Busy chef's recipe for quality family time

It is about 9 a.m. on a sunny weekday in November and the Fernandez family is sitting down to their biggest meal of the day: a hearty breakfast of French toast, eggs, bacon, yogurt and fruit smoothies, prepared, as on most days, by dad Ralph Fernandez, who is also executive chef at the Moshulu.

Whatever the menu, the morning meal and the remaining hours until Fernandez leaves for work around 11 are family time and his chance to be more than a breadwinner, to be a real part of his four children's lives.

For Fernandez, who works long, late hours including weekends and holidays at the Moshulu, the floating restaurant at Penn's Landing, home-school has proved to be the answer to a problem familiar in many households: finding quality time to spend with children.

Fernandez and his wife, Lyn, decided the only way to spend time together was to teach them at home, enrolling them in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, a public school program offering home-schooling curricula and online assistance.

Nothing desperate involved in recipe

CAPE CARTERET -- Shrimp and grits will soon be served on Wisteria Lane.

The southern dish typically cooked up in the kitchen of Cape Carteret resident Alicia Baucom won the approval of celebrity judges this week and will be featured in a future episode of the television series "Desperate Housewives."

Baucom was named the grand prize winner of the national "Desperate for Dinner" cook-off last week on ABC's "Good Morning America" after her shrimp and grits dinner was ruled the favorite over the beef dinner and white chocolate cake recipes of her challengers.

Recipes for the grill, the crock and oven

Rachel Knickrehm owns Wild West Bakery in Eagle and studied cooking in Canada and at BSU.

Jim Allen of Meridian is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a hunter education instructor.