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I had little or no exposure to Brunswick stew before I met my husband, which is a bit surprising considering that it is a Southern specialty and I'm a Southern gal. But I think this stew is more common in barbecue country because it is traditionally served as a side dish with barbecue, and Roanoke and the Alleghany Highlands really aren't "barbecue country," in my mind.

Most folks suspect the hearty concoction was invented in Brunswick County, Virginia and named for that place. Down near the border of North Carolina - now that's probably closer to barbecue country. It was invented by hunters who traditionally used rabbit, squirrel or chicken in the mix.

My husband just loves Brunswick stew, so I thought I'd try to make a pot of it for the first time last night. I chose a recipe from "Joy of Cooking: All About Soups & Stews." My only complaint with this recipe is that it called for waaaaaay too much chicken. Even bone-in, five pounds of chicken is too much. I also chose to pull the meat off the bone near the end of the cooking process. I'd just rather have tender chunks of chicken in my stew than have to cut it away from the bone in my bowl.

So, you might say I stuck with tradition and made this with bone-in chicken and barbecued pork, but broke from tradition by removing the bones before serving. I also left out the lima beans (gasp! I know, not traditional) because I didn't want to see the sad little pile of them that hubby would no doubt collect in one corner of his bowl. I added some Great Northerns instead because I would have at least missed the texture.

Let me know what you think if you try this recipe. And also let me know if you think you've got a better one, because I'm not wedded to this one.

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Just a quick note this morning to tell you about two great food and drink deals I recently stumbled across in my social flutterings:

1. TGIFridays has one of the best happy hours I've found in Roanoke recently. Every weekday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., all of their appetizers are half price and they have some extremely affordable drink specials. I think domestic drafts are $2, and they have mixed drink specials, too. We had some Jack Daniels chicken strips for about $5 and a three-for-all sampler for about $6.50.

2. Awful Arthur's in downtown Roanoke has a new bar menu that's available during happy hour and after kitchen hours. It offers some great deals on their appetizers - most are about $4.95. This includes a slider sampler that comes with two sliders (your choice of crab cake, burger or tuna) and a pile of fries. You can get two crab cakes, two burgers, or any combination of the three. Howard and I recently shared this appetizer and found it to be delicious and filling. Great value for the money.

If you know of any other great deals, please share them!

This week, I've received word that TWO fellows with local connections are finalists in national cooking competitions! Katsuko "Katz" Sandifer, who up until recently was a kitchen manager at The Casino Club at The Homestead in Warm Springs, is one of four finalists in the professional category of Ocean Spray's recipe contest. His dish is Asian Shrimp and Scallops with Ginger Cranberry Syrup. Patrick Maggi, owner of Blues BBQ in downtown Roanoke, is one of 10 finalists in the American Pizza Championship. His winning creation is a Prosciutto Pear Pizza, a sweet and savory combination of poached pears, prosciutto and Gorgonzola cheese.

Katsuko Sandifer

Katz was born in Japan but his family moved to America when he was about 13 and he went to high school in Chapel Hill, N.C. He received an Associate's Degree from the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute. He says he worked at The Homestead for about five years, starting as an intern and moving his way up to a kitchen manager. He recently quit and moved to Rhode Island to finish up his culinary degree at Johnson & Wales University. He would like to eventually be a teacher at a culinary school.

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Wileyptnews.com

If you've had your eyes open at the grocery store over the last year or two, you probably noticed a surge in those little 100-calorie snack packs. It seems like everyone who makes snack food has jumped on the 100-calorie packaging bandwagon. The idea is that if the food is portioned out for the customer, he or she is less likely to overindulge.

Generally speaking, I think it's a great idea and I've purchased some of these products myself. What bothers me about them, though, is the same thing that bothers me about a lot of packaged foods: all that paper and plastic that goes in the trash when you're finished nibbling your precious Goldfish crackers or cookie bites.

As a result, I was pretty intrigued when I recently received a new book in the mail called the "100-Calorie Snack Cookbook" by Sally Sampson. Sampson has created a 256-page guide to creating your own 100-calorie snacks at home. I can only imagine that some of her ideas wind up costing less and tasting better in the end. They may even be more filling -- in Sampson's world, you can eat a whole bowl of soup, 2.5 cups of spiced popcorn or a whole plate of salad for the same number of calories.

I'll share a couple of Sampson's recipes below. If you are interested in buying the book, it retails for $18.95 but can be had as cheap as $13 at various places I spied online.

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We've talked a little bit about German restaurants before on this blog. Today, my colleague, Doug Doughty, drew my attention to a Web site where you can vote for your favorite German restaurant in America. Think we don't have any German restaurants around here? Well, you would be forgetting about The Rhein River Inn in Buchanan!

The Rhein River Inn is on the list of restaurants for which you can vote, so if it's one of your favorites, be sure to give them the support. The closest German restaurant to Roanoke, besides Rhein River, is Edelweiss in Staunton. It's on the list, as well.

Meadow Creek Dairy in Galax has brought home another award from the American Cheese Society competition, an annual, nationwide contest that is in its 26th year.

This year, the dairy's best-selling cheese, Grayson, placed second in the Washed Rind Cheese Category. Just what is a washed rind cheese, you are probably asking? Well, these are cheeses that are literally washed down, usually with a saltwater brine but sometimes with such liquids as beer, brandy, or wine, on a regular basis throughout the aging process.

Keeping the surface of the cheese wheels wet allows a beneficial bacteria called b-linens, or brevibacterium linens, to multiply across that surface. But since I am no expert, here's more information from the American Cheese Society:

“Washed rind” is used to describe those cheeses that are surface-ripened by washing the cheese throughout the ripening/aging process with brine, beer, wine, brandy, or a mixture of ingredients, which encourages the growth of bacteria. The exterior rind of washed rind cheeses may vary from bright orange to brown, with flavor and aroma profiles that are quite pungent, yet the interior of these cheeses is most often semi-soft and, sometimes, very creamy. Washed rind cheeses may be made from both pasteurized and raw milk, depending on the style of the cheese and the cheesemaker producing them. Cheeses in this category include some tomme-style cheeses, triple-crème, and semi-soft cheeses, similar to Epoisses, Livarot and Taleggio.

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I'm not sure anyone REALLY needs an excuse to have a Dairy Queen Blizzard, but just in case you do, here's a great one: Today only, $2 from the sale of every Blizzard will be donated to the Children's Miracle Network. In our area, that means the money will go to the Carilion Clinic Children's Hospital in Roanoke and Virginia Baptist in Lynchburg.

This is the fourth annual "Miracle Treat Day." The CMN hopes to raise about $20,000 this year. So do your part, as hard as it might be to force down that ice cream blended with chunks of candy.

D'oh!!!

Today's Extra section indicates that the Taste of the Roanoke Valley Food Expo is taking place at the Education & Training Center within the Botetourt Center at Greenfield. It is actually taking place at the recreational park, which is also located within the Botetourt Center at Greenfield.

The tricky part is that while the education and training center is accessible directly off U.S. 220, in order to get to the recreational park, you have to go down Catawba Road, then turn on Etzler Road. It's really rather confusing and I don't understand why there is no connecting road to the recreational park from the U.S. 220 side, but hey, I didn't engineer and build this thing.

If you have a GPS system in your car, the exact address for the Food Expo is at 97 Preston Parkway in Troutville. Here are precise directions:

From Roanoke:
I-81 North to Exit 150B to U.S. 220 North to Daleville, left on Catawba Rd., right on Etzler Road, right on Preston Parkway.

From Alleghany/Craig:
U.S. 220 South to Fincastle, take a right on Blacksburg Road, then a left on Etzler Road, complex on left.

From Botetourt:
From Daleville - U.S. 220, left on Catawba Rd., right on Etzler Rd., complex on right.

From Fincastle – U.S. 220 to Blacksburg Road, left on Etzler Road, complex on left.

Today's Extra section contains a story about packing more nutrition into your school-age child's lunches. The story came with so much great information that we couldn't fit it all into the print version of the paper. So here are a few bonus recipes to help boost the amount of Folate, Magnesium and Vitamin E in your little one's diet.

FOLATE

Why kids need it: Folate plays a vital role in cell division and red blood cell formation.

Why they may lack it: If his or her "greens" consumption consists only of green M & M candies or if blood work reveals anemia.

Recommended daily intake: 200 micrograms for kids ages 4-8; 300 micrograms, ages 9-13; and 400 micrograms, ages 14-18.

Sources: Spinach (250 micrograms per cup boiled spinach); romaine lettuce (150 micrograms per cup) and cooked lentils (350 micrograms per cup).

Our lunchbox suggestion: Folate-rich Not Exactly Your Mama’s Meatloaf makes a great cold meatloaf sandwich. that adds 141 milligrams magnesiumI thought we were going for folate here? or 35 percent of the Daily Value to your child’s diet.

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I know that many of you are anxiously waiting to find out who won our Crabbiest Cook contest. And I'm getting to that, but first I want to announce that Virginia fared very well in American Farmland Trust's farmers market contest.

American Farmland Trust asked Americans to vote online for their favorite farmers market, and more than 30,000 votes poured in from around the country. The markets were separated into small (1-30 vendors), medium (31-55 vendors) and large (56 plus). The winner of the three categories were:

Small: Collingswood Farmers Market, Collingswood, NJ
Medium: Williamsburg Farmers Market, Williamsburg, VA
Large: Davis Farmers Market, Davis, CA

In addition to the Williamsburg market, several Virginia markets placed in the top 20, including the Roanoke Farmers Market, which placed in the "medium" category. Also honored were markets in Fairfax, Virginia Beach, Yorktown and Goochland. In the interest of full disclosure, I am pretty sure that not every farmers market in existence was on the list of markets for which you could vote. The Roanoke market was the only one that popped up when I looked to see which ones we could vote for in the Roanoke area. Maybe the smaller ones will make it on to the list by this time next year.

At any rate, I'm proud to live in one of the top-ranking states in that survey. Only California had more markets on the list, which just further supports my personal opinion that Southwest Virginia is one of the best local food regions in the country.

And now for the Crabbiest Cook....

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