"special" news and stories

From February 8-14, diners eating at the Anaheim White House in Anaheim, California will have a chance at getting more than just a good meal. Restaurateur Bruno Serato decided that a good way to celebrate Valentine's Day was by giving away diamond and sapphire necklaces to one diner each night of that week. The winners will be chosen at random from each night's reservation list. Six of the necklaces are valued at around $1,000 each, but the necklace that will be given out on February 14th will be one-of-a-kind and is worth $10,000. All of the necklaces were designed by J. Mac Jewelers. The most expensive features a pinwheel of stones (pictured) set in white and yellow gold. The six others have white gold hearts with a large pink sapphire outlined in small diamonds.

The Anaheim White House is considered one of Southern California's most romantic restaurants, according to Serato. It is located in an almost century old building and serves Northern Italian food, with an emphasis on fresh seafood and the local specialties of Verona, Italy, which is where Serato himself is from. The restaurant is quite large, and with 7 nights to choose from you should still be able to make a reservation by calling the restaurant. If you live in Southern California, like Italian food and were planning on going out to dinner for Valentine's Day, a little extra incentive doesn't hurt, right?

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At the beginning of the year, we mentioned that a special celebrity chef episode of Iron Chef America would be airing in fall and it looks like the week has finally arrived! This Sunday's episode of Iron Chef America will feature both Rachael Ray and Giada de Laurentiis, pairing Rachael with Mario Batali and Giada with Bobby Flay, in what is sure to be an interesting showdown, to say the least.

Who will win the battle of food network personalities? Rachael is primarily self taught and most of her cooking experience comes from actually teaching others to cook, aside from a stint as the chef at Cowan & Lobel market in Albany, New York. Giada, on the other hand, studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and worked at several well-known restaurants, including Spago in Los Angeles, before starting a catering company. This isn't to say that all professionally trained chefs will do better than home schooled ones, but it is the really high-end, innovative dishes that "wow" the judges on ICA and it seems like Giada would be more likely to turn them out than Rachael. Bobby and Mario will have a big part in this two, of course, so based on previous episodes and the personalities of all four "Food Network All-Star" participants, I'm rooting for Bobby's team.

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The Food Network loves Paula Deen and they are about to do what they always do with their favorite stars -Rachael Ray, Emeril, Bobby Flay, Alton Brown - and give her a new show. Paula's Cooking Party is an hour-long prime time show staring Paula, a kitchen and a live studio audience. The network describes it as a "non-stop rollercoaster of food, fun, stories, recipes and surprises" and it will have far less emphasis on straight cooking instruction, which her current show is based around. Well, that and butter, anyway.

Deen, 59, just recently became a grandmother, so it is something of a surprise that the network is opting to promote her when they have been trying to attract a younger audience. Granted, Paula's show and her specials have attracted the some of the largest tv audiences on the network, but is "Paula unplugged" going to attract viewers? And when one of the early episodes featured Paula "trying on a young audience member's stilettos, telling jokes and staging a live crab race," will it keep viewers accustomed to seeing her cook satisfied?

The show premiers September 29th, so we'll just have to wait until then to find out.

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The limited edition Kit Kats released in the UK resulted in consumer overstimulation and, in the US, too, consumers are seeing more and more limited editions on the shelves. Some of them seem to be only limited in their packaging, not the actual product.

Candybloggers Cybele, from CandyBlog, and Brian, from Candy Addict, were interviewed in a piece in the New York Times magazine that asked "what is the point of these releases?" The companies don't seem like they're asking consumers if they want to see them as part of the "regular" line-up, but there are so many limited edition candies on store shelves that they don't seem all that special anymore.

Personally, I don't mind seeing a new product every time I go into the store, but it can be annoying if a new favorite is never seen again after only a short run. There is no way for us, the consumers, to tell if this trend will continue or not - but do we want it to?

I noticed that David Lebovitz mentioned a concept that occurs with food stuffs in all walks of life. It is the idea that some things are too special to eat. He mentions that even in a high end restaurant that specialized in expensive, seasonal foods and went out of their way to procure the very best ingredients, some were lost because they were deemed "too good to use."

It sounds wasteful, since the food that is so precious often goes uneaten until it is past its prime, but I know that I am not the only one who is guilty of doing the same thing on at least one occasion. I have "saved" perfect strawberries, wanting to use them with the perfect dessert, only  to discover that they've gone bad by the time I want to use them. I have jars of gourmet marinades, probably from gift baskets or weekends in the wine country, that now have a thin layer of dust because I have yet to open them. Why is it that the "right time" to eat something doesn't always seem like the present?

I now make an active effort to use things up when I get them. Wonderful food is no less "special" because I don't wait too long to taste it and, in fact, may be even better because it's fresher; you will never find yourself scraping mold off the surface of a jar of a particularly wonderful chocolate spread because you waited too long to open it.

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