Bakers needed

All you bakers out there, it's time to put those recipes to good use. In the process, you'll be helping a good cause.

Imagination Station is holding ChiliJam again this year and would love to have some goodies to sell for dessert.

Homemade bake sale items such as cakes, pies, cupcakes and cookies are all welcome, said Robin Hauser, development manager for Imagination Station.

Hauser said volunteers will cut the cakes into individual slices that can be enjoyed at ChiliJam March 27 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Wilson County Fairgrounds.

Please don't contribute items that need to be refrigerated, she said, and leave a note with the recipe's name, the baker's name and phone number and whether the cake or dessert contains nuts.

"Some sugar-free items would be great!" Hauser said.

Items can be delivered to the museum March 26 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with curb service offered from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The treats can also be delivered to the fairgrounds on the morning of ChiliJam.

This is a wonderful opportunity to help out our science museum. Think how many times your children or grandchildren have enjoyed their visits to Imagination Station, and imagine future trips with wonderful exhibits funded from such projects as ChiliJam.

I'm including some past recipes to give you some ideas for submitting treats to this worthwhile project.


Fudge and Oat Bars

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups self-rising flour
• 2 1/2 to 3 cups uncooked quick oats

Filling:

• 1 (12 oz.) package semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat 13x9-inch pan with cooking spray.
Cream softened butter and brown sugar. Add in eggs and vanilla then stir in flour. Add oats and mix well. Batter will be sticky. Press two-thirds of mixture into pan to make an even layer.
For filling, pour chocolate chips, condensed milk and butter, vanilla and salt into saucepan and heat slowly just until chocolate melts. Remove from heat. Pour chocolate mixture over batter in pan. Sprinkle with nuts. Crumble remaining oat mixture over chocolate and nuts; it will not completely cover.
Bake 25 to 30 minutes until brown.


Chocolate Brownie Cake with Glaze

• 1 (18.25 oz.) package devil’s food cake mix
• 1 (3.9 oz.) package instant chocolate pudding mix
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup reduced-fat sour cream
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 10-inch Bundt pan with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, stir together cake mix and pudding mix. Add eggs, sour cream, oil and water and beat at low speed with an electric mixer until blended. Scrape bowl and beat at medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake in preheated oven for 50 minutes to 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center of cake comes out clean and cake pulls away from pan.
Cool in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes. Invert onto wire rack to cool completely.
While cake is cooling, mix glaze ingredients. Drizzle glaze onto cooled cake.

Satiny Chocolate Glaze:

• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pour chocolate chips and butter into microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 1 minute. Stir until chips are blended. Mix in honey and vanilla extract.

Home Cooking

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I got several calls from readers who wanted to purchase a church cookbook as a gift. Local cooks love church cookbooks, and there's a new one in the area to add to your collection or to give as a gift.

Bailey Baptist Church has published "Women On Mission Centennial Cookbook," recognizing the church's 100th birthday.

The three-ring binder cookbook has 133 pages of favorite recipes from WOM members.

I immediately marked a number of recipes to try when I first thumbed through the cookbook and stopped at the grocery story during my lunch hour to buy the ingredients for the very simple Jiffy Peach Cobbler. The recipes takes less than five minutes to assemble and has only four ingredients: a can of peaches, some brown sugar, a Jiffy cake mix and some butter. As suggested by contributor Nan Bissette, I served the hot cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream. My family really enjoyed this last-minute treat.

But there are many other recipes through the book that I also plan to try including Debbie High's Sparkling Summer Tea made with tea, lemonade and ginger ale; Julia Duncan's Tastes Like Lasagna Soup; and Janice Harris' Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole.

Another recipe that caught my eye was Barbara R. Jones' Garden Burger. At first glance, I guessed this was a vegetarian burger, but in fact, the beef burger is dressed up with mushrooms, Parmesan cheese and onion. Jones' note says the burger is very moist. I'd love to try this.

Jeff and Tammy Norris' Chopped Barbecue Chicken also sounds like a recipe my family would enjoy. The chicken is first grilled before being chopped and blended with seasonings. Reminds me of one of my husband's favorite dishes -- chopped turkey barbecue.

I'm always on the lookout for new bread and muffin recipes, and I'd love to try Holiday Morning French Toast from Annie Ruffin and Tar Heel Hush Puppies contributed in memory of Daisy Brooks Privette.

The dessert section in this cookbook is a good one. There are plenty of cakes and pies for the novice cook who needs ideas or the more experienced cook who wants a challenge.

I could easily picture a slice of Judy Murray's Chocolate Cake covered with a cream cheese and Cool Whip frosting, and her Everyday Fudge Cake will probably make it to my table one day soon.

There are chocolate pies, fruit pies, frozen pies, pecan pies and even an Old Fashioned Egg Custard Pie in memory of Theora Tapp.

And if you like to bake cookies, you're in luck and can find a variety, including Joan Goodman's Oatmeal Cookies that are served as sandwich cookies with marshmallow creme filling.

Put it all together, and you have a nice, serviceable cookbook to use as a springboard to some new menu items.

One of the nice additions to this cookbook is the use of photographs at the beginning of each recipe section. It adds a personal touch and gives a glimpse into the history of the church.

Proceeds from the sale of the cookbook will fund Women on Mission projects.

Books are $12 each and can be purchased by calling Roberta Workman at 235-2764 or church secretary Barbara Liles at the church, 235-3663.



Jiffy Peach Cobbler

• 1 15-oz. can sliced peaches
• 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 1 box Jiffy yellow cake mix
• 1/4 cup butter

Spray square glass baking dish with Pam and pour peaches, including juice, in dish and add brown sugar over top of peaches. Sprinkle cake mix on top.
Cut little blocks of butter to completely cover cake mix.
Bake at 350 degrees until mixture bubbles and cake mix is brown on top.
Delicious served with ice cream on top while cake is still hot.

Nan Bissette
“Women on Mission Centennial Cookbook”



Honey-Mustard Chicken

• 2 1/2 to 3-pound fryer, quartered
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon red pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Remove skin from chicken and arrange in baking dish.
Stir together honey, mustard, soy sauce, salt and pepper in a small dish.
Brush chicken with half of the honey-mustard sauce.
Place chicken in 450 degree oven and immediately turn oven temperature back to 375 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes. Baste chicken with remaining honey-mustard and put back in oven about 30 minutes more or until chicken is done.

Jackie Tapp
“Women on Mission Centennial Cookbook”

Healthy Choices

You can buy baked chicken and a salad every day at Wilson Medical Center's Cafe Court. Or maybe a black bean burger with some fresh fruit is more to your liking.

But if you'd rather have a serving of fried chicken tenders and french fries, you're in luck, too.

It's all about making choices, said Dan Cantu, director of food and nutrition services at Wilson Medical Center.

And the hospital is helping its employees and anyone else who eats in Cafe Court to make informed choices. Not only do they prepare healthy foods, in some cases they display the nutritional content of their menu items. For instance, a sign at the grill notes the turkey burger fat content is 9.5 grams with 203 calories. A veggie burger has only 2.7 grams of fat and 130 calories, but the cheeseburger jumps to 24 grams and 476 calories. A grilled chicken sandwich weighs in at 2.2 grams of fat and 146 calories.

The beef hamburger is still a very popular menu item, said Ricky Letchworth, cafeteria supervisor, but more and more people are paying attention to those fat grams and are opting for the healthier turkey, vegetable or black bean burger, he said. And to make it even healthier, they're ordering it on a whole wheat bun.

At breakfast, pork sausage and turkey sausage are each served in the cafeteria. About a third of the sales are for the turkey sausage, Letchworth said.

"We're selling more and more," he said. "People are making those choices."

Employees are also happy to see the big bowl of Apple Cranberry Salad at the salad bar. The salad is garnished with walnuts and feta cheese and dressed with fat-free raspberry vinaigrette. Letchworth sells two to three large serving bowls of the special salads each day.

The hospital has offered healthy menu items for years, but it's stepping up its efforts in order to receive a Red Apple designation from N.C. Prevention Partners. The organization's mission is "prevention first for a healthier North Carolina."

Wilson Medical Center currently has a Yellow Apple status as it implements its plan for a Red Apple, meaning the hospital will be designated a "healthy food environment." That should happen this spring.

To get there, the hospital must meet a number of goals from training food services staff on portion control, to working with outside vendors for healthier options, to labeling foods that can easily be identified as healthy.

Healthy choices will be labeled with a yellow and black bumble bee in the hospital cafeteria. Already, the bee is displayed on menu items and refrigerated beverages that are considered the healthy choice.

And soon, those who eat in the cafeteria will be able to thumb through a notebook of menu items to find the nutritional content of their meal. That process was quite labor-intensive, said Shannon Jackson, clinical dietitian supervisor. The hospital cafeteria is self-managed, and staff couldn't rely on a big corporation to supply the nutrition information.

Hospital dietitian Kay Johnson analyzed each recipe in the hospital's four-week rotation in order to calculate the nutritional content.

Employees and visitors to the hospital will soon see some more changes to the regular menu, Letchworth said. He'll be offering more healthy choices, including a healthy soup of the day, and wants to serve fish twice a week instead of three times a month, he said. Lightly seasoned vegetables will also be on the menu each day.

Jackson said they get mixed messages from their customers. Some are thrilled to have the healthy options, others get defensive and say the cafeteria staff is trying to change them.

Cantu said the challenge is to get people to eat in the cafeteria every day and not get tired of it. With 1,200 register transactions in the cafeteria each day, they need to keep their customers happy, but they also want them healthy.



Strawberry Walnut Salad

• 1 2 1/2-pound bag spinach or spring mix or both
• Two quart containers thinly sliced strawberries
• One red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups walnuts
• Feta cheese for garnish
• Fat-free raspberry vinaigrette dressing

Mix ingredients and toss with vinaigrette. You can easily change the ingredient amounts for a smaller salad.

WilMed Cafe Court



Citrus Chicken Salad

• One bag spinach (or spring mix, or both)
• 1 pound diced fajita chicken strips
• 1 30-oz. can mandarin orange slices (drained)
• 2 cups sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• Fat-free balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Mix salad ingredients and toss with dressing. You can easily change the ingredient amounts for a smaller salad.

WilMed Cafe Court



Apple Cranberry Salad

• 1 2 1/2-pound bag spinach or spring mix or both
• 6 diced Red Delicious apples tossed with lemon juice if desired (don’t peel)
• 2 cups Craisins
• One-half red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups toasted walnuts
• Feta cheese to garnish
• Fat-free Raspberry vinaigrette

Mix ingredients and toss with vinaigrette. You can easily change the ingredient amounts for a smaller salad.

WilMed Cafe Court