Strawberry Cake with Strawberries everywhere: Strawberry puree in the batter, Strawberry jam between the layers, Strawberry reduction in the icing. It's an explosion of strawberry! In my garden this week there are flowers. This is kind of a miracle to me. But then plants are a miracle. I planted my garden last year into new beds, in a new (to me) growing zone. And it was a struggle. The plants that didn’t drown in the water-soaked clay baked in the hot dry sun of a Charlotte summer. It looked grim out there. Over the winter we had a huge flood which brought water well up into the ...
Adventures of an Asheville Cook!
MY FOOD CHALLENGE
I went to the grocery store today and it was boring. Same old, same old doesn’t begin to say it. The fruits and vegetable aisle looks so inviting with its bright reds, greens, oranges and yellows. But once you start to walk down the aisle you will notice that there isn’t a lot of variety. Sure you can get carrots five different ways: organic, regular, mini-carrots, unpackaged with greens on, and topped and bagged (5 and 20 pound bags). And there is a small display of “tropical fruits”. But even that suffers from a steady diet of mangoes and passion fruit! To be fair, I am a part of ...
FIVE YEARS ON: THIS BLOG MAY REACHED THE END OF ITS USEFUL LIFE
One day you wake up and you look around you and you think “I can’t do this.” You break the bonds of many years and say no. People are upset. They are angry. You are alone. You drink too much. You play word games in the middle of the night and a friend in London or Texas asks you why you are up. Your cat sleeps on your stomach and his warmth is the closest thing you have to a human touch. But you keep on. You work on changing yourself. Learn to say no and learn to say yes. Learn to listen. Learn to ask about other’s feelings and to talk about yours. Don’t react. ...
THREE YEARS IN, IT’S TIME FOR A BREAK!
Three years in, it's time for reflection. Looking back over my blog, I am struck by how much I have done. I have travelled from Alaska to the Caribbean and places inbetween. I have met amazing people, professional chefs and home cooks. I have eaten all kinds of food at the most refined resterauants and in the most simple of kitchens. I have cooked and baked things I never made before or thought I would make. And I have shared it all (or most of it) on these pages. Was it really three years ago that I posted my first recipe on A Woman Cooks In Asheville? It seems so. At the ...
SOS! SAVE OUR SHAKESPEARE! LEMON-LIME POSSET AND SHREWSBURY CAKES
What do you love about your neighborhood? What is it that makes it home? And what would you do if something threatened that? My neighborhood consists of wide quiet streets, lined with gardens and flowers. The houses reflect both the history of our town and the personalities of the owners. Children play in the backyards of large, restored Victorian homes, next to small bungalows aching for a little care. Poetry pops up on the sidewalks, porches are festooned with art. Dogs are walked, exercise is undertaken, and rocking chairs are occupied. But my favorite thing of all is ...
An Asheville Foodie in Nashville
Let's get one thing straight right away. While this foodie went to Nashville, it was not a foodie trip. Because Nashville is not primarily a foodie destination. Food was important and I will steer you to some great bites but in Nashville it is more often the setting in which you eat that matters. Let us begin. We went to Nashville for an early Valentine's Day celebration. Years of battling crowds and confronting overwork servers and rushed meals have lead me to avoid going out on February 14th if at all possible. (My daughter's experience this year of having booked a 4 top for ...
January reset, reset. Crab Cakes with Mango Salsa
I don't know that I would like someone who went all the way through December without really overindulging, ending up in January as trim and fit as that person went in! I have tried but is it worth it? I don't know. Most of us look to January as a month of beginnings. A new diet, exercise, resolutions, they all surface in some form or other in January. I have never really looked at it as a month of beginning so much as a month of returning to the good habits I willingly and happily threw aside in the past year's end. So here I am, one day into eating better, with ...
ADVENTURES OF AN ASHEVILLE COOK IN A HURRICANE
Did you miss me? Did you notice I was gone? It has been two weeks since I posted anything on my blog, the first missed entries in a year and a half. I wish I could say it was on purpose. I wish I had gone on a fabulous vacation and left the cares of the world behind me. But I did not. Instead, the roaring winds of Hurricane Dorian turned its sights on North Carolina, the beach on which my family has a much-loved home, and on Wilmington, the coastal city where my youngest daughter, Abby, was to get married that same week. I arrived in Sunset Beach a week before the wedding with every ...
ALASKA: MOUNTAINS, SEA, ICE AND PASTRY???
I went to Alaska on a culinary tour with Access Culinary knowing I was going to see some beautiful scenery, eat some great food, meet some great chefs and learn some new things but I was not prepared for Laura Cole and her pastry. Laura is the owner and chef of 229 Parks Restaurant and Tavern, just inside Denali National Park in Alaska. It is considered to be the finest restaurant in the state. You may know her better from Season 15 of Bravo’s series, Top Chef . It was day one of our tour and we left Fairbanks early for the two hour drive to Denali and our cooking class ...
BAR HOPPING OR HOW TO EAT AT FOUR OF THE BEST RESTAURANTS IN ASHEVILLE ON A SATURDAY NIGHT WITHOUT A RESERVATION
It was Friday night and I had one eye on my TV and the other on my phone as I was flipping through my Instagram feed when I something interesting. I quickly sent my daughter a text. That was a good question. Which did I want more? Well I wanted them both but they were at two different restaurants and to complicate things it was the weekend in Asheville and the only time you can get a reservation in this town on a weekend is in the dead of winter when it's snowing! But Sarah and I had another trick up our sleeve. We decided to see if we could eat at the bar and have a course at ...
