Several families impacted by flooding last year in West Virginia have received new homes.
WVVA-TV reports the Rainelle residents were handed keys to their homes on Monday. The homes have 8-foot (2-meter) support beams should severe weather come again.
The work was done by Appalachia Service Project, a Christian ministry focused on home repair and replacement in central parts of the region. The organization has built more than 50 homes for those who lost theirs in the 2016 flood.
Darlenia Killen says she lived more than a year in a single bedroom apartment and Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer. She walked into her new home saying, “I could not be more appreciative, I’m afraid I might cry.”
The families also received Thanksgiving baskets with turkeys.
Cooking healthy for a holiday crowd can be expensive – but it doesn’t have to be.
“So, if we think about vegetables and that kind of thing, one thing we can do for sure is instead of doing fresh vegetables up here in the produce area, we could do canned vegetables or we could do frozen vegetables,” said Marshall nutritionist Mckayla Hart. “This time of year, typically those are a lot cheaper than buying fresh.”
Credit Kara Lofton / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Oscar Aguilar makes pupusas at Cafe Cimino in Sutton
Hart stands in the produce aisle at the Walmart in Huntington.
“So here some green beans…now this is organic so that’s going to be, here are some right here – this is the WalMart brand – so this is Marketside it’s $2.48 for 12 oz…so that’s a fair price.”
Hart said there is a perception that eating healthy is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. Eating seasonally, cooking from scratch and meal prepping are all ways to keep costs down.
She begins looking for some canned green beans.
Credit Kara Lofton / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“Love people. Cook them tasty food” reads a sign behind Oscar Aguilar in the Cafe Cimino kitchen.
“K let’s see if we can find our green beans…so let’s see. This is 38oz for $1.64 – the other one was 12oz for $2.48 – and here’s too canned and fresh have the same vitamins and minerals so you know – a green bean is a green bean – it doesn’t matter if it’s canned or fresh.”
It’s not just about checking prices, Hart said, but also making sure you don’t get caught up in buying what you don’t need.
“The very first thing is you want to make a list. You want to make a plan for what you want for the meal and then write down all the ingredients and the dishes you want to have and then stick to the list.”
And one good way to have a list, is to make a menu.
The restaurant at Cafe Cimino is popular for providing some of the best fine dining in West Virginia. But according to chef Oscar Aguilar, eating well can be as simple as sticking with the staples.
Credit Kara Lofton / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Owner Tim Urbanic fixes an omelet at Cafe Cimino in Sutton
“For example, you can go to the grocery store and get a whole chicken – it’s like six, seven dollars, and that’s enough for like four people or more,” Aguilar said. “And then get some sweet potatoes, mash sweet potatoes and green beans – you can get fresh green beans for like $2 a pound.”
Aguilar said this menu, including a rice pudding dessert, would cost around $19 for a family of four – or just under $5 a meal.
He refiles through papers to consult a second menu.
Credit Kara Lofton / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Papusus cook on the stove at Cafe Cimino in Sutton
“Pork. Braising pork. Pork is definitely pretty cheap right now. And you can get like two pounds of pork for like five dollars. And then beets. You can get beets right now for a couple dollars…and kale.”
But beets and kale are not exactly classic West Virginia food. Will people actually eat that?
“Well one of the things you do to try to be healthy is you change your lifestyle,” owner Tim Urbanic said. “If you really can’t eat the beets then you probably don’t want to eat them. But if you don’t eat the beets just because you never thought about it or you never really had it in your menu planning this would be a good place to put it in.”
Credit Kara Lofton / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Urbanic said it’s not just adding new things into your diet that will make the difference, but actually spending time in the kitchen making food from scratch. He said you might find not only appreciation for new tastes, but that returning to the kitchen, will make cooking an activity the whole family can do together.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Marshall Health, Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.
Officials say the West Virginia Turnpike had its highest Thanksgiving holiday travel period this year in at least a decade.
State Parkways Authority spokesman Greg Barr says there were more than 783,000 toll transactions along the 88-mile Turnpike between Wednesday and Sunday.
That’s an increase of 3 percent from Thanksgiving 2015 and 8 percent more than two years ago.
Barr says although he hadn’t checked records before 2006, he remembered that year and 2009 to be record years for travel with 774,000 transactions in 2006 and 772,000 in 2009.
On an average day, there are about 100,000 transactions.
Barr attributed this year’s increase to good weather and low gas prices. He says most holiday traffic consisted of out-of-state travelers, who make up 75 percent of transactions for the year.
The Turkey is in the oven and the family is gathering. Be ready to bring some interesting conversation to the table. Be able to talk about the life of a…
The Turkey is in the oven and the family is gathering. Be ready to bring some interesting conversation to the table. Be able to talk about the life of a turkey or the typical cost of a Thanksgiving meal, you can find it all on West Virginia LearningMedia. You can keep the conversation rolling with these lessons or use the information to create a trivia game to challenge even the hardiest Thanksgiving fans.
Sign up for a free West Virginia LearningMedia account to access thousands more educational resources from PBS and its partners.
What A Typical Thanksgiving Meal Costs In this infographic from KQED, explore the changes in costs of ingredients for a typical Thanksgiving meal from one year to the next. In the accompanying classroom activity, students consider the advantages and disadvantages of the graphical display used in the infographic.
The Making of a Turkey | My Life as a Turkey Travel with NATURE as the show looks at the development of the Turkey that we know today. Do you know, which breed (wild or domestic) was served at the first Thanksgiving? The answer, most likely, is neither. Instead, the menu seems to have featured venison, seafood, duck, and goose. Though it is unclear exactly when turkeys and Thanksgiving became so closely entwined, the one thing that is obvious is that the turkey’s place on the table has been firmly established.
The Chemistry of Tender Turkey To brine or not to brine, more importantly, follow the science behind cooking a moist, juicy turkey.
Traffic on the West Virginia Turnpike rose during the Thanksgiving holiday compared to a year ago.
Media outlets report that traffic along the 88-mile highway for the six-day period ending Sunday increased 8 percent compared with the 2013 period. Sunday was the busiest travel day.
West Virginia Parkways Authority toll director Steve Maynard says the number of toll transactions was below the Thanksgiving period in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Turkey and post-turkey naps aside, Thanksgiving is really about spending time with loved ones. With that in mind, this week’s “Mountain Stage After Midnight” showcases friends and kin coming together for the sake of great music. Broadcast from 1am-5am Saturday and Sunday mornings here on West Virginia Public Radio, “Mountain Stage After Midnight” takes the best episodes from the show’s 31 year history and shares their memories and songs with our late-night listeners. Each week we’ll hand-pick two of our favorite episodes that’ll alternate order each night.
Put down the gravy and turn on the radio for great tunes this Saturday November 29 and Sunday November 30 on “Mountain Stage After Midnight.”
First is an April 2012 show from the Keith Albee Theater in Huntington, West Virginia, featuring folk rock band Delta Rae, Huntington native-turned-Broadway star-turned-folk singer Michael Cerveris, blues rocker Paul Thorn and folky-family band Arlo Guthrie & Boys Night Out.
Mary Chapin Carpenter & Shawn Colvin performed a special extended set on Mountain Stage.
Next up is a Mary 2013 show with husband-and-wife duo Marti Jones & Don Dixon, Bronx singer-songwriter Ari Hest, Americana crooner Aoife O’Donovan and legendary singers and longtime friends Mary Chapin Carpenter & Shawn Colvin.
Thanksgiving Fact #2: In 2008, Mary Chapin Carpenter released a holiday record titled “Come Darkness, Come Light,” which featured a “Thanksgiving Song.”
