Photo: Alex Martinez

Creative cooks have found many unorthodox uses for muffin tins. You can use them to help create a steamy environment in your oven (crucial to crusty bread). You can use them to make individual frittata/quiche/strata-like eggy wonders for brunch. Or you can use them to make Myron Mixon's World-Famous Cupcake Chicken.

Mixon, whose family started a barbecue take-out business in Georgia, is a competitive pit master who proudly wears a massive ring commemorating his third barbecue world championship win. He competes in many events, from Whole Hog to Pork Shoulder, and knows just what the judges are looking for. When it comes to chicken, they want thighs—and they want them all the same size. Chicken thighs can vary, of course, though most are square-shaped. So Mixon found that by using poultry shears to trim them to three or four inches wide, he could fit a square piece of meat into a round hole—the muffin tin—and they'd all be the same dimension.

[After the jump, what exactly cupcake chicken looks like...]

Photo: Spiegel Online/DPA

There are so many reasons to love a beauty pageant for cows. The winners get sashes. And trophies. Some of the contestants train at camps where they're washed and brushed daily, and encouraged to bulk up, since judges are looking for curves and buxom udders.

A stunner named Krista won the grand prize at the 2011 German Holstein Show last week. She defended her 2009 title against some 200 other dairy cows in the competition, with her bright eyes, taut skin, strong legs and round belly.

But nothing makes me happier than this factoid: The animals get their hair cut and blow-dried before the big day—but not curled. Cows, you see, have a natural permanent wave.

[via Spiegel Online International]

Photo: MoMA Store

Celebrate making it halfway through the week with a little something fun...

Watermelon Knife, $25. A green handle and red blade will make this the cutest tool in your kitchen, and the nonstick serrated blade and seed-shaped cutouts (which let air in) help the fruit fall neatly onto your cutting board.

Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips, $9. Dress up nails fast (minus the dry time) with these press-on polish strips from Sally Hansen. From denim patterns to chic lace designs, your fingers will get a fashion upgrade in no time.

Hail Merry Blonde Macaroons, $4.99. They're made with coconut oil, which melts at 76 degrees. That means you need to store these cookies in the fridge—but it also means they dissolve in your mouth in a most delicious way.

Pressa Hanging Dryer, $4.99. Compact and cute, this hanging dryer offers an easy way to dry the entire family's swimsuits. Or, on a rainy day, have your kids create works of art and display them in their rooms like a mobile.

The World's Smallest Post Service, $22.95. A new kit designed by artist Lea Redmond lets you send tiny—and next-level-adorable—messages to your loved ones.

Photo: Keller + Keller

When Joanne Chang, who majored in applied mathematics and economics at Harvard, ditched a career in management consulting for one in the food industry, she chucked a whole mess of books. Goodbye, expanded edition of Applied Calculus for Business, Economics, and the Social and Life Sciences; hello, bread-making bibles and Southeast Asian cooking manuals. Cookbooks are a huge part of Chang's new life as the proprietor of Flour, a bakery-cafe with three branches in Boston. She and her husband, Christopher Myers, are also co-owners of Myers + Chang, a diner that serves Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai and Vietnamese specialties. Here, Chang shares her top five cookbooks, from the brass-tacks basics to more specialized guides, and why she thinks they belong in everyone's kitchen.

Amy's Bread by Amy Scherber
"Amy has a no-nonsense way of explaining how to make simple breads and pastries that have guided me for years. If you're starting a cookbook collection, this book will make you feel Amy's passion and spirit for bread baking. She's not hoity-toity. She's more like, 'Hey, this is my bakery, and here are the breads that we make—and you can make them too.' Bread is something a lot of people shy away from, but Amy makes it approachable."

The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum
"This is an introductory book that has enough in it that even professionals who've been baking for years will find it useful. Rose is famous within the pastry world for her exacting testing and measurements. She isn't a restaurant pastry chef, but you're not going to make restaurant deserts in your kitchen—you're going to make cakes for your family. (But we use this book almost daily at my bakery, Flour, and a variation of her sour cream coffee cake is on the menu.)"

Next: More of Joanne Chang's indispensable cookbooks...

Photo: Thinkstock

Red wine on ice? That advice seems to go against what most of us know—that whites should be served cold and reds at room temperature (assuming the room is not a meat locker)—but drinking some reds chilled can be refreshing. Wine expert Mark Oldman answers five questions on how, what and why.

Why don't people chill red wines? It's all about tannins, Oldman says, which come from grape skins and seeds. They're used in the making of red wine but not white. Tannins are often described as tasting bitter and puckery (they're also why strong black tea can taste astringent), and cooler temperatures make them more prominent. But light reds have imperceptible tannin levels, so chilling those varieties isn't a problem. In fact, doing so will make the wine taste more refreshing and will help "focus" its flavor. It will also make it taste less alcoholic, or "hot," in winespeak.

For all of the recording innovations jazz and country guitar legend Les Paul introduced in his lifetime, here's one he probably never saw coming. Paul passed away in 2009, but he would've been 96 today. In his honor, some musical wizards at Google have turned their logo into a guitar that you can actually strum with your mouse. Not only that, but you can record your song too. With apologies to Mr. Paul: my rendition of "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

Photo: Thinkstock

You know how sometimes you keep daydreaming of something, only to realize it's here right now, if only you'd open your eyes and see it? That's how I felt this morning, when I woke up thinking, "Well, summer's coming, and isn't that going to be great? I'm going to drink iced tea and eat fruit from the farmers' market and make lots of ice cream and..." Reality check: That holiday weekend over a week ago heralded the start of summer. It's here. I have 13 weeks until Labor Day, and if September 5 rolls around and I have yet to drink an Arnold Palmer, I'm going to be whining, "How did I let this happen?" To avoid that, I've drawn up a list of summer food resolutions...

1. Go to the greenmarket at least once a week for fruit (strawberries now, cherries in July, peaches in August) and vegetables (especially arugula and corn). Though, I refuse to fall for those pricey zucchini flowers...at least not too often.
2. Always have home-brewed iced tea in the fridge.
3. Eat more no-cook dinners, whether it's a chilled soup, cold roasted chicken, a hacked meal or a big salad.

Photo: Thinkstock

Is it written somewhere that rhubarb must be paired with strawberries and used in pie, and in pie alone? Or that if you really know what you're doing, you are allowed to put it in a crumble? I don't know who says the spring vegetable—which is in season right now—must be relegated to dessert, but I do know six bloggers who say it absolutely works in savory dishes. They're complementing pork and chicken with rhubarb's sweetness, using goat cheese to brighten its flavor and even using it in Indian curries.

1. Savory Rhubarb and Chipotle Goat Cheese Pizza from Eats Well with Others

A pizza topped with a compote of rhubarb, balsamic vinegar and cranberry juice, sprinkled with smoky chipotle-infused goat cheese. Sounds weird? It works.

2. Sweet-and-Savory Rhubarb Jam from Cookbook Archaeology

This would be good with sharp Cheddar; some might even put it on grilled cheese. Also: with sausage on an English muffin for breakfast.

3. Savory Rhubarb Lentil Curry from Scissors and Spice

French lentils + rhubarb + mustard seeds + sweet potatoes = delicious

Photo: Tara Donne

Baking without using wheat flour—the base ingredient in everything from chocolate chip cookies to red velvet cake—sounds like something out of a hybrid reality show called Survivor: The Bakery Challenge. Still, the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland says 6 percent of the population is now following a gluten-free diet, avoiding wheat. That means there are a lot of people roaming the aisles of health food stores wondering what the difference is between garbanzo and fava bean flour and rice flour, and what exactly is xanthan gum? Erin McKenna, who founded the gluten-free, vegan bakeshop BabyCakes NYC, which now has an outpost in Los Angeles, just published her second book, BabyCakes Covers the Classics (Clarkson Potter). Although she had her share of disasters when she was first learning how to make muffins and pies sans all-purpose flour, she's since perfected honey buns, thin mints and German chocolate cake, which makes her just the person to answer a few of our questions.