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Health/wellness expert Amy Hendel available for interviewsHoping to keep the flu at bay? A strong immune system helps. Enjoying the bounty of colorful fruits and vegetables available right now can be an important step toward supporting your family's immune system this cold/flu season. In addition to vitamins, minerals and fiber, fruits and vegetables contain phytonutrients, believed to come from the com-pounds that give these foods their vibrant colors. These phytonutrients provide a wide range of health benefits, includ-ing supporting a healthy immune system. A new study, America's Phytonutrient Report, found eight in 10 Americans are missing out on the health...

This dessert gets it's silly name because you basically "dump" all the ingredients in the cake pan together. Very easy and very yummy!

The recipe calls for 536 sheets of edible seaweed, 100+ pounds of rice, 167 pounds of surimi, 67 pounds of cukes and an equal amount of avocados. The finished product? A 330-foot long California sushi roll to best the world record one made in Maui in 2001. That beast of traditional cuisine was 300-feet long. More than 350 UC Berkeley students on 58 teams will build the ginormous roll on Sunday. The teams, with names like Smashin' Sushi, AvoCALdoes and Roll Me California Style, are made up of students from sororities, fraternities and other campus groups. After a learning lesson...

The National Inflation Association today released the following statement to its http://inflation.us members: "While most mainstream economists such as Nouriel Roubini are warning of deflationary threats to the U.S. economy, it is our belief that massive price inflation has already begun. The Federal Reserve's policy of massive monetary inflation in 2009 has caused the Dow Jones to bounce over 50% from its low, oil to rise 100% from its low, and gold to surge to a new all time nominal high. One NIA co-founder just saw his health insurance premium rise 16% over a year ago; and the average tuition...

Good morning gardeners! Happy Halloween. Don't forget to set your clocks back one hour Sat. night! Since things have slowed down I thought I would revisit this years threads and try to locate and archive some of the great posts, advice and info you Freepers have given out over the past year. My objective would be to then put all the posts in to categories like; Fertilizer, Gardening Methods, Flowers etc. And then post all of this info in one thread at the beginning of next year. What do y’all think? Also I would like your input. Let me know...

Buy Food – Price Rises Are Almost Guaranteed By Garry White Published: 7:50PM GMT 25 Oct 2009 There are two main drivers of commodity prices – supply and demand. This is just as true with soft commodities such as wheat, rice, sugar and cocoa as it is with copper and tin. The big problem for your weekly shopping budget in the future is that there are problems on both sides of the equation that are likely to squeeze prices higher, permanently. However, this also provides a great investment opportunity and now is a good time to buy into many areas...

At the small warehouse tucked away in the back side of the French Quarter, the shuckers at P&J Oyster Co. have arrived before daybreak for 133 years. Their in-shell and shucked oysters have been on the menus of generations of restaurateurs, from oysters on the halfshell at Acme Oyster House and Casemento’s to the seafood gumbo at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse. In less than two years, the tradition could become obsolete for seven months out of the year, based on newly announced oyster guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration. In an effort to reduce cases of a rare, but potentially...

NEW ORLEANS – Federal officials plan to ban sales of raw oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico unless the shellfish are treated to destroy potentially deadly bacteria — a requirement that opponents say could deprive diners of a delicacy cherished for generations. The plan has also raised concern among oystermen that they could be pushed out of business. The Gulf region supplies about two-thirds of U.S. oysters, and some people in the $500 million industry argue that the anti-bacterial procedures are too costly. They insist adequate measures are already being taken to battle germs, including increased refrigeration on oyster...

Biofuel refineries in the US have set fresh records for grain use every month since May. Almost a third of the US corn harvest will be diverted into ethanol for motors this year, or 12pc of the global crop. The world's grain stocks have dropped from four to 2.6 months cover since 2000, despite two bumper harvests in North America. China's inventories are at a 30-year low. Asian rice stocks are near danger level. Yet farm commodities have largely missed out on Bernanke's reflation rally in metals, oil, and everything else. Dylan Grice from Société Générale sees "bargain basement" prices....

Ingredients: 2 cups flour 1 stick butter 1/2 cup shortening 5 egg yolks 1 tsp. baking soda 2 cups sugar 1 cup buttermilk 1 tsp. vanilla 1 small can coconut 1 cup chopped pecans 5 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Good afternoon to all of you gardeners. I apologize for the late post today. Well the last days of October are upon us and the garden is finally tilled for the last time this year. I seeded it with an annual rye grass. I also started rebuilding my compost pile. The oak and pecan trees have yet to drop their leaves so I will have to wait for their contribution to the compost pile until November.

In my opinion, this over the top idea isn’t sustainable at any level. On a personal note, my cat eats with a footprint more like a Volkswagen microbus. I think I’ll give “Minners” a can of doplhin safe tuna tonight, just for spite. From Stuff.co.nz By TANYA KATTERNS – The Dominion Post Save the planet: time to eat dog? The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found. Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats...

The Agri-Food investment story has been unfolding for more than three years, and has another ten or so years to go. For that reason, investors still have plenty of time to uncover the opportunities for profits in a world soon to be far more hungry. Agri-Food cannot be produced in factories with lower marginal costs for new production. Unlike consumer electronics, marginal production will have a higher cost. For centuries mankind has sought to satisfy hunger. Only in the second half of the 19th century did food become more plentiful with improved availability. Yet even after that period food was...

Are we seeing the begining of the food police? Please. Stop. Just stop it. I’m not stupid. I know me Lucky Charms are not magic. I know Frosted Flakes are not …”Greaaaat” for you. I know Count Chocula isn’t a real monster and Tricks aren’t just for kids. Stop it pleaseeeeee. The federal government is wading into the supermarket aisle, making its first effort to provide better nutritional information on food products since it developed the black-and-white Nutrition Facts label 15 years ago.

Ingredients: 3 large avocados 2 1/2 lbs. lump crab meat 1/2 cup celery, chopped fine 1/4 cup lemon juice 4 tbsp. olive oil 1/4 cup vinegar 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper 3 tbsp. green onions, chopped fine salt and pepper to taste

INTERNATIONAL. Legendary global investor and chairman of Singapore- based Rogers Holdings, Jim Rogers said the lack of supply in agricultural products is especially concerning. This cycle may last for many years as no one is bringing new supply on stream, Rogers said. In a Yahoo Finance video clip Rogers explains the reasons he is bullish on agricultural commodities. As he sees it, "most agricultural products are still depressed on a historic basis." "The story is not over, not for a while," he said. "I don't see any reason it's going to be over for a few years because no one...

I make really good soup. The only reason I'm thinking about it now is that we're going from hot, dusty haying to cold and wind-blown leaves. That brings out the need for warm, homey food, and nothing fits the bill like soup. I make such good soup that complete strangers have asked me for my recipe. That's where the problem arises. I don't have a recipe, and there's no way that this week's soup is going to be anything like next week's soup, no matter how hard I try. If that statement sounds familiar based on other things I've written,...

It is seldom recognized, commented historian René Dubos, that each society and every civilization creates its own diseases.1 Is the peanut allergy epidemic man-made? And if so, how has it been created in millions of children in just 20 years and who or what are its architects? The features of the epidemic continue to puzzle doctors. In the US alone, 5.6 million people – 2% of the population – are allergic topeanuts and nuts almost all having experienced onset as toddlers. This epidemic tipped into critical mass around 1998 when the first flood of allergic children entered kindergarten sending a...

Sgt. Christopher Nekvapil, with Company D, 120th Combined Arms Battalion, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, provides security in the Murtada neighborhood near Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, Oct. 15. Nekvapil, of Portland, Ore., and other Company D Soldiers accompanied the Iraqi Army to provide humanitarian assistance to poor families in the area. Photo by Mary Phillips, Multi-National Division – Baghdad.BAGHDAD — A poor neighborhood near Mahmudiyah, south of the Iraqi capital, was surprised with much needed water and food brought by U.S. and Iraqi Soldiers, Oct. 15. Soldiers with the 120th Combined Arms Battalion, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team and...

This is a wonderful dish to serve on a special occasion!

A popular Boca Raton chef is in jail and faces aggravated assault chargesYou have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but one chef decided he would crack a few skulls if he had to make one more dish of mozzarella Caprese. Chef Mark DeCraepeo was arrested Wednesday night after he pulled a gun on two waitresses at his restaurant because he was tired of seeing orders for the appetizer, according to the Sun-Sentinel. "If you hang one more f---- ticket for mozzarella Caprese, I swear to God I'll shoot you in the forehead," witnesses at Pizza Time...

12 unbroken rice sheets (approx 8 inch diameter) 1 cup washed and chopped Vietnamese mint 4 large carrots – peeled and finely shredded 1 piece ginger (approx 2 inch) grated ½ cup gluten free soy sauce 3 or 4 radishes – topped and finely shredded 2 tablespoons sesame seeds 12 large washed spinach leaves

The other day, deep in Rego Park, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, Stanley Moscowitz and Walter Israel sat down at a Formica table for lunch at Ben's Best Kosher Deli on Queens Boulevard. Moscowitz, who's 53 and grew up in nearby Forest Hills, ordered first: matzo ball, tip of the tongue, roast beef, rye, Russian, onions and Dr. Brown's diet cherry drink. Israel ordered pastrami on rye bread. His son Jason ordered pastrami on white. In his defense, Jason did not ask for mayonnaise, but the combination of pastrami and white bread enjoys a certain...

Yield: 24 servings (serving size: 1 bar) RECIPE INGREDIENTS Non-stick cooking spray 3 cups favorite granola 1 cup wheat germ 1 1/2 cup almond butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/3 cup whole-wheat flour 3/4 cup honey 1 cup dried cherries or dried cherry-flavored cranberries 1 cup slivered California Almonds

Spiders deserve their reputation as bloodthirsty critters. Up until now, all 40,000 species known to science seemed to eat by sucking the juices out of insects and other prey. But researchers have come across a spider that is a vegetarian, and is apparently the first example of a plant-eating spider. Two scientists, working independently in Costa Rica and Mexico, noticed that the neotropical jumping spider feeds on acacia leaf tips. These yummy leaf tips are primarily eaten by ants, which in turn defend the plants from predators. But the spider, known as Bagheera kiplingi, has developed a taste for the...

We'll have what he's having If the idea of a heaping pile of thick, warm pastrami on rye gets you as hot and bothered as the female protagonist of When Harry Met Sally, you may have a problem. Then again, you may just really love smoked meat, like author David Sax. His forthcoming book, SAVE THE DELI: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen, calls for a party of the carnivorous sort. At Deli-licious: A Celebration of the Jewish Deli in New York, garlic-breathed Heebs like Jelvis the Jewish Elvis and Borscht Belt comic...

Kellogg's has developed a hi-tech method to stamp out imitation cereals - by branding individual flakes of corn with the company logo.   The new technology enables the firm - which makes 67million boxes of Corn Flakes every year - to burn the famous signature onto individual flakes using lasers.  Kellogg's plans to produce a number one-off trial batches of the branded flakes to test the system. Bosses will then consider inserting a proportion of branded flakes into each box to guarantee the cereal's origins and protect against imitation products.  If the system is successful it could be used...

This soup is bursting with so many flavors...sure to become one of your family favorites!

The winning entry:

4 eggs ¼ cup sugar 1 teaspoon pure vanilla flavoring 2 cups milk

HOBBY’S DELICATESSEN & RESTAURANT in downtown Newark may have lost much of its more traditional clientele over the years, but it has held on to tradition. The corned beef and the tongue are cured for 14 days in stainless steel bins in the basement. The salamis hanging on the wall look as if they’ve been drying there, their flavor intensifying, since the Brummer family bought the place in 1962. Samuel Brummer and his sons, Michael and Marc, even make their own matzo ball soup and potato pancakes. But in Newark, as in so many cities, holding on has been tough...

Ingredients: 1 stick butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 2 cups flour 1 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. cinnamon 4 large ripe bananas, mashed 1/2 cup chopped pecans

You can easily substitute crawfish tails for shrimp if you prefer. Either way, this is an authentic Louisiana recipe that might have you speaking in French by the time you're done, longing for a visit to The Big Easy.

Forget all the pizza and doughnuts -- the British government wants fans of "The Simpsons" to ditch junk food and eat more healthily. The Department of Health is spending 640,000 pounds ($1 million) to sponsor episodes of the long-running U.S. cartoon series broadcast on Channel 4, as part of its Change4Life campaign. Before the start of the sponsored shows, cartoon characters pretending to be the members of the dysfunctional animated family are shown sitting on a sofa tucking into ice cream and chips which then morph into more healthy alternatives. The government hopes that viewers will realize they should follow...

Bake sales are banned in NY city schools BY JENNIFER MEDINA NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK — There shall be no cupcakes. No chocolate cake and no carrot cake. According to New York City's latest regulations, not even zucchini bread makes the cut. Trying to limit how much sugar and fat students put in their bellies at school, the Education Department has effectively banned most bake sales, the lucrative if not quite healthy fundraising tool for generations of teams and clubs. The change is part of a new wellness policy...

Plant geneticist Dr John Sanford began working as a research scientist at Cornell University in 1980. He co-invented the ‘gene gun’ approach to genetic engineering of plants. This technology has had a major impact on agriculture around the world...

BRIDGEWATER, S.D. (AP) -- Behind the freezer doors at a meat plant mysteriously abandoned by its owner, the 44 tons of bison meat managed to hold its own for months, masked by the brutal chill of two South Dakota winters. Once the power was cut and spring thaw arrived, nature took over. And enough rotting meat to fill a high school gym did exactly what you'd expect: It stank. It stank at the bank. It smelled at the law office. It reeked at the cafe. Even the jewelry store wasn't immune. Everyone in this tiny town could smell it, everywhere...

I don't recommend eating this every day unless you want to be on a first name basis with your cardiologist, but this is the real thing...perfect to smother over homemade biscuits.

Manufacturers unite against a California law that prohibits the pasta from being kept at room temperature, saying it ignores a long-held cultural tradition. Public health officials cite safety.For 25 years, the Lucky K.T. Noodle Factory in El Monte has been making fresh rice noodles for hundreds of Asian restaurants and supermarkets in Los Angeles and around the country. But a state law requiring manufacturers to refrigerate the pasta instead of allowing it to be stored at room temperature threatens to alter a long-held Asian tradition, said factory owner Tom Thong. "The health inspectors don't understand our culture," said Thong, 53....

Hartland, Minn. (Freeborn County) I was eating sweet corn on a cruise ship. I knew I shouldn't have been eating it. The food on the ship had been unbelievably good, but I'm a Minnesotan. I have been spoiled. The only food I found lacking on the ship was that sweet corn. I'm sure it was good, but I have high standards when it comes to sweet corn. I once worked at Birds Eye. We all worked at Birds Eye - at least, it seemed that way. Working at Birds Eye was a rite of passage. When I was between grass...

This recipe can easily be doubled, improves on standing and may be refrigerated for two or three days. You can also substitute lobster or shrimp if desired.

A controversial cooker that 'grows' meat and fish by heating animal cells in your kitchen claimed first prize in the Electrolux design competition tonight. The invention, called Cocoon, could develop food with the make-up and nutrients of real meat. Mr Hederstierna, 27, said: 'This will create 100 per cent pure meat without the need for animals to be killed and with no risk of contamination. It will change everything.'

Meat from Swedish stockpiles dating back to the Cold War has been sold to Poland to be served in restaurants, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper. The Swedish state phased out its stockpiles of tinned meat at the end of the 1990s. The Swedish Board of Agriculture then sold 1.5 million kilograms of the meat, which dates back up to 27 years, to a Swedish trading company. The meat was offloaded on the condition that it could only be sold as food outside of the European Union. Within the EU it could be classified only as...

The New York Times reports today that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been caught “salt-handed.� Despite targeting sodium in his latest nanny-state crusade, the mayor privately enjoys pouring it on by the shaker-load: Under his watch, the city has declared sodium an enemy, asking restaurants and food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the salt in their dishes by 20 percent or more, and encouraging diners to “shake the habit� by asking waiters for food without added salt.But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Hungry Hondurans scrambled through looted stores and lined up for food on Wednesday during a break in a long curfew called to halt violence that erupted with the return of the country's deposed leftist president. Troops and police ringed the Brazilian Embassy where ousted President Manuel Zelaya took shelter on Monday after returning home in a daring challenge to the interim government that threw him out of the country at gunpoint in June and that vows to arrest him if he leaves the shelter of the diplomatic mission.

HE dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot. And his snack of choice? Cheez-Its. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has become New York City’s nutritional nag, banning the use of trans fats, forcing chain restaurants to post calorie counts and exhorting diners to consume less salt. Now he is at it again, directing his wrath at sugary drinks in a new series of arresting advertisements that ask subway riders: “Are you pouring on...

ROME (AFP) – World food production must increase by 70 percent by 2050, to nourish a human population then likely to be 9.1 billion, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation forecast Wednesday. "FAO is cautiously optimistic about the world's potential to feed itself by 2050," said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem. However, he stressed that feeding everyone in the world by then "will not be automatic and several significant challenges have to be met." The agency is preparing for a high-level expert forum in Rome on October 12-13 on "How to Feed the World in 2050" and plans to gather...

Bump and grind economic numbers might suggest that the Western economies, including the U.S., have seen the worst of the economic slide. Despite that appearance of an economic bottom, that the economic policies of the Obama Regime are a failure, and will continue to be a failure, is now increasingly obvious. When nations like China and India are demonstrating superior economic performance perhaps the time has come to either, one, jettison the bumbling economic policies of the Obama Regime, or, two, look elsewhere for opportunities. Western economies made two attempts at economic witchcraft, the internet/technology stock bubble and then the...

LOS ANGELES — The chickens have come home to roost for Los Angeles city dwellers who keep roosters. The City Council on Tuesday passed an ordinance that — with few exceptions — allows only one rooster per property. It was spurred by complaints over noise and hygiene and concerns over illegal cockfighting. Janice Hahn, who authored the bill, says it will give residents of her district some peace and quiet.