Beef

Beef Shakes reminds me of one of those old-fashioned hamburger shacks that are so hard to find these days: the ones open only in the summer, and usually near beaches and lakes, where everyone walks up to the outdoor counter barefoot to order their lunch. The major differences: It has a more extensive menu and a less bucolic location, on bustling Old Hanover Road. Also, Beef Shakes is open year-round. Poor:]

Walk into Sushi Hana and you'll immediately start to decompress. Tranquil music plays at just the right level in the background, as a smiling waitress in a lavender kimono jacket hands you a steaming towel. She'll bring another at the end of your meal, along with fruity Japanese bubble gum wrapped up in a tiny box. Yes, Sushi Hana knows how to start and finish a meal.In between, there are problems.Still, the staff at owner Po Chan's Japanese restaurant is so friendly, and the blond-wood and woven-bamboo decor so simple and right, you might end up enjoying your meal here, especially if you didn't travel far for it.The one dish that we liked without reservation was the broiled freshwater eel, served in a sweet brown glaze.

Those Rugrats! Now you can eat themThose rascally Rugrats are everywhere -- on television, in the movies and even on stage.Now, they're in soup. Campbell's has come out with specially marked cans of Rugrats Pasta with Chicken in Chicken Broth, which features pasta shaped like characters Tommy, Baby Dil, Reptar, Chuckie, Spike and Angelica.The cans also have under-the-label holograms showing scenes from "The Rugrats Movie," now playing at area theaters.Cooking beef properlyDon't put it on the bun until it's done.

U.S. offers to label beef to cool dispute with EUThe United States proposed labeling beef exports to the European Union in an effort to end a decade-old EU ban and defuse a potentially explosive trade dispute over hormone-treated beef, a U. S. trade official said yesterday.Peter Scher, U. S. trade representative special negotiator for agriculture trade, said the proposal marks the first time Washington has been willing to accept the idea of a mandatory country-of-origin label for U.S. beef exports to Europe.

* Item: Lean Cuisine Skillet Sensations* What you get: Two servings* Cost: About $4.20* Preparation time: 12 to 14 minutes stove top, 12 to 15 minutes microwave* Review: These frozen packages include everything from rice and vegetables to chicken, beef and turkey. All you do is snip the bag, pour the contents into a pan and cook. The flavors we tried were true to the Lean Cuisine motto -- "It's not just lean, it's cuisine." While the Beef Teriyaki tasted more like a typical Chinese orange beef, the Herb Chicken and Roasted Vegetables was just like Grandmother used to make.

My cooking students are wild about Provencal food and are always asking that I teach more classes featuring specialties from this area of France. They love the vibrant flavors of the cuisine and are intrigued by the imaginative uses of vegetables and fruits in so many Provencal recipes. They're also quick to point out that the simple dishes representative of this particular style of French country cooking are perfect for entertaining.I agree with my students on all these points and am as spirited a fan as they are. This week, for example, in a class I am showing them how to prepare Daube de Boeuf a la Provencale, a classic French dish of beef and vegetables braised in wine and stock.

Well-seasoned meat entrees ready in minutes* Item: Butcher and Cook's butcher-case entrees* What you get: About 3 servings* Cost: About $6* Preparation time: 5 to 6 minutes in microwave, 10 minutes boiled in bag on stove top* Review: Already marinated and cooked, these meat entrees are the newest item on the practically ready-to-serve circuit. Butcher & Cook's appears to have three advantages: a variety of dishes, quick preparation times and a relatively low price (especially when compared to similar products, which run $3 to $5 higher)

Even after the health revolution, you can still enjoy beef without losing your head."Steakhouse Sales Sizzle," "Beef Is Back," proclaim the headlines, as story after story details the resurgence of red meat on the American food scene. We are, it seems - despite health recommendations to eat less - a country crazy for beef. According to the latest figures available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, per-capita beef consumption was 63.9 pounds in 1997, higher, indeed, than any other meat, including chicken.

AMARILLO -- An expert witness for the cattlemen suing Oprah Winfrey wept openly on the witness stand Wednesday and apologized for saying Winfrey created "a lynch mob mentality" during a 1996 talk show about mad cow disease.Dr. William D. Hueston, an animal scientist, said he was trying "to come up with an analogy" to describe the talk show, which he said was biased against the U.S. beef industry.Hueston made the accusation on the witness stand Tuesday.On Wednesday morning, Charles Babcock, one of Winfrey's attorneys, suggested that Hueston had injected race into the trial.

WHAT IS THIS?" the kids asked when a platter of corned beef was placed on our supper table.I rolled my eyes with disbelief. My offspring had failed to recognize corned beef, a traditional Irish dish. I was thankful that their grandmother or relatives on the Irish side of our family were not able to hear this remark.When I was a kid I was familiar with corned beef. It was the bright red meat that showed up on your plate with boiled potatoes and hunks of cabbage. Hours before you ate it, you smelled it cooking.

Towson has had steak houses before. I'm thinking of JJ McBride's and Nichi Bei Kai. (Japanese steak houses count, don't they?) But for some reason, no one has opened what I think of as the Restaurant of the Decade: the upscale casual chain American steak house - big, bright and fairly affordable. Until now. Now Towson has Stoney River Legendary Steaks (825 Dulaney Valley Road, 410-583-5250). It's in the new wing of Towson Town Center. If you like the ski lodge look - lots of stone, wood and glass, a beamed ceiling, a large stacked-stone fireplace at its center, leather seats - the 7,600-square-foot restaurant has it all. There's also a large red canoe, a Stoney River trademark.

The Prime Rib is a restaurant living in the past. It's a restaurant Donald Draper of Mad Men, the cable TV show set in Manhattan in the '60s, would enjoy - a place where wheeler-dealers took their beautiful wives, ate prime steaks and drank chilled martinis. The service, by tuxedoed waiters, is top-notch. That goes almost without saying. Since it opened in 1965, the Prime Rib has been Baltimore's answer to the New York supper club. Reviewers - including me - have swooned over the leopard-print carpeting, the black walls, the sensuous, gilt-framed paintings, the baby grand.

Elfegne Ethiopian Cafe is a peach. Owned and operated, pretty much single-handedly, by former mortgage broker Emu Kidanewolde, this small and tidy 20-seat storefront cafe is more than just a great place to feast on inexpensive home-cooked Ethiopian food. Elfegne also acts as a de facto community center for the residents of Washington Village (aka Pigtown). It opens at 7 in the morning for breakfast (Kidanewolde will have been there for hours already, making homemade injera, the fermented Ethiopian bread staple)

The Baltimore Sun 's restaurants blog) and nearby workers. There were some waits, and some things ran out, but only a true crank would mind now. One short flight up from street level, Mekong Delta's brightly painted but sparely furnished dining room even looks like the kind of place that draws a loyal following. There are prints and paintings of the old country on the sunny yellow walls, a few other decorative touches behind the partly concealed kitchen. Word will keep getting out and, soon, Mekong Delta is going to need some more help.

It looks as if we're in the middle of another burger boom. Blame it on the economy, or the trend to more and more casual dining, or just the fact that burgers taste so darn good. Two books celebrating the burger were published this year: The Hamburger: A History by Josh Ozersky, making the burger out to be an American icon, and Hamburger America by George Motz. Celebrity chefs are opening or planning to open burger joints faster than you can keep track - Bobby Flay's Bobby's Burger Palace in New York, Thomas Keller's Burgers and Half-Bottles in California and Las Vegas, and Laurent Tourondel's BLT Burger in New York and Vegas, to name a very few. Earlier this decade froufrou burgers were hot, both locally and nationally.

I admit that I didn't go into Fin with as open a mind as I should have. I just thought the restaurant's full name, Fin Steak & Seafood, was weird. Shouldn't it be Fin Seafood? Or if beef is an important part of your raison d'etre, shouldn't you call yourself something other than Fin? But as somebody once said, "What's in a name?" It simply doesn't matter when the kitchen is producing food this good. From what I can tell, the kitchen of Fells Point's newest fine-dining restaurant is pretty much a one-man show.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration resisted calls from Congress to add more inspectors and new technologies to improve oversight of the nation's slaughterhouses, saying yesterday that neither was necessary to do the job adequately. The exchange, during a hearing before a House subcommittee, reflected continuing fallout from the nation's largest beef recall earlier this year. Richard Raymond, undersecretary for food safety, told committee members that the U.S Department of Agriculture has enough food inspectors after hiring 194 last year.

WASHINGTON -- The Agriculture Department suspended with pay yesterday an inspector and a supervisor who monitored the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. plant responsible for 143 million pounds of beef being recalled, a union official said. Stan Painter, chairman of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, said the department told him it "had obtained information warranting placing" the two employees on administrative leave. The suspensions are the USDA's latest response to rules violations at the Chino, Calif.

On a recent afternoon, close to sunset, there weren't too many visitors at the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of South Africa. I had the blustery beaches nearly to myself, save for a small colony of penguins and a capering pair of ostriches. These ostriches were the first I'd ever seen in the wild. The one with black feathers, I later learned, was male; another, gray-plumed, a female. I was delighted by their odd, loping gait; their small heads jutting about at the end of long, twisting necks; and their protuberant eyes.

Beef Shakes reminds me of one of those old-fashioned hamburger shacks that are so hard to find these days: the ones open only in the summer, and usually near beaches and lakes, where everyone walks up to the outdoor counter barefoot to order their lunch. The major differences: It has a more extensive menu and a less bucolic location, on bustling Old Hanover Road. Also, Beef Shakes is open year-round. Poor:]