Author: Mark Linton

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20056-2003Dec21.html" title="Protein Diet Craze, Thin Supply of Cattle Fatten Ranchers' Wallets (washingtonpost.com)">Protein Diet Craze, Thin Supply of Cattle Fatten Ranchers&rsquo; Wallets (washingtonpost.com)</a>: &ldquo;Dietary fashion, having long punished ranchers for their supposed role in making Americans fat, is handsomely rewarding them for their supposed role in making Americans skinny. Here on the mountain-ringed rangeland of southwest Montana, in the heart of the state&rsquo;s No. 1 beef-producing county, obesity is not an entirely discouraging word. 



&ldquo;&lsquo;That Atkins diet has really helped demand for beef,&rsquo; said Bill Garrison, 62, who, along with his two sons, raises cattle on 18,000 acres north of Dillon. He is also the immediate past president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. &lsquo;Prices are higher now than I thought I would ever see.&rsquo; 



&ldquo;Compared with last fall, Garrison and other ranchers around Dillon received about $100 more for each calf they sold in November for delivery to feedlots in Nebraska and Kansas. That spells a $40,000 spike in income for the average local rancher, who sells about 400 calves in the fall. It also means that Dillon, a beef-dependent town of 3,752, is suddenly swimming in cash&hellip;



&ldquo;The nation&rsquo;s taste for beef fell off the table in 1977, when a Senate select committee issued dietary recommendations that instructed Americans to eat more chicken and less red meat. 



&ldquo;Almost immediately, to the horror of the $93 billion cattle industry, consumers did as they were told. The year before the recommendation, per capita beef consumption was at an all-time high of nearly 89 pounds a year. Within three years, it slumped to 73 pounds a year. It finally bottomed out in 1993, at 61.2 pounds a year, which represented a 31 percent decline in beef consumption. 



&ldquo;It appears unlikely that Americans will ever again eat as much beef as they did in the 1970s. Although per capita consumption has increased since the mid-1990s, it was just 64.4 pounds last year.&rdquo;

Again, no real breakfast or lunch. I weighed in at 158 pounds. I did sample the cookies throughout the day, and had a Blue Moon Belgian White Belgian-Style Wheat Ale at mid day. Dinner was the butternut squash and vegetable gratin and two glasses of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=8" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon</a>.

<strong>Associated Press</strong> 
<br />
<strong>December 17, 2003</strong> 



Toll-free telephone services and Web sites offer a variety of specialist answers to cooking and food-safety questions during holiday preparation times. Here are some of them: 

• U.S. Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline: (888) 674-6854. Food safety specialists answer calls about meat and poultry preparation and cooking questions, year-round, Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST. Recorded information is available 24 hours a day at the same number. Also available in Spanish.
• Butterball Turkey Talk-Line: (800) 288-8372. Home economists and nutritionists answer holiday cooks’ questions, in both English and Spanish, for callers in the United States and Canada. Callers can request a free pamphlet with safety and cooking tips and recipes.
  • Through Dec. 23, weekdays, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. CST.
  • Dec. 24 to Dec. 25, Christmas Eve-Christmas Day, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.
  • Dec. 26, day after Christmas, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Foster Farms Turkey Helpline: (800) 255-7227. Turkey-cooking helpline is available 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST, Monday through Friday.
• Perdue consumer help line: (800) 473-7383. Consumer-relations representatives answer cooking, storage and other questions about poultry products weekdays year-round (except Christmas Day) 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST. Free booklet offer with tips on safe handling of poultry.
• Shadybrook Farms Turkey Line: (888) 723-4468. An automated service offering information on buying and cooking turkeys.
• Empire Kosher poultry customer hotline: (800) 367-4734, or (717) 436-5921. Help is offered by consumer-affairs representatives year-round Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST; Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. EST. Program offers recipes, newsletter, tips on defrosting and cooking poultry. Closed on Jewish and secular holidays.
• Ocean Spray consumer help line (800) 662-3263. Year-round, weekdays (not Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and other major holidays) 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST. Consumer department staff field questions on cranberries, offer recipes, cooking tips, nutritional information, menu-planning worksheets, product information.
• Reynolds Turkey Tips Line (800) 745-4000. A year-round 24-hour automated hot line; through Dec. 31 offers advice on turkey defrosting, preparation and cooking options, free brochure and recipes.

On the Net:

• Cook’s Illustrated magazine’s site features detailed guidance and recipes, for preparing turkey and all the trimmings, including apple and pumpkin pies, with bright step-by-step visuals.
• The National Turkey Federation Web site has holiday recipes and cooking tips, among its year-round general information.
• The McCormick Web site includes a holiday entertaining guide.
• Star Chefs offers Christmas and holiday recipes, with tips from professional chefs and cookbook writers.
• southernfood.about.com offers Christmas and holiday recipes and turkey information and hints.
• Land O’Lakes baking assistance, cooking tips and free recipe brochure.

Continuing with the garden catalogs, today we look at onions.

Yellow Onions

• Candy* 85 days to harvest. Sweet, moderately pungent, short storage, day-neutral yellow. A hybrid day length neutral yellow cooking onion that can be spring seeded in all areas of the U.S. It is less pungent than other cooking types and will store well if properly cured.
• Prince* 105 days to harvest. Fusarium wilt resistant. Long storage, high yields. Big onions for long storage. A beautiful, big onion, among the most widely grown varieties in the North. The large, blocky, globe-shaped bulbs are uniform with vigorous tops that finish off to a thin, well-dried neck. Yellow skins have a distinct satiny sheen and adhere well in storage. From the same talented breeder as our enormously popular Copra, Prince is larger and stores nearly, but not quite, as well.
• Copra* 107 days to harvest. Fusarium wilt resistant. Pink root rot resistant. Agway Seedway Uniform round, high yields, pungent. Uniform, “rock-hard” storage onion with early maturity. These medium-sized, dark yellow-skinned storage onions have the preferred blocky round shape with thin necks that dry quickly. Firmness and skin are superior. Unrivaled in our yearly storage trials, remaining firm and sound after other varieties have sprouted. Highest in sugar (13°-14°) of the storage onions.
• Ailsa Craig or Kelsae 110 days to harvest. Moderately sweet. This popular English heirloom onion is renowned for producing exhibition-size 2 lb. globe-shaped onions even in areas with shorter, cooler growing seasons. The huge bulbs have straw yellow skin and sweet, firm white flesh. A long-day sweet Spanish type that stores quite well.
• Walla Walla Sweet 125 days to harvest. Truly sweet; seed or plant as early as possible. Big flattened bulbs with mild, sweet flesh. The only truly sweet and mild onion for long summer days in the northern two-thirds of the country. Brought to Washington state from Corsica around the turn of the century. Yellow skin; white, juicy flesh. Not a winter keeper.

Red Onions

• Mars* 110 days to harvest. Bright red throughout; large bulbs, high yields. Early and big. An outstanding variety that matures early and makes nice, big, round red onions. Good purple-red skin color, and well-colored interior.

White Onions

• Super Star* 100 days to harvest. Pink root rot resistant. White skin and flesh, sweet to moderately pungent; not for storage. This first hybrid onion ever to win an AAS award, Super Star will wow you! The jumbo white globes can reach over a pound apiece, and are simply crammed with thick, mild-sweet rings. Good skin retention means better storage capability, and great resistance to pink root ensures healthier plants! But the real secret of Super Star’s performance is that it’s neither a long- nor a short-day type. Instead, it’s a “mid-day” or day-neutral variety, which means that it can be grown almost anywhere in the contiguous U.S., from the far north to the deep south. And Super Star not only grows, it flourishes! Earlier, larger, and more flavorful than most long- or short-day types, it is out-of-this-world delicious!

Bunching Onions

• Long White Summer Bunching 60 days to harvest. Fusarium wilt resistant. Pink root rot resistant. Mild, for scallions, can be overwintered. An improved White Spear or Nebuka type. White shafts are 5 to 7 inches long, full, upright, dark green, non bulbing. An elite scallion.
• Deep Purple 60 days to harvest. Deep red stems. The only red buncher that is highly colored at any temperature or age. Spring or summer sowing.
• Feast 68 days to harvest. Early blight or alternaria leaf spot resistant. An improved Tokyo Long White type with tolerance to Downy Mildew and Alternaria Leaf Spot. A single stalk type, upright plant habit 16- to 20-inch long white shafts, dark green leaves. Not winter hardy.

Happy <dfn title="The point in the ecliptic at which the sun is farthest south from the equator, namely, the first point of the sign Capricorn in northern latitudes; &mdash; so called because the sun then apparently stands still in its southward motion.">Winter Solstice</dfn>.

<a href="http://www.staceyscafe.com/dinnermenu.htm" title="Stacey's Cafe - Pleasanton California">Stacey&rsquo;s Cafe - Pleasanton California</a>: &ldquo;No matter how finicky you are, our servers are trained to resist the urge to slap you senseless. Feel free to ask for changes to your meal. We can add garlic, delete spices, remove meat if you&rsquo;re a vegetarian &mdash; whatever change you like &mdash; as long as it&rsquo;s legal. And if no one is watching, we&rsquo;re flexible on the legal thing too.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.dilberito.com/why.htm" title="Dilberito: Why?">Dilberito: Why?</a>: &ldquo;Founded in 1998 by Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert&trade;, and Jack Parker, food research and development veteran, Scott Adams Foods plans to make waves in the food industry. &lsquo;Quite simply, we want to change the way people eat,&rsquo; says Scott Adams, CEO. &lsquo;Scott Adams Foods started as a personal quest to find foods that were nutritious, fast and easy to make, and most important, taste great. When I found that it was impossible to find anything like that, I knew that we could do something to make the world a better place, and make some money in the process. It&rsquo;s called enlightened capitalism.&lsquo;



&ldquo;Scott Adams is enjoying creating a corporation modeled after tenets set forth in his best-selling book, The Dilbert Principle: Create a vision, hire good people, then get out of the way. True to his word, Adams created the vision for the company and hired one of the best minds in the food industry, Jack Parker, to run the operation. The company&rsquo;s first creation was the DILBERITO &mdash; a delicious handheld meal fortified with 100% Daily Value of 23 essential vitamins and minerals.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/food/la-fo-dweezil17dec17,0,6522764.story?coll=sfla-home-dots-right-utility" title="Sun-Sentinel: Food">Sun-Sentinel: Food</a>: &ldquo;Beginning Jan. 16, [Lisa Loeb, the petite pop songstress with the cat-eye glasses, and Dweezil Zappa, the guitarist son of rock music legend Frank Zappa,] will star in their own Food Network show, &lsquo;Dweezil and Lisa.&rsquo; Last summer, they filmed 10 episodes of the weekly half-hour food travelogue, in which they visit restaurants, ask experts about their favorite foods and get cooking lessons from Tarbell, chef at Tarbell&rsquo;s in Phoenix, and Scott Conant, the chef at L&rsquo;Impero in New York.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2281736" title="Economist.com |  Coffee-houses">Coffee-houses</a>: &ldquo;Where do you go when you want to know the latest business news, follow commodity prices, keep up with political gossip, find out what others think of a new book, or stay abreast of the latest scientific and technological developments? Today, the answer is obvious: you log on to the internet. Three centuries ago, the answer was just as easy: you went to a coffee-house. There, for the price of a cup of coffee, you could read the latest pamphlets, catch up on news and gossip, attend scientific lectures, strike business deals, or chat with like-minded people about literature or politics.&rdquo;

No real breakfast or lunch today, though I did sample Gretchen&rsquo;s holiday cookies throughout the day and I had a cup of Mint Green Tea. Gretchen and I made turkey noodle soup for dinner, Gretchen made popovers to go with it. I also had two glasses of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=8" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon</a>.