I know I say this every single time I do a Cookbook Giveaway, but this time I mean it more than ever: It was so hard to pick a winner this time.

I had entries from folks who had just quit smoking, were on fixed incomes and could not afford the book, wanted to lose weight for retirement, wanted to help their loved ones cook healthier meals for themselves and hoped the book would help them teach their children about a healthier lifestyle. I wanted to give the book to every single person who entered.

Fortunately, I was assisted just a little bit by a surprise phone call that I received this week. The public relations person for the Podleski sisters are sending me…. drum roll, please… an autographed copy of the book! So now I have TWO copies and I will give them out to my top TWO winners.

The winner of the autographed copy is Amanda, who said: I just started graduate school and am currently living at home with my 2 dogs while my husband is away doing military training. It’s so hard to eat healthy when it’s just myself! I’ve been married a little over 2 years and my husband is in the Army. He’s been gone for a little over 3 months. Right now he is doing training for his position. He will be be home in October and deployed next year. This will be a great way to get myself in shape -not only for him but for myself. I’ve started going to the gym, but need help with the nutritional aspect. I have around 40 pounds to go!

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Some would say that if you don’t like biscuits, you just aren’t a true Southerner.
We had biscuits at just about every supper at my grandmother’s house. Great Uncle Bill called them “catheads” and chose to have another cathead with gravy while the rest of us were having dessert.
Mom always made fabulous biscuits from scratch, but this past weekend when I visited her, I found her pulling a bag of frozen biscuits from the freezer and putting them in her convection oven.
What in the name of catheads is going on??
Well, once you try those frozen biscuits, you might find that they are far superior to the canned kind and almost as good as homemade.
Both Pillsbury and White Lily brands make a good frozen biscuit. And right now, you can win a basket of White Lily products if you go to their Web site and enter to win a contest.
All you have to do is answer their question: What is your favorite biscuit topping?
Seems easy enough, but for me, it’s kind of hard to choose. Sometimes it’s apple butter, sometimes butter and honey, sometimes bacon, egg and cheese, sometimes just a nice, fat slice of summer tomato.
As a true biscuit lover, I could eat them straight from the baking sheet.

My mom used to make green chili on occasion. As a young child, I appreciated it about as much as I appreciated her split pea soup, which is to say not at all.
It took a little growing up before I started to enjoy the way the pork just fell apart into strings and the green chiles in the broth added a little tangy zip. I remember my mom cooking her green chili all day, and hers was on the thin side. That is to say, it wasn’t chunky. The pork sort of became part of the broth.
Now, I see chile verde on Mexican menus all over town. I ordered it once and it was pretty tasty, but it was more like a pile of pork chunks with green sauce. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be made.
Here’s a recipe for chile verde that I received yesterday from the Simply Recipes listserv I joined a while back. It looks a little thicker than Mom’s, but more like a stew than what I’ve been served at restaurants in town. It also calls for roasting a bunch of tomatillos, which just sounds delicious to me.
I think I’ll give it a try. It’s a nice way to use some of those different chile peppers I wrote about in a story last month.

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