My Dear, Zoo Food Must Agree With You

Most light cheeses have one third less fat than regular cheese. Now that the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act requires any food labeled “light” to have at most half the calories of the standard food, you may be hearing more about an ingredient called Dairy-Lo, a processed milk protein designed for low-fat dairy products. We first heard about it, by the way, because it took a prize at the 1993 Food Processing Awards, held in early May at (for some reason) the London Zoo.

Let the Sorghum-Sopping Begin

“Food Festival: The Guidebook to America’s Best Regional Food Celebrations,” by Alice M. Geffen and Carole Berglie (Countryman Press: $16), concentrates on the East--only 20 of the 60 festivals are west of the Mississippi, and those are mostly in Louisiana or California. With that limitation in mind, though, it’s a great guide for planning vacations with echt- American events in mind. This is where to find out about the Swamp Cabbage Festival (La Belle, Fla.), the Pink Tomato Festival (Warren, Ark.), the Strange Seafood Exhibition (Beaufort, N.C.), Sorghum Sopping Days (Waldo, Ala.) and the Circleville Pumpkin Show (Circleville, Ohio), among many others. Includes recipes and first-hand reports on what the festivals are like.

For Potato Nutz

Spudnutz, subtitled Eating Low on the Totem Pole, is a potato-lover’s newsletter containing potato facts, cooking tips, buying advice, review of potato cookbooks and recipes. It’s a one-woman operation, which is why Gerri Dawes signs herself as author rather than editor. Examples of potato facts: The perfect French fry is three inches long. (OK, maybe it’s merely a consensus opinion.) Among the recipes, about 15 a month, might be potato-and-hummus salad or potato-and-black pepper crackers. For a year’s subscription (six eight-page issues), send $15 to Spudnutz, P.O. Box 18, Yuba City, Calif. 95992; back issues are $2.

For Moosely Vigor

Apart from being named after a beloved TV cartoon character, the deal on the new line of soft drinks named Bullwinkle’s is that each 12-ounce can contains 15% of the U.S. recommended daily allowance of vitamins. Bullwinkle’s sodas (including Mooseberry, a blueberry-lemon flavor) are in markets in California now, and we can expect that Boris and Natasha will soon bring out their own Genuine Moose ond Squeerrel Soda, Ho-Boy.