
Need a little inspiration for your holiday cooking? Or better yet, need a big push toward holiday meals to go?
Stop by Fresh Market Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the store’s annual “Taste of the Holidays Sampling Event” where the food is fresh, free, and someone else prepared it.

Voting will be held through December 18th, and winners will be revealed in the magazine's February 2010 issue.

Is there anything more delicious-sounding than a cake-cutting ceremony?
Today at Shara’s Paperie, there will be such an event to announce its new line of gift cakes, Cake Bliss, produced locally by Hilda Osarogiagbon.
Osarogiagbon says the path to Cake Bliss and Shara’s Paperie was like one of a boomerang.


Photo by Melissa Anderson Sweazy
This afternoon, Food News writer Pam Denney and I stopped by the newly opened Farmer's Market Midtown at 1632 Union.
Owner John "JR" Raney had originally tried his luck with an open-air Midtown market earlier this summer. When that didn't work out, he decided to take it indoors in a space that was previously a consignment furniture store.

Last night, Food News writer Pam Denney and I went to the soft opening of Stella Marris, Steve Cooper's restaurant that had been the subject of protests by Cordovans who were concerned about Cooper's background in adult entertainment.

To say the place — which is two-story and seats 330 — is ornate doesn't quite describe it...
CMI, the Flyer's parent company, is holding a Jack-o-Lantern contest.
Check out this entry of a pumpkin eating gourds. I always suspected pumpkins were vicious like that!


When I stopped by Wayne's Candy Co. earlier today, co-owner Kelly Hardcastle was standing in the door. Check out that smile! He's been selling candy since 6 a.m. this morning.

Skaggs took the time to answer a few questions about beer for Hungry Memphis.
You're both a horticulturist and brewer. Where does the twain meet?
The fact that all the ingredients in beer are from cultivated plants is a natural convergence of brewing and gardening. Both involve growing living things for our purposes. In brewing, yeast grows in a media of natural sugars; and in gardening, plants grow in a media of soil. Historically, if you look at the beers brewed in medieval times, many more plant-based ingredients were used than only the barley and hops used today. Both gardening and brewing are celebrations of the natural world.
I stopped by Mr. Lincoln's Costume Shoppe today to check out the food costumes.
There are plenty.
You can be an M&M, for example, in any number of colors.


Good news: After a hiatus, fast-food chronicler Backyard Blogger is back.

Today, food news writer Pam Denney and I stopped by the estate sale at the Annesdale-Snowden House.
We cleaned the place out.


Could it be true?