Hasbro announced plans Monday to unveil a black and silver Easy-Bake Oven after meeting with the New Jersey teen who started a campaign asking the toy maker to offer the product in gender-neutral packaging.

McKenna Pope's Change.org petition earned more than 40,000 signatures and the support of celebrity chefs who backed her request to change the Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven's girl-centric pink and purple packaging to include boys, too. She also asked Hasbro offer the product in different "non-gender-specific" colors that appeal to boys and girls.

Hasbro said the black and silver design has been in development for 18 months and pointed out that the oven has been offered in a variety of colors since 1963, including teal, green, yellow, silver, blue and purple.

Read the full story - "Hasbro to unveil black and silver Easy-Bake Oven after teen's petition" - on CNN Living.

Curious foodstuffs have graced the formica tables of Atlanta's Gato Bizco diner this year. They're the kind of dishes you might not expect to see in a kitschy short-order neighborhood diner where the menu specialties include biscuits, sweet potato pancakes and huevos rancheros.

Equally unexpected was the rotating cast of internationally-renowned chefs who turned Gato Bizco into the best restaurant in Atlanta, two nights at a time, as they hosted the pop-up BATON Supper Series.
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The home of New Orleans's beloved Hubig's Pies was destroyed by a fire early Friday morning in a "total loss," according to the New Orleans Fire Department.

The five-alarm fire at the historic bakery began around 4:28 a.m. in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, CNN affiliate WWL-TV reported.

An employee noticed smoke coming out of the fryer room, where the fire is assumed to have started.
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A revolution has been brewing in the workplace among coffee drinkers unwilling to settle for the break room sludge.

For some of them, pod machines and single-serve cups provide the illusion of a superior product. Others swear by the French press method, which has traditionally reigned supreme as the alternative to automatic coffee makers.

Now, more hand-brewed coffees from devices like pour-overs and the Aeropress are popping up in home kitchens and cubicles alike. Even in the CNN.com break room, the buzz of a coffee grinder has become a regular morning fixture. But why the fuss?
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It was a few minutes before 11 a.m. and Bill Adams had two things on his mind: Brunswick stew and cracklin cornbread.

To satisfy his craving for meat stew and fried pig skin, this lifelong Georgia boy made the hour-long drive Tuesday from his home in Griffin to Harold’s Barbecue in south Atlanta. When he and his friends learned this was to be Harold’s last week in business, they made plans for a final pilgrimage.

“Just wanted to stop by for one last meal,” the longtime patron said as he waited in the restaurant’s dusty parking lot for doors to open. He wasn't alone; there were about a dozen others, including a pair of Georgia State Troopers.

“It’s inevitable. Everything changes. Nothing lasts forever,” he said. “We don’t like it but we can’t stop it.”
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When tragic crime struck two neighboring Atlanta businesses last week, leaving a shop owner dead and a community in shock, residents turned to food to raise spirits and help survivors.

The result was a crowd-sourced bake sale to benefit one of the affected businesses, Sugar Coated Radical, a self-described "libertine confection shop" that has earned national press for creating "honest" chocolate from organic, fairly traded and locally sourced raw materials.

The event, also known as a "cash mob," drew hundreds of well-wishers on Sunday who bought baked goods to help the business recoup money lost in a robbery. Other small businesses donated coffee for sale and a food truck from which to sell the surplus of baked goods prepared by Sugar Coated Radical. Volunteers staffed the cash register.
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No one enjoys listening to crying children while they're dining out, and parents are no exception.

Mindful parents - and there are many of them - know the drill when it comes to eating out with children. They stick to family friendly restaurants, know the signs of an oncoming outburst and won’t hesitate to scoop up their children at first wail. That is if they decide to take the kids out in the first place.

Those parents wish restaurants didn’t need to publicly state policies for dealing with unruly children or even ban them outright. They shudder when the media shines a spotlight on establishments that go that route; the controversy gives parents a bad name.

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Among friends, competitive eater  Suzanne "Suzilla" French is known for extreme behavior. Whatever she does, she does big, be it eating or drinking,  showing her love for country or pro-football.

She's the fourth-ranked competitive eater in the world - the kind of person who parties hard on Flag Day and decks her Facebook profile picture with the New Orleans Saints' logo. The last time I saw her, before she left Atlanta for her hometown of Houston, was in the back of a stretch limo that she'd rented for a mutual friend's birthday. I joined them after they'd spent the day at Medieval Times - a gorge-fest in its own right. Bottles of booze spilled forth as the car flew around town, making stops at bars where French knew everyone. I can't remember how it ended.

For its new extreme eating special, Discovery's Planet Green channel capitalized on her "girl-next-door consumes gargantuan portions of food" shtick. "Suzilla: The Mouth That Roars" follows the 28-year-old as she takes on men at least twice her size in eating competitions in some of the country's greasiest spoons and short-order eateries.

She took a few minutes out of her day job as a contract lawyer for an oilfield services company to talk about how she manages to not look like a competitive eater and the two kinds of food she refuses to eat.
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To help keep the peace with her in-laws during holidays, Julia Smith adopted a rule several years ago about talking politics: Don't do it, and don't take the bait if anyone starts in.

Her relationship with her father-in-law in particular had always been fraught with tension, said Smith, who asked that her name be changed to preserve family relations. She was the "screaming liberal from New York" who'd corrupted his Texas-bred son into moving to "Taxachusetts" and voting Democrat. As far as she was concerned, he was a good ol' boy who didn't like to talk politics as much as preach his views.

Her resolve was put to the test three years ago at Thanksgiving dinner, right after Barack Obama was elected president. She was picking at her turkey when, she says, her father-in-law suggested an act of violence toward Obama.

She attempted to keep cool by gathering her children and leaving the table. But then he repeated it at dessert.

Read – Etiquette 101: Talking politics over Thanksgiving dinner

Most of the honey sold in chain stores across the country doesn't meet international quality standards for the sweet stuff, according to a Food Safety News analysis released this week.

One of the nation's leading melissopalynologists analyzed more than 60 jugs, jars and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia for pollen content, Food Safety News said. He found that pollen was frequently filtered out of products labeled "honey."
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