Harding's Family Restaurant is a homestyle restaurant just off the Mink Shoals exit. It's near a hotel and even is displayed on the travel signs near the exit, so it's popular amongst travelers and sounded good when I was in the mood for some good ol' country cookin.
There's a gift shop that sells some local items, including a specialty salad dressing they use.
Wilted Lettuce Salad - shredded lettuce, cucumber, tomato, green onion and bacon topped with hot Appalachian Mountain Wilted Lettuce Dressing.
Dinner rolls
Roast turkey dinner with stuffing, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes with yellow gravy.
Small caramel sundae
In A Jam is a cool company located out of Parkersburg that makes things like Heirloom Tomato Jam, Pawpaw Butter and Wild Ramp Jelly (and yes, I purchased one of each).
These first popped out at me when they were packaged with some JQ Dickinson gift packs. It wasn't until this story that I realized they are local.
She has a sweet story, and I love the creativity of these jams!
Have you tried any yet? Which is your fav?
Local markets - especially those who specialize in specialty food - are some of my favs. Here's one I stumbled into in Kanawha City!
Sweet Charity is a dessert competition event held to benefit Faith in Action of the Greater Kanawha Valley. This nonprofit is near and dear to my heart, as it works to help seniors in the area with everything from grocery store trips to appointments and regular phone calls to home chores. I'm also fortunate to sit on their board.
Sweet Charity, which is one of the organization's signature events, brought together 9 local businesses that served their best desserts to compete.
Edgewood Summit
This retirement home brought their A game with an Alice in Wonderland theme. They served up a bread pudding topped with white chocolate and nuts. Nice mix of sweet and salty!
Melissa's Sweet Creations
This simple display combined cupcakes with a rice pudding in a chocolate cup plated on a beautiful blue serving tray.
Sugar Pie Bakery
Sugar Pie Bakery went all in on a unicorn theme with macarons, tie-dye star cookies, cupcakes with unicorn horns, etc. We were served a giant cream-filled unicorn horn with edible glitter.
Cakewalk Designs
Cannolis galore! These napoleon cannolis combine the delicious flavor of the classic cannoli with thin deep-fried disks stacked separating layers of ricotta.
Mrs. Groovy's Kitchen
Pineapple upside down rum cake that was super moist, with actual chunks of pineapple.
Mardi Gras Casino and Resort
Butterfly chocolate raspberry kisses that were the cutest little things and a bite-size of goodness.
Rock City Cake Company
This place knocked my socks off. We were literally served a three-tier cake (each!) made up of layers of delicious cupcake flavors topped with an Oreo skull. The top tier was a 2" Raspberry Italian Wedding Cake (our classic white almond wedding cake with a vanilla bean mousse and raspberry puree filling iced in a simple vanilla almond buttercream), the middle 4" is Dirty Diana (a classic red velvet cake, filled with a cookies & cream cheese icing and crushed oreos, iced in more delicious oreo cream cheese), and the bottom tier was a 6" Chocolate Peanut Butter Reese Cup (a fudgy chocolate cake, with a center of peanut butter buttercream & crushed Reese cups/chocolate syrup and iced in peanut butter icing).
Delights by Davis
Did you know brownies can be a bunch of different flavors? Delights by Davis did a pina colada brownie.
Sugar Momma Sweets
Sugar Momma Sweets always does something super creative; these grill-themed cookies were so cute. And, served in a basket and liner - and a ketchup for dipping!
Sweet Charity, which is one of the organization's signature events, brought together 9 local businesses that served their best desserts to compete.
Edgewood Summit
This retirement home brought their A game with an Alice in Wonderland theme. They served up a bread pudding topped with white chocolate and nuts. Nice mix of sweet and salty!
Melissa's Sweet Creations
This simple display combined cupcakes with a rice pudding in a chocolate cup plated on a beautiful blue serving tray.
Sugar Pie Bakery
Sugar Pie Bakery went all in on a unicorn theme with macarons, tie-dye star cookies, cupcakes with unicorn horns, etc. We were served a giant cream-filled unicorn horn with edible glitter.
Cakewalk Designs
Cannolis galore! These napoleon cannolis combine the delicious flavor of the classic cannoli with thin deep-fried disks stacked separating layers of ricotta.
Mrs. Groovy's Kitchen
Pineapple upside down rum cake that was super moist, with actual chunks of pineapple.
Mardi Gras Casino and Resort
Butterfly chocolate raspberry kisses that were the cutest little things and a bite-size of goodness.
Rock City Cake Company
This place knocked my socks off. We were literally served a three-tier cake (each!) made up of layers of delicious cupcake flavors topped with an Oreo skull. The top tier was a 2" Raspberry Italian Wedding Cake (our classic white almond wedding cake with a vanilla bean mousse and raspberry puree filling iced in a simple vanilla almond buttercream), the middle 4" is Dirty Diana (a classic red velvet cake, filled with a cookies & cream cheese icing and crushed oreos, iced in more delicious oreo cream cheese), and the bottom tier was a 6" Chocolate Peanut Butter Reese Cup (a fudgy chocolate cake, with a center of peanut butter buttercream & crushed Reese cups/chocolate syrup and iced in peanut butter icing).
Delights by Davis
Did you know brownies can be a bunch of different flavors? Delights by Davis did a pina colada brownie.
Sugar Momma Sweets
Sugar Momma Sweets always does something super creative; these grill-themed cookies were so cute. And, served in a basket and liner - and a ketchup for dipping!
Best Presentation: Rock City Cake Company
Best Creativity: Sugar Momma Sweets
Best Taste: Edgewood Summit
Plus, there was a nice little pepperoni roll package, which included my book, some stuffed pepes, a pepperoni roll shirt, pepperoni rolls from Swiftwater Cafe, and a pepperoni roll pin.
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