The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 65

Thursday, January 20, 2000 IN THIS SECTION COmiCS Pages 9, 10 Movie Times Page 7 Recipes Lost Found Page 3 Television Pages Send comments and tips through e-mail to: flavortampatrib.com MARY D. SCOURTES, Reporter, (813) 259-7635 CAROLE TARRANT, Team LeaderLeisure, (813) 259-7324 Flavor fax, (813) 259-7676 The Tampa Tribune I Wki SOL 1 I iic-f lis i 1 i I'll i a r-s i I. V'- s.f vLJtv in vj Hostess Leopards hit the spot This week I reached out for a package of Leopards, the new chocolate-chip snack cake from Hostess, available at supermarkets and finer corner convenience stores. No, these are not chocolate-chip Twinkies. They just happen to be made by the same company and have the same size, shape and vanilla-cream filling.

The only difference is Leopards have a dense, buttery yellow cake, and Twinkies have a light, airy, orange sponge cake. Here's the blueprint two tubular yellow cakes with soft chocolate chips and creamy filling. Total calories: 300. Fat grams: 10. Dietary fiber 0.

Manufacturer's suggested retail price: varies, but if usually around 79 cents. Leopards are the first new snack cake for children by Hostess since 1967, when Ding Dongs and Ho Hos joined Twinkies as a necessary part of every schoolkid's lunch. Leopards actually were introduced in September, but they're just now reaching most areas of the country. The reason: Hostess bakeries were waiting for a special machine that gently folds chocolate chips into the cake batter without smushing them into Hersheys syrup. although hostess insists Leopards are not spotted Twinkies, the company wouldn't mind a 'A- By MARY D.

SCOURTES of The Tampa Tribune Few people need a reason to eat steak. It satisfies our need for flavor and holds top rank on the fad high-protein diet V. TAMPA -Beef is back. Assailed for years for its cholesterol and fat content steak has won a dietary cult following of its own with the popular Atkins' high-protein and low-carbohydrate diet When it comes to flavor, no one disputes that steak delivers. "People love beef," says Vina Jean Banks, whom Florida named its 1999 Woman of the Year in Agriculture earlier this month.

Banks, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, has been around cattle all repeat of Twinkies' incredible success story. Twinkies were invented in 1930 by a Hostess bakery manager named Jimmy Dewar. He named them Twinkies after a billboard he saw in St Louis for Twinkle Toe shoes. Twinkies originally had a bananacream filling. Hostess switched 8 KEN HOFFMAN Drive-thru Gourmet her life.

She and her husband, Windy, own 75 to 80 brood cows in Balm. For 20 years, Banks has paid close attention to beef recipes as she helped out at many Florida Beef Cook-Offs. The cooking event is held every other year at the Florida State Fair. Her favorite steak is a medium-rare, juicy porterhouse hot off the coals with "plenty of juices flowing good and pink." For variety, she steps up the flavor of flank steak by mixing up a marinade of oil, See STEAK, Page 4 n'c Rf Association Photo from National salad that takes 15 minutes total preparation. Steak, Pear and Walnut Salad is a dinner to vanilla cream during World War II, when bananas were in short supply.

Kids liked the new Twinkies so much that Hostess stuck with vanilla. Today, kids gobble 500 million Twinkies a year, and Twinkies have become an icon of junk food. Why do I keep saying I eat more Twinkies and Ding Dongs now than I ever did when Mom was packing a school lunch for me. OK, so twinkies were named after a shoe company, Ho Hos for the sound of laughter and Leopards for their spots. But how did Ding Dongs get their name? After the doorbell heard at the beginning of Hostess commercials in the '60s.

More Ding Dongs trivia: When they were introduced in 1967, they were called Ding Dongs everywhere except the East Coast and in pockets of the South. There the package said King Dons or Big Wheels. Hostess quickly saw that a nation divided could not stand, and Americans were soon eating the same Ding Dongs from sea to shining sea. Leopards had a dingy beginning, too. When the idea for Leopards left the Hostess Research and Development lab, they were cupcakes with cookies crumbled into the batter.

Then the folks in marketing started tinkering with the concept Why not make it in the shape of Twinkies, they asked? And lose the crumbly cookies. Let's go with chocolate chips. Leopards are heavy-duty, twice as heavy as Twinkies. Leopards are significantly sweeter and mushier than Twinkies, too. You definitely need a glass of milk to wash down a Leopard.

Ken Hoffman is a Houston writer who takes a humorous and nutritional look at the offerings of fast-food chains. Unscrambling the regulation of eggs Americans each year. The cost to the nation, he says, is $150 million to $870 million. But one of Washington's most senior food safety advisers challenges the numbers. Peter Barton Hurt, a former chief counsel for the Food and Drug Administration, characterizes the statistical modeling that produces the food poisoning statistics as "the closest thing I can think of in this modern age to a Ouija board." Sir Hans Riemann, a Danish-born research professor of food safety and epidemiology at the University of California, Davis, describes himself as "very unhappy" at the president's report.

"It's very common for public agencies, when presented with some evidence, to respond that they have taken this and See EGGS, Page 2 By EMILY GREEN of the Los Angeles Times New government proposals designed to check salmonella poisoning could force routine pasteurization or irradiation of the American egg supply. However, the plans are derided as political window dressing by some of the nation's leading specialists in salmonella and eggs. They challenge the plans' assumptions, from characterization of the pathogen, to numbers of people supposedly sickened, to what should be done that could improve food safety. It is a classic standoff, with nothing less than the future of what we eat and how we eat it in the balance. Eggs, argues President Clinton, might kill hundreds and sicken as many as 300,000 1 With steaks this good, firing up the grill could become a weekend ritual.

The weekend forecast is sunny, clear and 82F. So fire up your backyard grill. It's time to put it to the ultimate test with a couple of tender Porterhouse steaks from Publix, where our beef is high quality USDA Choice. We'll even offer sizzling cooking tips and cut them however you like. 1 But on days like this, we strongly suggest going extra-thick.

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