All The News That's Fit To Eat

A combination Blimpie/Pasta Central is now open at Fourth and Central, joining Quizno’s, on the same block, and Schlotzky's one block down. The restaurant took the long-vacant former UDH building and created a small outdoor seating area and indoor space with tables and booths. If you've never been, Blimpie is a close relative of both Subway and Quizno's, with assembly line sub sandwiches following the Subway model with the added Quizno's twist of optional toasting. How does it taste? I figure it's somewhere in the middle. In my opinion, toasting improves upon a regular sub but the Blimpie folks don't seem to have the same toasting skill as Quizno's, meaning their subs tend to come out squashed like a pancake and unevenly toasted. The pasta side of the menu involves Southern Italian dishes like chicken Parmigiana, lasagna, manicotti, fettuccini Alfredo and small pizzas.

Magazine subscriptions are a scam. The cover price is usually way higher than the subscription price but subscription rates vary wildly and it's tough to not feel like you're getting screwed on the deal. As far as food magazines go, I admit I mostly look at the pictures and skim through the recipes but when it comes time for Thanksgiving and Christmas I start buying them like mad. Out of the November issue of Saveur, which has very few Thanksgiving recipes by the way, fell a subscription card: only $29.95 for a full year subscription (which is only eight issues). Though it's 25 percent off the cover price $30 still seems like a lot for one magazine. But at www.magazineline.com you can subscribe for $20. Check the cards that fall out of your favorite magazines on the newsstand and compare the prices with rates on the website. Also, look at subscription cards that fall out of somebody else's subscription magazine; the rates are often lower. Magazineline.com has pretty fair prices on the best food mags like Saveur, Food and Wine, Bon Appétit, Gourmet and even smaller titles like Chocolatier and Vegetarian Times.

The American Institute of Wine and Food (of which, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a member) would like to thank all the volunteers and sponsors who made this year's Days of Taste program the best ever. The program, which brings food to the forefront of the curriculum for one week every fall, reached 110 school children during the third week of October. Students from Chelwood and Navajo elementary schools visited an organic farm, learning food history with the folks from the Food Museum, prepared a fresh salad with chefs and visited local restaurants to sample new cuisines.