Good Press

Lest you think I ignored or neglected a big part of my heritage, here is my post about the 67th Annual Preston County Buckwheat Festival wrapping up in Kingwood. We almost didn't go this year -- things have been kind of up in the air since my mom's surgery. So we didn't enter any food or arts and crafts exhibits. We didn't see a parade. We didn't walk through the livestock exhibits. We didn't have family and friends over for our traditional buckwheat-cakes-and-sausage feed on the Sunday before the festival. My husband said he felt like it was too early this year but it always starts the last Thursday in September. Here, in photos, are the highlights of our festival traditions and some of the new things we did this year. May we be better prepared for next year's festival. We watched a lumberjack contest ... ... let Bella ride the carousel (for which we paid $3 -- yow) ... ... bought a chance on a handmade muzzleloader from a craftsman I wrote about, got some ...

Two years ago I roasted a pie pumpkin for the first time. This year I made one of the recipes again. It is aptly called "Dinner in a pumpkin" because you bake all the elements of the meal inside the gourd. The filling is similar to that of stuffed peppers. You can serve right from the pumpkin and it makes a lovely presentation as the shell turns a lovely dark burnt sienna color. When picking your pumpkin, steer clear of the big kind you carve jack-o'-lanterns from. You want smaller pie pumpkins from the produce section. If your pumpkin won't hold all the filling, bake it separately in a covered casserole dish. You can halve the ingredients listed here for 1 small pumpkin or bake it in two. Save the pumpkin seeds to roast and snack on ... a recipe for that follows and includes variations. DINNER IN A PUMPKIN 1 medium sugar (or pie) pumpkin 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef 1 onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 1 1/2 teaspoon sugar 1 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning 1 1/2 t...

Wow. Tonight's dinner was special and awesome. I consoled myself for missing tonight's firemen's parade at the 67th Annual Preston County Buckwheat Festival by making a fully-cooked-just-heat-and-eat glazed ham with from-scratch summer squash cornbread and sweet potato, dried cherry, Madras curry and bleu cheese dressing. (That's dressing as in a casserole-style side dish that can also be used to stuff turkeys and game hens, not salad dressing.) I'll get right to the recipes and photos. Yum! SQUASH CORN BREAD From Taste of Home's Simple & Delicious Sept./Oct. 2008 This recipe makes two -- one to eat now and one to freeze. If you're trying it for the first time, you can halve the ingredients make just one, as I did. I like that it packs in extra nutrition and uses up some summer squash. 5 medium yellow summer squash (about 2 pounds), chopped 2 packages (8 1/2 ounces each) cornbread/muffin mix, such as Jiffy 4 eggs, lightly beaten 2/3 cup 4 percent cottage...

For dinner I just finished a juicy hamburger with creamy mayo and a luscious, red, sweet-tart tomato I bought at the local farmers' market. A few weeks ago, my neighbor left a bag of softball-sized tomatoes on my porch. Two of them kept me in BLTs with mayo on toasted 12-grain bread for almost two weeks of lunches. The rest I chopped up for a panzanella salad. I wish I measured when I made this but I don't. It just has to "look right". I add olive oil and red wine vinegar, a little chopped red onion, chopped fresh garlic and a chiffonade of basil. This time, I chopped fresh tomatoes and seasoned them with a little salt and pepper. Usually I use canned tomatoes -- an excellent choice -- with their juice ready to soak into the bread, these tomatoes are canned at the peak of ripeness so they make this salad a hit all year. In fact, I have it in the spring before tomatoes are even coming on in local gardens. I get some sort of Italian, French or country bread -- whatever ...

Before Rachael Ray brought her cooking show spots to daytime TV on a network station, before the TV chefs became a celebrity phenomenon, the Taste of Home Cooking School's home economists and culinary specialists were taking their cooking shows on the road. They still are. One week from today I will be sitting in the audience at one in Morgantown, WV. One year ago I was onstage, helping make the show happen. Newspapers and other sponsors bring the shows to venues in their cities. This one happens to be in a concert theater at a university arts center. National food makers sponsor the shows too so their products get plugged in the recipe demonstrations. The home economists that present the shows travel a particular several-state region of the country. They come to town and an advance team of workers from the sponsoring newspaper help unpack their equipment, shop for ingredients and prep all the recipes they'll be presenting at that night's show. They chop, measure and sort s...

I love fall. I love the colors and decorating with them. But probably most of all because of all the yummy things I can make from the harvest: pies, fresh whole hog sausage patties, pumpkin waffles, and much more. They warm my house and my tummy and my spirits. I started early this year and in the next few weeks I hope to share a lot of recipes and photos. Here's a recipe for an apple pie I made a few weeks ago. I used apples of unknown lineage from the tree in the backyard. I usually use Granny Smiths but David's grandma baked from this tree all the time and I wanted to give them a try. You might think they look splotchy but you must realize that Americans eat with their eyes first. If it doesn't look pretty and perfect and unblemished we think it has spoiled or is otherwise inferior and inedible. Not true! These are apples that haven't been treated with pesticides and so they bear the marks of growing unprotected in nature. I hope to make apple butter with them before...

It's that time of year when a swarm descends upon my kitchen and bathrooms, so I thought it fitting to repost this really good tip. Gnats, fruit flies, call them what you will -- my former colleague Mark prefers "flavor fairies" -- flit within my line of vision seeking something sour: drying towels, anyone? 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.

I got this 12-cup silicone muffin "tin" for Christmas 2007 and hadn't played with it until recently. I was making zucchini bread and got the idea to scoop some of the batter into these molds. The result was adorable. Tonight, when I needed birthday cupcakes for a church meeting, I decided red velvet batter would make pretty cake flowers. Because I couldn't top them with the traditional cream cheese frosting (you wouldn't be able to tell what the flowers are), I mixed up a simple powdered sugar glaze and dribbled it over the cooled cakes. I displayed them on my Wilton cupcake stand. The flower silicone mold is by Pampered Chef. I don't buy (or ask for) all the kitschy tools but it's fun to have some little indulgences so I can do something special once in a while.

My fabulous foodie friend Katie e-mailed me a recipe for roasted peaches that she concocted. It sounded yummy, but I had no whole vanilla beans and I worried extract just wouldn't do it justice. I made it with a cinnamon stick instead. It was warm and spicy and quite good. Here's my way and her way: Cinnamon Roasted Peaches 6 peaches, sliced in half, stones removed 3-4 tablespoons melted butter 3-4 tablespoons cinnamon-infused honey 3-4 tablespoons brown sugar cinnamon stick vanilla ice cream Whisk together the butter, honey and brown sugar in a 13-by-9-inch glass baking dish. Add the cinnamon stick. Place peach halves in the mixture, turning to coat thoroughly, and resting cut side down. Bake at about 375 degrees for 25 minutes or so, checking for doneness. About every 8-10 minutes or so, remove the peaches from the oven and use a spoon to baste the peaches in the honey mixture. Roast until the peaches yield easily to a knife, but aren’t mushy, and the honey mixture is bubbly ...

I'm trying to encourage the women and men of my church to sign up to bring sweet treats on Sunday morning for the coffee bar instead of the same kind soul (not me) buying doughnuts or whatever every week. It hasn't quite caught on yet. But today was my Sunday to bring the treats and boy was I swamped with work, work-related traveling and helping my mom. Still, feeling like I needed to be a good example, I whipped up something I already had on hand. It is easy -- 20 minutes start to finish. In fact, it baked while I was in the shower. And I thought it was pretty yummy -- a couple of other people said so, too. Here is my fuss-free formula: 1 package of Jiffy corn muffin mix 1 egg 1/3 cup milk red raspberry jam Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a muffin tin that yields 24 mini muffins. Prepare the muffin mix according to package directions but scoop the batter into 24 minimuffin tins, Filling them half full. Drop a scant 1/4 teaspoon raspberry jam into the middle of the batt...

My family is fortunate that my husband’s grandfather planted eight blueberry bushes in his backyard. Now our front yard blends into it and our daughter often walks down and stands among the bushes picking and eating the fat blue-black berries till she’s full or bored. We don’t usually snack between meals but I don’t mind her grazing at the blueberry bushes. Sometimes she will take an 8-cup lidded Tupperware measuring cup by the handle and pick alongside her grandmother, bringing home berries that I stir into pancake or waffle batter. Recently she brought so many that I made a pie. This year, thanks to their daily picking, we beat the birds to the berries. I’m not a berry pie or cobbler baker or lover (I don’t like the little seeds in my teeth) but I recently made individual (think cupcake-sized) peach “cobblers” – really they were more like pies – for a church bake sale. There was a berry variation listed so I adapted this recipe when I made my full-size blueberry pie. Then our culinar...