Hey, Mate: Dish Up These Plates

Getting ready to become a couch potato and take in the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, which start this weekend?

Then do it right with Australia-themed food.

The American Emu Association has put together suggestions for Australian cuisine. Emu meat is a staple in Australia. The association’s “Olympic Watching Party” lineup includes emu sausage balls, kangaroo punch (made from pineapple juice, oranges, lemons, bananas and ginger ale), emu meatballs with spaghetti and anzac biscuits (which adds oatmeal and coconut to a simple biscuit recipe).

An “Olympic Family Dinner” includes banana punch (bananas whipped with orange juice and cold water), emu burgers and dingo chow (similar to rice crispie treats but made with Rice Chex cereal, chocolate chips and peanut butter).

For complete recipes for this and more Aussie fare, visit The Spokesman-Review online at www.spokane.net and click on Food (scroll down to Channels listings). For more information about emu meat, go to www.aea-emu.org.

Outback aversion?

If food from Down Under doesn’t appeal to you, here’s an excuse to plan a Mexican fiesta instead as you tune in the Olympics. Saturday is Diez y Seis, or Mexico’s National Independence Day. Whip up your own Mexican fare or, for a more authentic taste, check out the recipes from the cookbooks written by internationally-known chef Rick Bayless.

Peanut hopes

The average American child will eat 1,500 peanut butter sandwiches by the time he or she graduates from high school, according to the Peanut Advisory Board.

But that’s certainly not the case for the more than 3 million Americans who suffer from a peanut allergy, which often strictly limits their consumption of many packaged foods.

While biotech (also known as a genetically altered) foods make headlines and controversy swirls about the growing practice, scientists behind the scenes have mapped the peanut’s genetic makeup and are getting closer to locating and eliminating the protein in peanuts that causes allergies.

Smoking oranges!

Vitamin C and smoking don’t mix. That’s the report from researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who found that vitamin C becomes a harmful oxidizing substance when paired with cigarette smoke. The result: heavy smokers who drink orange juice and other fruit juices high in vitamin C while smoking are doing more harm to their bodies. The dangerous chemical process that results from combining the two substances appears to speed up the body’s aging and degeneration process.