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


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PRODUCTS: Everything Old Is New Again

Le Creuset Gourmet cookware manufacturer Le Creuset has launched its new color for 2009: White. Our thoughts: This looks like all the white, enameled cookware we got rid of when we traded up to Le Creuset years ago. We prefer jubilant colors in our kitchen, such as Le Creuset’s red, yellow and blue cookware, which also look great at the table. But then, we weren’t in the focus groups that voted for white! You can find Le Creuset at Sur La Table and other fine stores. Le Creuset has been making enameled cast iron cookware since 1925. The factory is located in the north of France, in Fresnoy-Le-Grand, not far from the border with Belgium. Cast iron is a favorite of chefs because it most evenly conducts and retains heat—it’s the original slow cooker. It’s also very heavy, so you build your “kitchen muscles.”

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PRODUCT REVIEW: Go Appetít Cool Soup

A new alternative for healthy eating on-the-go, Cool Soup makes soup “drinkable” from a bottle at room temperature or chilled. It’s a new way to fruit and vegetables without having to chop and cook. The portable plastic bottle has a nine-month shelf life. As a snack or meal replacement, it’s high in vitamins and antioxidants, low in calories and 100% natural.

Go Appetít is “taking soup to new places” with Cool Soup, a new category in specialty convenience foods, Drinkable Soup. The company calls its products “souperfood.” Now, when you need something nutritious on the go, and want more than a piece of fruit, yogurt or an energy bar, you can have some yummy comfort food—soup! No spoon needed, just twist the cap and drink from the 8-ounce, single serve bottle. If you want a soup and sandwich or soup and salad combo, it couldn’t be easier.

Cool Soup is low in calories and 100% natural with no preservatives, artificial colors or artificial flavors. While it is ideal to consume the soup chilled for enhanced flavor, no refrigeration is required, and they taste just fine at room temperature. We toted them our purse and backpack, the latter with an ice pack, the former without, and didn’t feel any loss of quality drinking them unchilled.

Read the full review.


An easy way to eat your fruits and veggies on the
go: soup that you drink from the bottle. Above:
Rich Vegetable Gazpacho.

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TRENDS: Top Chefs Go For Burgers


Read our Tips For A Better Burger article to learn
how to cook perfect burgers at home.
Following our posting of the CBS report on the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona (or perhaps despite it), burgers are big in 2009. As reported recently in the trade magazine Restaurant Hospitality, top chefs are in the game. Bobby Flay launched Bobby’s Burger Palace, Laurent Tourondel has BLT Burger, Marcus Samuelsson started Marc Burger. Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack in New York is about to have an Upper West Side sibling, Hubert Keller is expanding his kingdom of Burger Bars and Govind Armstrong turned his L.A. Eatery, Table 8, into 8 Oz. Burger Bar. And everyone is awaiting the opening of Thomas Keller’s Burgers and Half-Bottles in Yountville, California and Las Vegas.

You can get in the game buy buying a franchise of Virginia-based Elevation Burger, which serves organic, grass-fed, free-range beef with fries cooked in hearth-healthy olive oil…in LEED-certified green buildings. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, you could own your local franchise of the Heart Attack Grill, the “Taste Worth Dying For.” We’d opt for the former.

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NEW PRODUCT: Obama Inauguration Tea

One of our favorite tea purveyors, SerendipiTea, has developed a tea commemorating our 44th president: Obama 44 ~ Inaugural Blend. Says the blender: “Enjoy a brisk, clear cup of straight-forward Kenyan Black blended with a taste of All-American Apple Pie & a hint of Hawaii (Apples, go-Mango & Cinnamon). For the maverick lurking within, add a drop of milk or soy….then settle in to observe or jump for joy. A four-ounce box of loose tea, which makes approximately 50 cups, is $10.00. Obama 44 is available through the company’s website, SerendipiTea.com or by phone, 1.888.832.5433.

-Read our review of SerendipiTea artisan tea blends.

-Read SerendipiTea’s tea and food pairings.

Obama Tea Blend

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TOP PICK OF THE WEEK: Ayala’s Herbal Water


Organic-certified flavored water, infused with
herbs, spices and some citrus, are a smash!
Several years ago we had an idea for a line of waters flavored with herbs and spices. We sought advice from a couple of bottled water experts, and were told that we’d never get such a product to market—the segment was too tiny, retailers wouldn’t make space for it, and so forth. We were thus truly delighted to run into Ayala’s Herbal Water at a food show last summer. Ayala either had better advisors, or didn’t listen to anyone at all.

Ayala’s infuses organic garden herbs, blended with spices and citrus peel, into purified water—with dazzling results. Innovative in flavor profile, it is the first nationally available, organically certified, flavored water. If you like unsweetened fruit-flavored waters, herb and spice flavors open up an exciting new perspective. If you don’t like fruit flavors, herbs are far more sophisticated.

Flavors include Cinnamon Orange Peel, Clove Cardamom Cinnamon, Ginger Lemon Peel, Jasmine Vanilla, Lavender Mint Lemongrass Thyme and Lemongrass Mint Vanilla. While the names are a mouthful, the mouthful is calorie-free, sodium-free, healthy, hydrating and wonderfully fragrant and flavorful.

Ayala’s Herbal Water is a refreshment, but it also pairs well with food. Thus, it’s a boon to people seeking an alternative to wine, beer or cocktails, who want to cut calories in general, or who simply want a more interesting water with their food. Give a case as a New Year’s gift to anyone embarking on a weight loss mission, or as a Valentine gift to people who’d be be better off if you didn’t give them chocolate.

There’s a store locator on the company website, and major retailers have embraced herbal water, proving our original naysayers wrong. You can also buy Ayala’s online with free ground shipping. And, to sweeten the deal, for a limited time there’s $5 off on your order if you sign up for the company newsletter. That makes a case of 12 bottles just $19. How can you resist? Read the full review.

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