“When a treasured recipe is a hit among family and friends, it’s a great feeling. When that recipe is selected from thousands of entries across the country by a panel of professional home economists to be featured in a new family cookbook, it is truly a reason for celebration,” said a spokesperson from the Wal-Mart Family Cookbook office.
Diane Raymond of Caribou is one such lucky cook, whose recipe for “Banana Bread with a Twist” was hand-selected to occupy a full page in the latest edition of the Wal-Mart Family Cookbook, now available in Wal-Mart stores. This isn’t her first time at the recipe rodeo, either. Raymond has had her recipes featured in Wal-Mart’s Family Cookbook for four years running.
“The past two years I submitted recipes that were totally my own,” said Raymond, “the first two years I used recipes that needed sprucing up.”
Adding “a little flavor” to existing recipes seemed to work in her favor, said the seven-year employee of Presque Isle’s Wal-Mart. Raymond mostly works in the garden center and greenhouse within Wal-Mart and said that her family and friends were very excited about her recognition in the nationally distributed cookbook. So excited in fact, that they wouldn’t let her not submit a recipe in the contest this year.
“At first I wasn’t going to do this and they said you have to. They downright begged me to submit something so, through trial and error, I came up with the banana bread recipe,” Raymond said.
In 2004, Raymond submitted her version of apple bread, in 2005 she conjured up her version of a Tex-Mex favorite that she called “Di’s Tasty Chili” and in the 2006 Wal-Mart Family Cookbook, Raymond submitted her original Pistachio Brownies. Her current “Banana Bread with a Twist,” along with scores of other sweets and savories to tempt the palate are available at Wal-Mart stores nation-wide.
All Wal-Mart Family Cookbook submissions must be from Wal-Mart employees. The cookbook sells for $4.96 and is just another great deal available at the discount store.
