Question on Food Production

[Mack the Knife]

forgive me if this is obvious but i've scoured the manual and the civilopedia and can't find an answer. ok, i'm in the city display and on the Food Production bar is says FOOD 5 per turn. there are two half stacks of food on the left side of the bar and three full stacks on the right side of the bar. first, why do i have half stacks and full stacks and second, why are they on the left and right side of the bar? an answer will restore my sanity! thanks!

oh, and would you know why i can't ALT TAB to minimize the game? thanks

[Nero Would]

The two stacks on the left with bites taken out of them are to show that your population is eating 2 units of food per turn. The three stacks on the right shows that you have three extra units of food per turn which will be used to grow your population.

At least in Win98, Alt-Esc minimizes the game, Alt-Tab brings up a list of other windows that you can switch to (but only if you already have other windows open).

[Sarxis]

You could also use the 'Windows key+D' to minimize the game.
This actually just brings up the desktop.

[Mack the Knife]

two stacks on the left with bites taken out of them

the hint i was missing was "bites" and for the life of me i would never have guessed that's what those were! . i thought i had tried alt+esc (atl+tab does not work, Win98SE). ctrl+esc brings up the taskbar which gets me to the Start menu so that's good enough i guess. i haven't tried the winkey+D but will! thanks much to both for your help...