Food

My wife and I occasionally shop for groceries at a supermarket that allows customers to collect points towards coupons, giveaways and other discounts. This year, we collected enough points to get a free turkey.

Hooray.

In years past, we never would've considered buying a frozen turkey from a chain grocery store. Not that we're arrogant or anything, we just prefer to buy local meats whenever possible. But because of the economy, we thought it might be a better idea to just take advantage of the free turkey and put the savings towards other things.

When you settle in to watch the annual spectacular of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade this year, your viewing experience will be missing something. No, it's not just the cast of Glee (banished due to the show's unusual popularity on the rival FOX Network); it will also include a PETA advertisement intended for just this audience. And for once, the famously edgy animal rights group is not showing too much skin (of the gorgeous or not-so-gorgeous variety) or brainlessly offending whole classes of society.

No. This time, NBC has decided, Americans can't handle the truth about turkeys. Specifically, the truth about how turkeys are raised and slaughtered so they can end up, neatly plastic-wrapped and hard as 15-pound flesh-colored rocks, in supermarkets everywhere.

The million-dollar question being asked among the faithful followers of Bravo's "Million Dollar Listing" show is this: Where is Chad getting those cakes from?

Chad Rogers, one of the three Realtors whose antics are followed each week, let the frosting out of the bag. In an interview with WalletPop, he revealed that he gets the one-of-a-kind cakes at the Brentwood bakery, Susie's Cakes.

Rogers uses them to make his open houses memorable (the $700 cake was decorated with an image of Cake Chad wearing identical clothes to Real Chad, standing in front of an exact replica of the house with a talk bubble saying "It's always a wonderful day in my neighborhood." In the show, Real Chad waits for the end of the open house and then eats Cake Chad's hair.

Those of us who don't charge out of the house in the predawn hours of Black Friday to shop often face the dilemma of an abundance of leftover food and a lack of imagination of what to do with it. Fortunately, the Internet can provide answers, in the form of the website Supercook.com.

Supercook allows you to input the contents of your fridge and larder and spits back recipes using those ingredients.

For example, I typed in the typical flotsam and jetsam of a Thanksgiving dinner; turkey, cranberries, pumpkin, mashed 'taters, bacon, asparagus and staples such as onions, olive oil, butter and garlic. With what I have on hand, Supercook suggested bacon corn chowder, fresh asparagus soup, garlic mashed potatoes, and an asparagus omelet.

It doesn't, however, allow me to search for recipes using leftover cooked turkey, so for that I found a couple of sites chock full of appropriate bird-recycling recipes. AOL Food has a special section on the Thanksgiving topic, with treats such as Cranberry Sorbet, Bread Pudding and Sweet Potato Pancakes.

Allrecipes.com has over 150 dishes such as Tex-Mex Turkey Soup, Chutney Turkey Salad and Turkey Pot Pie. My favorite food guy, Alton Brown, has gathered great compilation at Seriouseats.com, including Turkey and Black Bean Quesadillas with Cranberry Apple Salsa.

Let the feasting resume!

While most of us are preoccupied with gorging ourselves on turkey and stuffing, it can be easy to forget about the growing number of people who are struggling just to eat one meal a day. In fact, a recent government survey found that more than one in seven U.S. households are finding it difficult to afford putting food on the table.

Those 14.5% of U.S. households, representing about 49 million people, make up the highest rate of "food-insecure" households since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began monitoring the issue in 1995. As the recession has deepened, so has the number of people using food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, with participation growing by 23% in the last year, according to Hans Billger of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The situation would be far worse if not for food pantries and federal food assistance programs, such as SNAP. For the nearly 35.9 million people who receive SNAP benefits, they're a lifeline to survival. In July, more people were using SNAP benefits than at any other time in the history of the program.

The average SNAP benefit for one person is $101.53 per month with a maximum of $200. For a household of four, the average benefit is $226.59 per month (the maximum benefit is $668 per month). WalletPop recently spoke with a few families who rely on food stamps to find out just how hard it is to stretch their resources and put healthy meals on the table.

In her second annual Mega Holiday Gift Away celeb cook-turned-entrepreneur Rachel Ray is increasing odds of winning by offering more presents, more time to enter and more chances to walk away with the Grand Prize. Featuring free gifts totaling $145,463, Ray's successful Everyday with Rachel Ray Magazine is cranking up the heat this holiday season with daily "gift aways" from November 16 through January 27, 2010.

The Grand Prize allows two foodie fans to attend a taping of the Rachel Ray Show in New York City . However, if you don't wind up on set, the consolation prizes are pretty sweet too.

Black Friday's prize offers the chance to win $500 dollar American Express gift cards. On other dates in December, enter to win an HP mini notebook or desktop computer, golf clubs from Callaway, an Orbitz ski vacation, a culinary weekend for two at Hotel Viking in Newport, RI, a Jacuzzi hot tub or a week on a Norwegian Cruise Liner - to name a few.

If you're entertaining over the holidays, make sure you save yourself some money by following these simple money saving tips inspired by Jeannette Pavini, the Household Savings Expert of Coupons.com.

Simplify Your Ingredients: If a recipe this Thanksgiving calls for creme fraiche, use Greek yogurt instead. Take a look at your menu to see what simpler, more affordable ingredients you can sub in for the fancier stuff. Instead of serving the entire bird, save money by serving turkey breasts. This will also save you money on your energy bill, since it takes less time to cook, and it saves you from all those turkey leftovers. Don't forget to ask for day-old-bread -- you'll get a deep discount on the price and it's just as good if you warm it in the oven or use it for making croutons.

Need to stretch that dollar to the max when feeding your family? Elise Cooke, author of "Strategic Eating, the Econovore's Essential Guide," says cooking for four for less than $5 is a snap if you think crepes.

Practically by definition, crepes are made with leftovers, because the food in them only heats up long enough to melt cheese. Dig around in the refrigerator, and pull out what you've got.

For savory crepes, some kind of pre-cooked meat, chopped small, with sauteed onions and added cheese taste wonderful. Most vegetables and grated or crumbled cheese do well in this dish as well. Crepes can also go in a sweet direction: chocolate, nutella, cinnamon-sugar, and sweetened thinly sliced fruits all make terrific desserts.

The thrill of the hunt is compelling, especially when your grocer's ads tout "BIG SAVINGS" on favorite holiday meal fixins.

But even if you're just shopping for your weekly groceries this weekend instead of the trimmings and trappings for turkey day, it's still tough to say no to a good sale. And with most of us on strict, self-imposed budgets because of the current recession, shopping on the weekend becomes an even bigger temptation, a time to say, "But I've been so good all week, I deserve a little splurge!"

Tossing sale items in your cart can blow your budget if you're not careful. "I find it hard to resist great sales, so I'll buy far more than we need or than I can fit in my freezer," says frequent sale-shopper, Barbara Nelson.

Heart disease, it seems, doesn't discriminate, striking not only both men and women. Now, scientists have learned not even Pharaohs were spared of hardened arteries.

And they developed heart disease despite the absence of super-size fries paired with a sugary soda and greasy burgers, one of today's popular heart disease scapegoats. No doubt music to Ronald McDonald's ears.

"We think of it as being caused by modern risk factors," such as fast food, smoking and a lack of exercise, but the findings show that these aren't the only reasons arteries clog, said Dr. Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City who found signs of heart disease in 3,500 year-old mummies, told the Associated Press.

Want to avoid overspending on Black Friday? An amino acid you ingest in Thanksgiving dinners with lots of carbs and turkey could help you fight off that urge to impulse buy, according to a study by two researchers from the University of Utah's School of Business.

Aril Mishra and Himanshu Mishra suspect that the effect is chemical. Turkey and other traditional Thanksgiving foods contain the amino acid tryptophan, which increases the levels of serotonin in the brain.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter which aids the passage of messages through the brain, influencing many functions including sleep, memory, learning, sex drive, mood, and appetite. The body uses trytophan to make serotonin.

Eating popcorn at the movies used to be fun. Now it's scary, thanks to the Center for Science in the Public Interest -- the advocacy group that also has given the beat-down to Chinese food, fast food and most other things Americans love to pig out on.

The group performed lab tests on popcorn purchased from the largest movie chains, AMC and Regal, and came up with this equation: That eating a medium popcorn with a soda at a Regal theater is equal to eating three McDonald's Quarter Pounders with 12 pats of butter.

That's 1,610 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat. And, just to rub it in, CSPI noted the high profits the chain must collect for selling the combo for $12 -- given how cheap popcorn and soda actually are.

Get $1 off a sub sandwich at Quiznos, get $2 off two subs, or $3 off three subs! The deal excludes toasty torpedos and tasty bullets.

Or get 50% of a signature or classic sub when you buy a regular fountain drink. Not valid on delivery orders.

Print the coupons here. Both expire on Sunday, Nov. 29. Find a Quiznos near you.

Caveats: one coupon per order. May not be combined with other discounts.

In the world of advertising, the Tropicana disaster of 2008-09 is already legendary.

The orange juice container redesign by controversial brand guru Peter Arnell eliminated the familiar straw-in-an-orange image in favor of a photo of a glass of OJ. This killed the brand recognition developed over many years, resulting in a 20% drop in sales and the loss of millions of dollars within two months. Tropicana beat a hasty retreat to the old design.

Now, according to Advertising Age, Coca-Cola is taking a similar risky step, re-branding its Minute Maid line of juices. The company wants to eventually harmonize the images surrounding the brand and the others it owns, including Del Valle, Andina and Cappy.

The new orange juice design features whole oranges, slices, and leaves to suggest the groves from which it comes. As you'll see from the pictures above, the new packaging has more green, and the blue is gone. I like it.