5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Gail Dosik is THE tough cookie behind One Tough Cookie, Inc., her New York City-based business specializing in customized and hand-decorated cookies, cakes and cupcakes.  While each baked good speaks to each individual customer's personality and occasion, apparently cookies can say a lot more. According to Dosik:

Sending red roses to say ‘I love you’ to a certain someone? Well, that’s known as ‘floriography’, or the language of flowers. Popular in the Victorian era, flowers, and the way they were arranged, conveyed a message to those who received them. Be it passion or profit, gratitude or humility, a flower could say it all. Well, we can play the same game today, but with cookies. More unique than a cookie bouquet, more personal than jewelry, the gift of cookieography can be styled for any occasion and won’t soon be forgotten or tossed out.

Be warned: You may think twice about who gave you what type of Christmas cookie after reading.

Messages Various Cookies Send: Gail Dosik
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Editor’s note: This week, CNN Health's The Chart is taking a closer look at the most important health stories of 2010. Each day, they'll feature buzzwords and topics that came to the forefront over the past year.

According to an old adage, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But for egg eaters across the United States, breakfast briefly became potentially deadly.

In August, an outbreak of salmonella poisoning spurred a recall of more than 500 million eggs from producers across the country, and was eventually traced back to two sources – Wright County Egg Co. of Galt, Iowa, and Hillandale Farms of New Hampton, Iowa. Inspection reports released by the Food and Drug Administration indicated that neither company adhered to its salmonella prevention plans.

Further FDA investigations revealed conditions termed "stomach-churning" by food safety advocates at The Center for Science in the Public Interest. They included chicken manure in piles up to 8 feet high at Wright County and liquid manure leaking into a chicken house at Hillandale.

Read 2010 Year in Review: Food safety at The Chart and see all egg recall information on Eatocracy

Food in the Field gives a sneak peek into what CNN's team is eating, and the food culture they encounter as they travel the globe. Today's contributor Ed Henry is CNN's senior White House correspondent. He is based in CNN's Washington, D.C., bureau and is currently on assignment in Hawaii following President Obama as he vacations in his home state. His Twitter feed is making us incredibly jealous.

A reporter's gotta eat, right? When you're on the trail of a famously food-centric Commander in Chief, the culinary bar is set pretty high. Belly on up to Ed Henry's tantalizing tale of life on the road with the press corps' unofficial sommelier, a famous local restaurateur and a frustratingly skinny President.

Get an inside view of the goings-on of the First Family at The 1600 Report

We're highlighting local and regional bloggers we think you ought to know about. We can’t be everywhere at once, so we look to these passionate eaters, cooks and writers to keep us tapped into every facet of the food world. Consider this a way to get to know a blog’s taste buds, because, well, you should.

Meet today's featured bloggers and blog:
Who: Penny De Los Santos, of Appetite
Where: Austin, Texas
Twitter: @pennydelosantos
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"And to tell the truth, I was bored with restaurant criticism. At times I didn't give a damn if all the restaurants in Manhattan were shoved into the East River and perished. Had they all served nightingale tongues on toast and heavenly manna and mead, there is just so much that the tongue can savor, so much that the human body (and spirit) can accept, and then it resists. Toward the end of my days as restaurant critic, I found myself increasingly indulging in drink, the better to endure another evening of dining out. I had become a desperate man with a frustrating job to perform." - from 'A Feast Made for Laughter' by Craig Claiborne, New York Times Dining editor and restaurant critic, 1982

It's a rough gig, being a restaurant critic. Sure, you're dining on the paper's dime, but plenty of the food is lousy, disgruntled restaurateurs and fleet-footed bloggers are constantly trying to unmask you and a lot of people think you could just as easily be replaced by Yelp posters.
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Sink your teeth into today's top stories from around the globe.

• Turns out, 2011 really is all champagne wishes and caviar dreams. After a few years on tight party-planning budgets, consumers are ringing in the New Year with high-end spreads. - USA Today

• Making a case for boxed wines. - The Atlantic

• Pop the bubbly all year long! - Slate

• Much to the Keebler elves' chagrin, you can easily make crackers at home. - Sortachef

• After S. Irene Virbila's outing last week, Jonathan Gold takes on the anonymity issue of restaurant criticism. - LA Weekly

And you thought you had a rough time getting to the grocery store through a few inches of snow. CNN International reports that the traditional Inuit diet is being replaced by junk food because of climate change.

Barry Smit, a professor at the University of Guelph, Canada has spent five years researching how melting ice is making it difficult for Inuits to maintain their diet of seal, walrus, whale and polar bear, and causing many young people to turn to processed food. That's leading to levels of obesity and dental problems previously unseen when the native diet was centered around raw meat.

Read Inuit lives and diets change as ice shifts on CNN International and complete coverage on Earth's Frontiers

An English sparkler is popping up on American tables, while a Virgina vino is making inroads across the pond.

While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday and the most delicious finds on TV.

December 30 is National Bicarbonate of Soda Day.

Many of us know the alkaline salt as sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda. The chemical compound can be used in anything from putting out fires to antacids to bubbly beverages. For our purposes, however, we’ll focus on its food properties, which include leavening breads, cakes and cookies.

The New York Times offers an interesting take on cooking with our favorite alkali (it includes baking the baking soda and protective gloves). And, you know, if those cookies don’t turn out so well, you can always grab that fire extinguisher - also brought to you by sodium bicarbonate.

What's on TV?
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Pssst! Got a sec to chat?

We are utterly thrilled when readers want to hang out and talk – whether it's amongst themselves or in response to pieces we've posted. We want Eatocracy to be a cozy, spirited online home for those who find their way here.

Consider the daily Coffee klatsch post as your VIP lounge – the primary comments thread for readers who'd like to chat about topics not related to the articles we're running. That way, everyone knows where to find each other, and each post's comments section remains on topic.
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