THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 8, 1994 TAG: 9412060150
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VICKI LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
NEVER HAS THERE been a more perfect match between book and author.
``I've had pecans to eat every day of my life,'' says Adair Heyl, the author of ``Nuttin' But Pecans,'' a cookbook featuring recipes for 489 dishes containing the olive-shaped nut.
``Nuttin' But Pecans'' is being sold by the Eastern Virginia Medical School Women to raise money to benefit breast cancer and prostate cancer research.
``We wanted to fund an area that would benefit most men and women,'' Heyl said.
The EVMSW comprises female physicians, faculty wives and ``any woman who is associated with the medical school,'' said Heyl, the wife of Dr. Peter S. Heyl, a perinatologist and a faculty member in the department of maternal and fetal medicine at EVMS, as well as medical director of labor and delivery at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
Since 1974, the group has been selling pecans to raise money for scholarships. One year the group put together a 30-page pamphlet with pecan recipes to sell. When the idea came up to publish a recipe book, Heyl, 44, was the perfect choice for the job.
``I started collecting recipes for pecans when I was a child,'' she said. The shoe box in which she collected them soon overflowed. Next she filled a moving cart, then a file cabinet.
The house where Heyl grew up in Gates County, N.C., was graced with 20 pecan trees leading up the drive. Her family sold the nuts as a sideline.
``I am what I am because of eating pecans,'' she said.
The book includes recipes that Heyl has collected and modified over the years, her own recipes, family favorites and some from contributors who are acknowledged in the book. The 250-page book features chapters on appetizers and hors d'oeuvres; salads, dressings, chutney and relish; entrees, stuffing and rice; vegetables, breads and butter; cakes, cheesecakes and tortes; frostings and fillings, candy, cookies and other desserts.
``When you think of pecans you think of sweets, but they are also good in salads, vegetables and with fish,'' Heyl said.
She started the book on the first day of October 1993, and it went to print last Halloween.
``My major feat was putting it on the computer,'' she said. ``Sometimes I would set my alarm for 4 a.m. and work until 8 a.m. when I got the kids up and ready to go to school.''
While working on the book, she said she did a little research on pecans and discovered that the first trees were planted in Virginia by Thomas Jefferson. She said Jefferson gave seedlings to George Washington, who planted them at Mount Vernon.
Heyl has an undergraduate degree in communication and food and nutrition from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She also holds master's and doctorate degrees in child development from UNC-Greensboro.
``I went into college to be a dietician,'' she said. But after a doing a practicum at a hospital during college, she said, ``I realized I didn't want to spend my life in a hospital kitchen. I wanted to be out among people.''
She instead became a consumer education reporter for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Greensboro. In that position, she wrote and produced segments on food nutrition for TV stations in Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem, and wrote consumer-oriented radio spots and newspaper articles.
As Heyl has moved from place to place with her husband as he received his medical training, she said she has done ``a variety of things.'' That includes being an instructor of child development at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro and, after receiving her doctorate in 1977, serving as director of the mental health department at the Menominee Tribal Clinic on an Indian reservation in Keshena, Wis., while her husband was director of the medical department there.
The family moved to Norfolk three years ago from Boston, where her husband was director of obstetrics at Beth Israel Hospital.
Moving to Norfolk, she was ``almost like coming home, even though as a child we only came here for special occasions.'' Her mother, however, lived in Norfolk as a child.
``I've lived in a lot of different places,'' she said, ``and it makes me realize what a wonderful place Norfolk is.''
Heyl and her family, which includes son Jonathan, 17, and daughters Ashton, 10, and Grayson, 4, live in Ghent Square.
Heyl soon will be working on another cookbook - this time for the Hunter House Museum. The cookbook will feature recipes for theme teas and will be sold in the museum's gift shop.
``I like to sink my teeth into a project.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON
Adair Heyl's 250-page book contains recipes for 489 dishes
containing pecans.
Graphic
TO GET THE COOKBOOK
``Nuttin' But Pecans'' is available from the Eastern Virginia
Medical School Women. Send $10, along with $2.50 for postage and
handling, to Nuttin' But Pecans, Eastern Virginia Medical School,
Office of Public Affairs, P.O. Box 1980, Norfolk, Va. 23501.
by CNB