I love to eat. More than sex or even money, food satisfies a primal human urge that goes beyond simply needed calories. All day I crave cheesy omelets, smoked ribs or simmering stews. To relax, I watch Guy Fieri eat corned beef on TV and read about restaurants in magazines like Saveur or Food and Wine. For me, a backyard-grilled hamburger isn t a meal but a pleasure center on point with alcohol or recreational drugs.

I m obviously not alone. America s national holiday is Thanksgiving, which celebrates not an exalted leader or mythical god but capitalist-prompted prosperity in a country where many poor suffer from obesity, not malnutrition.

This summer we highlighted PowerShares Dynamic Food & Beverage, a.k.a. the Food Fund, an exchange-traded fund that holds food-related companies such as General Mills, Sara Lee and Kraft. As the consumer has slowly crept back to life, many have rebounded sharply, including Tootsie Roll, Pepsico and Kellogg.

Smaller investors often complain they are at a disadvantage to the large, professional traders. Yet nowhere is that less true than when it comes to many outstanding small stocks that, simply by virtue of their size, bigger investors cannot consider. If you run a $3.5 billion portfolio, like the popular American Century Growth Fund then a stock like Tasty Baking Co., a firm with a $53 million market cap, is essentially off-limits.

They are almost like private equity investments, prone to large intra-day volatility, wide spreads and oftentimes sleepy trading. Yet when they move, they move. I can recall owning shares of Odwalla back in 2001 when Coke bought out the small-cap juice maker for a 124% premium to where shares had been previously trading.

While that s by no means a regular occurrence, three smaller food-related stocks could serve up delicious profits to intrepid investors willing to order off-the-menu.

Bridgford Food (BRID) 10 year

Bridgford Foods Corporation manufactures a wide variety of biscuits, sausage, deli meat and my personal favorite gas station beef jerky, selling to retailers, restaurants and other food service outlets. Even after a stunning 150% gain this year, the stock trades near the same levels as it did 10 years back and sports a market cap of less than $100 million dollars. This is one investment solely dependent on the controlling Bridgford family, which controls 75% of the stock.

Chiquita Brands (CQB) 5 years

Most Americans are familiar with Chiquita Brands International, which sources and distributes fresh produce ranging from lettuce to cauliflower to its signature bananas. Shares are up some 300% from March lows, yet the company s market cap still sits at a rather modest $850 million, and the stock trades not far off from its 2002 IPO.

Especially appealing is the company s Fresh Express division, which created the world s first ready-to-eat packaged garden salad sold at grocery stores back in 1989 and appears well-positioned to capitalize on trends toward more convenient meals at home. In the near term, the stock could also benefit from an end to the uncertainty over the World Trade Organization s long-running dispute over import tariffs on bananas.

Tasty Baking Co. (TSTY) 10 years
Charts source: BigCharts.com

Tasty Baking (TSTY), a Philadelphia baking staple that goes back to 1914, manufactures and sells cakes, pies, donuts, as well as the company s signature Kandy Kake, which provides nearly 50% of your recommended daily intake of saturated fat in one single serving. Last week the company reported Q3 net sales up nearly 2% from year-ago levels. The stock trades at nearly half the level it did in 2007 and sports a tiny market cap of just $53 million, making limit orders a must.

The Peso s Got Its Own Beat

Last week we wrote about the Mexican peso, one currency in which I ve recently allocated funds. One other often overlooked fact is that the peso s price action shows very little consistent correlation to the U.S. Dollar, The peso is influenced much more by commodity prices, domestic politics and investor appetite for emerging markets. At last read, the correlation on the dollar carry trade into the Mexican was -0.05, indicating a virtually independent relationship to the greenback.

The upshot is that the peso could potentially rise even amid a dollar rally based on the expectation that a stronger dollar benefits Mexico (the NAFTA Trade ), which sends nearly 80% of its exports to the United States.

Returns on Dollar Carry Into Mexican Peso Don't Consistantly Correlate

Bloomberg, Rosewood Research