VRG outreach.

Nutrition Advisor Reed Mangels, PhD, RD, co-authored The Dietitian's Guide to Vegetarian Diets: Issues and Applications, 2nd edition, with Virginia Messina and Mark Messina. Published by Jones and Bartlett (<www.jbpub.com>), this textbook presents vital information on vegetarian nutritional needs and guidelines for treating all clients, including pregnant women, athletes, and diabetics. This edition takes into account new research, epidemiological studies, debates, and changes in the food market, as well as the different types of vegetarian diets.

VRG's Food Service Advisor Nancy Berkoff, RD, EdD, CCE, presented two seminars for the Los Angeles Area Food Bank. The first targeted the organization's providers and discussed how to prepare healthy (mostly vegetarian) meals for their clients at an All Charities Los Angeles Conference. The second was for Food Hunger and Awareness Day, when Nancy demonstrated how to prepare vegetarian meads and had 30 children living in shelters not only prepare the meal but also ear it! The menu, which had a Hawaiian theme, included pineapple and orange salad, ginger tofu skewers, and sesame-rice noodle salad.

In addition, Nancy did a Chef on Call, a quarterly feature that she writes for the Orange County Register, when she prepared a menu from a "mystery basket" (She doesn't know which ingredients the person has chosen.) in Newport Beach, California. She created a vegetarian Provencale feast with ratatouille (summer squash stew), rosemary and beaujolais grilled portobellos, endive and walnut salad, and chocolate-dipped dried fruit, including dried raspberries and starfruit. All the produce was donated by Frieda's.