What's cooking: Whitefish liver pizza?

Bolla Wines is celebrating its 125th anniversary with the Taste of Your Town Pizza Contest, seeking recipes that best reflect Minnesota (insert obligatory Spam joke here). But this is serious stuff; entries must also include which Bolla varietal would go with the submitted recipe. White with wild rice? Red with turkey sausage? The winners in five regional competitions will receive pizza ovens and other Bolla prizes. The Grand Prize winner gets a trip to Europe to visit Bolla's winery in Verona, Italy, and attend the 2009 World Pizza Championships.

For more info, pizza lovers 21 and older can go to www.bolla.com/taste. Contestants are encouraged to use local ingredients in the crust, sauce and topping. Entries are due by Aug. 31 and will be judged on creativity, taste, and their ability to pair well with a Bolla varietal. The grand prize winner among the regions will be decided via an online vote in October, which is National Pizza Month.

Summer can wait Sure, the hardy among us have always barbecued year-round, but this winter's unrelenting stretches of subzero weather have kept many grills cleaner than usual. Perhaps that's why we received a pitch from the folks at SpitJack about all the ways in which we can satisfy our yearning for open-flame cooking in our fireplaces. Hearth grills fit over andirons. Rotisseries turn the food as you lounge on the couch.

SpitJack was founded three years ago in Massachusetts; it also offers less complex gear such as spyder skillets, long-handled chestnut roasters and popcorn poppers. But the website, www.spitjack.com, is worth checking out for the instructions on how to truss a whole hog onto "The Beast," its no-nonsense outdoor spit. (It helps if you're a carnivore.)

Tag your fridge Among the all brilliant ideas we've heard, the folks at Whirlpool's Amana brand have made it into the list-maker's Hall of Fame with their new refrigerator called the Jot. The refrigerator and freezer door panels are covered from top to bottom with a white dry-erase surface. It's a giant memo pad, and even comes with two black and blue markers. (A caution to budding graffiti artists: Red and green markers may prove difficult to fully erase.) The suggested retail price for the 28-inch-wide fridge is $549.