The chef, his wife and their two teenage sons are eating for a week on the equivalent of a food stamp budget in protest of potential cuts pending in Congress to the benefit program used by more than 46 million Americans.

That’s $31 per person for the week, or about $1.48 per meal each.

Goodbye restaurants, free nibbles on his talk show “The Chew” and all the luxe offerings at Eataly, the high-end New York City market he co-owns. Hello Trader Joe’s, Jack’s Dollar Store, Gristedes and Western Beef, a low-cost supermarket chain.

“I’m (expletive deleted) starving,” said Batali, who’s on the board of the food relief agency Food Bank for New York City, which issued the challenge to celeb pals like Batali and anybody else who wants to know what it’s like.

Batali said his first reaction when asked to join was a big “gulp,” then he realized while shopping for Friday’s start of the challenge that with a little forethought it wouldn’t be all that brutal.

One lesson: forget organic and anything pesticide- or hormone-free. “The organic word slides out and saves you about 50 percent.”

So what’s on the Batali menu through Thursday? Lentil chili with onion, water and cumin was one dinner that came with a complaint from his wife when he bought two bags of lentils instead of one, until he convinced her the extra cost would mean cheap eats for the next day.

“Rice and beans is in my lunch every day,” Batali said. “We got a bag of mini gala apples for $3. We bought a pork shoulder roast for $8 and got two and a half meals out of it. I got a whole chicken for $5, but it was spoiled so I had to return it and got a $7 chicken instead. They were out of $5 chickens.”

Convenience also has been sacrificed, like the afternoon his boys, 14 and 15, were running late and the family really wanted to grab hot dogs before a basketball game but couldn’t.

His kids are doing well and didn’t have to be dragged into what Batali described as less of a publicity stunt and more of a conversation starter about what it means to be hungry in America today.

“They’re having more peanut butter and jelly than they’ve had in the last 10 years because bread is inexpensive and peanut butter and jelly, if you buy it at the right place at the right time, is cheap,” Batali said.

Also, the boys are eating school lunch, as those in low-income families do for free.

The Batalis have been joined on the weeklong challenge by wholesale meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda, who has a new Food Network series, “Meat Men,” Margarette Purvis, who heads the food bank, as well as more than 200 others who registered to complete the challenge. And anti-hunger groups in Las Vegas, Philadelphia and parts of Maryland and Ohio have led similar challenges over the last several months.

“Nearly 3 million New Yorkers have difficulty paying for the food they need,” Purvis said. “They live in every single neighborhood. We’re not trying to compare the food stamp challenge to the very real challenges people face. We’re just trying to raise awareness that it’s no longer just the homeless. It’s working families who use the food stamp program. It’s seniors. It’s a lot more children, in every single neighborhood.”

Any surprises for the chef?

“I thought spare ribs were cheap,” Batali said. “Spare ribs this week are $5.95, so I’m making pasta sauce with two pork chops that were $1.39 a pound. It won’t have as many bones to chew on but it’ll have more edible meat, which at the end of the day is probably a better deal.”

Batali has taken his challenge to “The Chew,” where he and his crew will be chatting all week about eating on less.

“We, hopefully, aren’t pretending or being like a bunch of yuppies saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is how you can do it. Look, we can grind our own oats!’ We want people to think about calling and talking to their representation about cuts to the Farm Bill and the food stamp program,” he said.

Subsisting on food stamps, especially when food is made from scratch, is doable, he said, “as a way to live, but certainly not as a way to thrive. You can always have pasta with tomato, but that’s not thriving.”

Maybe it’s in the way one cook browns meat, or another views dessert. Or it may be in the moments when a harried chef seeks perspective in the well-worn pages of “The Way to Cook.”

One thing’s for certain, the late, great Julia Child remains a culinary lodestone in kitchens across America.

“She was one of our most influential teachers and was among the first Americans to bring the spotlight to traditional French cooking methods and show that food is something more than the sum of its parts,” notes Thomas Keller, chef of the acclaimed The French Laundry and Per Se restaurants in the Napa Valley and New York.

To mark the century since Child’s birth, we asked chefs and others in the food world to toast the moment by suggesting a wine pairing for a favorite Child recipe. What we got back were a lot of tasty contributions — and a flood of memories.

• Gigot a la moutarde (herbal mustard coating for roast leg of lamb) and Chateauneuf du Pape, Les Cedres, Paul Jaboulet Aine 2007, from Marc Murphy, chef/owner of Landmarc, Ditch Plains, N.Y., and judge on Food Network’s “Chopped.”

“My biggest influence was Julia Child’s highly successful TV show and her ability to make even the most complicated dishes seem simple and effortless. Her passion for food was what I admired most. It really spoke to her audience and especially to myself as a French-influenced and inspired chef.”

• Salmon en croute (pastry wrapped salmon) with Chappellet Chenin Blanc, from Jan Birnbaum, chef, EPIC Roasthouse, San Francisco.

As a young cook, Birnbaum worked his way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” with some efforts more successful than others. One he remembers in particular was salmon en croute, a pastry-wrapped salmon, that was his first attempt at a simple butter crust.

• Roast duck with cracklings with Domaine Parent Premier Cru Les Epenots 2005, from Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen, authors of the recently published “The Fire Island Cookbook” and entertaining and lifestyle editors for Wine Enthusiast Magazine.
• Coq au vin with cru Beaujolais, from Ken Oringer, James Beard Award-winning chef with seven restaurants in the Boston area, including Clio.

“I grew up watching Julia Child and was lucky enough to get to know her well when I became a chef. She used to dine at Clio all the time and I have so many fond memories of her coming back to the kitchen to hang out. Back then in Boston, it was hard to find restaurants with bone marrow, foie gras and caviar, and she used to say she loved coming here because she could indulge in her favorites. I was invited to attend her 90th birthday party and they auctioned off items from her television set. I won the turkey baster — the one she was often seen using on camera! — and I still have it in my kitchen today.”

— Beef bourguignon with 2009 Domaine Mongeard-Mugneret Echezeaux Ville Vignes, from Jason Berthold, executive chef, RN74, San Francisco.

Berthold remembers watching Child’s cooking shows on television as a child and young cook and remains impressed with her show on making beef bourguignon. “Browning meat, braising onions, cooking with wine, simmering stock and skimming fat, slow cooking, using buerre manie, etc. It is classic, important and serious.”

RN74 is named for Route National 74, the main highway running through the Burgundy wine region of France, and Berthold picked a wine he discovered on a trip to Burgundy last fall. It has “great balance with layers of power and elegance, just like a perfectly made beef bourguignon should.”

— Bouillabaisse with French rose, E. Michael Reidt, executive chef, Area 31 Restaurant, Miami.

Inspired by Child’s classic bouillabaisse recipe, Area 31 serves a dish called “A to the 3 to the 1,” which is a fish stew with white water clams, local fish and tiger shrimp, highlighting South American flavors by using onions, garlic, tomatoes and cilantro. For Reidt, Child’s writings and philosophy of cooking are things that “helped me keep things in perspective. When the whole modernist cuisine trend took off in the late ‘90s, it was Julia and Jacques Pepin who influenced me to stay the course, to stick with the basics I had studied and continue to focus on the product and its execution — to make sure no matter what the trend might be that my cooking always needed to have soul and substance.”

— Feuilletes aux poires (puff pastry with pastry cream and caramelized pears) with moscato d’Asti, from Katherine Thompson, executive pastry chef at L’Artusi and dell’anima restaurants, New York.

Thompson first made this dessert from Child’s “The Way to Cook” as a 13-year-old and it’s still her favorite. She brought a version of this to the L’Artusi menu about a year and a half ago, using crepes instead of puff pastry and gelato instead of whipped cream. She pairs it with a moscato d’Asti because the wine has hints of pear in it, and a little acidity and freshness that balances well with the rich caramel flavor of the dessert. To Thompson, the great thing about Child was the way she made French cuisine approachable and she tries to follow suit, making dishes that guests can replicate at home and providing the recipe on request.

As the anniversary of Child’s birth on Aug. 15, 1912, approaches, the food world will celebrate in various ways.

Keller’s got his game plan in place for his team.

“We will all raise a glass of Champagne in celebration and thanks for her many achievements,” he says. “I’m sure she would approve.”

When I was young, Julia Child was as much a fixture in my family’s kitchen as she was on television.

Not only did my mother watch her, she cooked right along with her, as well. The local public television station sent the recipes in advance and my mother collected them in a three-ring binder that she still has today.

My favorite menu was what we referred to as “French Chicken,” a butterflied chicken that is slathered with a mustard, white wine and scallion sauce that bakes on during roasting, becoming a delectable crust and infusing the chicken with the heady flavors of Dijon.

The vegetable was fresh peas cooked with Boston lettuce, and dessert was a delicious apple tart with Grand Marnier-spiked applesauce and a layer of apricot-glazed apple slices on top. This menu often was served as a birthday meal, so it is a fitting menu as we near Child’s 100th birthday celebration.

I knew my mother adapted Child’s recipes, but I thought she created the menu herself. However, a few years ago I was rummaging in an antique store and I found a limited edition cookbook that compiled all the menus of Child’s television series. As I thumbed the pages, I saw the menu I’d thought was my mother’s.

I read through the recipes and realized that my favorite meal was literally taken from the show and I thanked Child for bringing a taste of France to my mother’s very Southern kitchen. I went on to become a huge Francophile, living in Paris and falling in love with the food, the culture, the sounds, everything, even the notebooks and pens!

When I came back to the U.S., I started working in the food world and joined several culinary organizations. Much to my delight, even though Child was a reigning culinary icon and getting on in years, she attended the conferences and was always front and center at the seminars.

———

“FRENCH CHICKEN” WITH DIJON MUSTARD AND SCALLIONS

I love the old-fashioned broiled tomato. It is simple, delicious and brightens every plate. This mustard sauce and the breadcrumbs make the best version of the dish, so I added it to the recipe and grill them while the chicken rests. If you don’t like tomatoes, skip them.

Start to finish: 1 1/2 hours (30 minutes active)

Servings: 8

2 small whole chickens (about 3 to 4 pounds each)

Olive oil, for brushing, plus 1/4 cup

Kosher salt

Grains of paradise (optional) or ground black pepper

2 tablespoons white wine

1/3 cup strong Dijon mustard (such as Amora or Maille)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Pinch of cayenne pepper

3 scallions, chopped

1 cup panko or fresh white breadcrumbs, plus extra for the tomatoes

2 to 4 medium tomatoes, halved

Heat the grill and prepare it for indirect cooking over medium heat.

Use paper towels to pat dry both chickens. Using poultry shears or a very sharp knife, one at a time cut down the length of each chicken’s backbone on both sides to remove it. Overturn the chickens to be breast side up, then break the breastbone by striking it sharply with a blunt object, such as can of beans (wash the can after use).

Spread the chickens open and lay them flat. Tuck the wing tips under the upper wings, then brush all over with olive oil.

Season with salt and grains of paradise or black pepper. Place the chickens in the center of the grill skin side up. Cover the grill and cook for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, assemble the mustard sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together the white wine and mustard. Slowly drizzle the 1/4 cup of olive oil and the butter in the mixture to blend. Add the thyme, cayenne and scallions, then mix to combine. Reserve 8 teaspoons of the mustard mixture for the tomatoes (if making).

After the chickens have cooked for 20 minutes, turn them over and spread mustard sauce on backs of the chickens. Grill, covered, for 10 minutes. Turn over to breast side up and spread mustard on the skin, then grill, covered, for another 10 minutes. Sprinkle the breast-sides of the chickens with breadcrumbs and grill, covered, for another 10 to 15 more minutes, or until juices run clear and the thickest part of the thigh registers 180 F. Remove the chickens from the heat and let them rest for 10 minutes before carving.

During the final 10 minutes of cooking time — or while the chicken rests — spread each tomato half with some of the reserved mustard sauce, then sprinkle them with breadcrumbs. Grill for 10 minutes, or until the tops are crunchy and the tomatoes are warmed through. Serve hot.

As I stood at the cutting board slicing slabs of thick skin off a fresh pineapple, a thought occurred to me — the strips of skin were an awful lot like the cedar planks some people use to add flavor to food on the grill. Perhaps they could be used the same way.

Cedar plank grilling is pretty basic. You soak a cedar wood plank (be certain they are meant for cooking and have not been treated with anything) in water for a bit, then set your food (salmon and chicken are nice) on it. Place the whole thing on the grill and let it cook. The plank gets charred and infuses the food with an earthy, savory, smoky flavor.

I wondered what would happen if I used pineapple skin (or what I like to think of as pineapple bark). And I wouldn’t even need to soak it because the skin contains its own juices.

I tried it both on the grill and in the oven and it worked great. The pineapple infused the meat with a delicate sweetness, and kept it moist and juicy. The enzymes in the pineapple also helped tenderize the meat (I sandwiched chicken breast cutlets between two strips of pineapple bark and let them “marinate” for a bit).

The same technique also worked on fish. I tried it with hake with delicious results, though any firm white fish would be appropriate. Just don’t prep the fish or meat with the pineapple skin too far ahead of time, as the acidity of the juice will make the flesh mushy.

To use the rest of the pineapple, I decided to accompany the chicken with grilled pineapple and guacamole.

———

PINEAPPLE BARK CHICKEN WITH GRILLED PINEAPPLE GUACAMOLE

Start to finish: 2 hours 45 minutes (45 minutes active)

Servings: 3

1 large whole pineapple

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Salt and ground black pepper

Ground cumin

Cayenne pepper

1/2 small red onion, diced

1 jalapeno, seeds removed, diced

2 avocados, pitted and chopped

Juice of 1 lime

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

Carefully cut off the top and bottom of the pineapple. These can be discarded. Stand the pineapple upright. Cut the skin off the pineapple, removing it in 6 long strips. To do this, begin cutting at the top of the fruit and slice downward, letting the knife follow the curve of the fruit. Leave about 1/2 inch of flesh on each strip of skin. Rotate the fruit and repeat. Set aside.

Place each chicken breast between sheets of plastic wrap and use a meat mallet or rolling pin to pound to an even 1/2 inch thickness. Season each on both sides with salt, pepper, cumin and cayenne. Lay each piece of chicken over the cut side of one of the slices of pineapple skin. Set a second strip of pineapple skin, cut side down, on top. Use kitchen twine to tie the bundles to hold them together. Refrigerate the chicken bundles for about 30 minutes.

When ready to cook, heat one side of the grill to high, the other side to low.

Meanwhile, cut the skinned pineapple (the flesh) into thick rounds. Use a small round cookie or biscuit cutter (or a paring knife) to cut out and discard the core from each round.

When the grill is hot, arrange the chicken bundles on the cooler side of the grill. Cook for 15 minutes per side, or until the chicken reaches 165 F at the center. During the final 10 minutes, add the pineapple rings and cook for 5 minutes per side.

While the chicken cooks, prepare the guacamole. In a small bowl combine the red onion, jalapeno, avocados, lime juice and cilantro. Gently mix, then season with salt and pepper.

To serve, place one chicken bundle on each plate. Set a grilled pineapple ring next to it, then spoon some of the guacamole into the center of and over the pineapple ring.

Nutrition information per serving (values are rounded to the nearest whole number): 430 calories; 190 calories from fat (44 percent of total calories); 21 g fat (3.5 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 70 mg cholesterol; 35 g carbohydrate; 31 g protein; 12 g fiber; 280 mg sodium.

What do you feed a man who spent decades eating prison food in the name of freedom and reconciliation?

It was an intimidating question Xoliswa Ndoyiya wasn’t sure she knew how to answer. It was about 20 years ago and at the time she was just a young cook working at a Jewish retirement home in Johannesburg, South Africa. But a friend had urged her to apply for the job as Nelson Mandela’s personal chef.

So she did. And when he met her, he immediately put her at ease.

“I believe that you are a great cook, but can you cook our food?” Ndoyiya recalled being asked by Mandela, who had only recently been released from prison. It was a reference to the Xhosa foods Mandela had grown up eating, simple dishes rich with porridge-like maize, beans and vegetables.

Ndoyiya said she smiled. Yes, she knew ukutya kwasekhaya, the term South Africa’s Xhosa clan uses to describe comfort food.

“That was the end of the interview. I was hired,” she said in a recent telephone interview. She has been with him ever since.

And now she is sharing the home cooking Mandela loves in a cookbook, “Ukutya Kwasekhaya: Tastes from Nelson Mandela’s Kitchen” (Real African Publishers), one of two recent books to use food as a fresh way to recount Mandela’s life from anti-apartheid fighter to prisoner to president to retired statesman.

Ndoyiya’s book, co-written with Anna Trapido, is a charming collection of mostly rustic, classic South African recipes, including many of Mandela’s childhood favorites, such as umngqusho, or crushed maize and beans cooked in beef stock.

“Tata (a South African term of affection used for Mandela) gets sad if days go by and I haven’t cooked umngqusho,” Ndoyiya writes in the book. Both books previously had been published in South Africa, but just now have been released in the U.S.

Trapido, a chef and food writer, also wrote her own book, “Hunger for Freedom” (Jacana Media), a more academic account of the role food has played throughout Mandela’s life, from his childhood and years in prison, to during and after his time as South Africa’s first black president.

Trapido unearthed fascinating, humanizing stories, including that of Mandela’s first meal after his release from prison. The timing of his release was so sudden, there had been no time to prepare. So it was decided at the last minute that Mandela (also often called Madiba, another term of affection) should dine at Archbishop Desmund Tutu’s home in Cape Town.

“We had no idea what (Madiba) liked to eat, so we thought, well, chicken is the safest thing, and I rushed to the nearest 7-Eleven,” Lavinia Crawford-Browne, Tutu’s personal assistant, recalls in the book. “I bought up every chicken piece I could find and a crate of Coke, which turned out not to be enough and I had to go back.”

Thin-sliced roasted turkey, prosciutto and soppressata no longer are the domain of the deli.

Food companies looking to capitalize on consumers’ increasingly sophisticated tastes — and their need for speed at the grocer and at home — are carving out new directions in lunch meat with upscale options that are pre-sliced, prepackaged and ready to go right alongside the bologna.

They also are revamping the classics, offering new flavors and styles of basic deli meats, including better-for-you options like the new line of Oscar Mayer Selects being introduced this week.

“There has been a huge expansion of flavors,” says Janet Riley, who has seen the trend as senior vice president for public affairs and member services at the Washington-based American Meat Institute — and as a mom. She was recently picking out ham for her son’s lunch and was struck by “the smoked, the honey, Black Forest, the mesquite and all the other options.”

Some prepackaged lunch meats now come in thicker slices, mirroring the choice at a traditional deli. Herbs and spices also are showing up in prepackaged products, boosting flavor and appeal. And there are the packages of sliced, dry-cured meats, such as soppressata and prosciutto, which used to be strictly deli items.

Meanwhile, producers have been cutting salt and removing artificial ingredients in response to customers’ requests for a more natural product.

“There are consumers out there who are interested in products that have ingredients that are more familiar and recognizable, says Heather Buettner, senior director of new product development and innovation at Oscar Mayer.

The new Oscar Mayer Selects lunch meats follow last year’s successful launch of Oscar Mayer Select Hot Dogs, a product that is among the tiny 0.5 percent of new products launched in the last decade to reach $100 million in their first year, according to data from Symphony IRI Group.

In addition to the hot dogs, new Selects products include five cold cuts and bacon. The company also announced that more than half of new products launched in 2012 will have no artificial preservatives. The company has a goal of reducing sodium by 20 percent across all products by the end of the year.

“This is important to consumers and therefore it’s important to us,” says Buettner.

The company already offers a Carving Board Meats line that are whole cuts roasted, sliced and packed to come closer to a homemade taste. That’s been a hit, too, according to the company, with sales more than doubling to $58.6 million comparing 2011 to 2010.

The idea is to provide products that are closer to what someone might make at home, Buettner says. “With Carving Board, this is all about products that are as good as what you carve off your Thanksgiving turkey and just make for outstanding sandwiches any day of the year.”

In terms of national sales, the multibillion-dollar lunch meat business got a bit of a boost out of the recession as more people brown-bagged it.

But last year, growth slowed, according to international market research firm Mintel. The company projects 2011 sales hit $12.6 billion, up 1.8 percent from the year before, but slightly down from the growth rates of the two previous years.

Lunch meat is ubiquitous; 94 percent of households surveyed by Mintel said they have lunch meat or have used lunch meat. But challenges to the industry include consumers having health concerns about the products or viewing it as overly processed, says John N. Frank, manager of Mintel’s Food and Drinks Reports Group.

In the survey, 59 percent of respondents said they would buy the product if it was natural, a result that fits in with the Selects approach.

Mintel projects 1.3 percent growth for lunch meat sales in 2012, a slow rate that can be attributed to a number of factors, not least of which is the limiting nature of a product named after just one meal.

The report suggests that manufacturers try to get customers to think of lunch meat as an ingredient appropriate for any meal any time of day.

“The problem for lunch meat, according to our report, is that most people still only eat it for lunch,” Frank says.

While the new flavors and varieties get attention, it turns out lunch meat eaters haven’t abandoned old favorites. Ninety-four percent of lunch meat consumers surveyed indicated they eat turkey. And the second biggest variety, right behind at 92 percent? That exciting new product, ham.

Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn’t always work everywhere.     

In other words, Lee Linthicum, a market researcher, says: “It can’t be some generic mix of spices that might fool an American.”     

Food makers long have tinkered with their products to appeal to regional tastes, but getting the recipe just right is becoming more important than ever. That’s partly because people in developing nations such as China and India are gaining more of an appetite for American-style “on-the-go” foods as they work longer hours and have less time to cook. But it’s mostly because snack makers increasingly are looking for growth in other parts of the world as sales slow at home.     

Growth in the snack food industry has been virtually flat in the U.S. for the past two years, according to market research firm Euromonitor. Meanwhile, combined sales in China, Brazil and Russia — three major developing markets — rose 15 percent in 2010 and 11 percent last year to $17 billion. That’s half the size of the U.S. market but it’s growing.     

SNACKS IN A DIFFERENT LAND     

The challenge for snack makers is that people in other countries have different tastes. Consider the Oreo, which Kraft Food Inc. introduced in China in 1996. Sales of the vanilla cream-filled chocolate cookie sandwich were respectable there, but the Chinese didn’t completely take to it.     

So Kraft decided to tweak the Oreo. But executives of the Northfield, Ill.-based company knew that they had to proceed with caution. “When you have a brand that’s 100 years old, you don’t mess with the recipe thoughtlessly,” says Lorna Davis, head of the company’s global biscuit and cookies business.     

In 2006, Kraft began offering the Oreo as a wafer, a popular cookie throughout Asia. It is made up of cream sandwiched between crispy wafers. The plan was to help familiarize more Chinese customers with the brand. Three years later, the company decided to go a step further.     

Kraft worked with a panel of consumer taste experts from around the world to identify the characteristics of the Oreo — including color, crunchiness, bitterness, color — that were likely to appeal to Chinese tastes. Executives learned through research that the Chinese don’t like their treats as big or as sweet as Americans do. So the company rejiggered the recipe to create a cookie that was a tad smaller and a touch less sweet.     

To test the new recipe, hundreds of Chinese consumers tasted the new Oreo. It was a hit. “It made us realize the smallest of details make a big difference,” Davis says.     

But the company wasn’t finished. After noticing sales of Oreos were lagging in China during the summer, Kraft added a green tea ice cream flavor. The cookie combined a popular local flavor with the cooling imagery of ice cream. The green tea version sold well, and a year later, Kraft rolled out Oreos in flavors that are popular in Asians desserts — raspberry-and-blueberry and mango-and-orange.     

The result? Over the past five years, Kraft said sales have grown an average of 60 percent a year, although it declined to give revenue amounts. The Oreo now is the top-selling cookie in China with a market share of 13 percent. The previous top cookie was a biscuit by a Chinese company.     

Kraft, which operates in more than 80 countries, is taking a similar approach with other snacks. In Saudi Arabia, Kraft offers its Tang powder drink in a lemon-pepper flavor. In Mexico, it comes in tropical fruit flavors like tamarind and mandarin, and a hibiscus version fashioned after the flower. Sales have nearly doubled to $1 billion worldwide since Kraft rolled out the localized versions in 2006.     

Kraft’s ability to adapt to local tastes is increasingly important as it looks for growth overseas. The rise in international revenue at Kraft was more than double the increase in North America last year.     

Kraft also plans to split into two separate units by the end of the year. The largest will be a global snacks company called Mondelez International, pronounced “mohn-dah-leez,” to sell its Trident gum and Cadbury chocolates in fast-growing countries worldwide.     

CAFFEINE WITH YOUR CEREAL?     

Kellogg Co., the world’s largest cereal maker, also has intensified its focus on catering to local tastes as it attempts to grow its snack business overseas.     

Last year, the company’s revenue in Latin America topped $1 billion for the first time. And in February, Kellogg said it agreed to buy Pringles chip brand from Procter & Gamble for $2.7 billion. The deal will nearly triple its international snack business, making it the world’s second-largest snack maker behind PepsiCo Inc.     

The company, based in Battle Creek, Mich., already sells products in more than 180 countries. It’s learning that on-the-ground insights can pay off. In Europe, for instance, Kellogg for many years had marketed its cereals there just as it did in the U.S. But it failed to take into account that many in the region don’t drink cold milk in the morning.     

Now, an American traveling in Spain might find it surreal to see TV ads showing All-Bran cereal floating in a steaming cup of coffee. Kellogg, which makes Keebler, Cheez-It and Kashi bars, declined to give details on how well the cereal is selling there, but it said the marketing has resulted in “great results.”     

A similar story played out for PepsiCo. For the first time last year, revenue from the company’s international snacks division surpassed revenue in North America. To achieve that, PepsiCo has had to adjust its recipes.     

In 2005, PepsiCo’s food division began a quest to make its Lay’s potato chips more appealing to local tastes in Russia. It wasn’t easy. Russians still like packaged versions of a Soviet-era snack — stale bread slathered in oil and baked to a crisp.     

“Potato chips were not big in the Communist time, so it’s something we’re gradually building,” says Marc Schroeder, who heads PepsiCo’s food division in Russia.     

To get a better sense of what Russians like, employees traveled around the country to visit people in their homes and talk about what they eat day-to-day. That was a big task. Russia has nine time zones and spans 7,000 miles, with eating habits that vary by region.     

The findings were invaluable for executives at the company’s Purchase, N.Y. headquarters. In the eastern part of the country, PepsiCo found that fish is a big part of the diet. So it introduced “Crab” chips in 2006. It’s now the third most popular flavor in the country.     

A “Red Caviar” flavor does best in Moscow, where caviar is particularly popular. “Pickled Cucumber,” which piggybacks off of a traditional appetizer throughout Russia, was introduced last year and is already the fourth most popular flavor. Other favorites include onion, bacon and “sour cream and herbs,” which is a bit sweeter than the American version.     

The chip translations are paying off; sales of Lay’s have more than doubled in the past five years. As for the classic Lay’s — an American favorite — Russians still aren’t biting.     

“They find it a very boring flavor,” Schroeder said.     

————     

Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi

It’s time to think beyond the bear bottle.

Because honey comes in way more forms than just plastic squirt bottles. My favorite? Honey in the comb, pure and simple.

And yes, the comb is totally safe to eat. People have been keeping bees — and eating the honeycomb — for several thousand years. But first, some honey 101. No, honey is not bee spit. But bee saliva does play a role.

When bees gather nectar from flowers, it is stored in a honey sac inside their bodies. During storage, the bee’s saliva mixes with the nectar, which (shocker!) is made mostly from sugar. Enzymes in the salvia convert those sugars into honey.

The honeycomb comes into play when the bee gets back to the hive. The comb itself — a network of hexagonal cylinders — is made from the waxy secretions of worker bees. As these cylinders are filled with honey, they are capped with yet another layer of wax.

The bees do all this to create food for themselves. In fact, for every pound of honey gathered by people, the bees make and consume another eight.

Honey processors typically gather these wax combs, crush them and run them through a centrifuge to extract the liquid honey. But increasingly, you can find tubs of unbroken honeycomb at grocers and farmers markets. It’s golden and waxy and sticky and the easiest way to extract it from the tub usually is a fork or spoon.

Honeycomb is totally worth seeking out. Kids love it. It looks cool. It tastes great. And you get to amaze the little ones with facts such as the distance a bee would fly to produce just one pound of honey (three times around the Earth).

But after you’re done dazzling your kids with honey trivia, why bother with honeycomb when you could just squirt the liquid stuff from a plastic bear?

The answer is part textural, part versatility. Let’s start with the latter.

Honeycomb can go places honey can’t. While drizzling honey over a salad seems odd, topping a salad with crumbled goat cheese and hunks of honeycomb is a simply heavenly way to eat more vegetables.

Honeycomb also has a completely different texture than liquid honey. It’s not like chewing on a candle. Rather, the wax gives the honey a pleasant body, transforming it from something merely absorbed by the other ingredients into something that stands on its own to contrast and enliven the rest of the dish.

Like liquid honey, honeycomb can be stored at room temperature for long periods. If you have a choice at the market, opt for darker colored honeycomb (and liquid honeys), which tend to have deeper flavors.

Ready to give it a try? For more ideas for using honeycomb, check out the Off the Beaten Aisle column over on Food Network: http://bit.ly/JPXhCW

———

Honeycomb and Brie English Muffin Pizzas

This recipe calls for just a touch of heat under the broiler. It’s just enough to soften the brie and honeycomb, one of the most splendid food combinations.

Start to finish: 15 minutes

Servings: 4

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium red onion, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

Salt and ground black pepper

4 large whole-wheat English muffins

6 ounces brie, thinly sliced

Honeycomb

Heat the oven to broil.

In a medium skillet over medium-high, heat the olive oil. Add the onion, garlic and thyme, then saute for 5 minutes, or until the onion starts to get tender. Season with salt and pepper, then set aside.

Split each English muffin in half and arrange cut side up on a baking sheet. Set under the broiler just long enough to lightly toast, about 1 minute.

Top each muffin half with a bit of brie, then spoon a bit of the onion mixture over each. Place under the broiler for another minute.

Transfer the halves to serving plates, then top each with a spoonful of honeycomb. Serve immediately.

———

J.M. Hirsch is the national food editor for The Associated Press. He is author of the recent cookbook, “High Flavor, Low Labor: Reinventing Weeknight Cooking.” His Off the Beaten Aisle column also appears at FoodNetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter http://twitter.com/JM—Hirsch.

What’s missing from the dressing room — groupies, bling and that we’re-about-to-trash-this-place vibe. What you get instead — a small table set with a few glasses and a bottle of the band’s Save Me San Francisco wine which they are making in concert with ACME Wine Movers, a newly formed division of The Wine Group.

It’s a pretty refined scene, but one that shouldn’t come as such a surprise considering that Train started out in San Francisco, just a microphone stand’s throw from the Napa Valley and its many wineries, says lead singer Pat Monahan.

“A couple of years ago, we decided that we wanted to start bringing San Francisco to the rest of the world and we decided that we would start by bringing one of the best things that we know about San Francisco, which is the wine,” he says.

In collaboration with ACME, the band started the Save Me, San Francisco Wine Co., named after their 2009 album which included the hit “Hey, Soul Sister.”

Their first bottling was a red named after another hit, “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me).” A second wine, Calling All Angels chardonnay, followed and the latest release is California 37 cabernet sauvignon, named after the band’s newly released album. The wine is made in the Livermore Valley wine region east of San Francisco and sells for a suggested retail of $9.99.

Band members visited the winery before finalizing the collaboration and work with the winemaker in approving the final blend.

Train’s Save Me, San Francisco wines are available online and have made restaurant lists around the country, including the Hard Rock Cafe chain, appropriately enough. A portion of the proceeds from sales of the wines goes to support Family House, a San Francisco-based nonprofit providing temporary housing to families of seriously ill children.

In another foray into wine country, the band shot the video for their new single “Drive-By” at Shafer Vineyards in the Napa Valley. And if you were hoping for some shoot stories of wild excess, dream on. “We could not have asked for a nicer group of people to show up,” says winery president Doug Shafer.

So, not quite as exciting as throwing a TV off a hotel balcony (Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards) or being banned from Holiday Inns for life (The Who, but especially Keith Moon), but memorable in its own way.

“Our philosophy about all things from wine to records and downloads and T-shirts is, you know, we’re not trying to get the most out of everybody,” says Monahan.

The idea, he says, is “sharing something that we have as a community. Music that lasts 18 years like ours, you have to form a community at some point because you either know everybody so well or you have to figure out what else you have in common.”

———

Online:

Train wine site: http://savemesfwineco.com/

Drive-by video: http://trainline.com/video/drive-by

Family House: http://familyhouseinc.org/

A brew and a bro — it’s the classic pairing, right? Not necessarily.

From the rise of female brew masters to the growth of women’s tasting groups, women are becoming much more than a pint-sized part of the brewing world.

The emergence of women as both beer-lovers and brewers happened as the craft beer scene grew overall by leaps and bounds, and that’s no coincidence, says Lisa Morrison, Oregon-based writer, blogger and author of “Craft Beers of the Pacific Northwest.”

“I think that women are finally discovering, thanks to craft beer, that beer has flavor,” she says.

“When we start getting into the artisan stuff you start realizing that there’s an entire rainbow of flavors that you can enjoy. And because of that you can pair that with all kinds of different food flavors,” Morrison says. “Women love food. We love cooking. We love tasting food. We love sampling different things. So when you put all that together, the cooking with beer, the pairing food with beer, the whole wide-ranging genre of beer styles and beer flavors — it’s something that women can get really excited about.”

The marketing message is also different, says Julia Herz, home brewer and craft beer program director at the Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association.

“Historically, the mass-produced lagers have been marketed as a beverage targeting males in their mid to high 20s, and it seems to me in advertising that I see for craft beer that it’s really not marketed as a gender-specific beverage.”

It’s hard to put a number on the trend, but Morrison and others say they’ve personally seen more women take an interest in beer.

“It used to be at beer festivals, I was pretty much the only gal. Now it’s definitely venturing more toward 60-40” with women being the 40 percent, says Morrison, who has been involved in the craft beer scene for nearly 15 years.

On the business side, beer management remains predominantly male, though there have been changes there, too, says Irene Firmat, founder and CEO of Full Sail Brewing Co. in Hood River, Ore.

To support female brewers, a support network called the Pink Boots Society was formed. It includes a consumer tasting group organization, Barley’s Angels, that has chapters in the U.S., Canada, Australia and South America.

Being a female beer producer means standing out, says Rosemarie Certo, cofounder and owner of Dock Street Brewing Co. in West Philadelphia.

Certo’s interest in beer started when she began making beer at home because she wasn’t happy with what was available domestically at the time. She started Dock Street in 1985 and remembers in the early days going to make a sales pitch to a distributor and being the only woman in a room of more than 50. “I remember not being bothered by it,” she recalls.

She sees the craft segment as generally having a different approach to business. “I think it’s easier for women to enter the craft industry only because the craft industry is different to begin with,” she says, pointing out that most people don’t go into the labor-intensive craft beer business with dreams of piling up a fortune. “It’s an industry that is born from a lot of love.”

Firmat also started in beer about 25 years ago, a time when there were about 20 craft breweries nationwide compared to today’s 2,000. Back then, it was considered more outlandish to be challenging the big domestic producers than to be a woman in the beer business, she says.

As far as operating in a man’s world, she says, “the thing that I always focused on, and it’s what I always tell women in our company, is really focus on being competent. Focus on being good and doing your job and don’t go in expecting to get a reaction.”

And, of course, there’s always a silver lining. “You can always tell when you’re at a beer conference because there’s a line in the men’s room and there’s none in the women’s room,” she says with a laugh.

One of the things that Firmat sees as a challenge is keeping craft beer accessible to women, which means guarding against the snobbery that can creep in when consumers become very enthusiastic about a product — think wine.

“Our responsibility is making sure that the way we communicate is very respectful to men and women,” she says.

———

Online:

Pink Boots: http://pinkbootssociety.org/

Dock Street: http://www.dockstreetbeer.com/

Full Sail: http://www.fullsailbrewing.com/

Brewers Association: http://www.brewersassociation.org