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The Weekly Newsletter |
Menus and Stories for September 19 - 23, 2006
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| Dinner and Conversation on a Farm |
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Say, please mark Thursday, October 19th on your calendar. We are going to have a very special event: a Dinner and Conversation at Whistepig Farm which will be a benefit for Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Partners. This will be a full and very deliciously fun evening with about 6 local chefs making and serving local food. We'll dine by candlelight, accompanied by local music (a string quartet and an old-time band will share the bill).
Tom Sherry, who owns the farm, grows heirloom garlic (remember the gift boxes we had last year? They're back in our shop with four new varieties of garlic.) He's invited his two adorably huge pot-bellied pigs. Should be fun.
Anyway - I'll tell you more very soon, with details about the chefs. There will be a limited number of seats available so please get ready to tell us you want to be a part and we'll make sure we save room for you.
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Celebrate Sunburst benefit - extended a bit |
Thanks to all of you who came here for the special Celebrate Sunburst dinner. Thanks, too, to all of our guests during that day both in the cafe and out in the world. We will be able to send the Sunburst folks a nice check which, combined with the collections from almost twenty area restaurants, should help them with their recovery efforts.
Dick and Sally, father and daughter and owners of Sunburst (I think she owns it, but he started it) came by on Thursday afternoon to say hello. I had wanted them to meet some of our staff and, hopefully, some of you. By the time they came most of the dinners to go had been picked up, and most of the staff had gone home. We had a quiet conversation, which was nice, and they went off, sweetly grateful at this outpouring of community support.
The Biltmore Estate donated so much wine to the Celebrate Sunburst week that we have decided to extend their gift. We will pass along all proceeds from any sale of their donated wine for the next week. Pick up a bottle of their lovely Pinot Grigio or the Cardinal's Crest, a light red. Tell us how much you'd like to pay. We'll collect it and send it on. Nice of the Biltmore folks, don't you think?
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| Local Pears are arriving |
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This is Bill, a newcomer to our local tailgate market. Here he is with a baby fig tree. We'll be getting local pears pretty soon, which is great as far as I am concerned. Bill picks them, stores them, sells them, and coaches us (and you) in how best to hold them and ripen them until they are perfect.
Imagine that?
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Dinners to go |
Dinners, as you know, 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 this coming week:
Monday September 18 Chicken Marsala 10.00
Tuesday September 19 Gorgonzola and Vidalia Onion stuffed Portobellos 9.75
Wednesday September 20 Swedish Meatballs with Buttered Noodles
Thursday September 21 Mojo Flank Steak with La Bamba Rice 11.50
Friday September 22 Crabcakes a la Laurey’s 12.00
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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| Special casserole of the week |
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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, September 21
Eggplant Parmesan
Full 28.00
Half 14.00
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Anne's peppers |
I spent yesterday morning in Spartanburg, cooking for one of our local tv stations. At 8:52 I did a five minute spot, cooking fried green tomatoes. That live piece was followed, as soon at the weather reporter had finished with the "weather on the hour" segment, with two short taped segments, both of which will be aired in the next few weeks.
For the first of those taped segments I demonstrated roasting peppers and, for the second, herbed chevre bites, using local goat cheese (from Spinning Spider, of course!) The crew and producers and staff all hurried right to my little cooking area as soon as we were done with the shot, and scarfed up the fried green tomatoes, oohing and aahing and emoting about them. They then politely tasted the peppers and sniffed and poked at the cheese - and then went right back to the tomatoes and finished them right up.
Nothing like a little fried green tomato for breakfast, right?
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| Globe Amaranth |
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The color is not done around here, not by a long shot.
Here are some buds of clover-like amaranth that Anne, one of the local gals, had at the tailgate market this last weekend. Next Wednesday she is going to bring us two fat buckets full. Can you imagine anything nicer?
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In the meantime |
We are still brightened by Barry and Laura's sunflowers.
Fat yellow flowers.
Fully, gorgeously gracing
Our cafe tables.
(By the way, I now know that that last haiku I wrote had 16 instead of 17 syllables. Sorry. I missed catching my mistake until it was too late.)
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| A Note From Laurey |
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Hiya,
Well, here it is Sunday and I’m just now able to get the computer program working. Sometimes it is like that. Yesterday, when I was trying to write, I couldn’t get anything to work. I tried, shifted, tried again, turned the computer off, tried again, and finally just went home. Which means that today I am here, trying again. So far, so good.
I had a GREAT time the other night! Chris and a couple of our friends went to the fair. I had been raving about the pg races, trying to share my excitement without giving away any of the details. We’d all had busy weeks and so, when I suggested a visit to the fair at the last minute, everyone thought it was a good idea.
We parked and started right off with eating. The turkey leg stand, # 1 on the wish list for one of us, happened to be right inside the entrance gate which was very convenient. And the corn dog place was not too far away. I had a plan to return to my favorite French fry booth and, though my friends gasped when I told the vendor to “load her up” they managed to be very good helpers as we worked our way through the cheese and ranch dressing and bacon bits that he pile dup on a huge plate of curly fries. (YUM!!!) We visited the ice cream stand and sampled the kielbasa too.
Stuffed, we made it to the pig racing place with enough time to spare to find seats and watch as fat little pigs scurried around a miniature track, racing for a cheese doodle reward. The audience loves this attraction, screaming and roaring for the pigs and then for the baby goats and then the ducks. If you missed it this year, please put a visit to our pig races on your list for next year. Trust me!
Then we wandered around, observing yet mostly avoiding the games (though we did do one balloon race). We found the llamas and the Brahma bulls and the tumbler pigeons and then, on our way to the quilt and pickle and pumpkin display, my heart skipped with delight.
SWINGS!!!
I don’t like most midway rides. Most of them make me queasy. And almost all of them scare me. But I LOVE the swings. This ride, this particular Swing Ride, was bigger than I’d ever seen. Without a second of hesitation, I sped to the ticket booth, bought tickets, skipped up the steps and slid into one of the seats on the outer ring.
As soon as we were seated the ride started. Almost immediately all the seats lifted up about 15 feet (though it felt like 50) into the night air and then they started to swing out around and around, slowly and then, quickly, much faster. Like a 5 year-old I waved to my two friends standing way below (they don’t like ANY rides) and then, as we went even faster, relaxed and let the force of our circles pin me back against my seat. The chairs swung way out over the midway. The moon, bright, whipped in and out of my view an we twirled. The music, the barkers, the sounds swirled in and whooshed away. The air, dark and soft, filed my shirt, my jacket, my hair. I could have stayed in that swing for hours.
But then it was time to slow down. Once we stopped, Chris and I staggered away, down the steps to our friends. No longer interested in any more food or any more exhibits or any more anything, we drove home and went to sleep. It was a perfect night. Just perfect.
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More glassblowing |
Here I am using at the marver, shaping a gather of glass prior to blowing it up and, hopefully, making a blown glass something or other. I spent a recent week at the glass school at Corning's Museum of Glass, studying, learning, trying to improve my skills. I did get better. I did not get to be fabulously proficient, but that takes years of constant practice. I can now make sharp edged, straight-sided vessels and I am not bad at spheres or cylinders either. I started to learn how to work with color and began trying to use canes also (those are the things that result in patterns of swirled lines on a vase.)
As soon as my box of treasures arrives, I'll show you what I learned.
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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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