Food garnishes add color, a sense of balance and cause the taste buds to anticipate the delicacy presented on a plate. While many garnishes are a work of art, the modern foodie doesn’t need to go to a lot of trouble to add pizzazz to a plate prepared at home.

Patrick O’Connell, chef and proprietor at the Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Va., believes the importance and power of garnishes is frequently underestimated.

“Garnishes can make or break a dish.  Too often they are not in harmony with the taste of the other ingredients or with the visual composition of the plate,” O’Connell told Foodie News.

O’Connell knows what he’s talking about. He serves food fit for the most demanding palates from every corner of the globe and many customers return to indulge in his five-star rated culinary delights.

“The importance and power of garnishes is frequently underestimated,” O’Connell said. “Ideally, a garnish should contribute something to both the taste and texture of the dish as well as to its visual delight.”

One of the simplest garnishes to immediately add visual appeal to a dish is a tasty sauce. They come in a wide array of colors and textures and are simple to apply. If you’re not sure you have just the right sauce, try some oil. It gives your plate a rich golden color and it can be mixed with other items to add even more colors.

“In classical cooking there is a rule that anything placed on a plate of food has to be edible.  This concept is still valid,” says O’Connell. Among the edible garnishes used at the Inn at Little Washington are blueberries and strawberries. A small cluster of grapes in the center of a place or on one side also can add a touch of the farm as well as a feeling of grace and well-being to a plate.

Herbs are an important garnish to consider. O’Connell favors using chervil, micro greens or Italian parsley to add a more interesting look than is possible with curly parsley. Also, “In the spring, tiny lavender flowers sprinkled across the rim of a plate can add a striking burst of color,” says O’Connell. “Among my favorite garnishes are the pale yellow, pungent leaves of celery hearts, which can be combined with several other delicate young salad greens to create a fresh, healthy, just-picked look.” 

Thyme, rosemary, sage, mint and lemon grass are other favorite herbs for garnishes. For most herbs, just a sprig or two on the food or beside it is perfect.

But O’Connell warns, “Don’t use one garnish for everything. Certain garnishes become so commonplace that they bring down a dish. The repetitive use of a mint sprig on every dessert for example becomes tiresome very quickly—especially when it has little to do with the other flavors.  I often use a mixture of roughly chopped aromatic herbs from the garden strewn loosely across a plate as though they blew there in the wind to convey a soft, fluid look.”

What advice would Patrick O’Connell give foodies who like to cook? “They need to be continually reminded that cooking, like other art forms, is a vehicle for communication and that every aspect of a presentation is making a statement and contributing something to the narrative.”

Food gardening in the U.S. is on the rise. Seven million more households plan to grow their own fruits, vegetables, herbs, or berries in 2009 than in 2008 — a 19-percent increase in participation. That’s according to a new survey from the National Gardening Association, The Impact of Home and Community Gardening in America.

In 2008, gardeners spent a total of $2.5 billion to purchase seeds, plants, fertilizer, tools, and other gardening supplies to grow their own food. According to NGA estimates, on average a well-maintained food garden yields a $500 return when considering a typical gardener’s investment and the market price of produce. The full report is available online.

Will you be planting fruits, vegetables, herbs, or berries this year to feed your family?

Link: http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/chicken-versus-beef.aspx

According to Monica Reinagel, a.k.a. the Nutrition Diva, people should think twice before automatically assuming turkey or chicken is a healthy substitute for beef or pork.

Some people think: "Never mind all the sodium, nitrates, preservatives, and saturated fat in that turkey bacon: at least it’s not pork. You know what? That’s just a bunch of turkey boloney. Cold cuts, bacon, and sausages made from turkey or chicken may contain just as much of that stuff as their traditional counterparts," says Reinagel.

The Nutrition Diva's three take home messages:

1.Chicken and turkey are sometimes lower in fat than beef or pork. But not always.
2.Lean cuts of pork and beef such as pork tenderloin, pork loin roast, sirloin steak, or flank steak are just as healthful as lean cuts of chicken and turkey.
3.Just because it’s made of turkey doesn’t automatically make it healthy.

As foodies continue to seek out higher-quality, unique culinary experiences, it only makes sense they would include fine dining in their vacation plans. But, for hard-core foodies, a vacation destination in and of itself may not be a beach or the mountains, but a resort that specializes in gastronomy. And they are paying big bucks for the experience.

Fortunately resorts are springing up around the world to accommodate travelers with such culinary tastes. In the U.S. alone, resorts have recently opened in Boca Raton, Fla., Santa Fe, N.M., Dallas and Atlanta that cater to foodies.

The Boca Raton Resort & Club, for example, brought in Michelin-starred U.K. chef Angela Hartnett to create tapas and other Spanish specialties for hotel guests. In Santa Fe, the Encantado resort dishes out Southwestern farm-to-table food, including resort favorite slow-roasted suckling pig.

A trend that continues to develop is resorts that either use the farm-to-table approach or even “pick” or “catch your own” dinner. At the Montage Laguna Beach, executive chef James Boyce takes guests to the local farmers’ market to shop for lunch and then helps them prepare their goods in the resort’s kitchen. The price tag for the market-to-plate program and one night’s accommodation for two: $2,000.

Less expensive, but still a great culinary experience, is the Fairmont Royal York’s “Shop with Chef” program. The Toronto resort offers guests the opportunity to go to the local market with Chef David Garcelon to shop for produce, meats and fish. Garcelon then creates a six-course dinner with the ingredients. The program for two, which includes shopping, dinner and two night’s accommodation, is around $550.

For those action-seekers who like to catch their dinner, resorts in Florida and Nevis, to name a few, offer such experiences. At the Watercolor Inn and Resort at Florida’s Santa Rose Beach, Chef Chris Hastings takes guests on three-to-four day tours to catch fish, dig for clams and even harvest honey. He then cooks up dinner for guests on the beach. With room and board, patrons can expect to pay about $1,500 for the voyage.

Further South at the Four Seasons in Nevis, in the British West Indies, guests can dive for their dinner. A dive master teaches patrons how to lasso lobsters and the resort chef will prepare their catch for dinner. “Dive and Dine” is nearly $2,000 per couple, which excludes accommodations.

“For all the hoo-ha, organic food is not making much of an impact on the way Americans eat,” according to a recent New York Times article. Sales of organic foods and beverages added up to just under $17 billion in 2006, according to the Organic Trade Association – that’s less than 3 percent of overall U.S. sales in the category.

And, to the possible chagrin of some organic enthusiasts, “the organic food business is now big business, and getting bigger,” according to the NYT.

Major companies grow and market about 25 percent of all organic foods sold in the U.S.; that figure jumps to 40 percent when only processed organic foods are tallied.

The federal government rolled out its Certified Organic program six years ago. Since then, sales of organic foods have doubled. Most (about 75 percent) U.S. grocery stores carry at least some organic foods and 30 percent of American consumers buy organics at least on occasion.