We eat lots of Mediterranean foods, often with pita bread from the supermarket that isn’t as flavorful as we’d like it to be. So when we spotted Canterbury Naturals flatbread mix, “just add oil and water,” we eagerly set out to bake our own flatbread (not with pockets like pita, but hopefully more exciting).

We were not disappointed! Warm from the oven, we proudly served our eight handmade, individual-size flatbreads, highly seasoned with a “Mediterannean” herb mix of basil, bell pepper, chile, fennel, garlic, marjoram, onion, oregano, parsley and thyme. Once they cool down they get a bit dry (like pita), but can easily be warmed in the microwave. After two days of storage in our Fresh Vac food storage containers, they still warmed up nicely.

While there are recipes aplenty to make flatbread from scratch, don’t underestimate the convenience of a packaged mix. It was easy, delicious and impressive! We mixed the package ingredients into a dough with some olive oil and water, kneaded it briefly, let it rise for 30 minutes, divided and rolled the dough into eight flat pieces, brushed the tops with olive oil and sprinkled them with the seasoning blend. The flatbreads baked for six minutes and cooled for a few minutes. Aside from the rising and cooking time, prep was no more than 10 minutes, using one bowl and one cookie sheet.

Impress your friends and family with home-baked flatbread. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

In addition to Mediterranean Savory Herb, the mix is available in Parmesan and Sundried Tomato. The attractive boxes make a nice house gift or stocking stuffer for your favorite cook. The product is certified kosher by KOF-K.

French Meadow Bakery’s Whole Grain Bread,
Sandwich Bread and Italian Rolls. Photo
by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

French Meadow Bakery makes certified organic and gluten-free products that are casein-free, lactose-free and peanut-free, as well as kosher (parve). We recently tasted a selection of company’s gluten-free line of breads and cakes.

When we taste gluten-free baked goods, we do it from the same perspective as we taste all products. We don’t judge if the product is “good for a gluten-free product,” but if it is a good product that anyone would enjoy. We tasted two products in French Meadow Bakery’s gluten-free line that scored on this front; anyone in the family would enjoy them.

Gluten Free Multigrain Bread is made of a tasty mix of whole grain flour blend (amaranth, quinoa, millet, sorghum, teff), egg whites, organic flax seed, organic millet and organic quinoa and a touch of honey, among other ingredients.

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread is made of corn starch, egg whites, tapioca starch, honey, rice bran and germ, plus raisins and other ingredients.

The Gluten-Free Italian Rolls and Sandwich Bread are more appropriate for those who must restrict their gluten intake.

Some of our tasters enjoyed the Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and ate every last one of the pre-formed, ready-to-bake cookies. We could taste that they were a gluten-free product; but the good news is that, those who can’t have gluten can keep these cookies in the freezer, ready to transform into a warm, fragrant cookie whenever the need strikes.

There’s a new flower in the garden of Ayala’s Herbal Water. Lemon Verbena Germanium smells and tastes just like geraniums accented with lemon verbena (which some will recall as Ellen O’Hara’s—mother of Scarlett—favorite scent). Like the rest of the flavors, it’s refreshing, delightful and wonderfully different.

Ayala’s infuses organic garden herbs, blended with spices and citrus peel, into purified water to create innovative flavor profiles. We love this line; it complements food so much better than other flavored waters. The rest of the line includes Cinnamon Orange Peel, Clove Cardamom Cinnamon, Ginger Lemon Peel, Lavender Mint Lemongrass Thyme and Lemongrass Mint Vanilla. The first three are wonderful Thanksgiving flavors, especially welcomed by guests who don’t drink.

Ayala’s Herbal Water has zero calories and is certified USDA Organic and OU kosher. It is available at HerbalWater.com and at retailers nationwide, including Central Market, Food Emporium, Giant, HEB, Raley’s, Safeway, Wegmans, Whole Foods Market and many natural food and specialty food stores.

It’s different and it’s delicious! Photo courtesy of Ayala’s.

For ease in pan frying, put your cooking oil in an oil mister—you can find one in any housewares store. You’ll get a better flavor than with Pam, you won’t be using chemical propellant and you’ll use much less oil than by pouring it the pan from the bottle. We have four misters filled with different Salute Santé grapeseed oils: regular, garlic, lemon and hot chili, to variously impart flavors to our food (some days we like eggs with garlic, some days with lemon, some days with a jolt of chili). Grapeseed oil has one of the highest smoke points, 485°F, so fry away!

It’s effortless to save the world by drinking
organic, Fair Trade coffee. Photo by
Ermek | IST.

With coffee emporia nearly everywhere you look—cafés and shops that sell beans—you’d think that coffee was a hot growth category. Yet the annual growth rate of conventional coffee between 2000 and 2008 was just 1.5%. Organic coffee imports experienced a 29% annual average growth rate during the same period, and Fair Trade® coffee, 35%. Last year, the amount of organic coffee imported into the United States increased 12%, and Fair Trade coffee increased 30%, despite the worst economy in 70 years and the premium prices that both command.

You’d think this would be great news, but just 0.6% of the coffee sold in the major consuming countries is organic certified, and even less is Fair Trade certified.

In honor of National Fair Trade Month, we’ve reviewed some of our favorite organic and Fair Trade coffees. Agricultural products can be organic and Fair Trade, organic or Fair Trade (obviously, the vast majority of foods are neither). What do these terms mean? In brief:

Yet of the $18 billion spent on coffee in the U.S. last year, the tiniest fraction went to organic and Fair Trade coffee. You can make a difference while enjoying an excellent cup of java.

The Bacon Salt family. Photo by Hannah
Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

When Bacon Salt debuted two years ago, we loved the idea. While the founders looked at it as “bacon flavor everywhere,” we delighted in the idea of “kosher, vegetarian bacon flavoring for those who can’t have bacon.” But we never found the salt bacony enough. In full disclosure, except for a sprinkling of sea salt here and there, we’re not big salt users. So while we applaud the innovation, perhaps we’re just not the target market for this product.

But Bacon Salt has throngs of devotées, so when two new limited edition flavors were released (Cheddar and Jalapeño), we sat down with all five varieties. There were some hits as well as misses.

Need a sweet treat, like candy or ice cream, but healthier? Want to spend your budget of say, 100 calories? The new YoCrunch 100 Calorie Packs hit the spot, with just 10 or 15 calories from fat. Nonfat yogurt, a blend of sugar and erythritol (one of the sugar alcohols, a natural sweetener that replaces much of the sugar to reduce the calories without artificial flavor) unite to create this 100 calorie, 3.75-ounce treat. And there’s enough calorie budget let to add some famous YoCrunch mix-in. Flavors include:

YoCrunch 100 Calorie Packs are sold in six-packs. YoCrunch is certified kosher (dairy) by OU.

Read our review of YoCrunch Naturals yogurt and visit our Yogurt Section for reviews of our favorite yogurts, recipes, our Yogurt Glossary and much more.

100 calories of pleasure. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

Treat your favorite meat lover (yourself?) to a gift of something meaty, new and interesting. Boar, bison, elk, emu and ostrich are readily available. Farmed, usually raised naturally and low in fat, what may sound exotic is actually sweet, tender and not in the least gamy. Cooking an unusual cut is a good reason to invite fellow food-lovers for dinner—and tell them to bring some good Burgundies!

xciting mayonnaises and mustards turn
everyday ingredients into delicious canapés.
Photo by KS Chin | IST.

We’ve fallen in love with a few products that have become part of our permanent pantry. In this Top Pick Of The Week, you’ll meet:

Marvelous Mayos

Mighty Mustards

Swell Sweeties

All make great small gifts and stocking stuffers. Read more in the full review.

Look at two of the hottest food trends—whole grain and gluten-free. Every one of us needs more whole grain in our diet, and one out of 133 people have celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that requires a gluten-free diet. (Still more have simple wheat allergies.)

Corn and rice, among other grains, are naturally gluten free. Chex cereals is the first mainstream, gluten-free cereal line, with Rice Chex, Corn Chex and new gluten-free Honey Nut Chex, Chocolate Chex and Cinnamon Chex.

We recently sat down with a box of “Simply Nutritious Honey Nut Chex With A Touch Of Honey.” WIth 8g or more of whole grain per serving, it is a healthier sweet treat than almost any other processed sweet treat (doughnut, breakfast pastry, raisin bagel), and nicely crunchy, eaten on the go from a plastic snack-size bag. We enjoy it.

But as we spend out days scrutinizing words and labels, we have two questions:

The new version of Honey Nut Chex is gluten-free and made of corn.

This recalled our favorite Abraham Lincoln quote: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” We don’t know if there were ever nuts in Honey Nut Chex, but has anyone else noticed they’re missing?