"mustard" news and stories

You know what I love most about America? The way that we have a holiday for everything. And even when we run out of holidays, we just make up more holidays and continue using them as excuses to glut. And when it's a food holiday, we are officially permissed to double-gorge! So here's a heads-up for my favorite August food holidays -- y'know, so you can get your shopping done early and beat the mad holiday rush.

• August 1 - Raspberry Cream Pie Day: This shortcut Chilled Raspberry Cream Pie recipe from Rachael Ray can be whipped up in a jif. It'll be just like one of those No-Bake commercials when your friends and family are fawning over you for spending the day slaving over the stove while you're secretly sniggering to yourself, "Heh heh, it was no bake, you fools!"
• August 2 - Ice Cream Sandwich Day: Sure, you could wade through the freezer case, or you could man up and make your own. Consider these decadent peanut-butter-'n'-honey-flavored "Bee-Nut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches" from Domestic Goddess.

Most trade shows are the stuff of, if not nightmares, then at least a sleepwalk from one charmless kiosk to the next. Not so at the 54th Summer Fancy Food Show, where 20,000+ gourmet retailers, restaurateurs, chefs, media folks and plain ol' food fans spend three days chomping their way through a fever dream of some 180,000 specialty foods. The throwback "Fancy" is a bit of a misnomer by now, as there's a very wide slice of products on offer, ranging from swankity wines, oils, cheeses and caviar to humble chewing gums, ketchups, chili seasonings and snack mixes.

Here are my first day favorites from the more wallet-friendly end of the spectrum. More thorough reviews will follow, but I've gotta recover from hauling around a 21lb* shoulder bag of collected samples and press releases first.

My family cooks turkey every holiday. Whether it's Christmas, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day, or the day we celebrate the birth of veteran stage and screen actor Mickey Rooney, turkey seems to be what we cook. Everyone loves it, so why not? But there are times I think of doing something different, like cook a ham. This recipe after the jump seems like a great place to start. Just the mention of the maple syrup and mustard and the apples all cooking together in the roasting pan makes my mouth water. And it seems really easy too.

The HJ Heinz Company has had the highest consumer satisfaction rating in the country for the past six years, and it's no wonder because, although they make many different products, they make one of the most popular and best loved condiments you can name: Heinz ketchup. Everyone likes Heinz, or at least, they think they do. Endless taste tests rank it sometimes higher and sometimes lower than other brands, and the brand still averages a high score. One recent test, however, may actually forecast a change in the way Heinz makes their ketchup. In it, Organic Heinz came out above regular Heinz.

For years, organic goods such as sauces and, of course, ketchup, had a hard time catching on with consumers since their flavors and consistency were too unfamiliar. Perhaps tastes have grown up a bit, or the technology is simply better, but if the organic version is now scoring higher with tasters, we could see a resulting increase in the availability of organic ketchup, possibly in place of the traditional stuff.

Where would you rank Organic Heinz? Is it as french-fry worthy as the classic?

Source

Even though we already looked at some great commercials made in the 1980s, a post on TV Squad about a ketchup commercial starring a young, hip, ketchup-loving Matt LeBlanc is a good reminder that there were a fair number of entertaining commercials made then. Many were from Heinz, which ran a number of commercials touting how thick and rich its ketchup was - before people started to complain that it was so thick that they couldn't actually get it out of the bottle.