You ever get in one of the modes where you eat the same snack for days and days and weeks?

That is what's happening with me right now with Planters Chocolate-Covered Cashews. They come in cans now (the bags vanished several months ago). They're big cashews, and the chocolate is delicious too. I have no scientific proof to back this up, but it seems to me that when companies cover their nuts with chocolate, they seem to use bigger nuts. It's especially noticable with whole cashews. Maybe they just seem bigger because they are covered with chocolate, I'm not sure. I just know I'm going through whole cans in one sitting while watching television or reading.

When you think about wedding cakes, chances are that you envision a tall, elegant dessert. It has sleek sides and might be adorned with splashes of sugar roses and pounds of buttercream frosting. Even if the cake is simple, ungarnished with excesses of sugar sculpture and fondant shapes, a wedding cake will always be elegant.

At least, almost always.

More and more couples are moving away from the traditional wedding cake model, having cupcake towers so that each guest can have an individual, elaborately decorated cake. The cupcakes maintain the elegance of tradition, but allow for an infusion of fun. Even further from the standard, however, is the snack-food cake. A snack food cake can be made of anything from Twinkies to Snowballs and chocolate donuts. What I didn't realize was how much the trend towards down-market "cakes" was catching on until I saw a "cake" of homemade Ding Dongs in the New York Times wedding announcements over the weekend.

Would you have wanted this at your wedding? Are you considering it for the future? I can't say that I would want it, but I would definitely serve ice cold milk, and not champagne, if I did.

[Image NYT] 

Not all school lunch options are created equal. Schools have dietary and budgetary guidelines to go by, but giving students the freedom of choice in choosing what they eat is not something that the guidelines can always take into account. My junior high school, for example, sold churros for 50(cents) and you can bet that many students were eating those fried sticks of cinnamon and sugar goodness at least a few times a week. I highly doubt that whatever nutritional standards the “taco casserole” was made to even considered the possibility that the meal would be augmented with a churro and a bag of Doritos. Parents generally only thought about their kids’ school lunches when they were asked for money on the ride to school and had no control over what the kids purchased with that money. Fortunately for parents who worry about their child’s health and waistline more than they used to, this isn’t the case anymore.

If ever you've torn open a bag of Doritos, or dived into a mountain of nachos, or simply scooped up your favorite gucamole with a tortilla chip, you have Rebecca Webb Carranza to thank.

Rebecca Webb Carranza passed away in mid January, but is remembered for pioneering the machine-manufacture of tortillas in the late 1940s. When once tortillas were made by hand, Carranza's El Zarape Tortilla Factory was pumping them out more than 12 times faster. Sometimes, the machines were turn out slightly misshapen tortillas. Carranza cut her factory-rejected tortillas into wedges and deep-fried them for a party. Thus, the tortilla chip was born.

By the 1960s, the tortilla chips were being made and sold commercially. Thank you for inventing one of my all-time favorite snacks, Rebecca!

[Photo: LA Times]

Kettle Foods, the company that is famous for its natural, thick-sliced, hand-cooked potato chips, is holding a contest to select its next flavored chip. The new chip flavors are inspired by a "happy hour" theme and include Spicy Mary, Dirty Martini, Buffalo Bleu Cheese, Tuscan Three Cheese and Creamy Caesar. The chips are being sold, not in stores, but on the Kettle website in a party pack for $9.95, which includes a 5-ounce bag of each flavor, a tasting guide and step-by-step instructions for hosting your own happy hour. No doubt that the happy hour instruction guide recommends serving Kettle Chips. The Dirty Martini and the Creamy Ceasar sound the least appealing, but only the taste will truly tell which chip is the best. Voting can be done online or by the ballot included in each party pack.