I know how much you 'hivers like a bargain, so here's the latest crop of cheap eats:

Pizza Fusion -- until 9 p.m. Sunday
Pizza Fusion has a deal for its e-mail club members until Sunday night. The details: Buy a regular or personal-sized pizza and get a second one free. (The second pizza has to cost the same, or less, than the one you buy. The offer is good for dine in, take out or delivery.)

Interested? Fill out a form at the restaurant or e-mail Pizza Fusion owner Mike Parisi at m.parisi@pizzafusion.com. If you're already part of the club, remember to print out the e-mail with the deal's details. Show it to the cashier or the delivery guy to get your free pizza.

Jamba Juice -- 2-5 p.m. Tuesday
Jamba Juice is giving away its new California flatbreads at participating stores for one afternoon. (Call ahead to make sure your store has 'em.)

There are four flavors. Three of them have really silly names: Tomo Artichoko, MediterranYum, Four Cheesy and Smokehouse Chicken. Warning: Some of the reviews of these breads have been pretty bad.

If you try one, feel free to leave your own review in the comments.

Wahoo's Fish Taco -- Nov. 21
All of Wahoo's locations are celebrating the chain's 21st anniversary by giving away free meals, gift cards, and more. Call the Fresno restaurant for more details.

The news of Pacific Seafood's upcoming closure has traveled far and fast, and some of you already have contacted me asking for the restaurant's recipes. In addition to the ones for house dressing and sauteed scallops, I also found the clam chowder in our archives.

Apologies for the delay in posting this; I've been tied up testing more Thanksgiving recipes for next week's food section.

Also please note that I have not tested the recipes below. They come straight from The Bee's archives.

Pacific Seafood's house dressing
Makes about 5 cups of dressing

1 cup wine vinegar
4 cups olive oil
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons dry mustard
1-1/2 teaspoons black pepper
2 tablespoons dry tarragon leaves
1 teaspoon salt

Blend the ingredients with a wire whisk until well blended.

This recipe was printed in The Bee on 8/7/1991.

If you haven't yet checked out the latest iteration of TasteFresno, please do. This web site aims to celebrate Fresno's diverse food, and it will succeed only if we submit sources for the best local eats.

My favorite idea is the community cookbook. TasteFresno is collecting requests for restaurant dishes from Fresno restaurants. Want to know the recipe for the fish tacos at the latest Guadalajara? Or the lomo saltado at Limón? TasteFresno just might get it for you.

As someone who collects recipes from local chefs for stories, I can tell you firsthand that the bulk of work will be in the editing and the cooking. (Case in point: This week's food section features The Vintage Press Restaurante's Thanksgiving recipes, which had me brushing melted butter on a turkey, drying sourdough croutons in the oven and straining pan drippings for gravy last week.)

So, good luck to the TasteFresno folks as they embark on this endeavor. Here's a recipe to get them (and you) started: the sweet potato fries that Roy Harland used to make at Harland's and Max's.

According to the latest restaurant rumor, The Chef's Table is about to shut down.

It's not true, says Mike Shirinian, who owns The Chef's Table and the Elbow Room in Fig Garden Village. Here's what is true: Executive chef Malachi Harland will leave The Chef's Table in 2010. Harland plans to spend some time cooking in Spain, Shirinian says.

That means fans of Harland's cooking should head to The Chef's Table soon for dinner or these events.

After Harland's departure, expect to see some changes at The Chef's Table. Shirinian is staying mum on the details until they're worked out. Stay tuned.

Above: Malachi Harland teaches a cooking class at The Chef's Table. Photo credit: Mark Crosse, The Fresno Bee

UPDATE: As promised in this week's food pages, here is the Valley's ultimate guide for the lazy Thanksgiving dinner. These supermarkets, hotels, restaurants and delis allow you to dine out -- or take out the entire meal.

Check out the story for the full list, then browse through the menus below. (I'll add more of them as they become available.) And if you have more places to add, drop them in the comments.

Supermarkets

• Whole Foods Market, Fig Garden Village


• Vons


• Save Mart


• The Market, Herndon and West avenues

With the arrival of National Pizza Month, it's time for us to share our favorite spots for pies or slices.

Are you a fan of Corsaro's in Kingsburg? Luna in Clovis? Mike's Pizzeria in Fresno? Or someplace else?

Tell us what you're eating and where. And watch out for these pizza-related events:

• Mike Oz has already told us about Me-N-Ed's pizza-eating contest at Victory Grill.


• Pizza Fusion is pairing pizza and New Belgium beers in a four-course dinner on Oct. 8. Here's the menu.

[photo source: zpizza]

If you're a beer lover, you'll want to check out my story for a list of fall festivals and events hosted by local brewers. They start this weekend with the Lindsay Brewfest and the Central Valley Craft Brewers' Oktoberfest.

As you well know, these aren't the only places to drink in the Valley. If you have a favorite beer-drinking spot, drop it in the comments -- and tell us what to order.

One place that should make that list is BC's Pizza & Beer in Clovis, where 22 beers are on tap, and about 80 others are in bottles.

Today is a good time to go there: In honor of Guinness' 250th anniversary, BC's is selling a commemorative pint glass filled with your choice of Guinness beers, and a T-shirt for $12. (Skip the T-shirt, and you'll pay $7 for the glass and the beer.)

Also ask BC about the current Oktoberfest special that lasts throughout October: $15 will buy you a T-shirt and a glass filled with your choice of 6-8 German beers. There also are a variety of glasses: a Pilsner glass, a half-liter stein and 20-ounce Oktoberfest glasses.

[photo credit: John Walker, The Fresno Bee]

Now that all of the weekend's food events are over, have any of you started on Restaurant Week Fresno?

We have until Oct. 9 to to try the three-course, fixed-price dinners at these restaurants. With prices at $13, $20 and $27, these are some pretty good deals.

It's a great idea, and I'm surprised our restaurants haven't done it before. Restaurant weeks are popular in many other cities, such as San Diego, Philadelphia, Austin, Palm Springs, Baltimore and Chicago.

New York started the trend. Back in 1992, New York restaurants offered three-course lunches for $19.92 during the Democratic National Convention. The meals were popular, and Restaurant Week took off.

As you try the different menus for Restaurant Week Fresno, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Do these menus excite you? Did you feel like the meal was appropriate, given the price? Did you find a dish you loved, or one you didn't care for? What about service and decor?

Hopefully, Restaurant Week Fresno will become an annual event. If you can think of anything that would make our Restaurant Week better, also share your suggestions below.

File this under British humor: Paul Crudden, a digital strategist in London, is invoicing companies for the time he spends waiting in their lines, shopping in their stores, eating their products and so on. (Check out a sample invoice here.)

And guess what? Some restaurants are paying up or giving him freebies. Pret A Manger paid him £62. Squat + Gobble sent this entertaining letter and a £5 customer loyalty card. He received £15 in vouchers from EAT. And £30 in vouchers from Little Chef.

Of course, he also gets rejections.

Do you want free sparkling wine, moussaka, German sausage and more? Here's your list:

MooLala -- Now through Saturday
This Swiss fondue restaurant at Shaw and Marks avenues is serving serving free glasses of sparkling wine to celebrate its one-year anniversary. Details are in my column.

Greek Fest -- Friday through Sunday
The 49th annual Greek Fest has returned to St. George Greek Orthodox Church. Here are the treats, the schedule and directions.

Famous Dave's -- Monday
To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Famous Dave's at Blackstone and El Paso avenues is giving a break to anyone named Dave, David, Davy and Davey. (Bring valid ID with you.)

If your first name fits the bill, you will receive a free entrée (maximum value of $15). If your middle name is Dave, David, Davy or Davey, you'll get an entrée for half price (maximum value of $7.50).

Also available are $3 pints of domestic beers and a Buck-A-Bone special: Buy an entree and add St. Louis-style ribs for $1 each. (Limit of six ribs per person).

Reedley's Taste of the Town -- Thursday
From 6:30-9 p.m., Reedley's 12th annual Taste of the Town will have German sausage, local wines and olive oil, verenika (dumplings filled with cottage cheese), Mexican seafood, California cuisine and more. The Reedley Downtown Association has more details, as well as videos of some featured restaurants and wineries.

UPDATE: Here are some more peaches at Craft.

ORIGINAL POST: By now, you know I like to track local food and see where it ends up.

So it's interesting to see how chefs are using David Mas Masumoto's Fay Elberta peaches. A bunch of them adopted his peach trees and harvested the fruit in Del Rey last weekend.

That means a lot of Fay Elbertas on the menu. Check it out:

• Michelle Polzine, the pastry chef of Range in San Francisco, talked about making peach cobbler, peach tarts, peach sorbet, peach ice cream, and peach-leaf panna cotta. Two of those dishes are on her online menu.
• Annie Miller, owner of Clementine in Los Angeles, said she was thinking of peach tartines, peach shortcake, and fruit salad. She also talked of a compound peach butter, made by mashing roasted peaches with honey and blending the mixture with butter. That butter, she says, goes well with biscuits.
• Jesse Ziff Cool of Flea Street Café in Menlo Park is serving grilled Masumoto peaches.
• Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski, former chefs of the (sadly) shuttered Rubicon, are cooking up a peach dinner tonight at Boulette's Larder in the San Francisco Ferry Building. Brioza was planning dishes such as a salad of duck (smoked over peach wood) and roasted peaches and barbecued lamb with peach glaze.
• And Eric Hyman, purchasing manager of Waterbar in San Francisco, says the restaurant is serving green salads with chèvre on toast and peaches. The bar is making virgin and spiked versions of peach lemonade.

UPDATE: In case you haven't seen today's paper, here's why I asked for your reaction to the calorie counts at chain restaurants. Thanks again for your help!

ORIGINAL POST: Remember Donald's astonishment at the calorie counts of Claim Jumper's dishes?

Well, it's been about a month and a half since some chain restaurants were required to supply nutritional information about their dishes.

No doubt, many of you have peeked at the info while dining out. So here are my questions to you:

1. Do you change what you order based on the information?


2. Do you split dishes, put half of your meal in a take-out box, skip dessert or order less food to keep your calorie intake down?


3. Do you say, "to hell with the nutrition police" and eat whatever you want?


4. Or do you have a different reaction?

Your input helps me on a story. Thanks in advance for playing!

Photo source: Claim Jumper

I just got back from vacation, and seeing that awful bacon tattoo reminded me to tell you about this:

That is how my husband kicked off our vacation.

My column today talks about proposed regulations that would affect Fresno's nightlife.

Read my column here, and check out the draft ordinance here.

I'm curious to know your take on the city's plan. Like I say in the column, I bet we would end up with more bars because they could open in zones that are currently off limits.

For me, the big question is about dancing. I think we could have fewer places to dance, at least in the short term. It would take time for restaurants to get the conditional-use permits needed for nightclub status.

But Arnoldo Rodriguez has a different take. Since more businesses would be able to stay open later under the new rules, he thinks more of them would become nightclubs.

I should note here that business owners' reactions have been mixed. On one hand, the new rules would be a lot simpler than the old ones. That means less red tape to go through when opening a business.

But the streamlined rules also mean that the city would have an easier time shutting down businesses that don't comply.

What do you think? As always, tell us in the comments.