Porta Mangiare meatball mixes are intended to recapture the flavors of Calabrese cooking as it was a century ago. They also make it easy to turn out tasty meatballs.
There are currently four varieties of meatball mix: Spicy Calabrese, Traditional Calabrese, Turkey Calabrese and Gluten-Free Traditional Calabrese, which uses potato flakes instead of breadcrumbs.
The directions call for baking, but you can also pan-fry the meatballs, which is how we prepared them (who wants to turn the oven on in this heat?).
The results were crisp and light. The boxes are not inexpensive ($5.99, $6.99 for gluten-free), given that you have to add a pound of ground meat, six ounces of grated cheese and two eggs to get 15 medium-size meatballs. But even if you won’t spring for it every day, the attractive canister packages make welcome gifts and stocking stuffers. Read the full review.
Find more meatball recipes, plus pasta, in our Pasta Section.
Love of beer has caused the drinking rate
to edge up slightly. Photo by Odelia | CSP.
The annual Gallup poll of American drinking habits, conducted last month, reveals that drinking rates have edged up slightly to a 25-year high. Beer is the beverage of choice among the largest group of drinkers, followed by wine and then liquor.
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults drink alcohol, a slight increase over last year and the highest reading recorded since 1985 (by one percentage point). Thirty-three percent of the responders said they were total abstainers.
The survey asked the question, “Do you have occasion to use alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine, or beer, or are you a total abstainer?”
One of the most significant predictors of alcohol consumption is church attendance. Those who seldom or never attend church are substantially more likely to say they drink than frequent church-goers. Those who have no religious affiliation, Catholics and non-Christians are more likely to drink than Protestants. Those with the lowest education levels and lowest incomes are less likely to drink than others.
Abstinence is not necessarily a good thing. Medical research shows that moderate drinking is associated with a lower probability of heart trouble, and Gallup has recently confirmed that the incidence of heart attacks increases substantially with age.
Still, the data indicate that many older Americans are not taking advantage of the prophylactic benefit of drinking; 59% of older Americans drink alcohol, substantially lower than the percentages among those who are younger.
The percentage of Americans who say they drink alcohol has been remarkably stable over the 71 years of the Gallup tracking study. The lowest level, 55%, was recorded in 1958. The high point for drinking came in 1976-1978, when 71% said they drank alcohol.
While the study did not address it, the composition of what is drunk may well have changed over the years. Comparatively few Americans drank wine before the California wine explosion of the 1970s, for example.
With the many millions of dollars spent each year on bottled salsa, few people realize how easy it is to make homemade salsa.
All you need is a sharp knife, fresh vegetables (tomatoes, bell peppers, onion), some chiles, seasonings (garlic, cilantro, salt) and lime juice. You can toss in corn, black beans or anything in your pantry, from canned pineapple to water chestnuts.
And you don’t even need tomatoes: Here’s a recipe for a summer salsa made with watermelon. It can be used with chips, as a side dish or as a salad on top of shredded lettuce.
Fresh salsa is crunchy and more refreshing than the jarred varieties, where the pasteurization process cooks the vegetables.
Have a Margarita for just 5 calories on top
of the liquor calories. Photo by Katharine
Pollak | THE NIBBLE.
A few weeks ago we wrote about Skinnygirl Margarita, a 100-calorie Margarita-in-a-bottle sweetened with low-glycemic agave nectar.
There’s a new contender on the market: The Original Skinny Margarita, made by Jordan’s Skinny Mixes. It’s joined by the Original Skinny Appletini and the Original Skinny Cosmopolitan.
The mixes are made with natural flavors and sweetened with sucralose (Splenda). The Margarita mix has five calories per four-ounce serving; the other varieties contain zero calories.
The five calories make a difference: The zero-calorie varieties were more “diet” tasting. It’s easier to make a lemon-flavored, almost-calorie-free Margarita mix than to duplicate the flavors of apple schnapps or cranberry juice.
There’s a need in the marketplace for sugar-free or low-glycemic agave-based cocktail mixes. A regular mix adds hundreds of calories, many of them sugar, to a cocktail. We applaud the introduction of these sugar-free cocktail mixes, and hope that a line of agave-sweetened mixes is forthcoming.
There’s a store locator on the SkinnyMixes.com website, plus links to purchase online.
Find more cocktail mixes and drink recipes in our Cocktails & Spirits Section.
