You may have noticed that the Virginia Department of Agriculture challenged Virginians last week to eat local for one day. It was part of Virginia Farmers Market week, a special designation by Gov. Tim Kaine.

Blog reader Deb seemed to take that challenge to heart. Or maybe she didn’t hear a thing about the challenge and just wanted to enjoy some tasty local chicken, dairy and produce. She sent me this photo of her lunch yesterday with this description of what she bought on the market: “The chicken, cabbage and green apples for the slaw, potatoes and eggs for the potato salad and deviled eggs, green beans and red bell pepper, fried green tomatoes, corn on the cob and peaches for the cobbler. Barbara Kingsolver would be proud.”

She would indeed. I’m proud, and hungry, too!

I didn’t go all out like Deb, but I did buy a gorgeous head of white cabbage from the market on Friday and fried it up last night to go along with grilled pork tenderloin and big, fat slices of my neighbor’s tomatoes.

The whole house now smells of cabbage, but it’s worth it for one of my favorite side dishes. Cabbage is easy to cook, but I’ll post my method below for anyone who has never cooked it up before. Other ideas for fresh cabbage? Shoot me a message!

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Blog reader Deb was the quickest with her keyboard this time around, so she wins the three books I discussed in this morning’s blog entry.
Since Deb is such a faithful reader of the blog, I could have sworn that she’d won something before. But when I checked back, she had not. So congratulations to Deb! You’ll have to let us know how those pretzel recipes turn out.
For the rest of you, I have a wonderful recipe sent in earlier this week by blog reader Amanda. This recipe has a twist on an old favorite, pasta salad. Called Supreme Pizza Pasta Salad, it is loaded with tomatoes, onion, mushrooms, bell pepper, pepperoni, mozzerella cheese and more.
Check it out, and have a great weekend! The blog will be alive with guest bloggers all next week, so be sure to keep checking in.

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The Washington Post recently did an interesting story about the burgeoning food scene in Charlottesville.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, click here.

After seeing the article, I can’t wait to check out Mas, a Spanish restaurant that supposedly serves up great tapas.

Anyone else have a favorite restaurant in Charlottesville? Or any thoughts on what makes the dining scene better than Roanoke’s, if anything?

While I’m sharing random tidbits, I’ll share a random recipe. I found this recipe for Mango Chicken Curry on Simply Recipes. Yellow curry…golden raisins…mangoes…heavy cream…what more could you want?

Since Swagat, one of downtown Roanoke’s Indian restaurants, has apparently closed down, maybe it’s time to perfect some Indian food at home. Enjoy!

Before I go, I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be in Florida this weekend and the first part of next week visiting my grandmother for Mother’s Day. When I get back, we can dish about grouper sandwiches and conch fritters and key lime pie.

Until then, please enjoy the guest blog entries on Monday and Tuesday by my colleague Nona Nelson, who can typically be found over at Happy Wag, the Roanoke Times pet blog.

Thanks, Nona!

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