| Melbourne chock-full of shops for cocoa nuts
MELBOURNE'S love of the humble cocoa bean has come of age, with gourmet chocolate shops, cafes and even bars springing up all over the city. The traditional Easter Bunny jostled for position alongside chilli chocolate truffles and "enrobed" pralines in tastefully lit shop windows across Melbourne's CBD. Chocoholic Tours founder Suzie Wharton has been tasting the local wares for 13 years and said there had been a marked increase in the number of stores selling handmade and high-end chocolates. "Chocoholics have always been there but they haven't been catered for by many companies," Mrs Wharton said. Ten years ago speciality chocolate shops were thin on the ground, with Haigh's Chocolates, Ernest Hillier, Newman's Chocolate and Darryl Lea the only places to get a fix, she said.
Eat To Live: Cut back on salt
If we eat out in fast food and chain restaurants, we are likely to eat food that contains too much salt. Sodium brings out flavor, particularly in fast food like burgers and fries. But too much -- the amount that most of us consume -- isn't healthy. The U.S. recommendation for an adult is one teaspoon a day, 2,300 milligrams. You'll consume all of that at one sitting if you order a KFC Famous Bowl with mashed potatoes and gravy. A Burger King Whopper-with-cheese, a medium order of fries and a medium Diet Coke to wash it down will shoot you 2,060 milligrams of sodium. So by the end of a day, we're far more likely to have consumed two teaspoons of salt than one. In the wake of a serious initiative by health providers and agencies concerned by rising obesity levels, the recent focus of food manufacturers has been on the reduction of trans fats.
Latest office perk? Gourmet coffee
As more workers flee their cubicles to get a latte fix, the office coffee machine has become a forgotten stepchild. Of people who drink coffee at work, the percentage who drink the in-house brew dropped to 52 percent last year from 64 percent in 2003, according to the National Coffee Association, an industry group.
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Viennese Ball preparation under way
Davies Center will be a far cry from the usual scene of students grabbing a quick meal or studying in between classes this weekend.
Elegant ball gowns and tuxedos will replace the typical sweatshirts and jeans. Cultural cuisine will replace the subs, pizza and burgers, and the sound of waltzes and polkas will fill the space.
The 33rd annual Viennese Ball, the largest one outside of Vienna, Austria, will transform the entire Davies Center into Vienna, complete with UW-Eau Claire musical ensembles and regional musicians performing period music, catered gourmet food and desserts and an Austrian marketplace to purchase European goods.
But making all of this happen is no easy task, said Beverly Soll, the Ball's executive director.
"It's a year-long planning process," she said, and several hundred people are involved in the set-up and production, including the performers, Sodexho food service workers, Davies Center employees and volunteers.
Homemade matzo adds fun to a Seder
Often families play "find the matzo" during the Passover Seder, and children search the house for the hidden treasure. However, a hidden treasure you could have been overlooking is the preparation of your own homemade matzo. With the convenience and quality of store-bought matzo, it's little wonder few people make their own, but it's a fun and easy project to try yourself or with your children that yields distinctive results. Every store-bought matzo is uniformly square and has perfectly proportioned lines of pinpricked holes. Homemade matzo looks much more rustic and usually turns out oval with rough edges. The flavor will charmingly vary slightly from batch to batch because it's not commercially produced. .
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