364. Barrington Family Recipe Contest Winners REVEALED!

The vote was extremely close but our readers have had the final say and chosen the top three winners in our first Barrington Family Recipes Contest at 365Barrington.com.  Close to 1,500 votes were cast over the weekend and it was extremely close, but the first place winner who received 35% of the votes cast is  Paula Voska!  Paula wins a $250 gift card from Heinens’ grocery store in Barrington for Nana’s Minestrone Soup, a recipe that she inherited from her grandma, Antoinette Wilkins, who passed away in July.

Paula says her grandmother always had a batch of her homemade minestrone soup waiting for family to enjoy during visits.

“I can picture the soup in my grandma’s refrigerator and the pan she used to use to heat it up – never in the microwave, always on the stove.  She was a wonderful cook and taught me so much about the love for food! So much that we now own a restaurant.”

Paula is from one of the two families that own ZaZa’s Tavola Italiana in Lake Barrington. And, while Nana’s Minestrone Soup is not on their restaurant menu, Paula says they do serve many cherished family recipes at ZaZa’s.  CLICK HERE to prepare a batch of Nana’s Minestrone Soup for your own family.

The next two winners in our contest almost tied for second place, which comes with a $150 gift card from Heinen’s.  But Jason Richards took the second place spot for Jay’s Creamy Gaaahlic Reds, a recipe inspired by his dad.  “My father taught me how to cook and his mashed potatoes were top notch!”

Our third place prize, a $100 Heinen’s gift card, goes to Kristin Smith for sharing her delicious Family Fall Pasta recipe (which has been a huge hit in our own home).  Kristin says, “This recipe comes from the amazing mom and grandmas that I grew up with who taught me to cook and inspired me to learn more from other great cooks.”

And one of my favorite things about how this contest turned out is that EVERYONE’S A WINNER! Not only do we all have some great new recipes to add to our collections, we have four $50 Heinen’s gift cards for the four others who shared recipes in our contest.

If you haven’t tried it already, you must add Michelle Van Loon’s Moroccan Chicken with Lemon and Olives to your list of upcoming dishes to prepare.

Thanks to John Julian for inspiring a new weekend morning activity in our own home kitchen with his recipe for the Julian Family’s Roll-Up Pancakes.

I’m hooked after giving Christine Stofan’s Irish Soda Bread recipe a try.

And we now have a go-to dessert to prepare for special occasions with family and friend thanks to Karen Russell’s Reunion Cake.

Congratulations to all of you for winning!  We’ll be mailing your Heinen’s gift card prizes to each of you this week.  Thank you all for participating and inspiring us to host more recipe contests to come at 365Barrington.com.

In the new year, we’ll be expanding our collection of Barrington Family Recipes right here at 365Barrington.com.  We’ve already photographed a few favorite Barrington Christmas Cookie recipes that we know you’re going to love!

It was such a privilege to work with Barrington photographer Sally Roeckell on this project.  Sally photographed many of the submitted recipes and you can view more of her work on her food and lifestyle website at TableAndDish.com.

And thank you to Heinen’s grocery store in Barrington for sponsoring our contest and for being there as our go-to grocery stop to feed our families and for all of our food and pantry staple shopping needs!

Heinen’s grocery is located at, 500 N. Hough Street, between E. Main Street and Route 14 (next to Meatheads) in Barrington, Illinois.  They’re open 7 days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. For more information, visit Heinens.com.