"tgi fridays" news and stories

LU Crème Roulee Tin. Image: Amazon.

A few of the best stories spied elsewhere on the Web this week:

Slow Food advocates organize potluck "eat-ins" to boost school lunch funding.

T.G.I. Friday's to give first 500,000 Facebook fans free food.

Club Med launches food blogger camp program, mixing beach bathing with blogger seminars led by prominent writers.

French snacks come to Mercedes Benz Fashion Week with a LU Café, exhibiting designer Erin Fetherston's limited-edition Crème Roulee Rolled Wafer tin at the Bryant Park Tents.

Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food," calls for food industry reform in the wake of Obama's health care reform speech.

Unsuspecting teachers got high off "church bake sale" brownies. Symptoms they chalked up to food poisoning were actually the result of pot brownies at a sidewalk sale that was, evidently, not benefiting a church.

Julia Child's illustrator isn't a foodie and doesn't have much interest in seeing the movie "Julie & Julia."

T.G.I. Friday's actually makes a bunch of snack foods that you can buy in supermarkets, including Baked Onion Rings, Quesadilla, and Mozzarella Sticks. But the only one I've ever latched onto are the Cheddar & Bacon Potato Skins.

These things can't be that great for you (cheddar, bacon, and salt in a chip form?), but who cares? They're very baked potato-ish and hearty, perfect to have with a sandwich. I usually have plain potato chips with a sandwich (not sure why, maybe I don't want any competition between the flavors of the sandwich and the chip), but I make an exception for these.

These aren't easy to find, at least in my area. I usually have better luck finding them at CVS or Rite-Aid than I do the big supermarkets.

It has long been suggested that the oversized portions offered to diners at many restaurants are responsible for the expanding waistlines of Americans. Now, the health/lifestyle watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is implying that "table-service chain restaurants," such as The Cheesecake Factory, T.G.I. Fridays and Ruby Tuesday, are cramming their dishes full of fattening, unhealthy ingredients on purpose, encouraging "extreme eating." Sometimes described as the "food police," CSPI cites the fact that these restaurants are not entirely forthcoming with the nutritional information on their foods, pointing out that Ruby Tuesday's Fresh Chicken & Broccoli Pasta entree has 2,060 calories and 128 grams of fat, while The Cheesecake Factory's Chris' Outrageous Chocolate Cake (layers of chocolate cake, brownies, coconut pecan filling and chocolate-chip coconut cheesecake) had 1,380 calories.

However misleading it may seem to call a dish "Fresh Chicken and Broccoli Pasta" and cram it with (mostly) cheese, it doesn't sound like there is any ill intent there, does it? The restaurants say that their menus change so frequently that it would be impractical to put together nutritional stats for individual dishes and change the menus all the time. They cite value-conscious consumers, who view large portion sizes as one of their highest priorities when eating out. Looking at both sides of this issue begs one question: which came first, huge portion sizes or the desire for them?