I normally like to support locally-owned restaurants, but on a recent holiday with my wife to Panama City, Fla., we tried out a restaurant on the water.

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The seventh annual Diabetes Wellness and Prevention Workshop will be held on Thursday, Oct. 22, from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Dothan Civic Center.

Families can celebrate the fall season with a trip to the pumpkin patch in Crowley Field at Landmark Park.

Preparations are under way for the fifth annual Downtown Christmas Festival to be held the first Saturday of December on the streets of downtown Dothan.

Find out about upcoming church-related events.

MercyMe lead singer Bart Millard and Fee lead singer Steve Fee say they want the night to be a “worship experience.”

Landmark Park will celebrate the local agricultural heritage during the Wiregrass Heritage Festival on Saturday, Oct. 24, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The food safety course and certification is a state requirement for any restaurant or food service establishment.

The seventh annual Diabetes Wellness and Prevention Workshop will be held on Thursday, Oct. 22.

Check out these books at the library in Dothan.

Find out about church-related events.

Find out what’s going on locally.

There are funny scarecrows and scary scarecrows. Some pay tribute to movie or television characters. A couple even play off the swine flu.

Located on the east end of the beach, snuggled next to a high-rise development, Schooners is a landmark.

Find out how local eating establishments ranked.

Crowder Orthodontics will buy back the candy that young trick-or-treaters collect this year for Halloween.

“Wild at heART,” an exhibit of wildlife art, will be on display in the historic Dowling Museum in downtown Ozark beginng Nov. 7.

Patricia “Sister” Barnes will visit Dothan on Wednesday, making a stop to sign copies of her cookbook at 1 p.m. at Vino Vino Marketplace.

Check out these books at the local library.

Find out about local church-related events.

The Scarecrows in the Garden is on display once again.

See what’s going on around the area.

Preparations are under way for the fifth annual Downtown Christmas Festival to be held the first Saturday of December on the streets of downtown Dothan.

Landmark Park is taking reservations for field trips for the 2009-2010 school year.

A Fall FURfest will be held later this month to help raise money for Felines Under Rescue, or FUR.

Holly Smith, a contestant on Food Network’s “The Next Iron Chef,“ praises this vinegary tomato and bread soup as being the perfect kid food — they can get their hands messy while mashing the bread into the tomatoes. That may be the case, but the 5-year-old tester still wouldn’t touch it. He doesn’t like tomatoes. His loss. It was delicious.

Melissa d’Arabian, host of Food Network’s “Ten Dollar Dinners,“ bravely tried to tempt a picky 5-year-old with a cheesy wilted spinach dish. Would it bring back memories of the curried spinach he loved as a toddler? It didn’t. He refused to eat anything but the sauce, and then only the tiniest lick off his fork.

Alexandra Guarnaschelli, host of Food Networks’ “Alex’s Day Off,“ came up with this kid-friendly soup that is topped with popcorn. The 5-year-old taste tester who generally avoids squash loved it.

In the battle to get a 5-year-old boy to embrace vegetables, the Food Network’s Alton Brown offered up these parsnip muffins, which were the easy winner in the taste test. They could be made healthier by substituting white whole-wheat flour for the all-purpose and by cutting back the sugar a bit.