Blaze a new trail

Enjoy Life Foods' Beach Bash Not Nuts! trail mix poses a question: With no nuts, no gluten, no allergens, no animal products - what, exactly, is in it? The mix ($3.69 for 6 ounces), a blend of sunflower kernels, pumpkin seeds, pineapple, cranberries, and apricots, still manages to be satisfying and crunchy while accessible to people with food allergies or celiac disease. Kernels and seeds add the salty nutlike backbone, cranberries the tang, and sweet dried pineapple the surprise element. Like all trail mixes, this is best eaten by the handful, and also like the others, thoroughly addictive. Available at Shaw's markets. - KASEY WICKMAN

With tricky questions like "How many creases should be visible in a tablecloth for a formal dinner?" the new "Foodie Fight: A Trivia Game for Serious Food Lovers" (Chronicle Books, $18.95) aims to test players' knowledge of everything from food's role in pop culture to the science of cooking. "Foodie Fight," which includes 1,000 questions, was developed by Iowa-based food consultant Joyce Lock, who did the game plan in a Boston University Masters in Gastronomy course. If you fill up your game board with correct answers, you've covered six empty plates on a charming little place mat. The game offers wild card questions: "What is served live to Officer Riker in the Klingon dining room in an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation?' " So you can know a lot about food and still not get the answers. By the way, one crease on that tablecloth, and "gagh," or serpent worms, to Riker. Available at major bookstores or go to chroniclebooks.com. - MONICA BOLAND

Political burgers at Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage are a 30-year institution, says Bill Bartley, whose father, Joe, founded the Harvard Square landmark 47 years ago. Bill remembers when Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter burgers were on the menu. Now they're named for Obama, both Clintons, McCain, and Romney. If a pol has staying power, so does the corresponding burger - Ted Kennedy has been on the menu for decades - and "there'd be an uprising if we tried to change it," says Bartley. The Hillary Clinton ($8.99), with sour cream and mushrooms (right), has been popular for more than a decade; no word from Bartley if that's soon to change. You could try and read into the Obama burger's recent popularity among young people, he says. "We move a lot of feta cheese through Obama," says Bartley. "Young people must really like feta." Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, 1246 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-354-6559, bartleysburgers .com. - LEIGH BELANGER