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The Weekly Newsletter |
Menus and Stories for June 14 - June 19, 2004
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| One of today's salads |
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Haricots Verts.
Grape Tomatoes.
A bit of Lemon Vinaigrette.
Crisp.
Light.
Fresh.
Yum! |
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What's in this issue: |
1. Haricots Verts
2. "Handmade Food" notebook
3. Dinners to Go
4. Casserole of the week
5. Talented individuals
6. The Girl and The Fig
7. A Note from Laurey
8. Phlox on the tables
If you don't wish to continue to receive these weekly notes, simply scroll to the bottom of this page, follow the instructions about "unsubscribe" and consider it a done deal. We'll understand. |
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| The stories behind our gourmet products |
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We've started a collection of information on the folks who grow and produce the products we carry here in the shop. As we gather more pages, we'll stick them in the notebook right up next to the front door. Look for the notebook with the "Handmade Food" on the front cover.
Did you know that all of the products we carry in the shop are made by small, award-winning companies around the United States? We've met most of the folks who make the jams and candies - and hope that this is a way to introduce them to you.
You know, there are intriguing stories about all of these companies. "Colts Bolts," for instance, the little chocolate morsels that are so irresistable, are the work of Mackenzie Colt. She was a regular cast member on the televisoin show "Hee Haw," singing with the gang and also being a successful songwriter. (Her "then" and "now" pictures are in the notebook). After a time, she turned to candy making and now sells her incredible confections all over the world. Take a look. She's just one of the intriguing folks represented here.
(We're going to see her in New York in a couple of weeks and will see if we can arrange a time to bring her here to give you a very personal introduction to her sweets. We'll keep you posted.)
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The nightly dinners for the week (Call 252-1500 to order) |
Dinners-to-go are available Monday through Friday.
Here's how it works:
Just call us in the morning and we'll take your order. Then come back between 4:30 and 6:00 to pick up your dinner - all ready in a heatable container. Simple, yes?
Monday June 14 Lemon Basil Chicken and Succotash Salad 9.75
Tuesday June 15 Shrimp Stuffed with Brown Rice and Pine Nuts 10.75
Wednesday June 16 Grilled Tenderloin Kebobs 12.50 **
Thursday June 17 Chicken Gorgonzola 9.75
Friday June 18 Almond-crusted Trout with Grilled Vegetables 10.50
** means you can enjoy this meal to your "low-carb" heart's content. Yum! |
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Dinners to go for the whole month |
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| The Casserole of the Week |
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Casseroles are made each Wednesday.
Call to order on Tuesday if you can.
Orders will be ready on Wednesday between 4:30 and 6:00.
Order a full pan for 9 (or so) or a half pan for 4 or 5.
This week's casserole (for June 16) is:
Shrimp Scampi with Mushrooms
served with Linguine
Half 23.50
Full 47.00
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Talented and interesting individuals |
Don't you wonder about the folks who work here? They are all so interesting AND talented. We thought it'd be a good idea to begin to share some of their stories with you.
This is Martha. She has cooked here since 1998 (isnt' that amazing!) and is the culinary wizard behind many of the Asian-inspired salads - just for starters. She takes the lead in coming up with the dinner-to-go menus these days, and, not incidentally, is the gal who is shaping and nurturing the garden right behind the shop. As the summer progresses look for her many different basils, sages, rosemarys, and thymes. Yum!
She cooked for a long time at "Irregardless" in Raleigh before coming to the mountains to garden, camp, hike, bike ride, and canoe.
She also runs "Camp Martha" where my little dog Tye stays when I go out of town. Sydney and Penny are always gracious dog hostesses.
Thanks for being here, Martha! |
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"The Girl and The Fig" products are here. |
Here we go! As fresh as you can imagine (the preserves you see here were made just last week!)
Come give 'em a try.
We'll have samples for you.
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| A Note from Laurey |
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I write to you from Seattle this week. Thanks to the “miracle of modern science” I can do this. Nothing terribly special about it, I guess. Happens all the time, I guess. Still, knowing that I am sitting here writing to you there makes me stop to think about it all.
Being here makes me think about finding a sense of place, discovering what it is that makes a spot special, uncovering the secrets that are not blaringly obvious. For me, that process has always been accomplished mostly completely and convincingly by sinking into food. I can wander around a market, quietly observing, smelling, thinking, and settling in. This is never a time to talk, for me. Talking is always too distracting. I can’t carry on a conversation when cilantro and cherries and flowers wave, blast, entice.
A tricky and intriguing thing, for me, is to see if I can find some taste that is so special that it can stand for the place, can be an instant reminder, later, in the deepest way possible, when I might otherwise doubt that I was even gone. Now, with it being so easy to go to one place and find nothing of THAT place, but so much of OTHER places, finding the silhouette of a spot is more and more elusive.
Last night, sitting at dinner, I found it. I am, after all, in the northwest. I am on the edge of the country, tucked next to the water, filled with salt air and breezes that might have come from all the way on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, for all I know. We started, last night, with oysters. A stand filled with ice and placed on our table held three beauties from the islands and bays around here. Each one had a subtle difference, revealing clues, if one could be attentive enough, to the land, the water, the earth itself.
I had been wondering what I could find, had been looking, in fact, for this taste, this touch of what I could not find anywhere else.
Which makes me think about bringing tastes from around our country to the little shop in Asheville and, ultimately, to you. The fig preserves, for instance, are, I think, a taste of one very specific place in California. American Spoon Foods’ preserves, another example of something you can find on our shelves, condense the sun and the taste of mid-summer Michigan into a jar. I open a tin of Vermont Maple Syrup whenever I need a fix of my childhood, and now, now that I live in the mountains of North Carolina, I find myself thinking about what it is that I have there that exists nowhere else. It is not always so easy to say, though I think about it a lot.
Today I sat at a lunch counter on the waterfront here and ate Alaskan Cod and a cup of Clam Chowder (it’s kind of cold here) and took deep breaths of the salt air and tried to let it all filter through me. And no, I have not stopped thinking about Italy. Or France, or any number of other places that hold secrets and musty messages that draw me in.
I’ll be back in the southern mountains soon, changed, as I always am, by all of these tastes in this time in this place. You know what I mean, don’t you?
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Phlox on the tables |
We had this same kind of flowers growing just beside the front door at Blueberry Hill when I was growing up. Today I noticed that we have them on our tables here in the shop. Simple flowers, nice memories. (And they smell good too)!
Oh - these come from Kabloom, the flower shop right next door. Convenient, yes? |
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Contact Info: |
Laurey@laureysyum.com
828-252-1500
67 Biltmore Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801 |
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