The Cheetos Duster is a gift for the die-hard Cheetos Fan. The snack brand is causing mischief in the kitchen with its first-ever cooking gadget.

What is the Cheetos Duster? It spreads Cheetle, the orange dust from Cheetos, to elevate your dishes to epic proportions.

From mac and cheese to salads to fries and beyond, your dishes can reach new levels of cheesy goodness. Here are some ideas to spark culinary inspiration:

 
To use the Cheetos Duster, simply fill the glass jar with any Cheetos snacks and press the power button. Cheesy magic awaits.
 
 
GET YOUR CHEETOS DUSTER 

Fans can purchase the Cheetos Duster exclusively on Amazon. You’ll also find an array of Chester-approved recipes to spark inspiration.
 
 
> The history of Cheetos & Cheese Doodles

[1] The Cheetos Duster (both photos © Cheetos).

[2] What will you dust first?

[1] Raspberry-Mascarpone-Stuffed French Toast with Balsamic Glaze (photo © DeLallo).

[2] French Toast banana split (photo © Tillamook County Dairy Association).

[3] Savory French Toast with cherry tomatoes and Parmesan cheese (photo © Castello Cheese).

[4] Monte Cristo, a French Toast sandwich.

[5] Croissant French Toast with cherries and chocolate (photo © California Cherries).

November 28th is National French Toast Day, and we have both sweet and savory French Toast recipes for you. First, a bit of history.
 
 
FRENCH TOAST HISTORY 

The dish known in America as French toast has roots at least as far back as ancient Rome, where it was a sweet dish.

In fact, pain perdu (or lost bread), the current French name for the dish, was once called pain à la romaine, or Roman bread.

While the story evolved that French toast was a food of the poor trying to scrape together a meal from stale bread, recipes from ancient and medieval times were food for wealthy people. Recipes used white bread, a luxury, with the crusts cut off.

Poor people ate brown bread, which was cheaper because the wheat endosperm did not have to be milled and sifted through screens to create white flour.

Costly ingredients such as spices (cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and sugar), and almond milk are found in numerous recipes. The cooked bread was topped with costly honey or sugar.

And cookbooks themselves were the province of the wealthy: Only wealthy people and clergy learned to read.

In addition to savory French toast recipes for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, more recently, French toast has evolved into a savory sandwich, the Monte Cristo.

It’s an evolution of the Croque-Monsieur, a crustless sandwich of ham and Gruyère cheese, buttered and lightly browned on both sides in a skillet or under a broiler.

The Croque-Monsieur was invented in Paris in 1910. A variation with a baked egg on top is a croque-madame. Neither sandwich was battered, like French toast.

The Monte Cristo sandwich was invented in the Coronado Hotel in San Diego, according to the L.A. Times. The first recipe in print is in the Brown Derby Cookbook, published in 1949. It’s a triple-decker sandwich, battered and pan-fried.

Here’s a Monte Cristo recipe.
 
 
30+ FRENCH TOAST RECIPES

Sweet French Toast 

Sweet French Toast recipes can be served for breakfast, brunch, and dessert.

 
 
Savory French Toast 

Savory French Toast recipes can be served for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner.

We love a good sweet-and-salty snack. Chunk Nibbles crunchy snack mix is based on a recipe that the founder’s grandfather had been using for decades.

It’s a mix of confectionary wafers, nuts, pretzels, corn squares, and different accents like graham crackers and marshmallows (for S’mores) or peanut butter chips (for Peanut Butter Chocolate).

The treats are both nostalgic and modern, packed full of delicious flavors and textures. You can “truly taste the magic of a Grandma’s recipe in every chunk.”

The snack mixes are handmade in small batches from quality ingredients.

In two sizes, they can be stocking stuffers, party favors, and additions to gift bags.

But before you give them away, make sure you have a stash for yourself.
 
 
CHUNK NIBBLES FLAVORS 

Available in 2-ounce “personal pouches” and 4.25-ounce pouches, flavors include:

 
There are also seasonal flavors:

 
We must admit a preference for Peanut Butter Chocolate and Peppermint (we haven’t tried Apple Cinnamon). Original is nice, but the other flavors are, understandably, more complex.
 
 
A FEEL-GOOD SNACK 

Chunk Nibbles has partnered with Blue Star Service Dogs, a non-profit organization that rescues and trains shelter dogs to be service dogs, and pairs them to military veterans living with PTSF or traumatic brain injury.

A portion of each sale is donated directly to Blue Star. Here’s more about Blue Star and its mission.
 
 
GET YOUR CHUNK NIBBLES 

Head to ChunkNibbles.com.

[1] Peppermint, delicious for the holidays (photos #1 and #2 © QVC).

[2] Pouches are available in two sizes.

[3] Apple Cinnamon is the fall flavor.

[1] While this moka pot makes strong Greek or Turkish coffee, it is not an espresso machine (photo © Andres Vera | Unsplash).

[2] This is a home espresso machine adapted from a professional model that forces pressure through the spigot (photo © Krups).

[3] Another home version uses capsules to make an almost-as-good cup of espresso as the larger models (photo © Nespresso).

There’s National Coffee Day and National Coffee Month, but November 23rd celebrates a specific type of coffee. It’s National Espresso Day. What is espresso, and how does it differ from coffee in general?

One of the primary differences between coffee and espresso is how they are made. Trade, a coffee trade association, tells us that:

 
In the original days of espresso coffee, this pressure was created using steam power.

And that pressure and extraction is the key difference.

In addition, espresso is a concentrate; coffee is diluted.

Espresso is also brewed as a concentrate, meaning there is less water and more coffee flavor in the finished beverage. That’s why the taste is stronger (although ounce-for-ounce, the caffeine is the same).

 
 
MORE ABOUT ESPRESSO 

The history of espresso.

The different types of espresso drinks.
 
 
ESPRESSO RECIPES 

 
Plus 

What green salad would you add to the Thanksgiving bounty?

The team at Diabetic.org turned to online search data to find out which salads were in demand and where.

They gathered 48 search terms from sources like Taste of Home and Taste Atlas and analyzed five years of data to determine every state’s most searched-for salad and dressing.

They also looked at “nontraditional” salads—those without lettuce, such as tuna salad or poke.

While the data don’t specifically answer the question, “What salad do you serve on Thanksgiving,” here’s what they indicate overall:

[1] Our Thanksgiving salad includes roasted butternut squash and pecans in a lemon vinaigrette (photo © Go Bold With Butter).

[2] Another Thanksgiving salad idea: romaine and radicchio with walnuts and sultana raisins (photo © Le Coq Rico | NYC [permanently closed]).

*Frog eye salad is a sweet pasta salad made with acini de pepe pasta (tiny rounds the size of peppercorns), canned fruits such as pineapple and mandarins, an egg custard, and whipped topping. Often it’s topped with marshmallows and/or coconut.