Olympic fever specials

Unless you're Mia Farrow, it's highly likely that you've caught some Michael Phelps -- I mean, Olympic -- fever. So have some restaurants around town:

West at Hotel Angeleno is offering opening ceremony dishes for $8.88 such as "chicken javelin throws" (chicken skewers). The obsession with the number 8 continues: Boa Steakhouse is offering a four-course "Infinite Deal" menu (steaks and sides such as Caesar salad, garlic whipped potatoes and mac-n-cheese), for $88.08 per couple. The deal is available for 88 days.

Vinoteque is kicking off its Olympic-tied events with a special $8 menu during the opening ceremony, aired on its jumbo flat screen TVs. Other events include Sunday's "Dream Team" brunch in honor of the U.S. men's basketball team.

Darren's in Manhattan Beach is offering an Olympic menu with dishes that represent countries participating in the Games -- Spanish charcuterie and Manchego cheese (Spain); spicy ahi tartare over sweet rice cake (Japan); pan-seared frog legs (China); marinated shrimp and queso fresco (Peru)....  During happy hour (5 to 6:30 p.m. weekdays), these dishes are half-price. And unlike at the opening ceremony procession, there are no diplomatic problems about which country follows which.

West at Hotel Angeleno, 170 N. Church Lane, West Los Angeles, (310) 476-6411. Boa Steakhouse, 8462 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 650-8383. Vinoteque, 4437 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, (310) 482-3490. Darren's, 1141 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, (310) 802-1973.

-- Betty Hallock

Photo credit: Roslan Rahman / Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Potions: Cooking with kids

Ever since my kids were very small, they've loved to make potions.  They'd go out in the backyard and mix together jars of water and dirt, leaves and flower petals, like tiny medieval alchemists. With their discovery of Harry Potter, these experimentations reached a new level. The girls would pretend they were in Snape's potions class, stirring foaming vials of water, vinegar, food coloring, detergent and baking powder (this combo, at left, is what makes the bubbling lava in fake volcano projects) and then pretending to drink them and transform into fairies, cats, Slytherin boys. 

Recently, in an effort to combine this fun with the actual consumption of a healthy snack (and cut down on the amount of cooking supplies they transformed into brightly colored jars of polyjuice potion and veritaserum), we've been making edible potions. This past weekend, Isabel got out the blender and added the following potion ingredients: plain yogurt, strawberries, a banana, honey, hibiscus-flower tea. She blended it, then added a few secret ingredients, stirring and mumbling some incantations.  The seeds scraped from a vanilla bean. (Vanilla extract contains alcohol, so it was out.) A teaspoon of rosewater. Then she garnished the whole thing with fresh mint and a strawberry, for aesthetic rather than magical reasons.  Accio snack. No eye of newt required.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photos by Amy Scattergood

Games foodies play

Holidays mean lots of family time, and this year a couple of board games for food lovers are just the thing.

Modeled after Trivial Pursuit with some Pictionary thrown in, "What's Cooking" is moderately fun -- especially the "What's a Spatula?" category, in which you have to draw a kitchen tool specified on a card and your team has to guess what it is ("shrimp deveiner," "tea kettle"). The "Foodie First" category asks you to name as many items as you can in 30 seconds (traditional Mexican dishes, foods that begin with the letter O, etc.). "Melting Pot" wants to know in what country a particular dish originated; "Renowned Restaurants" asks where you find particular restaurants. Finally, the "What's Cookin'?" category lists ingredients, and you have to name the dish it makes. It's in this category that the game loses a bit of its "foodie" cred. To wit: "4 c. tart cherries, 1 1/2 c. granulated sugar, 4 Tbsp. cornstarch, 1/4 Tbsp. almond extract, 2 pre-made pie crusts, 1 1/2 Tbsp. butter" is the question; "Cherry pie" is the answer. Oh, please! Pre-made pie crusts? 4 tablespoons cornstarch? And what's with those weirdo abbreviations?

"Foodie Fight" blows "What's Cookin'?" out of the water. The questions, which are much sharper, are more fun for food geeks. For instance, a question that starts "What tiny songbird ... " separates the gastro-know-it-alls from the pikers. (The pikers have to wait to hear the rest of the question to attempt an answer; the know-it-alls will shout out "ortolan" right away.) There are smart food and wine pairing questions, real cooks' questions like "Which is the preferred cooking method for tougher cuts of meat -- dry-heat methods or moist-heat methods?"; and just plain silly stuff: "What did James Cagney smash into the face of actress Mae Clarke during a breakfast scene in the gangster film "The Public Enemy" (1931)?" (Again, serious types shouldn't need more than the first five words.)

So while "What's Cookin'?" would more likely appeal to your big extended family, "Foodie Fight" appeals to more dedicated foodists, with plenty of inside-baseball-type questions like "What sausage company founder writes award-winning, meat-focused cookbooks?" And the author, Joyce Lock, seems to have seriously good taste. Take the question whose answer is "Food blogs": "What are 'Gastropoda' and 'Chocolate and Zucchini'?" The latter, of course, is the popular blog that spawned a cookbook. And the former? It's the blog from Regina Schrambling, the Food section's New York correspondent. How cool is that?

"What's Cookin'?," $24.98 at amazon.com; "Foodie Fight," $18.95 at surlatable.com.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photo by Leslie Brenner