Spoon

Most infants are weaned from breast milk or formula to pureed baby foods. From there they go on to eat finger foods -- cut-up pieces of soft table foods -- and on to cheeseburgers and fries. Well, OK, maybe not all of them. A new study suggests that babies may develop healthier eating habits if the skip that pureed-food stage and go straight to finger foods. The study, published in the British Medical Journal on Monday, looked at 155 children ages 20 months to 6 years old. Their parents provided detailed information on the children's weaning style and food preferences.

That's not Mom nagging you to quit scarfing your meal so fast. It's your fork. Specifically, a “smart electronic” Hapifork, designed to vibrate in diners' hands when they chow too quickly. Florida-based creator Hapilabs has also made a similar spoon. Revealed at the CES showcase event “Unveiled” on Sunday, the tech-filled set of utensils are fitted with sensors that track how often they're placed inside someone's mouth. Too many lip trips in too short a time span -- say, three in a single minute -- causes the handle of the fork or spoon to gently pulsate.

President Obama got a rise out of Mitt Romney with the campaign-trail observation that "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. " Romney saw the remark (plausibly) as an attack on him and (not so plausibly, but ingeniously) as an attack on Romney's rags-to-Rambler father. "I'm certainly not going to apologize for my dad and his success in life ," Romney harrumphed. "He was born poor. He worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn't have a college degree, and one of the things he wanted to do was to provide for me and my brother and sisters.

Scooping up intriguing Martian soil and casting away suspect batches, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has finally shoved a tiny spoonful into its robot belly to analyze, scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Thursday. The Mars Science Laboratory rover has arrived at Glenelg Intrigue  - conceptually an area where three different types of terrain meet, said project scientist and Caltech geologist John Grotzinger. The information scientists glean about the rocks here will help them decide where to finally break out Curiosity's drill, he explained.

CLEVELAND - President Obama did not mention Mitt Romney by name when he campaigned here in Lorain County on Wednesday - but there was no question who he was referring to when he noted pointedly that he “wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth” and that he and his wife were given “a chance” by others. The line was part of Obama's argument as he campaigned at a community college in Elyria that the Republican budget would gut initiatives like job training programs that are aimed at getting unemployed Americans back to work.

Foodie word fashions spread fast. Almost overnight in the early 1980s, recipe writers all over the country started to use the word "drizzle." The rising new verb of the last two years is "spoon." Suddenly recipes are calling for "spooning" ingredients when before they might have referred to "topping" or "stuffing" ingredient A with ingredient B, "spreading" B on it, "moistening" it with B, "skimming" B from A or even just "garnishing."

A teaspoon is a teaspoon is a teaspoon … right? Not exactly, as researchers tested several household spoons used to give medicine, finding wide variations in capacity. The study took place in Attica, Greece, where 25 women allowed their teaspoons (71 total) and tablespoons (49 total) to be measured. A standard teaspoon measure is about 5 milliliters, and a tablespoon is about 14.9 milliliters. The teaspoons the researchers collected had capacities ranging from 2.5 ml to 7.3 ml. The volume of the various tablespoons ranged from 6.7 ml to 13.4 ml. Some homes had a variety of spoons with different volumes.

Spoon seems just a little mainstream radio play away from being this year's Modest Mouse, an overnight success more than a decade in the making. Or maybe the quartet from Austin, Texas, is just a "Garden State" soundtrack appearance or a spot on "The O.C." away from being this year's Shins or Death Cab for Cutie, an act stepping up the indie ladder to serious attention.

Melissa Hanna and Laurel Tincher think they've found their sweet spot. The two college-age entrepreneurs recently launched the Little Spoon dessert truck (Twitter: @weliketospoon). With more experience in publicity and event promotion than at a professional oven, the pair will leave the baking to others. Little Spoon has contracted with caterers to produce a rotating menu of brownies, cookies, bars, layer cakes, eclairs, tiramisu, creme brulee, (maybe) cupcakes and novelty items such as pumpkin brittle, macaroons and cookie bark (layers of toffee and chocolate drizzled on cookies)

I thought you might enjoy some history on the creation of the sauce spoon ["Sauce Spoon Sighting!" Aug. 24]. This fabulous sauce spoon was launched in 1950 in the Paris restaurant Lasserre. Its raison d'etre was very specific. It was created to transport delicious French sauce, usually from the fish course, from a flat plate to the diner's lips -- without the use of bread. In these times, I think we can call it the low-carb spoon! EVEMARIE EYDE National retail director for North America, Christofle

Oftentimes when people have problems with a recipe, it's because ingredients were measured incorrectly. That's particularly true with baking. Check out the video above for tips to help you measure more accurately. Use liquid measuring cups (generally clear glass) for liquid ingredients, and dry measures (generally metal or plastic) for dry. Honestly, I can't stress how important this is; nothing will throw a recipe off more quickly than measuring out your flour in a liquid measuring cup (you can end up with much more than is called for in the recipe)

There are two main families of persimmons and though they may share color and flavor, in the most important ways they couldn't be more different. Hachiya persimmons, the large acorn-shaped ones, need to be softened to an almost mousse-like texture before they are ready to eat. Approached too early, they are astringent and unpleasant, but when they are soft enough to spoon, they are luscious. Fuyu persimmons, which are small and squat, can be eaten crisp, and though their flavor will never be quite as unctuously sweet as a Hachiya, it is remarkably flexible.

At 34, playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes has a lot going for her: this year's Pulitzer Prize for drama, a piece of a Tony Award-winning musical ("In the Heights") and a growing repute as one of the most poetic, socially clued-in young voices in the American theater. Now what she really could use is a little West Coast love. The off-Broadway Second Stage theater company just announced that it will produce Hudes' Pulitzer-winning "Water by the Spoonful," which premiered in October at Hartford Stage.

"I am being sunk by a society that demands success when all I can offer is failure," says the ruined theater impresario Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' "The Producers. " Mitt Romney sees things differently. As he sees it, he is offering success to a society that seems to actually prefer failure. "If people think there's something wrong with being successful in America, then they'd better vote for the other guy, because I've been extraordinarily successful, and I want to use that success and that know-how to help the American people.

CLEVELAND - President Obama did not mention Mitt Romney by name when he campaigned here in Lorain County on Wednesday - but there was no question who he was referring to when he noted pointedly that he “wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth” and that he and his wife were given “a chance” by others. The line was part of Obama's argument as he campaigned at a community college in Elyria that the Republican budget would gut initiatives like job training programs that are aimed at getting unemployed Americans back to work.

President Obama got a rise out of Mitt Romney with the campaign-trail observation that "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. " Romney saw the remark (plausibly) as an attack on him and (not so plausibly, but ingeniously) as an attack on Romney's rags-to-Rambler father. "I'm certainly not going to apologize for my dad and his success in life ," Romney harrumphed. "He was born poor. He worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn't have a college degree, and one of the things he wanted to do was to provide for me and my brother and sisters.

Destination: Cocktail Rum and coconut water It doesn't have a fancy name, nor is it a fancy drink. But the rum and coconut water served chilled in a young Thai coconut at 213's Caña Rum Bar in downtown Los Angeles conjures the Caribbean with each stress-relieving sip. The drink comes with a long-handled spoon so you can scoop out the tender white coconut meat and chew on it as you drink. The result tastes a bit like alcohol-laced French toast with languid hints of slow-moving molasses and sun-soaked vanilla.

  Total time: 30 minutes, plus rising time for the dough Servings: 12 (Makes 3 dozen beignets) Note: Adapted from a recipe by chef Bryan Gilmore of the Creole Creamery in New Orleans, from "86 Recipes."

ELYRIA, Ohio -- President Obama invoked his working-class roots and the career success he enjoyed later as he pitched his vision of economic fairness in the key electoral battleground of state of Ohio. Obama, speaking Wednesday at Lorain County Community College in the Cleveland-area town of Elyria, touted his support for investment in job training programs that connect community colleges with unemployed workers, programs he warned the Republicans would "gut" under their budget blueprint.