How To Eat Locally in January

When faced with weighty, life-changing decisions: Obama or Clinton, Grad School or Stable Employment, Rent or Buy, I prefer to return to the more immediate, more pleasant choices such as, Chicken or Fish?  Even these decisions do not lack a sense of responsibility, and so I would like to help us all out in making those less complicated choices just a little easier. 

If you are like me, all excited about local food when its flowing abundantly into my lap in late July, you may be sharing my feelings of guilt when I purchased, for example, Chilean asparagus last week.  What to do?  First, I recommend Mark Peters’ informative article in this month’s New Life Journal on winter local eats.  I’ve also done some field research of my own, so pay close attention. 

Cheese

Dark Cove Farms produces goat cheese- can be found at Greenlife

Spinning Spider Creamery (I’m not a fan but many folks are) produces many varieties of goat cheese- sells at Ingles, Earth Fare, and all the Co-ops

Yellow Branch Cheese produces milk cheeses- sells at Earth Fare, Greenlife, and the Hendersonville Co-op

Split Creek Farm offers goat cheese, goat milk fudge, goat milk soap-sells through mail order and at their farm stand

 Goat Lady Dairy- located in the whimsically named Climax, NC, the Goat Lady is a personal aquaintance who sells various goat cheeses, soft and hard, at Greenlife.

Produce

Shelton Farms in Jackson County sells greenhouse Bibb lettuce (yummers!) at Ingles

Sunny Creek Sprouts located in Tryon, I think, sells alfalfa and clover sprouts, also lima beans at Ingles, Greenlife.  I’ve been buying their sprouts for years and never knew they were grown locally until today.

Jafasa Farms produces greenhouse grape tomatoes- sells at Ingles

Robbins Family Farm produces potted herbs-sells at Ingles

Jake’s Farm grows greens and lettuce in the greenhouse- sells at Greenlife

Eggs

Local eggs taste SO MUCH BETTER than other eggs.  I promise.

Blue Hill Farm produces eggs and also cornmeal- sells at Greenlife, Earth Fare

Hickory Nut Gap Farm produces eggs- sells at Greenlife, Earth Fare, French Broad Food Co-op

Farside Farm Eggs- sells at Greenlife, FBFC, and their farmstand on North Merrimon Ave. past Beaver lake on the right

Meat/Fish

You can’t go wrong with Hickory Nut Gap Farm Spring House Meats-grass-fed beef, beef and pork sausage can be found at Earth Fare and Greenlife.  I don’t know if they are regularly offering pork or other meat cuts, quite yet, but ask the store manager or visit the website for more information.

Other-

Imladris Farms offers jams, jellies, and sometimes mushrooms (not right now, though)- I think this can only be purchased online.

Local pasta makers and upside-down flag activists sell homemade pasta at Earth Fare on Saturdays.  I love their eggs noodles, but have not enjoyed their more adventurous creations such as chocolate or chipotle pepper pasta.  You may feel differently.

The Mount Olive Pickle boycott is long over, since they agreed to offer reasonable wages and housing to their migrant farmworkers, and now they are touting local, NC pickles.  What a turnaround!  Viva Mount Olive!

I will add to this list as I learn more.  The local options at Ingles are quite exciting, don’t you think? Good luck, and happy shopping. 

Inspiration

I’ve just finished The Golden Compass, the first installment of Pullman’s His Dark Materials.  I wonder if this Dust, described with eery malignance, is the tangible stuff of inspiration and passion.  If so, I sure could use some.  What inspires a food writer is food.  Around these parts, I have experienced food made with intention, or enjoyment,  even love.  But rarely in WNC have I tasted exceptionally passionate or inspired food.  Therefore, I too have become less inspired.  Most restaurants I frequent here fall prey to the pitfalls of any tourist community.  Reputations reverberate far and wide, but the actual delivery most often is simply “good.”  Then one starts to question one’s own impressions, “do I think I love this food because everyone has told me I love it, or is this truly as exciting as the hype has determined it would be?”  It’s confusing, and I’ve taken myself to the internal wrestling mat of the mind on this one.   My solution:  eat somewhere critically lauded and unequivocally great.  Do so out of town.   

Central (Sen-trahl)

This was my  first foray into celebrity chefdom.  I wanted to eat food designed by a chef quoted as saying he has enjoyed a “lifelong romance with cuisine.”  I wanted to dine in an establishment keeping a “wine manager” in its employ.  I wanted at least three stars in a major metropolitan area.

Like many celebrity chefs before him, Michel Richard of Washington D.C.’s Cintronelle fame has recently opened a more affordable, lower key bistro catering to a hipper, urban crowd.  Central’s modern chic atmosphere was the perfect place to be on New Year’s Eve.  Located in the heart of the District, a mere two blocks from The White House, Central bustled with rich, festive, professionals arriving in their longest fur coats, giving way to the sleekest of black dresses/suits.

Humbled by my desperately small town ways, I was relieved when our waiter quickly alleviated the tension with his pleasant combo of succint professionalism and extreme politeness all lassoed in together with the perfect dash of informality.    The service was superbly infallible.  The best service I have received in my two star-eating life.  They served food from the right, and cleaned dishes from the left.  We ate the pre fixe menu for New Year’s and they brought new silver and plates for each of the five courses.  Water was filled dutifully with no pretention, napkins were refolded when one of us left our seats.  The service was a far cry from Asheville waitstaff, whose hipness borders on disdain and informality confuses the whole idea of service.  We eat out because we desire to feel special.  If we wanted to be treated like family, we would stay home and eat with them. 

Onward, to the the amuse bouche: Gougeres.  These cheeseball-sized gruyere cheese puffs were piled high in the delightful metal cone made for this exact occasion.  I bit into the warm flaky crust and my mouth was greeted with the steaming tanginess of gruyere.  This was too satisfying and far too fun to simply have one or two.   The bread was quite simply the most perfect French baguette I have ever put in my mouth.  Warm, rock hard floured crust gave way to a thick hearty, interior, full of holes that gracefully accepted freshly churned butter. 

Soup Course:  Mussel and roasted celeriac.  Also Carmelized duck and chestnut.  I began with an oversized bowl staring down its cavernous rim at six or so mussels, cubes of celery root, and chives.  Then a handsome man came and poured the liquid part of the soup onto the dry ingredients, thus commencing the soup course.  One bite of the sherry-based cream soup and my tongue conjured images of wet moss, clear, cold, clean salt water, and green fields in French countryside.  This soup was the most fabulous course of them all, and the mussels were breathtakingly plump and meaty.  In this moment, I felt completely and totally taken care of by Michel Richard.  Every single sensation was exactly according to his divine inspiration.  I silently praised this kitchen god before moving on to the next course. 

The foie gras parfait with apple chutney filled my mouth with light creaminess, like a savory and hearty whipped cream.  It was wonderful and paired exceptionally with the apple chutney and a thick triangle of toast.   The foie gras parfait disappaired in short minutes.  This is the one taste I continue to long for even though I’m days away from this meal. 

Our fish course was not as successful as the others.  The lobster in the ravioli was delicate tail, sweet and sumptious, but the ravioli was seated in a sauce I found both too sweet and too salty.  I could not place the sauce, it was a deep red, perhaps a beet-based sauce, but after two sticky bites I devoured the lobster and left the rest alone.  I still had two more courses to go, after all.

I tried the short rib with black bean sauce, and potatoes au gratin encased in a filo pastry crust.  The tender meat fell away from my fork with a forgiveness I knew would bode well.   The combination of flavors found in the chinese black bean sauce was the perfect marriage of sweet, spicy, and sour flavors that lended themselves well to the rib.  Although a little fatty for my taste, I found the dish to be wonderfully successful, especially alongside the crisped, delicate potato gratin creation.  My partner-in-extravagance ordered veal with mushrooms.  I ate more new types of mushrooms that night then I even knew existed, and each one offered a different experience of texture and flavor combination.  Some were more pungent than others, some were boyant and spongy against the teeth.  The sensations were exquisite.

My dessert was exactly what the doctor ordered:  an enormous platter of mixed berries with creme fraiche I could drizzle over them at will.  Each blueberry, raspberry, blackberry and strawberry was ripened just right and the clean finish rounded out the richness of my meal with a flourish.

As the Dust settled, I stood in my party dress, appraising Central for one final moment.  Staring into the bright kitchen, I saw order, excitement, skill, and commitment.  I saw passion.  I tasted it too, and was fully renewed. 

Next time you visit your capital city, get thee to Michel Richard’s Central.

Christmas Dinner Out

Hey y’all.  Due to some difficult family circumstances having nothing or perhaps everything to do with food, my blogging energy is currently waning.  I will be back in action very soon, but in the meantime, I invite you to this post of another local blogger who has thoughtfully illuminated for us some fancy shmancy Christmas Day dining options (For all you Jews, Pagans, Bottom Chefs, or Touristy Millionaires out there.)

As for me, I plan on making this my very first Christmas spent at a bar.  Christmas Eve in bars offers some darkly fascinating, often enlightening experiences that can end in any of the following: elation, hangover, new best friendship, depression, STD, or pregnancy.  I’m going to hope for the most former outcome on the Baby Jesus’ birthday, although I would accept elation+hangover and still experience that elusive sense of misanthropic accomplishment.   

Veggie Burgers in Paradise

                          

This picture barely begins to represent the natural wilderness and beauty on Cayo Costa Island.   Midwinter beach excursions are the perfect remedy for a buildup of overwhelmed stress during holiday time.  First of all, if you blow all your money in the beginning of the month, you don’t have much left for the barrage of consumerism to follow and are therefore forced into creative frugality.  Plus, you feel like a movie star, you know, the ones caught on camera surfing in Hawaii while the rest of us freeze to death on our way to and from work.    Point being, I highly recommend a random, twelve hour drive to the ends of the Earth for the sake of irresponsibility and beach lounging. 

When one must carry one’s food on land, car, and boat, food quality often suffers.  Unless, in my case, you have spent the previous week obsessing about the perfect culinary choices for camping.  For breakfast, I had yogurt with banana maple walnut granola, bananas, and lemonade spritzers.  For lunch it was organic cheesy poofs, pitas slathered with spinach-artichoke dip (or hummus or pimento cheese), sprouts, cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, and carrot shavings.  Then a Lunabar. 

When camping, supper becomes the focal event of the day.  Our first night on the island, we cooked a mixed seafood grill on the barbie.  This entailed a number of personal “firsts,” including first time I ever started a charcoal grill all by myself, first time I ever skewered swordfish, first time teaching someone to peel and devein shrimp, and first time I’ve ever ingested so many flesh-eating bugs in the process. 

The seafood mixed grill was nothing but Old Bay seasoning, butter, and lime juice, spread across fat scallops, pink shrimp, and a fabulous cut of swordfish.  Too lazy to chop the potatoes we had lugged over, this decadent meal we paired with a heaping portion of more cheesy poofs.  Endless, cheesy, poofs. 

The next night Queen Kirstifa heated up her homemade chili.  From what I can remember, (the rest of the night is fuzzy) this recipe featured zucchini, fake ground beef, onion, a myriad of crisp dried beans, and cheese on top.  We had a giant wheel of Ammish herbed cheese to last us the weekend.  Our tenuous new friend Ranger Mark brought us some of his homemade cranberry bread as the perfect side to our meal. 

I can’t end this post without mentioning the numerous and creative cocktails we created on our wilderness beach retreat.  Someone picked up Knudson’s pineapple-coconut juice at Greenlife, and we mixed that with OJ and rum.  The pina-colada juice was thin and not substantial enough to hold it’s own against the rum, and had to be added after the OJ to keep the tropical flavors along with the acid.   Vodka tonics followed, then some accidental rum tonics, and the squat jugs of table wine found in the center of Greenlife’s wine  section did the trick just fine.  I think we drank some water somewhere in there as well. 

I still am in search of The Perfect Camping Food.  Any suggestions??

Trail Mix For The Stars

I don’t “rough it” real well. 

Tomorrow morning I leave for a four-day adventure with the g-squad to a deserted island off the coast of south/mid Florida.  We are driving.  I’m traveling with obsessively healthy people.  Said island has neither store nor restaurant.  What will a Gourmet do?  Pack the most bangin’ snacks ever, that’s what.

Here’s what I’ve purchased for my formerly cheap weekend:

Enormous bag of dates

Huge bag of Tamari Almonds

Maple roasted cashews- tons

Roasted pumpkin seeds- more than enough

Fancy local beer

Fancy white table wine

Jamaican Lemonade spritzers

Organic lemonade in juice boxes

Luna bars- Lemon flavor only

Local banana-walnut granola

Organic yogurt

Organic pita

Spinach artichoke dip

Pirate’s booty- 2 bags

Kettle Chips- salt and black pepper

Red Bean hummus from Flying Frog

Green beans

4 Grapefruits

2 Tangelos

2 organic apples

Organic baby carrots

Black sesame rice crackers

Cream cheese

Organic cucumbers

6 Emergen Cs

2 bags of organic beef jerky

Sesame candies

organic sprouts

The kitchen sink

Everyone in line behind me was totally jealous.  Think I’ll make it through the weekend? 

Eating Like It’s The Endtimes

Sometimes, like the first of the month, I just want to blow all my money on dinner.  These nights are often quite fun, occasionally magical, and come with all the baggage and regret of a good, solid hangover the following day. 

This past Saturday was such a night, and I spent it at Fig.  When you are the youngest party in the room by 20 years or more, and the establishment you are patronizing is a one syllable word, it’s a good idea to eat at the bar.  I’ll explain my reasons later. 

Fig in all of its dimlit glory is a romantic getaway at best, a warm and bustling upscale cafe where the frumpy couple in the UT sweatshirts and the bourgoisie art patrons tuxed out and fresh from a gallery opening can mingle in comfort.  My initial disappointment was that the menu I had read on the website did not mirror the menu before me in the restaurant.  When I have made the choice to spend so much money on dinner, I read the menus online before making my dining choice, so as to insure complete gastronomical achievement, even ecstacy.  If I’m disappointed and my meal was over fifty dollars, well that’s just silly of me and I would have been happier buying a goat for someone on Heifer.  But for truly fabulous food, there is no price too high. 

So when I did not recognize the menu of the day from my research, something didn’t feel right.  I later found they do not have a website, and the link I include here is not up to date.  But there I was, although none of their menu options jumped out at me.  I was not about to drop over $20 on macaroni and cheese, nor was I interested in a $12 burger.  The salads were uninspired:  a celery and goat cheese salad thrilled no one, from what I observed. 

I ordered only the specials of the day.  Their sunchoke soup with oysters sauteed in butter tasted heavenly.  I don’t know that I detected any of the touted sunchoke flavor among the heavy cream, butter, oysters, and butter, but otherwise I happily scooped up my plump oysters with cream and apologized to my arteries.  Towards the end of the soup, I was really missing a vegetable flavor of some kind, and I think a stronger vegetable would have improved the taste, like maybe some root vegetables, asparagus, or even artichoke. 

My partner-in-crime ordered the simple salad, which turned out to be a depressing selection of bitter greens, some walnuts scattered on top and a randomly bland dressing.  For Fig, this should have been one heck of a salad, and I considered sending it back.  Not wanting to cause a scene, we clamped our mouths shut and drank our wine.  The Pinot Grigio they offer by the glass was overpriced compared to other Asheville restaurants, but it truly was the perfect glass of wine.  Full, crisp and light with citrus notes toward the end that did not dampen my tongue with sweetness.  The DJ ordered a stellar merlot, the cheapest one they had, and his selection melted in my mouth with a rich, velvety texture and mild, dark chocolatey-cherry flavors.

Our entrees were more impressive.  I ordered the special:  Striped sea bass with chantarelle mushrooms, celery root, and chestnuts.  I prefer my dinner sectioned rather than piled, so I wasn’t crazy about the presentation.  The mushrooms were sparse and still kind of dried.  I loved the fish, though, it was sauteed like a dream and extremely substantial.  Chestnuts dotted the plate and offered a welcome smokiness; this was a sucessful dish overall.  The DJ got the farfalle bolognese, and fell in love.  Simple, creamier than most bolognese I’ve had, this was total comfort food. 

While we considered the lengthy dessert menu, our server slipped us two glasses of wine which had been declared, “mistakes.”  The Pinot Noir wasn’t nearly as complex as the Merlot, but the price was right and the transaction made us feel special enough to order not one but two desserts.

The pot d’ creme tasted cold and sweet, but lacked a bitter complexity I find even in Greenlife’s pot d’ creme.  It came with a chocolate cookie, a completely unnecessary addition to a mediocre dessert. 

Unfortunately, I allowed myself to be talked in to a celery tart.  It tasted like breakfast.  The only thing worse than breakfast food for dinner is breakfast for dessert.  After forcing down most of this basically quiche-like attempt at a savory dessert, I wanted to go out for ice cream. 

Overall a good time was had, mostly due to the outstanding but painfully high-priced wine selection.  My advice:  call first and find out the menu of the day before venturing out to Fig.  Some nights are better than others, and often their daily specials are the only reason to add them to your Asheville dining experience.  I have yet to try lunch there, but I’m looking forward to it. 

This Just In: Gourmet Grrl In Print!

This DIY food writer has finally hit the Bigtime.  Check out this week’s food column in The Mountain Xpress for my collaborative restaurant review with Hanna Rachel Raskin.  Together we reviewed The Sunnyside Cafe in Weaverville.  New York Times, here I come! 

If you are new to SheWhoEats, keep in mind the active participation aspect of a blog.  Comments are welcomed and encouraged.  As for the rest of you, keep up the good work of sending out insightful suggestions and well-informed criticisms. 

Don Your Shortpants and Head to The Bavarian Lodge

“I don’t like food.  I love food.  If I don’t love it, I DON’T SWALLOW IT!!!”

- Anton Ego, Ratatouille

Here’s what I look for in a restaurant. 

1.  Something I am either too unskilled or too lazy to cook at home.  If I just paid $10-$20 for a meal I both could and would have made myself, I won’t be real pleased.

2.  Unique flavor pairings.  I would not have come up with a dish titled, “The Chocolate Duck*.”  Nope.  Not in a million years.  But it worked.  Actually, it was wonderful.

3.  A clear sense of purpose.  I like a restaurant to have a purpose, and a commitment to that purpose.  A particular ambiance they are creating, or a specific feeling they are working to evoke in their customers.  If I feel a strong enough purpose, I succumb to it completely, and that is how memories are made.

4.  A great time.  This could mean very good, cheap food with friendly but kinda lousy service (Nona Mia).  It could mean pricey food brought to me by people who remember me from last time I ate there four months ago (La Caterina Trattoria).  Or it could be an outdoor cafe after work on Friday with a nice view and some high-priced wine (Sante).  It could mean a late night of diner food with dear friends (51 Grill).  This is a precarious and obviously highly subjective category, but true nonetheless.   

The Bavarian Restaurant and Beirgarten in Weaverville takes the gold medal in all four categories.  We were greeted immediately by the infamous “Doc,” a jaunty man donning lederhosen and oddly spaced facial hair.  Music from the Griswalds European Vacation echoed around the homey lodge.  After requesting a booster seat and a menu, my two-year-old nephew was promptly outfitted with both by the cheery and flushed waitress-maiden.  The beer selection at this treasure trove is incredible.  Really, you could have a great time simply ordering appetizers and beer and skip the ridiculously heavy entree portion of the meal. 

I ordered a refreshingly crisp glass of their Pinot Grigio (I forget the name) and most of us ordered the juicy Hefeweissen they had on tap.  How can beer be juicy?  Only a wheat beer drinker knows the answer to that question.

The bread and butter flat-out schooled Bouchon’s bread and butter and now holds the crown for best bread and butter mini- course in town.  The bread was powdery, hard and crusty on the outside, melty and soft on the inside, and the herb butter tasted salty and decadently evil.  We ordered their potato pancakes and pate as our apps.  The potato pancakes were definitely well-made, and confounded our Russian-Jewish tongues with their perfectness.  The pate tasted hearty and strong, but I found myself wishing they had better crackers to serve alongside the meaty dip.  Generic wrapped wheat crackers reminded me of appetizers on the coffee tables of the mid-eighties, and I thought something a little crisper would have done the trick. 

Although most of us were nearly full by the time our entrees arrived, we were nonetheless presented with various shnitzels, a goulash, and different flavored bratwursts.  On top of that we received a sticky-sweet and congealed red cabbage concoction, made with sugar and vinegar and what were once apples.  I could have done without this innocuous side, but some of our party appreciated its presence.  Along came the spatzel (toasted thick egg noodle/nuggets is the best way to describe these delights) and Vienna salad, which was nothing more than tomatoes and red onion in red wine vinegar. 

The weiner shnitzel was simple and phenomenally fried, somehow both crispy and fluffy and soaked in the lemon slice just right.  I thought the goulash (beef tips spiced with paprika) had the perfect amount of heat and the beef was deliciously tender, just as I had hoped it would be.  Unfortunately, by this point I was full to near-illness and didn’t have the chutzpah to try the other dishes. 

The Bavarian Restaurant and Beirgarten  is wonderfully kid-friendly and creates a hilarious, quirky, inventive vibe making it a lovely evening with friends or family.  I suggest you try it soon, and don’t forget to read about the wonders of Himalayan rock salt!  You’ll never be the same. 

*The Chocolate Duck is not a menu at The Bavarian Restaurant and Beirgarten, but at a restaurant in Waynesville who’s name I can’t remember right this second. 

Post Thanksgiving Blues

Damn, I love Thanksgiving.  This year most of the fam drove in from Maryland to have a Gourmet Grrl Thanksgiving feast.  Some dietary issues had to be considered, so I plunked down some change for a few specialty cookbooks, and voila!  Brand new traditions abounded.  This was my first ever attempt at roast turkey.  Of course I couldn’t just get a giant Butterball complete with thermometer and stick it in the oven for half a day.  Never. 

We special ordered an organic bird from Greenlife, and I found a unique brining recipe in the Thanksgiving issue of Saveur, my current favorite food rag.  If you picked it up, then you will recognize my experiment with the Granny Smith apple brine, featured in the Splendid Table NPR show, the one parodied perfectly on late 90’s Saturday Night Live episodes.  Athough these middle aged Martha/Garrison Keillor wannabes write just like they sound on the radio, mutedly unfunny, the ladies can cook.  I used not one but three of their recipes for my table.  The brining wasn’t very difficult, Fnord and I started it in the morning, brewing a puree of apples, garlic and chili powder and mixing it with cider, water, and kosher salt.  Later I started the roast in a white wine base, breast down.  “Breast down!!” you exclaim.  You read right.  After basting with white wine and butter every twenty minutes, we turned it over at the halfway point.   In all modesty, this turkey was the juiciest and tangiest bird I had ever tasted.  Not too much effort either. 

I also branched out with two other side items.  I tried Thai-flavored yams instead of the traditional sweet version.  These bright-orange roots I boiled and then topped with garlic, ginger, jalapeno, scallions, shallots and lime for a savory and healthy detour from the norm.  Least successful were my mashed potatoes and root vegetable combo.  Skimming the recipe, I failed to notice I was supposed to boil the turnips and parsnips separate from the Yukon golds; they cook at different speeds.  This resulted in a lumpy, watery mountain of bitter roots which had to be drowned in butter to be made palatable, thus compromising its healthy properties. 

Other standouts included the gravy we made with giblets, shitake mushrooms, shallots and organic chicken broth.  This gravy was so thick and flavorful, my Dad declared never again will he use boullion cubes as a base for either soup or gravy.  It only took sixty odd years, but I was happy just the same. 

 After considering a homemade sage stuffing using potato bread and herbs, I recanted and used the bagged Pepperidge Farm stuffing my mother made for us growing up.  There are certain dishes that remain sacred no matter how smart you become.  So what if bagged, salted, stale bread with a stick of butter and a whole egg isn’t the healthiest thing ever, it seems this is the one holdout everyone shares.  We will not be moved. 

Bro made his fresh cranberry sauce with orange juice and cinnamon, a sweet and sour dish that won me over instantly. 

For dessert, the men baked pies:  A sour cherry and an apple pie, the latter overflowing with crisp fruit, encased a buttery shell flaking so perfectly no one noticed the sneaked-in Splenda substitute.   I didn’t even notice it until the pies had thoroughly cooled the next day.  I think Splenda is great for baking and masks wonderfully in hot dishes.   I usually reheat items baked with Splenda so as not to be distracted by introduction of chemical renderings. 

Exhausted though I am, I couldn’t be more pleased with my first ever Thanksgiving.  Tonight, it’s turkey pot pie with fresh pearl onions, carrots, celery, peas, corn, and plenty of thyme.  Onward to soup and stew season! 

Did you have any Thanksgiving experiments this year?  Did you stick to the old standbys?  If so, what is your all time favorite Thanksgiving dish you absolutely cannot live without?

Nouveau Night

Sorry I’ve been out of the blogosphere a little bit lately. 

Belatedly, here’s a review of Asheville’s annual wine extravanganza, Nouveau Night, brought to you by last year’s runner up for Miss Western North Carolina, the lovely and talented George the Bastard!    

Click on the above link for the review of Nouveau Night 2007.

10 Rules for Thanksgiving Dinner at My House

It’s official: I’m a grownup.  For the first time in history, I will be hosting Thanksgiving dinner for my entire family at my house.    That’s right.  It’s finally time, once and for all, to put every single wedding gift to use.  Those wicker candlesticks, the weird serving platters, that electric carving knife, those starchy cloth napkins.  So hear ye, hear ye, one and all.  In the style of Chris Rock, here are Gourmet Grrl’s 

10 Rules for Thanksgiving at My House

1.  If you are vegan, then you are bringing the vegan dish for our table.

2.  We eat pickles and olives as appetizers.  Not fancy olives, canned black olives.  It’s a inner city Chicago thang.  We don’t eat hummus, or tapenade or baba ganoush.  You can bring it, but you will take it home. 

3.  Now that I’m no longer the one forced to sit there, we will reintroduce the kids table.  It’s a rite of passage and every kid must experience it otherwise he/she will grow up to be a self-entitled wussy with obsessive table manners.

4.  Each year I invent a “brand new sidedish” and each year I’m nearly the only one who eats it.  Try not eating it at my house.  Just try.

5.  The Reverend Mother leads the Thanksgiving prayer.  No one else.  It will be as long or as short as she damn well wants it to be.  It may involve audience participation, or even role play.  But it’s all hers.

6.  I don’t believe in deep fried turkeys.  I don’t believe in tofurky.  You will not find either one of these at my house.

7.  Nobody wants the white meat, so that means everybody better eat some.

8.  At my house, we’re going to have a box for charity on the table.  No money, no food.

9.  Anyone, guest or otherwise, may wack Dad with a spatula when he does one of the following:  a.  Finishes his meal before anyone else has sat down.  b.  Eats too much pie or anything else with sugar in it.  c.  Takes over the entire stove while making gravy   d. Eats through the prayer.

10.  The House keeps the leftovers. 

Now You Know.

I’m a Locavore and I’m Okay!

The following post has been copied and pasted from The Village Voice online.  It’s written by one of my favorite food writer grrls, Nina Lalli.   

Locavore: Oxford Word of the Year

posted: 1:46 PM, November 12, 2007 by Nina Lalli

Nice work, Greenmarket fanatics. The New Oxford American Dictionary announces today that Locavore is not only a word, but their chosen word of the year.

“The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”

Just FYI, some of the runners-up include cougar (as in old lady slut), mumblecore, and tase (the verb).