Ants are a reality of any picnic, as all hard-core summer picnickers know.
Can we beat them? Honestly, no.
So we may as well join them ... or at least, have them join us. Chef Jacques Martine offers a recipe for chocolate covered ants at chefdepot. Strictly for gourmands, his recipe demands real vanilla bean from Madagascar and is full of helpful hints. My favorite tips:
"avoid red ants -- they're too spicy"
"Take care not to smash [the ants]. They stay more flavorful and retain extra moisture if intact."
"these make great dessert garnishes!"
Will chocolate-covered ants ward off real ants at your picnic? Find out for yourself.
Remember the saying, "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" from the 1980's? Whoever said this -- I think it was comedian Lewis Grizzard -- didn't factor in one important consideration when it comes to both men and to quiche: men like picnics and picnics like quiche.
In my book, quiche is the perfect picnic food. It doesn't have to be kept warm. It's not messy. Best of all, it's more exciting and savory than sandwiches. My favorite quiche of all time has to be Quiche Lorraine. If you're really ambitious -- I'm not -- you can even make your own crumbly, delicious crust. Otherwise, you can travel the pre-made route and follow this recipe, which was adapted from Julia Child's original Quiche Lorraine.
To fill the caloric void between plain water and regular sports drinkers, a few years ago, the makers of Gatorade created Propel Fitness Water. The drink was a huge success. With carb-phobes trying to avoid excess sugars, the vitamin-enhanced beverage caught on with a health conscientious market. Then in January of this year, Gatorade introduced Propel Calcium into the exercise beverage market. Like the original Propel Fitness Water, Propel Calcium is a low-calorie, vitamin-enhanced thirst quencher. Each serving provides the equivalent of 9% of the Dietary Reference Intake. (Wahoo! I love Calcium!)
Conceivably more successful than the original due to its huge celebrity following, Propel Calcium comes in three tasty flavors: Mango, Mandarin Orange and Mixed Berry. If you haven't tried Propel with Calcium, just remember: if it's good enough for Jennifer Aniston, it's good enough for you.
Despite the fact that I am a technically Southerner, I cannot stand drinking Sweet Tea. But lack of a Sweet Tea-tooth doesn't prevent me from appreciating a good iced Moroccan Mint tea on a hot summer day.
For ages, Moroccans have enjoyed green tea, flavored with mint and sweetened with a hearty serving of sugar. Part ritual, part cuisine, friends who have lived in Morocco tell me that you can't get through the day without enjoying at least one pot of the anti-oxidant-packed libation. Honest Tea's version of the North African specialty is made with a touch of organic cane sugar. The slight sweetness cuts the bitterness of the green tea, while also enhancing the mint flavor. With roughly 1/4 of the caffeine in coffee and 1/6 of the calories in other bottled tea drinks, Honest Tea's Moroccan Mint is like visiting the Casbah without leaving your couch.
Forget about the so-called Italian spaghetti western. This time around, Food Movies We Love brings us to Tampopo, the world's first Japanese noodle western.
Written and directed by Juzo Itami, Tampopo tells the story of Goro (played by Tsutomu Yamazaki) a truck driver/guardian angel who comes to town to help widowed noodlemaker Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) create the greatest fast-food noodle joint Japan has ever seen.
Equal parts Shane, The Seven Samurai and Big Night, Tampopo is a crossover hit. Whether you like art-house movies with subtitles or whether you like noodles, Tampopo is guaranteed to please.
Founded by high altitude food coach Chef Art Eggertsen, Probar is an all-natural alternative to the isolate- and mineral-infused bars eaten by runners, cyclists, backpackers, swimmers and other exercise masochists. With over 70% raw foods, Probar insists on keeping it real by taking real food -- peanut butter, raisins, sunflower seeds, coconut, cashews and so forth -- and putting them into an energy bar.
The result? Something that's incredibly good for you when you're working hard, but doesn't taste like it came from a test tube.
For me, it made the difference last Saturday between riding my bike the ten miles home and walking it home. So while it's no crowbar, Probar definitely packs a wallop.
Forget about lousy tomato juice and those miniature bottles of bad wine you had on your last airline flight. Bad beverages and boring cocktails are a thing of the past, or at least they are on Delta Airlines. In an attempt to spruce up their in-flight offerings, the airline has gone the way of so many restaurants and bars by introducing a signature cocktail.
The drink? The "Mile-high Mojitos." (They're great. Trust me, I had about three of them on my flight from Maine to Ohio last week. Of course, the only reason I know about these cocktails to begin with is because I was mysteriously upgraded for free. My lucky day apparently.)
And even though the Mojito wasn't prepared to my exacting specifications, with huge twigs of fresh mint, like they do at my favorite local bar, it was a pretty great cocktail. The mix contained the appropriate level of sweet and tart, cool and limey. So, next time you are flying Delta, by all means, order one. What else are you going to do? Read SkyMall magazine?
Scientific tests just confirmed that a cow in Manitoba, Canada has Mad Cow Disease. Food safety officials first suspected infection earlier last week, but held off commenting officially until the results came back from the laboratory.
Canadians need not worry, though. This isn't likely going to be like the British Mad Cow scare of the mid-1990s. According to the owner, the cow was purchased back in 1992, which means the cow probably contracted the disease prior to the 1996 ruling, which banned unsafe cattle feed.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or Mad Cow Disease, is usually transmitted when cows consume infected cattle parts. While this is only the sixth confirmed case of mad cow disease since 2003, Canadian officials recently announced enhancements to the feed ban to block even more high-risk cattle parts from pet foods and fertilizers.
Forget about the feel good sentiment in Mystic Pizza or the romance of Like Water for Chocolate, I Love You to Death takes on a pizza-slinging womanizer, Joey (Kevin Kline) and his revenge-obsessed wife, Rosalie (Tracey Ullman). When Rosalie finds out that her husband has been cheating on her for years, she and her mother decide to take matters into their own hands. Being Catholic, however, divorce is out of the question. So Rosalie decides to do the next best thing -- murder.
But unable to do the deed herself, Rosalie hires a pair of good-for-nothing hitmen, who poison, beat and shoot the philandering Joey, who, all the while, remains completely oblivious to the scheme.
Next to his role as Otto inA Fish Called Wanda, this movie is definitely Kevin Kline at his comedic best. I guess that should explain why I Love You to Death is a "Food Move I Love to Death".
In my on-going search for the perfect energy food, I've slurped down a number of gels that tasted pretty much like what I imagine the door handle at a Baskin Robbins tastes like -- syrupy, cloying and gross. So, it's no surprise that when I actually come across a gel that is palatable and delicious, I'm eager to sing its praises.
Honey Stinger Gel is the gel for people who normally can't stand the taste of gels. With a naturally low-glycemic index, Honey Stinger Gels provides lasting energy without the irritating blood sugar spike, which always leaves me shaky and disoriented. Theses sweet, convenient packets are also loaded with a healthy dose of my favorite vitamin -- Vitamin B. Of the flavor range, which includes Chocolate, Strawberry, Banana and Gold, my favorite has to be "Ginsting." Not only is the name clever, Ginsting comes with an extra kick of ginseng and caffeine for those killer-long bike rides.
What's so "charming" about this film is that it basically lacks a plot or a narrative structure. In fact, the whole 102 minutes of this film center around a single, simple conceit: the thwarted dinner party. With a cast of snooty French citizens and a surrealist ax to grind, Bruñuel takes the viewer on a wild, winding trip through the absurd distractions in the everyday life of the French bourgeosie.
Every single day when I get off work, my life can be summarized by three distinct phrases: Tired. No energy. Offended by the Atkins diet.
What's a girl to do if she wants to make the local 6 p.m. bike ride with the boys?
Carb-BOOM! may just provide an answer. With quite possibly the greatest name ever to grace a sports-food product, Carb-BOOM! is a vegan sports gel that strikes fear into South Beach Diet-devotees everywhere.
Vanilla-Orange and Chocolate-Cherry deliver caffeine along with the carbs, while caffeine-free flavors include Cinnamon Apple, Banana Peach and Strawberry Kiwi.
Frankly, I don't care how it tastes or what it does for me. The title -- with its all-caps format and exclamation point -- are enough to make me pull one out right now.
It's early June, and the mercury in Virginia has started to climb. But that's alright. Hot weather gives me an excuse to indulge in my favorite summertime treat: frozen Italian desserts. I'm not talking about the Italian Ice that comes in a waxed cup in your grocery's freezer. I'm talking about the artisanal home-made treats that you can only buy at your local transplant gelateria.
From gelato to granita to the rare semifreddo, believe me, I have my loyalties.
Gelato: Made from milk and sugar, combined with other flavorings. The ingredients are super-cooled while stirring to break up ice crystals. Gelato generally has less than 35% air, which results in a dense and extremely flavorful product.
Keanu plays Paul Sutton, a man returning from World War II. He encounters Victoria (in case it's not totally obvious, she's the film's female romantic interest), who is pregnant, unmarried and en route to facing her father. Our hero Keanu volunteers to pretend to be her husband ...
Soon, Paul and Victoria develop feelings for each other. This came as a total shock to me.
So why is this a food movie? Well, because Victoria's dad is a vintner, of course! His vineyard is called "Las Nubes" ("The Clouds" -- the mysterious title is thankfully now explained!), and the final scene -- in which Paul explains his love for Victoria to her angry father -- includes the greatest vineyard fire scene in all of cinematic history.
I remember the first time I realized that I loved Cher. It wasn't when she was swaying sweetly with Sonny, and it wasn't when she belted like a siren, "When you believveeee...." No, my admiration for Cher comes from her Oscar-winning role in a little film from 1987 called, Moonstruck.
Moonstruck not exactly a film about food – it's mostly about love, family and starting over again. But because Nicolas Cage plays a one-handed baker named Ronnie Cammareri and there are subsequently many scenes of his bakery, I think Moonstruck still counts as a food movie.
This amazing film has almost too many highlights to recount in this blog. Of course, there's the opera scene, and then there is the slap-scene, when Cher's Loretta Castorini famously screams, "Snap out of it."
And then there is the scene that is really the reason I regard Moonstruck as one of the greatest Food Movies of all time, wherein Ronnie laments, "Bread is life! Bread is my wife! But where's my life? Where's my wife? I've lost my arm!"
It sits alone and untouched at the end of a long buffet table -- a bowl full of apples and bananas, maybe a seedy orange tossed in as an afterthought. Don't let your fruit salad meet this awful fate, spruce it up instead!
Ants are a reality of any picnic, as all hard-core summer picnickers know.
Forget about the so-called Italian spaghetti western. This time around, Food Movies We Love brings us to 
In my never-ending quest to find the right sports food, this week I stumbled across Probar. 
Forget about lousy tomato juice and those miniature bottles of bad wine you had on your last airline flight. Bad beverages and boring cocktails are a thing of the past, or at least they are on 
Scientific tests just confirmed that a cow in Manitoba, Canada has 
What could be a better set up for laughs than a pizza parlor, 
If you've ever had the pleasure of renting Spanish director 
It's early June, and the mercury in Virginia has started to climb. But that's alright. Hot weather gives me an excuse to indulge in my favorite summertime treat: frozen Italian desserts. I'm not talking about the Italian Ice that comes in a waxed cup in your grocery's freezer. I'm talking about the artisanal home-made treats that you can only buy at your local transplant gelateria.
The tagline for A Walk in the Clouds tells it all: "A man in search. A woman in need. A story of fate." 
I remember the first time I realized that I loved 
Creating the ultimate Mother's Day gift for the carnivorous mom
Create less clutter with your Mother's Day gifts
Gifts for the vegetarian (or vegetable-loving) mom
