Solutions seem to be as prolific as the number of individuals offering advice. Now there is a strategy that everyone can employ and use wisely. Tomorrow, October 24 is the 1st National Food Day. What does that phrase really mean? In its most simple terms, it means, that there will be an emphasis on food issues throughout the country. Most cities have signed on with some sort of program and chefs, of course, are playing a significant role in the program.

What about the individual response? Yes, we can all get involved and do something. One day can make a difference. Support your local farmer. There are still plenty of farmstand markets bringing in the best of fall fruits and vegetables.  In some communities, individuals are helping plant a school garden so that young children can benefit from what is truly fresh. Restaurants are having a large variety of programs to bring in individuals and demonstrate how we can all pitch in and make a difference. Find a sustainable food project in your community and participate.

Yes, everyday can be a food day, but sometimes we need to pull back and think about how we can help others and create a stronger, better, more harmonious approach to food issues.  We can be a healthy nation.

The major undertaking of a food exhibit, “What’s Cooking Uncle Sam,” a pop-up restaurant, American Eats Tavern, and a cookbook, Eating with Uncle Sam, has added a whole new chapter to the collections from the Archives and the Presidential libraries. Yes, food has played an important role in our history and much of what we do and comment on today within the universe of food has its earliest roots tied into a major document that has been preserved. Think of the current trendy chef movement toward the healthy concept of Meatless Mondays. It was during World War II that Americans were asked to have a meatless day (Tuesday) and such a tradition remained a strong staple of households many years after the War ended.

Touring the exhibit at the Archives gives one a bountiful repast of our history and how food evolved within the culture. Dining nearby at the Jose Andres restaurant (America Eats Tavern), lets one celebrate our history with a taste of the original recipes. After all how many types of Catsup have evolved over the years! A good way to test your palate. Now it all comes together with this new book.

One of the most discussed posters in the exhibit is entitled “Eat the Carp” which serves as an introduction to the fish chapter which includes a recipe for Paprikosh (1917-20) which today we might call a fish hash. Or try Lady Bird Johnson’s famous Shrimp Squash Casserole.

If sweets are more to your liking, there are plenty of recipes to try including Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipe of Fruit Cake. After all, we wonder how some recipes ever evolved! How about a recipe for Fondant with the accompanying 1917-19 poster “Sugar: Save It.”

These little tastes should help you set a table of historical recipes. If you can’t make it to the Archives before the exhibit closes in early January, then take a You Tube tour.

In the meantime, enjoy the history and the recipes as you recognize the importance of keeping records.

The Subway chain in Oregon and Texas offers gluten-free sandwiches. (The program was rolled out several months ago, but I recently observed the process firsthand–quite different from a press release!) This is a big deal being advertised with banners and in-store literature. Anecdotally, they are reporting an impressive amount of interest and orders.

If you enter a Subway that offers a G-F menu, then you have hit the quick-service, made-to-order sandwich line. Before you scoff and say how could such a large chain pull off the G-F experience, let me share what I witnessed. The staff has been well trained and recognize the contamination possibilities. The roll comes wrapped but never even makes it to the counter until the sandwich person scrubs down the counter, announces that a G-F sandwich is about to be made, does a complete hand wash, and grabs a new pair of gloves. Pretty impressive actually! For those who worry about the isolation preparation. you have an advantage: You watch the process rather than speculate that caution is being followed!

When all is set and ready to go, the G-F sandwich gets further isolated during the preparation selection and ends up in its own specialty bag. What’s the upcharge for this attention to detail? A dollar more for a G-F sandwich: A price that goes down easily.

Maybe other fast food, casual restaurants, and nationwide chains will figure out that offering a gluten-free option is not price prohibitive but rather financially advantageous.

Marketing mainstream reality.

What special benefits can hotels offer to distinguish themselves? That is an ongoing industry, marketing question. Hyatt jumped up to the plate with a Welcome Credit. Depending on the number of nights, the monetary reward could be as high as $150. A guest should have no problem enjoying spending the money on the property. Hello, steak dinner.

If you’re Vegas-bound, you have the universe of selections as hotels are tripping over each other with good deals as their economy still lags. Once you settle on a property, take a stroll down the Strip and dine to your heart’s content as a whole coterie of big-deal chefs continue to wine and dine the visitor. It seems no end is in sight as to the restaurant potential in Vegas. Corby Kummer finds that the food now matches the hype! Jose Andres followers take note: The famous chef continues to research and study the history of foods. His latest education turns his palate to Chinese food. Washington, DC, which feels a certain hometown national pride over Andres’s food empire, will readily welcome a good Chinese restaurant, or two.

Let’s not forget coffee. In-room coffee service has been heavily scrutinized, and criticized, for its questionable cleanliness standards. Hotels have fought back with lobby coffee partnerships that promise a respectable cup of coffee. Marriott Hotels have various coffee partnerships depending on the brand. Newer or refurbished Courtyards offer Starbucks in the Bistro, and the higher-end properties (JW Marriott, Renaissance) may have taken coffee to a new height: An Espressamente Illy., a true coffee experience. The logic is quite simple: Keep the money in the property rather than watch guests stroll down the block and return to the hotel with someone else’s cup.

Sure small refrigerators and minibars stocked with a guest’s pre-ordered items (Hilton) are popular, but what’s better than good food and a great cup of coffee? OK, a lovely wine, but that’s not really been a hotel’s downfall. So pack your bags and take a hotel holiday or a mini-vacation. It is summer, after all.

Not every restaurant has the high rent problem. Some have solved the dilemma by getting a food truck. Remember this was a strong trend at the end of the decade and continues to be an ever-present one, regardless of the weather.  

Some cities are lined with food carts, and you quickly learn who’s got what and where to find the best hot meal. No matter the competition, the goal is the same: Quality food at affordable prices. Even with a smile!

Time to get onto Twitter and find where some of the mobile ones are hanging out.

These are the little businesses that need our loyalty even if the snow is still piled high along the street.

BTW, the falafel is excellent!

Yes, this was definitely the week that was; as in you were warned by Starbucks that prices would increase. They did. You may not have noticed the 5 cents here and there and some drinks jumped more than that, but it’s the caffeine that counts, right?

At the same time they got hit for the price jump, albeit with warning, they continued to tweak their healthy menu items. A few simple adjustments on your latte orders, like switching to nonfat milk, can keep the calorie count down. Actually they have lots of company in the new calorie-posting lifestyle. Look at Applebee’s new healthy choice list with the long title: “Unbelievably Great Tasting & Under 550 Calories.” That’s a mouthful.

Grocers continue to parade around their value-pricing deals and low-calorie combinations. FreshDirect, the online grocer in New York, touts its 500-calorie meals which they create in-house and have available for delivery.

Results are in that people do pay attention to calorie postings, but they are being questioned for their exactness. Several reports have questioned the validity of the numbers. Think this is where commonsense has to rein. If it looks too good to be true…Guess what the triple burger might actually have more than 100 calories! I see more fruit options as commonsense sides to accompany main courses.

Celebrity Food Shows have been touting the combination of waffles and fried chicken. Now that has become a menu buzz. Do you get two separate plates so they syrup does not run all over the crispy chicken? This is what we call a fad; not a trend!

As the weather continues lashing out at us with a full deck of impossibilities, (tornadoes in CA?), it’s time to begin the magical pre-spring daydream: Seed catalogs. This is the time of year to leaf through them and find the best possibilities for your eventual garden. Time to order and begin the slow sprout. So many catalogs and so many new veggie and fruit possibilities. This is your year to rotate and bring on some new choices. Skip the all-traditional garden and go for some of the newcomers–all well marked. Just verify the growing zone so CA crops do not sit idle in your mid-Atlantic garden! Can one really have too many tomatoes?

Always a few more food recalls to focus our attention. This week it was cheese logs, smoked beef brisket, and additional burger items. With the appointment of the new FDA deputy commissioner in charge of upgrading food safety, maybe, just maybe, we can start to see better focused attention and action.

Speaking of burgers: Here’s a new burger bar prototype to consider: Burger King and Budweiser have teamed up to open a Whopper Bar by mid-February in South Florida. If it works there…the rest is history: Tourist areas get ready to open a cold one! It’s a success in Germany and new one is planned for Spain.

Oatmeal continues to be everyone’s favorite bowl game. McDonald’s, Caribou, Starbucks, and Jamba Juice are all tripping over each other with the flavor possibilities and price wars. What happened to good Old Quaker at home–OK, the one minute kind in a to-go cup–even less expensive!

Rest up a new week in food is ready to entice.

Plenty of restaurants and quick-service spots have obviously heard the rallying cry–it translates as Ka-Ching as dollars are going into the register with record speed as breakfast has become a bigger stop than just for the all-mighty cup of coffee. The examples speak volumes.

–Chick-Fil-A: They just introduced a new breakfast menu with with a low-calorie yogurt parfait (They quickly decided this item would be a popular all-day choice so its availability extends beyond 10:30AM) and mini nuggets–(Chick-n-Minis)–you know, a hand-held slider. Judging by the early morning drive-thru line, the concept must already be working.

–IHOP: Breakfast anytime is their concept as they move into the new year with the return of the All-You-Can Eat Buttermilk Pancakes starting at $4.99. It’s not just a plate of pancakes on this special as the combo accompaniments of eggs, hash browns, and meat are part of round one. Pancakes can keep on coming until it’s time to roll yourself out the door.

–McDonald’s: They  took on the breakfast brigade with the national rollout of the $1 menu (sausage biscuit, burrito, or McMuffin, and, of course, hashbrowns).

–Sonic Drive-In has several breakfast choices on the dollar menu including the Junior Breakfast Burrito with Sausage. They subscribe to the breakfast anytime motto.

All-Day Breakfast and price-competitive menus seem to be the theme starting the New Year. That, of course, and the big shout out about new, better grinds for truly enjoyable coffee!

With all the drive-n-go or eat ‘n run options, is anybody really focused on the Breakfast Metabolism starter or just finding filling food at affordable prices?

A little less food; a better cup of coffee.

Thank you.

Grocers have heard the cry that more consumers are looking for gluten-free products and often publish an easily available list of their products that meet the gluten-free guidelines. What was once a savage search in numerous aisles has become less of a hunt for quality tastes. Two caveats before you go down the road to digestive health. You need to find the basics and do a lot of your own in-house baking. The minute a manufacturer attaches a gluten-free label to a new item, it seems costs far exceed products with so many unnecessary ingredients. Hardly logical!

As for cereals, the Chex family has numerous solutions to make shopping easy and less focused on how many changes are necessary. They list products and offer recipes. Several blogs including the “Gluten Free Goddess” are devoted to the issue and provide suggestions and approaches to healthier living. Look at her roasted acorn squash risotto recipe, and you’ll understand following the GF lifestyle is not that difficult. For those with a classified health issue such as Celiac Disease, The Celiac Foundation offers extensive lifestyle advice.

It’s not that difficult to be gluten-free. It just means paying better attention to ingredients in purchased products and adjusting your cooking strategies. With the web, there are plenty of opportunities to find resources to help educate and make shopping a less painful outing.

Stay with the basics.

If sushi chefs taught us anything, it was that customers love to watch their food being made. It somehow conveys a freshness not otherwise exhibited when one buys a plasticized food container. Yes, someone made that item somewhere, but when and where?

When we go to a Mexican restaurant and someone is manning the tortilla machine we get that warm, cuddly, freshness feel. Yes, tortillas somehow taste better when we see the machine in action!

We like to watch. (I’m not talking about high-end restaurants where the magic is delicately performed at stations in the kitchen). I’m talking about a different food tier. We feel comfortable ordering what we see being prepared. That’s why grocers have expanded their takeaway sections with meals you can put together for a set price. You make the selection based on what you see. It feels far cleaner and fresher than the salad bar approach to dining.

How about a machine that makes fresh rice cakes while you watch! First off, the concept is fun, and the flavor means you’ll forgo the packaged products forever. Hello, CocoPop Machine.  Yes, these circular gems literally pop out of the machine and into the individual order. You’ll question the packaged rice cakes you’ve been snacking on for years.

If you see the machine in action, like I did today at a brand, spanking new Wegmans, you’ll be hooked on the lightness of the taste. If they are doing samples, try it with the organic jam. Now we’re talking a pairing! This type of interactive food display makes shopping fun again. Trust me: No cardboard aftertaste!

Seeing food being prepared can enhance the palate.

We’ve already purchased the special accouterments such as immersion blenders, poultry thermometers, mandolines, and specialty knives. Restaurant quality pots and pans were a natural addition to complement white dinnerware of all shapes and sizes to showcase the specialty preparations. Appliances have not suffered from lack of attention with Viking Ranges making major inroads into the home kitchen, and barista-style coffee makers comfortably supporting the caffeine habit that lends itself nicely to the creativity high.

Now we can do better planning with the first sous vide appliance designed for the home chef. Let’s backtrack a little. Sous vide has been around for a long time, especially in France, and in the US it has gone under the microscopic lens of fears of health and food safety. The water-bath, vacuum-sealed method of steady, low cooking maintains flavors and textures.

After it received passing marks, many chefs joined its original US superstars such as Thomas Keller (French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon) who has even written a book on the subject with what are fairly technical recipes.  Now it is our turn to use the water bath method of cooking and lock in flavors naturally and emulate the masters. With the new piece of equipment, many of these recipes are now within reach!

It just gets easier and more fun to be the creative home chef.

Happy cooking.

This summer promises a delicious event, great food fun as Meryl Streep literally becomes Julia Child in the movie “Julie & Julia” based on the book by a cooking novice who decided she could duplicate the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. One a day wouldn’t be that hard is what she thought. The book and the movie tell a more interesting, fun tale of harried days and long nights and impressive success.

The cast includes Stanley Tucci who we remember so fondly from Big Night and Amy Adams as the young woman trying to master the Master.

Trust me: The trailer looks great as we await the August opening.

Some people look forward to the next “Harry Potter” (this week); me, I await the food movie.

Delish.

So today, the 1st of July, is a good time to get on the bandwagon and start celebrating National Ice Cream Month. You don’t want to miss a day of this event. The industry is happy to accommodate with all kinds of new flavors and ingredient combinations. Haagen Dazs simplified the rules a little with its “five” product line–just 5 ingredients for the purity of taste. Trust me on this: Try the five Coffee. If you have ultimate discipline, then celebrate just one day of the month: July 19th, National Ice Cream Day.

For the fruit lovers this is a good month as it is National Blueberry Month. When they are plentiful, the blues bring on the smiles. If you can’t get enough of them, they are easy to freeze and bring cereals to life in the dead of winter! Of course, there’s the whole health discussion and the top marks the blues earn in the antioxidant life-saving category. That makes them extra tasty!

July is also National Hot Dog Month and this coming 4th of July tips the scales with record volume expected of over 150 million hot dogs! That little factoid should have the bakers baking and the relish makers making. Even the mustard people should ready themselves!

These three celebrations set the mood for the month.

Don’t waste a second; get started.

There’s a lot to celebrate.

Yes, there is a little optimism in the air. You can see it with the increased crowds at neighborhood places. You can follow it with people taking an extra day for a long weekend. It is summer after all, and everyone seems to be enjoying the extra hours of daylight by being outside and doing more.

So in the promo world, let me entice you one more time. After all, Two-Buck Chuck may be more popular than expense account meals!

The half-off bottle wine promo for The Palm has been extended until the end of August. No surprise.

Denny’s had an amazingly successful breakfast promo this spring. Now for the month of June, it’s an all-day everyday value slam. Whaddya think–maybe longer?

Happy Hours have returned to their roots–not just lower priced drinks but many with respectable food choices. In Washington DC one of the better buys for an after-work respite is at Vidalia’s. Definitely worth the stop.

Consumer Reports just rated over 100 chain restaurants and listed the good deals and what to look for. There’s even some room for negotiation. Some of the restaurants rated highest for exceptional value include: Black-eyed Pea, Sonny’s Real Pit BBQ, Azteca Mexican Restaurant, Cheddar’s Casual Cafe, and First Watch. Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar, Joe’s Crab Shack, and Friendly’s did not have such positive feedback!

Don’t forget the usual suspects that give out coupons; they’re still actively working for your restaurant dollars.

Opportunities exist. Take some time.

Help yourself and the economy through the bright lights of summer.

When the diner asks, “can we,” and the server does not look flummoxed but responds,”I think we can make it happen,” you know that training has won the game.

The customer wanted something crunchy from the bar menu to go with the tuna tartare. Instead of saying sorry we have nothing like that, the server began an exploratory option guess–how about truffle rolls? No, too fattening.

Want oyster crackers?  No, I eat no shellfish. That was quickly remedied with an analogy drawn from the lore of Saltines. If you smashed a number of saltines and used a circle machine, you would have the basis of an oyster cracker. Close enough.

Nuts?  No, that won’t work. 

Then, the bright light hit. After a quick consult with another server, he came back and said, “sure we can do almost anything, we are a restaurant in a hotel. We have an extensive room service menu. “

We could get chips. Would that work?

All handled with polite sweetness and no charge for the thinking and clever solution!

Ingenuity, the mother of invention, and good training.

The perfect combo!

Hard to know who started the upsurge in prix-fixe dining, but this week we credit Smith & Wollensky for bringing a smile to our faces. As I continue to search daily for good dining deals, they may have demonstrated some real panache this week. Watch for imitators, that’s OK. The more the merrier who join the “let’s eat more economically bandwagon”.

The Smith deal, available in most of its cities but not New York, works like this: $45 a person entitles you to an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. Yes, it is a lot of money, but it is an expensive steak restaurant that could easily cost you almost twice that much. The offer is available daily from 5-7 PM and does not include tax and gratuity.

So what if you eat a little earlier. So what if the filet mignon is a little smaller, you get to enjoy the dessert as compensation! Actually there are three appetizers to choose from including the famous steak accompaniment, a tomato & mozzarella salad, three additional entrees for the non-filet lovers (that is a little difficult to fathom from a restaurant that once tried to promote itself with a big steak knife taunting vegetarians–oh, times have changed!), and three desserts. It’s still expensive; I’m not denying that. I am admitting we need to still dine out. Now it is up to you to have restraint and not order a bottle of wine. Drinks drive the bill. This is a finely priced dinner reward for all those mac ‘n cheese nites.

Another way to treat yourself is to take advantage of one of the many Restaurant Week promotions. Baltimore is having one this week, New York City has exteneded theirs from one week to two, and Washington, DC  has an upcoming one in February. Check out the online reservation service Open Table for restaurants throughout the country that have a specially priced menu for a one -week period. Many restaurants continue the special restaurant week menu for a longer period of time. Betcha that happens a lot this year!

Some restaurants just participate for lunch with a 3-course $20 menu; some offer both lunch and dinner menus; dinner for three courses is frequently $35. Prices vary by location and many neighborhoods have their own interpretation of Restaurant Week.

Keep those programs coming. people will eat out when they think there is a deal worth having. It’s a good balance: eat at home some of the time, and then reward yourself while helping the restaurants stay afloat.

Bon Appetit.