How do you add excitement to a venerable cracker brand?

In the case of Nabisco Wheat Thins, you make Even Thinner Wheat Thins.

Last week, Nabisco launched the Even Thinner Wheat Thins Limited Edition. It’s the same 100% whole wheat snack we love, but…thinner, and in a more upscale box.

The notable difference is that thinner crackers mean fewer calories. For the same calories (140 per serving), the traditional Wheat Thins have a serving size of 16 crackers, while the Even Thinner Wheat Thins provide 22 crackers.

How long will the Even Thinner Limited Edition last? That depends on you, dear reader. If customers buy them, not just initially but repeat purchases, the brand may decide to continue them.

Or, they may decide to continue them because, we suppose, they make more money on a thinner product.

Isn’t it nice when decisions benefit everyone!

New from Nabisco: Even Thinner Wheat Thins. Photo courtesy Nabisco.

Top photo: White whole wheat flour may
soon become one of the hot “better for you”
foods. Bottom photo: white whole wheat
flour compared to whole wheat flour from red
wheat. Photos courtesy King Arthur Flour.

We always start January with better-for-you tips of the day. There are a few weeks between the holidays and Valentine’s Day temptations where we can actually focus on better-for-you foods.

Americans say that their number one resolution for the new year is to lose weight. “Eat healthier” is in the top five.

One of the easiest switches Americans can make is to whole wheat flour in daily bread products—bagels, sandwiches, pasta, pizza crusts; baked goods like chocolate chip cookies and brownies; and family favorites like pancakes and waffles. Whole wheat provides lots of nutritional benefits and helps to mitigate the guilt of enjoying carbs.

But many Americans don’t like the stronger taste of whole wheat.

Enter white whole wheat flour, also called whole white wheat flour and marketed by some bread manufacturers as whole grain white bread. It’s milder in flavor and whiter in color than conventional whole wheat, and is a terrific option for nutrition-oriented people who aren’t crazy about the flavor of conventional whole wheat.

Aren’t “white whole wheat” and “whole grain white bread” contradictions in terms?

Friends, it’s only confusing at first. Just think of white whole wheat as “albino whole wheat.”

WHAT IS WHITE WHOLE WHEAT?

Most of the wheat grown in the U.S. is hard red winter wheat. In Australia, most of the wheat grown is hard white spring wheat. Both genuses of wheat are milled into whole grain flour (containing the bran, endosperm and germ) that is equally nutritious.

While white wheat has been grown in Australia for decades, different varieties needed to be developed to do well in American soil and climate. It has been slowly creeping into retail America, both in sacks of flour and baked goods. Even Wonder Bread now sells whole grain white bread!

Why is it whiter?

Hard white wheat lacks the genes for bran color. Traditional red wheat has one to three bran color genes.

The flavor of whole white wheat flour is more appealing to people who prefer refined white flour. If that’s you, you can now have your cake [or bread] and eat it, too.

In sum:

 
Here’s more information from The Whole Grains Council.

TIPS FOR BAKING WITH WHITE WHOLE WHEAT

Use it as you would regular whole wheat flour. Try these tips from King Arthur Flour, useful for both red and white whole wheat flours:

Pick up a sack of white whole wheat flour and try it with some favorite recipes. See if you can tell the difference in flavor.

If you can’t find it at your supermarket, look at natural food stores.

Get yours at KingArthurFlour.com.
  

There are numerous ways to add good vegetables into every meal (fried onion rings don’t count!)

You don’t have to twist our arm to adopt this one: ratatouille at breakfast. It can be served with eggs or polenta.

See the recipe variations below, along with other ways to serve ratatouille.
 
 
WHAT IS RATATOUILLE

Ratatouille (rah-tah-TOO-ee) is a vegetable side dish that originated in the Provence region of France.

The classic recipe consists of sautéed eggplant, onions, tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini plus garlic and herbs.

Sometimes, each vegetable is sautéed separately, then layered into a baking dish and baked (check out the beautiful tian).

Modern recipes make it easier: We fully sauté groups of vegetables with similar densities, combine them and don’t bake them.

You can customize the dish as you like—for example, with bell peppers, celery, fennel, olives, onions and yellow squash.

There are similar dishes in other Mediterranean countries, including:

 
 
OUR FAVORITE RATATOUILLE RECIPE

We misplaced our nana’s ratatouille recipe card; but the recipe below, adapted from TheFormerChef.com, looks almost identical.

Ratatouille is delightfully colorful when you use red, yellow and/or orange bell peppers and tomatoes/cherry tomatoes.

Regarding the tomatoes: Ratatouille has traditionally been a summer dish, when tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash are plentiful.

While you can find decent squash in the off season, imported tomatoes can be both pricey and lacking in flavor.

You can substitute cherry, grape or sundried tomatoes; or use diced canned San Marzano tomatoes.

Canned tomatoes don’t need to be sautéed; just drain them and add them to the final heating.
 
TIP: Don’t throw away the liquid you drain off. You can freeze it into ice cubes for Bloody Marys, or add a bit of gin, tequila or vodka for a mini cocktail treat.

We make double recipes and microwave the ratatouille (or other sautéed vegetables) from the fridge while the eggs are cooking.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. HEAT 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large sauté pan or skillet†, over medium-high heat. Add the onions and sauté until they are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the bell peppers and sauté for another 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes more. Transfer the sautéed vegetables to a bowl and set aside.

2. RETURN the pan to the heat and add 2 more tablespoons of olive oil. Add the zucchini and yellow squash and cook until tender, about 5-7 minutes. Add them to the onions and bell peppers.

3. Return the pan to the heat and add the final 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the eggplant and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the 1/4 cup of water; the eggplant will absorb all the oil very quickly and the water will help it cook before it burns. When the water is absorbed and the eggplant begins to soften (about 5 more minutes), add the chopped tomatoes to the eggplant.

4. COOK the tomatoes until they start to break down and the eggplant is soft, but not mushy. Add the rest of the vegetables back into the pan, folding it all together with a large spoon.

5. Cook for another 5 minutes and add the fresh herbs. Season with salt and pepper. Don’t overcook; you want the flavors to remain fresh and distinct. Plus, if you plan to reheat the ratatouille at a later time, it will cook more then.
 
__________________________________________

*Capers are the flower bud of the caper bush, Capparis spinosa. Caperberries are the fruit with seeds inside. Both are brined and thus contribute saltiness as well as flavor to dishes. They are members of the same botanical order as cruciferous vegetables, Brassicales, but a different family.

†While the pans can usually be used interchangeably, a skillet or frying pan has slanted sides and a sauté pan has straight sides. A skillet has a larger bottom surface area, and its straight sides are better for making an omelet or frittata—even though you may see slope-sided pans marketed as “omelet pans.”

 
 
SUBSTITUTES FOR RATATOUILLE

Serve any of the following, and don’t hesitate to mix them together.

 
 
OTHER THINGS TO DO WITH RATATOUILLE

Ratatouille is a side dish that’s great with grilled fish or seafood on Meatless Monday, or as a side anytime with grilled or roasted beef, chicken, lamb or pork. But you can also:

[5] Combine the toast and eggs into ratatouille crostini, or as shown above, with asparagus in season (photo © Urban Accents).

‡You can find whole grain couscous; but most supermarket products are not whole grain.

[2] Mary garnished with crab claw and dilly beans from Ramos House.

[3] Surf and Turf Bloody Mary with bacon and shrimp, plus an antipasto skewer and, as a nod to the past, a celery stalk. From The Wayfarer | NYC.

As if everyone who drinks didn’t have enough on New Year’s Eve, January 1st is National Bloody Mary Day. Each year we feature a different Bloody Mary recipe.

Some time ago we read about a famed Bloody Mary served at Ramos House in San Juan Capistrano, California.

It was made with shochu instead of vodka, lower-proof and lower in calories. It was garnished with lots of dilly beans (pickled green beans) and a crab claw.

So today’s tip is: Move past the celery stalk to more interesting Bloody Mary garnishes.
 
 
RECIPE: ADAPTED FROM THE RAMOS HOUSE
BLOODY MARY RECIPE

Ingredients For 2.25 Quarts

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE ingredients (except for garnishes) in a pitcher and chill before serving.

2. FILL glasses with ice cubes, as desired. We prefer to pre-chill the drink rather than dilute it with ice cubes. Another option: Make the ice cubes from tomato juice.

3. POUR into tall glasses, 3/4 full. Arrange the garnishes on top.
 
 
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*Mott’s Clamato Juice is packed with HFCS—so sweet you could churn it into sorbet (see our review). It’s easy to mix plain tomato juice with plain clam juice.

†We buy Tillen Farms’ Crispy Dilly Beans and Crispy Asparagus by the case, but you can pickle your own vegetables in just an hour or two. Here’s how to pickle vegetables.

‡If you pack the top with garnishes, a straw makes it easy to get to the drink below. How about these red cocktail straws? You can also provide inexpensive bamboo cocktail forks if your guests are too formal to eat the garnish with their fingers.

 
If you have a favorite Bloody Mary creation, please share.
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE NIBBLE!
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

Eggnog or egg nog is a descendant of milk-and-wine punches that had long been part of European celebrations when colonists arrived in the Americas. Rum, a New World distillation, enabled a spirited substitution for the wine. And eggnog history?

Eggnog became a popular wintertime drink throughout Colonial America. Then as now, people loved the rich, spicy, alcoholic brew.

President George Washington was quite a fan of eggnog. His own recipe, which included rye whiskey, rum, and sherry, was reputed to be so stiff a drink that only the most courageous could down it.

Brandy joined rum in the basic recipe much later—as part of a book promotion! In the 1820s, Pierce Egan wrote a novel called “Life of London: or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne, Esq. and His Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom.” You can pick up a copy on Amazon.

Just as today’s mixologists and publicists know how to generate buzz with a new cocktail, Egan created a variation of eggnog he called the “Tom and Jerry.”

The half ounce of brandy he added to the basic recipe furthered egg nog’s popularity—and fortunately, the original name prevailed. Here’s more about the Tom and Jerry.

December 24th is National Eggnog Day.
 
 
FROM THE BEGINNING: A PARTY DRINK

The research site InDepthInfo.com notes that “Egg nog, in the 1800s, was nearly always made in large quantities and nearly always used as a social drink.

“It was commonly served at holiday parties and it was noted by an English visitor in 1866, [that] ‘Christmas is not properly observed unless you brew egg nogg for all comers; everybody calls on everybody else; and each call is celebrated by a solemn egg-nogging…It is made cold and is drunk cold and is to be commended.’”

Baltimore initiated a tradition where young men made the rounds of their friends on New Year’s Day, enjoying a bracing cup of eggnog at each home. The more homes one visited, the more “braced” one became.

It was considered a feat to actually finish one’s rounds. How times change! Aside from today’s attitudes toward moderation, would anyone give up football to continue the tradition?
 
 
HOW EGGNOG GOT ITS NAME

[2] No punch bowl? Serve eggnog in a juice glass, rocks glass, Martini glass, or whatever you have (photo © Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board).

As with most things in the murky past, there are different stories on the origins of eggnog. The “egg” part is easy: There are eggs in the recipe (along with sugar, rum, milk, whiskey/bourbon/rum/brandy, heavy cream, vanilla, and ground nutmeg).

The two contenders for the “nog” portion:

 
Regardless, the unusual charm of the name only enhances the rich charm of the beverage. Now if we only could do something about those calories!
 
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*The term grog is named after Old Grog, the nickname of Edward Vernon (1684-1757), a British admiral who ordered that diluted rum be served to his sailors. The nickname is derived from grogram, after his habit of wearing a grogram cloak—a coarse fabric made of silk, mohair, wool, or a blend of them. Isn’t etymology fascinating?
 

MORE EGG NOG RECIPES: EGGNOG VARIATIONS

Conventional eggnog recipes vary by the type of spirits used, or how elaborate they get, from topping with simple whipped cream to ice cream and chocolate shavings. If you don’t have a family eggnog recipe, ask your friends. Or take a look at these:

 
If you don’t want classic eggnog, how about an eggnog cocktail? Here are two:

 
EGGNOG FOR BREAKFAST

For the holidays, serve one or more eggnog desserts. Start with eggnog ice cream from your grocer, and continue on to:

 
If you have a favorite eggnog recipe, please share!

And HAPPY NEW YEAR from THE NIBBLE.
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.