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I'm going to give everybody until 5 p.m. today to enter the contest to win Alton Brown's book, "Good Eats: The Early Years." The winner will be announced on this blog on Monday.

Until then, I've got a few fun recipes to share. These were the three winning recipes in a contest held at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. W&L spokeswoman Sarah Tschiggfrie tells me this is the sixth year they've had a "Recipes from Home" contest for first-year students and their parents. This year, the contest drew 75 recipes. The winning recipes were served at the college's Parents and Family Weekend Luncheon last Saturday.

I remember being a homesick transfer student at Roanoke College, so I can imagine how wonderful it would be to see one of my mom's signature dishes piled up on the plates of my fellow students.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

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Every year, "Peanuts" character Linus waits around for a Great Pumpkin who never shows. This year, grocery store shoppers were almost in a similar predicament.

Fortunately, the Great Canned Pumpkin Shortage of 2009 was over before panic and dismay began to set in. After all, what would Thanksgiving and Christmas be without a golden brown slice of pumpkin pie?

At the risk of sounding too maternal, I will say that this little scare creates a perfect learning opportunity -- in the absence of canned pumpkin, one can still create a delicious pie with just a few tricks and tips.

First, the lowdown on the shortage.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

See steps for turning a whole winter squash into pie filling, as well as a squash custard pie recipe, here.

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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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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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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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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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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General Mills

The Chex Party Mix folks have been searching for a new flavor to add to their line of snacks, and the winner of a national contest will reportedly be announced in December.

Thousands of recipes flooded in to the company from people in all 50 states, and "a team of food experts" narrowed them down to just five recipes: Chex Pumpkin Pie Crunch, Lemon Rosemary Chex Mix, Buffalo Chex Mix, Chexicago Party Mix and Deviled Chex Mix.

The staff of the Extra section (and a few hungry co-workers who wandered by) sampled all five flavors and came to the conclusion that the Chexicago Party Mix, with its three kinds of Chex (wheat, corn and chocolate), cheese crackers, cheese popcorn and brown sugar was the best. We loved the salty and sweet combination. One person wrote "Sweet! Reminds me of Poppycock" and another wrote "If you want sweet and salty, this is the one for you. I like the popcorn."

Chexicago got an overall score of 20, followed by Deviled with 18.5, Buffalo with 17.5, Pumpkin Pie Crunch with 16.5 and Lemon Rosemary with 14. The last one scored lowest because we felt it did not have enough flavor. We detected neither lemon nor rosemary, only a faint flavor of garlic salt. To me, it tasted like garlic bread without enough garlic.

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Leading a healthy lifestyle can get downright frustrating when the messages are mixed.

Case in point: soy.

For a while, studies seemed to indicate that consuming soy reduced a woman's risk of breast cancer. Then the pendulum swung, and eating too much soy could speed the development of tumors.

So which is it?

In observance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I decided to find out what nutritionists and dietitians believe to be the best cancer-preventing and fighting-foods in the market.

What they had to say may not surprise you.

Maintaining a healthy weight for your height and avoiding excessive alcohol consumption are particularly powerful ways to fight the chances of getting breast cancer.

"I think that is the best [scientists] know," said Nancy Robbins, who teaches nutrition at Jefferson College of Health Sciences.

But there are other tools to keep in the prevention kit, and if anyone remembers what Mom used to fuss at them to eat when they were youngsters, they've already got a pretty good idea what those not-so-secret weapons are.

Fortunately, with maturity comes a more sophisticated palate. What was yucky when we were 5 can be oh-so-delicious now.

To read the rest of this column, click here.

For a healthy, delicious recipe for Minestrone Salad, read on.
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All the bakers in the house, say "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!"

That's what I said when I opened the box this morning and pulled out "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" by Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of "The Cake Bible." The image on the front is enough to drive a sweet tooth wild, but just wait until you crack it open and see the glorious, glossy photos and recipes contained within. Chocolate Feather Bed Cake with four layers of chocolate ganache, anyone? How about Individual Pineapple Upside Down cakes? Lemon Meringue Cake? Chocolate Genoise with Peanut Butter Whipped Ganache? Are you saying, "Mmmmmmmmmmmm" yet?

This is a cookbook for the serious dessert bakers among us -- most of the recipes are pages long. But every element that goes into each recipe, from the Chocolate Snowball Hot Fudge Sauce to the Coconut Cookie Crust to the Vanilla Cognac Syrup, are done from scratch and explained in great detail. I'll share a recipe from the book if I can find one that won't take me all day to type up.

Interested in winning this $40 hardcover book for your collection? Leave a comment on this post before 5 p.m. Wednesday and I'll choose a name at random. Good luck!

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