Peanut butter and chocolate paradise. Photo
courtesy Jers.com.

If you’ve never tried Jer’s chocolate and peanut butter confections, you can sample them at 20% off—a special NIBBLE discount—through the end of July. Just use the code hrblog to take advantage of this discount.

Jerry Swain started in the bonbon business with his Original Incrediball, a center of peanut butter covered with chocolate. Expanding into other versions—with added pretzels, caramel, toffee and other inclusions—the chocolate peanut butter balls are the peanut butter cup lover’s vision of a box of bonbons.

Based on the success of these treats, Jer’s Handmade Chocolate now offers the award-winning combinations in chocolate bar form, as well as in peanut brittle bites. Our favorites are the peanut butter chocolate combinations with pretzels and caramel, but every PB&C lover will have his or her own faves.

Read our review of Jer’s Handmade Chocolate and use your discount at Jers.com.

Want some more ideas of how to use the Deli Flats? The winner will also receive a copy of “Real Housewife Of New York” Bethenny Frankel’s latest book: The Skinnygirl Dish: Easy Recipes For Your Naturally Thin Life, plus her exclusive sandwich recipe cards for Deli Flats. Check out more of what we did with Deli Flats in THE NIBBLE’s review. (Also check out our review of Bethenny’s Skinnygirl Margarita.)

A chicken sandwich on Deli Flats. Photo
courtesy Pepperidge Farm.

• THE PRIZE: One winner will take home three packages of Pepperidge Farm Deli Flats along with The Skinnygirl Dish book and Ms. Frankel’s exclusive Deli Flats recipe cards. Share the recipes with your carb-watching friends and take turns making delicious, low-carb meals.
• To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Diet Nibbles Section and enter your email address for the prize drawing. This contest closes on Monday, June 21st at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!

They taste better marinated, but learn
how to marinate properly! Photo
courtesy Kerrigan Meats.

Take The Time

• To marinate meat, refrigerate it in a self-sealing bag along with marinade, first thing in the morning. By dinnertime it will be ready to grill.

• If you have the time, it’s best to marinate meats overnight. They can be marinated longer—up to 3 days—but the quality of the meat deteriorates.

• As a time-saver, you can put meat or poultry into a bag with the marinade and freeze it—just be sure the marinade is cold when you add it. Then the food marinates while it is defrosting in the fridge. Be sure to cook defrosted food within 48 hours.

Don’t Reuse Marinade

• Never reuse marinade because of potential bacterial contamination from the raw protein (raw meat leaches the harmful bacteria in it into the marinade; those bacteria would spread to other meats if the marinade were re-used).

• If you want to use the same batch of marinade on different types of meat (chicken, pork, beef), you can marinate them all together.

• If you want to use some of your marinade in a gravy, set it apart before marinating the protein—or use the rolling boil method to kill any bacteria.

Find reviews of our favorite meats, recipes, and more how-to’s in our Gourmet Meats Section.

If money is no object, and if Dad loves specialty coffee drinks, then Saeco’s new Xelsis superautomatic coffee machine is pretty darn exciting.

Superautomatics are complete “coffee centers” that perform the entire espresso- (or other coffee-) making process at the touch of a button. While you do have to load the machine with the ingredients (coffee beans, water, milk), that one touch then takes over.

The Xelsis is a “dream machine”; it’s as if Saeco listened to all of the shortcomings consumers found with other superautomatics and designed the Xelsis to triumph on every detail.

On the simplest level, the machine grinds the beans, makes the coffee and froths the milk. The espresso, lungo, latte, cappuccino, coffee or special beverage of your choice falls gracefully into your cup.

Saeco’s new Xelsis Coffee Center: the “deam
machine” for specialty coffee drinks.

• You can pre-program a “profile” with your specific desires (the strength and temperature of the coffee and the consistency of the milk foam, for example). Today, the Xelsis can accommodate six different profiles. In the fall, machines will have a fingerprint technology so everyone in an office can have a profile.

• The water tank has a filter that purifies your tap water.

• A separate steam nozzle can reheat your coffee (or tea, soup and other liquids not related to the Xelsis).

This handsome stainless steel machine will turn the home or workplace into a high-end coffee bar. The removable milk pitcher can be kept in the refrigerator between uses. And it automatically cleans itself after each use!

Around $3,000, it can be purchased at Bloomingdale’s and online at www.SeattleCoffeeGear.com.

Find reviews of our favorite coffees, enlightening articles and recipes in our Gourmet Coffee Section.

Also check out our Espresso Glossary, an education in the differences between affogato, cappuccino, espresso, lungo, macchiato, ristretto and just about every other coffee drink.

Switch ice cubes for stone cubes and you
won’t dilute your drink. Photo courtesy
Sur La Table.

Talk about “on the rocks!” For those who want to chill their whiskey, but not dilute it, whiskey stones are the elegant answer. (You don’t want to plop plastic ice cubes into a single malt, do you?)

The concept was popularized in Scandinavia, where people have chilled whiskey with granite rocks for hundreds of years.

These all-natural, handcrafted Vermont soapstone whiskey stones have superior thermal properties to granite, and won’t scratch the glass. They reside in the freezer until they’re called upon to do their job.

Stones are nonporous, so they won’t impart any flavors or odors to the drink. The perfect cube shape of the stones also allows for a better and more even chilling.

Need to learn the differences among these and other types of whiskey? See our Whiskey Glossary.)