Thursday the 28th is a day to mark in your calendars.  It's the day when restaurants all over Asheville agree to donate 20% of their day's sales to WNC Aids Project.  (Yes, people here still need this kind of help.)

 

It's going to be a busy day here, because we have 100 school children coming for an early lunch - a time for them to eat really good, local food in a real, not fast-food, restaurant.  But they'll be gone by noon so come for lunch.  Bring friends and enjoy locally made, locally sourced foods.

 

One of the first things we get around here is local ramps.  I'd always been scared of them because people have ramp eating contests and they have quite the reputation of having a strong lingering taste.  But that is only if you eat them raw.  (ugh!)

 

Brendan grills them and they have a wonderfully rich flavor that complements grilled fish or flank steak.  He's been adding them to many things these days.  Check the deli case to see where you can find them every day.  oh they are so good!

 

If we can we save vegetable scraps for soup stock.  What can't be saved goes to the compost bin which is carried away and becomes compost for local gardens.  No need to throw any of this away, right? 

 

Here are our dinners for this coming week.

 

Monday, April 25

Chicken and Herbed Dumplings 6.95

 

Tuesday, April 26

Stuffed Peppers with Kale and Butternut Squash 6.95 (GF)

 

Wednesday, April 27

Grilled Flank Steak with Potatoes and Fresh, Local Ramps 8.95

 

Thursday, April 28

Swedish Meatballs with Egg Noodles 7.95

 

Friday, April 29

Shrimp and Spinach Crepes 9.00

 

Order by noon and we'll have your dinner ready to pick up by 3. We're open until 7. Nice!

 

Salad and bread can be added if you wish. Salad is 3.25 and bread is 1.25 per person.

 

We make a special casserole and a special lasagna each week.

 

Order by noon or so. Order a half if you have around 4 folks. If you have a bigger group, or you just like leftovers, order a full-sized one.

 

Then come pick up between 3:00 and 7:00.

 

The casserole this week is for Wednesday, April 27:

Springtime Beef Stew

With New parsnips and New Potatoes

Full: 55 Half: 27.50

 

The lasagna is for Friday, April 29:

Pesto Chicken Lasagna

Full 48 Half: 24

 

We have much less staff changing than normal, I'm told, but occasionally someone goes back to school or moves or just wants a change.  This opens up a spot for someone else and I've become positive about all that.  New people bring new energy and that is a good thing.

 

I've been the one who has pushed things around, occasionally rearranging the furniture and re-organizing stock.  But, as with new staff, new eyes make a difference.  Adam got sick of looking at things the way they were and pushed things around in a new way the other day. 

 

What a difference his moves have made! 

 

The drink area is now wide open.  No clogging up of people trying to get coffee, no clumping of people near the cash register.  Whewf! 

 

My sister joined me yesterday to dye Easter eggs.  Though our mother was Jewish, we did not practice that religion any more than we followed our father's Protestant upbringing.  BUT we did dye eggs every year and enjoyed finding them after the Inn's guests had hidden them the night before.

 

 

April 23, 2011

 

Hello to you from here in the mountains. The birds woke me up this morning. The light followed and the sun joined in, inching up and over the trees and into my face. Tye, sleeping on the bottom of my bed, rolled over, asked for a belly scratch, and curled up for a bit more sleep as I stayed tucked in, reading until I had to get up.

 

I hope it will be warm enough today to do some bee work. My queenless hive is limping along. Hives need a queen and I have some help on the way but you can’t do this sort of work on a windy or rainy day and that’s all we’ve had for this past week. Hopefully today will be the magic day for me and for my lonely worker bees.

 

It’s been an interesting week for me. I think I mentioned that my book proposal went out two weeks ago, the morning I drove to Washington to do the honey video work for the National Honey Board. Well, this week my agent got one and then another and then a third response to my proposal! (My agent says this is very fast.)  I got to chat with two of the publishers this week and have a meeting scheduled next week with a third. This, my friends, is a very cool thing. I’m in the wild position of getting to listen to them tell me about their company and tell me why they want my book on their lists. Wow! The cool part of this is that it speaks very strongly to the idea of this book: a cookbook using honey and other things that would not exist without bees. Bees really are on the minds of so many of us, not just me and not just people I know. It’s quite comforting to hear that my description of this book is good enough to attract publisher(s)! Zounds.  (Looks like it’ll be a writing summer for me!)

 

In the meantime, I’ve been going home and watching the seeds I’ve planted poke up from the soil in my new raised beds. I don’t think this will ever get old and, actually, for me it’s all very new. My new beds, in the middle of my lawn, are front and center in my days. The other day when I looked at the bed on my way to work, one bean had begun to poke its head out of the ground. By the time I came home, all 9 seeds in the square foot of space allotted to beans had sprouted and were out of the ground. My onions are up, as are the carrots, beets, and baby lettuces. The plant starts I put in after last Saturday are strong and healthy: romaine, cippollini onions, sweet yellow onions, rainbow chard, cukes. Whee! In a couple of weeks I’ll get the basil in and will put tomatoes in any remaining empty square. It’s going to be a fine, fine summer in my yard.

 

Here at work things are chugging along too. Here’s an early heads up on a couple of things that we’ll be doing in May: Jenna Lindbo will be here on the 12th. She’s just about my favorite singer so plan on this one. Our first dinner with a farmer will happen on May 26th with the folks from Green Toe Ground – a biodynamic farm. I’ll have another cooking class on May 18th. And then there’s my birthday… Oh yay!

 

Got this snap in a note last week.  Looking closely you'll see our "Don't Postpone Joy" bumpersticker on the back of this car.  I love that our message travels so far and wide.  We're about to send 100 of them to a fellow in Maryland.  It's the second batch we'll have sent to him.  He gives them to friends in memory of his wife, who loved these words.