Paula Deen

Uber-chef Thomas Keller takes on American comfort food, with 350 pages of lush photos and laborious recipes for classics like fried chicken and split pea soup - and trust us, Paula Deen it's not. Moosewood Restaurant dishes out another vegetarian cookbook, this time with less cheese, more whole grains, even more vegetables - and some very tasty recipes - in its charming no-frills design. And the Lee Brothers give us another gem: quick and easy Southern dishes updated from the long-simmered and the deep-fried, presented along with charming food memories from the South.

In the new Atlantic City, no longer is it sufficient to have merely a yen to roll some dice, eat some good grub and watch a name singer warble a dozen tunes. If Caesars vice president of marketing Erin Hansen has her way, visitors to Atlantic City will have a "lifestyle," too. "Tony Bennett has played here a long time and he will continue to come, which is wonderful," said Hansen. "But we want to attract people who never came to Atlantic City, people who never thought to come to Caesars before.

PORK PROCESSORS and ham handlers are mad at celebrity cook and Oprah fave, Paula Deen, who's quite the ham herself. After months spent tracking the drawling, cackling, butter-loving Food Network hostess at book signings and paid appearances across the country, the United Food and Commercial Workers union staged a rally Monday outside Deen's Savannah, Ga., restaurant, The Lady and Sons. The union has targeted Deen because of her endorsement deal with Smithfield Foods, the Virginia-based owner of the world's largest pork-processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. The union has fought with the company for more than a decade in attempts to unionize plant workers.

The notion of TV dinner - that is, cooking on television - began 44 years ago in Boston when a not-young, not-thin NBA-forward-of-a-woman with a warbling voice took to the airwaves revealing the pleasures of Gallic cuisine. The camera loved her immediately. Since Julia Child's The French Chef, cooking shows have proliferated but not necessarily progressed. Certainly there are more cameras, especially the all-important saucepan cam, and mediocre music (a ubiquitous Kenny G-like ragu)

Imagination and creativity in food as well as in decorations and costumes are key to the success of a Halloween bash. Consider succulent "eyeballs" of cherry-stuffed litchis as a stunning garnish for cocktails. Or add a wine-enriched red beet "blood" sauce to a harvest entree of roast chicken, sausage and root vegetables that is both tasty and colorful. Serve it on a "stake" if you're smitten with vampires. These and other eerie offerings are the tricks up celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse's sleeve on "Emeril Kicks Up Halloween," an episode of his Emeril Live series that was taped at Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary in July.