If you sometimes struggle to figure out which cheese to buy or serve, help is at hand. CheeseForMe.com, a Web site launched by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, makes buying and eating cheese a breeze. Just answer a few short questions and the site will recommend a cheese for you based on your sense of style and adventure. The site also offers pairing ideas and recipe options that feature your cheese.

"It's a fast and easy way to break out of your culinary comfort zone and have a whole lot of fun while you’re at it," notes the site CheeseForMe.com.

The poultry dish known as Turducken continues to grow in popularity for holiday meals, particularly Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Hebert’s Specialty Meats in Maurice, La., has been making Turduckens since 1984 when a local farmer brought in his own birds and requested custom processing for them in the style that appears to be a growing foodie trend.

Chris Catlett, owner of the Houston franchise of Hebert’s (pronounced A Bears), attributes the rising popularity of Turducken in the culinary world to consumer boredom with the traditional turkey.

“A lot of our customers we see just once each year. A Turkducken is their special holiday food,” Catlett told Foodie News. “People are looking for something different for their special dinner.”

Turducken – a partially deboned turkey stuffed with boneless duck and chicken, with layers of various types of stuffing added – certainly seems to fit the bill.

At Hebert’s, specially seasoned pork stuffing prepared at the store is the most popular choice for layering between the three types of poultry.

“We can create anything when it comes to custom stuffing. We put together whatever the customer has a taste for and layer it between the birds as they prefer,” said Catlett.

Considered by many in the industry to be the “Gold Standard” when it comes to Turduckens, Hebert’s uses only top-quality stuffing ingredients, seasonings and birds; foregoes preservatives; and does not inject its turkeys with seasonings or marinades. Instead, the delectable flavor of each Turducken is dependent exclusively on the seasonings of the stuffing within it.

The majority of the Turkduckens produced by Hebert’s are ordered online and shipped frozen on dry ice in coolers to customers although some are sold fresh locally.

“People love to have something that’s already prepared. When you order one of our Turduckens, all you have to do is let it thaw, then stick it into the oven,” Catlett said. It takes about 5 hours to roast a Turducken, depending on the weight. Most Hebert's Turduckens weigh about 15 pounds and cost around $70.

Hebert’s sells other Cajun favorites including Andouille, Etouffee and Crawfish Pie. For more information, visit HebertsHouston.com.

The Florida "Seafood to Schools" program is an initiative to bring nutritious seafood from local sources to Florida’s school lunchrooms. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services surveyed the state’s 67 school districts to gauge the demand for Florida seafood products in elementary, middle and high schools.

Feedback indicated there are opportunities for Florida seafood suppliers to provide products for Florida schools. About 60 percent of schools surveyed currently offer fresh or frozen seafood, with processed fish, shrimp and Pollack served most often.

Good eating habits can begin at school. Including seafood early in a young person’s diet sets the stage for the proper nutrition that young bodies need for growth and development and a healthy future. Seafood is a good source of high-quality, low-fat protein as well as omega-3 fatty acids and provides a variety of menu options. Compared to other meats, seafood is low in calories and cholesterol.

Every year, Florida schools spend millions of dollars for school lunch programs. The Seafood to School program is intended to open the door for more of those dollars to stay within Florida. It will also support Florida fishermen by promoting opportunities for schools and seafood suppliers to work together to increase the volume of locally harvested seafood product served in school cafeterias. Incorporating local products into school meals also supports local economies, reduces transportation costs and helps support Florida’s seafood industry.

Several types of shrimp (including Rock shrimp, pink, breaded rounds and popcorn), crab cakes, crab stuffing, clams and breaded fish fillets/sticks are among the seafood products offered by Florida companies that are interested in participating in the program.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is working with schools and seafood suppliers to develop opportunities through the program. Learn more at www.FL-Seafood.com.

This post was originally published in the November 2009 issue of Foodie News as a guest column by Martin May, management review specialist with the Florida Bureau of Seafood and Aquaculture Marketing.

Sure, you see all the food magazines on the stands this time of year – all displaying dressed-up turkeys. But do you ever stop to think what goes in to getting those birds on the glossy cover of a national publication? According to The New York Times, "The turkey has done what a supermodel never could: land the cover of dozens of magazines in a single month."

The paper goes further to examine what it takes to be a supermodel turkey. Says Dana Cowin, editor in chief of Food & Wine, "Turkey, as a model, is very much like a fashion magazine with fashion models. There are plump turkeys, and, I’m not kidding you, there’s skinny turkeys, there are chesty turkeys, breasty turkeys, there are flat-chested turkeys."

"We have enhanced the breasts of turkeys," Cowin admits.

Read more here.

At Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital in southeastern Michigan, we believe an integral part of providing exceptional health care means teaching people how to stay well. That means in addition to great clinical excellence, we must have a firm commitment to helping the members of our community learn and participate in activities and programs geared toward their overall well-being. And it all starts with what we eat.

Traditionally, we think of hospital food and some unappetizing images come to
mind: Little or no nutritional value. Lots of grease and fat. Barely a vegetable to be found. You get the idea. So why do we insist on feeding our patients and their families food that only contributes to the problems that bring them to the hospital in the first place?

The answer is we shouldn’t, and at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, we don’t.

Henry’s, the café at our hospital that serves all of our patients their families and other members of the community, offers healthy, fresh organic produce, low-sodium foods and in general a bounty of options that are good for the body, including the taste buds.

But with health care costs rising, we know we have to deliver this incredible cuisine at a reasonable cost, and that’s where our community partners come in. By creating relationships with local organic farms, we can buy fresh, tasty produce at reasonable prices, making sure nutrient-rich foods are delivered to our customers.

By partnering with a local culinary college, we have made Henry’s a teaching kitchen, reducing labor costs and utilizing the talents of passionate, motivated student chefs that represent the hospital culinary directors of the future. In addition, our 24-hour room service policy reduces the amount of wasted food, providing even more cost savings while creating an enhanced experience for patients and other customers. Guests eat what they want, when they want it, all in accordance with their specific condition or dietary restrictions. This is the way hospital food was meant to be and, we believe, the future of health care.

But serving healthy food to patients and the community is just the beginning. We have a responsibility to help people make healthy choices when they’re at home as well. That’s why we offer healthy cooking classes for members of the community as well as patients with specific illnesses like diabetes and cancer at the demonstration kitchen, a 90-seat auditorium inside our hospital. Our weekly farmers’ market provides economic support for local business and gives community members another reason to visit us when they are healthy as well as the tools to stay that way. Vita, our wellness center, teaches the value of living healthy through nutrition and exercise, and offers the latest integrative therapies to assist our community members.

Plans for the future include the world’s first Culinary Learning Institute for
Health Care, where hospitals, universities, hotels, restaurants and other service industries can come and learn how to integrate healthy, tasty cuisine into their businesses. Also on the way is a greenhouse and educational center where produce will be grown for the hospital and children in the community can come and learn about healthy organic farming.

By stretching the boundaries of what a hospital can be and serving as a community center for well-being, we are changing the way people think about hospitals and in turn, the way they take care of themselves. To learn more, visit www.henryford.com/foodrevolution.

Note: This post was originally published in the October issue of Foodie News as a guest column. It was written by Gerard van Grinsven, president and CEO of Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital.