Culture has just settled in to a new office space in Somerville, MA, and we are looking for two interns to help us out with the daily workings of this ever-so-intricate magazine-making process. Please read the requirements below before submitting your info. Thank you!

We are seeking part time editorial interns for the Somerville (Massachusetts) Culture office.

Duties will include research, copywriting, blogging, article formatting and data entry for our website and magazine. Opportunities to accompany staff to events may arise as well.

Ideal candidates are college juniors and above with office/admin experience who are organized and able to follow specific instructions. Knowledge of fine food and artisan cheese is helpful, but not required.

10-15 hours per week, unpaid.

To apply, please email resume, cover letter, and writing sample* to Eilis Maynard, eilis@culturecheesemag.com

Good news! The graphic anti-cheese billboards on display in Albany have been replaced with positive billboards sponsored by The American Dairy Association and Dairy council, much to the relief of the locals:

"When we saw the sign with the naked buttock, it was just distasteful. It didn't have a clear message," said Maria Stamoulis, of the Schodack Diner.

The group that put up the billboards is targeting cheese because it's the number one source of saturated fat. They're also criticizing schools in Albany, saying they serve too much cheese to kids, adding to the nation's obesity crisis.

"This gives us an opportunity to say that cheese is a wonderful food and it should be a big part of the American diet," Matt Nelligan from the New York State Farm Bureau told Newschannel 13 a month ago.

According to a study published by Dr Elodie Briefer and Dr Alan McElligott, baby goats will adjust the sound of their calls to mimic those of their social group. It's just like human Texas babies developing a drawl, right? The BBC has the story:

"We found that genetically-related kids produced similar calls... but the calls of kids raised in the same social groups were also similar to each other, and became more similar as the kids grew older."

"This suggests that goat kids modify their calls according to their social surroundings, developing similar 'accents'."

Dr Briefer suggested that the social structure of the goats could be the motivator behind the convergence in calls.

"This could act as a 'group member badge' allowing them to identify members of the group, differentiate them from members of other groups, and increase group cohesion," she told BBC Nature.

You heard it here, goat cheese infused with fish oil. Is the goal to make an extra healthy cheese? We're not sure. Tell us what you think:

It may smell fishy, but a team of US scientists is working on creating a goat cheese made with fish oil, an underused but health-packed food.

In a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Food Science, goat cheese was shown to be a successful carrier of fish oil -- an underused ingredient because of its strong odor and aftertaste and a finicky food that tends to oxidize quickly.

Fish oil has more balanced proportions of omega-3 fatty acids compared to other sources like flax and algal oil, the researchers said.

Read more

Braiden Rex-Johnson at the Seattle Times gives us a snapshot of a cheesemaking class with Mary Karlin. Check out her new book, Artisan Cheese Making at Home: Techniques & Recipes for Mastering World-Class Cheeses:

"All of you are cheese heads or you wouldn't be here," Mary Karlin said as she welcomed us to her Beginning Cheese-Making Workshop at the Art Institute of Seattle last fall.

The assembled students, including local foodies such as Sur La Table founder Shirley Collins and vegetarians in search of a good protein source, could hardly wait to begin making simple, fresh cheeses.

"We have beautiful milk from here locally. We are lucky to have it," Karlin said as she cast an admiring gaze over jugs of ivory-colored liquid from Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy, Grace Harbor and Medosweet Farms.

The results are in for Saturday's Mac-n-Cheese Bowl in Colonie, New York. The overall winner, "Perfect Storm," is made with with lobster, crab, mascarpone, pecorino and aged provolone...in other words, be there next year!

Angelo's 677 Prime in Albany and Valente's Restaurant in Watervliet took home the top prizes Saturday during the third annual timesunion.com/Table Hopping Mac-n-Cheese Bowl to benefit the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York.

The event attracted more than 2,100 people and will generate at least $35,000 for the food bank, said its executive director, Mark Quandt.

Held at the Albany Marriott in Colonie, the Mac-n-Cheese Bowl featured 29 restaurants competing for judges' and people's-choice awards for different variations of macaroni and cheese, plus 10 home cooks whose recipes were tasted only by the judges.

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Janet Fletcher has run into many repeating questions over her years of teaching cheese classes, and in an attempt to remedy these queries, she wrote this FAQ article for cheese lovers. Here's an excerpt:

Q: Why is raw-milk cheese illegal?

A: It isn't illegal. I eat raw-milk cheese all the time, and you probably do, too. If you sprinkle Parmigiano-Reggiano on your pasta or crumble Roquefort into a salad, you're eating raw-milk cheese.

Many American cheese producers make raw-milk wheels, too. The acclaimed Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Wisconsin and Fiscalini's Bandage-Wrapped Cheddar from Modesto come to mind.

Read the full article here

Some people want a party bus and an ice luge for their 40th birthday, but Jeanne Carpenter of Cheese Underground wanted to hang out with some newborn lambs. So she did:

We arrived late afternoon, just in time for transporting the 11 lambs born that morning to an Amish neighbor's farm, as Brenda had run out of clean stalls (this occasionally happens when you have 275 moms giving birth to an average of twins in a 30-day period). Another 75 ewes will lamb in May, giving Brenda a longer milking season, and thus more milk to make cheese later into the season.

Madame Fromage is always fielding questions, but this one prompted a great post on the best ways to learn about cheese:

This week, I’m thinking about a question from a reader named Mia. She wants to live the golden dream -- to work in the cheese world as either a maker or a monger. She wrote to me asking how to gain experience. When I put the question out on Twitter recently, several cheesemongers fired right back: "Tell her to get a job at a cheese counter!"

For Mia and others who are sniffing along the dairy periphery, below are some useful resources. I should note that Mia has already explored some of these books and opportunities. She’s clearly a woman ahead of her time. I hope to meet her soon -- hopefully, over a stack of wheels.

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Joy the Baker knows how to prepare for a killer dinner party, and she's sharing one of her puff pastry tricks here:

Puff pastry has a way of making everything easy.

After a bit of baking, the puff pastry becomes golden brown and butter flakey. The cheese melts and locks in all the herby good flavor. The whole pastry becomes a party-friendly cracker rod.

Ingredients
1 large egg, beaten
few dashes of hot sauce
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed but still cold.
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons chopped shallots
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
coarse ground black pepper
coarse sea salt

See the full recipe here