C-Ville Weekly, ABODE, May 2007

Cook your buns off
Win big: Do Dixie in the kitchen

What could be more Southern than sweet potato rolls with sticky caramel-pecan sauce? That’s the recipe that won the 2006 Southern Living Cook-off. The grand pooh-bah of all Dixie region lifestyle magazines is running the annual recipe contest again right now, and there’s a big cash incentive to submit. The grand prize winner will score a cool $100,000—enough dough to buy a lifetime supply of cinnamon rolls. Last year’s other finalists created an array of recipes featuring Southern decadence on a plate, including shrimp bruschette with guacamole and spicy braised short ribs with peach gravy and green rice.

One catch: You have to use at least one of the “sponsor products” in your recipe. Your options include pride-wounding stuff like Crisco and Jell-O, but also versatile and respectable ingredients like peanuts and shrimp. This year’s Cook-Off Finals will be held in Birmingham, Alabama, where finalists will duke it out on October 3 and 4.

If you’re a local and you win, we promise not to make fun of you for reading Southern Living. Last year’s winners were all from the Midwest or West Coast, so our position is that Southerners need to bring bragging rights back home. Go ahead and enter! And, for the love of O’Hara, don’t forget to garnish.—Jennifer Pullinger

Source: May 2007, C-Ville Weekly, ABODE Supplement