Pulling posts from only one category in “most recent posts”

Please take pity on a newbie. I’ve been pulling my hair out over this for a couple of days.

Here’s what I want to do. I’ve built a page within the Branford theme. Within the right col of the page there is a place where recent posts are displayed. I want to change the code somehow so that only posts from a certain category are pulled into the archive (if that’s the right word for the bulleted list of recent posts).

I’ve tried using the plugin “Show Posts by Selective Category” but can’t get it to work. I’ve seen other people post similar questions in the forum but I’m still confused.

Here’s where I believe new code needs to be inserted:

<div id=”featured-rightcol”>
<h3><?php _e(‘Recent Posts’,’branfordmagazine’);?></h3>
<li id=”featured-recent”>
<ul class=”bullets”>
<?php wp_get_archives(‘type=postbypost&limit=5’); ?>

</div>

Thanks.