Salt cellars are back in style. Check out this cute oyster shell cellar (at left) from Provisions in Roanoke. Photo by Lindsey Nair l The Roanoke Times.

We love our mothers, but sometimes it’s devilishly difficult to buy them the perfect gift.

“I don’t need anything,” she might say, or “Just buy me a card.”

But if a card doesn’t seem like enough and your favorite mother figure loves to cook, today’s column might help.

I’ve scouted four local kitchen shops, asking owners and employees to suggest hot new products and must-have gadgets for the chef/mom.

If your mom doesn’t like to cook, don’t worry. Some of these gifts are just right for a lady who wants to sit back and sip coffee or relax with breakfast in bed.

Warning: Some of these items are so neat you may find yourself shelling out for two of them — one for Mom, one for yourself (I’ve already asked for some of those silicone lids for my birthday). In that case, you’ll be well-equipped to prepare a special meal or dessert for the occasion, so check out the recipes on Page 3 that two local chefs learned from the women in their families.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Update: I got an email from the owner of Steger Creek, which was not featured in this article. He said they carry a wide array of gourmet foods and kitchen items, including the Charles Viancin lids and the corkcicles I suggested in the column. Those lids are apparently really hot right now, so this is another place to find them. Plus Steger Creek has lots of non-food-related gift items, as well. Click the link to learn more about the stores (they have one in Roanoke and one in Forest).

Check out the full gift guide here, along with these recipes:

Lemon Cake (submitted by Sandy Krebs, head chef of the Regency Room at Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center)

Cracker Jack Balls (submitted by Alex Eliades, owner, Bread Craft)

What do you plan to do for your mom for Mother’s Day? If you are the mom, what are your hopes for that special day?

Photo illustration by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times.

It wasn’t long ago that the word “app” meant something entirely different in the restaurant world.

“Let’s order some apps before our entrees,” one might say, or “Could you bring us some app plates, please?”

Now, millions of people turn to “apps,” or application software, on their smartphones to help inform their decisions about dining out.

According to the online industry magazine FastCasual.com, an April study of smartphone users found that 81 percent had searched for a restaurant on their smartphone in the past six months and 80 percent believe it is important to look at a restaurant menu before dining there.

In a far less scientific poll on my blog at roanoke.com, 60 percent of 40 responders said they have used restaurant apps on their phones.

Clearly, it would be prudent for restaurant owners to consider the effect of smartphone apps on their businesses.

One man, Bill Trifiro of Roanoke, is hoping he can capitalize on this trend and make a living selling customized smartphone apps to local restaurants. He is so excited about apps that he built one for his upcoming wedding.

“Every major chain has an app,” Trifiro said. “But there’s no reason smaller restaurants shouldn’t be able to afford to do this.”

To continue reading this column, please click here.

Cellphone apps are extremely popular, and that’s no different in the restaurant world.

Currently, there are apps that help you make reservations at restaurants, find restaurants in unfamiliar territory, seek out sources for special dietary needs, show user reviews of restaurants, find your way to specific restaurants or allow you to see other people’s food pictures. I’m probably just scratching the surface there.

Everybody has an opinion about the best restaurant apps out there. Chow.com thinks the top nine apps are Open Table, Vegout, Menu Pages, Around Me, Foodspotting, Urbanspoon, Yelp, Near+Now, and Citysearch. About.com adds Zagat to Go, Alfred, Tipulator, Wine Ratings Guide and Oysterpedia to the list. That last one is an app devoted entirely to the popular seafood item; it offers “listings for over 200 oyster varieties. Each listing includes detailed information including flavor, size, harvest location, and tasting notes,” according to About.

Mashable.com put its 35 favorite restaurant apps in a graphic chart that you can see here.

In addition to apps that help readers choose between the many dining options available in this world, some restaurants are having their own specific apps created. These allow customers to do things like place take-out orders or advance dine-in orders, make reservations, peruse the menu and map the location.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on restaurant apps. Which ones do you use, and why do you like them so much?

Photo courtesy Paul Posadas / Flickr

On an earlier post, a new reader to this blog, Perch, brought up a kitchen gadget question. I’ll let you read his exact comment:

“We have noticed a problem in our kitchen in the last couple of years…opening cans! Why such a simple and universal act has become such a problem is beyond me. While we have bought several can openers in the last two years after using the same one for a decade or so without problems, we still cannot consistently open cans these days without problems. Electric ones, hand operated ones, cheap or expensive, all give us fits. Have the manufacturers of canned goods changed something? I am sorry to butt in on another subject, but I am at a loss and figured I’d give you a shot. If I’m off target and just unlucky, could you recommend a brand or type of opener that you feel comfortable with? Am I the only one who has noticed this? Thanks for your patience, I appreciate any help you can give me.”

None of my research indicates that the materials used in food cans have changed in recent years. If someone knows otherwise, please clue me in. More likely this is a case of bad openers, whether manual or electric.

I grew up in an electric can opener household and still prefer to open cans that way. If I only have a hand-held opener I’ll use it, but nothing ticks me off more than a cheap, dull, useless manual can opener that hurts my hand. Fortunately, they make good hand openers. And can the blades of can openers be sharpened?

Here’s what a few readers had to say to Perch so far:

Debbie says she has a great manual can opener that is very comfortable to use. She’s going to check the brand and get back to us.

John said he’s been happy with this manual opener he bought at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Kristen said she has a hand-operated opener that “cuts off the lid in such a way that there aren’t the sharp edges. I love it, and I really dislike electric openers because I feel like they get nasty fast.”

Has anybody else had problems with can openers? Are you in the electric or the hand-held opener camp? Have a great opener you’d recommend?

When my friend was over the other day, I said, “Look, I have a kitchen scale!” And she joked, “Why would you want a scale in your kitchen?”

Well, I agree that having a bathroom scale in the kitchen would be pretty depressing because if I stepped on the scale before I cooked, I’d never want to use any butter. But having a kitchen scale for weighing ingredients is a whole different matter.

I’m not an expert at using the kitchen scale. In fact, there was a point in time when I never even thought to have one, and if someone gave me one I would have probably shoved it in a cabinet or in the basement and considered it yet another object for which I did not have enough storage space.

But as those of us who have been cooking for years have figured out, there’s definitely good reason to sometimes have an accurate weight of your ingredients. A lot of chefs cook largely by weight, not measurement. Case in point: I have a recipe for espagnole sauce that was given to me by a chef. And instead of cup measurements, it uses weight. But it also makes a gallon of sauce, so I really needed to halve everything. As a result, instead of a pound of mirepoix, I needed to chop about enough carrots, onions and celery for a half-pound.

Enter this kitchen scale, which was a birthday gift from some friends. It is a digital scale as opposed to a balance or a mechanical scale. All three have their place in the kitchen, but digital scales were rated highest by the Cooking for Engineers website, and I trust them on an issue like this. The only problem with small, flat digital scales like this is you sometimes have to weigh the bowl or container you’re using, then subtract that from the total weight to figure out how much your ingredients weigh.

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Photo courtesy Rich Creek Co.

I really don’t even need to write anything on this blog entry. All you have to do is gaze at this picture, which says it all.

I saw this delightful stemware at Gourmet Pantry in Blacksburg a couple of weeks ago. As you can probably tell, they are made from Ball canning jars. The product is called Hillbilly Crystal, and it is made by a company called Rich Creek Co., which is based in Patrick County.

You knew something this good had to be made locally.

The glasses are made with colored bobbles in the stems, which makes identifying one’s wine glass at a party much easier. You could also order them to match your kitchen or your dishes, and I believe the lady at Gourmet Pantry even said they had some in VT colors, which had already sold out.

I’m thinking these would be a great Father’s Day gift for the wine lover in your life.

Hillbilly Crystal can be purchased in the following places (or ordered directly from the company by going to their website here and contacting them). They ship anywhere:

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The good folks at Weber-Stephen Products, LLC have sent me the 22nd Annual “Weber Grillwatch Survey,” which seeks to determine what kind of grilling behavior will be on tap this season.

As part of the survey, they hid in bushes with binoculars and observed American grill masters in their natural habitats. OK, I made that part up. According to their release, they used “a third-party research firm using pristine methodology.” I think my plan sounds more fun.

Here are the trends revealed for 2011:

* More Americans will cook outdoors than in previous years, which continues an upward trend.

* Not as many people own multiple grills as before. Thirty percent own two or more grills or smokers, which is down 5 percent from last year. Only 5 percent of Americans own three or more grills. This all makes sense, given the economy.

* Ownership of grills with side burners and rotisseries is down; ownership of grills with a sear zone or a sear area has gone up.

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You’re hanging out in an airport terminal. Bored out of your mind at the DMV. Waiting for your laundry to finish drying at the ‘mat. Wherever you are, if you can access the Internet from your mobile phone, you can find out what this crazy redhead is up to on the old Fridge Magnet blog.

That’s right! The Roanoke Times/Roanoke.com has a spiffy new mobile website that makes surfing for local news and entertainment easier than ever. Of course, if you are in a foodie mood, you can read this blog, food columns and restaurant reviews. But the mobile site will give you access to tons of other info, as well.

As you can see in the screen grab here, the first thing you’ll notice when you log on to http://m.roanoke.com is breaking news. As you scroll down, you will see severe weather alerts and road conditions, the latest from the blogs, and that day’s most-read stories.

See the top, where it says “Latest,” “Topics,” “Search” and “Tools”? Well, if you hit “Topics,” it will take you to a nifty page filled with icons where subject matter has already been aggregated for your ease of use. The topic icons include Roanoke news, NRV news, blogs, Virginia Tech sports, UVa. sports, weather, food, arts, movies and music, varsity sports, our community tabs, sports, lifestyle, retail news, opinion, crime, business and real estate, politics and outdoors. WHEW! It’s a lot to play around with.

If you don’t see the Fridge Magnet blog on the “Latest” page, all you need to do is go to the “Topics” page, tap the blogs icon and scroll down until you find it. Feel free to leave comments from your mobile! And we would be so grateful if you like the site enough to update your bookmarks.

If you have any questions, concerns or comments about our mobile site, just let us know.

UPDATE: The Cash Cab was postponed to Wednesday (Dec. 22) next week and will leave from Fork in the Alley. Same times apply.

UPDATE 10:30 a.m. Thursday: As far as I know, these events are still on. Will post another update on this entry if I find out otherwise.

I’ve got details about a couple of food-related events happening Thursday (Dec. 16) evening.

First, the owners of Fork in the City and Fork in the Alley are having a fun little event tomorrow night that they’re calling “Christmas Cash Cab.” They’ve got an 8-passenger yellow checkered cab called the “Fork 2 Fork Cab” that will be carrying passengers around for a tour of Christmas lights and some fun Christmas trivia with “host” Sam Hensley. Winners will receive FITC/FITA gift cards.

The cab departs from Fork in the Alley on Crystal Spring Avenue in South Roanoke at 7, 8 and 9 p.m. If you miss this occasion, there will be another Cash Cab event on Dec. 23, when the cab will depart from Fork in the City.

Next up, gentlemen who have a lady who loves to cook might want to head to Gourmet Pantry at 401 S. Main St. in Blacksburg on Thursday (Dec. 16) evening for a little help with last-minute Christmas shopping for the gal. On this 10th Annual “Gentlemen’s Night Out,” there will be champagne, hors d’oeuvres, free gift wrapping, and sales and specials on many items, including Wustof knives and Le Creuset cookware. Store employees will be happy to help shoppers pick out the perfect gift.

I got an e-mail this morning from dedicated blog reader Debbie, who remembers that I posted instructions a few years back for brining a turkey. She asked that I send her those instructions because she’s doing Thanksgiving dinner at her house this year.

I love cooking turkeys, but I can’t say I’m upset that I don’t have to do it this year. It’s our year to have the holiday meal with my husband’s family, so I’ll bring the Nair family dressing and enjoy someone else’s cooking. For those of you who do plan to cook a turkey this year, I’ll type up my brine recipe at the end of this blog post.

Over the past few years, frying has become an increasingly popular way to cook the Thanksgiving bird. Folks have either invested in outdoor turkey fryers or purchased a fried turkey from a restaurant such as Bojangles. My mom this weekend pointed out some news that can be viewed as exciting or downright frightening, depending on your point of view: Butterball is selling a new, indoor-safe counter-top turkey fryer. Check out this thing. Has anyone actually used one?

Finally, on an unrelated note, I made some of the most delicious cream cheese frosting yesterday to ice a sheet of pumpkin bars. Simple though it may be, a good, homemade cream cheese frosting just cannot compare to a store bought can of frosting (in my humble opinion). If you have any kind of mixer, you can easily make this frosting. It’s so good on a variety of cakes and cupcakes, including carrot, coconut, chocolate and red velvet. Click here to take a look at the recipe and please tell me if you think you’ve got a better one.

Speaking of recipes, the Roanoke Times PlateUp Recipe Contest deadline was midnight last night. I hope everyone who wanted to enter got a chance to do so. We received about 550 entries, which we’ll be whittling down this week. Finalists will be notified soon! Best of luck to everyone!

How I brine my bird:

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Whenever I haul out my food processor, Howard clamps his hands over his ears and a look of fear rises into his eyes. It’s a 1960s or 70s model, I believe, and it was handed down to me by my mother. It’s a big workhorse, to be sure, but it sounds like women screaming when it runs. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure the cats clamp their paws over their ears, too.

My shrieking, free love-era food processor isn’t the kind of antique tool I want to talk about today, though. I’m thinking WAY back, to the time when electricity was still only something God sent out of the clouds when he was angry; when kitchen tools weren’t made of that sissy stainless steel and teflon stuff, but of iron or copper or tin. I started thinking about this recently when Mom sent me an e-mail about my grandmother’s old cherry pitter (above). Here’s an excerpt:

“My neighbor asked me if I wanted some yellow sweet cherries. She was given a bucket full and had been pitting cherries all day and was tired. She said her fingers were sore and she just didn’t want to fool with any more. I said sure, I’ll take them. She handed me a bag of about 3 lbs. of cherries. Within ten minutes I had them all done. My secret weapon? Grandma’s Enterprise Cherry Stoner No. 2.! I don’t have a clue how old it is, probably older than Grandma because she got it from her mother, I think. It’s one of my most prized possessions and when I am done with it, it is yours. Grandma would have been very proud of you and I think she would have wanted me to give it to you.”

I poked around on the Internet for antique kitchen tools, because I was curious about whether there’s a community of collectors. Of course there is! There’s a community of collectors for just about everything. I read that some people call them “culinary antiques” or “vintage kitchenalia.” Check out this link to a site that talks about all of the many different objects considered worthy of collecting. I’ll bet we all have at least one old kitchen tool in our homes that we inherited from a relative or found somewhere.

Do you think these new appliances they are making today are going to be handed down to our great-grandchildren? I would bet not many will! Do you have an old kitchen tool you still use?

GE Cafe, the best electric range you can buy, according to Consumer Reports.

The May 2010 issue of Consumer Reports takes on some of the appliances we use on a daily basis, including some that live in the kitchen. Any homeowner may want to have a look-see at what they’ve determined are the best and worst vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, laundry detergents, lawn mowers, tractors and weed eaters.

For our purposes, I would like to direct your attention to their take on kitchen appliances. They rated ranges, toasters, microwaves, cook tops, wall ovens, toaster ovens, nonstick cookware, mixers, refrigerators and freezers, water filters and more. I’m about to buy a new toaster oven (the knob broke off mine – why is it always some cheap little thing that breaks and renders an otherwise working object difficult or impossible to use?) so I paid particular attention to that rating. For the record, CR of course recommends a $170 toaster oven.

Here are a few other peeks at the ratings:

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I’ve owned a cast iron Dutch oven for several years now and wouldn’t cook a pot roast in anything else. I love the versatility of cast iron, which can be heated on a burner and transferred to the oven with no trouble at all. I would say a cast iron Dutch oven and skillet are must-haves in any kitchen where cooking is done. My mom had a skillet when I was growing up and she used it for everything. I especially remember that she would not fry chicken in any other pan and would often bake her corn bread in the same skillet.

Oddly, it took me years to finally obtain a cast iron skillet. Now, thanks to my dad and his girlfriend, I have three different sizes, from the standard size down to a cute little pan just perfect for frying a couple of eggs.

Don’t take my word for it on the benefits of cast iron. Check out these tidbits from “Tips Cooks Love,” a Sur la Table book:

* Cast iron absorbs heat more slowly than other materials but retains heat better and more evenly.

* Cast iron can be used on the stove top, in the oven, under a broiler or on the grill.

* It is perfect for high temperature cooking and you can develop nice caramelization on foods.

And a few words of caution:

* Cast iron can be reactive with acidic ingredients like tomatoes. For this reason, you might consider an enamel-coated Dutch oven, which is non-reactive.

* Unless you buy an already seasoned cast iron pan (many these days are seasoned, including products by Lodge, the biggest dealer of cast iron), you’ll have to season it before you can use it. Why season? Because unseasoned cast iron is brittle, and seasoning strengthens the material, prevents it from rusting and creates a non-stick surface.

Read on for instructions on seasoning cast iron and a few other tips.

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Chuck roast becomes ground chuck.

Ever since reading the hamburger story in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been wondering just how hard it could be to grind my own burger at home. I mean, we don’t generally buy frozen, pre-formed hamburger patties, but we do occasionally buy packaged ground beef at the grocery store. And one theory is that when the beef scraps used to make ground beef come from all different parts of the cow (and possibly different parts of the country, or the world) there’s just a better chance of some illness-causing bacteria getting in the mix.

I am not losing sleep over this, but what could it hurt to make homemade burger? It could be a good way to control the fat content since I’m trying to diet, and perhaps it would even taste better.

First, the tools: My Kitchen Aid mixer came with a rebate offer for a free attachment, and I, thinking maybe I’d make sausage someday, chose the grinder. Which comes in quite handy now. But not everyone owns a grinder attachment, much less a Kitchen Aid mixer (mine was the result of years of whining). I did some checking, and meat grinders can be had for as little as $30 for a hand-cranked model that clamps to the edge of a counter or table. They range all the way up into the hundreds of dollars.

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Most beauteous wonder

This weekend, my husband, friends and family gave me the most awesome birthday present I’ve received in a long time. I’m trying to remember a better birthday present, actually… other than the Barbie dream house or something, I just can’t come up with one.

And of course, the Barbie dream house was not a wondrous machine of great strength and intrigue. It was not the 5-quart Kitchen Aid Artisan stand mixer with 325 watts of sheer cream-whipping power. I have basically wanted one of these ever since I was a teenager and my mother bought herself a cobalt blue, 300-watt Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

Now, I need to create an attachment fund. First item of business: a pasta maker. Second item of business: an ice cream maker. Actually, hubby did such a good job of shopping for this mixer that I get a rebate deal for a free grinder or chopper, my choice. I’m leaning toward the chopper… I don’t grind much meat. But what if I decide I want to make sausage? Oh, the decisions!!

Anyone out there own a Kitchen Aid mixer? If so, what have you found to be some of the best uses for it? I broke it in by baking this cake. I guess you could say I baked my own birthday cake, even though I’d already had one cake! This is just a basic strawberry cake, but when I made the cream cheese icing I used fresh strawberry juice in place of milk. It gave it a pretty pink hue and a strawberry flavor.

Strawberry cake with strawberry cream cheese icing

Behold, my most beautious new kitchen tool — a Fagor 6-quart stainless steel pressure cooker.
You know you’ve purchased a serious gizmo when it comes with an instructional DVD that shows you how NOT to blow yourself up.
All former concerns about pressure cookers aside, this is an incredibly easy tool to use. The pressure cookers of the 1940s or even 1970s are things of the past– or at least, they should be. If you’re still using one of those dinosaurs, consider updating.
This bad boy made me two batches of falling-off-the-bones chicken wings last night for the Super Bowl in six minutes!! Six minutes! Since when can you cook anything that fast?
All of the food at my house — jalapeno dip, pigs in a blanket, veggie pizza, chicken pizza, spinach dip, cheese and crackers — was delicious, but the guests descended on those wings like a swarm of locusts.
Do any of you use a pressure cooker on a regular basis? After I’ve had more time to experiment with mine, I’d like to do a column on them. I’d be interested to hear about your experiences.

Anyone who has read my column and blog long enough knows that I have no problem with taking some shortcuts in the kitchen. Without certain shortcuts, I just don’t think double-income families (or even single income, for that matter) would be able to put a nutritious meal on the table on some nights.
I didn’t become a fan of cooking bags until I met my husband, Howard. And even after he began to sing their praises, I balked for a while. I considered them pedestrian. And if anyone reading this considers this whole topic pedestrian, just come back tomorrow, when I’ll be talking about flan.

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Here’s a new gadget for you– the amazing One Click Butter Cutter.
That’s right, now you can store your butter in a vertical container that also dispenses perfect pats of butter with one easy click. It even comes in a variety of colors. I’m thinking about getting the American flag model.
Here’s my favorite feature, according to the site: “Cut slices individually as wanted or cut an entire stick of butter into slices in less than one minute!”
Whew! That’s a darn good thing, because I’m always in need of an entire stick of butter cut into pats in under a minute.
OK, now I’m just being snarky and unfair. When you think about it, it would save a little time. Instead of getting out the butter dish and a knife, you just squeeze and this thing produces a perfect pat. No need to dirty a knife.
But what do you do when you need more than a pat or you have to measure out a quarter cup of butter or something? How many pats equal a quarter cup?
That’s a mystery for another day.

My inbox this morning was jam-packed with foodie news of the most urgent variety.
Kids, get ready for this: Mrs. Butterworth’s is talking again.
That’s right, the big, sweet breakfast character we all came to know and love with our pancakes and waffles, will be chatting in commercials again after 10 years of silence. I missed her so much. She is so motherly.
Moving on to carb world, a company called Jay Robb enterprises has developed a product called YAMMIT! It’s a entire line of energy supplements made out of sweet potatoes.
Here’s what the company said about it:
“Since no one wants to carry around a yam or sweet potato to munch on throughout the day, Jay Robb Enterprises has developed a simple solution

Check out this bizarre press release I got today:

“Catania Wine Enhancer’s Unique Technology Improves Taste Of
Wine, Beer & Coffee. It’s a product that can turn a good
beverage into a great one. Using a trade secret technology, the
Catania Wine Enhancer creates a harmonically balanced resonate
frequency that balances a wine’s tannins and boosts the flavor
and aroma. Additionally, the Wine Enhancer has been known to
reduce or eliminate headaches among wine drinkers, based on many
users’ testimonials.”

I’m told you can find more information or buy the stuff, which costs $45-$150, here.

Question: Why wouldn’t you just spend that money on a DECENT bottle of wine? Inquiring minds want to know… if you try this stuff, let me know how it works!

Next up: Good old liqueurs that probably need no enhancing whatsoever. They’re new from the Starbucks line and include both coffee liqueur and cream liqueur. The Starbucks folks sent me some yummy recipes for the stuff, which cannot be purchased at your local Starbucks. For these products, you’ll have to visit the ABC store.
Check out these summerlicious treats:

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Office manager Nona Nelson tried the Stok black coffee shot. Here’s what she had to say:
“I poured the shot of Stok into a venti Starbucks latte and so far as I continue to sip it I have not noticed much of a difference, not much of a difference at all, no, no, no, not the slightest bit jittery, so just fine here, except I am typing really fast…but other than that I am juuuuusssst fiiiiinnnnne….not manic at all…all is goooooooood here…where can I get mooooooore of this stuff?????”

Our sports writer, Doug Doughty, also tried a shot. Although he opted to take it straight.
He wrote:
“That elixir tasted a little bit like cough medicine.”

Okay, so much for our very unscientific analysis of this new product. Now, how ’bout a recipe for some creamy asparagus soup? Might be a good weekend for it. Read on:

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I stopped by the 7-11 for gasoline and a decaf this morning and noticed an unusual black box positioned near the sugars, creamers and other flavorings.
In it were what appeared to be coffee creamers, except they were black with silver lids.
They’re Stok black coffee shots, apparently. The label says “Limit 2/day. Warning: High Caffeine. Not for those under 18, pregnant or caffeine sensitive.”
I fall into the last category, but I snagged a few anyway so I could do a little research on them. Supposedly, Stok black coffee shots have as much caffeine as a cup of espresso. Although they are called creamers, they technically contain no cream or dairy product at all. No, this just contains caffeine. Which you pour into your, well, caffeine.
According to www.energyfiend.com, which is dedicated entirely to everyone’s favorite legal drug: “A 0.44 ounce shot of Stok Black Coffee Creamer contains 40 milligrams of caffeine. The “non-dairy creamer” shots come from Whitewave foods under the Stok brand. There is a “sweet” version and a non-sweetened version.”
I won’t be trying this stuff because it’ll cause my heart to jump out of my chest. But a brave soul in the newsroom here, Nona Nelson, has agreed to be my test subject.
I’ll write back later and let you know if Nona is hanging from the ceiling by her fingernails.

It’s a cold and dreary day, so it’s a good day to fantasize about grilling out on a warm summer night. Looking at this big Weber catalog I just got in the mail makes me feel a little like Ralphie on A Christmas Story.
“I want a Genesis E-320 gas grill in dark blue with electronic crossover ignition system, porcelain-enameled shroud with a center-mounted thermometer and accent-colored, cast-aluminum end caps and 507 square inches of primary cooking space!”
“You’ll burn the filet, kid!”

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No, I’m not talking about THAT! I’m talking about a new product for all you lactose-intolerant, nut-intolerant, high cholesterol having folks out there. It’s called Manitoba Harvest Hemp Bliss, a line of hempmilk beverages that has just been launched in North America. Apparently, hemp foods are a growing trend in the health food industry.

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