Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 33

insids this section i cdnsrdsy, July c3, I j7 She? talk: Growing henia Michigan-grown fruits and vegetables are in their prime now. Quality and price should be better for consumers because supplies are closer to home. Source MSU Cooperative Extension Service I JANE ERODY 2 wTne" 4 GADGETS' 5 GENERAL NEWS 9 DETROIT FREE PRESS Call Food: 222-6549 pagss 9-15 lb 'crcmy 1 1 H.S. 1 Grilled in loads of butter, this tit" By PATRICIA EDMONDS Free Press Staff Writer Free Press 5ta 00 EMPHIS Yes, there is room service at the Heartbreak Hotel. ft.

iiiemeiiuia i -uuuco mcu ou black you'd think nothin' but a hound dog would touch 'em. It's biscuits ladled with butter until iwi iU oimn 1Mirn nnti Frn CRAIG PORTFR Detroit Free Press WHAT WAS ELVIS' ARMY SERIAL NUMBER? Answer on Page 6C. See the back page for a close look at an Elvis impersonator. Thursday Elvis week continues in the Fashion section with tips on how to dress like the King. We include a how-to for women fans as well.

1 VI 1 v. St'" peanut butter and banana sandwich would jJ Even with his taste in food Mary Jenkins was Presley's cook for 1 8 years and has cooked at Graceland for 24 years. 17 x. jjbu'll eat anything if hungry enough I 've always believed that meal-in-a- box and meal-in-a-bag convenience foods have their place, and now I know where it is: the middle of a lake in northern Minnesota. went canoeing up in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area last week, and found that $bme of the foods that I'm ordinarily inclined to sneer at can actually taste quite good when you're camped on an island, there is a rainstorm howling outside your tent and the entire meal has to be prepared on one portable White gas camp stove.

ri Back at home in the city, I've never seen much point to hamburger helper-type products and instant pasta salad with dehydrated vegetables. Frozen dinners that require no work at all, I can understand, but not the meal-in-a-box dinners where you pay a premium price for dishes that you can assemble nearly as quickly from scratch with fresh ingredients. i I'm not a fanatic on this point, understand; I'm actually very fond of ramen noodles, for example. But ramen noodles are very cheap (usually 25 cents a package, or less) very quick to prepare, and very tasty when I doctor them up with scallions, mushrooms, and leftover meat, chicken or a few shrimp. Doctoring up dinners i In the wilderness, however, when you have to carry five days worth of food on your back, dehydrated foods suddenly make a lot more sense.

There are all sorts of specialized, very expensive food products for back packers, ranging from spaghetti dinners to freeze-dried ice-cream, available at camping outfitters and sporting goods stores. We brought along some Lipton packaged dinners, which are available in most supermarkets and which worked just fine for our pur-poses. I can offer a personal mendation for the Lipton Chicken Flavor Rice Sauce dinner, which we doctored up with a little fresh broccoli, and the Lipton Chicken Flavor Noodles Sauce, to which we added a few fresh mushrooms. Portable, but pricey The only drawback to these products is that they can be rather expensive: A 4.25 ounce package of Lipton Chicken Flavor Noodles Sauce costs as much as $1.10, which works out to more than $4 a pound for a product whose main ingredients are noodles, cornstarch, dried corn syrup and hy-drolyzed vegetable protein. Upon my return to the office, I found a fat new book titled "Cheaper Better: Homemade Alternatives to Storebought Goods" by Nancy Birnes, (Perennial Library, $11.95) that gives formulas for everything from a homemade shake-and-bake type product to curry powder to granola.

Birnes also includes recipes for a range of nonfood products, ranging from herbal shampoo to fly repellent to a disk-drive head cleaning kit. Included was a recipe: it Homemade Creamy Herb Rice 4 uncooked rice Vi instant nonfat dry milk dried minced celery 2 parsley 2 thyme 1 Tmarioram Comhine the ingredients, mix well, and store in a tightly sealed container for up to fdur months. To use, mix one cup of the mix with two cups of water or broth, adding a tablespoon of butter or marga-rihe if desired. Place the rice, water and better on high heat and bring to a rolling boil. Immediately reduce the heat to very low, cover, and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed.

Makes about two cups of rice. Tested bv Jeremy Iggers for the Free Press Tower Kitchen. I "I tried this one out at home, substituting dried onion flakes for dried celery since I couldn't find any dried celery in the supermarket. (Birnes gives directions for drying celery and other vegetables in the oven, if you really want to economize: You just preheat the oven to 120 degrees, spread the thinly sliced vegetables on a cookie sheet, and dry until crisp.) The result wasn't quite as tasty as the store-bought Lipton's version, I'll admit, but it was a lot less expensive. And I'll bet if I were ever again sitting in a tent on an island in a driving rainstorm, I would even think it tasted good.

Uie ycnuw slum i una uuwii unvu your blue suede shoes. It's a salad of macaroni all shook up with mayonnaise and sweet pickles and hard boiled eggs. Elvis Presley may have been rock roll royalty, the King. But his tastes in food were as down-home as his poor Tupelo, upbringing, and as elemental as the throb he put in the hearts of millions of fans. In the industry that is Elvis memorabilia especially as the 10th anniversary of his death Aug.

16 nears every scrap of memory is merchandise and every person who knew him is expert, author or both: Mary Jenkins was Presley's cook for 18 years, and often is asked for his favorite recipes. George Klein, a former Presley traveling companion, is hot on the TV talk show circuit, plans to write a book, and knowledgeably supplies Elvis minutiae, including the King's favorite burger joint (Chenault's in Memphis, on a drag known as Elvis Presley Boulevard). Jane and Michael Stern, who write a syndicated newspaper column on food, have See KING, Page 6C have been perfect for Elvis Presley. nll wealth, Elvis was quite simple Elvis' Favorite Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich (Mary Jenkins' recipe) 6 slices white bread Vi to peanut butter, divided 2 to 3 bananas, peeled and thinly sliced 2 sticks of butter Toast bread lightly. Spread three slices with peanut butter, about two to three tablespoons per slice; cover other three slices with banana, mashing banana slightly, and press halves of sandwiches together.

In large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter. Carefully drop the sandwiches into the melted butter and turn them over and over in the skillet until all butter is absorbed and bread is lightly grilled, about five to seven minutes. Makes three sandwiches. Tested bv Jeanne Ssrna for the Free Press Tower Kitchen. For more Elvis recipes, see Page 6C.

HeartSmart variations, Page 2C. tives joined together to beat them off, creating a bond that has lasted through the centuries, Pike says. THE LARGEST Belizean community in the United States is in Los Angeles, one of the strongholds of the Consortium for Belizean Development, the national organization which the local group supports. If the local Belizeans decide to publish their cookbook (a committee has it under consideration now), it will include such recipes as those for Johnny Cakes, Belizean Fish Stew, Rice and Beans and Conch Fritters, which follow. The ingredients may be obtained at the Caribbe- an Grocery Store, 18931 West Detroit.

534-5202. Store hours: 9 a.m. 7 p.m. 5 Adventuresome palates can travel to Belize Tn By MOLLY ABRAHAM Free Press Staff Writer The tiny Central American country of Belize, bordered by Guatemala and the Yucatan, has contributed a couple of hundred of its citizens to the metropolitan Detroit area's melting pot. They haven't forgotten the land they left behind, the country better known by the name it bore for more than a century British Honduras.

The Mayan ruins, the pyramids, the cays surrounded by crystal-clear water, the barrier reef that is the to Belize a few years ago. Pike laughs heartily at the thought of the British monarch dining on the wild creature which actually tastes very good, "as long as you don't ask what you are eating," says Pike with a grin. Since the country was a British Crown Colony for most of its history, England has been a definite influence on the cuisine. And, she says, the country has never had a racial problem, partly because the lumber industry, unlike the sugar cane industry, was one in which the bosses worked along with the laborers, not just as overseers. Also, when the Spaniards tried to invade in 1798, the English and the na IT ft Ufa" mi i second largest in the world after the Australian reef all are fond memories to the Belizeans.

Margaret Pike, Chalonie Sims and Sabina Gillett are three of them, and they got to thinking, along with other members of the Belizean Task Force of Michigan, that a cookbook might be one a good way to introduce local people to their country as well as a fund-raising tool to help build an art museum in Belize. And though they know that some of the popular Belizean foods might give a moment's pause to unadventuresome palates Belizeans love armadillo, peccary (wild hog), gibnut (wild rodent) and iguana eggs the country's cuisine is fairly tVDicallv Caribbean, includine From left to right, Margaret Pike, Chalonie Sims and Sabina Gillett want to write a cookbook to introduce people to their country, Belize. Seven Mile at Sunderland, a.m.-6 p.m. 9 lots of fish, chicken, beef, pork, shrimp and conch as well as such staples as rice and beans, plantains, yams and coco, another root vegetable. PAUI INK LUBrNbiUetroil Htee Prtss A few Belizean dishes: From top, rice and beans, johnny cakes, fried ripe plantains and conch fritters.

For Belizean recipes, see Page 6C. BELIZEANS ENJOY telling the story of how their country's Governor General, Dame Minita Gordon, served roasted gibnut to Queen Elizabeth at a banquet she gave durif! the queen's visit.