Food for Thought: Old News cooking contests stir up memories | Lifestyles
The goings on in New Castle and the promptly passing summer time have constrained the time available these days to chat about food stuff.
There is hardly ample time to eat lunch, and on these warm, humid times, appetites are limited.
1 working day although I was busily writing news stories, a faithful reader who had examine a few of these foodstuff columns contacted me.
She experienced saved a good deal of again issues of the New Castle Information Holiday getaway Cookbooks with foods prepare dinner-off recipes that have been judged in a contest sponsored by the paper. She questioned me if I needed the cookbooks simply because she was having rid of them.
They were tabloid sections printed on newsprint that ended up incorporated inside of the paper.
Judges for the contests integrated the late Peter Yerage, former foods services director at the college then identified as the Lawrence County Vocational-Specialized School, and Janice Hassen, retired Penn Point out Extension director. There usually were being guest judges, too, which includes ones from community dining establishments.
The difficulties she gave me ranged from 1989 by means of 1995. I was leafing by way of them and uncovered names of girls who have been single then, whom I know now by their married names.
There ended up two difficulties the place the similar individual, Joanne Stroud, experienced received the grand prize two yrs in a row. I experimented with to uncover her to try to faucet her memory, but seemingly, now in her 80s, she has moved to yet another state.
Hassen remembers remaining a choose at these events. She shared what she remembers.
“Maxine Carlson was the human being who initiated it,” she reported.
Maxine, now deceased, was the Way of life editor of the paper at that time and wrote her very own food column.
“We experienced it at the vo-tech faculty,” Hassen recalled. There was an application to enter the contest, and there have been various classes, and people today sent their recipes to Maxine. Then a committee reviewed them and invited men and women to “do the problem,” Hassen stated. “They experienced to just take their prepared dishes to the school and we judged them.”
“There were being distinctive groups,” she claimed, noting there have been appetizers, aspect dishes, main dishes, casseroles, cookies, cakes and pies, desserts, soups and chilis.”
They could place the ending touches on their dishes at the college, or heat them up there.
“It was normally a pleasurable party,” Hassen mentioned. “People arrived and they had been dressed up. It was long at night since there ended up so quite a few entries. We essentially tasted all the food items.”
She remembers New Castle resident Chloe Buckner successful a whole lot of situations.
“Chloe Buckner cleaned household all the time, in particular in the baking groups. She was a very fantastic baker,” Hassen recalled.
At 86, Chloe in a mobile phone interview mentioned she nevertheless does a good deal of cooking. What she remembers most about the contests ended up, “I was a winner.”
Baked items and major dishes were her specialties, and there was usually a whole lot of levels of competition.
“All I know is, I gained every little thing and I experienced all these awards, typically for cookies and cakes. I just appreciated it. I appreciate cooking and I keep in mind when I gained the a single of the contests, and I went to the vo-tech faculty and I cooked for the pupils and confirmed them how to make some recipes,” she mentioned, including, “Pete Yerage was my most important fan.”
She explained that after she received the New Castle Information cooking contest for so lots of years, he built her one particular of its judges in its place.
Chloe said her grandmother, Clotile Ross, taught her to prepare dinner.
“She was fabulous,” Chloe explained. “She cooked for all people in town, all the clubs. I cooked for most people, also. When I went spots, men and women would question me to repair some thing. I belonged to a large amount of social golf equipment and would consider a dish.”
Her favourite issue to make currently is spaghetti sauce, but her recipe is not one she can write down, she stated.
One of her grand prize-winning entries in the cooking contest was a recipe for Raspberry-Stuffed Cookies, the recipe for which is featured underneath.
It was unusual for a gentleman to enter the contest, and more unusual for a boy or girl to enter. But in 1999, 5-calendar year-outdated Jordan Reed from New Wilmington won the dessert class with his apple pie, that termed for rum in the recipe. The story printed in the tabloid mentioned his mother, Diana Reed, helped him bake. We speculate the place Jordan is today, and we’re hoping he is continue to baking pies.
Under are Buckner’s and Reed’s two successful recipes in the sweets group. Preserve watching, for the reason that following I thumb via them, there just may well be much more of these prizewinners published once more in the foreseeable future. And there might be persons who received back then whom you might realize.
Raspberry-filled Cookies
Chloe Buckner
Cookies
¾ cup margarine
¾ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup milk
4 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
raspberry jam
Icing
8 ounces product cheese
½ cup margarine
2 12/ cups confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
nuts or coconut
Cream margarine and sugar. Increase eggs. Mix in other ingredients (besides for the raspberry jam)
right until a soft dough varieties. Make balls the sizing of cherries. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.
Slice off tops, just a minor bit. Scoop out a little of the centre. Fill hole with jam and substitute the leading.
For icing, combine product cheese and butter until very well blended. Increase vanilla.
Ice complete cookie, then roll in nuts or coconut.
Outdated Planet Apple Pie
Jordan Reed
Crust
1 ½ cups flour
6 tablespoons (¾ adhere) butter
2 tablespoons shortening
¼ teaspoon salt
3 to 4 tablespoons ice water
Filling
2 ½ kilos of apples, peeled and sliced
2 cups brown sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
3 tablespoons dim rum
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Topping
¾ cup chopped pecans
½ cup oatmeal
½ cup flour
½ cup butter, melted
Preheat oven to 350 levels. Blend flour, butter, slash into pieces, shortening and salt in chilled bowl and mix right up until mixture resembles coarse meal.
Incorporate 3 tablespoons of ice drinking water and mix until dough retains with each other, introducing a different tablespoon of h2o if desired. Roll out a person crust to suit in a 9-inch pie plate. Prick with a fork and bake 10 minutes.
Blend apples, 1 cup brown sugar, cornstarch, rum and cinnamon and spoon mixture into pie shell.
Combine topping substances and combine right up until crumbly. Sprinkle on leading of pie and bake for 50 minutes.
