Ham spiral-sliced for a buffet. Photo courtesy
Cherry Marketing Institute.

If you typically have a sit-down Easter dinner, think about having a buffet this year.

Setting everything out at once and letting people serve themselves gives you more time to spend with your guests. It also enables you to accommodate more guests than your dining table allows–and it’s better for mingling.

You can place the food on a sideboard and seat guests at the dining table, or set the food on the dining table and let guests gather around the sofa or wherever they want to group and talk.

If you have outdoor space and the weather cooperates, some people may enjoy dining alfresco.

Observers of Passover must avoid a variety of foods for the duration of the holiday: grains (wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelt) and fermented products such as alcohol, among other things. Any permitted food, from milk and cheese to matzoh, must be certified kosher for Passover.

These rules can leave one scrambling for ingredients and enough products to keep things interesting for seven days.

This year, The Manischewitz Company has introduced more than 25 products to expand the possibilities. There’s Buttery Spray for baking and stove top pans. There are tasty macaroon pie shells in coconut and chocolate, making it easy to whip up a pie—think banana cream, chocolate silk or key lime.

You can make kosher-for-Passover cupcakes with the Magic Max Cupcake Fun Kit, nibble on Chocolate Covered Biscotti (not hard and crunchy like the conventional kind, but a fine nibble nevertheless), start the day with Honey Almond Crunch cereal and Brown Sugar Hot Cereal and end the day with chocolates, from Chocolate Covered Cherries to Mint Creme Candies.

See all of the products at Manischewitz.com.
  

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.

Labné or labneh (pronounced LOB-nay or LOB-neh) is the Lebanese version of cream cheese: yogurt cream cheese. It isn’t made with vegetable gum and shaped into a brick like American cream cheese. Rather, it’s thicker than yogurt and comes in a container the size of a large yogurt.

Labné is packed with live cultures (beneficial bacteria), calcium and protein. The flavor is refreshing and slightly tart. The cheese is popular throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.

In Lebanon, labné is most commonly served as a staple of the breakfast table. In the U.S. it is more often used as a dip for veggies, pita or crusty bread.

If you enjoy yogurt, give it a try.
 
 
HOW TO SERVE LABNE

 
In fact, labné can be substituted for cream cheese and sour cream in many recipes. It has fewer calories, and since it is not heated after incubation, the active yogurt cultures remain live.

The thick, rich yogurt cheese is produced by straining yogurt. Once the whey is removed, the firm yogurt solids (curds) that remain are called cheese.

Fresh cheese is a category of unaged cheeses with a high moisture content that are typically direct set with the addition of lactic acid cultures. The cheeses have a creamy, soft texture and fresh, sweet flavor. Fresh cheeses include cottage cheese, cream cheese, Neufchatel, panir, ricotta and the cheeses listed in the first bullet below. The cheeses can be made from any type of milk. Uncomplicated in flavor, fresh cheeses are often used in cooking, for breakfast or with fruit for dessert. They are not made to age, and should be consumed quickly.

Labné is sold in many supermarkets and in Middle Eastern and international markets. You can also prepare it at home with yogurt, cheesecloth and a colander.

Ripe bananas. If you have more than you
can use, freeze them. Photo by
Sanja Gjenero | SXC.

We don’t. Our perfect banana looks like the ones in the photo (which shows the visual standard of ripeness). The flesh of a brown-flecked banana has rounded, lush banana flavors that haven’t yet come out at the pre-fleck stage of ripening.