Start dinner with a tomato juice cocktail,
a.k.a. Virgin Mary. Photo by Marlena
Zagajewski | Dreamstime.

Earlier this year we wrote about juice “cocktails,” and how the custom of starting lunch or dinner with a glass of tomato juice had disappeared. On restaurant menus, tomato juice would be listed with the appetizers.

A tomato juice cocktail is simply tomato juice seasoned with lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Some cooks would get more creative, adding cumin, dill, onion powder and other seasonings. Some even added chili powder, which, when traded for hot pepper sauce, makes the tomato juice cocktail a Virgin Mary. Some traded lemon juice for lime juice.

Think about reviving the appetizer custom new-style, as a Virgin Mary seasoned just the way you like it. Tomato juice is low-calorie, nutritious and filling; Virgin Marys are one of our favorite diet foods.

The Tomato Juice Brand Makes A Difference

Growing up, our mother, an impeccable palate, served only Sacramento tomato juice. But the juice category has evolved so much since then.

• Read the January post with tips on how to garnish and serve a tomato juice cocktail.
• See review of our favorite juices.

Even among people who appear to be healthy, gluten intolerance is common. Studies indicate that 1 in 167 children (0.6%) and 1 in 111 adults (0.9%) have a gluten allergy—a much more mild condition than celiac disease.

We’re not writing a health column. We just want to tell you about gluten-free cookies, cakes and other traditionally wheat-based products that are so good, we can’t believe we ate the whole thing! But eating is believing, and people who can eat wheat to their heart’s content will love these gluten-free products, too.

If you have friends, family or co-workers who can’t eat gluten, you can bake or buy some terrific cookies or cakes (and pancakes and cornbread and more) and get showered with a whole lot of thanks.

So get clicking and learn about:

• Doodles Organic & gluten-Free Cookie Mixes
• Lucy’s Gluten-Free Cookies (kosher)

Terrific chocolate chip cookies from Doodles.
Photo by Jerry Deutsch | THE NIBBLE.

• Pamela’s Gluten-Free Products: brownie, cake mixes, cornbread and pancakes mixes; ready-to-eat cookies and cheesecake (regular and organic); and more.
• Gluten intolerance. Do you know someone who has it?

Find more of our favorite gluten-free goods.

Well, not really, but it’s a fun concept for Easter cocktails.

FOR KIDS: Serve a Peter Cottontail Cocktail, carrot juice with a squeeze of lime in festive glasses. Garnish with fruit—a strawberry on the rim, for example.

FOR ADULTS: Serve an Easter Mary. Substitute carrot juice for the tomato juice in your favorite Bloody Mary recipe.

If you like, start with a carrot juice tasting:

Buy several different brands of carrot juice, set them out small paper drinking cups or shot glasses and let guests vote on which tastes best to them. It’s an engaging activity as guests begin to arrive.

Find more Easter and spring cocktail ideas in our Cocktails Section.

Take our Ham Trivia Quizzes. We’ve got two of them.

After you’ve mastered the answers, bring them to the Easter Dinner and test ask your fellow celebrants.

They’ll have fun learning the difference between city ham and country ham, why you’d want a bone-in ham over a boneless ham and the most expensive ham in the world.

The person who gets the most correct answer deserves an extra chocolate bunny! (Or perhaps a chocolate pig, available at VosgesChocolate.com.)

• Ham Trivia Quiz # 1
• Ham Trivia Quiz # 2

What kind of ham am I? Photo courtesy
Cherry Marketing Institute. Answer:
a spiral-cut ham.

We’ll have to get married in Seattle, just so
we can have one of Mike’s Amazing Cakes.
Did Rick & Ilse live happily ever after, after
all? Here’s looking at you, kid. Photo
courtesy Mike’s Amazing Cakes.

As you may have gathered from the parade of wedding cake programs and segments like “The TODAY Show Plans A Wedding,” the cake design is secondary only to the wedding dress.

No longer content to have an elegant white cake with frosting flowers, brides are looking for fashionable cakes. Here are wedding cake trends for 2010 as reported by Stratford University, a Virginia-based school that offers culinary arts degrees (along with a traditional university curriculum).

Slightly Different Cakes

• Initials. Couples are opting to have their entwined initials monogrammed on the side of the cake.
• Height. Many people are opting for taller cakes—up to seven tiers high.
• Nature. Nature themes are popular as cake toppings. These can range from fresh flowers and leaves or fresh fruits to pine cones, seashells and other decor.
• Being Green. Many guests don’t like classic wedding cake, covered in fondant (to be fair, homemade fondant can be delicious, but some cakemakers purchase premade fondant, which is less so). So why waste the cake: Order something people will eat (see next bullet).

• More Than Cake. Lose the cake and opt for favorite treats: a tiered “cake” of cupcakes or a tree of mini desserts, such as cheesecake, tarts and brownies. If you must have a cake to display, see Rent A Cake, below.
• Matching Dresses. A big trend matches the cake decoration to the bridesmaids’ dresses. Another option is to decorate the cake with real lace and ruffles.
• Bold Colors. Who says the cake has to be white…or even chocolate? If your favorite color is red, go for it!

Really Different Cakes

• Artistic. Choose your favorite famous painting and have the wedding cake decorated with it, using edible paints. (It’s probably best to avoid Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and Picasso’s “Guernica.”)
• 3-D. Another hot trend in wedding cakes is for 3-D accents as part of the cake’s decoration and design. For the ultimate in 3D masterpieces (and an absolutely gorgeous gallery of wedding cakes), check out Mike’s Amazing Cakes in Seattle (designer/baker of the cake in the photo).

Saving Money

• Rent A Cake. In this economy, many people are looking for ways to save on their wedding. A new trend for budget-cutting is to rent a mock wedding cake for display (it’s been decorated with real fondant, rosetts, etc., and looks real, but you can’t eat it—instead of cake underneath the frosting, there’s styrofoam). Then, serve a budget-friendly sheet cake that is cut and plated in the kitchen.
• Go Faux. Another trend for saving money on the wedding cake, which can typically cost from $600 to thousands of dollars, is to have a faux bottom one or two tiers (frosted and decorated styrofoam, as above). This will allow the cake to look impressive to guests and for pictures, but can help bring the cost of the cake down quite a bit.
• Cupcakes. Tiers of cupcake-style wedding cakes continue to grow in popularity. They also allow for vegan and gluten-free versions so those on special diets can join in.

And now, we’ve got to go find a piece of cake to eat!