As someone who is overly fond of bagels and breakfast pastries—not a whole lot of nutrition in exchange for all of those calories—we’re glad we discovered New York Style Bagel Crisps. They come in regular and mini sizes

The light and crispy chips are made from bagel-type dough, but cut into small, thin, crisp slices that can be enjoyed at breakfast or for snacking (they have half the fat and fewer calories than regular potato chips).

The flavors are everything you’d expect in a bagel:

 
Bagel Crisps are great on their own or paired with toppings, dips and spreads—a delectable snack in a New York minute.

But the company doesn’t rest on its bagel laurels. There are also:

New York Style Pita Chips

These baked pita chips have real pita pockets, all the better for dipping. They’re available in:

 
Enjoy them plain or with dips like hummus and guacamole. We like dipping them in plain Greek yogurt.
 
Panetini

We’d have called these crostini; but by any name, they’re crunchy, tasty and great with dips,spreads, soups and salads. Try them in:

Instead of a cookie, have a Cinnabon Swirl Crisp or a Chocolate Swirl Crisp. It satisfies that sweet craving with a cup of coffee or tea; and we turned them into little crispy ice cream/frozen yogurt sandwiches.

Discover more at NewYorkStyle.com.
  

Kale sprouts: a new hybrid. Photo courtesy Melissas.com.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get trendier, there’s a new kale in town: kale sprouts, grown in California and available year-round.

A hybrid cross of Russian red kale and Brussels sprouts, kale sprouts look like a very tiny head of kale, much smaller than baby kale.

Kale sprouts—also known as lollipop sprouts or lollipop kale—are harvested when the first leaves of the plant have developed around a tiny, compact central head. This small, leafy delicacy has the same striking coloring as Red Russian Kale; silvery-green to blue-gray leaves with pronounced crimson veins.

Kale sprouts have a sweet peppery flavor and crispy fresh texture. Use them as a tasty garnish for meat entrées, mixed with spring greens in a salad, or sautéd lightly with mushrooms and garlic.

Send them as a gift to your favorite kale lover. You can buy three packages for $22.95 at Melissas.com.
 
  

We love to start the new year with lettuce wraps instead of bread-based sandwiches.

 
Here are two variations on a similar recipe—Asian turkey wraps—from Jennie-O, a specialist in turkey products from ground to whole to burgers and bacon.

You can substitute your meat of choice (it’s a great way to use up leftovers) or create vegetarian versions.

The first recipe is simpler in flavor profile, and uses ground turkey cooked from scratch. The second recipe is more complex in flavor, and uses leftover roast turkey.

RECIPE: CHINESE LETTUCE WRAPS

Chinese lettuce wraps with turkey, flavored with hoisin sauce, soy sauce and hot sauce. Photo courtesy Jennie-O.

 
*Tabasco makes a sweet and spicy version of its original hot sauce. It’s much milder than original Tabasco: (100-600 on the Scoville Heat Scale as opposed to 2500-5000 for original Tabasco. There are other brands of “sweet heat,” including Sweet Sunshine, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.
 

Preparation

1. COOK the turkey as specified on the package. (Always cook turkey to well-done, 165°F, as measured by a meat thermometer.)

1. HEAT the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and sauté for 3 minutes or until they begin to brown. Mix in the turkey, sweet and spicy pepper sauce, hoisin sauce, soy sauce and cucumber. Heat through.

3. MAKE the wraps: Spoon the turkey mixture onto lettuce leaves and the wrap leaves around filling.

RECIPE: THAI LETTUCE WRAPS

This recipe uses leftover cooked turkey, although you can cook raw, ground turkey as in the previous recipe. There are more ingredients, resulting in more authentic, complex flavors.

The reason this is a “Thai” wrap instead of a “Chinese” wrap is the Thai cuisine ingredients and seasonings: lime juice, grated ginger, fresh mint and cilantro, shredded carrots, fish sauce and sweet chili sauce.

Prep time is less than 15 minutes; total time is less than 30 minutes.

Ingredients For 4 Servings

1. COMBINE the onion and lime juice in small bowl; let stand 15 minutes.

2. HEAT a large, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil, ginger and garlic. Cook 1 minute or until fragrant. Remove the skillet from the heat.

3. COMBINE the onion mixture, turkey, mint, cilantro, sauces and carrot in large bowl. Spoon the turkey mixture into each lettuce leaf and sprinkle with peanuts.
 
WHAT IS HOISIN SAUCE?

Hoisin sauce is a thick, sweet-and-pungent condiment that’s used in Asia much the way we use barbecue sauce (but the taste is completely different). It can be used to coat meat and poultry prior to cooking, it can be stirred into dishes and, as in the case of Peking Duck, it can be used as the principal condiment—a very elegant “ketchup.”

The flavor of hoisin sauce has always seemed pruny-plummy to us (in the sense of a sweet fruitiness of roasted plums). In fact, recipes for a hoisin sauce substitute can include prunes.

However, there’s no fruit in traditional hoisin sauce; unless you count a touch of chiles, which are, by botanical definition, fruits. The base of hoisin sauce is soybean paste, which is flavored with garlic, vinegar and sometimes some other spices. The resulting sweet-and-spicy paste is extremely flavorful and may overwhelm people who try it the first time. But keep trying; you’ll learn to love it.

The grated carrots and zucchini in the meat loaf mixture add moisture and are a tasty way to eat more veggies.

RECIPE: MUFFIN PAN MEAT LOAF

Ingredients For 12 Servings

For The Meat Loaf

 
For The Sauce

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Mix all meat loaf ingredients in large bowl until well blended. Divide the mixture into 12 balls. Place each ball into a muffin cup.

2. BAKE for 25 minutes or until cooked through. Let stand 5 minutes before serving. While the meat loaves are baking…

3. MAKE the sauce. Place all the sauce ingredients in a medium saucepan. Cook on medium heat until heated through, stirring occasionally. Serve with the meat loaf.
  

[2] The Bloody Mary was originally called the Red Snapper.

In 1934, a seminal cocktail event took place at the King Cole Bar, an elegant watering hole in the storied St. Regis hotel in New York City. Bartender Fernand Petiot introduced the Red Snapper, a cocktail that would later be renamed the Bloody Mary.

A simple cocktail called the Bloody Mary—gin and tomato juice—originated in the 1920s at a Parisian bar called The New Yorker. Petiot had served the drink at Harry’s Bar in Paris.

After moving to the St. Regis, Petiot spiced up a tomato juice and vodka libation with celery salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon, and Worcestershire sauce.

There’s more Bloody Mary history below.
 
 
RECIPE: THE ORIGINAL RED SNAPPER COCKTAIL FROM THE KING COLE BAR

Ingredients

 
Preparation

COMBINE all ingredients and serve over ice.

The vodka-based drink became known as the Bloody Mary, and the gin-based equivalent became known as the Red Snapper. Over time, hot sauce replaced the cayenne pepper and a celery stick garnish appeared.

And the name switched: The Red Snapper became a cocktail like the vodka-based Bloody Mary, but with gin instead.

The St. Regis Hotel was opened in 1904, built by one of the wealthiest men in America, John Jacob Astor IV, as a companion to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Eight years later, John Jacob Astor IV perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic. His son Vincent Astor inherited the hotel.

In 1932, the “Old King Cole” mural by Maxfield Parrish, which had been created for Astor’s defunct Knickerbocker Hotel, was moved to the St. Regis and made the centerpiece of a new bar, the King Cole Bar. In 1934, Vincent Astor recruited French bartender Fernand “Pete” Petiot, who had moved to New York from Paris-based Harry’s New York Bar in the 1920s, as the head bartender.

At Harry’s, Petiot was famed for a tomato juice and vodka drink that was named the Bloody Mary, as the story goes, after a customer named Mary.

When he brought the drink to New York, Petiot had to swap out the vodka, which was hard to come by in the U.S. (until the 1960s), for gin. Then, the Astor family deemed the name Bloody Mary too déclassé for their society clientele. So the Red Snapper was born.

According to FoodRepublic.com, Petiot spiced up the Parisian Bloody Mary—originally just vodka and tomato juice—with salt, pepper, lemon, and Worcestershire Sauce. Since “Bloody Mary” was deemed too vulgar for the hotel’s elegant King Cole Bar, the drink was rechristened the “Red Snapper.” While the name may not have endured, the spicy drink most certainly has; over the years it has become the signature cocktail of the King Cole Bar. Sometime in the mid-1930s, the name reverted to Bloody Mary—a better, spicy Mary, to be sure.