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I bought a mess of kale. It was in the middle of butter-white flour-sugar season and I felt compelled to do something really healthy for myself and my family. I remembered having a spicy kale dish with peanut butter sauce two autumns ago at a potluck celebrating eating foods grown within 50 miles. Going against that principle, regretfully, I bought a 1-pound plastic bag of prewashed and chopped kale greens. Wouldn't you know, when I got home, I couldn't find my cookbook with the recipe in it? Searching for one like it, I found two recipes for other kinds of dishes that I tried this week and used up the kale. I say "I tried" when I should say "My husband made them." I've been sick with the respiratory crud that seems to have everyone down. No better time than to eat nutrient-rich leafy greens, and in hot soup, too! Thanks for picking up the slack, honey! A champion of local foods shared the recipes with the newspaper for which I used to work. Susan Sauter

It was not without good reason I neglected my food blog during the biggest food holidays of the year: I was wrapping my full-time commitments to my employer. Now that I am happily self-employed, I resolve to update more regularly. Here is the blog I have posted elsewhere concerning the major change I made at the end of 2007. The African impala can jump up to 10 feet in the air, but a wall only 3 feet tall is needed to keep it confined to a wildlife preserve. An impala won't jump when it can't see where its feet will land. I don't wanna be an impala. Those of you who know I have struggled to make a life-changing decision this fall are no doubt curious how it turned out. I resigned my full-time newspaper job effective Dec. 21. My reasons are personal, financial (specifically rising gasoline prices), spiritual and professional. I am guilty of getting into a comfortable rut, of having tunnelvision. But since this summer, I've grown up, and I've done a personal inventory

Tuesdays are dance class nights and my 4-year-old isn't the only one who has to shake a leg. We get home about 7:15 p.m. and I have to make dinner fast under the looming deadline of 8 o'clock bathtime. Soupbeans and cornbread have been in my repertoire of quick meals for years. But I've just found a way to make it even faster. Some folks might cook their own beans but I haven't tasted any better than Randall's Great Northern Beans in a jar. I use the cornbread recipe on the back of the Quaker corn meal box, but I bet Jiffy mix would work OK, too. The timesaver is in how you bake it. Use the waffle iron!!! I can't take credit for that tip -- I read it in Cook's Country magazine. But it works great in a couple of ways: it saves time and eliminates wasted leftovers. In the past, we've had lots of leftover cornbread that went to waste when the beans ran out. Baking the batter into waffles lets us easily freeze the extras and because of their shape and unifor

The first cake I remember decorating (other than just placing those hard formed sugar disks pressed into letters and shapes) was to celebrate my cousin's Special Olypics gold medal. Roberta competed in the International Games the first year they were held in South Bend, Ind., 1987 I believe. When she was due to visit to show her medal to our grandfather, I baked a cake mix and frosted it with canned icing. Then, using tubes of decorator gel, I drew a gymnast with long dark hair, arms raised in victory and a gold medal around her neck. I figure I wrote something on the cake, too, crooked no doubt, but I can't remember what. Fifteen years or so later, I would get the urge to create again. For one of my mother-in-law's birthdays I decorated a cake to look like a grill. Simple enough -- just draw evenly spaced lines of dark chocolate frosting crosswise on the cake; slide dried fruits such as apricots, pineapple chunks and prunes, a-HEM DRIED PLUMS, on bamboo skewers; and unwrap

Food Find: Philadelphia Cracker Spreads On a late-September shopping trip at the new -- and only -- Wal-mart in my county, I found Kraft's new Philadelphia Cracker Spreads. I chose Parmesan with Garlic & Herb. You see and taste real slivers of Parmesan in the soft cream cheese spread that's dotted with bits of herbs. Cracker Spreads are also available in Asiago and Parmesan, Feta & Spinach, Pepperjack & Jalapeno, and White Cheddar & Red Pepper. Suggested retail price is $2.49. They're good for snacking right from the tub but consider packing a few in a (refrigerated) lunch and definitely look for them at the holidays to easily upscale your hors d'oeuvres offerings at get-togethers.

Apples and sausage, to my mind, are autumn foods. So I was confused when I saw them in a Father's Day breakfast recipe for pancakes this summer. Despite the seasonal incongruity, I made them. My husband says he loves them and, because I reminded him of them when I asked his opinion just now, he's after me to make them again soon. He said they are filling and good on a cold day. Add maple syrup and finish the trifecta of fall flavors! SAUSAGE AND APPLE PANCAKES 2 medium sweet Italian turkey sausages (precooked), each cut into chunks 1 apple, peeled and cored 1 1/4 cups all-purpose or white whole-wheat flour 1 tablespoon sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoons salt 1 cup milk 1 egg 2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil cooking spray Place a heat-proof plate or platter in the oven. Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Place the sausages and apple in a food processor and pulse until coarsely ground. Transfer to a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Saute until the sausage

The tub of ready-to-eat cheesecake filling was intriguing and the urge to eat it a spoonful at a time, here and there, actually not that great. I bought it not because I planned to dump it all into a graham-cracker crumb crust and serve it -- it's obvious primary intended use. No, I was thinking about other things I could use it for. Inspired by Bob Evans or IHOP or another of those breakfast-all-day chains, my first application was stuffed french toast. This recipe is easy enough to make for Sunday breakfast and still get to church; it'll only look and taste like you made a big fuss. Plus it's a simple way to make an everyday day extraordinary. Take one day-old loaf of braided challah (Jewish egg bread...see side note below) and sliced it into pieces at least 1-inch thick. I probably had 8-10 slices. Beat 4 or 5 eggs in a glass pie plate with a splash of milk. Dip the bread slices one at a time in the egg batter and fry them on a hot nonstick griddle. To assemble the stuff

Sixty-five years ago, a volunteer fire department in the county where I live in West Virginia started holding a fundraising festival celebrating the area's agriculture -- a large part of which was the buckwheat that was harvested and milled into flour. Buckwheat is no longer the "insurance crop" farmers planted back then; a handful of farmers plant it now and a lot of the flour that is milled every fall for the festival starts out as buckwheat that's trucked in from a neighboring state. But a staple of the Preston County Buckwheat Festival remains: buckwheat cakes and fresh-ground whole-hog sausage dinners. Buckwheat cakes are pancakes (but don't call them that here -- the most my fellow Prestonians have ever let me get away with is "griddle cakes"). Buckwheat flour is flour but it's not from a grain; it's actually a fruit, from the rhubarb family. Doesn't taste like it though. At festival time there are lots of fund-raising dinners (plus peo

There are simple, inexpensive ways to make every day elegant and special. Candles are a must in my house. Sometimes just doing something different makes the house or the evening feel special. Use the good dishes on a tablecloth with real napkins. Float the blossom of a flower, even fake, in a wineglass of water. Light a couple of inexpensive candles and you've got instant ambience without spending extra money. Same goes for the food if you choose out-of-the-ordinary recipes that can be made with pantry staples. Weather conditions on Valentine's Day this year were blizzardlike so it was good we hadn't planned to go out. Instead we ate my favorite dinner [right now anyway], spaghetti aglio-olio. And I know I mixed cultures but because I had some Manchego to use up, I made a starter of julienned Granny Smith apples and the Spanish sheep's milk cheese. Chunks of mild, nutty/salty, "crunchy" Manchego are great topped with membrillo aka quince paste, too. I've

I haven't been feeling well lately. I'm not sure what's wrong exactly -- could be the heat or could be I've just been pushing myself too hard. I find few foods appealing and stick with bland, starchy, "safe" foods and peppermint or ginger tea. I feel up to cooking about every three days. On Friday I went to Panera Bread to get a bagel for lunch. I chose Asiago, Cinnamon Crunch and Blueberry to take home and got myself an Everything. I knew it was risky, dried onion and poppy seeds, but after not wanting anything to eat for so long, I gave into this craving. I suffered no adverse effects, but that's not my point. I slowly bit into the bagel and chewed the small bites well before swallowing, not daring to eat fast and shock my system. I noticed something for the first time. There are flakes of kosher salt on Panera's Everything bagels. Sometimes I was conscious of my tooth crunching down on one but more often I felt a salty "pop" on my tongue

Every year at this time the swarm descends upon my kitchen and bathrooms, even my office where a lot of my colleagues and I eat lunch at our desks. Gnats, fruit flies, call them what you will -- my colleague Mark prefers "flavor fairies" -- flit within my line of vision seeking something sour: drying towels, anyone? Last fall my friend Diane Hooie, a bright, well-traveled and adventurous cook, told me how to trap 'em. This really works: Pour a half inch of apple cider vinegar in a small glass and add two drops of dishwashing liquid. Mix well, sit it out and the flies will be drawn to the cup and gone forever. I misremembered her instructions and added water to the glass. It doesn't seem to affect the potion's desirability as dozens of gnats have perished in a watery grave.

It's cooler now in north-central West Virginia than this time last week when record-setting heat made my clothes feel like they were plastic shrink-wrapped to my body. This summer we discovered some low-calorie fruit slushes I make to keep cool. It's also a good and easy way to get in an extra serving of fruit. I'll be honest -- I use real sugar, cane sugar specifically, instead of Splenda. A little bit of natural sugar beats anything artificial, modified or engineered any day. Our favorites are the cherry limeade, peach and watermelon lemonade. I love that they're all made with frozen fruits so I don't have to buy and keep fresh fruit onhand worrying if it's going to spoil before we use it up. The most labor-intensive part is de-seeding the watermelon -- don't be fooled, there ARE seeds in seedless watermelon. But one watermelon, once de-seeded and chunked, has lasted me all summer in the freezer. Whipping up the drinks is so easy I can even let 4-year-old

A longhaul trucker named Melvin gave us his recipe for a refreshing lemonade drink. I dubbed it Melvinade, which left a bad taste in my husband's mouth. But the drink itself is pretty tasty -- an orange offsets the tart lemon and it's sweet but not syrupy. It quenches thirst and finishes light and clean -- no "drag" on the on the palate from too much acid or sugar ... at least the way we made it. We didn't follow Melvin's formula to the letter. All props to truckers 'cause they move America and my uncle [and Melvin's girlfriend's father in fact,] rest his soul, was a trucker -- but we think Melvin's ratios are a little out of whack. He said he puts the juice of three lemons and one orange and 1 1/2 cups of sugar in a two-quart pitcher and fills it with water. When we made it, to the citrus juice we added 3/4 cup of sugar and could probably have used even less. I measured the water exactly the first time we made it; the second time, my husband j