Good Press

On Thanksgiving Day, some people watch the parade. Some watch football. Some play football. Some hunt. A common denominator is food, and serving something that stands for the bounty with which we are blessed. Either we raised it or we earned the money to purchase it. When we're serving the food, we want to please our loved ones -- we serve family recipes or, at least, family favorites. We're nourishing them and we're nurturing them. When my hunter went to the woods this morning, he had a belly full of hot oatmeal that tasted like apple pie -- his favorite dessert. He also carried pepperoni rolls , trail mix and apples. I've been working on this hot apple pie oatmeal recipe since September. I have it almost right. I'm using bits and pieces of other recipes I've found all over the web, trying one, keeping what I like, discarding what doesn't work. One thing that didn't work for me was using a full-size Crock-Pot. The oatmeal spreads out and cooks too...

I have waited a whole year to show you this cute idea for a place card on your Thanksgiving table! I found this idea online somewhere last year -- on Thanksgiving Day. It was super easy to pull off with things I had around the house. Take a brown paper lunch sack. Fill it about 2/3 full of popcorn -- I used kettle corn. Twist the top of the bag tightly. Make the frilly white paper "booties" for the end of the drumstick by folding a length of white cardstock or copy paper in half -- about 2 inches wide by 8 inches long. Use scissors to cut through the folded side -- don't cut all the way. Make cuts every 1/4 inch or so. Eyeball it. Roll the strip of slashed paper around the end of turkey leg and hot glue the end to secure it. I wrote each guest's name on the little paper bootie. Here's a close-up: Happy Thanksgiving!

In our school distr ict in West Virginia, public school students have no classes the en tire week of Thanksgiving. This is because the first day of rifle deer hu nting season is Monday of that week . This is a rural area. When I was child, we got Monday off, were supposed to go to school Tuesday and Wednesday, and got Th anksgiving Day and Black Frid ay off. Well, hu nters gonna hunt. So the distr ict allowed hunting students to take "education al leave", guarantee ing th em ex cused ab se nces for Tuesday and Wednesday. I don't know why or when the county s tarted giving students the whole week off. If you're looking for something your children can do while they're off from school before Thanksgiving, have them make place cards for the dinner table. I found this idea on line a few years ago -- probably from Family F un ma gazine. All you need is some white cardstock (colored would wo rk too), tempera or other washable p aint in a variety of colors and their ...

Our first holiday season in our new house, in 1999, I hosted Christmas Eve. My husband's family came over after the church service for hors d'oeuvres and desserts. I had planned extensively, but I was inexperienced. I can't remember the menu, just the toast points topped with cilantro mayonnaise and shrimp. I t needed to be assembled as soon as I got home from church before serving. I guess I took a little too long getting it out because David's grandma murmured "Next time I'm invited here, I'm bringing a peanut butter sand wich!" That was my first experience cooking with cilantro. I don't like cilantro. I won't tell you what I think cilantro tastes like because it's unappetizing, and you'll wo nder how I know what that tastes like . I can think of t hree t hings I will eat cilantro in : fresh-made salsa , the hummus on Pan era Bread's Mediterranean Veggie sandwich and this Potato and Shrimp Stew I just discovered.  Knowing t...

I am making this cheesecake for Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house this year. I found the recipe in a women's magazine several years ago and it has been a few years since I've made it. It is always a big hit -- with my husband and my co-workers. MARBLED PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE Crust:  1 cup chocolate cracker or cookie crumbs 2 Tablespoons sugar 2 Tablespoons butter or margarine, melted Filling:  3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips 3 8-ounce bricks reduced-fat cream cheese 1 cup sugar 1 Tablespoon cornstarch 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1 15-ounce can solid-pack pumpkin 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 1/8 teaspoon each ground cloves and nutmeg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 large eggs, plus whites from 2 large eggs Heat oven to 350. Lightly coat an 8-inch springform pan with nonstick cooking spray. Stir crumbs, sugar and butter in a small bowl until evenly moistened. Press over bottom of pan. Bake 8 minutes. Cool in pan on wire rack. Meanwhile, melt chocolate acc...

There are still almost 9,000 households in my county in West Virginia without power from the blizzard caused by Hurricane Sandy. Remarkably, there are people whose major concern, once their power was restored, turned to "When are we rescheduling trick-or-treating?" Really? Really. A woman I know decided to make her own fun. She and a friend called friends and relatives to see if they'll be home on Sunday afternoon. They plan to take their children, in costume, to visit select households. To chat and show off their costumes. If they get a little leftover Halloween candy, that's just bonus. An area church is planning indoor trick-or-treating. Volunteers will wait in the church classrooms to give out candy to children who go door-to-door through the hallways. This is the event we'll probably attend. These approaches remind me of my childhood. We lived so far down a holler in West Virginia that you couldn't see your next-door neighbor's house, let alon...

When Hurricane Sandy roared far inland Oct. 30-31 and stalled over West Virginia, mine was one of the 275,000 households robbed of electricity. Fortunately, we were only without power for 36 hours. There are still people in my community who have yet to get power restored. I was pretty well prepared for the storm as far as food. Here is one way we were resourceful: We baked frozen biscuit dough in a dutch oven on our stove top. I noticed that the package of frozen biscuits I had in the freezer were thawing. We have a gas stove with electric ignition. That means we could light the burners with a match or lighter. But we couldn't light the oven. Well, we COULD but once it reached temperature, it would shut off. So baking was out of the question. We put our cast-iron dutch oven on the stovetop, turned a pie pan upside down to hold the biscuits and turned on the flame. You don't want the biscuits or whatever you're baking to be in direct contact with the bottom of the dutc...