"ServingWare" news and stories

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

One delicious-looking midweek pick-me-up with a twist (look to the right!): A recipe for Coconut Lime Chicken Soup.

Burger King apologizes for the "Texican" Whopper commercial that angered Jorge Zermeno, the Mexican ambassador to Spain.

A love letter to (and recipe for) 'Wichcraft's Chickpea and Red Pepper sandwich.

In a quest to perfect the engagement party process, the Come Party with Me series offers Tips.

Poll: Do you own fashionable servingware?

YumSugar readers sound off on the perfect salad bar fixings.

Rhubarb recipes for beginners and addicts alike.

You could simply rip open your bags of chips and throw them on the coffee table for your guests, but serving them in bowls and platters makes your get-together feel more like a party. Serving them in football-shaped servingware makes your party feel like you put some thought into it for the Super Bowl. We came across these ceramic football-shaped bowls, serving dishes, and platter while surfing on Amazon.com:

Touchdown Snack Bowl - Serve tortilla chips, potato chips, popcorn, and other snacks out of the microwave- and dishwasher-safe Touchdown Bowl, very appropriately shaped like a football. I love that the bowl's rim has "Tight End" on it. Available on Amazon.com for $19.99.

Touchdown Serving Dish Set - For smaller snacks like nuts, olives or dried fruit (but really, why would you serve dried fruit at a Super Bowl party?!?!) the Touchdown Serving Dish set is perfect. We'll go with nuts and serve roasted salted peanuts in one, pistachios in another, and seasoned almonds in the last. Available on Amazon.com for $19.99.

Touchdown Serving Platter - Pile chicken wings, taquitos, or other hot snacks on the Touchdown Serving Platter. Available from Amazon.com for $24.99.

It's just a matter of time before MyCuppaTea takes its rightful place on my kitchen counter. Finally, a coffee cup that understands that no one in his or her under-caffeinated mind thinks of adding one or two exacting teaspoons of milk to one's coffee. In my pre-java, pre-verbal state, all I do is pour enough milk to create a cozy, very con leche brew. It's all blind pourpourpour -- stir, then slowly sip to wakefulness. Gizmodo found this mug from that subscribes to the PANTONE school of coffee coloration. Now you can gauge your coffee-milk ratio by a burnt sienna for Just Tea to a bisque for Milky. While taking my coffee black would probably add a certain edgy elegance, I land somewhere just this side of Classic British. Just enough milk to blanket a bold French Roast without taming it.

I'd love to see the PANTONE principle adopted in other culinary realms from meat -- "I'd like my steak done Flamingo" -- to baked goods -- "Those cookies should be Mojave Sand not Colorado Timber!" -- to vegetables -- "Shouldn't broccoli florets come out a little more Lily Pad and a lot less Algae?".

I don't know if there is anything in the grocer's freezer actually called a "TV dinner" anymore, but basically every weeknight for me is a tv dinner, whether I've cooked it myself, had it delivered from the local Indian restaurant, or *ahem* heated something up in the microwave oven. I'm always plopping down on the couch in front of the TV.

This serving tray is perfect for making a TV dinner, well, a TV dinner. The tray is made of veneer and the plates and small sauce dishes are porcelain. It comes with chopsticks, so I guess Chinese take-out is considered the new "TV dinner."

The tray is designed by Soop-Group, and the products are available from a list of "Stockists" in England and France on their website.