Stock photo.

I sometimes get so caught up in planning the protein for a meal that the side dishes become an afterthought. That doesn’t mean I skip the veggies and the starch, but I find myself falling back on the same easy ideas — sauteed spinach, roasted broccoli, rice, baked potatoes and other basics.

Sometimes it’s nice to plan an entire meal around the side dishes, which is why I love an old cookbook I’ve had for years called “Vegetables on the Side” by Sallie Y. Williams. I don’t even remember where I got this cookbook, but I love it because it is completely dedicated to vegetables from A to Z and the many ways they can be prepared. The recipes range from a vinegared cucumber salad to a pearl onion and raisin ragout.

Because the weather was so nice on Saturday, we decided to grill a steak. Hubby was in charge of that task, so I was able to devote my time to something fancier to go along with the steak. The result was a spinach and artichoke gratin adapted from Williams’ cookbook. I loved this dish so much that we ate it three nights in a row, and my husband will tell you that’s unusual for me.

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I asked Interlink Publishing, the publisher of “The Yogurt Cookbook,” for a couple of pictures to go along with my column on Wednesday. Since they didn’t have pictures of the recipes I wanted to share, I asked for two photos that would generally show the versatility of yogurt.

Well, you guys really got hungry when you saw the picture on the front page of the Extra section. A few readers have asked me what kind of soup that was and whether I can share the recipe. That was a photo of ash-e-jo, a barley soup made with legumes, vegetables and yogurt. Since it looks like spring is toying with us and we might get chilling weather again this weekend, this might be the perfect thing to whip up in the next few days.

I posted a second photo from the book on the blog and someone commented on how beautiful it was. It’s an orange salad made with yogurt called narinchi aghtsan. I previously reported that it was an orange salad called portakal salatasi, but I was mistaken.

I’m going to share both of those recipes here today. Hope you all enjoy!

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Carrie Forbes, originally of Botetourt County. Courtesy photo.

Carrie Forbes was raised in Botetourt County, where her mom and dad (retired Roanoke Times reporter Cody Lowe) instilled in her a love of good food. But she never knew how much she enjoyed cooking until she grew up and moved to North Carolina.

There, the James River High School graduate also decided to start a blog about her attempt to switch to a gluten-free diet, which eventually would relieve her of some miserable health problems. It happened that Forbes’ switch to the gluten-free lifestyle came as more and more Americans were making the same choice.

Forbes’ blog caught the attention of a publisher, who asked her to write a cookbook. “The Everything Gluten-Free Slow Cooker Cookbook” was released in October.

I asked Forbes to tell us more about her experience and share a couple of her favorite recipes.

To read the Q & A with Forbes, click here.

Click the links for these gluten-free slow cooker recipes:

Peruvian Roast Chicken with Red Potatoes

Blueberry Cobbler

Gallagher

About four years after she graduated from Virginia Tech, Krista Gallagher realized that she had many fond memories of college that included food — small wonder, as Tech now ranks as one of the top three schools in the nation for its culinary offerings.

“I had been reflecting a lot on how much I missed the food at Virginia Tech,” Gallagher said. “Not just the food, but it was the memories of how each dish connected with me.”

She associated the broccoli and cheese soup at West End Market on campus with rainy days and hangovers; the spicy wings at Sharkey’s with failing a cholesterol test for a class assignment; and the grilled cheese at Top of the Stairs with the place she met her future husband.

When she didn’t find any cookbooks dedicated to the food in Blacksburg, Gallagher decided to put her love of cooking into a book. Five years later, the working wife and mother found her project stuck on pause, and that’s when her college sorority sister, Kris Schoels, came back into her life.

Schoels

“There was a day when she did a blog post about following your dreams and how sometimes it can be very scary risking failure,” Gallagher said. “I was just finding it very difficult to finish [the book] given the time constraints I had. I looked at my husband and I said, ‘I feel like I know what I am supposed to do. I need to invite Kris to help me with this.’ She wrote me back in just a matter of minutes, being thrilled that I had asked it of her.”

Schoels, who does lifestyle segments for television, is also an amateur photographer and runs the blog Young Married Chic from her New York residence. She was a perfect fit.

“Right as Krista contacted me, I was telling my husband ‘I really owe it to myself to pursue a cookbook.’ I think it took me about five seconds” to decide, Schoels said.

Their partnership has resulted in the recently released “A Taste of Virginia Tech,” a beautiful, hardback cookbook filled with recipes from the university’s various dining halls and Blacksburg restaurants.

To continue reading this column, click here.

Click the links to see recipes for:

West End Market’s Cajun Cream Pasta Sauce

Gillie’s Banana Walnut French Toast

Photos courtesy of Laura’s Focus Photography

Nannie Figgat, the keeper of one of the cookbooks. Courtesy photo.

Mary Martha Godwin of Fincastle and her daughter, Nannie Figgat, collected recipes from family, friends and newspapers. This is no different from the way most of us operate, except Godwin and Figgat lived more than 150 years ago.

Their manuscript cookbooks are part of a larger collection of fascinating old documents purchased by Virginia Tech in 2000. In this past Sunday’s Extra, we shared what Figgat’s diary and family correspondence revealed about her life.

But the recipe books are just as interesting to researchers Gail McMillan and Jean Robbins. McMillan, director of digital archives at Virginia Tech, transcribed as many of the recipes as possible. It was a difficult task because some of the writing is so faded, and some pages are stained or torn.

Robbins, a retired dietitian and founding member of the university’s Peacock-Harper Culinary History Friends committee, studied the recipes in an effort to fill in the gaps. To unlock the hidden words, she referenced cookbooks from the same period, such as Mary Randolph’s 1824 “The Virginia House-Wife,”one of the earliest known American cookbooks.

As a result of their work, we are able to peek inside the household of a 19th-century Fincastle family.

To continue reading this column, click here.

If you missed Sunday’s story about Nannie’s life, click here.

Here are a few of the recipes from Mary Martha Godwin’s manuscript cookbook. What do you think of these?

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The Roanoke Times will have a booth at Dickens of a Christmas in downtown Roanoke tonight, where we’ll be sharing some tasty samples (first come, first served!) and selling copies of our 150th anniversary cookbook, “Flavors of Home.”

Our table will be located in the parking lot area of the market near farmer Mark Woods.

Here are some of the amazing local recipes you’ll find in the cookbook, which benefits Roanoke Area Ministries: Liberty Station cheese sticks, Elsie Wertz’s potato salad, Hotel Roanoke Brunswick Stew, Angler’s Cafe chicken Senegalese stew, Nair family Thanksgiving stuffing, Zorba’s falafel, Miller & Rhoads’ Missouri club sandwich, Angler’s Italian cream cake, and Thelma’s meatloaf sauce. The book is a great gift for anybody who loves to cook and wants some Roanoke flavor! It makes a great teacher gift, too, for just $15 per copy plus tax.

If you cannot get to Dickens tonight but are interested in buying a cookbook, here is a link to the online order form.

Here is a link to an earlier article about Dickens of a Christmas with details about the event. In addition to these Friday night activities, the “Shop Differently” campaign means that many downtown shops are open for extended hours on Thursday nights until 9 p.m. this season. After 4 p.m. on Thursdays, the city is offering free garage parking. Here is a list of participating merchants: http://www.downtownroanoke.org/.

Have a great weekend!

I am excited to announce that “Flavors of Home,” The Roanoke Times 125th Anniversary cookbook to benefit the Good Neighbors Fund, is here!  This book is packed with great recipes from our archives, local restaurants and members of the community, and it is sprinkled with History Highlights from our archives.

“Flavors of Home” makes a great gift for any cook on your list. It is also a wonderful gift for teachers!

You may place your order using our online order form. The order form may be accessed on your Internet browser at the following address: https://secure.roanoke.com/cookbook/default.aspx.

The books cost $15 each plus sales tax. If you would like to have your order shipped to you by FedEx, the shipping fee is $5 for the first book and $1 for each additional book. Supplies are limited. All sales are final.

You will also see options on the online order form for picking up the book in person at the FedEx Office Print & Ship Center at Towers Mall in Roanoke OR on North Franklin Street in Christiansburg (no shipping fees). With this option, all you need to do is place your order, print out your receipt and take it, along with identification, to the store of your choice ON THE FOLLOWING BUSINESS DAY.

And — as a final purchasing option — we’ll be set up at the 23rd Annual Stocked Market at the Roanoke Civic Center on Saturday, Nov. 12 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. So if you plan to be there or if you’d like to stop by and purchase a book (no shipping fees) please come and see us. If you are a blog reader and you see me there, please introduce yourself! I would love to meet you!

I hope you and your family and friends will enjoy the recipes in this book for many years to come. And I thank you for helping us to support families in need during these difficult economic times.

If you have any questions, you may email cookbook@roanoke.com.

Uncrate.com

Today is one of those days when I need to clean out the “refrigerator” and offer a bunch of leftovers for consumption. But like a lot of actual leftovers, some of this food news is pretty darn good.

New addition: Oktoberfest beer tasting at Wine Gourmet
Wine Gourmet, located at 3524 Electric Road, Roanoke (Promenade Park), is hosting a special beer tasting this Friday, Sept. 30, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Aaron Layman, the beer buyer for Wine Gourmet, said local distributors will be on site sampling out more than 10 German beers and craft beers. Brats and beer bread will also be available, and it’s all FREE!
If you have any questions, you can contact the shop at 400-8466.

Local boy does well
A Roanoke native, Daniel Mowles, works as executive chef at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York, NY. According to his uncle, Roanoke resident Jeff Fletcher, “Daniel was born and reared in Roanoke and is now in NYC by way of the Cordon Bleu in London with stops in Roanoke at Metro! and in Miami Beach along the way.”
Fletcher sent me an email with a link to a recent New York Times article about a special dinner prepared by Mowles and featuring Civil War-era foods. Check out the article here.

Chocolate contest winners to go to state fair
Three locals who won the Everybody Loves Chocolate contest at the Salem Fair will now advance to the Virginia State Fair level of competition. The Everybody Loves Chocolate contest is sponsored by the Virginia Egg Council. The state competition is Oct. 1. The local winners and their concoctions are:
* Kerrington Dowdy, Salem — Chocolate Lover’s Favorite Cake
* Catherine Wortman, Bedford — Chocolate Sour Cream Pound Cake
* Kaileigh Dowdy, Salem — Really Rocky Road Brownies
Kerrington and Kaileigh Dowdy appear to be related. I will update you on how they do at the state fair and work on getting those recipes. Good luck, folks!

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This blog entry is jam-packed with upcoming food and beverage events, so click on “Read more” for details about:

* the release of New Belgium Brewing Company beers at local retailers
* a birthday bash at Mr. Bill’s Wine Cellar
* free tastings at Vintage Cellar
* the end of a local food retail service
* a murder mystery dinner at Hotel Roanoke
* a three sisters (corn, beans and squash) with buffalo dinner at Local Roots
* some local poultry options this fall
and
* a cookbook to benefit the Women’s Resource Center of the New River Valley

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On Wednesday, June 8, we ran a wire story in the Extra section about variations on banana bread. The article mentioned a banana black cake, and though we had three recipes with the article, we did not have space to run the banana black cake recipe.

Reader Betty wrote in and asked if I could dig up the recipe for this cake, which included seedless blackberry jam, raisins and dates. YUM! I found it and thought I’d share it for anybody else who might be interested. The recipe comes from “Maida Heatter’s Cakes” by none other than Maida Heatter, who has been dubbed “The Queen of Cakes” by Saveur magazine. Enjoy!

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Those of us who didn’t plant their lettuce and spinach under a faulty gutter, who have not come outside TWICE this year after bad storms only to find their baby greens flattened into the rocky, exposed soil of what was supposed to be a raised garden bed, are now enjoying the vegetables of their labor.

Some folks, including my friend Sarah, even have so much lettuce they are handing out bags of it to their friends. My own failure aside, this is great news. Because while we can buy lettuce at the store year-round, it’s been pretty puny and sad-looking for a while now. And nothing beats homegrown veggies! Nothing!

This time of year, I always start thinking about making my own salad dressings to go with fresh salads for supper. It’s something my father and I always used to do together when his garden was popping. Vinaigrettes are particularly easy, especially once you have a well-stocked pantry with several different oils and vinegars to choose from. Other basic ingredients that are always helpful for making salad dressings are honey, brown sugar, Dijon mustard, garlic, fresh herbs and lemon or lime juice.

Many vinaigrettes can be made easily in a cleaned, empty jelly jar. You can add all the ingredients, screw on the lid and shake vigorously. It’s easier and less messy than using a whisk and a bowl, and if you have leftover dressing, you can just store it in the fridge in your little jar. This is something fun to do with your little budding chefs. Let them dip a leaf into the dressing after shaking and ask them if it needs anything else. It’ll help them understand the balance of sweet, salty and sour.

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Do you ever read a recipe and wonder why it even needs to be written out so explicitly? I mean, some recipes look more like common sense than actual recipes.

I came across one recently while hunting for a new side dish to fix for an early Mother’s Day supper with my lovely mom. The recipe, called summer vegetable bake, came from a cookbook called “Vegetables on the Side” by Sallie Y. Williams (which I highly recommend).

It called for potatoes, zucchini, onions and tomatoes cut into chunks, tossed with olive oil, fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, salt and pepper and then roasted in the oven. I skipped the tomatoes because they aren’t in season and instead got a couple handfuls of fresh green beans. I chose red potatoes, picked some rosemary and thyme from my herb garden, and added a few cloves of garlic to the mix. Voila! It was a huge hit, and it was so easy it was almost ridiculous.

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Jessie Knadler (Courtesy photo)

If someone had told Jessie Knadler 10 years ago that she should move to the country and co-author a canning cookbook, she probably would have slowly backed away from this obviously insane person.

After all, she’d lived for years in New York City, working for magazines such as Glamour and Cosmopolitan and writing about subjects such as fashion and dating and the eight worst things a girl could say to her boyfriend.

But then she was assigned to cover a Montana rodeo, where she laid eyes on a bull-riding, cowboying VMI graduate named Jake Wilson.

When they decided to make a home together, they compromised on Rockbridge County because, as she put it on her blog, it was “the closest place where I could retain ties to East Coast civilization and he could wear a cowboy hat without being mistaken for one of the Village People.”

Acclimating to this new pace of life on 8 acres outside of Lexington has been agonizingly hard, Knadler said, and still is. The 38-year-old has coped by chronicling the culture shock on her sassy blog, rurallyscrewed.com, and by immersing herself in gardening and the local food movement.

The day she decided to learn how to can, she had picked 54 cucumbers from her garden and hauled them, in a wheelbarrow, up the hill to the house.

“I remember looking at this mountain of cucumbers and wondering, what am I going to do with all this?” she said. “I went on a pickle-making bender. I made about 10 different kinds of pickles. And it was really fun; it was like tapping into this side of myself I never had explored.”

Continue reading about Jessie’s new canning cookbook, “Tart and Sweet,” by clicking here.

For a recipe for Blueberry Lemongrass Syrup, click here.

For a recipe for Pickled Fiddleheads, click here.

I’ve been hanging on to this book for months, waiting for the perfect opportunity to spring it on you all. Actually, I let my co-worker borrow it and just now made him dig it out from under a pile of papers on his desk. This seemed like a really good time to unearth it.

It’s “Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s Recipe for Raising Chickens” by none other than Minnie Rose herself (edited by Nancy Rekow and Chaya Siegelbaum). When I first saw the author’s quote on the cover, “The main thing is to keep them happy,” I knew this was going to be good.

According to the summary, Minnie Rose was born in 1888 in Norfolk County, England to a mother who ended up bearing a total of 19 children. Minnie Rose narrowly missed becoming a passenger on the Titanic and eventually ended up in Bainbridge Island, Washington, got married and helped her husband build a dairy farm. They ran it for 30 years, and she got to know a lot about chickens by raising them herself.

Minnie Rose died in July of 1975, God rest her soul. But not before knowing her book was a success. I hope she knows now that a third edition was recently published.

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It’s too late. I’ve started.

One would think after devoting an entire column to grilled cheese sandwiches some time ago, I wouldn’t have anything else to say about it. One would be wrong. Also, one would have to factor in the release of a new cookbook by Laura Werlin called “Grilled cheese, please.”

When this landed on my desk this week, I had to struggle to focus on the zillion items on my to-do list, none of which had anything to do with sitting, hunched, over this book and ruining its pages with drool. Also, I thought I might have to arm wrestle my colleague, book page editor Nona Nelson, for ownership of this book. I commend her for bringing it back to the Features department. She could easily have secreted it away and I would have been none the wiser.

Now it’s MINE ALL MINE.

I have a split grilled cheese personality. One part says it’s sacrilege to dress up a grilled cheese. For goodness sake, it contains three of the most amazing foods on earth – bread, butter and cheese. Why gild the lily? But the other part wants to look at it like a pizza, with the basic cheese version being both delicious on its own AND a foundation for gobs of amazing creations.

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I met Cynthia Bertelsen through her role as a member of the Peacock-Harper Culinary History Friends group, which formed around a special collection of culinary books at Virginia Tech. The Peacock-Harper Culinary Collection contains more than 3,000 works, including 1,700 in a rare books room, and dates as far back as 1693. I’ve received a lot of interesting information from the friends group since I first heard of it a few years ago.

Last month, Bertelsen sent an e-mail about a special digital collection at the University of Nevada Las Vegas called Menus: The Art of Dining. It seems the folks there have collected and digitized more than 1,500 restaurant menus from around the world. The bulk of their collection is made up of the Bohn-Bettoni Collection, a personal collection consisting of about 2,000 restaurant menus dating from 1870-1930. Bohn was editor and publisher of “Hotel World” magazine and Bettoni was a restaurant manager in London in the late 19th century.

The UNLV database is so cool because you can scroll through the collection on your computer and see each of these menus. Not only does the food on these menus provide a slice of history, but some of the menus feature brilliant art work. Many of the restaurants are long gone, including some of the original Las Vegas establishments, which were destroyed to build what is the existing strip.

If you’ve got a little time on your hands to poke around and look through this menu collection, click here and have fun. Incidentally, you can also look at a few digitized versions of works in the Peacock-Harper collection here.

Hey, maybe I should send some of Howard’s old Roanoke menus, such as this Villa Sorrento menu, to UNLV, eh?

Did your weekend seem to pass by in about 20 minutes? Mine sure did.

Here are a couple of quick food-related links to get us warmed up on this Monday morning. I’ll be back later with more.

* Roanoke Times book page editor Nona Nelson has reviewed Anthony Bourdain’s new book, “Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook.” It sounds like a pretty juicy read. See more here on the Back Cover, our book blog.

* So Salem reporter Miranda Adkins has more details on that new Mexican restaurant in Salem, Xinachtli, on her blog here. Including, finally, a little advice on how to pronounce that crazy name.

UPDATE: Based on responses to this entry so far, I have added Radish Pickles and Hot Cumin-Pickled Summer Squash to the recipe database. I would like to also suggest that those of you with an excess of green beans check out my mom’s recipe for Dilly Beans. END UPDATE

The fact that a Gen-Xer (or maybe even a Nexter) has written a book about canning, a food preservation technique that has been around for centuries, just goes to show you how much attitudes toward food have changed.

I suspect that young Liana Krissoff is hoping to capitalize on a renewed interest in local foods, gardening, cooking and environmental sustainability with her new book, “Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry.” She’s a smart cookie.

Some of you have been canning food your entire life. Others, like me, watched our grandmothers and mothers can food but never thought to learn to do it ourselves. Why would we when we could run to the grocery store and pick up a can of peaches or tomatoes at a fairly cheap price? Why would we when we’ve got double-income households, kids to raise, errands to run (to the grocery store for canned peaches) and not much time left over?

But as we begin to realize what some of those processed and convenience foods are doing to our bodies and our quality of life, we’ve been rather quickly coming around to the old ways. Krissoff has been experimenting with some basic canning recipes to come up with new, exciting ideas. You’ll find some of grandma’s old standards, such as strawberry preserves, basic tomato sauce and pickled beets, in her book. But you’ll also find Strawberry Jam with Thai Herbs, Cocktail Onions, Pickled Fennel with Orange and Mint, Sushi Ginger, Blood Plum and Apple Jam with Rosewater, Creole Spiced Pickled Okra and more.

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When I received an e-mail about a new cookbook for fans of the novel and movie saga, “Twilight,” I couldn’t help but laugh. In fact, several of us in the Features department at The Roanoke Times spent the better part of that morning poking fun at the idea.

It isn’t because I don’t like “Twilight.” I will admit here and now that I have devoured each of the four books, I have seen the first two movies and I look forward to seeing the third, “Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” which was released in movie theaters Wednesday.

I laughed because, really, what do vampires eat besides blood? I kept picturing an entire cookbook filled with this recipe:

Human Blood
Serves 1

Ingredients:
1 live human

Directions:
Bite human in the jugular. Suck dry.

But “Love at First Bite: The Unofficial Twilight Cook Book” by Gina Meyers (no relation to “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer, despite the suspiciously similar name) does feature actual recipes inspired by the stories. Those of you who have read the books know the main character, Bella, is a decent cook who often makes dinner for her bachelor father, Charlie, the town police chief. So the cookbook does feature recipes for some of the dishes, such as chicken enchiladas, that are  mentioned in the novels.

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Edna Lewis, 1916-2006

Happy Friday! Don’t forget that you have until noon today to enter to win the cookbook “Steak with Friends” by Rick Tramonto. To enter, scroll down to the blog entry from Wednesday and leave a comment! I’ll announce the winner this afternoon after a random drawing.

I’ve been enjoying this banana pudding discussion so much that I can’t get my mind off the stuff. Last night, I started wondering if Edna Lewis had a recipe for banana pudding. When I think of true Southern cooking, my mind usually makes a beeline for Edna Lewis long before it meanders around to Paula Deen. Lewis was probably one of the best, most celebrated black chefs in the history of America. To learn more, check out this column I wrote about her two years ago.

Lewis had several projects with her close friend and protege, chef Scott Peacock, including their cookbook, “The Gift of Southern Cooking.” That book, it turns out, did include a recipe for banana pudding made from scratch (I don’t think Lewis did it any other way). It’s really long, which is always a good sign! I noticed with great interest that they advise using lightly toasted cubes of angel food cake in place of vanilla wafer cookies, if desired. I’m going to attach the recipe below the jump.

Also, reader Autumn mentioned that she loves steak au poivre. There is a recipe for au poivre sauce in the Tramonto book that I am happy to share below.

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Author Judith Finlayson had a cookbook published in 2004 called “125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes.” Apparently, it was so successful that she learned a bunch more recipes! Her latest book, “The Vegetarian Slow Cooker,” includes more than 200 recipes.

Those of us who eat meat have come to love our Crock Pots for their convenience, as well as their ability to render even the toughest cuts of meat fork tender. But the possibilities for vegetarians, vegans and meat eaters who still enjoy meatless dishes from time to time, are also wide. You can do hot cereals and breads for breakfast, appetizers such as artichoke and white bean topping for crostini, all manners of soups and stews and an endless array of flavorful ethnic dishes.

Finlayson warns that just because these dishes do not call for meat doesn’t mean you can slack on advance preparation. With most meats, it is always advisable that you sear the cut before placing in the cooker. For veggies, she suggests browning some to soften them and begin the process of caramelization. She also points out that root vegetables like parsnips or potatoes can cook even slower than meat, so they should not be cut larger than 1-inch cubes. And, as with any slow cooker dish, Finlayson says, do not overcook. We’ve talked about this before: the key is getting to know your particular slow cooker model.

There are so many good-looking recipes in this book that I had a hard time deciding which one to share. But I settled on Fennel-Spiked Lentil Cobbler with Red Pepper and Goat Cheese. Sounded pretty darn good to me. Here it is:

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Alright, readers, it’s time for another cookbook giveaway, and this time I’ve got a prize for someone who is trying to lose weight and get in shape for bathing suit season. Ugh. Could it really be so close?

Fans of the hit reality show “The Biggest Loser” may be familiar with “The Biggest Loser Cookbook” by Devin Alexander. Well, now Alexander has a new book on shelves called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fattening: Over 150 Ridiculously Easy Recipes for the Super Busy.” Who ISN’T super busy in America these days? Only the people who are super-duper busy.

Many of the recipes in this book include low-fat or fat-free ingredients, to which I know some would object. But a good number call for “real” food ingredients. Some examples: Breakfast fried rice, blackened salmon sandwich, Old Bay potato wedges and orange shrimp.

To enter to win this book, comment on THIS blog post no later than 2 p.m. tomorrow (Friday) and tell me one thing you would do if you reached your goal weight that you cannot do right now. Fit into that pair of jeans? Put on a bikini? Run up the stairs? The winner will be drawn at random.

Here’s a super simple sample recipe from Alexander’s new book. It’s for grilled turkey cutlets with cranberry honey mustard sauce. Enjoy!

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A reader named Julie Ann e-mailed me this week with a request for a blog topic. Here is what she had to say:

“I’m 8 mos. pregnant and expecting my first child within the next 3 – 6 weeks, so I would really like to go ahead and prepare some good meals that we can freeze and eat after he is born. Likewise, there have been many times in the past that I have wanted to prepare something for a new mother, ill neighbor, grieving family, etc. and I can’t ever find anything more exciting or original than the usual lasagnas, chili, and soups.
I’m guessing/hoping that you and your many culinary-gifted readers might be able to provide some good advice and recipes.”

I had to laugh a little when I read “the usual lasagnas, chili and soups,” because I know I’m guilty of falling back on those ideas when I want to make a dish for someone. Another standard of mine is a chicken noodle casserole. While nothing is wrong with any of those tasty dishes, I can see how, if everyone is thinking the same way, a family could end up with 5 lasagnas and 5 pots of soup. So it is a good idea to try and think of some more unusual dishes to comfort an exhausted, ill or grieving family.

Part of the problem is that we don’t always know a family’s food preferences, so I think we tend toward dishes that most everybody likes. But I don’t think Miss Manners would mind if you called a person in advance and tried to get a sense of what they like to eat. If she does mind, who cares? This is 2010.

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Please note that you actually have until next Friday, March 5, to register for this event.

The Peacock-Harper Culinary History Friends group is celebrating its 10th anniversary by hosting a fascinating speaker at the Roanoke Country Club on Friday, March 12. Nancy Carter Crump is the author of “Hearthside Cooking: Virginia Plantation Cuisine” and “Hearthside Cooking: Early American Southern Cuisine Updated for Today’s Hearth and Cookstove.”

The Peacock-Harper group is associated with the Peacock-Harper collection, a culinary history special collection at Virginia Tech’s Newman Library that includes thousands of food-related books, some of which are very old and very rare.

I interviewed Nancy, a former educational programmer for Colonial Williamsburg, for an article that ran in the paper in 2007. To read it, click here. Nancy is well-schooled in the art of cooking over an open fire. And we aren’t talking about just cooking a pot of stew on the woodstove; she can roast meats on spits, bake breads and make delicious desserts in a fireplace or a campfire. If the power goes out in her home, she is set up!

Nancy’s talk costs $30 and includes a lunch of dishes from her book. The menu is: asparagus soup, Mrs. Randolph’s chicken with sauce, Oatlands corn pudding, green peas with mint, Mrs. Gray’s muffins, iced tea and Hopkins family coconut pound cake.

If you are interested in hearthside cooking, whether in your home or on camping trips, you might want to think about registering for and attending this event. To register, click here.

This week, I chose a recipe from Pillbury’s “Fast Slow Cooker” cookbook. This would be a useful book for beginner cooks or those who barely have time to throw together a Crock Pot meal, because they are all really easy recipes that take about 15 minutes to prepare.

On the downside, as you can imagine, the recipes are pretty simple and most could probably benefit from some doctoring. But the Cheesy Potatoes with Ham I made yesterday really only needed a little bit of extra love. I thought it was quite good and very comforting.

Here’s the original recipe:

6 cups peeled potatoes cut into 1-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups cubed cooked ham
1 can (15 oz.) whole kernel sweet corn, drained
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
2 tsp. minced dried onion
1 can (10 oz.) condensed cheddar cheese soup
1/2 cup milk
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

1. Mix potatoes, corn, ham, bell pepper and onion in Crock Pot.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the soup, milk and flour. Pour all over the potato mixture in the Crock Pot and stir gently to mix.

3. Cover and cook on low 7 to 9 hours or until potatoes are tender.

My variations:

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One of my all-time favorite Roanoke Times feature stories was written 10 years ago this month by my late, great predecessor on the food beat, Nancy Gleiner. The sensual photographs taken by former RT photographer Josh Meltzer made the story even more memorable. I recall that we had a beautiful blond model come in and pose with clumps of grapes and bunches of asparagus artfully arranged to cover what needed covering.

The article was simply titled “Aphrodisiacs,” and was, of course, about certain foods believed to stimulate romance and sexual desire. The origin of the word is the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. Although some of these foods have been considered aphrodisiacs for centuries, mainstream medicine doesn’t subscribe too much to that kind of thinking.

But mainstream medicine doesn’t subscribe to a lot of thinking that can still be fun. And who knows? Maybe a plate of raw oysters and a chocolate lava cake on Valentine’s Eve really can work some magic. Even if they can’t, they are still delicious!

If you want to put together a full buffet of aphrodisiacs as a surprise treat for your honey next weekend (after all, it will likely be cold outside and warm by the fire inside), consult the list below, which I borrowed from Nancy’s 2000 article. Here’s my suggested menu: An appetizer of raw oysters or oysters Rockefeller (which incorporates spinach, one of the aphrodisiacs), grilled salmon drizzled with truffle oil, sauteed asparagus with fresh garlic and chocolate brownies with walnuts and a dash of real vanilla extract.

For more recipe ideas, check out these books: “Sex on a Plate” by Sharon Esther Lampert, “The New InterCourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook” by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge, “Fork Me, Spoon Me: The Sensual Cookbook” by Amy Reiley, or “The Seduction Cookbook: Culinary Creations for Lovers” by Diane Brown. (Don’t blame me; I didn’t make up the titles.)

Read on for a long list of aphrodisiacs and some truly fascinating history:

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The little pulse and the super grain seem to have generated the most interest in Friday’s blog entry about the new book, “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.” FYI, a “pulse” is the seed of a legume, and lentils fit into that category.

A few blog readers have shared recipes for these ingredients, but I wanted to expand your repertoire a bit with a couple of extra recipes from two very good cookbooks, “The Gluten-Free Vegan” by Susan O’Brien and “A Fistful of Lentils” by Jennifer Felicia Abadi.

Read on to see recipes for Mexican Quinoa Salad and Rishta b’Tahineh, or egg noodles with lentils and sesame butter.

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Food writer extraordinaire Dave Lieberman of Food Network’s “Eat This with Dave Lieberman” has put out a new book with co-author Anahad O’Connor called “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.” Let’s get your biggest question out of the way right now: The 10 foods are tomatoes, avocados, beets, spinach, quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah), lentils, cabbage, nuts, berries and “super fish,” or certain varieties of highly nutritious fish.

It doesn’t surprise me that any of those foods are on the list. Many have been touted for their health benefits for years. What gives Lieberman and O’Connor’s book added value are the wonderful informational tidbits, the fun illustrations that begin each section, and the recipes, which inject new life into the usual application of these ingredients without being too difficult or weird.

Examples of some tips I had never heard: Drinking green tea with fish eliminates the risk of mercury poisoning, British explorer Capt. James Cook stocked cabbage on all his ships, and lentils get their name because they are shaped like lenses.

It was apparently too hard for the authors to really limit themselves to 10 super foods, because throughout the book they give “honorable mention” to other ingredients, such as pomegranates, turmeric and red wine. And then they share a recipe using those additional foods with the original 10 (think spicy tomato, red onion and pomegranate jam).

If you know someone who is trying to eat healthier but is looking for new ways to cook these natural wonders, this might be the book for them. Let’s look at a recipe for grilled fish with tangy spinach, cilantro and caper puree. Have a great weekend!

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Hi, this is Kathy again. Lindsey will be back tomorrow.

I thought I’d take a moment and post this recipe I used over the weekend for an in-house bake sale we’re having today at the paper.

The bake sale is a fundraiser for the annual Roanoke Times Good Neighbors Fund, which supports the Roanoke Area Ministries’ Emergency Financial Assistance Program. You can read our story profiling people who’ve been helped by the fund or contribute to it here.

I chose to make Chocolate Zucchini Muffins out of the “The Only Bake Sale Cookbook You’ll Ever Need.” It wasn’t hard, but I did turn the batter into 24 cupcakes instead of 12 large (they would’ve been REALLY large) muffins. The muffins are light, with a nice cinnamony zing. But it’s not super-chocolatey, as a warning to those chocoholics out there.

I’m also not one to follow a recipe to the T, which has burned me in the past but I just can’t seem to do everything a recipe says to do (or just to do). So you’ll see my comments in here, but know that the cupcakes still turned out OK.

Hope you enjoy!

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

Makes 12 large muffins (or 24 cupcakes)

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted (I skipped the sifting)
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten (I think I didn’t see the beaten part, so I added them unbeaten)
2 cups shredded zucchini (about 4 medium zucchini — my 3 medium zucchini turned out 4 cups of shredded, so you might want to stick with 2 or 3)
1/2 cup milk
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I prefer the mini version)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease the cups of a 12-cup muffin pan or line with baking cups. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a bowl.

2. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating lightly after each addition.

3. Add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture alternately with the zucchini and milk, making two additions of each. Fold in the chocolate chips. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Remove from the pans immediately and cook on a wire rack (I don’t have a wire rack, so they just cooled on a countertop).

When I posted my last Cookbook Giveaway entry for a cake book, one diabetic reader felt left out. And I can only imagine how hard it must be to see recipes for rich, decadent desserts when you are not allowed to enjoy them. I have two loved ones who suffer from diabetes, and I’ll bet almost every one of us knows at least one person who is affected by the condition.

Fortunately, in this day and age, there are relatively good artificial sweeteners on the market. I have also read an article or two lately that suggested blue agave nectar, a natural sugar substitute, can be safe for diabetics, but please check with your physician about this before adding agave nectar to your diet if you are diabetic or borderline diabetic.

I have also been learning that some recipes can contain sugar but still be safe for diabetics simply because the amount of sugar is drastically lowered. The dessert recipes in Holly Clegg’s “Trim & Terrific Diabetic Cooking” and Tom Valenti’s “You Don’t Have to Be Diabetic to Love This Cookbook” fall into this category.

I’m going to share a recipe from each of these books. Got a wonderful low sugar or sugar-free dessert recipe to share? I’m sure some readers would greatly appreciate that.

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Those crazy kids at Sur la Table are at it again, this time with a cute little handbook called “Tips Cooks Love.”

I’ve been flipping through this book and while some of these ideas may not seem very novel (smash garlic under your knife blade; use room-temperature eggs in baking – meh), others really do have me saying “Aha! What a great idea!”

A sprinkling of those gems:

* After you are finished processing herbs in the food processor and have removed most of the bits, toss a slice of bread in there and pulse a few times. Voila! Herbed bread crumbs.

* Chopping sticky things like crystallized ginger? Coat the knife with a light layer of flavorless oil.

* For parties where you will be scooping lots of ice cream, line a baking sheet with wax paper ahead of time, place ice cream scoops on wax paper and put the whole tray in the freezer. When it comes time, all you’ll have to do it pluck the scoop off the wax paper and put it on the cake.

* Out of cooking twine? Use unflavored dental floss. Just don’t tie the meat too tightly or you might cut it with the floss and lose juices during cooking.

* If you are out of tea bags but have loose tea, line your mug with a coffee filter, then put in the desired amount of loose tea, fill with hot water, let steep and carefully remove the filter, which will collect the loose tea.

* Finally, if you are worried about pesticides on store vegetables, here is a list of the “dirty dozen,” or the 12 veggie types that had the highest amounts of pesticides on them when tested. It might be good to buy these particular vegetables in the organic section. On the other hand, the second list is of vegetables that do not tend to be sprayed much, so you can feel good about saving money buy skipping those in organic.

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Every time someone mentions in my presence that they don’t like grits, I have to struggle not to look at them as if they are an alien.

Seriously, what’s not to like? We aren’t talking about something strongly flavored, such as brussels sprouts. Or something that once had big, soft eyes, such as venison. Or even something that once filtered the waste out of a body system, such as liver or kidneys. Grits come from corn. They’re cooked in water or milk, like hot cereal. Basically, they are baby food.

I don’t disparage anyone for having personal preferences, though – Lord knows I have some bizarre preferences. But this blog entry is for all of my fellow grits lovers, and it’s about a new cookbook from Southern Living magazine called “Glorious Grits: Fresh, Flavorful Recipes for Grits, Cornmeal & Polenta.”

Grits are just fine with a pat of butter, a spoonful of apple butter, some cheese or a topping of shrimp. But boy, just imagine the wondrous possibilities for new recipes. Especially with talented chefs across the country finally learning to appreciate what we Southerners have appreciated all along. Examples from the book: Mini grits quiche cups, a grits frittata with herbs and shallots, grits primavera or even a pecan-grits pie!

Before I share a recipe or two, a few definitions from “Food Lover’s Companion”:

Grits: Commonly used to refer to hominy grits, but grits can actually be coarsely ground corn, oats, rice, etc. Cooked in water or milk and served as a side dish, usually at breakfast.

Groats: Generally thought to be a coarser grind than grits, but actually the two words are synonymous, because grits can come in a variety of grinds, from fine to coarse.

Cornmeal: Dried corn kernels that have been ground into one of three textures: fine, medium or coarse.

Polenta: A staple of Italy. A mush made from cornmeal that can be eaten hot or cooled until firm, then sliced and fried.

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A gingerbread "Cockaigne?"

Dad called me last night to ask a food question; it’s not an uncommon occurrence for either of us to ring up the other and talk food. I usually buzz him because he’s a great, experienced cook, and he usually calls me because he lives in the Bath County boondocks with dial-up and can’t Google the answer.

Last night’s question: “What does the cooking term ‘Cockaigne’ mean?”

The answer wasn’t in the food Bible, “Food Lover’s Companion.” And once I wrote it down (because you can imagine the array of unfortunate mispronunciations) and stared at it, it looked really familiar. I was sure I’d seen it within the past few days – In “Joy of Cooking,” it turns out.

The word is sprinkled liberally throughout “Joy,” appearing at the end of various recipe names, such as Almond Torte Cockaigne or Fruit Cake Cockaigne. So I Googled it for Dad, my cell phone crunched between my ear and shoulder. Oddly, the first hit was “A great place for winter fun.” Then Wikipedia, with “a medieval mythical land of plenty, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease.”

Where were the official food and cooking sources? Merriam-Webster dictionary defined “Cockaigne” as a 13th century invention, indeed a magical land of wonderment and riches. And the word itself, some believe, derives from “cake.”

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Chroniclebooks.com

I absolutely adore the title of this new book by Anita Chu, “Field Guide to Candy.” I can’t help but picture someone with the binoculars out, spying on a marzipan pear perched on a tree branch. Or a herd of gum drops slowly making their way across an empty field. Or a school of Swedish fish flitting in clear waters.

OK, so I spent way too much time as a kid flipping through the Audubon guides to plants, trees, birds and insects. Candy is oh-so-much tastier than insects, so flipping through this field guide to candy is even more delightful. And it’s out just in time, folks. Because what better time of year for accurately identifying and making candy than the holiday season?

I know I’m probably freaking out those of you who hate any mention of Christmas before Halloween. Or before Thanksgiving, for that matter. I’m usually like that myself, but I just can’t help but get excited about the cooking possibilities. Just the other night I read “About fudge” in “Joy of Cooking.” Getting my mind in the right place.

I want to share a recipe from “Field Guide to Candy,” but since it is a little early for winter holiday ideas, how about a recipe that’ll be perfect for fall: candy apples! I know my co-worker and author of the Happy Wag blog, Nona Nelson, will appreciate this one. She was just craving candy apples the other day.

Chu offers up some great tips about candy making in this book. I’m not very adept at candy making, so I may invest in a candy thermometer. But she says if you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can use the old-fashioned “cold water method,” which involves dropping a drop of your hot sugar syrup into a bowl of cold water. What happens next determines the stage of your candy. Read on:

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Wileyptnews.com

If you’ve had your eyes open at the grocery store over the last year or two, you probably noticed a surge in those little 100-calorie snack packs. It seems like everyone who makes snack food has jumped on the 100-calorie packaging bandwagon. The idea is that if the food is portioned out for the customer, he or she is less likely to overindulge.

Generally speaking, I think it’s a great idea and I’ve purchased some of these products myself. What bothers me about them, though, is the same thing that bothers me about a lot of packaged foods: all that paper and plastic that goes in the trash when you’re finished nibbling your precious Goldfish crackers or cookie bites.

As a result, I was pretty intrigued when I recently received a new book in the mail called the “100-Calorie Snack Cookbook” by Sally Sampson. Sampson has created a 256-page guide to creating your own 100-calorie snacks at home. I can only imagine that some of her ideas wind up costing less and tasting better in the end. They may even be more filling — in Sampson’s world, you can eat a whole bowl of soup, 2.5 cups of spiced popcorn or a whole plate of salad for the same number of calories.

I’ll share a couple of Sampson’s recipes below. If you are interested in buying the book, it retails for $18.95 but can be had as cheap as $13 at various places I spied online.

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