I don't know about y'all, but I was brought up to fear the pressure cooker. Before the days of reliable pressure relief valves, my mother would clear the kitchen when the top began to dance on our cooker. When I shared this fear with Nicki a few years ago, she was kind enough to come to my house and show me how easy the new modern devices are to use, and she even made me a really nice 15-minute risotto.

Now she wants to share some of that knowledge with you, plus she'll be teaching about canning procedures as well.

Here's the syllabus:

If you're a grill pro, you might want to try to grab one of the last remaining entry spots for the Hearth and Grill Shop's Backyard Challenge BBQ Cook-Off on June 2. The entry fee is $75 and there are both gas and charcoal divisions, and chicken, rib and dessert categories. Grillers will compete for more than $7,000 in cash and prizes with judging starting at noon.

Here's the rest of the information on the event:

• Chef Kevin Ramquist's winning dishes.

Kudos to 1808 Grille chef Charles Phillips — who followed up cooking dinner at the James Beard House in New York on Wednesday with cooking and hosting the Savor Nashville Celebrity Chef Dinner on Saturday. And congratulations to chef Kevin Ramquist of F. Scott's, who won the Savor Nashville Chef Challenge on Sunday. (More on that later.)

Saturday night's dinner at the tony Hutton Hotel kicked off with a cocktail hour featuring Cultivate Wines, which were also served along with the courses of the dinner. There were some bargains to be had at the silent auction table, since most attendees were more interested in socializing than bidding.

Once we were seated, Chef Phillips kicked off the proceedings with a nice small plate of a perfectly fried quail egg, carnitas and some really flavorful gigante beans. Phillips barely had time to rest between the Savor dinner and cooking at the James Beard House, so you know he's on top of his game.

For the second and third courses, chef Bruce Moffett of Barrington's in Charlotte, N.C., took control of the kitchen. Chef Moffett told me that since his restaurant seats only 40 people, he'd never served a ballroom full of people before. The largest number of plates he'd previously made at one time was 10. Despite his inexperience in a big kitchen, his food came to the table beautifully composed and at a perfect temperature. His dish of English pea soup with ham and cheese croutons and smoked olive oil was a bowl that even pea soup haters could love. (I only made one Exorcist joke to my table-mates who claimed they didn't want to try it.) The olive oil was smoked with pine cones to give it a really nice evergreen note.

Moffett's next dish of roasted halibut with potato pave served with wilted greens, a green garlic soubise and caramelized shallot vinaigrette was even more anticipated by the table and did not disappoint. While we wish we'd had a botanist on hand to identify which greens that were so flavorful, we were still blissful in our ignorance.

Knowing that I had the Savor Nashville Chefs Challenge to judge the next morning, I had only a small bite of dessert, which was peanut butter and jelly in phyllo strawberry compote, milk chocolate ice cream and salty peanuts. Although it was total overkill at this point in the gluttonous evening, the dessert was quite nice. We're talking about wants, not needs. ...

Seven trucks from the Southeast will roll into Manchester to create the Food Truck Oasis. Guests will find everything from grilled arepas to Korean tacos to curried vegetables and farm-to-truck bites with Gastropod (Miami, Fla.), Petro’s Chili & Chips (Knoxville, Tenn.), Roti Rolls (Charleston, South Carolina), Pot Kettle Black (Charleston, South Carolina), eatbox (Ashville, North Carolina), Savory and Sweet (Knoxville, Tenn.), Blackbird Heritage Farms (College Grove, Tenn.) and Good You (Kansas City, Missouri).

For bites true to Tennessee, fans can look for returning favorites like Prater's BBQ, a state-wide favorite, which will be smoking meats on-site and enhancing them with specialty home-made sauces, and sides like Fried Dill Pickles and Fried Green Tomatoes, and Bear Creek Farm, a family farm just 50 miles from Manchester, and renowned for its Angus burgers.

The health- and eco-conscious will gravitate toward Planet Roo Cafe, a 100% waste-free cafe featuring fresh local produce and a menu with bites like Pan Seared Trout with wilted fresh baby spinach, Pecan Southern Stir Fry, Sesame Asparagus, and Grilled Sweet Potatoes. Planet Roo will also be home to the Bonnaroo Victory Garden where guests can learn about sustainable eating and how to grow their own garden.

At the Broo’ers Festival this year, 21 breweries join forces to create the ultimate beer experience. Under one tent with hay barrels and picnic tables setting the ambiance, guests find microbreweries from around the country offering up hearty bocks, revitalizing pilsners, crisp pale ales.

A full listing of eateries and breweries follows. Some names are familiar (Nashville's TomKats Catering, Blackbird Heritage Farm). Many are more enigmatic.

In addition to an incredible meal, Thomas also tapped his foodie and chef friends for a silent and a live auction filled with one-of-a-kind dining experiences. The event raised a boatload of money for Nashville at exactly the time when boats and money were needed. The final tally was near $72,000.

Now Mobile Loaves and Fishes has morphed into the Nashville Food Project, an organization that I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon in the kitchen with earlier this spring. Williams is on the board of the Nashville Food Project and has agreed to work his networking magic to put together another fundraising event for the organization, which will be called Nourish.

The dinner will be held at the Nashville Farmers' Market on June 19 starting at 6 p.m. and ending whenever the last biscuit has been buttered. Then you need to seek out the after-party. John Fleer of Canyon Kitchen at Lonesome Valley in Cashiers, N.C. will return to work his magic in the kitchen for Nourish. I still dream about the buttermilk-glazed Sunburst Trout that Chef Fleer served at Thomas' first dinner.

I spoke with Chris Moran of Louisiana Seafood Co. in the Nashville Farmers' Market, and he told me it's been an excellent season for mudbugs. He has been selling hundreds of pounds of bagged live crawfish out of his storefront and also selling out of hot boiled batches every Friday and Saturday. If you want to order some for your own backyard boil, or have Chris do the work for you, either on-site or to-go, check out his prices here (PDF).

Chris is also one of the organizers behind the new crawfish event, which is coming to the Farmers' Market on Saturday, June 2, from 4 to 10 p.m. Your $40 entry fee gets you access to all-you-can-eat crawfish with all the fixin's, bottomless beer and sodas sponsored by Abita. There will also be door prizes and raffles all night and Louisiana-style live music.

Attendance will be limited to 800 people at this 21-and-up event, and Moran will make sure that there will be plenty of crawfish for everyone. He is planning to boil literally thousands of pounds of mudbugs and is in the process of constructing a huge boil trailer which you can expect to see around town in the near future.

Each Thursday until October, you can wander in and out of Edgehill Village shops and studios like tweed baby outfitters and Dulce Desserts, while sipping a lemonade from the lemonade stand. Or stop for a $5 glass of wine from Bella Napoli. You can even settle in for a mini spa treatment ($10 to $30 — a great deal) from o.liv Body Bar.

There's a farmstand component, too: Buy local beef from Bear Creek Farm; vegetables, honey and dairy from Vincent Farm; mushrooms and medicinal herbs by Sweetgrass Farm; a herbs and organic vanilla from Evelyn Farris Raines.

There'll be live music, a free stretch class conducted by Life Fitness Academy, and some of the shops are running specials, like 25 percent off men's custom shirts at Olia Zavozina.

It all dovetails nicely with Taco Mamacita's 4-7 p.m. happy hour, with $1 off specialty drinks and 50 cents off draft beer.

The event starts at 4 p.m. Thursday and rambles on until 8. Edgehill Village, 1201 Edgehill Ave. at Villa Place. Free parking in the lot, too.

• Tonight's menu — click to enlarge

Here's an explanation, from the BE Hive website:

The BE Hive is a collective.

It’s a campaign for good. It’s an idea that advocates healthy lifestyle choices, community involvement, and sustainable environmental practices. We believe that grassroots action, BEginning with one’s self, can bring about global change and awareness.

As of now, The BE Hive exists in the form of a weekly Tuesday dinner buffet at The Wild Cow Vegetarian Restaurant in East Nashville. Each week we donate a percentage of our profits to progressive and socially conscious causes that we support.

Last week's buffet featured a Thai theme, and it was fabulous. I won't go into details, since tonight's buffet features a completely different menu, with a Jamaican theme: Dishes include jerk soy strips, banana tofu curry, island barbecue lentils, mashed sweet potato casserole, coconut carrots, smokey greens and more. For $10 ($9 to go), it's an exceptional deal. A percentage of the proceeds will benefit Walk/Bike Nashville. If I get out of work on time (note to self — no iPhone solitaire), I'll be there. In fact, I plan on going just about every Tuesday that I'm free.

The BE Hive buffet takes place 4 to 9 p.m. every Tuesday at The Wild Cow, 1896 Eastland Ave.

While he was able to warm the decidedly cool receptions he got in both cities to at least a gentle saute, Oliver recognizes that real social change will only come from grassroots efforts around the country. To that end, he has declared May 19 to be Food Revolution Day, and encouraged local communities to come together to raise awareness and raise money for food education programs.

He hopes May 19 to be a day of action, but also an opportunity to educate people around the globe. From the event website: "Food Revolution Day is about connecting with your community through events at schools, restaurants, local businesses, dinner parties and farmers' markets. We want to inspire change in people’s food habits and to promote the mission for better food and education for everyone."

Nashville is joining the fray with an event at the Nashville Farmers' Market on Saturday, May 19, from 1 to 3 p.m. in their Grow Local Kitchen. You are invited to:

Current or aspiring food writers can learn from the legends at the conference, including Times-Picayune restaurant reviewer Brett Anderson, Southern Food author (and journalist) John Egerton; editor Ronni Lundy; Southern cookbook authors Nathalie Dupree, Elizabeth Sims, Barbara Swell, Sheri Castle, and the FoodBlogSouth people. Sessions cover culinary research, publisher's perspective, culture and breaking into writing.

Dinner at the luxurious Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tenn., is included in the ticket, and you can buy an add-on dinner with Alton Brown.

There is, of course, a biscuit session, and if you can't get enough, there's a whole biscuit festival right outside the seminar doors the next day.

Check out the writing conference schedule here, and register here.