There’s something about favorite fall foods that speaks to our hearts as well as our stomachs. It’s tradition and celebration and comfort food all rolled into one spectacular season.

These are among the autumnal goodies that make fall fun!

* Apples, cider, and applesauce
* Biscuits
* Butternut squash
* Casseroles
* Chili
* Cranberries
* Potato pancakes
* Pot roast
* Root vegetables
* Stews
* Sweet potatoes and sweet potato dishes
* Roast turkey
* Stuffing
* Mashed potatoes and gravy
* Pumpkin pie
* The whole Thanksgiving day dinner

No matter what fall foods you hold close to your heart, you can enjoy them as part of a healthy eating plan.

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The new health food?

No doubt it actually does contain those antioxidants. But it’s really mostly a package of sugar, every bit as bad for our heart as the antioxidants are to be good. And what exactly does this number tell you? Look how complicated Hershey makes the measurement of antioxidant compounds in chocolate sound. And while there is an emerging consensus that there are good-for-you compounds in chocolate it still just might not be that good for you!

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Here is a recipe for Bacon Quiche Tarts:

INGREDIENTS:

5 slices bacon

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese,

softened

2 tablespoons milk

2 eggs

1/2 cup shredded Swiss cheese

2 tablespoons chopped green onion

1 (10 ounce) can refrigerated flaky

biscuit dough

DIRECTIONS:

1.Preheat oven to 375 degrees F Grease 10 muffin cups.

2.Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until crisp and evenly brown.

3.Place the cream cheese, milk, and eggs in a medium bowl, and beat until smooth with an electric mixer set on Low. Stir in Swiss cheese and green onion, and set aside.

4.Separate dough into 10 biscuits. Press into the bottom and sides of each muffin cup, forming 1/4 inch rims. Sprinkle half of the bacon into the bottoms of the dough-lined muffin cups. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture into each cup.

5.Bake 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, until filling is set and rims of the tarts are golden brown. Sprinkle with the remaining bacon, and lightly press into the filling. Remove from pan, and serve warm.

Don’t have time to make quiche tarts? Do you have egg, milk, bread, cheese, meat, and veggies in your fridge? Whip together a delicious Strata. Here are the instructions:

Materials:

1 9X 13 pan, greased

1 pound prepared meat

1 pound prepared vegetables

12 slices plain white bread (Wonder Bread works best)

1 dozen eggs

12 oz cheddar cheese

Salt & Pepper

3 16 oz cans of canned food (to weigh the strata down before baking).

Instructions:

pre heat to 325

Line your pan with 6 slices of bread

pour half the meat and half the veggies down. Cover in 1 cup of eggs and half the cheese

Place 6 slices of bread on top, then add the rest of the meat, veggies, and cheese. Poor the egg mixture over top. Cover in saran wrap, then place the 3 16 ounce cans on top of the strata to weigh the ingredients down and smash them together. Let sit about 15 minutes

Bake for 50 minutes, then turn off your oven and broil for an addition 10 until the top is browned. Take out and let sit for 10 minutes then serve immediately.

This is a very easy Mother’s Day 2010 brunch. We hope that one of these two recipes will help you give mom a mother’s day she can remember for years to come. This is a great last-minute gift that she will see as very thoughtful.

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2. The studies that food producers support tend to minimize health concerns associated with their products.

3. Junk food makers donate large sums of money to professional nutrition associations.

4. More processing means more profits, but typically makes the food less healthy.

5. Less-processed foods are generally more satiating than their highly processed counterparts.

6. Many supposedly healthy replacement foods are hardly healthier than the foods they replace.

7. A health claim on the label doesn’t necessarily make a food healthy.

8. Food industry pressure has made nutritional guidelines confusing.

9. The food industry funds front groups that fight anti-obesity public health initiatives.

10. The food industry works aggressively to discredit its critics.

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Jamie Oliver is using fresh fruit and vegetables to try to win the hearts, or at least the fatty arteries, of a West Virginia city. Rachael Ray is working to reform school lunch. And Paula Deen, queen of Southern-fried goodness, recently taught an auditorium of kids how to cook and eat healthy.

Chefs have always wanted us to eat something good. Now, it seems they’re just as interested in seeing that we eat well.

“They’re digging down to more substance, which is great because we all win,” says Phil Lempert, the food marketing expert known as The Supermarket Guru. “Before it was cleavage and being cute to get noticed. Now it’s all about substance, nutrition.”

This didn’t happen overnight.

Pioneers like California chef Alice Waters and, more recently, journalist Michael Pollan have been preaching the gospel of fresh, unadulterated food for years.

But when everyone from Deen to “Dancing With the Stars” alum Rocco DiSpirito is talking about the benefits of produce over processed you know the tent has gotten a little bigger.

“It became clear to a bunch of us that not only is it a good idea now, but people are ready to be receptive,” says DiSpirito, author of the recent New York Times’ bestselling healthy cookbook, “Now Eat This!”

That’s partly because the rock star status TV chefs enjoy gives them an entree into American kitchens that previous proponents of healthy eating lacked, notes Lee Schrager, founder and organizer of the annual South Beach Wine and Food Festival.

Oliver, for example, is headlining “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” an ABC reality show documenting his efforts to change eating habits in a community the network calls the nation’s unhealthiest.

Chefs are realizing they have a responsibility to use their influence to foster change, Oliver says. And celebrities often can do that with more panache than traditional nutrition advocates have.

“You don’t want to food nazi the fun out of everything,” he says. “You can still cook great things that are calorific, but you just need to intro it with kind of — Look, this is a special occasion, or this is for the holidays, or whatever.”

Snappy titles and glamorous stars are new tactics for the eat healthy movement, which in the past has been perceived, fairly or not, as fun-deprived. Even Sesame Street is reaching for star power. The program recently named Art Smith, Oprah Winfrey’s former chef, as its healthy eating adviser.

“It’s becoming less elitist,” says nutrition and policy expert Marion Nestle, who credits first lady Michelle Obama’s championship of healthy eating with helping take the issue mainstream.

Deen agrees. “We work on unintimidating foods that mothers and dads can put together pretty easily,” she says.

Now there even is a glossy food magazine dedicated to helping kids eat and cook healthier. The just launched quarterly ChopChop Magazine is aimed at 5 to 12-year-olds.

A tipping point in the debate seems to be child obesity, the focus of the first lady’s campaign. A nation that can gaze with equanimity at racks of XXL clothing for grown-ups has grown less tolerant of needing “husky” jeans for 5-year-olds.

At the recent South Beach festival in Miami, an event for 50,000 people where $300 tickets are the norm and Champagne flows freely, obese kids might seem off-topic. But Schrager worked them into the schedule for the third year, adding a healthy eating fair for children at a nearby zoo. For $20, families could spend the day learning about healthy eating and watch cooking demos by Food Network celebrities such as Ray and Deen.

“Everything has to change — access to food, attitudes, education,” says Ray, who designs healthy recipes for the New York City school lunch program and started the Yum-o! charity, which raises money to teach kids healthy eating.

Even the message itself has changed. Low-fat and low-carb are so last century. Today, it’s about balance and real foods.

“It’s far better to eat a balanced diet of full-fat whole foods than it is to eat no-fat, low-fat or fake foods where they’ve replaced fat with fillers and stuff like that,” says Ray. “And I think that one of the benefits of eating a balanced diet is that you can eat some of the things that are not so figure-friendly some of the time,” says Ray.

Still, even celebrity-driven change doesn’t come easy.

Oliver, in the early episodes of his new show at least, has made some converts but also gotten pushback from people who don’t take kindly to an out-of-towner overhauling their diets.

But, he says, it’s an effort worth making.

“One doesn’t want to suck the life or fun out of food because that would be wrong. But, you know, I think the general world of food — chefs, celebrity chefs, fast-food industry, supermarkets, the ‘government food gang’ — they all need to do a bit. Hopefully, a bit more than a bit. And if they do, the world will change.”

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Discounting by Campbell, the biggest U.S. soup maker, failed to lift sales in the past month, said Alexia Howard, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. Campbell lost market share in the four weeks ended March 20 as its soup sales dropped 4.2 percent, according to data that market researcher Nielsen Co. released to clients last week.

More consumers are buying competing products from Nestle SA, ConAgra Foods Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. as sales in the $5 billion U.S. soup industry fall, according to data from the companies and research firms. The most recent decline exacerbates market-share losses over more than two decades.

The share of at-home lunch meals with soup fell to 12 percent from 14.4 percent from 1985 to 2009, and dinners with soup shrank to 5.6 percent from 6.5 percent, according to market researcher NPD Group. In the same period, the percentage of meals with pizza, macaroni and cheese or a frozen entrée rose,

Campbell Chief Executive Officer Doug Conant, 58, called last quarter’s 18 percent drop in ready-to-serve soup sales a “hiccup,” blaming a lack of promotion at retailers and Campbell’s failure to fully take into account the competition from other simple meals. Conant said on a Feb. 22 conference call that soup sales would rebound this quarter, helped by marketing plans.

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Recently in my never ending quest to be healthy I came across a great site chalk full of health nut info. www.wellnessdaily.com is a great site! This new site is an online community that also collects the latest in health news, healthy living blogs, expert opinions on health matters, easy and nutritious recipes, videos on a variety of topics including weight loss, healthy eating, exercise and mental well-being. Whenever I find a site that has this much good info I must share!

From weight loss to stress relief and eating right, this site provides one location for anyone looking to get or stay healthy. WellnessDaily.com also allows users to create a customized personal health and wellness news feed so that they receive info that pertains to them and their situation!

My recommendation is to go to their site and sign up! I have tried many things in my life to be healthy and fit. The best advice I can give is to get on an exercise regimen and stay on it. Keep active and moving. Eating healthy foods is key. Foods that will truly provide nutrients to your body are the best things to give your body. This will make for a more meaningful life.

Jennie-O Turkey Store, a sponsor of www.wellnessdaily.com is providing a rebate for the purchase price of any one product (up to $5.00) for the first 25,000 registered users and people that become members.

This site can really help aid you in becoming more healthy in your life and joining a community that can help get you there! Being fit and eating right is easier with support and connecting with people that are also on a quest for healthy lives.

Nothing to think about JOIN and be HEALTHY!

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Pride, however, has turned to embarrassment amid claims that the scheme has not so much highlighted how many authentic restaurants France boasts, as how few.

Instead of demonstrating the commitment to locally grown ingredients in gastronomic recipes, it has merely underlined the spread of factory food, such as spray-on flavours and vacuum-packed sauces, according to critics.

The government said it hoped to award the Maitre Restaurateur label to 20,000 restaurants, brasseries and bistros when it began the project in 2007.

They were to get the title for using mostly fresh produce, for refusing pre-cooked, industrial dishes and for greeting customers “in a friendly, welcoming, polite, warm manner”.

Three years later, only 300 have obtained the label, according to figures released at the Paris Food Fair.

Officials say they hope the figure will rise to 3000 by 2012, but even that appears optimistic given the trends sweeping through French restaurant kitchens.

“It’s understatement to say that it has not been a triumph,” said Claude Izard, chairman of Cuisineries Gourmandes, an association that defends traditional cooking.

He said some restaurants did not want the Maitre Restaurateur label because it involved red tape and inspections by teams of civil servants.

Others were ineligible because of their reliance on factory-made blanquettes de veau, gateau au chocolat or aromes de truffe, which they merely heated in their kitchens.

“You can get everything you want from the agro-alimentary industry now – sauces, patisseries, cakes anything,” Mr Izard said. “But we are fighting against that evolution because it could destroy our heritage. When I make a duck sauce, I make it with the bones of a duck and it tastes nothing like an industrial sauce.”

The influence of factory food on Gallic gastronomy was in evidence at the Salon de la Restauration in Paris last week, where food companies demonstrated the pre-cooked products that they said could save time and money in restaurants.

There were vacuum-packed courgettes peeled and cut to look like pasta, “ready-to-assemble” chocolate tarts with the pastry in one plastic packet and the chocolate in another, and packaged cremes brulees.

Francois Blouin, director of Food Service Vision, a restaurant consultancy, said many industrial products available to restaurants were of quality. He said they enabled chefs to respect health and safety regulations while keeping labour costs down.

Francis Attrazik, chairman of the French National Restaurant Federation, said however that the spread of pre-cooked dishes was a worry. “As a Frenchman, I think it is important to promote the true professionals who make the effort to respect our cuisine.”

Courtesy, The Times

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* 4 tablespoons butter
* 1/2 cup all purpose flour
* 1 cup heavy whipping cream
* 1 cup milk
* 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
* 1/2 teaspooon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
* 2 tablespoons diced celery
* 1 tablespoon grated onion
* 1 tablespoon chopped pimento
* 3/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
* 1 pound Maine lobster meat, chopped

Method

* Preheat oven to 350°.

* Butter a 6 cup casserole dish.

* In a sauce pan, melt butter over medium heat.

* Whisk in flour and cook, stirring constantly for 2 to 3 minutes. Be careful not to brown the flour.

* Remove from heat and slowly whisk in the cream and milk. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, celery, onion and pimento

* Add 1/2 cup of the cheese and the lobster meat, mix well. Pour the mixture into the prepared casserole dish and top with the remaining 1/4 cup of cheese.

* Bake until the cheese is lightly browned, about 20 minutes.

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