The Weekly Newsletter
Menus and Stories for April 24 - 29, 2006

Dining Out for Life - April 27





Thursday, April 27th is Dining Out for Life day here in Asheville (and all over the US, for that matter.) This is a big fundraiser for Western North Carolina AIDS Project. Last year a tremendous amount of money was raised in our area simply by you going out to dinner. Cool huh?

We�ll be fully up and ready and stocked and ready for you that day. Come for breakfast (muffins, yogurt, fruit, breakfast burritos and more), come for lunch (salads and sandwiches, soups and cookies.) If you�re having an office meeting that day, we�ll be happy to do that too. (A percentage of all sales that day will go to WNCAP.)

This year, for the first time, we have decided to offer a special dinner-to-go. We�re doing something spring-like, Asian-inspired. If you�re already planning to go out to a restaurant, that�s great. If not, how about inviting some friends over and letting us do the cooking?

Here�s our menu:

At the start:
Elsie�s Pickled Shrimp
(a newly rediscovered favorite around here)

The Salad:
Cucumber and Bean Sprouts in a Lemongrass-infused Vinaigrette

The Dinner:
Thai Chicken with Sugar Snap Peas
Jasmine Rice

The Dessert:
All-American Chocolate Mousse Layer Cake
(okay � not quite Asian, but it sounds delicious, don�t you think?)

The price will be 18.50.

Please place your order with us by Tuesday, April 25th if you can. Dinners will be ready to pick up between 4:30 and 6:00 on Thursday, the 27th.


The girls come for lunch

We love having children here. And, by the way, who says kids are picky eaters?
By the looks of the ones who come here, the parents are doing just fine, teaching them the ways of real food.
We have high chairs. We have counters. We have kid-friendly food (they love our cut fruit, our chicken, our pastas...)
We love the chatter, the energy, the fun.



Martha's Iris

Our Martha, kitchen wizard, tends the garden out behind our place. It used to be a wreck of a lot. Our neighbor Steebo created the beginning of the beds, and Martha now keeps them filled with blooms, herbs, greenery.

Here are a few of this season's early delights.


Dinners to go


Dinners, as you know, come with a freshly-made green salad, salad dressing of the day, and made-right-here bread of the day. We take reservations until noon or so. Please order by phone (252-1500), by FAX (252-02002) or stop in to speak to one of us in person.


Here is the menu for this week:

Monday April 24 Chicken, Leek, and Mushroom Linguine 9.75
Tuesday April 25 Caribbean Grouper with Avocado Relish 10.00
Wednesday April 26 Turkish Meatballs with Couscous 10.25
Thursday April 27 �Dining Out for Life: Special Dinner (see inside)
Friday April 28 Crab Cakes with Lemon Rice and Cole Slaw 11.50






By the way, every time you order a dinner to go you are eligible to enter our drawing. Just drop a card in our drawing jar (a business card works or fill out one of the cards that we have right here) and, at the end of the month, we'll pull one card which will be good for two free dinners-to-go. Inaugurated a few months ago, our first winner was delighted! Maybe you'll win next month.

Order a lot? Enter a lot!
Good luck!!

Our website


Casseroles

We make a special casserole each week on Wednesday. Please give us a call by the end of the day on Tuesday and we�ll fix yours for you. Come by between 4:30 and 6:00. Get a half (for 4 appetites) or a full sized pan (for 9 or so.)




Wednesday, April 26
North Carolina Chicken Pie
with Fresh Spring Vegetables
Full 33.00
Half 16.50


Some Hostas

Tucked in a corner right by our back door, aren't these pretty?

I love Spring.


A patch of Mint

Many mornings find the crew out back, snipping and pinching bits of this and that. I think Martha has a few different kinds of mint. Do check the deli case.� They might have been trimming this morning. If so, lucky you.


And, fennel

This grows like a weed but a simple brush past its fronds yields a rich reminder, all day long, that life comes from the ground. From dirt and rubble, elixer.


A Note From Laurey

Good morning to you all.

I write this note a couple of days early this week, as I am going to be away for the weekend. Thanks to the miracle of modern science, I can tell my computer to send this note out on Saturday. You�d never know if I didn�t tell you, but, well, that�s not my style.

Spring is trying to get going around here. But it is confused. One day hot � I had shorts on earlier this week � one day icy. It�s too early to pack away the fleece. Last night I curled up with the dog, the cat, and a blanket, happy for their warmth.

Skipper, the cat, has been particularly cuddly at night recently. Aloof for the whole day, he wastes no time cuddling into me when I climb into my bed in the evenings. The chillier the night, the closer he gets. The other night he ended up on top of me, flinging himself with heaves and starts, closer and closer until any hope I had had for reading or doing the evening�s Sudoku (have you done these things?) was shot.

Tye, the dog, not to be left out, works her way into the pile too. How she manages all day without me, I�m not sure. But the minute I come home she is my shadow, on my trail as I do my afternoon and evening rounds. I sit. She sits. I go outside. She goes outside. I come in, she is inches behind. If I near the shelf that holds her leash she leaps in ecstasy. A walk! A walk!

We walk around Beaver Lake in the afternoons. I admire the dogwoods, the buds, the fish. She examines every twig, every whiff of dog, every glimpse of squirrel. She quivers, points, clicks her teeth together, frozen and hoping, hoping, hoping that the squirrel will stop noticing her and she will get her chance to pounce. The squirrel scolds, jabbers, mocks. Tye inches forward, rapt. And then, always, the squirrel lithely hops to another branch and that is the end of it.

�C�mon,� I say to her. �You NEARLY had that one. Really! Good job. You�re quite a dog.�

Tye, proud even though she did not get her prey, skips over to the edge of the lake, tiptoes in, and lays down. She is not a swimmer, but my, she loves to cool off, belly in the mud, face nice and dry. Up she gets, shaking off the pollen and scum. She smiles at me, and on we go.

The past few days have been explosive ones. Thunder-filled mornings. Torrential downpours. Hot. Cold. Nothing moderate about any of it. I guess that�s what Spring is. We�re in it. And that�s all there is to that.


New stickers

More irreverence from our friends in Massachusetts.

How about these hilarious stickers for your favorite officer person. We also, by the way, have Bacon-shaped luggage tags. Hey - it's a food thing, isn't it?


Contact Info:

Laurey's "Gourmet Comfort Food"
Eat In - Take Out - Catering
67 Biltmore Avenue Asheville, NC 28801
828-252-1500

Hours:
Monday - Friday 8:00 - 6:00 pm
Saturday 8:00 - 4:00 pm

"Don't Postpone Joy!"(tm)

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