French Broad Chocolates

Reblogged from Gomming & Yowing:

Chocolate lounges have been popular in other cities for a while, and truly, what’s not to love about an all-chocolate “lounge” experience?

Asheville has its own take on lounging with chocolate: the French Broad Chocolate Lounge at 10 S. Lexington Avenue. (For locavores, it’s near the S. Lexington intersection with Patton Ave.; just above the back door parking lot for Mast General Store, and across the street from the Drhumor Building’s parking lot.) Even their sign, which proudly proclaims “artisan chocolates & desserts,” looks good enough to eat!

Read more… 380 more words

French Broad Chocolate Lounge is having a Facebook competition for locals and non-locals, so I thought I'd reblog this piece from 2008! As my friend Robin Dance (http://pensieve.me) might say, FBCL is magically delicious!

Green Hand Weather

There’s a certain kind of weather that happens only in the summer, when the day is warm and sultry but overcast, and you can feel a storm building.

Driving home from work yesterday, I thought to myself, “this is Green Hand Weather.”

The sky was darkening, but not with the blue-black inky clouds of a standard, fast-moving thunderstorm–instead it was almost green-looking, like an old tarnished mirror, reflecting nothing. The sky got heavier and lower and the light that filtered through took on a mossy tinge, like I was underwater. Everything got quiet and still, waiting. It almost seemed like I could poke that swollen sky with a broomstick and it would burst, drowning everything below it in a murky flood.

That’s Green Hand Weather.

To fully appreciate “Green Hand Weather,” you’d have to have grown up in my family.

1) You’d have to have an older brother who had an alligator-head pincher like this one:

Classic alligator-head pincher toy

2) You’d need an older sister with lots of imagination (plus a talent for scaring younger sisters), and

3) Two younger sisters (my middle sister and me) who were eager to be scared out of their wits.

Combine these necessary ingredients (the characters, the alligator pincher, and the eerie green prelude to  a summer storm), and you’ve got everything you need to play Green Hand.

I don’t know how it started the first time, but I suspect it was brought on by the disturbing look and feel of the swollen green sky ready to burst into a storm. My oldest sister set a scene where my middle sister and I would play the role of weary travelers, arriving via stagecoach to spend the night at a deserted wayside inn. We went into the backyard that was lit by the watery green light, climbed dutifully out of our imaginary stagecoach, not liking the look of the run-down inn (it looked very creepy in our mind’s eye), but determined to get out of that weird weather. The friendly-but-enigmatic innkeeper (my oldest sister’s role) met us at the door and escorted us upstairs to our room. There were no other guests, but we were tired after our long trip, so we got in bed and pulled the covers up and pretended to sleep.

Somehow, my oldest sister managed to get under the bed, and when the moment was right–usually just as the first thunder boomed and the lightning flashed and the sky was ready to crack open and pour down–she’d start whispering “green hand…greeeeeeen haaaaand…” and grabbing at our ankles (because every child knows, instinctively, that your feet are incredibly vulnerable to being caught by whatever it is that hides under your bed and wants to drag you down with it), and no matter how sure we were that it was a game and that it was just our sister–in seconds we’d be screaming and scrambling and trying to get away from that terrifying greeeeeeen haaaaaand.

Of course, my sister helped us further by pinching us with the greeeeeeen alligator-head, chasing us down the hall and the stairs and sometimes straight into the storm outside, because rain and lightning were far less scary than the green hand.  And no matter how scared we were, we’d look forward to the next storm that might bring Green Hand Weather.

I should tell you about playing Killdozer and Morgue, too, but I’ll save them for another time. Right now, it’s Green Hand Weather!

Rescue Me

Dixie_jail

Rescue Me

Rescue me / Take me in your arms / Rescue me / I want your tender charm / ‘Cause I’m lonely / And I’m blue / I need you / And your love too / Come on and rescue me

 –Fontella Bass; 1965

So…when it comes down to the call of nature answering the call of an animal in need, who rescues who?

A completely unexpected rescue mission began last week when my biological clock–which has always ticked to the beat of a different drummer–suddenly began alarming me.

Let’s face it–Teddy will be three years old on May 16. He’s settling down a bit. No longer chewing my shoes to shreds, no longer cutting his leash in half with just a few snaps of his scissor-like teeth.

What’s a mother to do? Simple: get another “baby” and start all over again.

Enter Dixie: a yard-dog from way up in Watauga County. Six months old and got into some majorly moldy food, which made her sick and caused neurological symptoms. Her people took her to the vet, but were unable to pay for her treatment. The very nice vet treated her, spayed her, and took her in as a foster-pup with her own dogs. Another friend put her picture and description on Facebook to see if they could find a home for her.

Dixie, as she appeared on Facebook

A friend of mine saw the Facebook post and thought Dixie looked a lot like Teddy, and the rest is history. Or beginning to be history–Teddy wasn’t thrilled to be a big brother at first and he did NOT ask to get a sister for his birthday–but he’s beginning to get used to Dixie and get his nose back in joint, so to speak. After all, he’s been an only-dog for nearly three years and I haven’t provided the most effective discipline for him (I tend to smooch him rather than correct him).

Teddy and Dixie learning to walk together on their “double-dog-dare-you” leash

So…Dixie gets a new home, Teddy gets a new sister, and I get that second baby I didn’t even know I wanted until I saw Dixie’s little dog face in a Facebook post. And my biological clock? Well, let’s just say that I quietly turned off the alarm, pulled the plug out of the socket, and put the whole thing on a shelf in the attic where I hope I never hear from it again!

Jarlsberg, Y’all!

Jarlsberg

‘Yep, I’m telling you this for the truth,’ is what we say in the South when we want to convince our listeners that whatever tall tale we’re telling is the truth and not just another short story about our cousin’s husband’s sister’s niece (you know–she was the one who went you-know-where with you-know-who).

I digress…but I’m telling you this for the truth. I have no cherished childhood memories of Jarlsberg cheese. Cheddar? Check. Pimiento cheese? Certainly. Cream cheese, jack cheese, cottage cheese, E-Z Cheese? Sure. Even goat, Gouda, and Epoisses, in later years—plus one infamous episode with Stinking Bishop, which still haunts my tastebuds whenever I smell road kill languishing in the summer sun—but no Jarlsberg.

But wait—I do have one sort-of Jarlsberg memory: in the movie version of The Devil Wears Prada, “Nate” (actor Adrien Grenier) offers “Andy” (actress Anne Hathaway) a grilled cheese sandwich after a grueling day in the office. She’s so aggravated with her day that she waves his masterpiece away, saying she’s not hungry, and Nate says, “there’s like $8 worth of Jarlsberg in there!”

That was my only frame of reference, until recently.

In November 2011, I had the wonderful opportunity to tag along on the Eat Write Retreat Field Trip that explored the food culture of Asheville, North Carolina. I work for one of the companies that sponsored the event, and sponsorship perks included a seat at the table for a weekend of eating and talking (otherwise known as gomming & yowing, in the South) and eating and drinking and eating and visiting farms and eating and learning about the city’s food culture and eating and—well, you get the idea.

 

 It’s Jarlsberg, y’all—a user-friendly cheese developed in Jarlsberg, Norway in the mid-1850s

Turns out, Jarlsberg USA was also a sponsor, and they sent a giant wheel of Jarlsberg to be divvied up among field trip participants. It was a small group, by design, so the wedges of cheese turned out to be something to write home about (or lug home, for those traveling by air). In fact, Asheville might have been renamed Jarlsville that weekend, in honor of the mighty cheese wheel that reclined in chilled comfort until it was time for the divvy-nation and dispersal.

Anyway, I thought the Jarlsberg was pretty darn good (PDG). Sort of Swiss-like with the holes and all, but not exactly.  And I had a distant memory of a recipe that might just make the most of my new cheese whiz: natte, a cheese-bread I used to make all the time when I was in high school and college, back when nobody told me I didn’t know how to bake bread, so I baked a lot of it.

Natte was my favorite recipe; you made a simple yeast dough into which you kneaded shredded cheese, shaped it into a braid (that’s what ‘natte’ means in French), and baked. The recipe called for gruyere, but that was fancier than my mom would add to her shopping list, so I made do with cheddar, which tasted PDG to me.

Fast forward 20 years, and I wondered what natte would be like with Jarlsberg. Any historical enmity between France and Norway that might preclude culinary civilities? I decided to risk it.

Got my bits and pieces ready to go!

My natte recipe is not original; it’s from the Betty Crocker’s International Cookbook* that my aunt gave my mom for Christmas circa 1980. Somehow, the idea of experiencing “international foods” (guided by that nice lady who smiled out at me from the baking aisle in the grocery store) seemed faintly exotic, with just a whiff of secret spices from faraway places with strange sounding names. I was hooked, and I set out to see the world, one recipe at a time.

Fast-forward 30+ years, and I’m just taking a crusty brown braided loaf of Jarlsberg natte out of the oven.**

  

My kitchen smells as good as it did the first time I tried the recipe, and now I realize I DO have a special Jarlsberg memory—it’s just taken it a little while to come full circle.

*Many thanks to Betty Crocker’s International Cookbook; published in 1980 by General Mills, Inc.; of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

**Full disclosure: Jarlsberg USA is sponsoring a contest for blog entries about favorite Jarlsberg memories (old & new). The prize is a paid admission to the upcoming Eat Write Retreat weekend in Washington, DC–and boy, howdy, would I like to win that!

 Click here for the complete recipe, with photos!

Crawlin’ King Cake

Ready for my close-up...

With apologies to John Lee Hooker, The Doors, and others, this is the line that runs through my mind when I think of King Cakes:

Eagle Mills flour is a nice compromise (for me) between standard flour and one like King Arthur, which is really nice, but really pricey. Unbleached is the important factor, and Eagle Mills offers that.

Well, I’m the Crawlin’ King Snake / And I rule my den / I’m the Crawlin’ King Snake / And I rule my den…

I was humming it to myself Sunday night while baked my first-ever homemade King Cake. I knew Mardi Gras wasn’t until Tuesday, but I’m far more likely to bake on a weekend than a work night. Here’s my experience:

The project started with a trip to the grocery store to buy ingredients. There’s nothing fancy in the King Cake recipe I used, but I didn’t have everything I needed, like flour. (I used up the last of my flour in my attempts to get a decent loaf of Salt-Rising Bread. Success has remained elusive!)

I combined butter, sour cream, sugar, and salt and stirred over medium heat until butter melted, then set it aside (in the top rack of my dishwasher, which acts as an auxilliary countertop at times) to cool sightly.

Rich ingredients, worthy of a King Cake!

Yeast was next: very warm water + yeast + sugar makes the yeast get bubbly, like these pictures:

This is what happy yeast looks like!

Oops! This yeast got a little too happy!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Then I combined happy yeast, eggs, and butter mixture in large bowl (I used my stand mixer) and continued following directions* until dough was smooth and elastic. I put it in a warm oven and allowed it to rise until doubled.

My dough runneth over!

More apologies–in all the dough-rising excitement, I forgot to take pictures of the rolling-into-a-rectangle-and-brushing-with-butter-and-cinnamon-and-sugar stage of the process.  After rolling & brushing, you coil the dough up from the long side (like a jelly roll) and shape it into a circle. It rises again, you bake it, and then drench it with a confectioner sugar icing.

Buttered, brushed, and tucked into itself

King Cake, fresh-baked…

Last, but not least, I was inspired by Short Street Cakes to decorate my King Cake with Mardi Gras beads (purple, green, and gold) rather than the usual colored icing/colored sugar, which is not that attractive (to me) and causes one to develop a dark and sinister “candy-tongue” if you eat much of it (purple, green, and gold = muckledun).

Iced & beaded!

Ready for a close-up…

 And then I took it to work…

And we laissez les bon temps rouler!

All over but the shoutin' and a tangle of sugar-coated beads...

*Special thanks to Southern Living  and allrecipes.com for sharing this easy and delicious King Cake recipe!

Witch of the Cumberlands

When I was a kid, this is the book that made me realize I wanted to write–and that I wanted, someday, to write a book as good as this one.                    

“With the prophesied arrival of three children on Devil’s Mountain a gentle elderly woman, whom the villagers call a witch, unravels the old mystery of a local mine disaster.”

How could anyone resist such a jacket-blurb? And the totally cool illustrations that captured the stories-within-a-story world that author Mary Jo Stephens created–wow!

I think my oldest sister clued me in to the utter wonder of this book, and I used to check it out of our public library (the West Asheville branch on Haywood Road) several times a year. In fact, I got so worried that some other (careless/insensitive) child would check it out and lose it that I finally talked my mother into letting me keep it. (Yes, such was my mania for this book that I compelled my mother to fib to the library for me!)

We said it was lost, paid the library for it, and it’s had a place of honor on my bookshelf ever since.* I occasionally loan it to those who I think will sincerely enjoy it, but I watch the lender like a hawk until the book is safely home again with me.

I don’t know much about the author, and she apparently wrote only one other book (Zoe’s Zodiac), which I never read, for some reason. Hmm…maybe that’s an idea for my reading list?

*I still feel some major guilt about the library lie we told, but it was impossible to get books way back when, with no Amazon.com at your fingertips or Barnes & Noble on every corner. If a book got away from you in those days, you might never see it again…and I just wouldn’t risk it!

Happy Birthday, Mr. Addams!

Addams1

Today is Charles Addams’ 100th birthday–and for a complete stranger born 57 years and one week before my time, he’s had a surprisingly important influence on the way I see the world.

We never owned a sweet, traditional copy of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes; we had the version illustrated by Charles Addams. Far more sinister, and a whole lot more interesting!

‘Solomon Grundy’ takes on a whole different perspective when glimpsed through Mr. Addams’ macabre vision:

Along with the weather, another of Mr. Addams’ Mother Goose illustrations inspired my July 2008 blog post:

I could go on and on–and I’d like to–but what I really want to say is this: Happy Birthday, Mr. Addams! May your work continue to send shivers up our spines for the next hundred years!*

*For more information on Charles Addams, visit the Charles & Tee Addams Foundation.

Eat Write Retreat

French Broad Chocolates

Sometimes you have to retreat in order to advance. Counter-intuitive? Not necessarily–especially when the retreat is a well-organized time apart from the daily grind in order to focus on something of importance.

Last weekend, I had a chance to join Eat Write Retreat in their first EWR: Destination Learning series, which incorporated “skill-building and networking into a fascinating exploration of a unique, food-focused community.” The destination just happened to be Asheville, and the company for which I work just happened to be one of the event sponsors, so I got to hang out with some very interesting folks who make a living through writing and blogging about food.

Fantastic foodies Robyn Webb and Casey Benedict developed the program “as a way to strengthen connections in the food blogging community through a shared exploration of cooking, writing and photography. Robyn and Casey have worked tirelessly to create an intensive, hands-on learning weekend, full of opportunity, friendship and fun at a great value.” (That’s how the EWR website describes it, and I’d definitely agree!)

As as overview, we accomplished the following in our short Asheville weekend:

  1. Friday: wine tasting and dinner at Biltmore.
  2. Saturday: breakfast at Early Girl Eatery; tour of Hickory Nut Gap Farm (and their very cool farmhouse, with its long history!); a beer-tasting lunch at The Market Place Restaurant with special guest Oscar Wong of Highland Brewing Company; a chocolate-tasting and lesson in cacao production from French Broad Chocolates; a wine and local cheese tasting with Sante Wine Bar; and last–but far from least–dinner at Carmel’s with wines by Shelton Vineyards and desserts courtesy of True Confections.
  3. Sunday: a light breakfast at True Confections; a tour of Blue Ridge Food Ventures (including a meeting with a filmmaker who’s working with local farms); and finally, a tapas lunch at Cúrate.

I believe a truly good time was had by all, even if we were dragging a bit by the end of the weekend. Though some menus were small/tasting-style, it was a LOT of food (and drink!) to consume in less than 48 hours.

Next time, I’ll dig deeper–with my fork–into the specifics of each element of the retreat. Be sure to read when you’re hungry!

Feral Friday: Feathery

feather

(I wanted to post this on Friday, but my technology had other ideas. Still, it’s the thought that counts, right?)

This free-range, organic turkey feather, caught in the grass at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, caused images of Forrest Gump and Thanksgiving to dance through my head.

So feathery and insubstantial, and yet so perfectly designed for its purpose that neither concrete nor steel could render it any more effective.

Kinda gives me quills…er, chills, that is, up my spine.

Top 10 Survival Tips For Horror Movie Scenarios

nosferatu

Honestly…if you somehow found yourself in a real-life horror movie situation, couldn’t you make a better showing for yourself than the standard characters? I’d like to think most of us could. With that in mind, here are my Top 10 Survival Tips for Horror Movie Scenarios:

1.  Vampires, ghouls, werewolves, witches, demented serial killers, most zombies–and even creepy aliens and Killer Klowns–tend to work a night shift from 5:00 p.m. – 5:00 a.m. If you can’t complete your investigation and subsequent disposal (vampire-staking, incendiary device detonation, etc.) by 5:00 p.m., give it up until the following day. In a horror move, overtime = certain death.

2. Keep your clothes on! Changing into filmy nightgowns or pajamas or stripping down to lingerie generally = death. Think about it: if you have a job to do–like counteracting a mummy’s curse or outrunning a chainsaw killer–you’ll be better equipped to perform your duties if you’re wearing jeans, sweatshirt, and running shoes rather than trying to bring your A-game in nothing but panties, your (doomed) boyfriend’s flannel shirt, and bare feet.

3. Stick together. The killer can’t arrange a grisly decapitation of the entire group at the same time–he’d be lucky to merely scalp somebody and odds are in your favor that it won’t be you. The Buddy System doesn’t work if you don’t watch out for your buddy!

4.   If the house/cave/carnival looks deserted and scary, don’t go in. There’s nothing in there that can’t wait until daylight (see Survival Tip #1), and you’re trespassing, so stay out. If your semi-naked girlfriend/boyfriend went in to look around, they’re already doomed, so let it go. Somebody else will undoubtedly ignore Survival Tip #2 and take their clothes off before long, so you won’t miss much.

5.  As soon as the first member of your party ignores Survival Tip #4 (and you know they will), get a flashlight and a cell phone before you follow them. Why not be prepared to see where you’re going, see the masked madman before he swings the axe at you, and be able to call for help? It makes your odds of survival so much higher!

6.  When you first notice something weird in the new old house you and your family just moved into, don’t pretend you didn’t see it–turn the lights on and investigate that boarded-up well in the basement. Did the sellers or the realtor disclose the possibility of demonic possession? Did they leave the name and number of a local exorcist on the refrigerator? Take your family to a hotel and call the Better Busines Bureau in the morning–you may be able to get your money back as well as surviving the night!

7.  Zombies have gotten completely out of hand–but they’re still pretty slow. If you encounter a traditional voodoo zombie, salt is your weapon of choice. For the new flesh-eating-goo-oozing type zombies that seem to result from meteors passing close to the earth or outbreaks of a mysterious zombie-virus, your best bet is to run for it, preferably having not neglected Survival Tip #2.

Former San Diego Charger O. William Faison as a tradtional zombie in "Kolchak: The Night Stalker"

8.  When attacked by mutant spiders or an atomic nutria, try to stay calm and keep moving. You can mow down a lot of wildlife with a good-sized SUV–provided, of course, that you’re a responsible vehicle owner who keeps enough air in your tires and gas in your tank to outrun a devil dog or giant alligator. Once again, planning is key: don’t defer vehicle maintenance, just in case you have to take Mothra right in the windshield!

9.  Pale, ghostly hitchhiker by the side of the road? Pass them by–they’re nothing but trouble. They’ll either sink their fangs in your neck from the backseat and make you drive off the road into a swamp (and the suggested vehicle readiness in Survival Tip #8 won’t help), or they’ll make you drive them to a creepy old house, then vanish, making you very vulnerable to ignoring Survival Tip #4 and #5. Just say NO to hitchhikers!

10.  Last–but certainly not least–exercise a little bit of common sense in each situation. Think about your options–nobody is going to care if you skip the funhouse or the fortune-teller; go ride the Tilt-A-Whirl instead. Stay where the lights and the people are, even if your uber-hot date is urging you to fling off your clothes and follow him or her into the mist. Remember: if they really loved you, they wouldn’t want you to have your heart ripped out of your chest and offered as an initiation sacrifice.

Good luck out there, and stay safe…if you dare!