It's official, the Cupcake Spot is coming to St. Petersburg, at 405 Central Avenue #102 (727-825-0572). Not sure of the opening date yet, but will let you know soon.

In the meantime, you can see the largest provolone ever shipped to the United States at Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg. This baby is 800 pounds and 9 feet long. As a Christmas tradition Mazzaro’s cuts a large extra sharp Provolone right before Christmas, this year on Dec. 20. Whoa: the extra sharp cheese took 8,800 gallons of milk to produce. The cheese will be taken out of Mazzaro’s cheese department with a small crane and forklift and moved to a special area for cutting.  Samples will be available and the cheese will be on sale while supplies last.

Wouldn't Michael Pollan make an excellent Secretary of Agriculture? If you think so, go here. Pollan, author of runaway New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma, NYT journalist, and unofficial guru of the local, non-industrial food movement, framed his agenda most recently in his essay ‘Farmer In Chief’ published in the NYT Magazine, the Big Idea being:

“Most of the problems our food system faces today are because of its reliance on fossil fuels, and to the extent that our policies wring the oil out of the system and replace it with the energy of the sun, those policies will simultaneously improve the state of our health, our environment and our security.”