AROUND HOME : The Daily Grind

PEPPER’S VERY POPULAR these days, and getting more so. As people increasingly shy away from salt, they turn to pepper to give their foods pizazz.

Suddenly trendy peppercorns have invaded restaurants. The word pepper seems to have a certain magic, and the word is written all over menus. Meat and fish come wrapped up in black pepper crusts. Breads are speckled with flecks of black pepper. Peppered salmon, peppered venison and peppered duck are becoming commonplace.

For the home cook, this is a welcome trend. Pepper, unlike many other super-chic foods, is not expensive, hard to find nor hard to handle. All it requires is a good pepper mill--and a lot of patience.

But now you need less patience. Automatic pepper mills have hit the market. They’re not as silly as they sound. Automatic mills such as Pepper Power can be operated with one hand. This one is large enough to hold a whole jar of peppercorns so you don’t have to constantly fill it up. And the design makes the hitherto annoying job of filling the mill remarkably easy. On top of that, Pepper Power grinds evenly and efficiently.

After all, if grinding pepper is going to be a daily chore, you might as well make it as easy as possible.

Pepper Power automatic pepper mill costs about $29.95 at Utensils, the Kitchen and Dining Store, in Los Angeles; Kitchen World in Santa Monica; Esprit de Cuisine in Pasadena; Cook’s Corner in Glendale; Cookin Stuff in La Habra and torrance, and Kitchen Kitchen in Palm Desert.