Cheese & Culture: A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization came out last month. Melissa Pasanen of the Burlington Free Press interviewed author Paul Kindstedt, who's also a food science professor at UVM and the co-director of the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese, about the book.

From cheese’s ancient origins when it was first developed to enable almost universally lactose-intolerant adult humans to take advantage of dairy nutrition back around 6500 BC, Kinstedt painstakingly traces the story of cheese making, illuminating both large swathes and fascinating corners of global history along the way.

These two Floridian cities are in a battle over which one has the better Cuban sandwich. NPR's Miami and Tampa newsrooms have stepped in to make eloquent arguments for both sides. We suggest you read what each city has to say, and If you have an opinion go to NPR and vote for your favorite sandwich. Right now Tampa's in the lead:

Tampa's version includes salami, and it might have a swipe of mayo, depending on who's making it. Each city uses differently-shaped bread. Those are about the only substantive differences.

Now, most food historians agree the sandwich was invented in Tampa's Ybor City, but that's not the end of our story.

On Thursday, the Tampa City Council officially renamed the Cuban sandwich the "Historic Tampa Cuban Sandwich."

Thus, the gauntlet was thrown.

Read more about the smackdown here.

U.S. Park Rangers stumbled upon six dead, frozen cows in a remote cabin in the Rockies. The cows are presumably part of a herd of 29 that went missing in the mountains last fall. These poor cows, who most likely huddled in the cabin for shelter, have left the Park Service with the conundrum on their hands:

The cabin is at Conundrum Hot Springs at 11,200 feet, accessible only by a precipitous hike. And rangers are trying to figure out how to get rid of the carcasses before they decompose.

Read the full story here.

Photo by ArtNow314

An investigation into Inner Mongolia's specialty "milk wine" uncovered that four out of five bottles were illegally made using powdered milk, fragrance, and edible creams instead of fresh milk.

Under a 2009 standard, making milk wines requires blending liquor with fresh milk or whey before undergoing fermentation, the report said.

However, despite the difference in ingredients, fake milk wines taste similar to the genuine product, said Deng Zhao, an employee with an alcohol company in Chifeng City in Inner Mongolia.

Read the full story here.

Photo by NickPiggot

Dairy farming was recently ranked as the 199th worst job out of 200 in a CareerCast poll. Why? It's hard work! Being a newspaper reporter was ranked as 196, so Mike Gruss, a reporter for Hampton Roads, set out to learn more about a job that was supposedly worse than his own. In the end, he found out that dairy farming isn't so bad after all.

The first thing her own grandchildren do when they come to visit is run for the goats. In an era where self-sustainability is in vogue, Wright makes her own cheese, yogurt, milk and ice cream. The homemade ice cream has about twice as much butterfat, because of the goat milk, as store brands.

Read the full story here.

Over 55% of the milk that Indians consume is now coming from buffalo, instead of the Indian Holy Cow. Over the past 40 years, there's been a dramatic shift away from using cows to till and fertilize farmland. They're being replaced with buffalo (who produce more milk), diesel-powered farm equipment, and chemical fertilizers.

The most obvious reason for that is milk. An average Murrah buffalo produces 2,000-odd litres over a 300-day lactation period, which is more or less what comparable elite indigenous cattle breeds such as Sahiwal yield. But buffalo milk also fetches higher price, as it contains 7-7.5 per cent fat – almost twice that from cows.

Read the full story here.

Photo by seeveeaar

The number of milk processing facilities in the state of Vermont has increased 36% since 2001. A milk processing facility is any plant that takes fluid milk and makes it into tasty things like cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. Fifty one of the 79 Vermont state facilities are on-the-farm!

Diane Bothfeld, who grew up on a dairy farm in central Vermont, is deputy secretary for dairy policy for the state’s agency of agriculture. She attributes the growth in cheese making to several factors:

• A market driven by people’s desire to know where their food comes from and who’s producing it;

• For farmers, greater control over the price they can get for their product if they process fluid milk, a phenomenon known as value-added...

Read the full story here.

Finger-food nuggets made from cheddar cheese and grits!

I’ve added a lot of cheese to make them into a decadent yet homey finger food. Serve them for breakfast or dinner, with cocktails, or when you’re watching the game. These nuggets are great on their own but are even better when dipped in Souped-Up Mayo.

Get the recipe here.

Photo by Hirsheimer & Hamilton

Edward Schumacher-Matos at The NPR Ombudsman Blog analyzes listener feedback on a recent NPR commentary on raw milk. In said commentary Bonny Wolf described her first taste of raw milk, as tasty and thrilling, and ultimately ended up rubbing some readers the wrong way:

That approving statement—and the commentary that followed—left some listeners feeling as though Wolf did the audience a dangerous disservice.

"How could this qualify as reporting on NPR?," wrote Jo Ann Lutz from Durham, NC. "The article implied that the government is wrong to require milk to be pasteurized and that the nutrients in raw milk are very important."

"Where were the facts?," Lutz added. "What are the illnesses the government is worried about?

Florida's greenbelt law was originally put in place in the 1950s to protect farmland by taxing it at a lower rate than other land. But recently, some Floridians have been taking advantage of this tax break by literally renting cows for their land or even hiring ranchers to keep cows on the land.

Other beneficiaries of the law have included Walt Disney World ($1.5 million in savings), as well as U.S. Senator Bill Nelson ($43,000 in savings), who keeps about six cows on 55 acres of land near the Indian River, courtesy of a cattle ranching operation that leases the property for free. Like Nelson, some developers simply offer their land to ranchers for no charge. Others, as the Herald noted, actually pay the ranchers -- hence the loophole's nickname, "rent-a-cow."

Read the full story here.