Functional flavors - Beyond green tea and pomegranate there is a whole world of functional food that will become more widely used. Açaí, acerola cherry, red wine and red tea will all step more into the limelight.

More Latin flavors - Chipotle is still popular, as is regional Mexican (from Oaxaca and Jalisco), but new flavors will step up, with more influences from Central and South America.

Sweet and savory- The pairing of salty and sweet (or savory and sweet) really hit a home run with packaged foods last year, but more mainstream restaurants will be offering salted caramels or herb-infused ice creams than in the past.

Expected flavors, unexpected fruits- Why stick with orange when you can use blood orange? The same goes for choosing Meyer lemons, Buddha's hand or other citrus over plan lemon. Twists on popular flavors will make the food seem more exotic, without taking a big risk by radically changing the flavor.

More Spice, Less Heat - Instead of the overt heat of chipotle, ancho, and jalapeño, there will be more Indian and Moroccan spices added to menus, including curry, cumin and cardamom.

New Year's Eve is the perfect night for a long cocktail party. While they still take some planning, the combination of good drinks and small, munchable foods (as opposed to a sit-down dinner) is perfect for entertaining. Cocktail Parties, Straight Up! Easy Hors D'oeuvres, Delicious Drinks, and Inspired Ideas for Entertaining with Style is a fun, relatively short book that will help you put parties together in no time. It has plans for 12 "gently themed" parties (so no pressure to theme your own) along with decorating tips, menus and signature cocktails. The recipes are for finger food-types of dishes that can usually be made ahead. Depending on how fancy you want to go with food and drinks, the recipes might not be the book for you if you tend to opt for really cutting edge bites, but they are far from boring. They include Asparagus Parmesan Bites, Curry Coconut Scallops and Wild Mushroom Tartlets. And whether you use the 60 or so recipes or not, the menus and tips are still helpful, especially if you need a hand getting things off the ground.

The average family seems to get carry-out food far more often than any time in the past, and the number one reason cited is convenience. It seems easier than cooking at home, since there is no planning and no shopping required. One Chicago family realized that they got take out meals just about every single day and Mary Ann Schultz suggested to her husband and son that they try going for 30 days without carry-out. They didn't have a problem affording all their meals, as both Schultz and her husband are well-employed, but she wanted her son to actually experience "family meals" as she did growing up.

The family took on the challenge and, after a rocky start, they learned to plan meals and write out shopping lists. They learned to stock the freezer and pantry so that they would have options at home. Quick-fix cookbooks were helpful for providing inspiration and do-able recipes for an inexperienced cook. You can take a look at her ongoing journal to see how the challenge went from day to day.

Overall, the family learned that cooking at home was just as tasty as restaurant food and they enjoyed it more. They saved over $200 and Mary Ann lost 7 pounds during the switch. They're probably not going to cut it out completely, but perhaps their challenge could lend a bit of inspiration to anyone else who uses the "carryout menu folder...as a crutch for meals."

New York's Board of Health is getting a lot of attention for their proposed ban on trans fats at restaurants in the city, but there is another proposal on the table that could have an even bigger impact on the dining community in NYC. The Board of Health is considering requiring some restaurants - beginning with chains and fast food establishments - to list the caloric content of their menu items on the menu. Not only that, but the calorie count must be "in type that is as large 'as the name or price of the item.'"

The NY Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is "intent on creating the nation's most rigorous system of calorie disclosure in restaurants" - which has restaurant owners worried about what they're going to serve. Chefs already admit that calories and fat aren't exactly major considerations when they are planning menus and restaurant owners are concerned that their offerings will have to change to such a degree that people won't want to eat out anymore. But the smaller eateries don't have to worry just yet because the rules will only apply to "restaurants with highly standardized menu items" that "already make their caloric content available on the Internet, in brochures or in some other format."

It seems that more and more restaurants are offering prix fixe menus these days, a fact that the Wall Street Journal picked up on in their weekend edition. Restaurateurs and chefs like fixed prices because they can much more easily plan the labor and cost of what will be used for a meal, since everything will be timed and the menu options are limited. Diners who might have only had a main course and a dessert are now having salad, as well. For multi-course menus where the portions are small, a nice piece of duck that might have been one main course ordered à la carte, is now several smaller courses for multiple diners.

How can you, as a diner, tell if a fixed price menu is really a good deal? The WSJ suggests that a good place to start is by looking for "wide margin items," such as chicken, salads, pastas and salmon on the menu. They are foods that typically have a significant mark-up, which could be even higher behind the set price. Another thing to look for is tricky wording. For example, "tomato carpaccio" is really just thinly sliced tomatoes, though on the name alone some restaurants might up the price.

And what are signs that you're getting a good deal? Tasting menus that "bear no resemblance to à la carte offerings" often indicate that special time or care has gone into their preparation. And if the chef is well-known and you just want to "put yourself in his hands" the memories of the meal might be worth the price, no matter what it is.

Originally limited to New York, MenuPages has been expanding quickly lately. The site, which features not only the hours, address, etc. of many restaurants, but also their menus and prices, so you know exactly what you're getting into before you go. MenuPages recently came to LA and even more recently launched in Philadelphia. Other cities the site covers include Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Washington.

If you've never used MenuPages before, it's worth a look, since you'll be able to determine whether a given restaurant actually has anything on their menu that you want to try, unlike straightforward restaurant reviews (and they have user comments/reviews, too), which only provide a price and the descriptions of a few dishes. The restaurant categories are more location-specific than most, too. For example, in Los Angeles, there is a distinct option for restaurants that serve Wings, while in Philly, there is a category for cheesesteak places. If the food you're craving isn't on the pre-set list, another great feature of the site is the "find a food search," which allows you to narrow down your restaurant selection to those that serve flourless chocolate cake or lobster rolls.

Today's Seattle Times food section has an article about menu-speak - words on menus that, if you haven't been dining out in the last five years, would sound foreign to you. They are not fancy, ooh-la-la words. The reason is that most of the words are foreign, as they refer to techniques or ingredients from other countries, the global and ethnic flavors that Americans are picking up. They are words like "amuse-bouche," "guanciale," and "Kurobota pork."

At the end of the article, there is a short glossary of some common terms that are showing up on menus these days and explanations. Of course, add this to the pronunciation guide for foods and for chefs' names and you could be next in line to be a judge on Iron Chef.

For a foodie voyeur, MenuPages is highly addictive. The site has been around for a while as a resource for people who dine out in NY. It has addresses, phone numbers, and most importantly, scanned images of the restaurant's menu so that we can see what's available and for how much. Sure, lots of restaurant review sites have dollar signs to indicate about how much one would spend on a three course meal, tax and tip (not) included, but for me, those three $$$ mean nothing. I like to know how much certain things are. 

MenuPages has recently launched in LA. Not a few days later, MenuPix also launched its site, offering the exact same kind of resource! And to think I was going to do the same thing on my own blog! I guess great minds think alike.

Has anyone used either or both sites? What do you think? Which is better?

Menus already chock-full of details about the soil quality in the area the salad spinach was grown and the precise variety of vanilla in the crème brule are soon going to have another detail: the sire of the steak. Always looking to be on the cutting edge of dining trends, some chefs are getting involved in animal husbandry to custom breed specific, and often rare, varieties of meat for their restaurants. They feel that this gives them an edge over companies that contract with well-known high-end producers. Whether or not there is any truth to the belief that things which are rarer are necessarily better or higher quality, chefs like David Burke are beginning to do things like buy bulls and find farmers to raise what will be a future meal, according to an article (subscription required to read it online) in the Wall Street Journal.

Diet is a word that you don't really want to hear on Valentine's Day, especially since the word you probably want to hear is chocolate. Unfortunately, millions of people are either actively dieting or simply watching their weight - and they neither want to eat all those extra calories and fat grams at a meal, nor do they want to refuse them. After all, they've only lost weight, not their taste buds. Dieters have learned how to cope at restaurants, but if you are inclined to cook for your sweetheart, you will have to customize your dinner menu to their requirements. Fortunately, this isn't as difficult as it seems. Try one of these menus for your special evening, one lower in fat and one lower in carbs. Both include an appetizer, side dish, a main course and a dessert, all of which should go over in a big way with your Valentine - without making them any bigger.

With drive-thru service now accounting for up to 70% of fast food sales, the mind boggles to hear that companies are trying to speed up their drive thru service. One method of speeding up service is to route calls to call centers - instead of simply receiving them inside the restaurant over a speaker or radio - to increase accuracy. Companies have found this to be relatively effective, particularly in areas where their employees have limited English skills. The call centers enter the menu items onto a central computer, which transmits the order directly into the restaurant's computers. Another strategy is to replace the traditional written menu board with a photo illustrated or digital one, hoping that tempting food imagery will help customers choose their food faster. There are even computer programs that average how much food needs to be cooking at any given moment.

I thought I could do better than the Hillbilly Housewife, whose weekly menu of weiner stirfry and tuna-and-peas-over-rice didn't appeal much to my sense of budgetary gourmet. I'm not the only one, evidently. The good people at the Better Times Almanac have created what they call the "Slow Food for Poor People Challenge."

Taking the "Food Stamp Challenge," they ate on a food stamp budget for a week (about $61 for two people) and tried to make their example an even better one by employing "(1) frugal supermarket shopping, (2) preparing meals from basic ingredients, (3) buying local foods, (4) gardening, (5) food storage, and (6) home preservation of food."

Menus like "Buffalo meatloaf, oven fries, corn on the cob, green beans," biscuits and gravy, buffalo pot roast and a breakfast of "2 scrambled eggs, 1/3 lb sausage, hash brown, potatoes, rolls, apple cobbler" are a little more my speed. The drawback is that their menu is a bit repetitive (and, being from Oklahoma, relies heavily on buffalo meat). But you can hardly argue with a $60 weekly menu that employs organic eggs from free-ranging hens and meats from local cooperatives. It's a nice attempt and only fuels my desire to come up with more and better cheap-but-gourmet meals.

[photo Sarah Gilbert]