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Briefs: New spice products

McCormick has expanded its spice grinder line with Italian Herb Seasoning Grinder and Steakhouse Seasoning Grinder. Both blends feature an easy-to-use grinder built into the top of the glass bottle. Suggested price is $1.99 a bottle.

Kenya Shake It, the winner of the 2004 McCormick $10,000 Blend to Win Challenge, created by Valerie Szlatenyi of Rhode Island (she out-spiced 1,700 other entries), is available for a limited time for $2.99 a bottle. If you can't find it at your grocery store, call toll-free 1-800-632-5847 to order. It's a slightly sweet mixture of coriander, cumin, orange and lemon peel, cloves, brown sugar, salt and pepper - and lends itself to grilled chicken, pork chops, rice, fresh tomatoes and vegetables.

Get more juice from citrus fruit by using a microwave. Gently warm a lemon, lime or orange before squeezing by hand or using a juicer.

Coincidences enliven daily life. Consider these three new, very different food books that happen to be lined up currently on bookstore shelves:

- Eat This Book (Potter, $32.50) by television chef Tyler Florence. A bright, well-flavored cookbook drawing on ideas from global cuisines, with some 150 recipes for the home cook, illustrated with color photos.

- Don't Eat This Book! (Putnam, $21.95) by Morgan Spurlock, producer-director-star of the Oscar-nominated movie documentary Super Size Me. This book further explores in Spurlock's breezy style what he sees as the serious dangers of the unhealthful food Americans find all too tempting around them.

- Read It and Eat (Hudson Street Press, $19.95) by Sarah Gardner. A month-to-month guide to "scintillating book club selections and mouth-watering menus," which presents suggestions for book-club choices, topics for discussion, and recipes for feeding the literary gathering.

When you need to improvise with kitchen gadgets, remember these tips from Parents magazine's food editors Fraya Berg and Jackie Plant, in this month's issue:

Use an ice cream scoop to:

- Scoop cookie dough.

- Measure muffin and cupcake batter.

- Shape cooked rice or mashed potatoes into balls to decorate a plate.

Use a melon baller to:

- Add balls of fruit or veggies to a salad.

- Remove seeds from cucumbers, melons, or winter squash.

- Scrape the hairy center from an artichoke.

- Make tiny ice cream balls for parfaits and sundaes. Added benefit: Your kids get a treat, but it's really small.

There's a self-heating latte showing up on the shelves with packaging that's more interesting than what's inside. Super Targets, Big Kmarts and Publix are getting shipments of Wolfgang Puck's new line of lattes in a can, developed by a company called OnTech. The java is heated to 145 degrees in about eight minutes when consumers turn the cans over, remove a seal and push a button that combines a liquid with the mineral calcium oxide, also known as quicklime. That combination then heats the coffee. Some environmentalists are aghast at the packaging and waste for something as simple as coffee. But the food industry may find the technology worthy of soup, oatmeal or any other on-the-go food. It has a suggested retail price of $1.59, or $5.99 per four-pack.

www.whfoods.com

Sponsored by the nonprofit George Mateljan Foundation, this site claims to have no commercial interests. Its objective is to share scientifically proven information about the benefits of healthful eating.

A sample recipe of the week is poached eggs over spinach and mushrooms, which is fraught with goodies: 120 percent of the daily value for vitamin A; 41 percent for vitamin C, 38 percent for selenium.

There's more where that came from, hundreds of quick and easy recipes, a featured food every week, cooking demos and the Feel Great in 7 Days Menu Plan. Dig in.

Compiled by JANET K. KEELER from staff and wire reports. You can reach her at 727 893-8586 or e-mail krieta@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 7, 2005, 08:39:04]