So you wanna be a Food Network star

Open auditions will be held Oct. 9 in Minneapolis for chefs and home cooks aspiring to the fourth season of "The Next Food Network Star." The eventual winner of various competitions wins their own Food Network series. The show seeks "people who have strong culinary knowledge and vibrant personalities who can pass along their passion for cooking to our viewers." The auditions will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Chambers Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Foodies should bring an application, photograph and résumé and/or bio to the auditions, which will allow them to meet with network casting directors. If you're less inclined to wing it, you have until Oct. 12 to send in a three-minute audition tape explaining why you should be Food Network's newest star. Applications and contest rules can be downloaded from www.FoodNetwork.com.

Calories on speed-dial

No more playing the innocent around that mocha latté. CalorieKing, the leading provider of food awareness tools for weight management, has launched the CalorieKing Mobile Web Site, www.calorieking.com/mobile/ The site allows anyone with an Internet-enabled mobile phone or smartphone to search, without charge, a 50,000-item food database for calories, carbohydrates, fat, protein info about generic, brand-name and fast-food items. Members of the CalorieKing Club, a subscription-based online weight management service, can also access their accounts with questions or directly log their food consumption using their mobile phones. For more details, go to www.calorieking.com.

KIM ODE

Back in print

Mr. Tidbit has an alias, and for almost 20 years it was Uncle Al. That would be Al Sicherman, who wrote the Tidbits column in Taste for about as long. When Al retired in March (his Tidbits column in Taste is a freelance effort now), readers mourned his absence from the features pages.

Well, no more. He's back, this time in a collection of humor columns that ran in the Star Tribune. "Uncle Al's Geezer Salad" (Syren Book Co., 305 pages, $14.95) includes more than 70 columns, with his musings on dogs, cars, trips to the hardware store, and, as he phrases it, "a whole lot of one man's decline into mental cottage cheese." That's about as close to the subject of food that his book gets. But no matter. Mr. Tidbit covers the rest.

LEE SVITAK DEAN

Clarification

Last week's paella recipe omitted a step: The chicken should be returned to the pan once the rice has been added.