Decades ago, homemakers relied on a man in a tidy apron and a necktie to provide the perfect cut of meat for Sunday dinner and a stop at the local butcher shop was part of the regular shopping routine. Over time, grocery stores started offering a similarly packaged cuts and it was the friendly neighborhood meat man who was being cut out.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, year after year, the number of grocery store butchers has grown steadily while the number of specialty store butchers has struggled to add numbers. Last year, there were more than 94,000 butchers working in grocery store chains.

Comparatively, specialty store butchers only accounted for 13,500 jobs that year, but that’s up significantly from 2008, when the economy tanked. Since the economic crisis, specialty store butchers have grown in number at a higher rate than their chain store counterparts. And that’s not including self-employed butchers.
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Anderson Cooper's favorite teen bride and alliterative tweeter Courtney Stodden is on a sexy campaign to sexily promote eating sexy veggies sexily. Because of vegetarianism. Sexy, sexy vegetarianism.

While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my! - April 18 is National Animal Crackers Day!

Nothing tugs on your nostalgia like the innocent sweetness of animal crackers. Perhaps they were your favorite snack at lunchtime in elementary school, or they still offer comfort to you at the end of a bad day. No matter how you snack, you're never too old to grab a colorful box that still makes you think of recess.

During the late 1800s, America coveted something that England was rich with, so much that we had to import it for ourselves: animal-shaped biscuits. The demand escalated, and homegrown bakers began to make and sell their own. Stauffer's Biscuit Company was the first around the turn of the century in Pennsylvania.
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