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The Weekly Newsletter |
Menus and Stories for March 6 - 17, 2006
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| A trip for me |
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I start this newsletter with a photo from a previous adventure out to the Southwest. I'll be gone for the next week, this time to Moab, a red rock-filled wonderland in Utah. This is a place I have never visited and it will be a sweet change to go there, roam around the arches and rocks, hike, maybe bike some, eat tacos, and relax.
Since I'll be gone next Saturday, I am going to put two week's worth of menus in this newsletter. Be sure to take a look at our special meal of the month - St. Patrick's Day.
I'll be back in this particular saddle on the 14th. And I'll tell you a story or two and maybe show you a photo or two about our trip.
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Special St. Patrick's Day Dinner to go - March 17th |
St. Paddy’s Day is March 17th, you know. A Friday this year. You might go out gallivanting and raising a ruckus and drinking green beer. If that’s your idea of fun, have at it. If not, we invite you to join us for a Dinner to Go.
Here’s our menu for this year:
At the Start:
Irish Cheddar Cheese Wedge
Smoked Trout Chevrons with Cucumbers
Toasted Rye Triangles
The Main Event:
Corned Beef and Cabbage with a Mustard Sauce
Colcannon (Home-style Irish Mashed Potatoes)
Spring Carrots with Lemon
Irish Soda Bread with Currants
And, for Dessert:
Guinness Cake
(an Irish Spiced Cake)
The price? 16.25 + tax
Please order by Wednesday, March 16. Orders will be ready to pick up on Friday between 4:30 and 6:00. Erin go bragh!
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| "The List" |
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This Saturday morning is nicely busy for early March. We have a big wedding, a small birthday party, a memorial service, and a number of other things going on. The kitchen folks are quietly cooking, the shop staffers have their portion of the items on the day's list all under control too. Pretty soon guests will arrive for lunch and then it'll be time to do the deliveries and, for me, time to go home. Nice. All nice.
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Dinners to go - for two weeks |
Dinners come with a freshly-made green salad, salad dressing of the day, and made-right-here bread of the day. We take reservations until noon or so. Please order by phone (252-1500), by FAX (252-02002) or stop in to speak to one of us in person.
Here is the menu for the next two weeks:
Monday March 6 Rosemary Lemon Chicken with Golden Potatoes 10.00
Tuesday March 7 Polenta Pizza with Prosciutto and Chevre 9.75
Wednesday March 8 Steak and Roasted Pepper Lo-Mein 10.75
Thursday March 9 BBQ Ribs and Sweet Potato Salad 10.50
Friday March 10 Grilled Snapper Filet with Lemon Wild Rice 12.00
Monday March 13 Spinach and Walnut Stuffed Chicken Breast 9.75
Tuesday March 14 Chicken Curry with Mango Chutney 10.00
Wednesday March 15 Pork Tenderloin with Winter Vegetables 10.75
Thursday March 16 Beef Bourguignon 10.75
Friday March 17 St. Patrick’s Day Dinner Special
By the way, every time you order a dinner to go you are eligible to enter our drawing. Just drop a card in our drawing jar (a business card works or fill out one of the cards that we have right here) and, at the end of the month, we'll pull one card which will be good for two free dinners-to-go. Inaugurated a few months ago, our first winner was delighted! Maybe you'll win next month.
Order a lot? Enter a lot!
Good luck!!
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Our website |
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| Casseroles for the next two weeks |
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We make a special casserole each week on Wednesday. Please give us a call by the end of the day on Tuesday and we’ll fix yours for you. Come by between 4:30 and 6:00. Get a half (for 4 appetites) or a full sized pan (for 9 or so.)
Wednesday, March 8
Seafood Newberg
with Shrimp, Scallops and Salmon
Full 45.00
Half 22.50
Wednesday, March 15
Chicken and Mushrooms
with Wild Rice
Full 32.00
Half 16.00
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A hint of Spring |
Not quite local yet, but freshly, barely cooked this morning. Soon, soon we'll have our local markets filled with local bursts of bright flavors. Oh my, I'm excited about that. Hurry up, I want to say to the earth, hurry and warm up so we can get going here. I miss that just-out-of-the-ground freshness that can only come from things picked right near here, right before we get them. Soon. Soon.
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| Ready for a party |
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Here are the parts for one of the day's events. Cobb Salad is one of my personal favorites. Here is a glimpse of some of the elements that will become a party in a few hours. Lucky party folk!
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Bread for the party |
Our bread comes from about as close as possible - from right across the street. (It used to come from their bakery about a mile from here but the flood wiped them out and they've re-settled up here in the higher ground.) Lucky for us, lucky for you. We get a delivery almost every day. We'd make it ourselves, you know, but our kitchen is just too small for that kind of production. This, we find, is really the very next best thing.
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| A Note From Laurey |
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I often think about this note during the week, imagining telling you one story or another. And then the week whizzes along and I lose that thought and find something else that I KNOW I will tell. This morning two people in the grocery store stopped me to tell me they like these simple stories…and that, for me, is the best thing that can possibly happen to me in a day (well, almost.)
I think about writing a lot. I write stories in my mind, and, often, on paper too. And then, before I can even pay attention, time has whooshed again and another day has gone and another idea has come, settled, left.
One day earlier this week I was helping serve some folks in the shop. I served the woman some salads and then turned to her husband.
“I bound your book,” the man said, completely unprompted, and totally unexpectedly.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Your book. Well, your mother’s book. I bound it. That Blueberry Hill book. The blue one,” he said, mumbling.
I put down the spoon, the plate, looked up at him.
“You did?”
People frequently tell me they visited Blueberry Hill and it’s true, lots of people from here HAVE gone there. After my family left, the place continued to be an Inn. And, curiously enough, many of those people from here who have stayed at the Inn have stayed in the very room my sisters and I shared when we were young. I’m almost used to these comments by now. But this comment about my mother’s book was a first for me.
I followed the couple to their table.
“Can you tell me more?” I asked.
The gentleman peered at me through thick glasses and told me that he’d worked for the bindery, Vail-Ballou Press, that assembled my mother’s cookbooks in the early 1960s.
“We bound thousands of those books,” he said. “It was the same year that the Fanny Farmer book came out. Wow – we were busy with those two books. I’ll never forget it. I got one of each of them. Loved ‘em.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I got up from the table, went into my office, picked up one of my mother’s books, opened it, saw “Vail-Ballou” on the copyright page, and took it out back into the café.
“Yup!” I said, “Vail-Ballou.”
“I probably touched that book,” he said, taking it from me, turning it over, admiring his handiwork from some 50 years ago.
He handed the book back to me. Our hands touched for just a moment We looked at each other for just a moment. And then I took my book, went back into my office, put it on my desk, and just, well, sat.
Even though I have these books and have these stories and have these memories, I sometimes forget that I am actually a part of them. Those stories, after all, marked my beginning. And now, so many years later, this fellow, who was a curious and very important part of these same stories, was sitting here, in my shop, eating my food, telling me his connection to it all, to my very life.
I’ll be gone next week but will tell you some more stories when I return. Things here will go on so don’t be a stranger. And thanks for listening and being a part of this all, right along with me.
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Twins for the day |
We do NOT call each other to find out what we are wearing, but we show up dressed alike more than we'd like to admit. Karen and I were almost identical earlier this week. Ah me.
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Contact
Info: |
Laurey's "Gourmet Comfort Food"
Eat In - Take Out - Catering
67 Biltmore Avenue Asheville, NC 28801
828-252-1500
Hours:
Monday - Friday 8:00 - 6:00 pm
Saturday 8:00 - 4:00 pm
"Don't Postpone Joy!"(tm)
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