Good Press

This recipe crossed my path at two holiday potlucks. It is yummy and seems easy to make. I also got a giggle at its name. WHITE TRASH SNACK MIX 3 1/2 cups Cheerios toasted oat cereal 3 cups Rice Chex 3 cups Corn Chex 16 ounces M&M's plain chocolate candy 2 1/2 cups salted mixed nuts 2 cups small pretzels 2 (11 ounce) packages white chocolate chips OR 1 (1 1/2 pound package almond bark) Dump the cereals, M&Ms, nuts & pretzels in a large bowl. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler. Melt very slowly, stirring occasionally, being careful not to burn the chocolate. Dump melted chocolate over the rest of the ingredients and fold over and over until you have well-coated hunks and chunks. Spread the whole mess out on parchment paper and set in a cool place until it sets up, then break it into pieces. Store in zip-top bags or air-tight containers. Variations abound and I've seen Golden Grahams cereal, ...

This recipe is the newest I have added to my Christmas candy repertoire. My friend Melanie, with whom I attend Taste of Home Cooking School shows, shared this recipe, which is her Aunt Jean’s. She said her aunt does it differently than she submitted it to me and I made it still differently than that. What I have written below is what I did and it was yummy. The combinations of the two chocolates and the almond bark coating makes the candy’s taste is more complex than just “chocolate-covered peanuts”. I’ve gotten swoons from the people I’ve shared it with so far. It is so easy to make because a Crock-Pot melts the chocolate. All you have to do is stir and drop the clusters onto waxed paper. PEANUT CLUSTERS 1 16-ounce jar salted dry roasted peanuts 1 16-ounce jar unsalted dry roasted peanuts 1 pound 8 ounces white almond bark, broken into chunks 4 ounces Baker’s white chocolate 12 ounces Baker’s German chocolate 12 ounces Toll House semisweet chocolate chips ( you could use milk chocola...

Scrapbook Expo posted this on their Facebook Wall. I'm sure they got it somewhere else. HOLIDAY EATING TIPS 1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the holiday spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls. 2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. It's rare... You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you think. It's Christmas! 3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat. 4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's...

The Waffle Hut in Flatwoods has a lot of characters. Yeah, that’s not a typo. We visited twice this fall when we stayed in Flatwoods for a conference. Our first impression was marked by a guy on the phone who sounded like an amateur lawyer. He sat at the lunch counter in the lobby area in front of a coffee cup and a newspaper that I would’ve assumed was a racing form if we hadn’t been hundreds of miles from a racetrack. “That is illegal. I’m telling you that is illegal. Now calm down. Calm down! Listen to me. The cops cannot touch you first. It is illegal for them to put their hands on her first. They cannot lay one finger on her. Now I said calm down!” It’s dim in the restaurant even when the sun is shining brightly outside. The dark wood paneling and booths suck up the light from yellowed lightshades of lamps resembling old gas lanterns on some walls and hanging from the exposed-beam vaulted ceiling in the main dining room. The wallpaper in the lobby I’m sure I’ve seen on my grandpar...

Most people think it’s called comfort food because it makes you feel warm and sleepy and comfortable when you eat it. That’s true. But I think comfort food is also food for which I have all of the ingredients at any given time and I can make easily on any day when I haven’t planned well. THAT is a comfort to me. My husband got this recipe from his landlady when he was in college in Charleston, WV. I had always made meat loaf with the recipe on the Quaker Oats canister. Once I tried this recipe, I never made meat loaf with oats again. This serves four polite people or two hungry ones. If you want leftovers for cold sandwiches, better double the ingredients and make two. I usually do. MISS BANKS'S MEAT LOAF 1 pound ground beef or venison 1 1 / 2 slices soft bread 1 / 2 cup milk 1 egg 2 tablespoons minced onion 1 / 2 teaspoon salt 1 / 8 teaspoon dry mustard 1 / 8 teaspoon celery salt 1 / 8 teaspoon garlic salt 1 1 / 2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce Preheat oven to 350. Tear bread and...

Sarah Jones of Sarah's Gourmet Cupboard, who also blogs at Leftover Makeover , was randomly selected today as the winner of the giveaway . Sarah will receive an apron from Just A Pinch Recipe Club ! Congratulations, Sarah, and thanks for joining the conversation at Good Press. Visit again soon!

Six inches of heavy, wet snow is forecast for my corner of West Virginia starting tomorrow morning. Maybe you're heading to the grocery store to stock up and you're wondering what warming comfort food you could make for dinner. When it snowed and stuck around last week, I made this divine and easy Crock-Pot meal: Creamed Chicken Over Biscuits. My business partner at Mountain Mamas Retreats , Shelley Miller, shared the recipe (aka Italian Crock-Pot Chicken) after a scrapbooking crop we held at our retreat house. There, we served it with an equally easy Brussels sprouts dish brought by a guest. The flavors of the main course and the side set each other off perfectly. We had more creamed chicken than we had biscuits so we served it over rice the second time. For dessert at the same meal I served vanilla ice cream with hot fudge cake (also made in a Crock-Pot). That recipe is from Taste of Home. You wouldn't think Italian salad dressing mix would be a key ingredient in this bu...

Has your chili got game? Are your cookies cause for celebration? There are national contests where you can prove your culinary skills. I've had a little success and a lot of experience entering local cooking contests. I have won blue ribbons at the Buckwheat Festival and at a small pie-baking contest at the school's fall festival for Blueberry Dream Pie and my mom's butterscotch pie. Almost four years ago I entered a chili cook-off. I think I had to make 8 gallons of chili and find ways to keep it hot while driving an hour and waiting to serve it. I took at least two electric roasters and a crock-pot. So did the 20 other competitors. All those current-suckers were too much for the mall's electrical system and breakers kept blowing. It's not an experience I have rushed to repeat. The most fun I had was dressing, with my little girl, like cowgirls and ringing dinner bells to draw attention. I'm more familiar with holding or judging food contests. Being asked to j...

Saturday night I was cleaning -- wild times, I know! -- and I felt snacky. I decided to make my favorite version of Chex Mix, which some people think of as a Christmastime treat. I eat it year-round. Especially since I found many variations on the original recipe. When I was a kid in the 80s, there was the original recipe of Worcestershire sauce, seasoning salt, garlic powder, onion powder and butter mixed and poured over Chex cereal, pretzels, peanuts and sometimes crackers or bagel chips. There was also a sweet version called puppy chow (maybe because Ralston Purina, which invented Chex and then sold all its brands to General Mills), which Chex also called Muddy Buddies. It was made with peanut butter and chocolate and powdered sugar. Besides that the only innovations I saw were GM packaging the cereal with a seasoning packet at the holidays and marketing bags of ready-made Chex Mix, which tastes nothing like homemade. Until I was an adult. In the late 90s/early 2000 when giving home...

When I was in my middle-school home economics class, we got recipe boxes. I was so excited to fill mine like my mom's and grandma's. When I started seriously cooking as an adult, it was obvious a box wasn't going to cut it. For a while, I printed recipes from the computer or tore out magazine pages and slipped the papers into page protectors and stored them in binders on a bookshelf in my kitchen. That worked to keep the recipes clean while cooking and all in one place. But I got busy (lazy) and started just stuffing recipes in there out of order or just keeping whole magazines. It wasn't very organized and more than once I bought the ingredients to make something and couldn't find the recipe! Frustrating! When I got really busy, I would stash the magazines I got from gift subscriptions in tote bags, boxes and shelves until I had a chance to read them. There might be something in there that I needed! Well, three people and two dogs live in this little house and thes...