Book Orders Up Favorite Recipes

Do you have a favorite recipe - and a story that goes along with it - that you’d like to share with the world?

If so, the “Recipes Across America” cookbook people want to hear from you. The book, due out this fall, will feature cherished recipes of home cooks from coast to coast.

Send your recipe, along with a statement of 100 words or less about why it is special to you, to: Recipes, P.O. Box 30156, Tucson, AZ 85751. (And please feel free to send a copy to us here at the Fresh Sheet, too. We’d love to take a look.)

The 1991 Perch, please

With apparently way too much time on their hands, those finny folks at Simply Seafood magazine have been trying to create a standard set of terms for describing fish flavors - like the ones wine snobs use - through a series of “vertical tastings” from Hawaii to Boston (look, there’s some snobby wine language already!).

Among the early returns: “delicate hints of nuts and herbs” for skate, “tangy-citrus and full-bodied” for wahoo and “wild mushrooms and spruce needles” for wild sockeye salmon.

For a copy of the final results, send a $3 check to: Vertical Seafood Tasting, Simply Seafood Magazine, 5305 Shillshole Avenue, N.W., Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98107.

Charitable chow

Foods from a dozen Spokane restaurants and caterers will be featured at the first-ever “Twilight Tidbit Tasting” Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Holiday Inn-West, 4212 W. Sunset Blvd.

Proceeds from the event benefit Morning Star Boys’ Ranch and the Inland Northwest Area Special Olympics. Live music and a silent arts and antique auction are also on the program.

Tickets are $15 and available by calling 448-1411, 327-8551 or 1-800-325-SEAT.

Prize patties

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Build a better burger, and you could win $10,000 (in which case your friends and relatives will beat a path to your door).

That’s the grand prize in Sutter Home Winery’s fifth annual Build a Better Burger Recipe Contest, open to burgers of all types and judged on originality, flavor appeal and ease of preparation. (Hint: Last year’s winner, Portobello Burgers, just happened to use Sutter Home wine.)

Entry deadline is Sept. 8, so there’s still time if you hurry. For information, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to: Build a Better Burger Rules, Sutter Home Winery, 303 Green Island Road, American Canyon, CA 94589.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: We’re always looking for fresh food news. Write to The Fresh Sheet, Features Department, The Spokesman-Reivew, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210. Call 459-5446; fax 459-5098.