Papaya Mango is the new limited edition
Snapple tea. Photo courtesy Snapple.

Last year, Snapple sponsored an episode of Celebrity Apprentice that allowed Bret Michaels to create one of our favorite Diet Snapple flavors ever, Trop-A-Rocka. The layering of mango, pear and cinnamon was the most complex Snapple flavor we’d come across. And it’s not just our opinion: the limited edition was so popular that it was made into a permanent member of the line.

A couple of weeks ago, Snapple debuted its newest limited edition tea, Snapple Papaya Mango Tea, in Episode 6 of The Amazing Race.

Inspired by the exotic flavors of India (where the contestants spent the second hour of the show), the flavor combines green tea, black tea and the lush fruit flavors of papaya and mango. It’s available in both regular and diet versions at participating retailers nationwide.

If you like Peach Snapple (and we know people who buy it by the case), you’ll want to try Snapple’s Papaya Mango Tea. Like Tropa-Rocka, it deserves to be a permanent member of the family.

What will be the next co-branded Snapple limited edition? Please, Snapple, not the Real Housewives. We’d have to draw the line.

Find a Snapple retailer near you and print a $1.00 coupon at Snapple.com.

Asa Candler, who purchased the Coca-Cola recipe from John Pemberton in 1887 for $2,300, worked on the original recipe to turn it from a medicinal tonic to a soft drink.

Candler was maniacal about protecting his secret recipe. He demanded that no one ever write it down. All labels were removed from ingredient containers. Staff had to identified the ingredients by sight and smell only. All invoices from the ingredients suppliers were shredded, so that employees could not discover what they were and sell the information to rivals.

Over the years, the company has made much of its “secret recipe,” which is so cloak-and-dagger that a major “secret ingredient” is known only as Merchandise 7X. The formula is kept in a bank vault. The company claims that any given time only two people know how to mix the 7X flavoring, and they can never travel on the same plane in case it crashes. It makes for good press.

While it’s easy to determine the general ingredients in a lab analysis, the Merchandise 7X unique flavoring has been elusive.

Now, producers of the Public Radio show “This American Life” claim to have uncovered the identity of Merchandise 7X. It’s a mix of seven ingredients.

A February 18, 1979 article on the history of Coca-Cola, published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, included a photograph that claimed to be a handwritten copy of the Pemberton Coca-Cola recipe, written in a friend’s leather-bound recipe book of remedies and ointments.

A portion of an image from an early Coca-
Cola company check. The original can be
purchased at Scripophily.net.

Instead of trying to recreate the original, we recommend that you purchase some Boylan’s Cane Cola. It has a wonderful old-fashioned taste that might be quite similar to Candler’s final product. Their sugar-free cola is just as delicious—you won’t know it’s sugar free.

Like Coca-Cola, Boylan’s is certified kosher. Read our review of Boylan Bottleworks, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.

Salsa verde is made from the green tomatillo
berry, which is not a tomato. Photo by
Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

We’re a nation of salsa lovers; but much of that is salsa roja, red salsa.

In Mexico, the land from which we obtained our love of salsa, it’s the opposite. Only the northern states of Mexico, closest to the U.S. border, have red salsa as their tradition.

Green salsa is based on the tomatillo, which is a distant relative of the tomato (the difference between tomatoes and tomatillos).

We’ve had salsa verde from jars, but only recently experienced the joys of fresh salsa verde, from Chef Gerard & Chuck’s. It made us ask, why isn’t there more fresh salsa verde on the market?

Of course, that’s the very question that got Chef Gerard into the business!

That spoonful of jelly, jam or preserves can be up to 70% sugar and so sweet that the first thing you taste is table sugar, not fruit.

If you’re trying to cut back on sugar, switching jam and preserves is one place to start.

The producers of the Fiordifrutta (“flower of the fruit”) line of no-sugar-added jams (actually fruit spreads*), imported from Italy, say that they “work with nature” to produce their products.

*Per U.S. Food & Drug Administration definitions, a jam or preserve sweetened with something other than sugar is called a fruit spread.

The taste is right from nature. It’s as if you picked and cooked the fruit in your own kitchen, modestly sweetened with apple juice.

The only ingredients in the jar are organic fruit, organic apple juice and apple pectin, resulting in about 30% fewer calories than conventional products.

The 100% organic line works with nature in a second way: Organic agriculture is sustainable agriculture. By choosing an organic product, you help maintain the environment for your family and for future generations.

Spread more for less: There are less sugar
and fewer calories in this line of apple-
sweetened organic fruit spreads. Photo
courtesy Fiordifrutta.

You can enjoy Fiordifrutta in apricot, blackberry, cherry, cranberry, lemon, orange, peach, plum, raspberry, strawberry, wild blueberry and wild berries.

Spread away: on bread, with cheese, as a dessert or pancake topping, in sauces, in smoothies, in plain yogurt.

The suggested retail price is $5.99 per 9.52-ounce jar. All of the flavors are available online at SelinaNaturally.com. Or, phone the importer at 1.305.470.7583 for a retailer near you.

One note: Since the fruit spreads are organic and made without sugar, there is no preservative—natural or otherwise. Thus, the shelf life is shorter than other jams in the fridge. Enjoy your Fiordifrutta within 6 to 8 weeks of opening. Most people won’t have to worry about this: The jar will be empty within a week or two.

Organic Hazelnut Spread
Apart from the fruit spreads, Nocciolata chocolate and hazelnut spread, an elegant version of Nutella, is a must-try. According to the company, Nocciolata contains 15% more hazelnuts than Nutella.

Learn more at FiordifruttaUSA.com.

If you’re one of the millions of people who have just made a New Year’s resolution to pursue better food choices, here’s an “inspirational” video. It shows some simple, portion-controlled snack ideas that let you treat yourself without going overboard.

Whether you have a sweet tooth or prefer savory flavors—and there’s no reason you can’t have both—pick up some tips to maintain your 2011 eating plan.

Some of our favorites:

You can still enjoy a few drinks on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, without breaking the calorie bank.

Registered Dietician Elizabeth Somer provides tips that help you to “drink this, not that,” to borrow a phrase from the popular book by David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding.

In fact, the book series that includes Drink This, Not That, Eat This, Not That and Cook This, Not That will help jump-start your New Year’s diet.

But back to our weekly cooking video: Spend a few minutes with it and you’ll be mindful of which drinks are highest in calories and which alternatives are just as satisfying. Or as we see it, trade off drink calories for a piece of pecan pie or cheesecake.

Our vote for World’s Best Toffee. Photo

We taste lots of toffee each year, but have never found one we like as much as Enstrom’s.

It’s a very buttery toffee; and that rich, buttery flavor combined with excellent chocolate and nuts makes the product stand out.

There’s so much butter that the company recommends refrigerating the toffee (but don’t worry, it’s even delicious right from the freezer).

And, the line is certified kosher!

A satisying O.J. Lite. Photo by Erika Meller |
THE NIBBLE.

If you’re still stuffed from Thanksgiving dinner, it’s a good time to read about Minute Maid Light fruit drink, instead of some rich, heavy food.

At only 15 calories and 4 grams of carbohydrate per 8-ounce glass, it’s an orangey way to start your day or quench your thirst throughout it. Each 8-ounce serving contains 100% of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C.

We tried Orange Tangerine and Lemonade fruit drinks. The products are made with real juice from concentrate, sweetened with sucralose and acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), and are certified kosher by Triangle K. Both can also be used as low-calorie cocktail mixers.

The line also includes Limonada-Limeade and Raspberry Passion, which we couldn’t track down at our local markets. A colleague tells us that Limonada-Limeade, some Orange Tangerine (substituting for the Cointreau) plus tequila makes a lower-calorie, No Sugar Added Margarita.

Minute Maid, the world’s largest marketer of fruit juices and fruit drinks, is a brand owned by The Coca-Cola Company.

If there’s a Paciugo Gelato near you, you may want to head over for a few scoops and see why the readers of DMagazine in Dallas chose it as “Best Gelato.”

Christina and Ugo Ginatta and their son Vincenzo moved from Turin, Italy to Dallas, where they started the city’s first gelato caffè in 2000. Using artisan techniques and the finest ingredients, they developed a recipe list of 200 flavors in rotation (with a selection of 30 to 38 available on any given day). The company is now a mini-chain of more than 40 stores in 11 states plus Mexico.

Just looking at the list of flavors makes you want to try every one (and if you really want every flavor, ask about having your own franchise).

What we especially like about Paciugo Gelato is its ability to provide a frozen treat for just about everyone.

Gelato for everyone! Photo courtesy Paciugo.

It’s easy to make sugar-free sorbet.
Photo by Dusan Zidar | BSP.

There’s a lot of good “No Sugar Added” ice cream out there, but it’s tough to find a sugar-free sorbet.

If you’re on a sugar-free diet and miss sorbet, you can make it with unsweetened fruit juice or puréed fruit.

Sugar or no sugar, sorbet is a better choice in general than ice cream: it’s fat free, cholesterol free and full of nutritious fruit. Whether you want a sugar-free or a sugared dessert, make some from delicious fall fruits. We adore apple and pear sorbets. Clementine/orange/tangerine, cranberry, grapefruit, kiwi and persimmon are other fall favorites.

For a juice-based sorbet:

To make sorbet with fresh or frozen fruit:

Find more sorbet recipes in our Gourmet Ice Cream Section.