Saying that five times fast led to a college student’s likeness in Darigold butter.

It took 110 pounds of butter, two days of carving and a 14-second, tongue-twisting video to make it happen. One lucky Seattle resident, Haley Alaji, was announced the grand-prize winner in Darigold’s “Better Butter” online contest, and as her prize, Darigold created an oversized butter bust carving of Alaji that will feature prominently on billboards throughout Puget Sound through December.

“It’s amazing to see myself in butter—the carving is so precise, and it actually looks just like me!” says Alaji, a theater student at the Cornish College of the Arts who lives in downtown Seattle and moved to the Northwest four months ago from Detroit. “I happened to come across Darigold’s contest asking people to submit videos of themselves saying ‘better butter better’ five times fast, and decided to go for it. I found a street performer playing the violin, set up my camera and shot a little spontaneous dance video, and the judges picked me!”

From a veritable vegetable harvest to liquid luxuries to 24/7 snacking, a noted trend-tracker is among the first to predict what will be hot on menus next year.

Courtesy of Culinary Visions^® Panel

Culinary Visions^® Panel collected insight from foodservice professionals, scoured more than 20 trade conferences and surveyed more than 3,000 consumer foodies to get their take on the foods and flavors most likely to captivate consumers this coming year. This year the conversation was about the cultural significance of food and the role consumers play as curators.

Curation has become the new art form practiced by opinion-leading chefs who are among the important cultural curators of our time. Consumers, who have been digitally enabled, have become enchanted with the idea of becoming the curators of their real or imagined lives. Following are highlights from the insight collected that includes both food-professional and consumer-foodie perspectives, and what it suggests for the coming year:

When teaching the development of successful children’s menus, emphasize to your students that all five human sensory perceptions (and an arguable sixth) must be put into play.

By Eric Stein, RD, MS, CCE

Getting kids to eat a nutritious meal doesn’t have to be a challenge. Just as there’s no one-size-fits-all learning style in the classroom, kids don’t respond to food stimuli the same way, either. Each child is born with a dominant sense that guides his or her food choices.

Appealing to the senses has a direct bearing on parents’ success getting kids to eat enough of the right foods. And while it is commonly perceived that we eat with our eyes first, aroma and sound also play vital roles in building hunger.

The following recipes are not only visually striking and flavorful, but also appeal to the senses of smell, touch (including texture and mouthfeel) and/or sound:

For millennia, specific ingredients indigenous to traditional sheep-growing regions have influenced the types of dishes made using lamb, and today, popular techniques cross global frontiers for many cuts to yield eminently flavorful and satisfying dishes.

By Priscilla Martel

Lamb is among the most common livestock consumed throughout the world, linked to feasts and religious observances. Christians, Jews and Muslims celebrate with lamb, an essential part of the cuisine on Easter, Passover and Ramadan. Lamb is symbolic of spring, sacrifice, fertility and it unites people around a table of delicious food. For centuries, in humble homes, on the street and in the finest restaurants this versatile meat has been grilled, seared, braised, roasted, stewed and served everywhere. The lore and tradition that surrounds the way lamb has been served around the globe is a source of inspiration for new ways to prepare it.

The “healthful” food label gets taken to new levels through nationwide cooperation, resulting in up-and-coming heirloom whole-grain breads and leafy breakfast salads and the well-established veggie-burger revolution.

A health-food renaissance is upon us, as the notion of “healthful” is being redefined nationwide, according to the recently released “The New Healthful: Culinary Trend Mapping Report” by market-research publisher Packaged Facts and San Francisco-based strategic food-and-beverage agency CCD Innovation.

As part of our country’s renewed emphasis on promoting good health comes the focus on the presence of beneficial nutrients and the use of inherently nutritious foods, as opposed to simply eliminating or avoiding certain ingredients that might negatively affect health when over-consumed. As discussed in the report, the New Healthful is also about growth of new distribution outlets, new places where healthful foods can be found. As these increase, the existence of healthful food-and-beverage options alongside more indulgent ones will become an everyday occurrence.