Eating in Asheville

Life does have a way of blowing by, but before our lovely meals become distant memories, I wanted to do a post on where we ate in Asheville last weekend.

When we came into town, we went straight to 12 Bones - it's only open on weekdays and only for lunch, so it was our one opportunity. We were hopeful when we pulled in because the usual line wasn't snaking through the parking lot. As it turned out, the line was snaked through the restaurant proper - so much for a small crowd at a late lunch. As usual, the BBQ and ribs were amazing, as were the sides. Unfortunately, the crowd meant we had to sit outside, which would have been okay (despite the cold and the low oil in the table heater) if some folks hadn't let their kids use the outdoor seating area as their personal playground (while the parents dined inside). I'm guessing one kid is still having nightmares about the glare Rob gave him when he decided to springboard off the table we were eating at - the kid kicking up dirt a few feet away would have had a similar terror had he been paying attention. As we were leaving, the kids were throwing stones at random cars in the parking lot. Yeah.

That night, though, made up for that weirdness in spades. A new joint has opened in Biltmore Village, in a building that was most recently a biker bar. The before pictures they had for our viewing pleasure showed amazing imagination in turning that run down hole into what is now Stovetrotters. Stovetrotters is a wild place with lots of big dreams - I encourage you to visit their Web site to learn about some of the wine dinners, culinary vacations and more that they've got going on (or, in some cases, will have going on soon). As a straight-up dining experience, though, we summed it up as a fine dining where you feel comfortable slouching.

You walk into Stovetrotters looking straight into the open kitchen, which is set up behind the bar. We got our first little thrill when the chef looked up from what he was doing to greet us as soon as we stepped inside. The place is small, so a little loud, but that added to it feeling comfortable for us. The waitstaff was warm and knowledgeable and gave off the distinctive feeling that they are in it for the love of the place as much, if not more, than the paycheck. The food was excellent... though, for the sake of full-disclosure, I do have to confess it wasn't the best meal we've ever had, but it was way up there and the dedication of the staff makes us believe that they will only get better with time. After all, they've only been open as a bistro since December.

Over the course of our meal, we chatted with the owner/pastry chef, the chef, and our waiter who is also the sommelier. We witnessed staff members teasing one another then hugging and a waiter give the chef a high-five after tasting the special for the night (by then, we had finished eating but I had to know what the waiter was so excited about so he brought us a little tasting plate of a pecan-crusted mahi with a sour cherry compote over risotto - we instantly understood the high-five).

I know, those are silly little things, but for me and Rob, they all added up to the best overall dining experience we've had - comfortable, warm, friendly, delicious - and we had a three-course meal with wine for just over $100 - can't beat it!

The rest of the weekend was rounded out with places where we've eaten before but were eager to return: Salsa's, the first place everyone mentions when dining in Asheville (crazy delicious Carrabean/Latino flavors piled high - go very hungry but plan to wait in line), Blue Mountain Pizza in Weaverville, a pizza joint with a gourmet's soul and bohemian clothes, and, never to be missed, the Chocolate Fetish where you won't regret trying anything but must have the sea salt caramels.

Just some thought for food...

Kitchen tools: oil spray pump

I've been using an oil spray pump for a long while now - I switched from Pam to avoid both the waste of the empty cans and the many ingredients added to help it spray and keep it from spoiling. In my experience, though, pump sprays are notoriously mediocre, spraying in clumps rather than mists, and never for as long as I'd like between pumping. Still, small prices to pay for a reusable container that sprays nothing but the pure oil of my choice.

After five or six years, my last pump finally pumped its last. After a bit of looking around, I came across the Cuisipro Spray Pump at Extra Ingredient. At $14, it was more than I had paid for my last one, but after using it for the first time this morning, I think it was well worth the few extra dollars.

Amazingly enough, it does, in fact, mist, and has an easy pump action. It's a little thing, but in my experience, a few good, essential kitchen tools can be the difference between a pleasant cooking experience and a painful one. For a dramatic example, spend a week using a relatively dull utility knife before switching to a sharp chef's knife - you'll know exactly what I mean.

Googletastic

Rob and I tend to do a mid-season Hannumas gift exchange. Actually, we're both on the impatient side (more for giving the gifts we've purchased than receiving, though we like that an awful lot, too) so we tend to exchange gifts at our earliest convenience after we finally purchase them (we're also procrastinators).

Among other things, Rob gave me Google: The Missing Manual. That's right: 440 pages of pure Google optimization. And yes, that's right: I am a total nerd because I did practically jump up and down when I unwrapped it. Nerd is the new super-cool-ninja, though, so I don't feel too weird about it. (Don't tell the ninja v. pirate people, though, or there will be all sorts of opposition rallies and nunchuck fighting and "ahoy mateys" and all that brouhaha.)

Anyway, I tend to fail miserably whenever I announce on my blog that I'm going to do anything with regularity. (Exhibit 1: This week in the CSA bag seems to have lasted one whole post.) So, while I would like to share the creme de la creme of this book as I read it, I'd like to offer the warning that now, 37 pages in, may be the last time you hear about this. Oh, and this stuff might be totally obvious to you but it never occurs to me to do nifty stuff like read the Google search tips.

Now that my ridiculously verbose intro is out of the way, this is what I've learned so far:

• It's better to ask for info in the form of an answer rather than a question. For example, if you want to know what size dress Marilyn Monroe wore, it is better to type "Marilyn Monroe wore size * dress" - if you ask as a question, you'll likely find message board with people who wonder the same thing but perhaps no answers
• You can search within number ranges by using two periods. For example, If you want to know what Marilyn was up to between 1945 and 1955, search: 1945..1955 "Marilyn Monroe" and it will pop up answers that include Marilyn and anything within that date range, including the starting and ending years. This isn't just for dates, but any number range.
• You can exclude results with certain keywords by inserting a minus before the excluded term. So if you want to know about Marilyn but are holding some strange grudge against Joe DiMaggio, just search: "Marilyn Monroe" -"Joe DiMaggio" (with a space before the minute but not between the minus and they keyword)
• And, finally, if you're super-nerdy like me and think it would be nifty to have stats about who is searching for what, like how many people are Googling Marilyn daily, you can use the Google zeitgeist at www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html.
  

More later... perhaps... Just for the record, in the Marilyn v. Bettie Page debate (is there one?) I'm solidly for Bettie... Marilyn just popped into my mind... so darned searchable after all these years...

A call for conscientious consumerism

By the time you read this, the last of the Hanukkah wrapping paper will have already been cleaned from living room floors and siren-producing toys will have been rigged for eternal silence. But as with many Jews, my interfaith marriage means that my holiday season is still ramping up for round two: Christmas with my in-laws.

Also like many people, I find myself torn each year between my concern that the meanings of both Hanukkah and Christmas have been distorted by consumerism, and the desire to take advantage of the opportunity to spoil my loved ones with treats. Each year, my family and I debate whether we will buy presents or redirect our monies to charitable causes. Inevitably, we decide on donations and then can't resist treating one another — a cushy pair of hiking socks here, a KitchenAid food grinder there.

The most recent Triad Health Project newsletter reminded me that there is another option: conscientious consumerism. The Guilford County HIV/AIDS support organization has partnered with GiveBackAmerica.org, a Web site that connects major retailers to local charities nationwide; the charities then receive a portion of every purchase made. Target, for example, will donate 2.5 percent of every purchase to THP; Turbo Tax has offered up 5 percent. These percentages then come directly back into our community and the food bank, HIV testing, counseling and other services that THP provides.

If keeping your charitable dollars local isn't a top priority for you, GreaterGood.org has options that will benefit communities in need worldwide. Better known by it component sites — including The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site and more — the online store includes everything from clothes to jewelry to household décor, with profits going to everything from free mammograms to rainforest preservation. Additionally, the artisans who produce the products are paid a fair trade wage, making the purchases doubly impactful.

Of course, if supporting artisan works is important to you, look no farther than my favorite spot in Greensboro, the Greensboro Farmers' Curb Market. Between the stalls of hearty winter foods, like greens, eggs and baked goods, are an increasing number of craftspeople. Jewelry, purses, aprons, gourmet teas, pottery, wooden toys and even metal art pounded into existence by my good friend James Quinn are all available at the market. Some products, like the soaps by Mermaid Says, pack an extra punch by being both locally made and environmentally conscious.

There are no distributor fees or overseas shipping in these products, just raw materials and the elbow grease of those who made them. These kinds of purchases not only keep your money in our local economy, but they also personalize gift giving by replacing our typical off-the-rack gifts with one-of-a-kind handcrafted goods.

The gifts I gave for Hanukkah and will give for Christmas are a blend of donations, conscientious consumer products and good, old-fashioned American spending. Had I known about GiveBackAmerica.org a few weeks ago, I likely could have directed all of my holiday shopping through charitable organizations.

One of the joys of this season is treating our friends and family to physical reminders of our affection for them. Still, there's no need to sacrifice the Christmas morning mad dash to the tree (or weeklong eyeballing of the gifts by the menorah) to preserve the bigger picture of giving during the holiday season.

Vocab for rice

An old high school friend of mine (now an English teacher at Weaver Academy) sent me a link to FreeRice.com today. The site is one of those concepts that is elegant in its simplicity. It offers a multiple choice vocabulary quiz. For each word you correctly define, 20 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program - and you get a harder word. For each word you incorrectly define, you get an easier word. The site will even track your top score.

For a geek like me, this site has endless appeal - vocabulary building AND good deeds?!? If I could get Rob to bring me my meals and an occasional glass of wine, I'd never have to leave my desk!

Daily Lit

I don't think I've ever read anything by Charles Dickens. I'm not sure how I made it through public high school and an English-intensive college degree without reading any Dickens but there it is. I admit it.

But today, I read the first installment of A Tale of Two Cities via Daily Lit, a service that really kicks sliced bread's ass on the "best things" scale. The whole idea is that many (most?) of us spend so much time at our computers and yet seem to find so little to time to read offline. So, Daily Lit has serialized a pretty impressive selection of books - mostly free though some do involve a nominal fee to finish after a free trial - and emails a short section of your chosen book per whatever schedule you set.

The first section of Tale took me about five minutes to read and included a link at the bottom that will send me the next section immediately, should I want it. Otherwise, I'll receive future sections at 6:30 every weekday morning.

Now, if they could only join forces with Good Reads somehow...

(Thanks, Tam, for the heads-up on this one!)

Customer service gone right

I can't remember who originally recommended Wear Yours to me, but they've been doing my embroidery since they stitched the logo from my personal chef company, Dining with Ease, onto my first chef's jackets. It's exactly the kind of place I like to shop: not only are they the only embroidery shop I know of that doesn't charge a digitizing fee (trusting that repeat business will make up for that loss-leader), it is family-owned, with a serious emphasis on personal service and pride in workmanship. That pride stretches so far, in fact, that one employee spent a week mulling over our Jones CAN logo, which is complicated by a grid design, because she felt confident that she could do an even better job on it than the sew-out we had approved. She was right: her modifications made it absolutely spot-on.


We've been so happy working with them that when our most recent batch of shirts arrived and were unusable, for both size and quality reasons, I felt pretty strongly about talking to the owner about it. My hope was that she would offer some sort of apology and suggestion for getting a better result next time - after all, they're a small business and had all sorts of expense outlays to get our shirts done, and with our logos embroidered, it's not as though they could hope to recoup any of that money from the company from which they bought the shirts.

She exceeded my hopes by a long shot: she deducted one shirt that wasn't embroidered and split the difference on the remainder. I'm guessing that she didn't just eat the profit, but is actually losing money on the deal. I take no pleasure in that piece, but I do truly appreciate that she stepped up to the plate so firmly and graciously. She has changed me from a satisfied customer to a loyal customer and I can't encourage everyone enough to give them a try for any embroidery or screen printing needs.

Illustrated blog

I stumbled across this great blog today, Shari Davies Illustration - a graphic designer by day, graphic novelist and memoir illustrator by night, it seems. This is part of "A Lumpy Family Album" and is posted with the caption:

The degradation of being annually hurled into 100 metres of chlorinated piss by a some sadistic prick of a PE teacher was more than I could bare.

New Big Bang Boom tracks

Big Bang Boom, the amazingly listenable kids' band created by Chuck Folds, has a couple of new, original tracks on their site. I particularly like Why Can't I have Ice Cream?

Be sure to check it out - then take your kids to see them play (or do what I would and borrow nephews, etc):

Rehab for GoodReads?

I'm not on any of the social networking sites. I take that back - I have a MySpace account which I have done absolutely nothing with, so that I can search their database freely. I'm not opposed to them - just don't really see how they fit into my life right now.

But last week, my friend Chelsea sent me a link to GoodReads, a site in which you create reading lists and rate the books you've already read. Each day, GoodReads emails a report covering all of the changes made to the reading lists of the people registered as your friends. Also cool is that the site is linked to Amazon, so the cover art of the books appear in your list.

And now I'm hooked. I have been keeping reading lists sporadically since 2001 (at least, that's the earliest I can find) to combat my habit of forgetting most of a book the second the back cover closes. I've spent hours (and hours) in the last week moving those lists to GoodReads, reviewing my friends' lists, considering organization for my shelves. I should really instruct Rob to go ahead and lock me in a room until the DTs pass if I stop wanting to eat in favor of surfing the site (that really would be a sadly shocking sign).

You can see my profile and books here. And you can become my friend (in a book way - though perhaps not in a catching a beer on a Friday night way... unless I agree with your book reviews...) here.

Great new blog

My friend/colleague/employer Tamara McLendon has launched herself into the 21st Century (her words) by not only starting her own PR-focused blog, but also including a twitter feature. Tamara's amazing breadth and depth of knowledge certainly shows through in her first posts.

Welcome to this Century, Tam!

Big Bang Boom

I feel like I should offer a mea culpa for being so bad about posting lately - I truly don't know where the time goes... but instead, I'll offer kids' music, the kind that parents even dig listening to - and it's for free! My gift to my loyal readers... okay, a show my bro-in-law is putting on.

Big Bang Boom, one of Chuck Folds' many musical projects, will be playing at Center City Park this Sunday from 3 - 5. Parents, I promise your ears won't bleed and your kids will have a great time!

Insight from Killian

Joe Killian, embattled (I just wanted a chance to use the buzz word of the minute) News & Record reporter, has some interesting insight on the protest from a reporters perspective. Despite what the Gathering of Eagles may think, and despite the fact that I sometimes do journalistic freelance work, being an opinion writer is a world away from being a news reporter... and despite recent criticism of Joe's coverage of the protest by members of (apparently) both sides of the debate, organizers would do well to read the comments section of his post to learn more about how to shape such an event to have more impact on the way it's covered.