Sweet baby dinner

It appears Bonnie Mortimer has come up with dinner and desert in one setting.

The Mount Pleasant, Pa., woman accomplished that with her spaghetti and meatball cupcakes, which bowled over the food judges today at the Washington County Agricultural Fair.

The taste-testers in "Little Washington," Pa., gave her the best-of-show blue ribbon for her unusual concoction. Actually, she rocked and rolled them by also winning first place with her chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and third place for her blueberry muffins.

And those judges were two prestigious chefs/instructors at Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Pittsburgh. There were not only judging the food for taste, but presentation.

"Those people are just so kind," she said. "They are tough judges and I've learned a lot of things down there."

Mortimer said she probably got the idea to make the entirely-sweet cupcakes while she was on the job as a state employee, after making several years ago a similar, but larger spaghetti cake. She made the meatballs with fudge, and them drenched them with a strawberry jam, which is sort of the color of tomato sauce.

That's what you call being creative in the kitchen.

Bonnie Mortimer of Mt. Pleasant, Pa., with one of two blue ribbons she won for her baking at the Washington County Agricultural Fair. (Beveridge/Observer-Reporter)

A busy editor relishes this recipe book

By Liz Rogers

It's 6 o'clock on a Wednesday evening.

Do you know what you're serving for dinner?

You're in good company if you answered no. Lots of time-crunched folks return home from work and stare blankly inside the refrigerator, in search for a shred of inspiration.

That's where a good, hard-working cookbook comes into play, one like "The Best of Relish Cookbook," says Jill Melton, editor-in-chief of Relish Magazine, a monthly food supplement that is distributed monthly in newspapers across the country, including the Observer-Reporter.

Melton, along with Relish food editor Candace Floyd and author and recipe developer Nancy S. Hughes, collaborated on the cookbook released this year.

"The recipes are simple and for everybody," Melton said in a recent phone interview from the magazine's offices in Franklin, Tenn. "I don't care how much of a foodie you think you are. Everybody's got to get dinner on the table at 6 on a Wednesday night. We were trying to actually hit on that and introduce people to a new spin on something but not overwhelming them with something exotic."

The book features 150 color-illustrated recipes, all of which have been published in Relish Magazine or on the magazine's Web site. All have been vetted multiple times in the magazine's test kitchens.

Recipes range from comfort dishes like macaroni and cheese, pot roast and cobblers, to newer fusions featuring such ingredients as tofu, phyllo and quinoa. There's a section dedicated to vegetarian dishes along with some recipes for gluten-free breads and baked goods. Sprinkled throughout are helpful cooking tips.

Melton, former food editoral director at Cooking Light Magazine, counted recipes for Cilantro Chimichurri, Quick Okra Sauté and Grilled Shrimp with Orange and Habanero Mojo as personal favorites. And the Orzo Veggies recipe is perfect for any potluck occasion.

"This is a reader recipe," Melton added. "We loved it. It's just all sorts of vegetables tossed with orzo and cheese and baked. It's great at room temperature. It just stands out."

Asked what makes this cookbook different from the hundreds of others jockeying for position on bookstore shelves, Melton replied: "To me, this is more of a hard-working cookbook, with a comfortable, familiar note, which I think people still want and will always want. It gives them a splash of something new.

"It's easy to digest and not overly complicated. It doesn't make you work too hard."

Liz Rogers is editor of the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa., where this article was first published. The Best of Relish Cookbook is available at bookstores nationwide, online and through Relish and American Profile magazines, distributed in the Observer-Reporter.

A tweet leads to sweet music

Andrea Capozzoli performs this week at Club Cafe in Pittsburgh.

By Scott Beveridge

PORCHVIEW, Pa. – A tweet on the Net was enough this week to take me away from a project around the house on a recession-proof vacation close to home this week.

The independent 91.3fm WYEP used Twitter to promote another one of its Third Thursdays happy hours that provide live performances by the best local musicians, free food and beer.

The band, “Meeting of Important People,” was on the menu alongside chips, pretzels and beer from Pennsylvania Brewing Co.

I left after few songs at the station’s community headquarters in Pittsburgh’s trendy South Side district because the music, while it had a good beat, was too loud to tolerate.

An unexpected reward, though, came around the corner at Club Cafe, where a female rhythm and blues singer was on stage.

Pittsburgh native Andrea Capozzoli immediately drew me inside the lounge at 56 S. 12th St., and her talent, and especially those scat numbers, kept me there until the set was over.

The decision was set when she performed the number, “Can you stay for a while.”

An instructor at Berklee School of Music in Boston, she also held her own on the keyboard and when she pulled out a muted trumpet. Her guitarist, Casper Gyldensoe, was spot on with his performance, too.

Capozzoli’s love songs were perfect for this dim, intimate venue accented with blue and plum walls and twinkle lights strung on tree branches around the ceiling. There were just a dozen people in the audience, making it seem as if they were at a jam session in her family room. All she needed was sexy, silk ballroom gown to melt the room, where everyone was keeping time with the beat.

“You got to make time to make love,” she crooned.

It would be hard not to fall in love with her voice.

It’s too bad that I didn’t purchase one of her albums before leaving to later liven up the mood at home during that miserable job of painting the entrance hall. Click here to listen to a sample of her music.

Meanwhile, Club Cafe wasn’t the place to seek out a good meal. The menu is limited to such small dishes as chili and pizza. The bruschetta pizza with green and black olives I selected arrived undercooked, and it didn't appear in any way to resemble bruschetta.

And while Pittsburgh is so lucky to have WYEP, the station needs to find another room to hold its concerts, or at least break a second door from the lobby into the studio to ease the congestion. The room is just too cramped.