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PLEASE keep those ideas for "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" coming (blog post below)! Meanwhile, I have big food news out of Maryland -- the 30th Annual National Oyster cook-off has ended and several people went home with shiny silver trays and big grins on their faces. I know Maryland is not super local to Southwest Virginia, but the winter holidays are probably one of the biggest oyster-eating seasons in these parts, so maybe you guys will enjoy these recipes.

Jackie Hardin of Galena, MD won Grand Prize with her Oyster Tacos with Chipotle Cream Sauce. Your first reaction may be similar to mine - oyster tacos? But they actually sound pretty good - fried oysters with a cornmeal coating served in soft taco shells with slaw and the sauce. If you like oysters and you like fish tacos, this might be a neat twist.

Other winners were Jim McDuffie of Durham, NC, with his Outer Banks Poached Oysters on Smoked Pimento Cheese Grits with Fried Green Tomato Croutons, Brendan Cahill of Lusby, MD with Beach House Oysters with Sherry and Loic Jaffres of Leonardtown, MD with Oysters Bourguignon in Puff Pastry.

I'm going to share a couple of these recipes with you now. I'm trying to figure out if the rest are available online somewhere or if you have to write in to the Maryland Department of Agriculture to buy the cookbook. As soon as I hear back from the PR lady, I'll let you all know.

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Guy Fieri/www.foodnetwork.com

"Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" is my favorite show on the Food Network. Even if I've just consumed an entire turkey and a pie (which I've never done before, but I'm just saying), I would probably still have to go find a snack while watching D, D & D. It just makes me so hungry.

Every greasy spoon visited by host Guy Fieri has obviously been highly recommended by the locals, and always has at least one really good signature dish. Fieri spends time back in the kitchen while the chef or head cook shows him how they make those signature dishes. Usually, it's a lengthy, from-scratch process. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone start by throwing a frozen beef patty on the grill or hauling out cartons of ready-made stock, but then again, I don't watch every episode or I'd weigh 400 pounds by now.

Every time I do tune in, I wonder what greasy dive Guy Fieri would find worth visiting in Southwest Virginia. Would he love watching the guys at Texas Tavern making a batch of chili? Drool behind the scenes at Short Sugar's Bar-BQ in Danville? Moan with ecstasy while devouring a plate of biscuits with sausage gravy at The Roanoker? Do any of those places even qualify as diners, or drive-ins, or dives? What does?

I posted this question over Twitter and Facebook last week and got some interesting suggestions about where Guy should go in Southwest Virginia. Read on for the list so far. Please keep adding to it, and if we can come up with a solid suggestion or two, I will send them to Mr. Fieri.

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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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Chuck roast becomes ground chuck.

Ever since reading the hamburger story in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago, I've been wondering just how hard it could be to grind my own burger at home. I mean, we don't generally buy frozen, pre-formed hamburger patties, but we do occasionally buy packaged ground beef at the grocery store. And one theory is that when the beef scraps used to make ground beef come from all different parts of the cow (and possibly different parts of the country, or the world) there's just a better chance of some illness-causing bacteria getting in the mix.

I am not losing sleep over this, but what could it hurt to make homemade burger? It could be a good way to control the fat content since I'm trying to diet, and perhaps it would even taste better.

First, the tools: My Kitchen Aid mixer came with a rebate offer for a free attachment, and I, thinking maybe I'd make sausage someday, chose the grinder. Which comes in quite handy now. But not everyone owns a grinder attachment, much less a Kitchen Aid mixer (mine was the result of years of whining). I did some checking, and meat grinders can be had for as little as $30 for a hand-cranked model that clamps to the edge of a counter or table. They range all the way up into the hundreds of dollars.

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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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I just couldn't NOT share this recipe from Simply Recipes. It reminds me of a delicious little appetizer that my good friend Stacy makes on occasion. Hers involves slicing a baguette and topping the pieces with chopped walnuts, pears and crumbles of gorgonzola cheese. She then bakes it in the oven a little bit before serving. The combination of flavors - sweet fruit, earthy nuts and salty, pungent cheese - are absolutely heavenly.

This recipe uses apples instead of pears, incorporates thyme, and is a bit more involved, but still does not look too hard considering that you can use a refrigerated, ready-made pie crust. I'll post the entire recipe below the jump. Enjoy!

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UPDATE: I talked to Kroger spokesman Carl York this afternoon, and he said the shortage is definitely affecting supplies of canned pumpkin in our area. Kroger stores are getting it "on allocation," which means they cannot get all that they order right now. He said he isn't sure when the rationing will end, but he does know that it has not affected supplies of frozen pumpkin pies or the pumpkin pies you can buy in the Kroger bakery.

"I know for some customers, that might not be an alternative," he said.

If you go to your Kroger store and cannot find canned pumpkin, check with the customer service desk. They may be able to tell you if another order is coming in or if they can get some from another store. Also remember that fresh pie pumpkins are a delicious alternative to canned pumpkin. If you can find pie pumpkins, all you have to do it split them in half, remove the seeds and stem, place them in a microwave-safe dish with about an inch of water on the bottom, cover and nuke until soft. Then scoop out the flesh, puree it and go from there as you would with a recipe that calls for canned pumpkin. Another good idea came from my co-worker Tonia Moxley, who is a great cook: try subbing butternut squash instead.

I don't know if you all have heard the news, but we may be facing a bit of a pumpkin shortage come holiday time (L.A. Times story; Baltimore Sun article). It's hard to believe, seeing the Halloween pumpkins stacked in front of grocery stores and spread across fields at the orchards, but it's true -- canned pumpkin is scarce right now, and when the shelves do get stocked, you might be paying upwards of an additional dollar for one can of Libby's, the leading brand.

Apparently, it was wet weather last pumpkin season that is negatively affecting supplies of canned pumpkin this year. That's because the canned pumpkin companies generally use surplus from the previous season to supply stores in September and October. Then, once this year's harvest begins, they can start stocking fresh cans.

I have to wonder if this year's harvest is going to be much better, though. At least in these parts, it seems a lot of people's summer squash harvests were ruined by too much rain. Maybe the harder shelled winter squashes are a different story. But it seems that most of the canned pumpkin comes from out west anyway.

Has anyone had trouble finding canned pumpkin at local grocery stores lately?

Get ready for a world of possibilities.

If Marie-Antoine "Antonin" Careme  were alive today, he would undoubtedly have his own television show on the Food Network.

Heck, he might even own the Food Network.

The 18th-century Frenchman was known as “the king of cooks, and the cook of kings,” and for good reason: He cooked for Napoleon of France,  Alexander I of Russia, England’s George IV  and the Rothschild family of banking fame.

He also created dishes for one of his biggest (and roundest) fans, Italian composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini .

Careme may have been the original celebrity chef, but he left a legacy much broader than his name. He was the first to publish a classification for sauces, calling four basic recipes the “mother sauces.”

His four categories included espagnole (brown stock-based), veloute (clear stock-based), bechamel (cream-based) and allemande , a veloute enriched with eggs that is very similar to hollandaise sauce.

It wasn’t that nobody was making these sauces before Careme came along; he was just the first to point out that an array of different sauces could be created just by embellishing these mother sauces.

In essence, they are the building blocks of saucemaking.

Continue reading this column.

To see recipes for espagnole sauce and chicken Marsala, read on...

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Wings of gold

Last week, a blog reader forwarded me a fascinating business article from The New York Times about chicken prices. According to the story, lots of restaurants have dropped wing specials or dropped chicken wings from the menu entirely in favor of "boneless wings," which are really just breaded chunks of chicken breast meat.

According to the article, this is happening because chicken wings, once little more than a throwaway part, are actually MORE EXPENSIVE now than chicken breasts. This may be more obvious to restaurant food buyers than supermarket customers because grocery stores may be trying to "preserve their margins on breast meat."

Is this happening because chicken wings have gotten so popular? In part, but the NYT reporter also found that when the economy took a nosedive, people stopped eating out as often and chicken breast sales slumped. But chicken wings were apparently still viewed as a cheap indulgence.

I haven't thought of chicken wings as "cheap" in quite some time. We buy them and make them at home pretty often, and by the time you factor in the work it takes to clean and trim them, we might as well go out to a restaurant and order a plate. We do it for fun and because our wings are pretty darn good.

Do you guys think boneless wings are a reasonable substitute for bone-in? If any chefs and restaurateurs are reading this entry, what do you make of the price flip-flop?

A black bean soup that looks like mine did before I cleaned the bowl.

We had friends over Saturday night to watch football, and it seemed like perfect night to make a big pot of something hot. One friend is a vegetarian, and since I'd had black bean soup on the brain for some reason, that seemed like a good option.

By the time I made up my mind that I wanted to make black bean soup, however, it was too late to start soaking dried beans. I decided to go the easiest route and start with canned beans. You can throw any number of things in a black bean soup, depending on the mood - bacon or ham, green chiles, bell peppers, salsa, tomatoes, hot sauce, lime juice, cilantro - you get the picture.

From a vat big enough to feed a small Army, we had one serving left. After last night, we don't even have that!

Here's how I made my version. What would you do differently?

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