You’re Never Too Young

Gerber’s baby food is strained prunes and carrots, right? No. It’s strained prunes and carrots in this country, but in Italy Gerber’s bottles pasta and in France it sells strained artichoke. In the Far East you can buy Gerber’s seaweed or rice with whole baby minnows.

There’ll Always Be an England

Letter in the London Daily Telegraph: “The hymn ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ sung to the right tune and in a not-too-brisk tempo, makes a very good egg timer. If you put the egg into boiling water and sing all five verses and chorus, the egg will be just right when you come to ‘Amen.’ ”

A Hogshead of One’s Own

Send in your orders now for a hogshead (that’s an aging barrel holding the equivalent of 30 cases) of single-malt scotch. The Aberlour Distillery Company is charging only $2,700, which works out to a bargain $12 per bottle. Of course, you won’t get any of it until the scotch has completed its aging--which won’t be until 1999. On the other hand, you’ll get a newsletter on its progress and you can always come to the distillery to inspect your own hogshead. For details, call (212) 725-9144.

Cookie Quandary

Restaurants and Institutions Magazine reports that 79% of all people who get a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant actually eat it. But this doesn’t answer the real question: Do you have to eat the cookie to make the fortune come true, or do you have to eat it to keep the fortune from coming true?

A Navy Sails on Its Stomach

Last summer Kentucky Fried Chicken opened a branch at Ft. Campbell, (where else?) Kentucky. Now the Navy is striking out on its own in the new fast-food military. It has just opened its first “standardized restaurant concept” at Moffett Field Naval Air Station: Parcheezi’s Pizza, Pasta, Plus. The Navy hopes to open ten Parcheezis at naval facilities in the next year and is reportedly toying with a Tex Mex concept as well.

Hole Story

Life Savers plans to bring out a little hard candy called Life Saver Holes. They’re not actually the trimmings left over from making Life Savers, though; they’re separately made, but the company does promise that they will exactly fit into a Life Saver.

Pitstsa Problem

OK, so Pizza Hut has come to Moscow (look for the Russian alphabet sign reading Pitstsa Khat). The question is whether Moscow is ready for it. Both Pitstsa Khat branches were recently shut down for lacking dishwashing sinks because the Moscow sanitation code has no provision for automatic dishwashers.