November Fun Food Holidays

Halloween is gone and the big food holidays are upon us. Everybody knows about the glutton-fest that happens on the fourth Thursday of November, the 24^th this year, but what about food happenings on the other days of the Gregorian calendar's penultimate month? Glad you asked.

If you love peanut butter, have I got a month for you; November is indeed National Peanut Butter Lover's Month. It's also a month for aficionados of Georgia pecans, raisin bread, pomegranates, and peppers. November is National Good Nutrition Month, and, oddly enough considering all the celebration of turkey, ham, and a variety of dishes made with eggs, milk, and other dairy products that will be occurring near the end of the month, November is also Vegan Month. Go figure.

The first week of November is National Fig Week. And some widely varied comestibles also occupy the inaugural week of the month. Fried clams and vinegar are both honored on November 1, although probably not together. Deviled eggs, sandwiches, candy, and doughnuts each claim national recognition on the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th, respectively.

Nachos are in the spotlight on November 6 and bittersweet chocolate with almonds – make sure it's with almonds – takes the day on the 7^th.

Start the next week with a cappuccino on Monday, November 8. Or you may prefer a Harvey Wallbanger. No, I'm not kidding. The cocktail that is basically a Screwdriver with a half-shot of the Italian liqueur Galliano shares a day with the popular Italian coffee creation, cappuccino.

I'd go for the Harvey Wallbanger because the following day, November 9, is National Scrapple Day. If you've never enjoyed pig fat, pig hearts, pig livers, pig skin, flour, cornmeal, and spices all mushed up together and compressed into a loaf, then you've never enjoyed scrapple. I know I've never enjoyed scrapple. I may opt to celebrate the day's companion occasion, National Cook Something Bold and Pungent Day. Although scrapple seems to fit the bill there, too. I may just sleep in that day.

I'll be awake, though, for National Vanilla Cupcake Day on November 10 and I'll stay up for National Sundae Day on the 11^th.

National Pizza With Everything Except Anchovies Day – I'm serious – is November 12^th.

If you're a fan of British-style puddings served in a traditional New England fashion, then you'll enjoy November 13, National Indian Pudding Day. No, it doesn't make sense to me either.

How about guacamole and pickles? Both are celebrated on November 14. Again, probably not together.

National Raisin Bran Cereal Day happens on November 15.

Now, help me understand this one: November 16 – right smack in the middle of National Good Nutrition Month – is National Fast Food Day. Things that make you go “hmmmmm.”

Homemade bread and baklava share the day on November 17.

Nothing warms a late autumn day like a bowl of cold potato and leek soup. I guess that's why National Vichyssoise Day is celebrated on November 18.

Here's an occasion I can get behind; November 19 is National Carbonated Beverage With Caffeine Day. As a non-coffee drinker, I imbibe my caffeine cold every day, but it's nice to know that my habit has an actual holiday dedicated to it.

Peanut butter fudge and gingerbread get back-to-back days on the 20^th and 21^st.

Don't eschew the cashew on its holiday, November 22.

Cappuccino and Harvey Wallbangers got to share a day earlier in the month, so somebody apparently decided that espresso and cranberries were a good match. National Espresso Day and National Eat a Cranberry Day are both slated for November 23.

Now, we've already established that Thanksgiving is November 24, right? However, if you aren't into the whole turkey and mashed potatoes thing, you can still celebrate a food holiday; National Sardines Day is also November 24.

You might think that turkey salad, turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey casserole, etc. would be filling the remaining days of November, but no. The whole rest of the month is dedicated to desserts. Parfaits are preferred on the 25^th, cake – no particular kind – takes the cake on the 26^th. The 27^th belongs to Bavarian Cream Pie. French toast is featured on the 28^th. (Okay, so its not a dessert, but with a little cinnamon-sugar added, it could be.) Chocolates and lemon cream pie split the day on the 29^th. And the month wraps up with a salute to foam in the form of National Mousse Day on November 30.

Ready for fruit cake and egg nog month? Just wait until December rolls around.

Margarine Is Still Illegal -- And Nobody Cares

I don't make any secret of my disdain for margarine. I find that it tastes like exactly what it is; processed yellow-colored hydrogenated vegetable oil. I never bought into the bogus health claims made by its purveyors and current food and nutrition science doesn't either.

I've always wondered; if margarine is so great, why do the marketers of the stuff insist on names like “I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?” Why do they tout how “buttery tasting” their product is? Never once have I heard a butter maker proclaim, “Wow! It tastes just like margarine!” Even the URL for the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers proclaims the popularity of real butter – butteryspreads.org. Hey, what's wrong with “margarineyspreads.org, huh? For my money, if I want something that tastes like butter, I buy butter!

Margarine is nothing but a cheap substitute for the real thing. And I don't believe in cheap substitutes. I once saw a Volkswagen Beetle with a kit-built Rolls-Royce front end bolted on. That's margarine. You can dress it up, but it's still a Volkswagen.

Margarine has been a cheap imitation from Day 1. That's it's purpose, it's raison d'etre. The 19^th century French government needed a cheap substitute for butter to foist off on its troops. A French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès invented a substance he called oleomargarine and the rest is history.

Needless to say, the dairy industry was not happy with the new kid on the block. It wasn't long before farmers in dairying states were up in arms, demanding that something be done about margarine for the sake of preserving the health and well being of their market and of their very way of life. Ultimately, by 1902, thirty-two of America's forty-five states had some form of restriction on colored margarine. And, of course, Wisconsin lawmakers were at the head of the charge. In 1895, “America's Dairyland” enacted stringent laws prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or use of margarine colored to imitate butter.

In its unadulterated form, margarine is a pasty white color. Just imagine spreading a nice thick, greasy layer of Crisco on your toast. Margarine makers, realizing that such an unappealing appearance was a real marketing drawback, began selling yellow food dye capsules with their unattractive product to make it more…well...attractive. (At one point, an attempt was made to force margarine manufacturers to color their product pink, but the Supreme Court struck down such forced coloration restrictions.) By and large, the gimmick worked and people started buying the second-rate substitute not because it was better than butter but because it was cheap. In those days nobody knew anything about saturated fats and trans fats and cholesterol. And as long as the stuff sorta looked like butter, well, you could almost get over the unnatural artificial flavor. Factor in the widespread dairy product rationing that accompanied a couple of subsequent world wars, and, despite heavy taxation and restrictive legislation in the dairy states, the demand for margarine took off. Kind of like Prohibition; the best way to popularize a substance is to make it illegal.

In fact, now that the statute of limitations has probably expired, I can come clean and admit it; back in the '50s, my dad was a bootlegger. We lived just a few miles north of the Illinois border. Margarine was legal in the Land of Lincoln and my dad used to take orders from friends and neighbors throughout the week and then head south on Saturday to fill up the trunk of his car with contraband, bringing it back to Wisconsin for clandestine distribution. Oh, the shame!

But those days are all behind us now, right? Even as liquor began to flow after the 18^th Amendment was repealed in 1933, legal margarine has spread itself across the land and is now free for all to consume without legislative restriction, right? Wrong.

That's right. Wrong. While some statutes in previously anti-margarine states have been quietly removed from the books over the years, some laws in some states remain in effect. Granted, they're not enforced, but they're still there.

Spurred on by the aforementioned National Association of Margarine Manufacturers and other lobbyists, laws regulating the sale and use of margarine came under serious fire in the 1950s and '60s. Federal taxes on margarine were eliminated in 1951. State color bans, taxes, and other legal measures began to fall to well-funded pressure until, in 1967, Wisconsin became the last state to end its restrictions on margarine. Happy days were here again and people like my dad were out of business.

But....

Wisconsinites are a determined lot and they didn't completely cave in to the interests pushing fake butter. While all the old laws regulating butter were repealed in '67, a new one was added. That law, targeted at the food service industry, made it illegal for restaurants to serve margarine as a replacement for butter. Customers can request margarine, but it can't legally be the default table offering. And if a restaurant insists on serving margarine, the law insists that it make butter an available option. The law also requires that butter be served to students in schools, patients in hospitals, and inmates in prisons. Anybody who violates margarine laws faces fines ranging from $100 to $500 and they can be jailed for up to three months for the first offense. Fines and jail time increase for additional violations, with recidivist margarine offenders subject to fines of $500 to $1,000 and six months to a year in the pokey.

Nobody can remember the last time the law was enforced, if it ever has been. One or two complaints trickle in to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture every year. And the authorities dutifully send out warning letters. And that's about it. Most consumers don't even know the law exists and most restaurant owners, if aware if it, don't care. And they don't care for a very good reason; most of their customers don't want margarine. One Wisconsin restaurateur says he goes through five or six times as much butter as margarine. Another says if he puts out margarine, his customers won't touch it.

But there is the whole money thing and that's why a Wisconsin state representative, one Dale Kooyenga, is out gunning for the last of the state's margarine laws. Something like 21,000 inmates are being fed expensive butter when margarine is cheaper. And besides, he feels it's an antiquated, anti-free market law that's just plain silly. And silly laws, he believes, “erode citizen's respect for the overall rule of law in our state.”

Now, Wisconsin has a boat-load of silly laws. Why isn't Rep. Kooyenga going after the law that bars cats and dogs from cemeteries (excepting dogs guiding the blind, of course.) Or perhaps he should tackle bike riders in Sun Prairie who ride with no hands: “No bicycle shall be allowed to proceed in any street in the city by inertia or momentum with the feet of the rider removed from the bicycle pedals. No rider of a bicycle shall remove both hands from the handlebars or practice any trick or fancy riding in any street in the city nor shall any bicycle rider carry or ride any other person so that two persons are on the bicycle at one time, unless a seat is provided for a second person.” Man, I should still be doing time for the number of violations I clocked against that one back in the day. Women in Racine can't walk the streets at night without being accompanied by a male. Milwaukee says if you look offensive you're not allowed to be seen on the street during the day. LaCrosse bans unclothed mannequins in store windows. And my personal favorite, one I think the Honorable Mr. Kooyenga ought to challenge: according to state law, when two trains are at an intersection, neither shall move until the other does.

It's a good thing I'm no longer a citizen of Wisconsin. I'd feel so eroded.

Apparently, there aren't too many of Kooyenga's compatriots who fear erosion over the margarine law. At last count, only eleven other lawmakers – out of a possible 132 – have signed on as co-sponsors of his bill. The other 120 are no doubt sitting in their favorite eateries slathering delicious, all-natural butter on everything from fresh bread to corn on the cob.

Hey, Wisconsinites! Try this on; Paula Deen for Governor!

Hey, Michael Symon! You Can't "Caramelize" Meat!

Up front, I like celebrity chef Michael Symon. I think he's fun to watch and he has some fabulous food ideas. But I heard him say it again the other day. He referred to the “caramelization” on a piece of meat he was preparing. He's done it before. And he's wrong. And he's not alone. I've heard other chefs say it, too.

I'm sure – or at least I hope – that a trained chef knows the definition of “carmelization.” A non-enzymatic, or oxidative, process, caramelization is a chemical reaction – pyrolysis – in food that produces a nutty flavor and a brown color. BUT it is a reaction solely related to non-reducing sugars in certain foods.

There are two principal non-enzymatic browning processes. These are chemical reactions that turn foods brown without the activity of enzymes. By contrast, an apple turns brown when you cut it because of enzymatic activity in the presence of oxygen. The non-enzymatic processes are caramelization and the Maillard (MAH-yar) reaction.

I really don't want to go into page after boring page detailing disaccharides and monosaccharides and oligosaccharides and polysaccharides and closed ring structures and aldehydes and ketones and other stuff that blurs the vision and boggles the brain. So let's keep it simple.

Caramelization occurs when the aforementioned non-reducing sugars react to heat. Sucrose – common table sugar – is a non-reducing sugar. It begins to caramelize at 320°. The rate of caramelization is affected by pH balance, with the lowest rate occurring near neutral (pH7) levels and increasing as you go more acidic – for example pH3 – or more basic, like pH9. But there we go with all that mind-numbing scientific stuff again.

The Maillard reaction, named for a French chemist who first demonstrated it in 1910, occurs in the presence of amino acids. Sugars are involved, but they are what is known as “reducing sugars.” The carbonyl group of said sugar reacts with the amino group of the amino acid to produce browning and flavor changes. This process occurs when low moisture levels are present and temperatures reach around 310°. Different amino acids produce different levels of browning.

Still struggling to keep it simple, sugars are involved in both processes, but they are different sugars, or carbohydrates – a word everybody knows these days. The sugars that can caramelize are those that form simple carbohydrates, such as those found in fruits and vegetables. The sugars involved in the Maillard reaction are those that form the complex carbohydrates found in meats and grains. The nice brown color you see in toast, for instance, is not due to caramelization. It is a Maillard reaction.

In short – and simple – terms, there is no such thing as “caramelizing” meat. When you apply heat you “caramelize” fruits and vegetables to achieve changes in flavor and color, but those changes in meat are due to an entirely different chemical process. Since I've never heard anybody refer to “Maillard-izing” a cut of meat, let's just call it “browning,” shall we?

And a seasoned chef should know the difference. I sometimes think it's a matter of a person trying to sound educated beyond his or her intelligence or vice-versa. Given the choice between “caramelizing” and “browning,” which word sounds more “cheffy?” Never mind the people like me who sit and shout at the TV screen, “Idiota! You can't “caramelize” meat!” (Said people have to like to scream things in Italian.) “Caramelize” is a nice cheffy-sounding word that gets tossed around on TV a lot. But is it the correct word for all occasions? No. And with so many “Iron Chef” wannabes watching TV to gain or improve their culinary skills, the people imparting information on TV have to be especially careful to impart correct information, lest we turn out millions of home cooks who try to impress their friends and families by talking about how well “caramelized” the roast is.

Love ya, Michael, et.al., but it really is okay to just “brown” something.

Proper Care of Kitchen Knives

Pretty much anybody who has spent any time in a kitchen – home or professional – will tell you that the most dangerous thing to have in a kitchen is a dull knife.

Now this might seem counter-intuitive. After all, sharp objects are certainly more often associated with danger than are dull objects. But the reason is fairly simple; a very sharp knife will easily and cleanly slice through meat, vegetables, fruits, etc. with very little effort on the part of the knife wielder. Basically, the knife does all the work. Its a matter of kinetic energy – the energy the knife possesses due to its motion.

Very little energy is needed to move a sharp blade through, say, a potato. A dull blade requires more pressure – energy – to be exerted to achieve the same result. When you're talking about objects that are often wet, slippery, or odd-shaped – i.e. meats, vegetables, fruits, etc. – the more energy you exert, the more likely the knife is to slip, usually taking a piece of your finger along with it.

Another reason to keep kitchen knives sharp involves clean, even cutting. A sharp knife allows for precise, uniform cuts while a dull knife usually results in jagged edges and uneven cuts.

Recent personal experience: I was asked to prepare a meal in a home I was visiting. Since I almost always wind up cooking someplace, I almost always carry my knives with me when I travel. Not this time. I was at the mercy of the home kitchen.

In the first place, the knives were all strewn about in a drawer. In the second place, they were nearly all of the cheap discount store variety. In the third place, they were without exception exceedingly dull. I went through six knives of varying shapes and sizes. There was an eight-inch chef's knife, a santoku, a couple of utility knives, a boning knife, and a carving knife. The hostess even brought out a cleaver! After practically having to stand on several knives in order to get them to pass through a potato, I was on the verge of pulling out my Swiss Army knife when I finally hit upon one – a carving knife – that was almost sharp enough. Almost. The cuts I wound up with were not anything to which I would normally lay claim, but I managed to butcher six potatoes without butchering my hand.

Part of the reason for this is quality. If you are at all serious about cooking, you should invest in the best quality knives you can afford. This doesn't mean you have to take out a loan and buy a full set of Globals or Henckels or Wustofs. But you should avoid the discount store sets that include twenty-five pieces – including a full set of steak knives – for ten dollars. Victorinox makes a number of good knives for reasonable prices. If you've got a couple of bucks to spare, you can buy one or two of the higher-dollar knives from open stock at most culinary stores or places like Bed, Bath and Beyond or Williams-Sonoma.

Among the best tools I own are four Ekco Eterna knives that I inherited from my mom's kitchen. They are at least fifty or sixty years old, but they still outperform many of my other blades. Things were made so much better in those days. Quality really does count.

However, proper care is also essential. It doesn't matter how good your knife starts out – how sharp it is, how expensive it is, how pretty and shiny it is – when you throw it in a drawer with the spoons and spatulas and what have you, you are going to ruin it. Period. Constant rubbing and bumping against other objects will dull and pit and nick the blade, rendering the knife useless. That's why they make knife blocks.

Knife blocks come in all kinds of designs. Most are made of wood or bamboo and have slots of various sizes, although there are “slotless” polycarbonate knife blocks on the market. These are all great for keeping your knives organized and in relatively good condition. I say “relatively” because the slotted blocks can – and often do – dull your knives by the repeated sliding action. Even the polycarbonate brushes in the “slotless” jobs will scratch and dull your knives over time. Another drawback with knife blocks relates to sanitation. They are impossible to clean. Stuff can accumulate in the slots and you'll never get it out. Moisture can be a problem, too. Even so, a knife block is far superior to loose storage in a drawer.

Superior to a knife block is a magnetic knife strip. Now, I have heard one or two people talk about damaging their knives on a magnetic strip. It can be done – if you are a careless, blithering idiot. The only way to damage a knife on a magnetic strip is if you slam the knife onto the strip edge first. You should place the knife on the strip, being careful to let the spine make first contact with the magnet and then ease the rest of the blade onto the strip. And don't drag the knife along the strip when you remove it; lift it straight off. You'll never damage a blade and your knives will stay clean and dry.

Another key element in proper knife care is cleaning. Never – let me italicize that – never put a knife in the dishwasher. (A) – There's a lot of banging around that goes on in there. (B) – The extreme heat inside a dishwasher can damage your knife, especially if it has a wooden handle. Wash knives separately by hand and either dry them immediately with a clean, soft towel or allow them to air dry. If your wooden knife handles seem to be drying out, regular treatment with mineral oil will keep them in good shape.

I was ten or eleven when I learned how not to wash a knife. Actually, my grandmother was washing; I was drying. I took the knife out of the rinse sink and, with the towel draped over my open palm, ran the spine of the knife and one side of the blade over the towel. Then I turned the knife over and ran the other side of the blade and the edge over the towel. Fortunately, I didn't require stitches. And I never did anything that stupid again.

Which leads to another safety point – besides the obvious one I just made; don't throw a knife in the sink with all the other dishes. In the first place, there's that jumbling everything together and causing damage thing again. And, with all those dishes and all that soap in the water, you're really likely to reach in there blindly and grab a handful of the wrong side of the knife. Sort of been there, done that. Not fun.

Wash knives individually. And wash them quickly. Acidic foods – tomatoes, citrus, etc. – can be corrosive if left too long on the surface of a knife blade. I wash my knives as soon as I'm finished using them. They never go in the sink with other dishes and they never see the inside of a dishwasher. If something does stain your knife, use a fine abrasive pad – like a Scotch Bright pad – to gently remove the stain. Do it right away before the stain penetrates the surface of the blade.

Preserve the edge on your knife by being careful about your cutting surface. Marble and glass cutting boards are so pretty and attractive in your kitchen. And nothing will dull your knives faster. Wood or bamboo are still best, although plastic boards are okay, too. I like wood, my wife likes plastic so we have a kitchen full of his and hers boards. But we both have very sharp knives.

And we keep them that way by regular honing and sharpening. Honing involves the use of a metal or ceramic rod usually called a “steel.” Gordon Ramsay doesn't do all that fancy stuff with the steel just to impress his audience. It has a real purpose. (Well, maybe Gordon is a little over the top about it; a few light strokes on the steel are all that's needed.) Honing with a steel, however, is not the same as sharpening. That's why the term “sharpening steel” is a misnomer. A honing steel removes little micro-serrations that develop on the knife's edge and actually straightens the blade. A steel should be used before and/or after any cutting task. There are lots of places online where you can learn about how to use a steel.

Sharpening, on the other hand, is done less frequently and usually involves a whetstone. Sharpening a knife on a stone is an art and a science. It is a practice which most casual cooks – and many pros – will never master. That's why there are a wide variety of knife sharpening devices on the market. Some are really good and some are really a waste of money. Do your research and buy the one that best fits your needs and your budget. Or do as many of the pros do and have your knives professionally sharpened from time to time. It won't be cost-effective if you have a five-dollar Walmart knife, but if you dropped a hundred or more on a Wusthof, you'll want to make the investment.

Your knife is your most important kitchen tool. Keep it sharp, keep it clean, and keep it properly stored and you'll keep it for a lifetime.

TV Review: The Chew

ABC Gives Daytime Viewers Something New to Chew On

The Chew—ABC, Weekdays @ 1 pm ET/12 pm C/PT

If you were a fan of the long-running ABC soap opera All My Children and tuned in Monday (Sept 26) expecting to see Susan Lucci continuing her career-making role as Erica Kane, boy, were you surprised! Another Italian had taken her place. The Chew, ABC's new entry into the burgeoning reality food show market, now occupies the time slot so long filled by the fictional denizens of Pine Valley.

Unfortunately, at this point The Chew is a little hard to swallow.

Not wanting to judge based solely on the dreadfully unprepossessing inaugural episode – one in which Mario Batali, the cast member with the most star power, literally phoned in his contribution – I decided to watch a couple of follow-ups before commenting. Having done so I can say that after a few bites I'm honestly trying to like The Chew, but it's simply got to get better.

First, there's that ridiculous name; “The Chew.” Okay, ABC. Very cute and clever. I can imagine myself in the meeting where the programming executive's eight-year-old said something like, “Gee! You've already got 'The View.' Why don't you call it 'The Chew!' Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” And somebody actually liked the idea. Honestly! “The Chew?” Maybe they're trying to appeal to Southern male viewers. You know, the guys with little circular spots worn into the rear pockets of their jeans?

I do like the premise; take a panel of culinary experts and put them in a kitchen setting to talk about food and to cook in front of a studio audience. But there's a big problem right from the start – too many cooks spoil the broth.

Since there are five panelists on The View, the network felt compelled to put five panelists on The Chew; Mario Batali, Michael Symon, Carla Hall, Clinton Kelly, and Daphne Oz. Unfortunately, two of them are obvious fifth-wheels.

Mario, Michael and Carla are the draw cards here. Every foodie on the continent is familiar with at least one – if not all – of these people.

I am thrilled to see Mario Batali back on TV. Admittedly, I would go ga-ga over watching him read a list of Italian ingredients, but beyond that, the man really knows not only his food, but his audience. I've watched him work for three guests on a set and I've watched him work for a thousand guests in a live setting and he's fabulous either way. With his bright bold personality, his bright red ponytail and his bright orange clogs, he looms larger than life, but still imparts a passionate and finely detailed depth of knowledge about food and cooking.

Michael Symon is another ray of light. The Food Network folks tried their Iron Chef out in a couple of ventures that didn't really work too well. They put him in Robert Irvine's “Dinner: Impossible” shoes back when they were briefly on the outs with the British chef, but even with a shoehorn, Symon didn't fit and disappeared quickly when Irvine returned. The network bigwigs next loaned him out to the fledgling “Cooking Channel” and put him in his element, a kitchen, where he tried to Cook Like An Iron Chef, a rather poorly received one-man version of Iron Chef. Finally, they gave him a shot at ripping off the Travel Channel's Food Wars with his own Food Feuds, but his attempt to be Camille Ford didn't pan out either. It's a shame because the guy has an outgoing personality, an infectious laugh, and great culinary chops. These attributes added to his “Iron Chef” relationship with Mario present a good team in the making. Symon and Batali are just fun to watch.

I don't know a lot about Carla Hall other than through watching her compete on Bravo's “Top Chef,” where she acquitted herself quite well. She's a Tennessee native with classic French training and a decided Southern flair to her cooking. I haven't heard her utter her trademark “Hootie-hoo” yet, but her cooking segments so far have been entertaining and informative. She seems like a good fit with the other two powerhouse chefs.

These three are the core of the show. With their on-air presence and their culinary ability, they could effortlessly carry the demands of the program. Clinton Kelly and Daphne Oz, on the other hand, are distracting, annoying, and superfluous.

In the company of the aforementioned super-chefs, Dr. Oz's daughter fits like a foot in a glove. Author of The Dorm Room Diet, and billed by the ABC press machine as a “nutrition expert,” her only notable qualifications are her surname and her photogenic appearance. Watching the real food experts on the set prepare drool-worthy dishes and then watching Ms. Oz throw a handful of psyllium husks on a bowlful of yogurt was like watching a gourmet food truck crash into the front of a health food store. Even Mario got in a sly dig or two at the expense of her shaky culinary POV. Molasses and psyllium husks, anyone?

And where did they dig up Kelly? Wherever it was, I hope they put him back there soon. I know he's purportedly an “entertaining expert,” but so far the only point to his being on the show appears to be acting as sort of the overall program host, a task at which he fails miserably. As a former talk show host and frequent master of ceremonies, let me offer Mr. Kelly a little advice: nobody introduces a segment with the phrase “Here's a little thing we like to call ….” And his attempt to announce the death of Doritos creator Arch West with a little comic touch was classless at best. Clinton, your amateur slip is showing. With no real food experience and a personality that vacillates between supercilious and just plain silly, he adds little to the show, although his tablescape segment on Day 3 was interesting. Maybe he'll grow on me.

The Chew mirrors The View in that the panelists don't always put on fake smiles and pretend to march in lockstep. Mario's opinion of Daphne is pretty obvious. And Michael took a poke at her and Kelly after they attempted a “hard news” piece about Listeria-tainted cantaloupes. The two “experts” were basically telling people to ditch cantaloupes because of the potential danger. Symon, in a much more reasonable vein, jumped in and defended the defamed melon, saying, “Don't freak out,” and advising people to continue to buy cantaloupes and wash them before use. To which Kelly backpedals and tries to close the subject by lamely saying, “know your cantaloupes.” If you have a DVR or similar device, go back and look closely at the audience shot that followed this exchange. There's a brief glimpse of two women reacting. The sidelong glance and “WTF” look on the face of the lady on the left speaks volumes.

And please, ABC, please! We get the connection with The View. Please find somebody else to do guest shots. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar are acquired tastes that I really have no desire to acquire. At least Whoopi had the good grace to admit that she knew nothing about cooking and thus had the good sense to sit there and shut up. Not so with Joy Behar. No. In a point of dissent over whether or not to boil lasagna noodles, she told the pro-boiling Mario Batali to “get with the program.” Let's see, how many award-winning restaurants does she own? Mario took it in stride, wryly commenting, “I have much to learn in this life.”

In fact, Mario already seems to be setting himself as the show's lynchpin. When helping Carla Hall with a cooking segment, Mario observed her being sidetracked by Kelly into an extended discussion of seasoning cast iron. Mario got the distracted Hall back on track by asking, “Are we seasoning it right now or are we cooking something?”

If ABC were to listen to me about casting – like that's going to happen – I would dump the deadwood, Kelly and Oz, and move producer/announcer Gordon Elliot out from behind the scenes. The English-born Australian has oodles of television hosting experience. He's hosted everything from talk shows to game shows and he can also hold his own in the food arena, having served as the driving force behind Paula Deen's TV empire as well as numerous other Food Network offerings. He has a quick wit, an easygoing personality, and a distinctive voice. You might recognize him from his stint as a pitchman for Campbell's soups.

A daytime food-themed show comprised of Elliott as the point man and Batali, Symon, and Hall doing the heavy lifting would be a killer success. As it stands right now, The Chew is far more likely to be killed than to be killer. The curiosity factor allowed it to have initial ratings equal to the beloved soap opera it replaced. However, the “new” wears off quickly in network television. Ask Ashton Kutcher over on rival CBS.

But it's early. There have been only three episodes. The show's still rocking on its training wheels. I'm willing to give it a while to gather its legs and hit its stride. (Wow! Talk about mixing your metaphors!) I don't think that's possible without skimming the Oz/Kelly oil off the surface of the Batali/Symon/Hall water. In culinary terms, it is possible for oil and water to mix. It's called an emulsion. But the mixture is thermodynamically unstable, and right now so is The Chew.

Heinz Unveils a Better Ketchup Packet

At last. In a world dominated by reports of economic crises, climate change, war, and political upheaval comes news of truly astounding importance: the Heinz people have invented a new and improved ketchup packet.

Seriously, this is big stuff, especially if you are one of the millions who have been frustrated out of your skull trying open one of the confounded little things. “Tear Here.” Yeah, right! Most people go caveman and resort to using their teeth. Some pull out pocket knives or other sharp objects. Some just curse and throw the wretched things back in the bag, opting to do without rather than risk their sanity.

There is one enormously successful way to open a ketchup packet. I learned this method quite accidentally when I showed up at work with what appeared to my coworkers to be a serious leg wound, blood staining my lower pants leg all the way to the knee. Somebody had carelessly dropped one of the accursed condiment packets on the floor of my car and I unknowingly stepped on it at some point. So take my word for it, tromping one of the accursed little things is extremely effective if not entirely practical.

In light of that incident, it seems strange to me that the second largest complaint about ketchup packets is volume. Most people seem to think they simply don't contain enough ketchup. (My dry cleaner would disagree.) I suppose that's why most fast food places drop about three pounds of them into your takeout bag.

At any rate, the news from Pittsburgh is that the H.J. Heinz Company, after three arduous years of R&D, has come up with a solution to both issues. Now lest you think I am kidding about the “arduous” part, it is being reported that Heinz researchers spent hours behind one-way glass observing the frustrations of test consumers situated in simulated minivan interiors as they struggled to open conventional ketchup packets for their fries, burgers, and chicken nuggets. Even more, the vice-president of global packaging innovation and execution went out and bought himself a used minivan, which he proceeded to drive around to various fast food drive-ins, ordering fries and attempting to put ketchup on them in the confines of the van. Wow! Such dedication to research!

And it has apparently paid off in the form of the new “Dip and Squeeze” packet, which will soon begin replacing the fouled up foil rectangles in Wendy's restaurants. Some Chick-fil-A and Dairy Queen locations are already using the new product, while the big two – McDonald's and Burger King – are said to be “testing” the packets.

The new design is kind of cool – and pretty simple, too. It's a little plastic tray shaped like a ketchup bottle. It has a foil lid and you can either tear off the “cap” – a strip near the top – for squeezing, or you can peel back a lower corner for dipping. Ingenious, huh? And they contain three times as much ketchup as the traditional packets so consumers won't have to grab double-handfuls of them anymore, a good thing for vendors since the new containers are also about three times as expensive as the old ones.

In fact, one Heinz official even attributes a decline in “fry inclusion” orders at drive-thrus to an increased level of consumer frustration with recalcitrant ketchup packets. He apparently believes people would rather forgo their fries than fight with the foil packets. In light of the current trend toward more healthy eating, I rather think the French fry fall-off may be more the result of people making other choices, but if the man in charge of making food-service ketchup packets wants to hold onto his illusions, I won't naysay him.

Truth be told, I don't eat ketchup on my French fries – or on anything else for that matter – so I don't really have a dog in this fight. However, I have assisted my wife and kids in their struggles, so I can at least relate. But if you are one of the millions for whom this innovation will mark a vast improvement in quality of life, I'm happy for you. Just keep your new and improved ketchup packets off the floor of my car.

FDA "Cautions" HFCS Pushers Over "Corn Sugar"

You know, when I was a kid we took our garbage to the town dump. A guy named “Shorty” worked there, burying the garbage with a bulldozer. We called him “the Dump Man."

Nowadays, of course, we take our “solid waste” to the “sanitary landfill” where it can be “processed” by “sanitation engineers.” We're still just taking our garbage to the dump, but now it sounds so much better.

That's the theory behind the Corn Refiners Association's effort to rebrand high-fructose corn syrup. On the heels of more and more studies that essentially call the substance “garbage,” the producers – or “pushers,” as I like to label them – are pulling out all the stops in an effort to give the stuff a new image by calling it “corn sugar.” It just sounds so much better.

When I first reported on this issue last year in an article entitled “The Corn Sugar Scam; What's In a Name,” I quoted Shakespeare's familiar citation, “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Now comes news that the FDA still thinks the whole thing stinks.

See, the pushers petitioned the FDA to allow them to make the change, prevaricating that "the name 'corn sugar' more accurately reflects the source of the food (corn), identifies the basic nature of the food (a sugar), and discloses the food's function (a sweetener)." Then they just went on ahead and did it. They launched a televised ad campaign and set up websites, one of which uses “cornsugar” in the URL. They “petitioned,” alright, but operating under the old adage, “it's easier to seek forgiveness than permission,” they didn't bother waiting for approval. And because the specious ad campaign does not seek to promote a particular product, but rather an entire industry, the FDA is something of a toothless tiger regarding its ability to regulate the advertising.

But even toothless tigers don't like having their tails pulled. In a July 12, 2011 letter obtained by the Associated Press, Barbara Schneeman, an FDA director, wrote to the Corn Refiners Association to say she was concerned with the pushers' interchangeable use of the terms “high fructose corn syrup” and "corn sugar.” "We request that you re-examine your websites and modify statements that use the term 'corn sugar' as a synonym for (high fructose corn syrup)."

That, of course, drew an immediate response from the pushers; they yawned. Then they sent the AP a blah-blah e-mail promising to review materials and to make changes if necessary. In other words – specifically the words of W.C. Fields, – “Go away, kid, ya bother me!”

But it appears the tiger does have at least one good tooth: the FDA can bust any food producer who actually uses the phony term in place of “high-fructose corn syrup” on any food packaging.

All this comes after the pushers had already been shot down by the FDA when they attempted to get permission to drop the words “high-fructose” and just call their product “corn syrup.” An FDA official called the effort “misleading.” Ya think? This despite the fact that seven pork-addicted senators from Corn Belt states filed a letter backing the “corn syrup” snow job in the interest of clearing up “consumer confusion.”

But the writing's on the wall; in a recent survey, Kraft, Gatorade, Pepsi, Hunt's, Heinz, Starbucks, Sara Lee and a slew of other manufacturers have all removed HFCS from some of their product lines in response to consumer concerns. And now the restaurant industry is jumping on the bandwagon. Chains and privately owned eateries alike are beginning to dump HFCS from their menus, both in response to consumer demands and as a result of trying to upgrade to more healthy, natural offerings. Wait for it.....here come the pushers......”Corn is a natural product!!!” Yeah, so is hemlock. Want a cup?

Besides – and restaurant chefs are discovering this, too – anything made with the cheap, nasty crap tastes cheap and nasty. Pat Herring, the Research and Development guy for one of my favorite places, Jason's Deli, puts it best when he says, “Food today has so many ingredients that we've kind of dumbed-down our tastebuds.” He referred to HFCS – which is conspicuously absent at Jason's – as sounding “chemical-y” when compared to sugar and/or honey and sagely adds that nobody goes to the pantry and gets a little HFCS to add to their morning cereal.

And with corn prices on the rise, HFCS isn't going to be a bargain much longer, so a lot of food manufacturers are killing two birds with one stone; they're trimming costs by reverting to cane sugar and they're looking like health-conscious consumer crusaders at the same time. Win-win!

Excuse me, now. I'm going to go knock back a Sierra Mist and fix a sandwich made with Jif Peanut Butter on some Pepperidge Farm 100% Natural Bread. Maybe a little Mott's Natural Applesauce on the side. And some Archway Molasses Cookies or a little Dove chocolate for dessert. (All HFCS-free products.)

Call it what you will, tempus fugit, high-fructose corn syrup. The hands on the popularity clock are nearing midnight and your fancied-up Cinderella product is about to become a plain old ear of corn again.