Food

Good news, Baltimore. You're hip and healthy. Cooking Light magazine, due on newsstands this week, lists our charming city among the top 20 that are both food-forward and lifestyle-light. The magazine, celebrating its 20th year, used a variety of measures and statistics to rate the cities, but editor Mary Kay Culpepper said the city's crab cakes are a gift to the world. "Baltimore has so much going for it," she said. "I think you know it if you live there, but I think many of our readers will be surprised.

Sales at Giant Food declined yet again in the fourth quarter of last year, but the grocer's parent company said that it has seen positive results from a price reduction program it recently implemented at the supermarket chain. Dutch food company Royal Ahold NV, which owns Giant, also said plans to sell Columbia-based U.S. Foodservice, the food distributor it also owns, are on track for later this year. "It's good to be a seller when there is a lot of interest," Ahold President and CEO Anders Moberg said in a conference call with analysts yesterday.

Economic pressures have led many metropolitan newspapers to reallocate more resources to topics of local interest, leaving most national and international coverage largely to wire services. In Baltimore, a city less than an hour's drive from Congress and the White House, the shift in emphasis has in fact produced journalistic dividends for Sun readers. While many larger newspapers have sharply reduced or eliminated their Washington bureaus, The Sun has chosen to retain reporters in the capital to cover subjects and institutions of keen interest to Maryland - the National Security Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Pentagon.

When artists turn their brains, eyes and palettes toward food, interesting things happen. What they serve up is usually not standard fare, but it can be intriguing, a different way to look at eating. I say this as Artscape, the city's annual sweltering carnival of music, street food, crafts and art, is about to begin. I can't avoid Artscape. I live a few blocks away, close enough to run over and grab a sandwich, or roasted vegetables on a stick. In search of supper, I usually happen upon some culture, perhaps catching a glimpse of pieces of sculpture set up in the median of Mount Royal Avenue.

We big-foot baby-boomers are at it again, changing the nature of the relationship between humans and their food. And I am not talking about Early Bird Specials. It seems that a good meal isn't good enough. We want dinner to heal us, to postpone aging and prevent disease. With the dressing on the side. The buzz at the recent Institute of Food Technologists conference in Chicago was all about "nutraceuticals" or what they are calling "functional foods." Apparently, we baby boomers are demanding food that will keep us eating for a while -- food filled with antioxidants to prevent cancers and vitamins to hold off the signs of aging, such as heart disease, memory problems and arthritis.

KITCHEN TIP "Avoid storing carrots next to apples in the refrigerator. Apples give off a gas that carrots absorb, giving the carrots a bitter taste." "Cooking Healthy Across America," by the American Dietetic Association grouprecipes.com This site is an online community for food lovers where members can post and rate recipes, discuss food topics, post their own cooking videos and search recipes based on a particular flavor rather than an ingredient. The site even recommends new dishes based on recipes members have already seen.

Food *** (3 stars) Service *** (3 stars) Atmosphere *** (3 stars) The news that Michael Tabrizi is back with Tabrizi's in the Harborview complex means something to Baltimoreans who have been around for a while. They remember his first wonderful Mediterranean restaurant of the same name, a cozy spot in Federal Hill where Corks is now. It closed over a decade ago. I expected more buzz about the reopening, but the lack of it may be because Tabrizi's has arrived in the shadow of a much showier new restaurant.

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- The way Son Hye Suk sees it, having nuclear weapons means more than security for this Stalinist state. It means North Koreans will have more food on their plates. "Our nuclear weapons are a source of great pride in our country, and if anyone insults us now, they won't survive," said Son, an ideologically vetted worker at the International Friendship Museum north of the capital. "Now that we have our pride, our great political and military power and nuclear weapons, the economic problems can be solved.

EDWIN TRAISMAN, 91 Helped create Cheez Whiz Edwin Traisman, a food researcher who helped create Cheez Whiz and, as an early McDonald's franchise owner in Wisconsin, co-developed the freezing process used to make McDonald's french fries, died Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison after suffering a heart attack, said his wife, Dorothy Traisman. He had worked as a director of food research at Kraft Foods, where he was instrumental in the development of Cheez Whiz cheese spread, instant pudding and other food products, before buying the first McDonald's franchise in Madison, Wis., in the late 1950s.

Funding available for septic upgrade The Anne Arundel County Department of Health is funding nitrogen-reducing units for septic systems through the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund, which is supported by a state grant. Applications are available on the department's Web site at www.aahealth.org or by calling 410-222-7193. Nitrogen-reducing pretreatment units are designed to decrease nitrogen in wastewater and extend the life of a septic system. Reducing excess nitrogen from septic systems helps protect against algal blooms, low oxygen and fish kills.

How much good service matters to you when you've got great food might determine how you feel about the new Alizee. It's a restaurant that has successfully reinvented itself after a recent change of owners, a change of chefs and a change of basic concept. But I'm not sure the management realizes yet that with a change for the better come more customers, and with more customers comes a need for more servers. Certainly the staff was overwhelmed the night we ate there. On a weeknight, the dining room was almost full because of a hotel package tour.

Twice a year, Liz Reitzig drives 2 1/2 hours to a Pennsylvania farm, then heads back home to Bowie with half a cow in the minivan. Closer to home, she regularly meets a farmer in a parking lot to buy whole chickens. Fish comes straight from a Baltimore County guy who casts nets in Alaska and brings the catch back frozen. She picks up eggs at somebody's driveway and produce at the farmers' market. She hasn't been to a conventional supermarket for years. "I would say about 80 to 90 percent of our food is coming direct from farmers," said Reitzig, 29, a stay-at-home mother of four.

Sometimes the best questions come from the most unexpected places. Take the case of Doug Davis, a food expert who had been on his new job - planning menus at a Vermont public school - for only a few weeks when the woman who owned the orchard next door approached him. "My apple trees are so close to the school, the apples fall right onto your playground," she said. "Why are the students being served apples from Oregon?" Davis, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and industry veteran, stopped short.

Sometimes the best questions come from the most unexpected places. Take Doug Davis, a food expert who had been on his new job - planning menus at a Vermont public school - for only a few weeks when the woman who owned the orchard next door approached him. "My apple trees are so close to the school, the apples fall right onto your playground," she said. "Why are the students being served apples from Oregon?" Davis, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and industry veteran, stopped short.

J. Kelly Lane, a Baltimore artist, got a jolt of inspiration recently while walking down the produce aisle of the grocery store. Lane, a painter, was having trouble conjuring up an idea for her next piece. "I was coming up empty," she said." Then I was in the grocery store, Shopper's, and they put out these most beautiful artichokes. And I said, 'That's it!' " Lane told me. She bought an artichoke, took it home and worked its image into a painting called Flag of Artichokia. The work, she said, "has stars, stripes and artichokes."

There are some restaurants that just generate strong feelings both pro and con. We've discussed a lot of them on my blog, Dining@Large. One reader suggested the topic would make a great Top 10 Tuesday, and I agreed. So last Tuesday I published this list of the 10 most controversial places in this area - ones that could ruin marriages or cause friends to come to blows - along with reasons people say they like them or hate them: ... 1 Ambassador Dining Room in Tuscany/Canterbury. Love it: Good Indian food, wonderful setting and suave service.

Kat Nicholson, 12, helped fry 22 pounds of bacon and scramble 20 dozen eggs well before dawn yesterday so that a Howard County food shelter could serve breakfast. Hours later, she was making dozens of bag lunches to distribute to the homeless in Baltimore. The smell and the feel of food heightened her hunger, but she didn't so much as take a taste. She had promised to fast for 30 hours. About 250 Howard County teens from more than a dozen different churches participated in the 2009 World Vision 30 Hour Famine, an event that meant forgoing food from midday Friday to 6 p.m. yesterday.

As snowy white granules rain down on a cup of coffee, words appear across the TV screen: "Sprinkle your coffee with something other than guilt." Then, the narrator intones: "Try the first great-tasting, zero-calorie, natural sweetener borne from the leaves of the stevia plant. Truvia. Honestly sweet. Find it at your grocery store." It's not exactly pure spring water, but the newest sugar substitute on the market is getting buzz for its origins in flora rather than the lab. The Food and Drug Administration said in December that an extract of stevia was safe to eat, and about the same time, the food-supply giant Cargill Inc. launched the commercial for tabletop packets of Truvia.

We all know that salt is an essential ingredient of life. It helps maintain the electrolyte balance of our cells. It helps transmit nerve impulses. It aides muscle contraction and relaxation. Our blood is 0.9 percent salt. But as with most anything, says Dr. Mahmoud Alikhan, cardiologist with the St. Joseph Medical Center, moderation is the key - and too much salt can be unhealthy. How much salt does a typical healthy adult need? The average American eats about 5 to 10 grams of sodium chloride in his daily diet, and that is too much.

To make up this list of the best restaurants I reviewed this year, I went to the Sun's archives and started reading my old reviews. What I found was that the stars awarded weren't always an indication of whether I would love to go back. Sometimes it's not something you can put in words (or stars) that pleases you about a restaurant and makes you want to return. 1 Abacrombie near the Meyerhoff: Food: *** 1/2 , service: ***, atmosphere: *** 2 Woodberry Kitchen in Hampden/Woodberry: Food: ***, service: ***, atmosphere: *** 1/2 3 Fin Steak & Seafood in Fells Point: Food: *** 1/2 , service: ** 1/2 , atmosphere: ** 1/2 4 Corks in Federal Hill: Food: ***, service: ***, atmosphere: *** 5 Mari Luna Latin Grille in Pikesville: Food: ***, service: **, atmosphere: *** (I think the comparatively low service rating was a fluke because it was so overwhelmed by its success at the beginning.