Pity the poor eating establishments

If there's a restaurant you dearly love, schedule a dinner there. Restaurants, even as they try to lure customers with meal deals, will find it very hard to stay afloat as inflationary pressures increase.

But as a Dow Jones Newswire story indicates, the meal deals may be coming to an end, and the public is getting more frugal. Since vegetable garden seed sales are higher than they've been since Victory Garden days, that public may be staying home just to use up all the new vegetables that are arriving in their kitchens.

And that's not a bad thing. Although restaurant food tastes good, sometimes better than what most people can cook at home, that taste comes at a price, in terms of calories (doesn't EVERYTHING taste better with butter on it?), salt and, occasionally, food handling practices that can endanger people with allergies or compromised immune systems. And like most skills, cooking gets easier and better the more you do it.

Food allergies nothing to sneeze at

If you're planning to cook for a crowd (something I love to do), you might keep in mind that experts say eight foods account for 90 percent of all allergic reactions in people:

• milk
  
• eggs
  
• peanuts
  
• tree nuts
  
• fish
  
• shellfish
  
• wheat
  
• soy
  

Yes, avoiding all of these may limit your options, but it's better than sending someone to the hospital. Or have a substitute or two on hand for those with one of these common allergies.

Jim's cousin Cait says she forgot to order her usual gluten-free meal on her way from Ireland recently, and got a bagel, a mini-muffin and frosted mini-wheats for her breakfast. Luckily, she brought some food with her that she could eat.