For Brave Toasters

For all those June weddings on tap, Korbel Champagne Cellars has a wedding toast hotline. You can call (800) 7-KORBEL for any questions about protocol and etiquette (such as who toasts whom, who gets served first). The hotline also offers do’s and don’t’s, such as “Don’t gesture wildly with your hands or use any other distracting motions,” which might be summed up: “Don’t do anything that people in your favorite sitcom would.”

Contains Two Sips

Riedel, the company famous for devising glass shapes to flatter the flavor of wines, has come up with one designed for criticizing them. The Tasting Glass has a thick stem holding a measured 20 milliliters (5/8 ounce), enough for two judicious mouthfuls--a portion-control strategy to get about 35 tastings out of a single wine bottle. Instead of being swirled to bring out the aroma, which inefficiently wets only half the surface of a glass, it’s designed to be rolled on a table, moistening the entire surface.

This stumpy little glass (available from wine merchants and wine specialty mail-order catalogs) may look dumb, but we expect to start seeing it at wine tastings all over the place.

The Peanut Butter Diet

Peanuts don’t want to be overlooked in the heart-healthy fat sweepstakes. The Peanut Institute has announced a study in which people tried a regular American diet, a low-fat diet and a peanut-oriented diet. The peanut one, which differed only slightly from the others--it replaced a turkey sandwich with a peanut butter sandwich and offered peanuts instead of cookies as a mid-afternoon snack, for instance--did best in reducing triglycerides and LDL cholesterol without depressing HDLs.

The report also boasted of the peanut’s nutritive value (vitamin E, folic acid, phytochemicals, fiber, etc.). In fact, it would seem that the peanut is so healthy it’s sort of an olive.

Official Newsbite of the Millennium

M&M;’s Official Candy of the New Millennium hype, which you know all about if you watch TV, is amusing, and the possibility of buying the package that contains all red M&Ms; with two ms printed on them instead of one is pleasant. Especially the fact that it’s worth $2 million if you do.

But we like best the fact that the candy company has registered 200 official millennium items, ranging from Official Grandmother to Official Rubber Ducky. Up in Fresno, Amelia Nygaard is driving around the Official Motor Home of the Millennium.

One Coffee Packet, With a Twist

Ten years ago the Illycaffe company introduced Easy Serving Espresso: a packet of espresso-grind coffee sealed between two layers of filter paper. All you had to do was stick it in a specially designed espresso machine, press the brew button and presto: a cup of coffee with no grinding, measuring or cleanup.

Some coffee purists complained that the coffee could never be as fresh as freshly ground, but the idea has been catching on. Last year 8000 tons of prepackaged coffee were manufactured (not all in paper packets; there are also plastic and aluminum systems). Expect the figure to grow, because the Consortium for the Development and Protection of the Easy Serving Espresso Standard includes a couple of heavy hitters: Moulinex-Krups, the biggest espresso machine manufacturer in the world, and Starbucks, whom you know.

Stack Attack

Heads up, young cookie stackers. This Saturday, Nabisco is sponsoring an Oreo stacking contest at Wal-Mart stores. Kids will compete to stack the most Oreo cookies in 30 seconds without using any props or adhesives. Winners will be invited to November’s National Stacking Championships, where they’ll compete for a $20,000 US Savings Bond and a year’s supply of Oreos. FYI: Last year’s champs in the two age categories (7 and under; 8 to 12) stacked 22 and 23, respectively.