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The Weekly Newsletter |
Menus and Stories for April 16 - 20, 2007
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| Another local reading - tomorrow! |
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Do come to Accent On Books tomorrow at 2. I'll be there with stories and tales and such.
The store is underneath Steinmart in North Asheville (on Merrimon) right behind Port City Java, both of which are near The Fresh Market.
Also, the outside-of-the-area readings continue to get on the schedule. I'll be in Vermont around July 4th and have a few readings set up. There's Michigan in June and, possibly, in August too. Atlanta in May. Nashville in October. Orlando at some point. Fun! Don't worry about marking your calendar right yet. I'll give you plenty of notice as the time draws near.
Do you have an independent bookstore near you? I love reading and would be happy to see about coming to do so in your neighborhood. Give me a shout and let's see what we can do.
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Two of the sweetest |
Kate and Julie run through their final checklist (in between posing for me) this morning. They're off to serve a morning event near here. Today is the beginning of our busier season. Weddings, openings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and a memorial here and there too. People are building things and celebrating things and announcing things and doing things and they keep eating as a part of all of that. Hooray!
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| Up and at 'em! |
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You can't load food into a van if it is not cooked, right? Here's a look at some of the gang who were making sure all that food was ready to go for the two smiley gals in the previous picture. Nice, yes?
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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.
As a reminder, 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.
Maybe you'll win next month.
Order a lot? Enter a lot!
Good luck!!
Here's this week's menu:
Monday April 16 Rosemary Chicken with Spinach Fettuccine 9.95
Tuesday April 17 Chicken Zucchini Enchiladas 9.95
Wednesday April 18 Flank Steak with Mushroom Madeira Sauce 10.75
Thursday April 19 Crab Cakes with Maple Cole Slaw 12.25
Friday April 20 Roasted Salmon & Cous Cous with Pine Nuts 12.25
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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. Order before noon on Wednesday and we'll have yours ready to pick up between 4:30 and 6:00 that very afternoon. Order a full for 9 portions or, if your gang is smaller, opt for the half-sized one, which serves 4 or so.
They do freeze perfectly so if you want to stock up for the holidays, go right ahead!
This week's offering is:
Wednesday, April 18
Spicy Chicken & Mushroom Ragout Polenta Pie
Full-32.50 or Half-16.25
We'll be happy to add salad and bread for you if that sounds like something you'd like to do.
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Richard's Oven-Roasted Tomatoes |
These will go on top of the wedding salad this evening. The bride and groom got married last week in Italy (what a fine idea) and are celebrating here tonight. Their menu will be a celebration of their jaunt to my favorite area of the world. I celebrate vicariously with them. Salut a tutti e auguri! ("Cheers and best wishes!")
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| Richard and Kether |
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Chop and bake and cook and arrange. It smells wonderful here right now, a delicious blend of brownies and roasting pork and tomatoes and chicken and all sorts of yums. Lucky me!
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Another view at the new towels |
Old flour-sack cloth towels. Nice dyes (no harm to the environment!) and a sweet old-fashioned feel. We made them so you can hang them this way or fold them and hang them that way or can drape them or roll them or tuck them into a basket or over your arm while pouring wine, for that matter. We're going to feature them in our special Mother's Day gift basket (oh my that's coming right up!)
Nice, wouldn't you say?
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| A Note From Laurey |
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April 14, 2007
Happy Saturday to you all. The 14th is generally my favorite day of the month. 14 is generally my favorite number. So today I am delighted to be here at my desk writing about 14. Silly? Maybe. But maybe not.
My desk is the only quiet place here right now. The kitchen is bustling, cooking and presenting the day’s events. I’ve had one meeting and have two more before I go to serve a party this evening. My dog looked at me with sadness this morning as I said goodbye and told her I would not be back until the end of the day. I’ll spend more time with her tomorrow, I promised. I miss our walks almost as much as she does, if not more.
I was sad that the freeze came last week. My yard was just greening up, the new hydrangeas bringing a festive tone to the new stone walls in the back yard. They got zapped and are now a pile of nothing. The nursery tells me they’ll come back. I hope that’s true. It’s nothing compared to the loss of the fruit blossoms in the region. I don’t know what these farmers will do, now that their crop has been frozen. As I get more involved with local food, these sorts of things make my heart ache. I hope they recover but I don’t know if that is possible.
This past week I have been thinking about what it is that we do, what I do. Sometimes it seems kind of mundane, fairly unimportant, fairly flat. But this week I paid closer attention and noticed the diners a bit more. At one table a group of people sat, sipping and eating and talking about the air in our area, working on ways to make it better. One woman sat by herself, taking a break, with a novel, from what I know is a difficult time in her life at home. Elsewhere a group of men visited, a collection of women and babies chattered, business and friendships developed – all with our food. The café, full, buzzed with the lives of these people.
Today, as I am showing you, we are preparing foods for a real estate gathering, a 95th birthday party, a 50th anniversary, a wedding, and a memorial for someone who just died. We are parts of these lives in all stages. We’re making the things that will help celebrate or ease or just, maybe, plain old feed these assorted celebrations’ guests. So in some ways what I do these days is pay for a lot of groceries (I’m not personally cooking so much at this point). But in another, much larger sense, I am able to be involved with so many different people at so many different, and very important, times of their lives.
The hydrangeas will come back. The gal at the nursery said so and I am hoping she’s right. Tye will be home, waiting, when I get there later on. Tomorrow I get to sleep in a little bit and then go for a walk with my pup and then read some stories to some people. It’s an interesting flow. Sort of a more complex version of chop wood, carry water. It’s good.
I’ll be in touch next week.
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Jones the adorable! |
I visited my sisters last weekend and got a lovely span of time with my grand nephew Jones. He can crawl, stand up, move along a table (while holding on, that is) and is quite pleased with himself and is also especially pleasing to all who stare, unable to look elsewhere as long as he is in the room. He smiles a lot of the time, shrieks with delight at all sorts of things, and is starting to express himself in many different ways.
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