| Parent: Charged daycare worker 'a little weird'
"I always found him a little bit childish, weird and for the longest time I didn't say anything to him," said a father of three, who attended Ontario Court of Justice at College Park yesterday. Paul Thomas, 19, was a fixture at the downtown Blevins Child Care Centre with 50-plus children under the age of 7 in his care. "My first impression of him wasn't good. Everyone else there was friendly to me, but he wasn't," the man said. "He was hugging my son, so I thought I should talk to him. Naturally, as a parent, I'm concerned and I want details." "I just thought he was a little weird," added a woman, who has since removed her children from the daycare. "He spoke like a child. He sounded like a 5-year-old." .
Double the fun of Del Shores in Palm Springs
A Del Shores doubleheader at the newly renovated Palm Canyon Theatre alternates two comedies in repertory programming through April 15. "Sordid Lives," a favorite in the desert, is being reprised. It is directed by William Layne. Don Hillier is directing "Daddy's Dyin' ... Who's Got the Will?" Radio personality Joey English takes the role of a singing ex-con in "Sordid Lives." The story about a family of misfits brought together for the funeral of the matriarch, who died when she tripped over her lover's prosthetic legs and hit her head, has a cult-like following similar to audiences at "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." .
Iowa guys find zing for nationally celebrated sauce
Before that, Russ Cerniglia and Frank Ksiazak had careened on the road of trial and error between "really bad" and "good but not quite there."
Cerniglia estimates they made "between 50 and 75" batches, adding and subtracting varying ingredients in different combinations, in their quest to build a better barbecue sauce.
"It was molasses that put us over the top," Cerniglia said, referring back a few years ago to the "we've found it" moment shared by the two West Des Moines neighbors.
Molasses or whatever, the sauce concocted sometime in late 2002 has moved well beyond the point of winning polite praise from friends and neighbors.
In 2003, Russ & Frank's BBQ Sauce won its first award at the Iowa State Fair.
Most recently, two of their sauces finished third and fourth out of a field of 95 in the 2007 National Barbecue Association's Award of Excellence sauce contest.
The anatomy of a winning recipe
The deadline is approaching for the mother of all cooking contests, the Pillsbury Bake-Off.
With a $1 million grand prize, this is a contest that goes way beyond blue ribbons.
So what does it take to win that million-dollar prize? Diane Kerekes of Sapulpa came close to finding out last year when she advanced to the finals, and won $10,000 for her Southwestern Chicken Biscuit Pot Pie.
One thing that Kerekes' recipe shares with other Pillsbury winners is a creative use of Pillsbury ingredients. Taking ordinary ingredients and making them interesting, or even gourmet, is something many of the past winners have in common.
Kerekes' recipe used canned soup, plus added ingredients, and was topped with Pillsbury biscuits. Last year's grand-prize winner, from Austin, Texas, won for her Baked Chicken and Spinach Stuffing, a dressed-up concoction of chicken breasts stuffed with Green Giant spinach and Pillsbury waffle sticks.
Food Notes Food Notes
New Rivers Bistro in Providence probably will be closed for a month while repairs are made to the kitchen, the site of a fire last week, owner Bruce Tillinghast reported. The fire on April 9 did relatively little damage to the building at 7 Steeple St. but it will take time and money to restore things to normal in the restaurant, he said. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, he said, though it seems to have begun in duct work and some of the kitchen's hardwood charcoal used for cooking. Tillinghast wasn't at the bistro at the time of the 8 p.m. fire. He said he had left the restaurant at 5:30 p.m., gone for a swim at the Y and was home making dinner at the time he was called by his staff who said the flames were quickly extinguished. The restaurant was serving dinner at the time.
West Point names new chef
Moving on up is Doug Fulton, the West Point Market's manager of meat, seafood and oven-ready, to the position of executive chef. Fulton has been at the market for a year and replaces Dave Hanna. When we talked last week, Fulton said he was excited about the promotion. Some of Fulton's most recent work has gone into the meat case, where he increased the number of handmade sausages from three to about a dozen. Some of the newer offerings include turkey and chicken Italian sausages. Speaking of West Point, this month the market is celebrating its original items, including its signature ``Killer Brownies.'' As part of the celebration, West Point is sponsoring a story-writing contest, titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to West Point.
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