Diners gathered around the Sunrise Grill & Sandwich Co. truck in the Oak St. Mill parking lot Wednesday. (David Boraks/CorneliusNews.net)

Updated 4:08pm
Beginning this Wednesday and continuing every Wednesday indefinitely, the Cornelius Cultural Art Group will host “Food Truck Wednesdays – Lunch In The Lot” in downtown Cornelius. They’re planning a different food truck (or two) from 11am – 2pm. Read the full story

Columnist Nikki Sawyer Moore has a primer on mussels today, with an explanation of how to buy and prepare them. And she offers a simple recipe for “Mussels with White Wine, Shallots and Tomatoes.” See FOOD & DINING»

Meatballs on Main, which operated less than a year in an old house on North Main Street in Cornelius, closed abruptly on Tuesday, leaving behind unpaid employees and surprised customers. Read more in FOOD AND DINING»

Last week, when spring was supposed to arrive, but didn’t, I made this recipe. It would be perfect eaten with a cold margarita in hand in the fading light of a warm spring day. Instead, I enjoyed the brightly colored slaw atop smoky grilled mahi-mahi inside my home where the thermostat remains set on heat. No matter. It’s a dish I’ll make again.

Read more in FOOD & DINING»

Cornelius bakers Madeline Baucom and Enza Friedman will be in the spotlight Sunday night – the “Cupcake Wars” spotlight. Their Maddy’s Fatty’s bakery on West Catawba Avenue is among this week’s contestants in the cupcake vs. cupcake battle on TV’s Food Network.Story in FOOD & DINING»

Gabriel Dumitrescu built his brick oven himself, so he could return to his family specialty – baking. (David Boraks/CorneliusNews.net)

By DAVID BORAKS
CorneliusNews.net

Gabriel Dumitrescu was a baker in Romania a decade ago when he shut his bakery one day and brought his family to the United States. It has taken 10 years to get back to his passion: Last week, he opened the doors on Our Daily Bread Bakery, in a shop off West Catawba Avenue.

“All my life I was a baker, in Transylvania,” he said the other day, near the end of a day of baking. “Since I came here, I’ve tried to open a bakery, but it was so hard.” Read the full story

Bananas have a rough go of it here in the United States. Even the most basic grocery store has at least 4 or 5 varieties of apples. Carrots come in a variety of colors and sizes and even the pear section continues to expand. Bananas however remain the same: one kind, many bunches, green or yellow. Columnist Nikki Sawyer Moore today offers a recipe for Banana Upside Down Cake using ripe maduros, also known as plantains. See the story in FOOD & DINING»

Our columnist Nikki Sawyer Moore has fond memories of her Polish-American grandfather, and of the pierogi he loved. “I’d often arrive home from school, cut up a little onion, sauté it in butter, and add precisely six frozen pierogi to the mix. It was a hearty snack, but one that always made my belly happy,” she says. Today, she offers a recipe for Cheese and Potato Pierogi. In FOOD & DINING»