THE NIBBLE BLOG: Products, Recipes & Trends In Specialty Foods


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PRODUCT: Teach Table Manners With Manners Cards

Need help teaching table manners to kids?

It can be trying, or it can be fun.

Golly Gee-pers! Table Manners Cards choose the fun way—one that eliminates nagging and prodding.

And you can get them just in time to impress relatives and friends at upcoming holiday dinners.

These easy-to-use “manners cards” make sure that kids are on their best behavior during every dining experience—at home, at other people’s homes and at restaurants. Children learn proper manners via fun games.

The funny-yet-respectful cards depict 14 different table manners, proper and improper, designated with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Kids and adults alike compete for Ready To Dine Out awards.

 
Elbows on tables are a “thumbs down.” Photo
courtesy Golly Gee-pers!
 

Extra blank thumbs-up and thumbs-down cards can be used to address specific age groups, cultures, family rules, etc.

And surprise: adults will improve their table manners in the process, too.

Get your Golly Gee-pers! and have fun learning how to eat genteelly.

See how easy it is to turn your family into a class act at the table.
  

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TIP OF THE DAY: Make Radish Eyeballs For Adult Halloween Food

How about some “eyeball” nibbles with your Halloween cocktails?

This healthy hors d’oeuvre or snack uses a radish base for the white and “veins” of the eyeball. The pupil and iris are a pimento-stuffed olive. All you have to do is peel the radishes and insert the olives (buy large radishes and small olives).

Fun to look at, crunchy radish eyeballs are a low-calorie and healthy food. (Yes, fun, delicious and healthy do co-exist!) Serving ideas:

  • Relish Tray: Serve the eyeballs as part of a retro relish tray, with celery and carrot sticks or other favorite crudités (our favorites include broccoli, cauliflower, fennel, grape tomatoes and zucchini), plus gherkins or pickle slices. We also like to add spiced apple slices and pickled pears.
  • Cheese Plate: Add radish eyeballs to a platter with Halloween cheeses.
  • Halloween Platter: Present the radish eyeballs on a Halloween plate, perhaps with some plastic spiders (check out this tarantula) or a more standard garnish (parsley or a bed of shredded lettuce). Or, treat yourself to a Halloween platter where the “garnish” is the built-in design.
  • Ice Cubes: Freeze the eyeballs in ice cubes and use to create a Halloween Martini (a regular Martini with eyeball ice).
  • Pasta: Garnish a dish of “blood and worms” pasta (spaghetti with tomato sauce).
  •  
    Add your ideas to this list!

    The video below uses a blueberry to create the iris, but we prefer a pimento-stuffed olive, as shown in the photo above.

      Bloody Eyeball Martini
    Use a radish eyeball garnish to create a Halloween Martini (photo courtesy Kim Plaszek).
     

      

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    PRODUCT: Tabasco Reserve Pepper Sauce (Grab It While You Can)

    Tabasco has been a table staple since 1868, when the McIlhenny Company first produced it (read the story).

    Over the past few years, the company has expanded its line beyond Original Red Tabasco to Green, Garlic, Habanero and Chipotle Tabasco and Sweet & Spicy Sauce.

    Few people know of a seventh product that the company has produced since the early days, available only to family and close friends: Tabasco Family Reserve Pepper Sauce.

    Each year, a portion of the finest peppers grown on the company’s property on Avery Island, Louisiana are hand-selected for their superior color, texture and robustness. These special peppers are mashed with premium white wine vinegar and a small amount of local salt. The mash is placed in white oak barrels and aged for up to eight years (compared to three years for regular Tabasco sauce).

    This year, a small batch of Tabasco Family Reserve Pepper Sauce is available to the public. You can pick up a bottle (five ounces) for $24.95 (the regular five-ounce bottle is $9.00).

     

    The 2011 Family Reserve Tabasco sports a
    medallion. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

     
    The company calls this special release a “collector’s item.” The expiration date on our bottle, 4/14, suggests that you have a few years to decide when to consume it. You’ll have to pry through the green wax seal to get to the sauce.

    How does it taste? We can’t tell you: We’re keeping ours as a collector’s item! Is it 2.7 times as good as the $9 bottle? If you’ve tried it, please weigh in. The company press release is mute on how Family Reserve tastes compared to Original Red. Aging produces rounder flavors, honing the rough edges. In general, the more a product ages, the more mellow it becomes and the more complex the flavors become.

    The special edition is available only at the Avery Island gift store and online. Let your Tabasco-loving friends know, before it sells out.

  • Get the Tabasco 2011 Family Reserve.
  • Try all the flavors of Tabasco.
  • Want to make your own hot sauce? Here’s the Tabasco recipe.
     
    As with most pantry products, hot sauce will keep better in a cool, dark area.
      
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    TOP PICK OF THE WEEK: Halloween Brownie Gifts

    Harvest Pumpkin is like a pumpkin pie
    crossed with a blondie. Photo courtesy
    Sugardaddy’s.

      Last week we presented our favorite Halloween candy.

    This week, it’s Halloween brownies.

    They’re not decorated with ghosts or tombstones, and only one brownie—Pumpkin Harvest Blondie—has a related Halloween theme.

    But all 15 flavors of these delectable round brownies and blondies—called Sugardaddy’s Sumptuous Sweeties—are a welcome addition to any celebration, party or gift fest.

  • More sophisticated than most candy and neater than cupcakes, each brownie is encased in a round, hard plastic gift box. (You can put a Halloween sticker on the box.)
  • It’s easy to exercise portion control: You can have one-third or half a brownie and store the rest in the airtight box for another time.
  •  

    Rich, Moist Brownies In Luscious Flavors

    You may have come across some of these delicious brownie flavors before: caramel, double chocolate, espresso, mint, peanut butter and raspberry. If not, hasten to try these moist, fudgy flavor expressions.

    Blondie lovers can be tempted with exciting flavors we haven’t found elsewhere: cinnamon streusel (with a coffee cake topping), coconut pineapple cashew (coconut lovers will adore it), drunken chunky (with bourbon), PB&J and a “sweet-and-salty” three-nut blondie with sea salt.

    Read the full review to learn why these special brownies and blondies are at the top of our list.

    Place your order now for a 10% discount. Use code BOO at checkout, through October 31, 2011.

    Keep them in mind for teacher gifts, stocking stuffers and anytime you need an impressive gift for less than $5.00.

      

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    HALLOWEEN: Best Candy For Halloween

    What Should You Hand Out On Halloween?

    We’ve already weighed in on what we think is the best Halloween candy for those who enjoy the best.

    For trick-or-treat candy for kids, MSNBC has nominated the five best and five worst of the popular kids’ candies. Their evaluation was based on the saturated fat and sugar content.

  • The Best Halloween Candy: The winners are Jolly Ranchers, Blow Pops, Gobstoppers, Pixy Stix and Candy Corn. We’d add gummi candies, jelly beans and licorice to the list—the first two are fat-free and licorice has just a small amount of fat.
  • The Worst Candy: Mr. Goodbar, NutRageous, Snickers, Baby Ruth and Mounds. So much for thinking that candy with protein-laden nuts is “better” for you!
  •  
    As you scan the supermarket aisles, think of the “better” choices.
     
    Why We Trick Or Treat On Halloween

     
    Candy corn is fat-free, though high in sugar.
    But Baby Ruth and Snickers have as much or
    more sugar—and lots of saturated fat. Photo
    by Liz West | Wikimedia.

    This custom comes to us from the ancient Celts (who date to 450 B.C.E. and were prevalent in Ireland and Scotland from 1500 C.E. to 1800 C.E.). They believed that on October 31st, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped, and the deceased came back to life and caused havoc. The night was known as All Hallows Even (evening).

    To avoid the ghosts, fairies, demons and other spirits that roamed the countryside that night, people began to wear masks and costumes so they would not be recognized as human by the “walking dead.”

    To keep the spirits away, people also placed candles in their windows, using hollowed-out turnips and other vegetables as the holder (pumpkins are an American tradition).

    In seventeenth- and eighteenth- century Scotland, guisers—people who had disguised themselves from the spirits—would parade from house to house, singing and dancing to intimidate the spirits.

    “Guising” evolved into a masquerade for children, who disguised themselves in costumes and went from door to door for round loaves called soul cakes, fruit and/or coins. They carried candles in scooped-out turnips to light their way. If the guisers were refused a treat, they would retaliate with a prank “trick”—hence the term “trick or treat.”

    According to Magick7.com, traditional tricks in England included stopping up chimneys with pieces of turf, blowing smoke through keyholes and smashing glass bottles against walls.

    Immigrants from the U.K. brought guising to America. All Hallows Even became Halloween.

    The first printed record of “guising” in North America was in 1911. “Trick or treat” first appears in print in 1927.

    And the rest is Halloween history.
      

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