Edgy Mama

Are you hot? Or is it just me?

You know you want to read my column at Mt. Xpress about sweat, peri-menopause, and a guy wearing a chicken suit.

Happy Monday!

If you live in or near Asheville and are planning to hit the Southeast’s largest street festival this weekend, here’s my no-nonsense guide to taking your kids along. Have fun!

Here’s the Mountain Xpress column where I write about my eat local week courtesy of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. As they say, it’s thousands of miles fresher!

I knew it was coming, I just didn’t know when.

The Asheville Disclaimer has lovingly spoofed Edgy Mama.

Here’s my fave graf:  “Edgy games like ‘Dodge the Angry Pitchforks’ and ‘Swimming Lessons in a Lake of Fire’ keep the kids in tip-top Edgy-shape. Nothing to hurt them, of course, but Camp Summerlane provides just enough Edge to scare them into looking forward to coming home at the end of summer.”

For those of you who don’t regularly read Mountain Xpress, Camp Summerlane was a supposed “free love” overnight camp that opened in Rosman, N.C. in 1963. It wasn’t around for long, as the town’s residents raided the camp in the middle of the night, because, God almighty, there could’ve been black folks  or even worse, nudity, there. Jon Elliston wrote a rocking four-part series telling the story.

I am honored, Asheville Disclaimers, to be so spoofed.

Unless you were the first one of your friends to have a baby, you’ve been here.

(Crossposted from the CFSA blog)

Enviro-spouse and I hit Bar 100 in downtown Asheville last night for our anniversary. I chose the restaurant because of the Eat Carolina Challenge. Our server told us that some of the foods may come from over the border in Tennessee, because Bar 100 provides food from within 100 miles–in all directions (thus the restaurant’s name). I figured a bit of Tennessee thrown in with my Carolina would be OK for a night.

We sat outside on the patio for the people-watching on Wall Street. The weather was steamy, but a brief rain cooled the patio off. When we said we didn’t want to go inside, our server pulled over an umbrella to protect us from the spitting raindrops. Sadly, the rain didn’t last long.

The Bar 100 menu is simple and short, which I like. To start, we shared the cheese platter featuring Spinning Spider camille with roasted beets, Meadowcreek Dairy mountaineer with pickled fennel, Spinning Spider cheddar with strawberry jam, and my fave, Clemson blue cheese with roasted pecans. The plate was served with housemade toasted crostini that we supplemented with wood-grilled flatbread topped with olive oil, fresh rosemary and Celtic sea salt. Amazing! The cheese plate costs $15–not inexpensive, but worth the variety of taste and freshness.

I drank a Highland gaelic ale with dinner. I’m slightly disappointed that Bar 100 doesn’t offer more local beers, particularly the organic Pisgah, because they don’t stock draft. I guess the foodie crowd there is more of a wine-drinking group.

For the main course, we split a butter lettuce salad topped with Benton’s bacon and house-made green goddess dressing. Simple but succulent. We also shared a pan-seared trout from Sunrise Farms. The trout was served over coarse milled grits and wilted greens, including a delicious peppery arugula. I wish I could cook trout as well as Bar 100’s chef–the fish’s skin, normally not very tasty, was crisp and crunchy, while the ,meat of the fish was fork tender. Yum!

The salad was $7 and the trout was $16. Again, a bit pricey for us, but worth the occasion.

Another entree that I noticed others enjoying was the smoked chicken with summer vegetables. Unfortunately, the veggies mostly consisted of squash, which I’ve about had enough of already this summer!

We’re lucky here in Ashvegas to have a number of restaurants that make use of local and organic foods: Early Girl, Tupelo Honey, The Marketplace, The Green Sage, and Sugo, to name a few. But I wish and hope that more would embrace the 100-mile concept. It rocks!

So I’m eating and drinking local for a week, courtesy of the Eat Carolina Challenge.

The challenge, sponsored by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, runs from July 7-13. All foods grown or processed in North and South Carolina are fair game.

My first day on the challenge (yesterday) went well, except that I accidentally popped an Altoid on the way to the gym (know of any locally-made mints?). Also, I was running around all day, and it’s damn difficult to find quick pick-up food that’s local. So, I didn’t eat lunch until almost 3:00 p.m., at which point I was shaking from low blood sugar.

Check out the CFSA blog to read about more about my and others’ experiences with the challenge. Go locavores!

If you’re considering renovating or adding on to your house, you should read my column this week. I’m still breathing.