by Melissa Howsam | Oct 28, 2025 | Eat, November 2025
Favorite Family Recipes
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all—time to go full baste mode. In the famed words of Clark Griswold: “This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency. We’re gonna press on.”
For our Favorite Family Thanksgiving Recipe comp, in partnership with Wegmans, we asked, you cooked, and the entries rolled in like a holiday parade. From crowd-pleasing classics to secret-family twists to Southern staples, we reveal the three top takes that take the cake—er, pie—earning a coveted feature + a Wegmans gift card to boot.
So, feast your eyes on the top trio, get inspired, crank up your ovens, maybe hum a little holiday ditty—because these dishes promise to make this year’s table the stuff of legends.
Orange Cranberry Relish With a Kick
Winning Recipe by Beth Butler
Serves: 10–14 | Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes
INGREDIENTS
6 oz. jar orange marmalade
½ cup water or OJ (for more citrus flavor)
12 oz. bag fresh cranberries
2 Tbsp. local honey
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
DIRECTIONS
1. Rinse cranberries, discarding any damaged fruit. Drain well.
2. In medium pot, combine cranberries, marmalade, water (or juice) and honey. Set over high heat and bring to a boil, stirring often.
3. Once cranberries begin to pop, reduce heat and simmer, about 10 minutes.
4. Remove from heat. Stir in cayenne pepper and cinnamon (if using).
5. Let cool to room temperature, about 1 hour.
6. Transfer to a lidded container and refrigerate. Relish will thicken as it cools and can be stored for up to 2 weeks.
Broccoli Salad
Winning Recipe by Irish Dunlap
Serves: 6 (double recipe for large groups) | Prep Time: 15 minutes
INGREDIENTS
2–3 stalks fresh broccoli (or 2 bags of florets)
1 medium red onion (or white), finely chopped
1 cup cheddar cheese, grated or preshredded
½ lb. bacon (or turkey bacon), cooked and crumbled
½ cup Duke’s mayo
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. white vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
DIRECTIONS
1. In large bowl, combine broccoli florets, onion, cheese and bacon. Set aside.
2. In separate bowl, whisk together mayo, sugar and vinegar to make dressing.
3. Just before serving, pour dressing over salad and toss until evenly coated.
Creamed Corn Spoonbread
Winning Recipe by Amanda Vysocka
Serves: 6–8 | Prep Time: 5 minutes | Bake Time: 30 minutes
INGREDIENTS
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) salted butter, plus softened butter for the baking dish
14.75-oz. can cream-style corn
15-oz. can corn kernels, drained
1 cup sour cream
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 Tbsp. sugar
½ tsp. kosher salt
8.5-oz. box corn muffin mix (preferably Jiffy)
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously butter a 2½-qt. casserole dish.
2. In a large bowl, combine 8 Tbsp. melted butter, creamed corn and corn kernels. Stir to combine.
3. Stir in sour cream, eggs, sugar and salt.
4. Gently fold in the cornbread mix only until dry ingredients are incorporated.
5. Scrape batter into prepped dish.
6. Bake until golden on top and nearly set in the center, about 30 minutes. The spoonbread should look slightly undercooked; a knife inserted 2 inches from the center should come out clean.
7. Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes before serving.
by Emma Brennan | Nov 23, 2021 | November 2021, Web Exclusive
WEB EXCLUSIVE Boast your baking skills (and get that bread) through Bailey’s Fine Jewelry Gingerbread House Contest offering a grand prize of $2,500.
Oh, (ginger)snap! Bragging rights—and cash money (!)—are on the table during Bailey’s Fine Jewelry’s second annual Gingerbread House Contest. So while you may have mastered the art of sourdough in the past year or two, you’ll want to brush up on your confection construction skills to participate in this super sweet holiday tradition (entries accepted through Friday, Dec. 3).
“We began the Gingerbread House Contest last year during a very difficult time in the world to remind people there are still so many things that can bring us joy,” says Trey Bailey of Bailey’s Fine Jewelry. “The response we received was incredible, and the designs far exceeded anything we could have ever imagined. It’s such a fun activity for the family to do together, and we knew we had to bring the contest back this year.”
Each gingerbread genius will be judged on five criteria, including overall appearance, originality and creativity, difficulty, precision, and consistency of theme. Although there isn’t an overall theme requirement for the competition, each house must include at least one Bailey’s themed element.
The top five entries will be announced on Dec. 8, with the final winners announced on Dec. 17. Each winner will score a Bailey’s gift card—$2,500 for the first-place winner, $500 for second place, $250 for third place, and $50 for each finalist who didn’t place.
So whether you’re a born and bread baking aficionado or an ambitious amateur, the victory lap you’ve been waiting for could happen when you yeast expect it. Visit baileybox.com/gingerbread-house-competition-2021 for all entry rules and criteria.
by Raleigh Magazine | Feb 2, 2021 | Buzz
Woof! There it is… International Pet Day is April 11—and no doubt your feed will be overrun with adorbs pets the world over. And, sure, your doggos, kitties, birdies, etc. promise to be the star of your news feed (and life), but we think your fur-child could deserve the extended spotlight by being featured in the pages of our Raleigh Magazine April issue. It promises to be the cat’s meow.
To have your furry friend potentially featured in our April issue, send us your cutest and/or most fun pet photo.
Submission Deadline: March 12, 2021.
For consideration, please provide:
- High-res photo (no screenshots) of your pet
- Name of pet and breed
- Your name and email address
- One-sentence or fragment photo caption.
Send to:[email protected]
by Jane Porter | Dec 1, 2017 | Buzz, December 2017/January 2018
What Do You Think?
Raleigh’s new city logo was unveiled last month and reviews from the public were mixed, to say the least. Fans praised the sleek, minimalist leaf design and eye-catching hodgepodge of greens and circular and rectangular shapes. Critics called the logo boring, corporate-looking, non-symmetrical and, well, curiously lacking in oaks. Bashing of the logo’s $226,000 price tag—with $86,000 paid to an out-of-state consulting company for research and the rest to local designers at The Assembly— was nearly unanimous and some variation of “my kid could have done this for free” was one of the more common responses to the logo’s unveiling on Twitter. Regardless of where we fall on this latest iteration of a symbol for the city, Raleigh’s logo is likely here to stay for a while; love it or hate it, we might as well all get used to it.
Try Your Hand: Locals Create Logos
If you’re one of the Raleighites who was disappointed by the city’s new logo, or the process the city used to come up with the design, here’s your chance to try to do better.
Zack Medford, owner of downtown bars Isaac Hunters and Paddy O’Beers and founder of the Great Raleigh Trolley, just launched the Great Raleigh Citizen Logo Contest to give Raleigh residents an opportunity to get their own creative juices flowing. Medford says he’s gotten a lot of interest already, ranging from a teacher and her fifth grade class to an artist inquiring about painting the winning logo as a mural onto a downtown building.
“This is about citizen engagement,” Medford says. “There was a piece missing in the city’s process and people are excited about the contest because they want to to have a voice and be heard. There are so many creative voices in Raleigh.”
Here’s how the contest works: you, your child or a group of friends design your own logo that captures why you love Raleigh. Once it’s finished, submit the design to the contest’s website with a brief description. A committee of community leaders and thinkers will choose the winning logo design early next year, and contest organizers will sell T-shirts emblazoned with the logo and donate the proceeds to an organization that fosters artists and designers in Raleigh communities.
The contest winner(s) will receive a $250 cash prize, a $250 donation to a charity of their choice, and a Great Raleigh gift box full of goodies from local merchants. In February, the winning logo design will go before the Raleigh City Council.
Medford says the winning design is not intended to replace the logo the city already settled on in any way, but he hopes the city and other organizations will embrace the citizen-designed logo alongside the official one. Though Medford says he understands that professional designers work hard and deserve to be compensated, he says he’s excited to get people thinking about what they love about Raleigh and reaching talented people who may not be arts and design insiders.
“It will be cool to see some different options and it’s a fun way to build citizen engagement,” he says. “Raleigh is unique for having such a creative community. We have a world class design school at NC State, incredible artists and graphic designers. Why not open it up to everyone?”
Find out more about the Great Raleigh Citizen Logo Contest and submit your entry at greatraleigh.com before Dec. 20. Winners will be chosen Jan. 3 and the winning design goes before Raleigh’s City Council Feb. 6.
by Alexandra Drosu | Feb 13, 2017 | Buzz, February 2017
The 4th annual Cradle to Cradle Product Design Challenge just announced its winners, and Mallory Barrett, a student at North Carolina State University, was awarded Best Student Project. The national competition recognizes products that embody the organization’s sustainability mission; 162 designers across 19 countries submitted work.
Barrett submitted an innovative prescription bottle design she calls REX to reduce unnecessary plastic waste. “The inspiration for the design of REX was my own frustration with the cycle of wastefulness in which our world has become so comfortable with,” she says. “Billions of prescriptions are filled each year in America alone.”
The NC State student designed a bottled manufactured out of recycled stainless steel that supports the lifecycle of the container and can endure many rounds of sterilization. A card with the prescription information is slipped into a label holder without using toxic adhesives, making the labels biodegradable and shortening the time required for sterilization. She estimates that the bottle only needs to be reused 14 times to offset the cost compared to a plastic bottle production.
“REX is a product that I would be ecstatic to bring to market, both for my own feelings of accomplishment but primarily due to the fact that it would result in a dramatic decrease in new material consumption,” says Barrett.
