Meal

Do you want to fight global warming? Do you like eating worms? If so, two scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have an idea for you: Start substituting mealworms for the conventional animal proteins in your diet such as chicken, beef and dairy products. Writing in the journal PLoS ONE on Wednesday, Dennis Oonincx and Imke de Boer suggested that shifting global diets away from the usual livestock -- the cultivation of which use 70% of agricultural land and is responsible for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity -- and toward "lower impact animal species" might help.

We're deep into holiday territory now. The party invitations just keep coming, the Christmas Eve and New Year's menus, too. But for right now, here are a few interesting eating opportunities in the coming days: Michael Young, chef-owner of Ombra Ristorante in Studio City is marking the holidays with a special dinner celebrating baccalà , or salt cod. On Tuesday, he'll be presenting a four-course meal paired with wines from the...

Airport food in L.A. has been so bad for so long it's no longer brought up in polite society. Only at LAX could the 2010 arrival of Pink's hot dogs - and God love 'em, I know I do - have been welcomed like Moses coming down off the mountain. "It's like the smog: Why complain? Everybody knows," chef Mark Peel told me last week. Since we began having to schlep wretched little bags of food on the plane or starve, the smell of rancid oil and Flamin' Hot Cheetos has made the LAX experience unpleasant in all five senses.

It was a makeshift banquet hall on asphalt. Tables were decked with yellow and orange paper and an arrangement of dried flowers. Hundreds of volunteers scurried around, offering plates laden with turkey, ham, stuffing and gravy. Onstage, a band played a mix of jazz and funk. Thanksgiving at the Midnight Mission on skid row was underway. Volunteers were prepared to serve a free hot meal to about 4,000 people, many of them homeless, on a cordoned-off section of 6th Street. On hand was a staggering amount of food, including 4,000 pounds of turkey, 3,000 rolls, 700 pounds of candied yams, 400 pies and 15 gallons of gravy.

It is Thanksgiving morning. As you read this, the bird, a fine 16-pounder, is coming to room temperature on the counter. The green beans have been topped and tailed, and my fingertips smart from peeling smoking-hot chestnuts for the stuffing. I've reminded my mother-in-law that she needn't bring the cranberry sauce - my cranberries are chilling in the refrigerator next to the bottles of Alsatian Riesling. I still have to blanch the Brussels sprouts, whip the cream and peel a mountain of potatoes, but I am locked into the rhythm of the day. My knife work is clumsy, and my soufflés may occasionally fall, but I know how to do this meal.

The chef at Someone Cares Soup Kitchen is accustomed to preparing meals for hundreds of people using donated meat, vegetables and fruit. But on a recent afternoon in Costa Mesa, the chefs of Internet cooking sensation "Epic Meal Time" were raising a skeptical eyebrow. Among the "epic" meals added to the lunch menu: Fast Food Lasagna (whose main ingredient is 45 McDonald's cheeseburgers), the Angry French Canadian (an adaptation of the Quebec dish poutine, on this day made with French fries, bacon and cheddar cheese and topped with brown gravy and maple syrup)

Leaders of Los Angeles County's embattled child welfare system believe they have solved one of their most intractable problems - finding a place for some of the most troubled foster children to lay down their heads at night. For more than a decade, thousands of children - - unruly teenagers, premature infants and others - have spent uneasy nights in a high-rise building's waiting room, cramped together without sufficient beds or food while social workers struggle to find them a place in foster care.

During the recession, offering deals on meals was key to getting restaurant patrons through the door. These days, that may no longer be the case. Combo packages and value menus don't have the same allure for customers that they had in the downturn, according to research company NPD Group . Deal-driven traffic has declined over the last two years, while the number of consumers paying full price has increased 1% each year. Three years ago, the situation was reversed. Now, increased focus on healthful eating and premium options has retrained emphasis from dollar menu offerings to more upscale foods.

HOBOKEN, N.J. -- The Hoboken Elks club has served 800 to 1,000 hot meals since the storm, and it saw steady traffic Sunday as more people sought a warm meal and place to eat it. "It's getting better because the lights are coming on, but there's still not a lot of heat and hot water for people because there was flooding and the hot water heaters were trashed," said Eddie Madigan, 49, a cook at the Elks. "We anticipate more people coming out. " Madigan had no heat or hot water at his house, but that didn't seem to matter -- he had been volunteering at the Elks all week.

The chicken or the fish. Only a few years ago that was the only choice of reheated meals available when you flew first-class. But now airlines are tapping celebrity chefs such as Suzanne Goin at Singapore Airlines, Michelle Bernstein at Delta Airlines and Sam Choy at American Airlines to cook up the kind of meals you don't expect at 30,000 feet. And last week American announced that it was going a step further by letting first- and business-class passengers review and reserve their in-flight meal via the airline's website.