Happy Eater

Tomorrow, The Sun introduces a new Sunday section that brings together your favorite features from Food & Home and People -- along with a number of new offerings -- in one expanded and redesigned section.The new section will have a familiar name -- Today -- in keeping with the features section published during the week. (And next weekend, the Saturday section will take the Today name as well.)Here's what to expect on Sundays:* New columns on raising children, making the most of your time, managing your money and ironing out marital problems will be added to the personality profiles and lifestyle coverage readers received in People.

Rob Kasper, a columnist for The Sun, has won the 1993 National Headliner award for a consistently outstanding feature column on one subject by a news service or a syndicate.His Happy Eater column, a personal and often humorous look at food, appears in the food section on Wednesdays and in the Food & Home section on Sundays. It is distributed by the Los Angeles Times FoodStyles Syndicate and runs in 80 newspapers in the United States and Canada.Mr. Kasper won first place for a selection of columns, including one suggesting that the Department of Agriculture's much-ballyhooed food pyramid was upside down; one defending milk drinking among children; and one describing the joy the Kansas native felt when he won a Maryland crab-picking contest.

Thank you for spending time with our premier issue of Distinction, a new magazine that celebrates personalities, pastimes and pleasures.We've assembled some talented writers and photographers to produce what we hope will be a magazine that is as satisfying and stimulating to read as it is to look at.In this issue, Rob "The Happy Eater" Kasper, a nationally recognized writer on the joyful consumption of all things delicious, writes about the staff of life,...

The other day a veteran newspaperman recited a list of topics people want to read about. At the top of the list was "dogs."Write a story about dogs, said Bill Blundell, a former editor with the Wall Street Journal, and you will get sacks of mail and the switchboard will be flooded with phones calls.He was right. Once, following the advice of another veteran newspaperman, I wrote a story listing all the problems biting dogs cause a community. The story was accompanied by a disturbing color photo of the jaws of a snarling German Shepherd.

A reporter is only as good as his sources. Without informants to tell us what is going on in the great, wide world, newspaper types would have to report only what we know. And the extent of our knowledge can usually be expressed in a short sentence: "Lemme call some people and find out."So we spend a lot of time "cultivating sources." That means staying out of sight of editors. And it means when someone tells us something important, we try to spell his name right. Or, at the very least, we try to get the first name right.

Not by cow's milk alone does man live. There also has to be soy milk, cornbread and bacon fat and squaw bread. At least that is what I read in the mail and hear on the phone.Born to drink milkFrom: Georgia Corso, Baltimore.Re: Column standing by cow's milkDear Happy Eater,. . . I was raised attached to my own cow. I have always been exceedingly healthy and drink, as an adult, at least 3 glasses of milk at day. I know, my doctor tells me it is way too much, but we all have have our vices.I also have two kids.

IT IS the '90s, and we're supposed to be more than merely "active." We're supposed to be "interactive." This is computer lingo meaning to communicate electronically. It is my understanding that to do this well, you have to be "wired" or "webbed" and maybe even "home-paged." I am none of the above.But I do have some interesting mail from readers, about waffles, shad, and the resurgence of the fondue pot, to share with other readers. So let's get interactive the old-fashioned way, let's read letters.

Sometimes when you hear about olive oil selling at $20 a bottle, or fish that was flown in from the other side of the earth to be the centerpiece of a special dinner, you get the impression that no one is eating plain old simple foods.Not true. Or to quote a favorite negative expression of Baltimore youth: "Nuh-huh."A look at the mail, for instance, yields a couple of strong opinions on the correct style of cooking shad.Another correspondent offers advice on how to cook those PTC dishes of the '90s, creamed chipped beef and pickled beets.

Love may fire the soul, but an ice cream soda soothes it. That is what I found out recently when I opened the mail.Old soda makers wrote in, sharing some of their techniques and reveling in the days when cream was cream and seltzer had squirt.Since the experts tell us we are supposed to have balance in our diets, I did not confine this column solely to sodas.I threw in a letter on homemade ice cream as well.If that is not enough balance for you, chew a carrot as your read this column.TC 6& Sweet memories of a skilled 'jerk' From: Jerry Rosenthal, PikesvilleColumn on ice cream sodas with recipe for coffee soda.