I had to laugh when I received Volume 18 (Fall 2008 edition) of the Virginia Garlic Festival Association’s newsletter yesterday. The banner shows a clove of garlic emitting Pepe Le Pew-esque fumes, which drift lazily across the word FOG in big capital letters. Translation: Friends of Garlic.

The headline news this quarter is the Virginia Garlic Festival, which is coming up October 11 and 12 at Rebec Vineyards in Amherst. Now, I’m just joking about the stinky thing. I love cooking with garlic and eating garlic, and I can’t imagine that the smell of this festival would in any way rival the West Virginia Ramp Festival.

I had never heard of the Garlic Festival, which is in its 18th year this fall. It includes a garlic cook-off and contests for Garlic King and Queen and Garlic Junior Queen. There are also the requisite arts and crafts, live music, games, food, a wine tasting and products for sale.

Of course, it’s the cook-off that really got my attention. The first place winner of last year’s contest was our very own Jane Wolford of Vinton, who placed with her Sweet Italian Garlic Chowder. Other winners made Truffled Mushroom Risotto with Roasted Garlic and Sundried Tomatoes, and BBQ Garlic Shrimp and grits. Yum!

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The weekend flew by as usual, with a few blessings thrown in. I harvested my first round of cherry tomatoes (oh, the sweetness) and threw some lime on my other plants to hopefully rid them, once and for all, of the blossom-end rot.

More importantly, I learned that blog reader Lori gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Samuel, early Friday morning. That makes regular blog reader Kathy a proud grandma! Congratulations to them!!

Let’s continue to brighten up this Monday morning with a cookbook giveaway! This week’s feature book is “Organic Marin: Recipes from Land to Table” by Tim Porter and Farina Wong Kingsley. It was produced by Marin Magazine and includes a forward about organic gardening.

Even if you don’t grow or buy all organic, there are some wonderful recipes in this book. I was immediately drawn to one for a shaved zucchini salad with Italian sheep’s milk cheese, which I will share below the jump.

If you want to win this beautifully illustrated, hardcover book, write in and tell me why you think you are most deserving of a little cheer on this Monday. I’ll accept entries until 6 p.m. today. If you have won previously, you cannot win. Thanks!

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You would pretty much have to be in a coma to be unaware of this season’s bumper peach crop. (My apologies to anyone who is actually in a coma — sadly, you are missing out on some good eating.)

At any rate, WFIR, WDBJ-7 and The Roanoke Times have all run stories this week about how last year’s dismal peach crop has been rejuvenated into a boom crop this year. Our friend Amy Hanek, a frequent reader of this blog and a blogger herself, has also posted a couple of entries about peaches this week.

After an early warm spell and late frosts nipped last year’s stone fruits in the bud, the stars aligned this year. Warm weather during pollination season, moderate rainfall during the fruits’ developmental stages and Mother Nature’s tendency to push for a comeback the year after a loss have put us in Peach Heaven.

You can find the best peaches, in my opinion, down at your local farmer’s market. My husband brought home one of the biggest peaches I’ve ever seen — it’s nearly the size of a softball — from Ikenberry Orchards this week.

If you’ve bought a big mess of peaches, it’s possible that you’ll get your fill of raw ones and need to cook a few up before they are overripe. Amy’s peach crisp recipe, my mom’s cobbler recipe and peach pie are all wonderful ideas. But I’ve been thinking about some less common recipes for peaches, too. Maybe something with a savory punch instead of dessert. I scoured a few cookbooks and located what I believe are some devilishly good-looking peach recipes.

A few of them are ridiculously easy, too. Take a look and see what you think. And, as always, if you’ve got a great recipe you can share, fire away!

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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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I must admit that I haven’t paid much attention to this Jamie Oliver character, who is the star of “Jamie’s Kitchen” on TLC. I do know that he recently killed a chicken on live television in order to make a point about the welfare of chickens in Britain’s poultry industry.
I also know that some of the recipes in Oliver’s new cookbook, “Jamie’s Italy,” look pretty darn good. As soon as I cracked the book, I saw one for squashed cannellini beans with garlic, which sounded like a quick, easy and delicious topping for crostini or pita wedges. I’ll share that after the jump.
The first person who can tell me the name of Oliver’s London restaurant can have this book and enjoy all the beautiful full-color photographs and illustrations, not to mention the recipes.

Before we part ways for the weekend, I’d like to subject you all to a video that was shot and edited by my co-worker, Evelio Contreras. The star is another co-worker, Pete Dybdahl, who promised to score me one of the free breakfast burritos at McDonald’s this morning. As you’ll see, when the cashier told Pete that he could only get one free burrito because the rules were one per person, Pete thought only of himself.
Oh well, I’m not sure I wanted to eat one anyway.

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A few days ago, my co-worker was looking for a fancy red meat recipe to impress his sweetie. He had heard of osso buco (literally translated as “bone with a hole”) and wondered if I could find a recipe.
Find one I did, but the cooking time for these tender veal shanks was more like 3 hours than the 35 minutes or so that he was hoping to spend on that night’s dinner. I hear he ended up buying a nice ribeye steak instead.
Since it’s almost the weekend and we’ve got plenty of time to plan for a 3-hour meal, I’ll pass this recipe along to you all instead. That is, if you have no problem with the thought of feasting on what was once a cute, baby animal. I know I don’t.
Have a great weekend.

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