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The Weekly Newsletter for August 8-12, 2011 |
Celebrating Local Food this week!
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| To- MAY-toes from Hominy Valley |
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Oh what times these are! The fields are producing like crazy and our farmer friends are keeping our kitchen full of ingredients and inspiration. I thought it'd be fun to show you a few of the gifts that showed up this week.
Here's a look at some of our friends' tomatoes. YUM!! |
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Local Celery from Green Toe Ground |
| Green Toe Ground is a biodynamic farm near-ish here (up in the Celo area.) Yesterday Brendan invited me into the kitchen to get a whiff of the beginnings of a soup he was making. I tell you, the aroma of this celery was intoxicatingly rich, earthy, real. Nothing at all like that stuff they cram into plastic in the grocery store. Friends - come here or get to the market to take advantage of this bounty! |
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| Dinners for the week |
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Give us a call by noon and we'll have your dinners ready by 3. You can come until 7.
828-252-1500
Monday, August 8
Chicken Kiev with Sorrel Sauce 6.50
Tuesday, August 9
Stuffed Squash with Shitake Succotash 6.75
Wednesday, August 10
Roast Pork Tenderloin in Madeira Sauce 12.25 (GF)
Thursday, August 11
Green Tomato Chicken and Shrimp Gumbo 9.95
Friday, August 12
Pub-style Fish and Chips 7.50 |
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Laurey's |
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Casseroles |
Here is this week's casserole:
Wednesday, August 10
Latin-style Beef Tamale Pie (with Hickory Nut Gap Beef)
Whole 55 Half: 27
And this week's Lasagna is:
Friday, Ausugt 12
Italian Sausage and Roasted Red Pepper Lasagna
Whole: 59.95 Half: 30
Call us by noon and we'll have yours ready to pick up by 3. |
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| Firefly's Poblanos |
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| Firefly Farms is near Green Toe Ground (up in the Celo area.) They are the folks who provide us with the amazing Candy Roaster Squash a bit later in the season. These are the beginnings of Lito's Stuffed Poblanos. A couple of weeks ago I showed you a snap of the beginnings of the INSIDES of them. Here, for your inspection, are the outsides. 100% local, pure, delicious. |
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Common Ground's Chard |
| Our friend Jim farms up north of here in a place that is much higher in elevation. Jim is a careful, curious farmer who shows up with his car trunk full of boxes of treats. Brendan wanders out with him to the parking lot, chooses, and then comes in and gets to work. Lucky, lucky us. |
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| and Beans too |
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| Down here in the lower elevations things are dry and the farmers are moving into later summer produce. Jim, up high, had these beautiful beans the other day. Could YOU have resisted? A few hours after I took this picture I saw customers' plates filled with the resulting salad. Crisp and sweet and fresh. |
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The Wednesday French Broad Market |
| I'm so happy that some of the brave resisted the offer to move. Do help make them happy they stayed in our location. We have a few new farms represented and a few of the original ones (like Barry and Laura and Dave the honey guy) who are still in residence. It's actually easier to see their produce, now that there are fewer of them. Do come, won't you? And then stop over to see us, have some cool lemonade and pick up some of our Simple Supper. Last Wednesday Brendan made a Thai Chicken Curry. MMMMM! |
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| A note from Laurey |
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Hey there, happy Saturday. I’m home after a morning spent with my sister at the North Asheville Tailgate Market. We arrived with coffee and headed right to the apricot Danish table (Farm and Sparrow) and found a comfortable curb seat. I love that place! It’s my neighborhood market, which means that many of my friends are there and that means that I can sit for 10 minutes on a curb and eat a Danish and say hello to a lot of friends (collecting, “gosh you look great!” comments while I’m at it.)
Heather bought some Banana Apples (?) and some Olive Tapenade and a Cantaloupe. We wandered and sat, again, next to Barry and Laura’s fragrant basil, admiring dogs and kids and flowers. Nice.
Wandering through the market is a sweet thing for me too, since many of our farmers have stands and so I get to say hello to them get to admire their produce, get to thank them for the things they bring to us at work, and get to remind them to call and bring us MORE. Frank’s Cute Baby Squash were there, as were the folks from many of our other farms. (I know they sell to many people, but I like to think of them as “ours.)
I have so much admiration for farmers. Just thinking about how hot and dry it has been and how pathetic my little home garden is makes me enormously appreciative of what it must take for these folks to make sure what they are growing is planted, weeded, watered, harvested, cleaned, packed, and sold. I can barely keep up with my 6 tomato plants. My lettuce wilted or bolted long ago, and I just remembered, the other day, that I never even planted those zinnia seeds. I shake my head at myself.
The other thing about all this freshness is how excited everyone at work gets. As a cook it is much more fun to have a walk-in full of boxes of local, wonderful produce. Brendan said that his sister, who lives in the Piedmont, put in an order for things she wants him to bring when he goes to visit her – a reminder to me of how lovely it is for us to be up in the mountains where things are still ripe and blooming, not drought-starved or heat exhausted.
So thanks to the friends of ours who are braving the heat and are making sure the water gets where it needs to get. As we hide in air conditioned comfort, they are outside, taking care of us in their own way. And so we try our best to take care of them by buying things for you – a tidy circle, wouldn’t you say?
I’ll be in touch next week. Thanks for all your wonderful wishes for me. I’m feeling great and am happy when I get to run into you or get to open your cards. Thank you. Thank you so very much. |
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The GANG!!!! |
They're hard to photograph, as they are usually scurrying around, chopping, washing, mixing, presenting. This is the best of the batch of snaps I took. Their blurriness is the result of their impatience with me and my camera. Enough!
This, my friends, is the talented bunch (who were here that day) who produce the breakfasts, lunches, dinners, parties, snacks, caterings, dinners to go, desserts, and so on. Quite the talented bunch. |
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