225. Barrington Family Recipes Contest Kickoff

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3 mins read
Grandma Winnie

Welcome to our 2013 Barrington Family Recipes Contest!  We’re creating a collection of community recipes at 365Barrington.com to celebrate the upcoming season of holiday and colder weather cooking and would love to include your contributions.  Throughout the holiday season, we’ll be collecting recipes from our readers and sharing them here at 365Barrington.com and in Shaw Media’s Barrington Suburban Life newspaper.

Heinen’s Fine Foods is sponsoring our Barrington Family Recipes contest and has offered us SEVEN generous gift card prizes to give away to seven winners. To enter, all you have to do is share a favorite recipe for our collection and tell us what you love about it.

Share Your Recipes for a Chance to Win Cash Prizes
Share Your Recipes for a Chance to Win Heinen’s Cash Prizes

We’re particularly looking for those special recipes that bring back memories you cherish.  Is there a story behind your Thanksgiving stuffing?  What about that cookie recipe that you now know by heart?  Is there a favorite dish you prepare to warm up your family when the temperature drops or something you only make for that once-a-year party with friends or relatives?  We’re talking about recipes that remind you of the people you love and appreciate and anything goes.

I’ll be the first to admit that I can count the recipes I make with any regularity on one hand.  (I’m working on that ;))  But there’s a simple dip that we make in our family for special occasions.  Some might call it Onion Dip.  But it’s Grandma Dip to us.

Grandma Winnie
Me with Grandma Winnie – Photographed by Tim LaBarge

My mom’s mom or “Grandma Winnie LaBarge” passed away a number of years ago.  But she had this soft-spoken intelligence, poise and very refined air about her that I will always remember.  And though I was too young to truly appreciate and thank her for her cooking during those holidays we spent together, she prepared the most beautiful meals for our family.  My mom inherited that gift.  And we can always count on tasting a little Grandma Dip over the holiday season.  The recipe might not score points for complexity, but it’s special to me and it’s as simple as this:

Grandma (Winnie) Dip

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Tbsp Mayo

1 Tbsp Milk

1/4 Tsp Salt

1 Tsp grated onion

1 Tsp Worcestershire Sauce

2 6-ounce packages of cream cheese

3 Tbsp sour cream

Directions:

Put everything in a big bowl and blend it together with a hand mixer.  Serve with Wavy Lays, Fritos or Veggies.

Another thing I’ll never forget is Grandma Winnie’s handwriting.  When she passed away, we saved her cookbooks including torn out and hand written recipes she collected over her lifetime.  These are treasures to our family.

Grandma Winnie's Twice Baked Potato Recipe
Grandma Winnie’s Twice Baked Potato Recipe

Do you have any recipes like this, passed down from loved ones in your family or inspired by people in your life?  If so, to enter our contest, all you have to do is share the recipe, tell us where you got it and what makes it taste so good.  If you have a photo to share to go with your story, that’s even better!

We’ll add yours to our Barrington Family Recipes collection throughout the holiday season and publish some of them in Shaw Media’s Barrington Life newspaper (giving you credit, of course).  I’ve even lined up two professional food photographers to take pictures of some of the recipes we receive for our collection.  If you don’t live in Barrington but you visit 365Barrington.com, you are WELCOME to enter the contest.

Also, during our contest, watch for a few special featured recipes offered by chefs from Barrington area restaurants and businesses with a food focus.  We’ve reached out to some cooks whose names you’ll recognize to also include their favorite family recipes with our collection.

As Christmas approaches, we’ll either draw seven names out of everyone who enters the contest to give away our seven prizes or we’ll open it up to a vote to let our readers choose the seven winning recipes.

And Here’s the Best Part….

The Heinen’s gift card prizes up for grabs include one $250 gift card, one $150 gift card, one $100 gift card and four $50 gift cards.  Now that’ll come in handy as you’re shopping for this season’s holiday parties! 

The more people who enter, the more rich our collection will be and we’ll share all recipes here at 365Barrington.com for you to enjoy this season and beyond.  Here’s where to enter:

Fill out my online form.

Grandma (Winnie) Dip
Grandma (Winnie) Dip

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