“Hello” The message popped up on my Instagram account. “Have you ever worked with red wattle pork before?” “No. I can’t say that I have.” I replied. Red Wattle Pork, for the uninitiated, is considered by many chefs to be the finest pork meat available. I was intrigued. And so, one dark and rainy day not long after, I found myself driving up a small dirt road in Big Sandy Mush Valley on a visit to the home of Sugar Creek Meats. Tyler De Francisco, a Sicilian transplant from New Jersey, is passionate about his pigs and his meat. Actually, Tyler is passionate about food in ...
Adventures of an Asheville Cook!
ONE YEAR LATER: A PERSONAL UPDATE
It has been a year since I wrote my first blog post. It was written in February, between Winter and Spring. And it felt like that at the time. My life swung from dark, sad and cold to warm, content and hopeful, and back again. A lot has changed. This February I can look back on a year filled with great joy and happiness: A daughter engaged, a grandchild born, and a home completed. What have I learned? That rebuilding your life is like renovating an old house. It was not for nothing that I often used #metaphorforlife when posting pictures of the remodel. Like my house I had ...
CULINARY TRAVEL: MIRAVAL RESORT & SPA IN TUCSON
It was a wintry day in the Sonora desert. The sun was shining but the air was cold and the wind caught at the edges my jacket. I was seated in the shade in front of a corral where there was a large, although gentle seeming, horse. Over the course of the next two hours I, and the small group of people around me, would interact with this animal and hopefully learn something about ourselves in the process. I was at Miraval Wellness Resort & Spa in Tucson, Arizona One of the benefits of having a daughter who is a travel agent is her knowledge and access to great deals and ...
THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I have no recipe for you this week. If you don’t know what you are making by now, I can’t help you. But I do have some thoughts to share. The past year has been a year of transition with many changes for me and, by extension, to my family. It has been a year of growth and self-actualization and it has not been easy. True change seldom is. And while it is sometimes difficult and unpleasant on a day to day basis, over the holidays it is damn hard. Our tendency is to reflect sadly on what once was and to be angry at the circumstances and people who have forced ...
JOIN ME IN DISCOVERING THE CULINARY TREASURES OF TUSCANY
I started my life overseas in Paris many years ago and, from the beginning, food and cooking was my way of exploring and learning about a country. This served me well as I moved back and forth across continents from France to Hong Kong to England and Singapore, stopping in many other places along the way. But while I have visited (and loved Italy) I never had a chance to really get to explore their wonderfully rich and varied cuisine as much as I would like to. So I am really excited about joining up with Access Culinary Trips and leading a small group (no more than 12 people) to the ...
PEACH MINT JULEP HAND PIES
(It's Summer and things are heating up. So in order to bring you seasonal recipes when you need them most I will be posting twice a week from now on. Look for my new posts on Wednesday and Sundays. Sign up to receive notification of new posts above. I promise I will never, never, never give your email to anyone else!) You might not think it based on this but there are other things I like beside food. Food just always makes good times even better! One of the things I like a lot is the theater. I have always been involved in theater: acting, directing, teaching, working with kids, ...
5 TIPS ON HOW TO USE YOUR FARMER’S MARKET SHARE
This article was previously published in AVLToday . I got my first CSA basket from the North Asheville Farmer’s Market on Saturday. It marks the beginning of my summer challenge: how to use the varied and sometimes strange items I am given. It is my own personal game of “Chopped”. If you already participate in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program than you probably know what I am talking about. For those of you who don’t, it works like this: the buyer purchases a share of the harvest from a local farm and receives a “box” on a set schedule over the course of the growing ...
THINGS TO BE HAPPY FOR IN ASHEVILLE IN APRIL
Last Friday night I sat down with a glass of wine, my cat snuggled at my side, as I watched the news on TV. While this is usually a happy thing, this particular time it was not. Next door, my youthful neighbors had friends coming and going with loud clatters of door slamming and bursts of laughter and I thought, “What a sad stereotype I am: the older, single woman, her cat and her wine, alone on a Friday night”. But before I could sink too far down into self-imagined misery, my phone lit up with a question from a friend. Would I like to go to the theater the next night? I believe my ...
Kitchen Utensils & My Trip to the Smith McDowell House
For Christmas this year I was given a Master Class . It’s an online school very well produced and thought out. There are a number of great teachers and a wide range of classes from cooking to sports, architecture and design to fashion and literature. I really urge you to take a look at it. There are some amazing things on offer. My interests being such as they are I decided to take the Technique Class with Thomas Keller. He starts at the very beginning with the most basic tools of the trade. You might think this would be too basic but so far in every lesson there has been something ...
