Is it stuffing or is it dressing? “There’s really no difference,” says Leo Pearlstein, Mrs. Cubbison’s PR man since 1948. A personal friend of San Marcos legend Sophie Cubbison, Pearlstein watched as this inventive entrepreneur used her passion for health food to become a national icon.

Jars of jam, bottles of liqueurs, cookies, cakes and more lined the walls of the Del Mar Fairgrounds grandstand complex during the annual San Diego County Fair as it came to a close last week. The Home and Hobby contest drew in hundreds of competitors to more than 100 categories this year.

The Fermenters Club held its fifth annual San Diego Fermentation Festival at the Leichtag Commons farm in Encinitas on Feb. 17. Festivalgoers were able to learn how to make their own apple ginger sauerkraut in take-home demo jars at a hands-on table and nibble on samples of products from local artisan producers of fermented products.

One of my favorite snack recipes is layered Greek dip, which makes a substantial number of servings. Homemade hummus is topped with layers of vegetables, whole Greek yogurt, olives and feta cheese.

Today’s busy cook is veering away from just quick, to quick and healthy. It’s my opinion the days of the blue and green dinosaur shaped chicken nugget are coming to an end. People want real food.

It’s possibly nervy thinking I have anything to serve up Southern California’s community in terms of a Mexican rice recipe, but I absolutely do. I might not have an abuela who passed down authentic Mexican recipes, but I grew up in Southern California, and know what good Mexican rice tastes like. The standard for me was set years ago at Carlsbad’s Fidel's Mexican Restaurant. It’s now called Norte, but to some of us, it will always be Fidel’s.

Thumbing through the yellowed recipe cards from years back, I can see glimpses of times gone by — the ingredients, the lingo, and the simplicity. I loved the stains and crinkles on the cards, thinking of busy hands pulling them out of the box, hurrying to get dinner served on time. My grandmother ate poor man’s soup, but there is only a richness in the care, creativity, and even worry people faced, and still face today, about nourishing their families.

I like to challenge myself in taking a vegetable my family doesn’t like and making it irresistible, so I decided to take on tomato soup. The result was a creamy, aromatic, tomatoey treat. Even my daughter, who has declared she hates tomatoes, quietly begged with her eyes as I proceeded to warm the last bit of leftovers for myself the next day.

Fall is my favorite season, so I jumped on the pumpkin wagon. But instead of buying something pumpkin flavored, I wanted to cook something with actual pumpkin — something fresh and creative.

It’s a canning mother’s lament — finding the perfect pickle kids will like. In the past, they have been too sour, too sweet, too soft or too spicy, according to my children. Just giving them the first bite of my pickle experiment is like watching a stressful sporting event. Will they pucker? Will they run for the faucet because of spice? And could this be the one ingestible item they refuse because it’s too sweet?

I love California’s abundance of citrus. I’ll never forget driving through the back roads of Temecula with the windows down as the fragrance of lemons filled the air. Growing up, my friend Veronica had several orange trees in her Escondido backyard, and it always seemed kind of magical to me.

My eggnog drinking experience reminds me of the “Three Bears” story — one is too sweet, one is too rich, and the other one is devoid of any warm notes of spice. Until making eggnog myself, I hadn't...