On Sept. 18, Smoothie King is giving a "wake-up call" to potential customers by offering a free taste of their new coffee-based products. The 20 oz. drinks come in caramel, mocha and vanilla flavors, and it's one per customer.

In case this is something you're inclined to forget -- because, presumably, you don't have enough caffeine in your system right now, the Smoothie King Web site has a few ways to remind yourself. You can set up a reminder on your calender or RSVP on Facebook.

If you're concerned about calories, there's also nutritional info on the new concoctions. Mocha is the skinniest, at 260 calories, with the others weighing in around 340.

Dining out in New York is often a heady experience -- especially when you get the check. You can't stop going back for more, however, because it's just too convenient, and fun, and part of the joy of living in a big city. But after reading about how some high-end eateries are coping with the economic downturn in the New York Times, I'm starting to get inclined to just stay home and cook my own over-priced food.

The Times talks to restaurant owners who are finding ways to stretch a buck, mostly by serving cheaper ingredients and smaller portions. At fancy places, that means smaller lobsters at some exorbitant price and hanger steak instead of strip steaks. Some places are offering early bird specials and bar specials. Some are considering no-show fees. Like airlines that keep tacking on fees for things that used to be free, that's probably going to be the last straw for casual diners. Freelance writer Carol Vinzant covered 10 restaurant tricks, for WalletPop back in May.

Wendy's is the latest fast food chain to expand its 99-cent menu, adding the double-stack cheeseburger, the junior bacon cheeseburger, and the crispy chicken sandwich. It seems that all fast food restaurants are using 99-cent menus to lure in customers, and there's a science behind this simple-sounding ploy.

The key to making a 99-cent menu work is not putting too many items on it. The items offered for 99 cents have to be enticing, and the restaurant has to be prepared to make little to no profit off the special menu. The profit lies in the add-ons that customers will buy. Drinks are particularly profitable for restaurants, and sides like French fries and salads are also fairly profitable.


Put too many items on the 99-cent menu, and customers won't venture away from it and toward the more profitable items. Put too few items on the menu, and you won't draw in enough customers to make the promotion worthwhile.

I think it's safe to say (in my non-scientific, only anecdotal) opinion that fast food restaurants are aiming toward increasing foot traffic in their stores. Eating out is one of the biggest wastes of money ever, so during times of tight budgets, many families are cutting back on trips to restaurants. If fast food joints can increase traffic with deals for bargain hunters, they stand to make a tidy little profit from all the "extras" sold to patrons.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

When you cook on a stovetop, you are not just using electricity to heat your food, you're also heating up the room, which causes your air conditioner to kick in and fight harder against the rising temperature. You might start to notice a jump on your utility bill every time you steam vegetables for dinner.

Solar energy is free, widely available, and effective at cooking many of the foods you currently prepare on your stovetop. Cooking may take a little bit longer than with a traditional stovetop, but not so much that it will add significant time to your meal plans.

Ready-to-use solar ovens are available for $50-$300 online. These devices collapse down for easy storage and transportation, and are great for camping as well as use in the home. If that seems like a steep price tag, it's not really very difficult to build your own solar cooker using cheap materials you already have in your home. This might also be a nice way to try it out before committing to a big purchase. Find building instructions for a variety of solar ovens here.

Saving money on groceries is high on everyone's list. Places like the 99-cent Only Stores make it easy by stocking a wide variety of food items, including fresh produce. For example, a recent flyer from there advertised 2 lbs. of beef steak tomatoes for 99 cents, as well as cantaloupe or honeydew melons for 99 cents each.

My neighborhood dollar store, Dollarama, devotes two aisles to food items, which isn't a lot but I still found 10 brand name items that cost less there than buying them at a major grocery store in my area. You'll need to compare prices in your locality, but here are a few of the things I found:

The grocery store chain sells Jello brand instant puddings for $1.19 a package. The dollar store has Neilson instant pudding mix, 2 packages for $1, a savings of $1.38 on two packages.

The taco trucks of L.A. are still on the move. For now.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Wednesday overturned an ordinance passed in April by the County Board of Supervisors banning taco trucks from parking in one location for more than an hour.

Judge Dennis Aichroth ruled in favor of the roving taco trucks, stating in part that law was "too ambiguous to be enforceable" and was "arbitrary and not based upon any rational, intrinsic or natural basis." He also wrote that it effectively banned free trade. The Honor must love a good carne asada taco.

I've written about the controversial taco truck for WalletPop in the past. And I still stand by them as a beloved L.A. institution, a way for the working man to get a good meal at an affordable price. It's a conundrum, though, since I also stand by the small independent restaurant owners, who say their business is hurt by the existence of taco trucks.

To be sure, this reprieve is only temporary. It's probably only round one. And many legal battles loom ahead. So in the meantime, find your favorite taco truck and carb up!

It had to happen: slapping the greedy hand reaching out to sup at the trough of plenty. This CNN report details a new way colleges around the country are cutting down on food and water waste, while at the same time helping keep students hungry.

It's a simple idea really: Stop stocking college food halls with the common food tray. Colleges around the country have excised the trays from their larders and are seeing some pretty green results.

Two nationwide surveys conducted by Aramark, the country's largest university and college food servicer, found a 25-30% reduction in food waste per person when trays were not available. Makes sense -- especially when your eyes are bigger than your stomach during the lunch hour. Basically this means making students eat only what they can carry. You can imagine the cost savings for university and college food service providers.

And you can imagine the grumblings of hungry college students. Maybe they haven't learned about "going back for seconds" yet.

On September 3rd, Starbucks will unveil a new line of breakfast foods ostensibly featuring better nutrition and lower calorie counts than its previous fare. According to USA Today, the menu will be higher in fiber, fruit and protein with fewer of those sweet, sweet carbs found in its previous offerings.

I compared the new menu with similar selected items on the Starbucks menu from 2003, as broken down by dietfacts.com. In 2003, the chain offered a 138-gram (quarter-pounder) Blueberry Muffin that packed 450 calories, 200 from fat, with 1 gram of fiber and 6 grams of protein. The new Apple Bran Muffin has only 330 calories, 8 grams of fat and 7 grams each of protein and fiber. Definitely an improvement.

The old Blueberry Walnut Coffee Cake ran to 340 calories, 162 from frat, with 1 gram of fiber, 4 of protein. The new menu doesn't have such a beast, but offers the Baked Berry Stella. At 280 calories with 13 grams of protein and 7 of fiber, a much better choice, imho.

Gone too are is the Apricot Currant Scone (450 calories, 3 gram fiber, 7 grams protein), but new items available included the Starbucks Power Protein Plate with peanut butter, 330 calories with a hefty 16 grams of protein and 7 of fiber.

Add to these items oatmeal in various incarnations served in a disposable bowl, and other diet-friendly fare appearing on the new menu, and I think Starbucks should be commended for making real progress in its morning offerings. The corporation seems very pleased, too, that the new selections don't override the coffee aroma that it sees as an essential part of the ambiance of its shops.

You know that old dieter's trick of putting your food on a smaller plate? The food looks bigger and you eat less. Colleges around the country are trying out a modified version of the plan by getting rid of cafeteria trays. Kids are taking less food and throwing out less food. And nobody has to stock and wash all those trays. Aramark, which runs cafeterias at 500 campuses, says removing trays cuts food waste by 25 to 30%.

The cafeteria giant thinks half of its customers will get rid of trays. They've done a white paper on schools that have tried to go trayless. Every time you use a tray someone back in the kitchen uses one-third to one-half gallon of water to clean it. Trayless eaters waste 1.2 to 1.8 ounces less food per meal, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 pounds a year. Food waste isn't defined in the paper, but I assume it means just what you throw out after the meal. The University of Maine at Farmington removed trays in February, 2007 and thinks they've saved $57,000 since then.

It's unclear, though, whether the schools are saving the money or Aramark is. Perhaps a mixture of both since the school would be the one supplying water and power. The study doesn't go into if going trayless actually cuts overall food consumption. That could offer some real health benefits. And it could mean that Aramark's costs come down significantly (or at least lessened the impact of rising food costs). The company has done some great work pointing out how accepting this simple inconvenience can save food, water, time and energy. I just hope the colleges will get to share in that bounty.

Daily Deal for Thursday, August 28: Cook's Illustrated cookbooks, 50% off.

What were you expecting to do with all those summer tomatoes and zucchini?

I'll tell you what. First, sign up for a free membership with Cook's Illustrated here. They're the folks who make cooking simple, even for those of us who can barely boil water.

Then go into the sit back and wait for your special offer email: a cookbook summer clearance sale, featuring 50% off some of Cook's best-selling titles.

For example, The Best 30-Minute Recipe book, usually sells for $35, now selling for $17.50 under this promotion. Baking Illustrated, also $17.50. Italian Classics usually sells for $29.95, is selling for $14.95 under this promotion.

In addition to these savings, you get a whole host of other freebies when you become a member, including instructional videos and recipe guides.

Bon appetit!

A pair of high school kids did a DNA-barcode test on New York City sushi and found that one-quarter of the fish they tested was really a cheaper species than what the seller said. The kids, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, got some help from Eugene Wong, a graduate student at the University of Guelph in Ontario, but these new quick DNA tests show both how easy testing is becoming -- and how prevalent fish fraud is.

The girls sampled 60 different kinds of sushi, then Wong ran them up against the growing library of DNA at the Fish-Barcode of Life. He could get a reading on 57 samples and found that 14 of them were mislabeled. And all the labeling errors went in the seller's favor, making the fish more expensive.

The most mislabeled fish was red snapper: seven of nine samples (77%) were really something else. Most egregiously, some of it was really the endangered Acadian redfish. Their results are no fluke. This spring the Chicago Sun-Times did a great investigation on Chicago sushi and found all 14 of its samples of red snapper were fake, mostly the cheaper tilapia. They say a congressional report found that 37% of fish and 80% of red snapper sold in America is mislabeled. That's consistent with a 2004 University of North Carolina study that found 75% of red snapper was fake.

About a week ago, I took my family out for one of those impromptu, unplanned dinners out, and immediately, I was both glad and frustrated at myself. It's fun to go to a restaurant, which is why I was happy with this dining decision, but with two daughters, 4 and 6, my wallet is still occasionally in shock when it sees what it costs to pay for a family of four to dine out.

Anyway, we wound up at IHOP, the International House of Pancakes, which somehow we had never visited before despite it being one of those chains that are kind of everywhere; and when the bill came to my and my wife's surprise, the waitress told us that we had picked an evening to eat when the kids dine free: $9 magically had been subtracted from the bill.

What a great country, I thought.

If you've ever had insomnia, you've probably clicked on the TV to see a late-night infomercial. You know, a long-winded ad featuring a fast-talking person hawking anything from ab-crunching gizmos to vacuum machines. Opinions about infomercial pitchmen range from entertaining to annoying, but a select few have stood the test of time to become celebrities in their own right – and some sell millions of products.

Love 'em or hate em', here's 13 of the most famous – or infamous – infomercial spokespeople who've sold Americans on their products as well as their pitches.

Also see our gallery version.

Our earlier story about the Hot Pockets recall dovetails nicely with a story about the results of a recently study of our eating habits. A team of European scientists that found that, contrary to expectations, consumers eat more snacks when they are packaged in small portions than when put up in larger batches.

The study subjects were questioned about their body issues, to put them in a frame of mind sensitive to food issues, then plopped in front of televisions to watch episodes of Friends. They were told the purpose was to measure their reaction to the commercials shown during the episodes, but, in reality, the scientists were watching their consumption of potato chips.

The study determined that subjects ate more potato chips when served in small bags than they did when presented in larger bags. The study concluded that people hesitate to open a large bag, but not a small one, or even a series of small ones.

Certainly the truth of this find is demonstrated on every grocery shelf. Would manufacturers push single-serving sizes if it didn't drive up consumption? This psychology works on me, I must admit. On opening a large bag of chips, I tend to eat as many as it takes to satisfy me. When I open a single serving, I eat it all, regardless of my sense of satiation. If I'm not quite full yet, I'll open another and finish that off. I'm not alone in this thinking, I know; it drives my wife nuts when I drink 2/3rds of a bottle of beer, because that's all I want.

The lesson I've taken from this study? Single-serving packaging is not a good tool for those of us trying to control our eating, because only we know what represents a single serving to us.

Also read:

Diet to save the economy

LA halts new fast food outlets

Over 200,000 pounds of Nestlé's favorite food of the single tween, Hot Pockets, have been recalled, according to the USDA. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, pieces of plastic from a device used to test metal-detection equipment at the Mount Sterling, KY plant found their way into the Hot Pockets. The recall is limited to Hot Pockets Pepperoni Pizza in cartons printed with "8157544614D" and "EST 7721A" and "Best Before Jan2010."

Personally, I find most Hot Pockets taste like plastic, with cardboard overtones. I was also struck by the "Best Before" date. The Hot Pockets in question were made on June 5th. Is it possible to make delicious food that can remain on the shelves without diminishing in flavor for over a year and a half? Perhaps only if the flavor is cloying to begin with. I'd suggest anyone who cares about what they put into their body might think twice about any product with a such shelf life.

If you have questions, you can reach the Nestlé Consumer Services Center at 1-800-350-5016.