One Moment, Please… Our Readers Make It Happen Again

You’ll probably notice a very nice cookbook titled Tasty Temptations in this week’s issue of the Fillmore County Journal.

This is our 14th annual cookbook appearing in the newspaper, blessed with recipes shared by your family and friends from the region.

On Saturday, October 12, 2023, we coordinated our annual cooking contest at Rushford Foods.  Historically, the cooking contest rotates between Harmony Foods, Preston Foods, and Rushford Foods year after year.

Due to busy schedules, not everyone was able to attend the cooking contest, but their recipes have been included in this cookbook.

This year’s cookbook boasts 56 tried and tested recipes.  Collectively, if you have a copy of every cookbook since we started publishing Tasty Temptations, you’d have 877 recipes from various categories.

During this year’s cooking contest, I spoke with some of the contestants about the annual event.  Many participants have every cookbook and use them regularly.

I think it is amazing and wonderful how this all comes together each year.  We are fortunate to have so many people who are willing to share their favorite recipes for the cookbook.  Then to have so many of them prepare their recipes to be judged in a cooking contest.

And, then there are the sponsors of the cooking contest and cookbook.  The Hoiness family of Rushford, Minn., owners of Harmony Foods, Preston Foods, and Rushford Foods, have played a big role in the annual cooking contests and the cookbook itself, with more than $6,600 in gift cards provided to the winners of the cooking contest since 2010.

This entire cookbook would also not be possible without the participation of local businesses advertising all throughout the Tasty Temptations cookbook.  They help pay for the cookbook to be published and distributed in 19,000 newspapers spanning the counties of Mower, Fillmore, Houston and Winneshiek.  Please be sure to thank those businesses and support them throughout your local holiday shopping.  They play an important role in making things like this cookbook possible.

Of course, I cannot forget our judges.  A special thanks to Ellen Whalen, Wanda Hanson, Andrew Darling, Kim Durand-Hammel, and Amanda Sethre for taste-testing all of the recipes for this year’s cookbook.

If you are missing any copies of the previously published cookbooks, or you simply want a ready reference of these great recipes, you can visit our website and flip through the digital pages of each cookbook dating back to 2010. fillmorecountyjournal.com/tasty-temptations-cookbooks/