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This week's Tar Heel Tavern is up. Check it out!

A simple pictorial how-to on making roses out of maple leaves in the fall. Beautiful!

The N.C. State Fair starts on Friday, and you know what that means: fried food!

From Mark Binker at the Capital Beat:

And if you know anything at all about state fairs, it's that they are famous for frying things. So this year, new to the fair, joining the ranks of Twinkies and Snickers, is ...

...Coca-Cola. Yes, the soft drink. Yes, you can fry it, sort of.

Greg Seamster, who was whipping up swirls of new dough concoction for curious reporters Tuesday, explained the process. The batter is made with the dry ingredients that typically go into fried dough, but instead of mixing them with water, they are mixed with the soft drink.

"We first heard of this from the Texas state fair," said Seamster, as he added a few shakes of powdered sugar, a couple heavy squirts of cola syrup, followed by whip cream and a cherry.

While Mark's not a big fan, the judges in Texas liked it well enough to give it a win for creativity at the second-annual Big Tex Choice Awards Contest, beating out such delicacies as deep-fried macaroni cheese and deep-fried Cosmos. In fact, the creator of Fried Coke, Abel Gonzales Jr., is a repeat winner: his fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were winners in the tastiest category last year.

Related links
Best in Show in Cakes at the recent Central Carolina Fair
Elephant ears vs. funnel cakes

OK, so she's not the first cookbook I go to when I'm looking for something a little fancy. But I'm a Rachel Ray lover, not a hater. And this article in Esquire just increases the love I have for the perky brunette.

She responds to the haters:

"And the funny thing is, everything they say is valid: I'm not a chef; I'm a cook. But even the best chef in the world needs to know how to make a fast, tasty burger. Say what you want about me, but I throw down when it comes to burgers. I'm the queen of ground meat. The way I hack an onion is truly hacking at an onion. I do everything wrong. Whatever. Everything gets smaller in the end."

And then she goes on to mention some of her quirks that some people find particularly irritating:

"Yeah, some people find me annoying. I'm perky. I smile a lot. Hell, it's better than bawling. I speak in abbreviations. But if you had to stand there and talk to yourself for five years, you'd shorten some words, too. Yum-O? It just came out of my mouth one day, "yum" and "Oh my God" smushed together, because it was so good."

Whatever. We sold a lot of T-shirts with that one."

She has moxie, a quality that will always earn you points in my eyes.

Found a new cooking Web site today, Cooking Debauchery, and it has a great list of staples you need to make quick and simple meals. I have nearly everything she mentions in my kitchen at any given time, and I've become a whiz at throwing together pasta and whatever to make a quick lunch or for me to take to work. Check it out!

Saw a bunch of pie pumpkins at the Teeter today, and I think it's about time for me to run a rehearsal pumpkin pie before the family invades for Thanksgiving. But in the meantime, I've been making lots of other things with pumpkin, as you can read in my column in Savor tomorrow. Here's some previous posts with pumpkin recipes, tips, etc., all in one place for your convenience.

Carving pumpkins
Pumpkin spice cake
Pumpkin apple cake
Harry Potter pumpkin

If you're like me, you refuse to buy pumpkin spice because all it is is a combination of cinnamon, ginger, allspice and nutmeg. Here's a good set of proportions to follow.

To make 4 teaspoons of Pumpkin Spice:

2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 tsp Ground Ginger
1/2 tsp Allspice
1/2 tsp Nutmeg

I know it's against News & Record policy for me to take a stand and express my controversial opinions, but I just can't stand it any more. I have to speak out.

I hate cilantro.

There. I've said it. It tastes like soap.

Finally, there is a Web site for people like me: IHateCilantro.com

Here's a sample of haiku from other haters on the Web site:

You look like parsley

Really, you are cilantro

You taste like evil

***

These are all good herbs:

Basil, parsley, tarragon.

Die, Cilantro, die

When the leaves start to fall and there's a chill in the air, my mouth starts craving pumpkin. Rather than stopping at the coffee shop every day on the way to work for a pumpkin muffin to satisfy that craving, I dug out some of my favorite pumpkin recipes.

Though canned pumpkin works for most recipes, there's nothing like the taste of fresh pumpkin when you have the time.

When selecting a pumpkin for cooking, pick a "pie pumpkin" or "sweet pumpkin." If you can't find one, a carving pumpkin will yield good results as well.

Remove the stem and cut the pumpkin in half with a sharp knife. Scoop out the seeds and scrape away all the stringy stuff. (Don't throw the seeds out — they make a wonderful snack with the recipe at the end of this column.) Throw the strings in the trash — they'll clog up a disposal drain.

Roast the halves skin-side up at 350 degrees, until they're tender when pierced with a fork. (This could take an hour.) Let it cool, then cut away the skin and puree the flesh in a food processor. Strain the puree in a cheesecloth or coffee filter-lined colander to let the excess water drain out.

So, now that you have some cooked pumpkin, here are some recipes to use it in. (Note: 1 pound of pumpkin will yield about 1 cup of cooked pumpkin puree.)

And the winner is ... a parsnip.

From the Courier Mail:

"The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals."

The guys over at MyScienceProject.org really have too much time on their hands, which translates to useful information for us. They ran a 14-day experiment to see which "tried and true" method works best to keep your carved pumpkin from rotting before all your friends see it.

The verdict? It's a close race between using Pumpkin Fresh and not doing anything to your pumpkin. Which makes my lazy self happy.

Last year's Harry Potter pumpkin

I am truly grossed out.

I happened across this site, The Sneeze, which has as one of its specials, "Steve, don't eat it!"

And whether it's his experiments involving dirty socks and prison hooch or potted meat product or silkwood pupas, this man proves that he will eat ANYTHING. And there are pictures to prove it.

"It's like a Halloween communion"

Seriously. Those words were uttered on the copy desk the other night.

My friend Holly got a packet of orange hot chocolate a while back from someone who knew how into Halloween she was. (There's an annual event called Hollyween. The girl is into it.) And yep, orange. As in, when you mixed it with water, it would turn orange. We all thought this was the neatest thing ever, so we decided to hold a tasting one evening at work. (We have nothing better to do, right?)

So we open the package, and it's white!

We heat the water and grab a bunch of cups for the brave souls willing to try it. It looks more like Tang than anything.

In the end, it turns out it was too watered down to taste like anything. One taster remarked that it tasted "orange." (The good thing about wielding the video camera is that you don't appear on video.)

That's the subject line in an e-mail I got to send out today. I made some fun bloody finger cookies today to bring into work, and the paper cutter in the middle of the newsroom is the accepted spot for communal goodies. Convergence, my friend! I will never get to send out a more interesting subject line than that.