Good Eats

Aimee Walton of the Fairfield County village of Carroll didn’t know quite what to do with the lovely cake stand she got as a gift a few years ago. It was tall, maybe 16 inches, but had only a small platform with a lip to hold the cake.

“It wasn’t big enough to be functional as a typical cake stand, but it was so pretty, I had to come up with a dish to showcase it,” says Walton, a member of Lancaster-based South Central Power Company. “At the same time, I had a lot of tomatoes from the garden, which I had roasted, and I was trying to figure out what to do with them.”

That’s when the idea of savory cheesecakes came to her, and after testing out a few different iterations on her husband, David, and their seven children, she came up with Tuscany Cheesecake — winner of Ohio Cooperative Living’s 2024 “Alluring Appetizers” Reader Recipe Contest. Walton earned a new Ohio-made KitchenAid stand mixer, while Butler Rural Electric Cooperative member Beth Polk and Midwest Electric member Cora McCalla each earned $50 gift cards as runners-up.

Walton taught herself to cook when her kids were young, and eventually even taught cooking classes — first at the old Lazarus in Columbus and later at Easton. She has since moved on to create for the BeFeathered catering company, where she says her friend and company owner Feather Johnson encourages her to stretch her talents even further. “My husband will tell you that when we were first married, he would never have thought I would ever be paid to cook,” Walton says with a laugh. “But after all this time and practice, I guess I’m pretty good at it.”

Polk took inspiration for her Fish and Bubbles appetizer from Chex Mix, by way of her sister-in-law, Becky Steele. “I had been making this recipe for years, a spin-off of ‘Nuts and Bolts’ Chex Mix that Becky had adapted ages ago using pretzel sticks,” Polk says. “I wanted to change it up some for one of my son’s birthday parties.” So she used Goldfish pretzels and added some Cheerios cereal, and voila! “It’s a perfect party appetizer,” Polk says, “and it also makes a great snack for movie night.”

McCalla says she’s been making her Frisky Whiskey Dogs for so long, she can only guess where the original recipe came from. “It might have been in one of the magazines I would read at the barber shop while my boys got their hair cut.” The recipe, her take on classic cocktail wieners, starts off a bit boozy — but don’t worry, the alcohol cooks off during the long simmer.