for Geeks

Back to school edition here, revving up the brain with some quick, easy, and edible science lessons.

From last week's Science Friday, New Frontier For Geeks: The Kitchen.

In Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food, software engineer Jeff Potter discusses using the hacker mindset in the kitchen, from cooking salmon in the dishwasher to a warranty-voiding experiment on his oven to get the scorching temperatures necessary for perfect pizza crust.

Other Science Friday episodes you might want to revisit:

The basil blight that is threatening our pesto.

Do-it-yourself gardening.

The science of cheese-making.

Chef Wylie Dufresne experiments in his laboratory/kitchen.

The evolution of beer and the science of beer bubbles. (Your eyes don't always tell you the truth.)