Thanks to Rainey Coffin for the homemade Halloween treat of the day.

She frosted these cupcakes with orange tinted vanilla frosting and then used a pastry bag to make the circles of brown frosting.

Using a toothpick, she dragged through the frosting to create spider webs and then topped each cupcake with a spider ring.

Jennifer Gatts, manager of Carolyn's Cake Candy and Cookie Supplies recently sent a note to the store's e-mail list about last minute Halloween treats.

Here's her idea for Oreo Suckers. There's still time to do this for your little ghouls and goblins.

Oreo Sucker
Separate one side of the Chocolate Cookie from the filling. Using a sucker stick, scrape a line of the white cream filling out.

Dip the sucker stick in White A'Peels Candy Coating (or melted white chocolate) and replace in the space.

Replace the chocolate cookie and dip entire cookie into A'Peels Candy Coating. Place on cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Decorate with sprinkles such as; non-pareils, decorettes, or shaped sprinkles, while candy is wet.

Place cookie sheet in freezer to set up (approximately 5 minutes).

I'm a sucker for caramel apples sprinkled with candy, cookie crumbs, or other goodies.
What's your favorite homemade Halloween treat?

All of the talk about bacon on The Falls in the last couple weeks inspired my husband to head to the basement for our cast-iron Dutch oven. (He was muttering something about popcorn, bacon grease and Parmesan... I'm not sure what he had in mind.)

When he brought it up we found the rust on the top of the lid. Oops.

We had stored it with the lid turned upside down on the pot, a cast-iron no-no. According to Lodge the lids should not be stored on the pots to allow for air circulation.

The Web site also includes instructions for reseasoning cast iron that has rusted. It recommends simply scouring off the rust and reseasoning the pan.

Here are the steps for seasoning cast iron from Lodge Manufacturing:

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Jesse Tinsley, The Spokesman-Review
After researching it all morning, I can say with authority: I have no idea.

It all depends...
Here is an excerpt from Sharon Tyler Herbst's "The Food Lover's Companion."

These wild nuts grow in clusters on the hazel tree in temperate zones around the world. The fuzzy outer husk opens as the nut ripens, revealing a hard, smooth shell. Italy, Spain, France and Turkey lead the way in hazelnut production. Until the 1940s, the United States imported most hazelnuts; however, they're now grown in Oregon and Washington. Also called filberts and cobnuts , particularly when cultivated, these sweet, rich, grape-size nuts are used chopped, ground and whole in all manner of sweets. They also add flavor and texture to savory items such as salads and main dishes. Hazelnuts are usually packaged whole, though some producers are now also offering them chopped — a real timesaver. Hazelnuts have a bitter brown skin that is best removed, usually by heating them at 350°F for 10 to 15 minutes, until the skins begin to flake. By placing a handful of nuts at a time in a dish towel, then folding the towel over the warm nuts and rubbing vigorously, most of the skin will be removed.

Here's what the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board says about the nuts:

The name filbert is the scientifically correct name for the tree and nut. The name is of French origin and the tree was likely first introduced into Oregon by early French settlers. Hazelnut is the name coined by the English and it was applied to the native species by early settlers. Hazelnut is more commonly used in marketing channels. In 1981 the Oregon Filbert Commission decided to conform to the common standard and began emphasizing "Hazelnut."

So, take your pick. They're more commonly called hazelnuts and that's what we're calling them on tomorrow's (Oct. 31) food page where reporter Heather Lalley has written about the nuts that are grown at Green Bluff.

I say hazelnuts. My grandfather (and maybe my mom) call them filberts.

What do you say?

We scored this can of Cougar Gold during a Friday night trip to Pullman.

I instantly thought of the Cougar Gold Soup that Carolyn Lamberson wrote about for the Food page during last year's tailgating season (recipe below). It is so incredibly cheesy and delicious. My husband can't stop talking about it.

I'm not sure my heart can standing having it more than once in a lifetime, but I'm thinking about chancing it...

For the record, you can buy Cougar cheeses at the Bookie in Spokane, 410 E. Spokane Falls Boulevard.

Maybe I'll just make grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. Any other ideas for this can o' cheese?

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Try some good old-fashioned Halloween fun this year.

Patty Hamilton sent an e-mail to request a leaflet from our Dorothy Dean collection. Dorothy Dean was a pseudonym for The Spokesman-Review's Home Economics Department, which started 1935 and closed in 1983.

The Dorothy Dean Homemakers service distributed leaflets (three each month for 11 months, with an index to the recipes on the 12th month) which subscribers collected in a green binder.

Hamilton was looking for the Halloween leaflet that includes a play for party guests along with holiday recipes. She plans to share the story with her grandchildren.

Here's the leaflet, circa 1970.

Download the PDFs of the Front and Back to enjoy at home.

You should start one.

We're barely a week into it... but I can already declare with confidence: "I love my lunch bunch."

You see, so far I've lunched on roasted leg of lamb with couscous, wild salmon and cream cheese quiche, Mediterranean bulgur salad, corn chowder and mulligatawny soup.

Today the menu is calzones made with olives, sundried tomatoes and cabrito (goat sausage) with coffee brownies for dessert.

Here's how it works: Instead of packing a lunch everyday, a co-worker suggested that we cook once a week and make enough to share. There are just four people in our lunch bunch and so far it is heaven.

No more boring sandwiches or endless leftovers...
And the best part is that everyone has been sharing their recipes.

I like them so much I used lunch bunch as an excuse to make these decadent peanut butter brownies I came across on the Smitten Kitchen blog.

On second thought, lunch bunch could be hard on my waistline.

Tim and Jan Kelley recently sent me a note.

They had misplaced a recipe we published from Brix Chef Adam Hegsted for Black Magic Shrimp with Charred Corn-Tasso Cream on Grilled Scallion Rice Cake and I'd recently sent it to them. Hegsted's recipe was the winning recipe from the mARTi gras party and cajun cook-off in Coeur d'Alene in 2006.

"Although it's an awful mount of work we had no difficulty making it and it was absolutely fabulous! So wonderful in fact that we decided to try the recipe by the same chef... you published in Feb. 2006."

But there was something funny about the Blackened Ahi Tuna with Pecan Dirty Rice with took the contest top honors in 2005. There were no pecans called for in the recipe.

The Kellys added 2 ounces of pecans to the dirty rice. When I got their note, I dropped a line to Chef Hegsted.

He said: "That is weird, maybe I originally was going to put in pecans. It sounds good and fits with the Southern (theme) and nuttiness of the blackening. Works either way I guess."

If you're up for the work, here's that recipe again:

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I've never lived in a Trader Joe's town.

That's my excuse anyway, for not understanding the Trader Joe's hype. Sure, I'd stopped in a couple times during my treks to Issaquah, Wash. on the west side. It seemed to me though that it was really just a place to get yourself into trouble buying things that you really shouldn't be eating (chocolate covered raspberry bars) and grab some cheap wine.

So, before a recent trip to the West side I polled my friends about what they love to buy at Trader Joe's and stopped in with a fresh eye.

Now, I get it. All it took was a bag of hazelnuts.

Food page correspondent Carolyn Lamberson was recently asking about where she could buy hazelnuts in Spokane. I pointed her to a couple of bulk bins around town, but she lamented that she used to buy them for a great price at Trader Joe's in Oregon.

While I was wandering around the Trader Joe's aisles I picked up a couple bags. They were $3.49 for a pound. That's five dollars a pound cheaper than I can find them around here.

(Although to be fair the salted snack-type filberts were $5.99 a pound. The roasted, unsalted nuts similar to the package I found at Trader Joe's were $8.49 a pound in a local bulk bin last week.)

I also picked up some Trader Joe's simmer sauces, chocolate covered edamame (c'mon it's got to be good for you. Dark chocolate? Soybeans?), garlic naan, animal cookies and some sweetened dried hibiscus flowers for fun.

What do you buy in bulk and haul back to Spokane when you stop into Trader Joe's?

Chattaroy's Eliza Shotts contest-winning nachos won't appear on Emeril Lagasse's Food Network show until 2008.

But if you can't wait, she's shared the recipe with us.

Shotts' nachos and the Emeril Live taping at her house were featured on the cover of today's HOME section. Here's the story.

Shotts says the recipe looks complicated, but it's not. She prepares the salsa relish, quartered olives and avocado ahead of time. She makes her own refried beans, but canned beans work fine too.

Plus, she promises it's worth the effort.

Here's the recipe:

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Finding the perfect birthday gift for your husband is never easy.

But if he's a Texas boy with dreams of throwing a crawfish boil for his Seattle friends, these little buggers can make things a whole lot easier.

I helped a good friend of mine with the planning for her husband's surprise birthday party this weekend. But what do two Montana natives know about crawfish boils? Next to nothing. (Although I do remember my cousins catching these critters in the river when I was a kid. We called them crawdads and we didn't eat them.)

We found a Web site for a Louisiana company willing to ship live crawfish to her door and we thought we were set. My friend gathered a huge stainless steel pot and a propane burner. The rest of the menu would be boiled potatoes, corn on the cob, cornbread, Shiner Bock beer and White Texas Sheet Cake (recipe below).

But when she logged on to order the crawfish the season had ended. (There's a season?) No need to panic. We settled on ordering cooked and frozen crawfish from the same company. Then they ran out.

That's when we panicked. As a last resort, my friend called the Pike Place Fish Market to see if they could order crawfish for her. They'd had a surprise shipment of Lake Washington crawfish that morning but weren't expecting more in time for the party. She bought 30 pounds. (If it's your main course experts recommend 3 pounds per person.) She was up until 2:30 a.m. boiling the little crawlers for the freezer.

During Saturday's party, we boiled potatoes, corn, onions, garlic and artichokes in the pot with seafood seasoning, adding the crawfish just long enough to warm them. We also boiled Gulf shrimp to help fill hungry bellies and for the less adventurous guests. The heartier eaters tried "sucking da heads."

It was a riot. As for my friend's husband...shown below dumping a batch of dinner out for the guests. He was as happy as a crawfish.

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I can't resist.

I don't go to the store intending to buy them, but as I wait in line to check out the Pumpkin Praline Pie and Double Chocolate Mitten cookies beckon.

Before I know it there are two on the conveyor belt and then in my grocery bag. Then, the sticker shock. ($5.99 each! I could have bought a cookbook for that price.)

I simply cannot walk past the holiday baking magazines.

It's too early to get started, but I'll be paging through those magazines for the next month, planning my attack. Maybe I'll make the Bittersweet Chocolate Caramel Tart.... Wait, I'll definitely need an excuse to make the Petite Blue Cheese Galettes.

But since the urge to bake is here, I think I'll start with a Halloween warm up. I didn't get a chance to make last year: Chef Deb Green's Pumpkin Chocolate Tart.
Here's the recipe:

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Once upon a time, The Spokesman-Review had a Dorothy Dean department that included a staff of home economists who helped callers in the midst of a recipe crisis.

There's no longer a hotline, but one vestige of that era is that my number is still listed in the phone book in The Spokesman-Review listing under "food editor."

When area cooks need help, they'll sometimes call.

'Can I freeze scalloped potatoes?', 'Where can I find some of the foods that we enjoyed in the Philippines?', 'Can you substitute ground mustard for mustard seeds?' are all questions I've received lately.

(The answers are: Scalloped potatoes don't freeze well. The Artist's Cafe in Cheney. And ground mustard can be subsituted for mustard seeds using 3/4 to 1 teaspoon of ground mustard for each 1 teaspoon of seeds.)

Perhaps you can help with this question: Irene Schmidt has been making an Italian Fried Spiral cookie called scalille (scaledde or scalicegghi) for most of her 80-plus years and she's always done it the same way.

Recently, her cookies have developed tiny bubbles all over the surface when she fries them. They taste fine, but she thinks the little bubbles are unsightly.

I suggested that she check the temperature of her oil. (Something she's never done because she's always made them by feel.) But that didn't work. Any other ideas?

I can never resist the bounty of fall.

I don't have any fruit trees or a garden of my own this year, but between friends, co-workers and the farmers' market there's been something on the counter that needs my attention for the past several weeks.

First, there were apples from the picturesque Talache Orchard on Lake Pend Orielle. (Thanks Chris and Caroline for introducing us.)

Then, plums from a friend's tree joined the lineup. Pears from a co-worker were added last week.

And who could have walked past the local sweet corn or the baskets of tomatillos we found at the Sandpoint Farmers' Market this weekend?

It all added up to a lot of hours in the kitchen. Now that I can see the countertops again, I'm feeling stocked up and ready for winter. There's applesauce, spiced plum butter, and corn in the freezer and amaretto pears in the pantry. Only the tomatillos remain and they're in danger for tonight's dinner of Chile Verde Enchiladas.

In a recent Food page story on pears, John Stucke mentioned a friend's recipe for Amaretto Pears and we've had several requests for it.

Here's the recipe (with thanks to Pam Hansen):

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It's not holiday crunch time yet, but some cooks are starting to think about their holiday baking and gift giving.

A reader recently sent a note requesting Rockwood Bakery's granola recipe after losing it in a house fire. According to the e-mail, it has become a favorite for gifts to co-workers and friends during the holiday season.

Here's the recipe

Rockwood Bakery's Peanut Butter Granola

11 cups rolled oats
2 cups shredded coconut
3 cups sliced almonds
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup chunky peanut butter
1-1/2 cups light corn syrup
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons vanilla
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 cup Craisins (dried cranberries)
1/2 cup golden raisins

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix oats, coconut and almonds in a large bowl; set aside.

Combine remaining ingredients in a saucepan. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves and ingredients are well mixed. Pour warm mixture over dry ingredients in stages, stirring well in between. Continue stirring until all dry ingredients are coated.

Transfer granola to two or three greased cookie sheets (with raised edges) and spread evenly.

Bake for 45 to 60 minutes (or longer), until deep golden brown, stirring every 10 to 15 minutes with a metal spatula.

Remove from oven and cool. Continue to stir and break up granola every 10 minutes.

When cooled to room temperature, add the dried fruit and mix to combine.

Yield: Approximately 17 (1-cup) servings.

Nutrition per serving: 750 calories, 36 grams fat (7 grams saturated, 42 percent fat calories), 16 grams protein, 97 grams carbohydrate, no cholesterol, 9 grams dietary fiber, 145 milligrams sodium.

What is chef Alexa Wilson's favorite new place to find bulk spices?

Wilson, of Wild Sage Bistro, says the back wall at DeLeon Foods at 102 E. Francis Ave. in Spokane, has a nice selection of spices. And it's not just all chili peppers (although there's a huge selection of dried pods).

She also told cooking class participants that it's better to buy bulk spices in small quantities because they start to deteriorate in as little as six months. Keep them away from the hot stove and bright sunlight, which speeds up the decline.

Wilson and Wild Sage partner and baker Gare Trager shared recipes and tips during a class featuring the restaurant's Breaking Bread platter. The recipes for Wild Sage's hummus and olive tapenade will appear in a story about party platters in this coming Wednesday's (Oct. 10) food section.

They also gave out a recipe for the restaurant's Olive Oil and Lemon Vinaigrette. Wilson says she uses the dressing to top the spreads on the appetizer platter, tossed with blanched green vegetables, to marinate meats and on oven roasted vegetables.

Here's the recipe:

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Jed Conklin/ The Spokesman-Review

The chill in the air always makes hungry for soup, mashed potatoes, pot pies and cooking classes.

While the kids are getting ready to go back to school. I'm scouring the listings for a class myself, a reward before the long winter retreat.

There are classes this fall for everything from chocolate to cake decorating to meat fabrication.

Here are just a few:

The Chocolate Apothecary is holding two classes about chocolate Oct. 9 and Oct 24 at 8 p.m. They are $15. Call (509)324-2424 to reserve a space.

Carolyn's Cake, Candy and Cookie Supplies offers classes for beginner cake decorating, rolled fondant, cookie bouquets and gingerbread houses.
The schedule is on their Web site and classes range from $30 to $65. Sign up online for a $5 discount.

The Greenbriar in Coeur d'Alene is hosting classes for Wild Game, Advanced Sauces, Country French, Meat Fabrication, Artisan Breads, Tapas and Hors d'oeuvres and Mediterranean Cuisine. Classes are $45. Call (208) 667-9660.

Also, check out the City of Spokane Parks and Recreation Activity Guide for classes for kids or adults.

And the Institute for Extended Learning for classes.

AP photo

A whoopie pie craving is nothing to ignore.

So I steered my way down Northwest Boulevard on a rainy afternoon for a cup of DOMA coffee and treat from Cielo Bakery. But it was a Monday and the bakery was dark, the parking lot deserted. Never mind.

Tuesday I tried again... (Maybe it was because I'd recently fed Oreo Cakesters to the food panel and those new cookies reminded my of those darn cream-filled goodies). The same blank parking lot and quiet storefront greeted me, so I walked up to the door and read a notice about new hours.

Cielo Bakery is now open Thursday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. I never got my treat, though in the meantime I came across a recipe for whoopie pies (that's two soft chocolate cookies stuffed with creamy marshmallow filling for the uninitiated) in the new "America's Best Lost Recipes Cookbook."

Oh, perhaps I should introduce myself...

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