Whether you’re planning your first Thanksgiving or looking to dress up your traditional holiday feast with minimal costs, this guide offers suggestions and pricing for making basic turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and rolls for 12.

“People are calling us, begging us to take their animals,” said Dianne O’Kelley Inman, a volunteer and foster home for Cat Adoption and Rescue Efforts Inc.

An audio slideshow and downloadable recipe card on how to prepare dinner biscuits

An audio slideshow and downloadable recipe card on Indian pudding.

An audio slideshow and downloadable recipe card on how to prepare the best pumpkin pie.

An audio slideshow with step-by-step instructions on how to carve a turkey.

“We do see first ladies as representative of what the American woman should be,” said Linda B. Hobgood, a University of Richmond speech and communications expert whose research interests includes first ladies.

“It is all for show and, frankly, this show is getting quite tiresome to the American traveling public that has gotten fed up with mounting delays and FAA mismanagement that has degraded the system during the current administration,” National Air Traffic Controllers Association spokesman Doug Church said.

If you look at some of the scale-tipping chefs on the Food Network and cooking shows on other networks, and then you look at the expanding waistlines of Americans everywhere, you have to ask.

Growing food may be an environmentally safe action, but add in the gasoline and vehicle emissions that result from having to ship it and it is no longer as green as it appears.

“Travel is down for Thanksgiving in general,” concurred Geri Jones, president of Accent on Travel in Henrico County.

Volunteers for the presidential candidates unofficially created campaign headquarters, held grass roots rallies, handed out virtual buttons and T-shirts, and signed up actual voters in the vast virtual world developed by San Francisco-based Linden Lab. Many people decided to spend Election Day as their avatars — and they weren’t alone.

Time management can be a serious issue for college freshmen.  What students do with free time, where they are going to eat, when they study for a test, and whether they are actually going to their next class are all decisions that students have to make when they are for the first time on their own without their families. 

People sometimes joke about the fact that in today’s world students should start thinking about college when they enter kindergarten. That may be a stretch, but the college application process often does begin early in a student’s high school years.

204 W. Washington St.
Lexington, VA 24450
540-458-8710

1301 College Ave.
Fredericksburg, VA 22401-5300
540-654-2000 or 800-468-5614

800 S. Main St.
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
540-568-5681

319 Letcher Ave.
Lexington, VA 24450
540-464-7211 or 800-767-4207

Peabody Hall
P.O. Box 400160
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4160
434-982-3200

When Roger F.H. Leclere and his wife, Martha, initially laid eyes on Pine Knot in the mid-1990s it was in rough shape. Theodore Roosevelt’s rustic getaway near Keene had never been more than a humble, two-story cabin in the woods.

Our Lady of Peace residents are getting into the Olympic spirit with a statewide competition of Nintendo Wii bowling.  Several teams compete at the Hillsdale Drive retirement community and the scores are compared with other nursing homes around the state.  For many seniors, it’s the first time they’ve ever played a video game. 

Dedicated sleuthing through the dusty pages of history can turn up colorful bits of minutia that serve to animate otherwise tinder-dry dates and basic facts.

For most of his 81 years Harry J. Dannals has used the dots and dashes of Morse code to meet and say howdy to people around the world.

Drop the s’more and take that hot dog off the stick — one of the hottest trends in summer camp has kids whipping up haute cuisine.

Chef Chris goes organic tonight at the 9

Vintage Virginia, the state’s oldest outdoor wine tasting, will hold it’s 27th annual festival at Bull Run Regional Park in Centerville on Saturday and Sunday.

On a recent afternoon dozens of locavores could be seen gathering in the parking lot of Woodbrook Elementary School. 

Wintergreen Winery in Nellysford will present its annual Memorial Weekend Celebration from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

May is the month many European gourmets live for. It is asparagus month, and Allan and I were fortunate to be there at that time on several occasions. Many restaurants had whole menus consisting of asparagus in various forms at each course. We even experienced a tart lemon asparagus souffle for dessert.