[2] A classic escargot dish. It can be metal or ceramic (photo © Williams-Sonoma).

Escargots don’t have much flavor. What brings them to life is the vibrant garlic-parsley butter, known in French cuisine as beurre maître d’hôtel butter.

It’s a popular compound butter that’s used on fish, meat, noodles, potatoes, vegetables and you-name-it.

It’s delicious year-round, and its bright hue from the parsley gives the dish some needed color.

Substitute the escargots for mussels, as this inspired recipe from Millesime restaurant in New York City shows, and serve it as a first course. (Or, use escargots: They work equally well.)

The only challenge is to decide what dishes you have to serve it in. Most of us don’t have escargot dishes.

But as you can see in photo #1, any dish will work. Have Champagne coupes? Time to use them for other than Champagne!

We’ve suggested extra toast, below, because most people will want to soak up every last drop of the butter sauce.

Going forward, we’ll use the American name for the butter sauce, sparing those who don’t speak French the need to pronounce beurre maître d’hôtel butter (burr meh-TRUH doe-TELL).

You may have seen escargots presented in the classic style: in a round “escargot dish” with five or more wells. One snail drenched with garlic butter is placed in each.

While escargots are cooked out of the shell, sometimes they are placed back in for serving (see photo #2): an impressive visual.

Escargots are a popular first course in France, Spain, and Portugal. They are also served North Africa, particularly Algeria and Morocco.

In this dish, escargots and mussels are interchangeable. However, for visual effect, triangles of toast make more impact than the traditional slices of baguette.

Ingredients For 4 Servings

 
Preparation

1. MAKE the garlic parsley butter. Keep on the stove.

2. REMOVE mussels and beards from shells; rinse and sauté lightly in butter.

3. MAKE the toast and slice into quarters. Warm garlic parsley butter sauce as necessary.

4. ASSEMBLE and serve: Fill dish with butter sauce, add six mussels and serve with toast points.

5. REFRIGERATE any remaining garlic parsley butter for other use, including garlic bread.

RECIPE #2: GARLIC PARSLEY BUTTER

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PULSE all ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Pour into a microwave-safe dish or small pitcher.

2. KEEP on or near stove if making the mussels for immediate consumption. Otherwise, cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to use.

3. HEAT before serving.

Compound butter is preparation that combines unsalted butter with flavorful ingredients: fruits, herbs, nuts, spices and/or other savory ingredients (anchovies, capers, mustard, olives, etc.).

It is often used in French cooking to create an instant sauce for anything from grilled steak to sautéed chicken and fish to vegetables; it is also stirred into soups and stews for added flavor.

In the U.S., popular compound butters include strawberry butter for muffins, chipotle butter for corn on the cob, and perhaps the most familiar, garlic butter for garlic bread.

Here’s more on compound butter, plus recipes.

[2] Colcannon, a mash of potatoes and kale. Here’s the recipe (photo © Elise Bauer | Simply Recipes).

[3] A blend of mashed potatoes and mashed cauliflower, garnished with tarragon. Here’s the recipe (photo © Williams Sonoma).

They’re filling and affordable, but they’re a starch—they don’t count toward your daily servings of vegetables. Here are four easy ways to change that.
 
 
1. ROAST VEGGIES WITH THE POTATOES

Bell peppers, carrots, mushrooms, onions, squash—all are delicious with potatoes. One of our favorite dishes is roasted fall vegetables: potatoes with beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, and turnips.

The added colors and flavors from the veggies make the potatoes taste even better. Here’s a popular recipe from Betty Crocker.
 
 
2. TOP MASHED POTATOES WITH COOKED VEGETABLES

A hearty garnish of diced red and green bell peppers (or any two vegetables you like) has eye appeal, palate appeal, and yes, it sneaks in more veggies.
 
 
3. MASH VEGGIES WITH POTATOES

You may already know the trick of cauliflower mashed potatoes, which look just like mashed potatoes.

You can also do a 50:50 mix of cauliflower and potato, or any proportion you like.

Along the same lines, mix in another favorite vegetable. Zucchini mashed potatoes are an excellent choice; carrot mashed potatoes are especially fun.

And don’t forget colcannon, the traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale. Here’s a recipe.
 
 
4. MUST HAVE FRIES?

Combine French fries with French fried zucchini, carrots, onions, portobellos, summer squash, and more.

Here’s how to make fries from almost any vegetable.

Help everyone eat more veggies! Send us your suggestions and recipes!

The flavors have neutraceutical enhancements that turn them into functional beverages. For example, Vanilla Nut has “naturally-calming herbs to sooth feelings of nervousness brought on by everyday stresses”; Mocha has “powerful ingredients that will undoubtedly add a boost to your body’s immune system.”

Depending on the neutraceutical, each flavor is also labeled with a benefit: Energize, Focus, Relax, and so forth.

But we, who don’t put sugar in our coffee, found the flavors to be overly sweetened.

Recently, the company sent us new flavors made with coconut water: Cappuccino With Coconut Water and Dark Roast With Coconut Water.

The sweetness level seems to be toned down a bit—but still plenty sweet for sugar-craving Americans.

There’s more about the neutraceuticals below.

The line is Certified Kosher by The Orthodox Union.
WHAT’S THE BENEFIT OF COCONUT WATER?

Enjoy a coconut water drink for hydration, not for enhanced health. According to Web MD, the main benefit of coconut water is the potassium.

“Most Americans don’t get enough potassium in their diets…” says Web MD, “so coconut water can help fill in the nutritional gaps. Beyond that, the scientific literature does not support the hype that it will help with a laundry list of diseases.”

Here’s the full article.

WHAT’S THE REAL BENEFIT OF THE
NEUTRACEUTICALS IN YOUR BEVERAGE?

All seven varieties of RealBeanz are nutrient enhanced. Beyond the natural caffeine from brewed coffee, the different flavors include natural ingredients such as choline bitrate, green tea, grape seed extract, guarana, L-theanine, niacin, panax ginseng, vitamins B6, B12, B5 and yerba mate.

Each of these ingredients has shown efficacy, but the question is: How much of these nutrients is needed to provide noticeable benefit? To quote Price Hamlet, “Aye, there’s the rub.”

Whether you drink cups of green tea or beverages with a neutraceutical enhancement, there’s a threshold beneath which you’re not getting any benefits. The amount of the functional ingredient may be just enough to make a marketing claim and attract your attention.

So enjoy whatever you drink for the taste and hydration, and try to cut back on the sugar.

Don’t buy flavored water: Make your own
with this pocket-size squeeze bottle. Photo
by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

On previous World Water Days, we advocated buying a permanent water bottle to spare the earth the landfill of billions of plastic bottles a year.

ENHANCE TAP WATER WITH WATER ENHANCERS

This year, for folks who don’t like plain water from the tap, we’ve advocating portable water enhancers instead of iced tea, Vitamin Water and other options. These small squeeze bottles fit in your pocket and turn your [reusable] bottle of water—or a glass of water—into a zero-calorie flavored beverage.

The process is simple: Take your water bottle or a glass of water, squeeze in a few drops of water enhancer and shake or stir. No refrigeration is required; the enhancers are caffeine-free and gluten-free.

As an at-home or on-the-go product, water enhancers are environmentally friendly, leaving one small plastic bottle to recycle instead of up to 32 full size beverage bottles.

We tried two brands: AriZona, which makes flavored iced tea, and Stur, which creates flavored water.

ARIZONA WATER ENHANCERS

From the folks who make AriZona bottled teas, these water enhancers let you recreate your own diet AriZona in seven of the company’s most popular flavors: Arnold Palmer Half & Half, Arnold Palmer Strawberry Fruit Punch, Golden Bear Strawberry Lemonade, Lemon Tea, Mucho Mango and Peach Green Tea.

Made with real tea and flavored with real juice and honey without artificial† colors or flavors, there is added sweetness from sucralose (marketed to consumers as Splenda).

How can the enhancer have zero calories when juice and honey are ingredients? They have just a pinch to add flavor while keeping the calorie count less than 1%. If it’s less than 1%, the FDA allows the claim of calorie-free. (And by the way, it’s the same with any ingredient, including trans fats.)

As of now, AriZona Water Enhancers are being sold at Walmart and online. They are expected to roll out to other distributors nationwide.

The line is certified kosher by OU. For more information, visit DrinkArizona.com.

Stur is a water enhancer that adds flavor and vitamins. Instead of making iced tea like AriZona, it turns plain water into vitamin water.

Flavors include Freshly Fruit Punch, Lemon Tea, Only Orange Mango,Purely Pomegranate Cranberry and Simply Strawberry Watermelon.

The line is made with kosher ingredients but has not yet been certified kosher.

Stur is an all-natural† product that supplies 100% DV of Vitamin C per serving, along with a blend of essential vitamins, including A, D, E, B3, B5, B6, B12.

The company’s goal is to encourage Americans drink more water, by giving those who don’t like to drink a lot of water a “delicious way to hit those 8 glasses of water a day.”

You can do more than enhance water:

Just squeeze a drop into a water bottle or glass of water. Photo courtesy Stur.

Get some for yourself, and put them on your stocking stuffer list.

 
*Source: Huffington Post.

†Stevia, the sweetening agent, is a natural product made from the leaf of the stevia plant. While stevia can be a highly processed product like sucralose, sucralose detractors point out that it is created by the addition of chlorine atoms to sucrose molecules. Here’s more information from the anti-sucralose resource.

Cookies & Cream bread pudding from B
Sweet. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE
NIBBLE.

The headline: Delicious bread pudding from freezer to the microwave in minutes.

Launched last month, B Sweet Bread Pudding is melt-in-your-mouth indulgence that’s a cross between bread pudding and a hot soufflé. Bought frozen in 12-ounce containers resembling ice cream pints, they go into the microwave and hot bread pudding emerges.

Chef Barbara Batiste’s B Sweet gained fame on the streets of Los Angeles, where her award-winning food trucks sell a variety of freshly baked sweet treats. The hot bread pudding was named Best Dessert of CitySearch Los Angeles.

There are four flavors:

“NOUVELLE” BREAD PUDDING

B Sweet isn’t like Mom’s chunky custard-laden bread pudding. It’s “nouvelle” bread pudding.

The consistency is smooth, like a dense, cakey soufflé. While custard is an ingredient, the eggy custard flavor of conventional bread pudding is replaced by the featured flavors (apple, brownie, chocolate sandwich cookie and glazed donut).

And reading the ingredients label, pound cake seems to have replaced the stale bread.

But however the magic happens, the result is quite noteworthy.

If you’re worried about calories: 1/4 container has the same calories as 1/4 container of Haagen-Dazs.

The four flavors of B Sweet Hot Bread Pudding. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.