Meet The Team / Anne Metz

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.