Cue the “Mission: Impossible” music.

“Your mission, Mr. Lendon, should you accept it, is to attend one of the world’s foremost sporting events and eat from the concessions all day for under $15.”

This is crazy, I say to myself. Can’t be done. For the 2011 Super Bowl, a single beer was $10, a soda $6.  At a regular season L.A. Dodgers game, a hot dog sets you back $5.

And this is Augusta National Golf Club, the best of the best for golf. Nevertheless, I set off on my mission.

Mission log follows.
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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.

Has a non-cookbook ever sent you scrambling kitchen-ward?

For legendary and James Beard award-winning chef Norman Van Aken, literature often beelines straight from his brain to his stomach.

He says of the delicious bond: "The strands of fate and history pull us in circles we may never fully comprehend, but they are there. And why I’m a chef is moved, most surely by all of the ‘levers’ moved by the pencils, pens and typewriters of these artists and many more."

Five Non-Cookbooks that Influenced My Cooking: Norman Van Aken

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Chocolate is one of life's greatest pleasures, but for the children working in slavery conditions in cacao fields across West Africa's Ivory Coast, the reality behind it is anything but sweet.

Some 70 to 75 percent of the world's cocoa beans are grown on small farms in West Africa, including the Ivory Coast, according to the World Cocoa Foundation and the International Cocoa Initiative. The CNN Freedom Project reports that in the Ivory Coast alone, there are an estimated 200,000 children working the fields, many against their will, to satisfy the world's hunger for chocolate.

The average American eats around 11 pounds of chocolate each year, and the weeks leading up to Easter show the second biggest United States sales spike of the year next to Halloween - 71 million pounds according to a 2009 Neilsen report. A recent press release from Kraft claims that worldwide, more consumers purchase chocolate during Easter than any other season.

So how does a chocolate lover ensure that the treats filling their family's Easter baskets are not supporting a life of slavery for a child half a world away?
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Sink your teeth into today's top stories from around the globe.

• With a vanilla shortage looming, summer's frozen treats could see a price hike. - Daily Mail

• James Bond will stealthily order beer in the next film. - Ad Age

• But if you are a fan of the Bond martini (vodka, shaken not stirred), you've been doing it wrong. - Michael Ruhlman

• In case brightly colored sugar isn't your thing, try marshmallow chicks au naturel. - Mother Nature Network

• E=mcDoughnut: The hole mathematics behind the perfect doughnut. - Huffington Post

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

This dish is worthy of a bleu ribbon - April 4 is National Chicken Cordon Bleu Day!

This glorious chicken creation has nothing to do with the oh-so-storied cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu (which means "blue ribbon"), but it is still worth celebrating, and enjoying to the fried hilt. And it gives you the excuse to say "bleu" in a nifty way, all day.
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