Museum Ambassadors' delicious cookbook returns

No tuna casserole with potato chips for this community cookbook. No Mexican Meat Loaf Surprise. Art Fare, the cookbook written by the Toledo Museum of Art Ambassadors, includes recipes for sesame-crusted sea bass, mushroom-herb stuffed leg of lamb, and roasted pheasant with port and pear salsa.

The Ambassadors are an independent fund-raising group dedicated to supporting the museum. One particularly successful effort 10 years ago was publishing the cookbook, which went on to win a Tabasco Community Cookbook Award in 2001.

A slim but elegant volume filled with jaw-droppingly delicious photography, the book sold out its entire run of 20,000 copies.

Now the Ambassadors are bringing it back for a 10th anniversary edition. Nothing has changed, except possibly the color on a picture of asparagus that was so hard to get right the first time. Each recipe has been tested at least three times and held to exacting standards.

Art Fare will be released in October, just in time for Christmas shopping. The book costs $30 and will be available at the museum bookstore and from any of the Ambassadors.

And don't miss the breakfast recipes for apple puff pancakes, cinnamon-raisin coffee cake, and macadamia french toast.

P&B. No J required

Last year's winner in the Jif Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest was extra-crunchy peanut butter with apples, grapes, and chicken combined in a lettuce wrap.

This lettuce wrap filled with peanut butter, fruit, and chicken was the 2009 winner of Jif's Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest.

Can your kid beat that?

The 9th Annual Jif Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest is looking for great-tasting peanut butter sandwiches created by children ages 6-12. The entries will be judged on creativity, taste, nutritional balance, appearance, and ease of preparation.

After a long and complicated judging process, one grand prize winner will receive a $25,000 scholarship (plus a Jif $50 gift basket!). Four second place winners get $2,500 scholarships (plus those baskets!), and five other finalists get the $50 gift baskets.

Entry forms are available at jif.com, along with a lot of rules and requirements (each entry must use at least two tablespoons of one of the varieties of Jif Peanut Butter, no brands may be mentioned except the many brands owned by Smucker's, etc.). The contest is open until Oct. 22, but entries postmarked by Sept. 10 will receive a gift pack until supplies run out.

Old-tyme recipe

The Web site Food Site of the Day (foodsiteoftheday.com) led us to a site about how food was cooked centuries ago (historicfood.com), which in turn led us to this quaint old recipe for roast of beef. It dates back to 1660 (Note: "Broach," in both the noun and verb, means "skewer"):

"Take a fillet which is the tenderest part of the beef, and lieth in the inner part of the surloyn, cut it as big as you can, broach it on a broach not too big, and be careful not to broach it through the best of the meat, roast it leisurely, & baste it with sweet butter, set a dish to save the gravy while it roasts, then prepare sauce for it of good store of parsley, with a few sweet herbs chopp'd smal, the yolks of three or four eggs, sometimes gross pepper minced amongst them with the peel of an orange, and a little onion; boil these together, and put in a little butter, vinegar, gravy, a spoonful of strong broth, and put it to the beef."

Just dessert

The following is a recipe for Blueberry Bananas Foster Sundaes:

1 pint blueberries

1 cup caramel, either homemade or purchased

1/3 cup pecans, roughly chopped

1 large banana, sliced in rings

Pinch cinnamon

1 quart vanilla ice cream

Rinse the blueberries and set aside to drain.

In a small Pyrex cup, mix the caramel, chopped pecans, banana, and cinnamon. Heat the banana-caramel mixture in the microwave on low for 20 seconds, until it is soft and pourable.

Scoop ice cream into four bowls or ice cream dishes. Pour an equal amount of the banana caramel mixture on each sundae. Top each one with an equal amount of fresh blueberries. Serve right away.

Source: Driscoll Blueberries

Items for Morsels may be submitted two weeks in advance to food@theblade.com.