The headlines for various projects and challenges to eat on a small food budget always slurp me in with their titillation, the gauntlet-throwing, and immediately I ask myself: could I do it? The answer always disappoints, because I'm either doing it already or find the challenge so impossible it's meaningless. Eating on $1 a day per person?

For people with peanut allergies, beware these innocent-looking jelly beans. Jelly Belly is recalling 7.5-ounce cylinders of 49 Flavors Jelly Belly jelly beans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

The label does not mention that the ingredients include peanut butter and peanut flour.

"People who have an allergy to peanuts or a severe sensitivity to peanuts run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these ingredients," the FDA said in its recall announcement.

In honor of Veteran's Day, three restaurant chains are offering free meals to members of the military and veterans.

McCormick & Schmick's is having its 11th Annual Veterans Appreciation Event on Sunday, Nov. 8. Veterans can receive a free lunch or dinner entree when they show the proper ID. Space is limited and reservations are required.

You can get a free individual pizza or entree at Uno Chicago Grill on Monday, Nov. 11. The offer is good with a purchase of equal or greater value. Just wear a uniform, bring a picture of you in uniform, or show a military or veteran's ID to qualify.

Golden Corral is offering a free "Thank You" dinner on Monday, Nov. 16, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at all restaurants. Anyone who has ever served in the U.S. military can receive a free meal, and no identification is required.

Here are this week's Five Fabulous Finds from Coupon Cravings, including free calendars, mascara and nearly free Rice Krispies Treats. Plus, get scarves for just a buck at Old Navy and a coupon to save $5 when you spend $5 at Kohl's.

1) It's gift card giving season. Stop by Chick-fil-A and get a free 2010 calendar with loads of free food coupons, like free chicken strips, milkshakes and soft drinks, when you buy a $20 gift card.

2) Hit Walgreens by Saturday (November 7) to get two free tubes of mascara. Or stop by Safeway to get Rice Krispies Treats for just $.17 a box. Yummy!

3) Sign up to get sale alerts from Kohl's and get a coupon by email to save $5 when you spend $5 in-store.

4) In case you missed out on $2 Halloween costumes at Old Navy last weekend, be sure to stop by Old Navy on Saturday (November 7) to get performance fleece scarves for just $1.

5) Want more freebies? Get free samples of Kirkland Signature Supreme Diapers and Garnier Nutritioniste Skin Renew Daily Eye Cream. You can even get a free Sun-Rype FruitSource Bar from GNC.

One long standing retail tradition is to offer gift card bonuses leading up to the holidays to give gift givers a little extra incentive to give a gift card. This year the trend continues, and we are seeing bigger bonus offers coming in from retailers beyond the restaurant industry.

Retailers offer these deals to spur the sales of gift cards for others, but many bargain lovers like myself pick up these deals just to save money on our own purchases.

DealNews has a roundup of several great gift card bonus offers that could be great for gifting or saving money on your own purchases, including;

• 20% off gift card purchases at Eastbay with coupon code.
• Free $5 gift card with $25 gift card purchase at Boston Market.
• 10% bonus on Marriott gift cards.
• $20 gift card on $100 gift card purchase at Outback and other OSI restaurants
• And many more deals including Ruth Chris, L.L. Bean and others.

Author Christiane Jory has created a companion DVD to her cookbook the 99-cent Only Stores Cookbook just in time for the holidays. Fabulously Frugal Feasts will show you how to create a holiday buffet that will feed seasonal foods to a houseful of guests for the same cost of delivered pizza. Sounds good, doesn't it?

The DVD has lots of delicious new recipes and helpful hints, as well as Christiane's own brand of gentle humor. The recipes are easy enough for anyone to make and they're printable, so you won't have to keep plugging in the DVD every time you want to try something. My cooking never strays much from plain old meat and potatoes 'cause I need easy. Having watched a couple of the videos, I've gotta say that these recipes look easy enough for even the kitchen-phobic to create.

This week, Dunkin' Donuts added more variations of chicken and tuna oven-toasted sandwiches to its menu in select markets -- for as low as $1.49 for a wrap.

The popular hang out for breakfast and beverage has been expanding its offerings for quite sometime and morphing into something more than just a coffee and doughnut place. You can now have all three of your meals and more there.

Chocolate lovers have a reason to celebrate. David Edwards, a professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard University, has developed an alternative to the pesky wrappers keeping chocoholics from enjoying a delicious indulgence: "Le Whif."

Edwards' "Whif" is an inhaler that puffs micro-particles of calorie-free cocoa bliss into your mouth that's exceeded the inventor's wildest expectations. Le Whif isn't lasting long on stores shelves, with its initial production run of 25,000 selling out in a few weeks last May in Paris.

"We did not imagine the reaction that we got at the end of the spring," Edwards said in a Reuters story on CNBC. Women seem to be "Whif's" biggest fans, stashing the inhaler in their purses to satisfy anytime chocolate cravings.

What's in a name? The pork industry is discovering the wrong name can become a multi-billion dollar calamity.

Since April, when many of us first heard the name "Swine Flu" used for the H1N1 virus, the pork market has been in a tailspin.

According to the National Pork Producers Council, this is the second body blow absorbed by hog farmers in the last two years, resulting to date in $5.3 billion of lost revenue.

The first was the sudden dramatic increase in the price of corn, which almost doubled within the six months following September 2007. The second blow was the Sw*** flu, a misleading moniker for a virus that you cannot, cannot, cannot contract by eating pork.

After two deaths and more than two dozen people taking ill from E.coli, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is recalling 545,699 pounds of fresh ground beef products sold from Maine to North Carolina.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with health and agriculture departments in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts connected the E.coli cases to beef that was prepared at a plant in upstate New York, the USDA said. All the meat was processed at Fairbank Farms in Ashville, N.Y.

UPDATE: The CDC announced the outbreak now has victims coast-to-coast, stretching from Maine to California. The 28 people known to have gotten sick with the same strain of e.Coli live in 12 states: California (1), Connecticut (4), Massachusetts (8), Maryland (1), Maine (2), Minnesota (1), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (1), New York (1), Pennsylvania (2), South Dakota (2), and Vermont (1), the CDC said. Of those, 16 were hospitalized and three suffered kidney failure, the CDC reported.

Last Christmas, I got a Starbucks gift card for $50 from my boss (a nice gift but with a semi-intentional hint that caffeine may help me do a better job).

I used it up within a month but when a barista tried to lure me into getting the Starbucks Rewards Gold card, I wasn't even tempted. Paying a $25 annual fee upfront for the right to 10% discounts on coffees didn't seem like a deal when I didn't know if I'd have the money for the remaining 90% of the cost of my once-daily lattes.

Guess I'm not the only one who felt that way, and Starbucks got the hint. It recently announced it is consolidating its Starbucks Card and Gold Card reward programs into a free, easier-to-follow customer loyalty program called "My Starbucks Rewards" that launches Dec. 26.

You'd think any fast-food chain would have taken a lesson from KFC and the Great Free Chicken Fiasco of 2009 and avoid offering customers an outrageous deal via the Internet, where word of just about anything -- good or bad -- can spread faster than greased lightning.

Nevertheless, Boston Market stepped into similar pile of fowl doo-doo last week when it offered its loyal customers a coupon for a $1 chicken entree via its Web site. While not free, it was still one hen of a deal. For $1, diners got a choice of a quarter white or 3-piece dark chicken dinner, along with mashed potatoes and cornbread. Vegetables weren't part of the deal.

Keeping your family well fed is becoming more of a challenge each day. Not only do you have to take into account what the kids will and won't eat, what's in season, and organic versus non-organic, there's the issue of cost. And according to the Agriculture Department, your grocery bill will climb even higher as the economy starts to recover.

To help, WalletPop will occasionally feature recipes from famous chefs and restaurateurs. The price tag: $15 or less to serve a family of four or more. To kick off the series, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck recommends this hearty but easy to make Southwestern Strata with sausage recipe.

Halloween trick or treat night night came early this year at our house, and thanks no doubt to the H1N1 flu scare, we were visited by very few ghosts and goblins. We were despairing (drooling) over the amount of candy left over to tempt us, until I discovered Halloween Candy Buy Back, a program by dentists to buy candy from kids and their parents and send it to soldiers overseas.

Here are this week's Five Fabulous Finds from Coupon Cravings, including free tacos, burritos and frozen yogurt on Halloween. Plus, get free pumpkin stencils and carving guides, as well as extra-cheap ambiance music, costumes and coupon booklets.

1) Stop by Taco Bell between 6 p.m. and midnight on Halloween for a free Black Jack Taco. Or, dress up as a burrito and head to Chipotle between 6 p.m. and close on October 31 for a free Burrito. You can also get a free 12 oz Frozen Yogurt at Menchie's when you wear a Menchie's swirl top hat on Friday or Saturday (October 30-31).

2) Send in candy wrappers from trick-or-treating and get a coupon by mail for a free YoCrunch from Breyers.

3) Get free pumpkin stencils, jack-o-lantern carving guides and coloring pages. Or, download more than an hour of Halloween ambiance sounds for just $.99.

4) Need a last-minute Halloween costume? Stop by Old Navy on Friday or Saturday (October 30-31). All Halloween costumes and apparel will be just $2. Then pop by Sears with your child in costume to get a free Mattel toy.

5) For just $1, get free food Halloween coupon booklets from Burger King (free fries), McDonald's (free ice cream cones, hamburgers, apple dippers and milk), Wendy's (free jr. frosties) and Friendly's (free kids cones).