Saying that five times fast led to a college student’s likeness in Darigold butter.

It took 110 pounds of butter, two days of carving and a 14-second, tongue-twisting video to make it happen. One lucky Seattle resident, Haley Alaji, was announced the grand-prize winner in Darigold’s “Better Butter” online contest, and as her prize, Darigold created an oversized butter bust carving of Alaji that will feature prominently on billboards throughout Puget Sound through December.

“It’s amazing to see myself in butter—the carving is so precise, and it actually looks just like me!” says Alaji, a theater student at the Cornish College of the Arts who lives in downtown Seattle and moved to the Northwest four months ago from Detroit. “I happened to come across Darigold’s contest asking people to submit videos of themselves saying ‘better butter better’ five times fast, and decided to go for it. I found a street performer playing the violin, set up my camera and shot a little spontaneous dance video, and the judges picked me!”

An interview with father and son Michel and Sébastien Bras of France.

By Brenden Blaine Darby

A small glance, a deep breath, a long pause and a lingering stare. These two men seem to dance with each other on a cerebral level, always interacting with the other’s thoughts. My questions are pondered in their own unique way and only answered once all the right words are ready to be expressed. While speaking, they look at each other to make sure they are always extracting and mixing their ideas together.

We need to remind our students that communication is an art that recognizes the dignity and importance of the receiver. In fact, have them consider taking the E-Mail Pledge.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Last month, we talked about social-media etiquette for students and listed the five recommendations of accuracy, brevity, consistency, directness and expansion. This month, during the holiday season, we will review some common e-mail practices and suggest some guidelines for students to adopt because they are important in personal, and especially in professional, circles.

First Principle for E-mail Etiquette
There are a few commonly accepted principles for using e-mail that most professionals practice; students who Twitter, Facebook and instant message may not be aware of them. The first principle involves recognizing and honoring the audience of e-mail messages. Sometimes that audience is clear in the “to” box, but students should be warned that e-mail messages are often forwarded to other people and, therefore, need to be written carefully with a sense that others might read them and they might be kept and used for a range of different purposes in the future.

A must list that students should review frequently so they might keep their jobs in commercial kitchens.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

Happy holidays!

Those of you who read this column on a regular basis know that I preach the need to teach your students more than how to cook. Unless you teach a pure home-economics class, your ultimate goal is to have your students get jobs in the culinary field. If you don’t teach them how to work in a commercial kitchen, you are dooming them to failure.

So, in honor of the 12 Days of Christmas, and December being the 12^th month, I will recap the 12 things that your students must know to be able to keep their jobs in a commercial kitchen. Feel free to print them out and give them to your students. Tell your students to look at them frequently when they start working.

The Great American Can Roundup Industry Challenge raises more than $183,000 for charity.

As the nation celebrated America Recycles Day on Nov. 15, the aluminum-beverage-can industry announced it had collected and recycled more than 235,100 pounds of cans, raising nearly $183,830 for local charities across the country according to the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI).

The Rexam North American beverage-can headquarters office in Chicago won first place in the annual industry competition, with 70,775 pounds of used aluminum cans (874 per capita), followed by Novelis in LaGrange, Ga., whose employees collected 3,517 pounds of cans (352 per capita). In third place is Ball Corporation’s plant in Findlay, Ohio, collecting and recycling 36,611 pounds (101 per capita). Winners are selected from the highest per-capita collection rates based on the number of pounds of aluminum collected per employee at each site.