Ten Thousand Things Food Co-Op Has a Workday

Once upon a time there was a food Co-op, and they had a workday. Everyone came.

They came with power.


They came with wonder.


They came to paint.

They came to polish.

They worked high.

They worked low.

They cast spells with the wand of cleanliness

and prayed to the window goddess of transparency.


They came as families

and as friends.


The knew when it was time to work,

and time to eat,

when it was time to rest

and time to stare at the Swedish gummy fish.

Cosmo plots

The newly-hatched Cosmo Evans plots his next move. That's his correct name, but, given that his mother is Astra Coyle, I'm going to have a hard time not calling him Cosmo Coyle because it sounds so darned cool.

Canoe Fun

Tammy made this little video of Luca and me paddling around on the pond. Between the sun washing out the color and the cool guitar music she added, it reminds me of a scene from some old French movie--not that I look the least bit French.

A dainty eater

It's a wonderful thing about being alive that you never know when you are going to see something you've never seen before. Like today at lunch (at Penland) when I noticed the person across from me eating a donut with a knife and fork. She wasn't trying to get anyone's attention; that's just the way she eats donuts.

By a pig's whisker

This is Nate Allen making a few remarks just before it was revealed that he and the Knife and Fork crew (in the fork shirts and the far left) had won in the first round of the WNC Chefs Challenge--by a margin of .3 percent, a true photo finish.



Each team makes three dishes and every dish has to use the secret ingredient--it's secret in that the chefs don't know what it is until the day of the competition. In this case, the "ingredient" was a whole hog, of which every part was available to the teams. According to the vote, and the absolute consensus at the Celo table, this Nate plate was the killer dish of the evening: a savory waffle topped with pea shoots, crispy sunchoke slices, andouille sausage, and a tempura ramp. Yummy!

Knife and Fork competes in the quarter-finals on May 23. Tickets are available now.

Hail, yeah!

As everyone undoubtedly noticed, we had a little bit of hail on Saturday afternoon and evening. But in Burnsville, they had serious, crazy hail. This is Schell McCall at around noon on Sunday with a chunk of amalgamated hailstones that were still piled up next to her back porch.

Cartoon trees

I have a funny affection for the locally-beloved Bradford Pear tree. The remind me of cartoon trees, or maybe of every little kid's first drawing of a tree. This time of year, they keep me amused on my way to work.