What we're reading in the food world

Looking around the online food world this morning:

• Is pimento cheese Southern? Charleston blogger Robert F. Moss offers a good look at the history at Al Forno (www.robertfmoss.com). And blogger Tim the Cheese Man ties the question to The Masters in Augusta. (Thanks to CNN's food web site, Eatocracy, for pointing out that link to the links, and to John T. Edge for tipping me off to Robert Moss.)
• While we're thinking about cheese, how do you make the best grilled cheese sandwich ever? Spread mayonnaise on the bread instead of butter. Francis Lam explains that and other grilled-cheese chef trucs at www.salon.com.
• Raise a toast to the debut of a new site at www.seriouseats: Serious Eats Drinks is dedicated to all things potable, from cocktails, wine and beer to coffee, tea and sodas. Today's offerings include a tasting of cream sodas.
• Where's the orange roughy at your Costco? www.change.org reports that mega-wholesalers Costco has agreed to cooperate with Greenpeace and pull 12 fish species that are fished unsustainably. Get the details here.
• And finally, David Leite wants to start a campaign to change the calendar. His reason: Making our food resolutions in January dooms our diets. See if you agree at www.leitesculinaria.

Help a Girl Scout out

In this case, you get to help two organizations. Emily Elliott, a senior at South Mecklenburg High School, is working on her Girl Scout Gold Award by creating a cookbook for the new Ronald McDonald House in Charlotte.

She needs recipes that fit these categories:
- Practical, cost-effective nutritious meals that can serve 70.
- Recipes that are easy for volunteers to prepare.
- Recipes that will fit vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dietary options.

Have a good recipe that meets any of those descriptions? Email them to me at kpurvis@charlotteobserver.com and I'll forward them to Emily for her project.

Paula Deen Edition: Give her a break

What a coincidence: Paula Deen was the guest of honor on "Top Chef" last night (fellow Georgian Richard Blais greeted her with deep-fried mayonnaise, which I think should become a tradition in my native state).

And I made a Paula Deen recipe this week. The reason: Bake sales.

The bake sale obligation does not end when your child leaves elementary school. When you are a known cook, you will be asked to cough up a few dozen of something on quick notice. It's wise to always have a few easy, crowd-pleasing recipes that people will pay for like it's gold coated with crack. And is there a better description for a Paula Deen recipe?

I had an office bake sale coming up (a good cause, raising money for the very fund-worthy Arts & Science Council) when I spotted Paula Deen's Homemade Kit-Kat Bars making the rounds on a couple of Web sites. Club crackers coated with boiled sugar and melted chocolate goop? I am so there.

Paula Deen's Homemade Kit-Kat Bars

75 Club crackers (about 1 1/2 sleeves)

1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter

2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup milk

1/3 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup creamy peanut butter

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 butterscotch chips

Line a 13-by-9-inch rectangular baking pan with crackers. (The original recipe called for breaking crackers to fill in the edges. But I later realized it wasn't necessary. I'll explain later.)

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the graham cracker crumbs, dark brown sugar, milk and granulated sugar. Bring to a boil. (Because the graham cracker crumbs make the mixture sort of thick, I never saw it actually boiling. It was more a question of listening for bubbly boiling noises. Just keep stirring so it doesn't burn.) Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

Pour half of the sugar mixture over the crackers and spread out with a flat or offset spatula. (This is the one place I had trouble. The sticky sugar goop made the crackers shift around like cracked sidewalk pavers. It would have helped to have a little room to push the first cracker layer back into place, and broken pieces of cracker made that more difficult.)

Arrange another layer of crackers over the sugar layer. Top with the other half of the hot sugar mixture. Top with a third layer of crackers.

Combine the peanut butter, chocolate chips and butterscotch chips in a small saucepan. Melt, stirring, over medium-low heat. Spread evenly over the top cracker layer, scooching a little melted chocolate into any open edges.

Let stand two hours (I cheated and went for one hour, which worked fine). Refrigerate at least two hours or overnight. Cut into long pieces. (A good tip for protecting your baking pan: Use a bench knife, a long, straight-edged cutter, to press down through bars cookies without sliding a knife and scratching your pan. In this case, I cut straight down through the middle long-wise, then cut each half into thin sticks about 1 1/2 inches wide.) Package 2 bars in sandwich bags or wrap in plastic and seal to strangers or your closest co-workers.

Tom Hanchett is a smart fellow in The Times

In this morning's New York Times, John T. Edge explores the ethnic food diversity of the suburbs of Indianapolis with the help of Dr. Tom Hanchett of Charlotte's Levine Museum of the New South.

Hanchett rode along with Edge during the reporting and supplied insight on why suburbs can be just as exciting and diverse as urban areas:

Hanchett, writes Edge, "coined the useful term 'salad bar suburbs' in 2008 to describe post-World War II suburbs, where 'newcomer and native-born intermingle without ethnic boundaries.'"

There's a lot more, but the gist is that what is really interesting in cities isn't what's going on in the downtowns, it's what's going on in the outer rings, where empty malls and abandoned big-box sites become mixtures of new populations and entrepreneurs.

It's smart reading to start your Thursday morning. As Hanchett says in the story, "The grownups don't usually know this is going on. . .. When they don't see a Chinatown, they see nothing."

Cheese quiz: Who eats the most pimento cheese?

Which two cities are the leaders in pimento cheese consumption?

Apparently, they are . . . Charlotte and Raleigh (well, Raleigh-Durham, the Tarheel twin cities).

That's according to writer Emily Wallace, who did a report on 'minner cheese in the latest edition of Gravy, the newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Wallace interviewed Ed Simmerly, vice president of Moody Dunbar in Johnston City, Tenn., the nation's leading canner of pimentos.

Simmerly said that 80 percent of pimento cheese spreads are sold in 11 Southeastern markets, with Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte claiming the prize as the two biggest consumers of pimento cheese.

As far as which pimento cheese is best . . . let's not start that again, shall we?

Making Hatcher crackers

When Beth Lee of Charlotte called me a few weeks ago about the Hatcher Crackers made by her friend Hatcher Kincheloe, I had to ask her what a Hatcher cracker is. "Well, it's . . . it's . . . "

Hang on, I said. I put the name into Google and quickly turned up several versions of the recipe, including a blogger in another state who had taken pictures when she was making them for Christmas. I realized quickly that it's a cheese-based variation of that Christmas toffee that some people call Mystery Cookies - you make a mixture of brown sugar and butter, pour it over saltines or graham crackers and bake it.

But the cheese version demanded to be tried, so I stopped on the way home that Friday and picked up the ingredients. After I got Kincheloe's version of the recipe, I found a few differences, mainly in the red pepper. The online recipes have you sprinkle it on the crackers, while Kincheloe sprinkles it on the cheese. I think that helps with distribution -- I had trouble getting good distribution of pepper, so my first batch was a little too picante.

Still, when Linda Kincheloe dropped off a bag of her husband's crackers, I was surprised to realize I had hit it pretty close to right the first time, with about the same level of browning and crunch as his version.

It's a great recipe and simple to make if you have an electric oven. Gas ovens may make it difficult to get the tray far enough from the heat source to keep the cheese from burning too quickly.

Thanks, Beth Lee, Hatcher Kincheloe and especially Linda Kincheloe, for letting me tell the story behind the crackers. Hatcher Kincheloe Sr.'s legacy lives on.

Raise a Fork Friday: What do you always buy at Costco?

Instead of a Friday poll, I thought I'd do a survey: Keeping it to five items or less, what foods are always on your list when you go to Costco? Yes, most of us pick up paper products and cleaning items, but I'm looking for your food list.

I'll start it off:
1. The big bag 'o limes. They're big and usually juicy instead of pithy, and you get 15 or so for $6.99. And limes have endless uses.
2. Kirkland Organic Peanut Butter. Real peanut butter, just ground peanuts and a little salt, so it doesn't have all those unpronounceable ingredients of the name-brand peanut butters. And you get two big jars for $8.59.
3. Nutella. Everybody deserves an indulgence. And a big jar at the supermarket is about the same cost as two big jars at Costco -- $8.89.
4. Frozen wild blueberries. Every summer, I try to freeze enough blueberries to make my breakfast smoothies all winter. And I always fall short (can't help it, I really love my blueberries). So I get through the rest of the year with big bags from Costco for $8.79.
5. Olive oil. Believe it or not, Kirkland's origin-specific Tuscan olive oil does well in taste tests against much pricier oils. And you get a full liter for $9.99.

OK, your turn . . .