Baked Potatoes

Carlos & Company 2 N. Charles St. Hours: Open daily from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. (410)You'll know you're in the right place when you spot the neon palm tree. It's the welcoming post at Carlos & Company, a busy little pastel-colored eatery near the corner of Charles and Baltimore streets that serves lunch standards and quick breakfasts with a touch more care than your average sub shop.The menu includes the expected: pastas, soups, sandwiches and salads. The unexpected includes the size of the huge salads that are tossed with your choice of dressing while you wait in line; the variety of salads, including bistro, Nicoise, spinach, Caesar, garden, pasta and plain; the generous size of the sandwiches served on sourdough, wheat or rye; the assortment of fresh-baked breads, rolls, cakes, cookies and brownies; and the efficient, ready-to-serve staff.

Figuring drab cafeteria decor and stainless steel do little to stimulate young appetites, Anne Arundel County public schools have put their money where the mouths are.One by one, beginning last year with Broadneck High School, cafeterias are being transformed with bright colors and signs into food courts -- just like the ones in the local shopping mall."

Too much fat. Too much sodium. Too few fruits and vegetables. Not enough of certain vitamins.Sounds like a meal at the local pit beef stand, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the above description is taken from a U.S. Department of Agriculture report on school lunches nationwide.In another recent study of children's eating habits, the consumer group Public Voice for Food and Health Policy said 57 percent of kids ages 6 to 11 eat less than one serving of fruit daily, and 32 percent eat less than a serving of vegetables a day. The federal government has too long ignored these bad habits.

The federal government has come a long way since the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration tried to expand the bounds of good nutrition by promoting ketchup as a vegetable.Now, prodded by mounting evidence of atrocious eating habits among American children, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced new regulations aimed at subtracting much of the fat, sodium and cholesterol from school lunches, while adding fiber and vitamins through increased servings of produce.These changes, the broadest in the USDA's school-lunch program since the mid-1940s, are long overdue.

Close your eyes for a minute and imagine it's lunchtime at your old elementary school.Remember how the cafeteria looked, all bare and spare, like something out of a hospital?Remember those cafeteria ladies who glowered if you so much as looked at an extra pudding cup?Remember the slightly nauseating smell, the beans-and-franks casserole, kale and greasy chicken?How about those days when you pocketed your lunch money and skipped the whole disgusting mess in favor of milk and a Creamsicle?Some memories are guaranteed to make us remember that being a kid isn't all adults crack it up to be, and this is one of them.

Bringing fresh taste into February menus can be challenging. You've had about as much of baked potatoes and turnips as you want for one season. Now you want foods with a little punch to them, and you'll find the big flavors you crave wrapped in small packages. For example, add a squirt of fresh lime juice to beans, and you have a dish with a Caribbean accent. Use fresh jalapeno chilies instead of crushed red pepper flakes from a jar. Chilies, with their sweet, hot and piquant accents, will enliven salads, meat dishes and even sauces.

When roasted, red bell peppers seem almost like another vegetable, their clean, sweet taste developing earthy overtones, their crunchy flesh turning velvety, and their dazzling color deepening to brick-red.A peck basket (a quarter bushel) holds about 16 to 20 big "bells" - enough for a roasted pepper salad, sandwiches, pasta sauce, side dishes and more.Choose from three roasting methods: To keep the kitchen cool in fTC hot weather, char the peppers over an outdoor grill. Temperature control is easiest with a gas range, and if you're careful, you can keep two burners going at once.

3346 Paper Mill Road, Jacksonville. Hours: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. (410) 628-8806.The Hunt Manor Gourmet in Jacksonville is enough to make you want to move to the country -- or at least go there for food. It's all things for all people: 40-seat (soon to be 60-seat) cafe, gourmet carryout, ice cream parlor, bakery, New-York-style deli and sandwich shop. Formerly the Manor Tavern Gourmet Deli, it changed names and owners two months ago. The food is as sophisticated as any of the in-town gourmet shops, but the place is not intimidating.

A PICTURE IS worth 1,000 calories, as anyone who is viewing holiday snapshots knows. "Oh, God! Tell me I don't look like that in real life," is the lament uttered just before, "That's it. I am not putting another thing in my mouth in this lifetime." Howard M. Shapiro, New York City diet doctor to the rich and famous, seems to understand the power of the picture, and his new weight loss program is all the buzz as a result. In Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss, now available in paperback (Warner Books, $14.95)