Gourmet Boutique has issued a recall of 286,000 lbs of deli luncheon meat for possible contamination by listeria. The meats were used in sandwich wraps and other ready-to-eat products. The USDA has classified this recall as Class I, "reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death," or what I would call "pretty damn serious."
The list of potentially affected wraps and other ready-to-eat products from the company are listed here.
We love food on sticks, and in the summer months, there's nothing better than a popsicle. However, when it's still a little too chill outside for frozen treats, make cake-sicles! Heck, even during the summer months, cake-sicles won't melt into a runny mess.
The Norpro Non-stick Cake-sicle Pan makes eight big popsicle shaped cookies in which you can stick popsicle sticks once the cookies come out of the pan. I'm thinking that a nice dip in melted chocolate after the cookies are cooled would be a fantastic idea.
It sounds to good to be true -- a berry that makes sour things taste sweet!
The berry is very real. It's called "miracle fruit -- that's actually what it's called -- though the scientific name is Synsepalum dulcificum for those of you who want to get technical. And more for the technical folks, a protein in the fruit binds to taste buds and alters the tongue's so-called sweet receptors to activate when sour foods are eaten. Sour things taste sweet for about an hour after the berry is eaten.
It may seem just a novelty or a fun foodie trick to do at parties, but there could be some health and medical uses for the berry once the science people figure it out. I can think of a few now: lose weight by tricking your taste buds into thinking that extremely low calorie foods are actually as sweet as dessert, and any other use in which people need a sugar substitute.
We might start feeling the squeeze on savings accounts, but we all know that there's an entirely separate account for ice cream!
Even still, Baskin Robbins is reducing the price on its single scoop tonight from 5-10 PM from whatever $1+ price it is (it's probably different everywhere) to a mere $0.31!
The 31 Cent Scoop Night is to honor America's firefighters, so grab your change purse, hurry over to your nearest Baskin-Robbins, and order a scoop of Jamocha Almond Fudge (that's what I like, but you order what you want).
The news couldn't be more timely with Cinco de Mayo right around the corner.
According to the Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a native Mexican diet full of soups, legumes, tomato-based sauces, meat and Mexican cheeses seems to help prevent breast cancer. Whether the foods and dished are topped with a chili or two wasn't stated, but Hispanic women believe it's the chili in Mexican food that may prevent breast cancer.
So with Cinco de Mayo coming up and resources featuring Mexican recipes, now might be a great time to add Alondigas Soup, bean-based dishes, and moles (might it be the chocolate?) to your recipe repertoire.
But don't let this be an excuse to gorge on greasy, deep-fried tortilla chips!
Though I know for sure I don't have what it takes to be a Top Chef (heck, I doubt I have what it takes to be just any chef), there might be some of you out there who have the endurance, the stamina, a thick enough skin to take words from Tom Colicchio and cold stares from Padma Lakshmi, and of course the talent.
If so, get yourself to an open call for the next season (wow, they're already on Season 5!) of Top Chef. New Orleans and San Francisco already happened, but there are calls scheduled in May for Vegas, New York, LA, Denver, and Chicago. If you can't make it to one of those cities, you can also "apply" by sending in a video.
If there's heat wave where you are like there's a heat wave where I am, (it was over 90 degrees in some parts of southern California), then you'll appreciate the perfect timing of Ben & Jerry's annual Free Cone Day, which takes place tomorrow, Tuesday April 29, 2008. If you're not sure where there is a Ben & Jerry's shop near you, head over to their website and look one up!
If I have it me, I'll definitely making my way over for a free cone, though I do recall that last year, lines at some stores were circling blocks.
In the single malt competition, Yoichi 20 years old, which is distilled near the city of Sapporo on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, beating out a number of other ostly Scottish brands. Judges chose Yoichi 20 for its "amazing mix of big smoke and sweet blackcurrant," "explosive aroma" and "big, long and sweet finish." The best blended whiskey award went to Suntory Hibiki, the same brand that was used in the movie Lost in Translation (hence, "Suntory time").
You've seen them before. Those fliers tacked onto telephone poles (wait, do such things still exist?!), duct taped to street light posts, or even stapled onto the bulletin board in your doctor's office: "Wanted: women for a [insert health condition here] study."
You've never thought about actually volunteering for one of those studies.
You know when you are eating your fourth tofu salad of the day for the eighteenth day in a row of this hell we call "diet before bikini season?" And on the salad there is a slab of stupidly healthy tofu that when you bite into it, you close your eyes and tell yourself it's actually a piece of chocolate cake?
The old story was that expectant mothers should eat fish to help their growing babies' brains. Then we heard that eating fish was dangerous to the health of the baby. If you're pregnant, no fish!
Obviously, fish was never really bad for expectant mothers; it was simply that some certain types of fish that had high levels of mercury. All the news about "fish," "mercury," and "pregnancy" must have been confusing. The most recent research doesn't seem to sound like anything new, just a reminder that fish is, in fact, good for the brain, as "Preschoolers whose mothers regularly ate low-mercury fish during pregnancy may have sharper minds than their peers...Researchers found that among 341 3-year-olds, those whose mothers ate more than two servings of fish per week during pregnancy generally performed better on tests of verbal, visual and motor development."
Just remember that it's fish with low levels of mercury, so make sure you do your homework.
We love food on sticks, and in the summer months, there's nothing better than a popsicle. However, when it's still a little too chill outside for frozen treats, make cake-sicles! Heck, even during the summer months, cake-sicles won't melt into a runny mess.
We might start feeling the squeeze on savings accounts, but we all know that there's an entirely separate account for ice cream! 
The feature story this week is on restaurateur and chef Michael Mina, with a recipe for his Seafood Bake.
Though I know for sure I don't have what it takes to be a Top Chef (heck, I doubt I have what it takes to be just any chef), there might be some of you out there who have the endurance, the stamina, a thick enough skin to take words from Tom Colicchio and cold stares from Padma Lakshmi, and of course the talent. 
If there's heat wave where you are like there's a heat wave where I am, (it was over 90 degrees in some parts of southern California), then you'll appreciate the perfect timing of Ben & Jerry's annual Free Cone Day, which takes place tomorrow, Tuesday April 29, 2008. If you're not sure where there is a Ben & Jerry's shop near you, head over to their website and look one up!
Let's just call this year "Suntory time." 
You've seen them before. Those fliers tacked onto telephone poles (wait, do such things still exist?!), duct taped to street light posts, or even stapled onto the bulletin board in your doctor's office: "Wanted: women for a [insert health condition here] study."
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
