November is National Pecan Month. Celebrate with some of our favorite pecan products:

See the rest of the November food holidays.

This Southern belle makes wonderful pecan
toffee with your choice of dark, milk or white
chocolate. Photo courtesy Lula Belle.

Emeril Lagasse is about to debut a gourmet burger restaurant named Burgers And More, or … BAM! The restaurant, set to open November 22nd in the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, will specialize in burgers made from a blend of prime and grass-fed beef. Burgers And More will also have an ample nonbeef burger menu, including crab, mushroom, salmon and turkey, along with hand-cut French fries, condiments made from scratch, malts and shakes and local draft beers. (We’re ready for a crab burger with a craft brew right now!)

Asked if he planned to replicate the burger concept elsewhere, Lagasse said he didn’t yet know: “We’ll have to see how it goes.” As the burger generally ranks on surveys as America’s favorite food, it should go well.

Chef Lagasse joins other celebrity chefs who find that the margins are higher (and more fans are to be made) in selling burgers over foie gras…although Daniel Boulud has done both with his pioneering gourmet burger stuffed with shorts ribs and foie gras, available at NYC’s Bistro Moderne.

“The Piggie,” at DBGB Kitchen & Bar in New
York City, features a beef burger on Boston
lettuce topped by pulled pork, with jalapeño mayonnaise. Photo by T. Schauer © DBGB.

Burger Gourmania

Other chefs with burger restaurant concepts include Bobby Flay, Hubert Keller and Laurent Tourondel. “Top Chef” contender Richard Blais’s menu at Atlanta’s Flip Burger Boutique includes 30 rotating burgers, with a daily choice of 8-10 beef burgers, three vegetarian burgers, three pork burgers, and three “alternative meats,” lamb, duck and venison. Numerous others, like Chef Boulud, have added gourmet burgers to their casual restaurant menus. Boulud’s recently-opened DBGB Kitchen & Bar in New York (a favorite of the NIBBLE staff) offers three kinds of gourmet burgers, one of which is pictured above, a happy marriage of burger, pulled pork and jalapeño on a Cheddar cornbread bun.

The Sterno Buffet Kit is ready to party!

The holidays are just around the corner, and with them come parties! When hosting a party, however, the last place you want to be is hovering over the stove in the kitchen. You’ve got guests to entertain! So why not put your trust—and your food—in one of Sterno’s newest products: Sterno Buffet Kits.

Each kit contains a water pan to keep the food temperatures and textures uniform, and Sterno’s gel fuel, which is a safe and reliable heating solution. The kits also include a newly designed folding rack for easy storage along with standard-sized pans so the rack can be used over and over again. Using the buffet kits will ensure you have everything needed to easily and conveniently warm and serve food so you’ll have more time to simply enjoy entertaining. Lasagna, anyone? Chili? Meatballs? Gosh, we’re hungry already!

Ten winners will receive both a full- and a half-size Buffet Kit. Each kit comes with a reusable wire folding rack, an aluminum water and food pan and one can of Sterno gel fuel. The full-size kit also includes an additional food pan and gel fuel, plus plastic serving utensils. Ideal for both indoor and outdoor entertaining, new Sterno Buffet Kits are available just in time for your holiday entertaining needs. Approximate Retail Value: $32.00/set.

It’s National Deviled Egg Day, so here are tips to make perfect boiled eggs. (1) Test eggs for freshness: A fresh egg will sink in a bowl of water. Raw eggs that float are over the hill. (2) Fresh eggs peel more easily, but make sure they’re more than 3 days old. (3) To avoid a green ring around the yolk, don’t overcook.

Try this technique for easy-to-peel eggs with beautiful yellow centers: Place eggs in a pot of cold water, add a teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and remove from heat; let sit for 13 minutes. Drain and immediately place eggs in an ice water bath until completely cooled. They should be perfect, and you can proceed with your favorite deviled egg recipe.

Deviled eggs topped with a piece of Smokra,
pickled okra from Rick’s Picks. Photo courtesy Rick’s Picks.

In honor of National Fair Trade Month, this week’s Gourmet Giveaway prize is not only socially conscious, but also smooth and satisfying.

Six winners will enjoy Brazilian coffees from National Geographic’s Terra Firma coffee brand. All Terra Firma coffees are Fair Trade Certified™, which guarantees fair prices to farm families, environmental stewardship and investment in farming communities.

We know many people will love Terra Firma coffee (it was on our Father’s Day gift list in June). The single-origin, specialty-grade coffee is sourced from six of the world’s finest growing regions: Brazil, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Sumatra and Kenya. If you don’t win, you can purchase it on Amazon.com in light, medium and dark roast, ground or whole bean. The handsome bag makes it a nice gift, too.

It’s effortless to make the world a better place, simply by buying Fair Trade coffee.

As the weather grows brisk, Aunt Jemima Frozen Pancakes invites you to photograph “Morning Moments” with your kids for the chance to win a family vacation to a warm location and digital cameras.

“We want this contest to highlight the importance of giving your children a warm breakfast even when you are on the run,” said Eric Hintz, Vice President of Marketing at Pinnacle Foods.

All you have to do is photograph a breakfast moment with your child/children and submit a picture along with a description in 100 words or less, of how you share a delicious, warm moment in the morning with them. We guessing that it helps if they’re eating Aunt Jemima Frozen Pancakes, available in Blueberry, Buttermilk, Homestyle, Low Fat Buttermilk, Whole Grain and Mini.

To enter:

Will your kid’s photo win a family vacation?

Log onto www.auntjemimafrozen.com/morningmoments, or send your entry to: “Aunt Jemima Frozen Pancake Morning Moments” Contest, c/o BHG PR, 546 Valley Rd., Upper Montclair, New Jersey 07043. All entries must be received by December 31, 2009. No purchase is required to win. One grand prize winner will receive a warm getaway for a family of four (Approximate Retail Value: $5,000). Ten finalists will each receive a digital camera to continue capturing their family’s moments (Approximate Retail Value: $200 each).

Simply become a Facebook Fan of Edible Arrangements and you’ll be able to sign up to receive a coupon code for a free box of six Dipped Fruit pieces: chocolate-covered strawberries, orange and pear slices and pineapple daisies (the selection may vary by location).

The offer ends on November 16th or once 100,000 new fans are registered, so do it today! (At a retail value of $15 per box, that’s $1.5 million worth of fruit being given away!) There’s also a 10% holiday early-bird discount off the purchase price of any orders placed before December 1, 2009.

Edible Arrangements sculpted fruit baskets are our favorite healthy dessert and snack—beautiful to look at, perfect for parties and a terrific way to teach kids that cake and ice cream aren’t the only things worth looking forward to.

Chocolate-dipped fruit: A heaven-sent combination.

In Morocco, father and son share a glass
of mint tea. THE DVD provides a beautiful
tea experience, available in DVD with
a companion book.

Tea lovers can enjoy a profound and breathtaking journey through the world of tea with Scott Chamberlin Hoyt’s film on DVD, The Meaning of Tea. A wonderful gift for anyone who wants to see first-hand exquisite tea plantations, how tea leaves are hand-plucked from the plant and turned into the beverage we drink, the DVD, $24.95, can be enjoyed and shared over and over again.

The film takes you through China, India, Japan and Taiwan. It also talks to tea-drinkers in far-away Morocco, England, France, Ireland and even Tea, South Dakota, who enjoy the tea that comes from half a world away. Unveiling tea’s mysteries, the film contrasts ancient rituals and bonds, such as that expressed by a tea planter who would “dishonor his ancestors” if he could not continue growing tea. Then, there are the youth to whom the cultural heritage is unimportant, expressed by Taiwanese teens who disparage their grandmothers’ tea-drinking but enjoy spitting the tapioca balls in bubble tea at each other, and young adult Japanese who prefer coffee because “it’s Western and cool.”

The hanging question is the future of tea, still the second-widest-drunk beverage in the world thanks to its ingrained presence in the high-population countries of China and India. But as fast food and soft drinks enter those cultures, the influence on younger generations has already had its impact. There is continually growing disinterest towards a long-renowned and honored refreshment whose place and rituals are now largely ignored.

Contrasted against this sea change are the seriousness of purpose of people who have spent their lives working in the tea industry and consumer tea lovers. Two middle-aged brothers who sell Pashmina scarves in India remonstrate that they could survive without anything on a desert island including water, but not without tea. A Moroccan man describes the ritual and pleasure of searching in the market for the perfect bunch of fresh mint with which to make his tea, and the satisfaction of brewing the perfect pot of tea with it.

Experiencing the bonds that so many people have to tea is an emotional and cultural ride we’d like to take again. This handsomely-shot, wonderfully-edited 74-minute DVD includes 45 minutes of special features. There’s a companion book with 150 photos that explores tea through the words of tea growers, tasters, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, scholars and experts from eight countries. Get the DVD and invite friends over for tea. It will be a memorable experience!

Halloween is right around the corner, and all those ghosts, goblins and superheroes will be expecting you to hand out some special treats. So go out and buy a few bags of candy, as this week’s Gourmet Giveaway prizes are definitely too good to give away.

Dove is offering one winner several bags of bite-sized candy in its newest flavor: Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate. These melt-in-your-mouth candies have just enough smooth chocolate to encase the creamy, peanut butter middle, and each individual piece also comes with an encouraging PROMISE message inside the wrapper, urging us to feel good about ourselves or expand our horizons. We loved it (see our blog post) and are lucky that fights didn’t break out at THE NIBBLE offices over how to divide the pieces.

This week’s Gourmet Giveaway also features 5 bonus prizes of Bubble Chocolate for five additional winners. These “aerated” chocolate bars imported from Beylorus are popular in Europe, and now available in the U.S. It’s not what the name sounds like—pockets of bubbles bursting in the mouth—but it’s tasty like a crisped chocolate bar without the crisps—a very interesting technology. Available in Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate, both are delicious and high quality. The Dark Chocolate tastes a bit like devil’s food cake to us, and the milk was not sticky-sweet like most U.S. milks. Both flavors are bound to please.

If you love chocolate and peanut butter,
rush out for Dove Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky |
THE NIBBLE.

With 102 different flavors of stuffed cupcake,
you’ll be able to celebrate National Chocolate
Cupcake Day for many days to come. Photos
courtesy of The Petite Café.

Very few people we know would decline to celebrate National Chocolate Cupcake Day. So go out and buy a few or stay home and whip up a batch from your favorite recipe or mix.

If you want to celebrate National Chocolate Cupcake Day more than once a year, that’s OK with us.