Experience the art of old-time retro cooking in a 1940s East Asheville log cabin.
You’ll think you’re in granny’s kitchen as you tie on a vintage feed-sack apron and bake up pies, biscuits, our garden veggies, and more using retro kitchen gadgets, mixers, bowls, and a 1928 Home Comfort wood cookstove. Recipes are heirloom, and ingredients are seasonal, local, and organic when possible. All classes hands-on and include recipes and take-home food or in-class feast. Beginning and experienced cooks welcome. Cost includes materials fee. Class size limited to 8.
Vegetarian substitutions available for all classes.
As usual, I got carried away planting my garden this spring. What are Wayne and I going to do with 15 kinds of heirloom tomatoes, 12 varieties of squash, six types of potatoes, 10 varieties of garlic, and I won’t even go into the rest of it, only that I hope I get to teach a lot of classes this summer! Most of the ingredients for summer classes will come from what you pick out of my organic garden or offerings to be found at our local tailgate markets. Weather permitting, we'll eat outside on vintage tablecloth-bedecked tables by candle & lantern light serenaded by cicadas.
May Feast Thurs.. May 22 6-8:30pm $35
Don’t you just love spring here in the mountains? Besides all the woodland wild orchids, tree pollen, unfurling ferns and rhododendrons, we get salad greens, asparagus, spring onions, strawberries, and all kinds of fun herbs and edible flowers. We’ll start our May feast off with a glass of wine and homemade oat crackers topped with local goat cheese and drizzled with dandelion honey (a scented syrup made from dandelion flowers) followed by spring pistou stuffed chicken breasts, cheddar/chive buttermilk mini-biscuits & a just picked green salad with home-made dressing. It's not spring without fresh strawberry & lime curd tarts.
Spring Confitures…Creative fragrant jams made from strawberries and rhubarb
Wed. May 28 6:00-8:30 $35
From Christine Ferber, a.k.a. The French Fairy Godmother of Jams & Jellies comes two spring, pectin-free fruit confits that are so good you’ll croak louder than the 17 year locusts that are laying siege upon our fair city. We’ll make two jams: rhubarb with my neighbor’s honey & rosemary as well as strawberry, mint, & black pepper. Then we’ll pair them with wine, cheeses, breads, and pick some salad makings and call that supper. Participants will leave with a jar of each confit.
Early June at the Market Thurs. June 5 6:00-8:30 $35
Wondering what do do with the early June market & garden gleanings of lettuces, greens, beets, peas, carrots, rapini & more? We'll start off with a glass of wine and dig into some garden beet and goat cheese lettuce wraps, two seasonal soups, fresh pea with mint and curried ginger carrot. Then we'll grind some Madison county corn and make a batch of polenta topped with seared greens from the garden with liqueur soaked currants, pine nuts and grilled local pork sausage. For dessert, strawberry granita with home-made meyer lemon limoncello.
New!!! The "I don't cook" series of classes for beginning or lapsed cooks. I hear this all the time, I don't cook, and I can never quite believe it. In fact, I find it shocking! So I'm just going to do what little I can to encourage everyone who wants to, to get in the kitchen and whip out some healthy, easy, seasonal, and mostly relatively quick slow foods that will tickle your innards. Future classes will include I don't make soups and stews, I don't bake, I don't prepare fresh seasonal vegetables, I don't throw dinner parties, the possibilities are endless! We'll also learn knife skills, ingredients, kitchen equipment, seasoning know-how, and what kinds of foods pair well with others.
From Slow Food Asheville, this will be really fun!
100 Mile Diet and
Benefit for the Mountain Farm Tour
Sunday May 18, 4:00 pm
At the Hawk and Ivy B&B
Pot luck: Bring a dish using at least 3 local ingredients.
Beer, wine, drinks, and fabulous music provided
Donations: $5- $30 (kids under 10 free)
Directions at www.hawkandivy.com. Park on the left in the field. Call ahead for handicapped.
We are very excited about our Slow Food event on May 18 at the Hawk and Ivy B&B which highlights both the 100 Mile Diet and the Mountain Farm Tour. For 2008 during each season we are exploring what foods are produced within 100 miles of Asheville. This is our spring event and also a benefit for the farmers on the Mountain Farm Tour. What better way to enjoy eating within 100 miles than to get out and meet the farmers and see their beautiful farms. The tour is June 28, 29.
Because this is a benefit for the Mountain Farm Tour, we are asking for a donation of $5 - $30 or more. The Farm Tour has become a truly community supported event and a way to give back to our hardworking local food producers.
Mountain Farm & Garden Tour: June 28-29 will feature 25 farms from the Asheville area and neighboring counties. The event is sponsored by the Mountain Chapter of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.
Other Cooking Classes in Western North Carolina
I'm just one of many offering cooking classes in the Asheville area, be sure to check out the following terrific classes as well (I know they're terrific because I've taken classes with all these folks):
Swannanoa School of Culinary Arts
this summer right in your own back yard at Warren Wilson College July
13-26
http://www.schoolofculinaryarts.org
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080127/LIVING/80125086/1004
Cooking Classes and more all year at John
C. Campbell Folk School
http://www.folkschool.org
Slow Food Asheville, monthly events
you won't want to miss, check the events link http://www.slowfoodasheville.org
Italian Cooking Classes with Wally
Maria Mazzucco Wyatt
http://www.discoveritalian.com
Thai Cooking Classes in your home
or hers Kade Espy
http://www.majorkade.blogspot.com
Stecoah Valley Cultural
Arts Center in Robbinsville NC
http://www.visitsvcenter.com
Vegetarian, Vegan, Macrobiotic Cooking
with Lenore Baum
http://lenoresnatural.com
To Register for classes, call (828) 298-2270 or email: swellcookin@hotmail.com
To receive notice of future classes ... contact us by email at swellcookin@hotmail.com (We never give out your email or address to anyone!)
Gift Certificates Available!!!
Ask us about private group classes for friends, family, or co-workers
Barbara Swell has written eight historic cookbooks including Log Cabin Cooking, The Lost Art of Pie Making, and The First American Cookie Lady. See http://www.nativeground.com (click on Kitchen & Home) She teaches cooking classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Swannanoa School of Culinary Arts, and elsewhere, and is on the Slow Food Asheville Board. An overenthusiastic organic gardener, you'll most often find her rooting in the dirt.
Barbara Swell
Directions: Log Cabin Cooking & Music is located at 111 Bell Road, just off off New Haw Creek Road in the Haw Creek section of East Asheville. From Highway 240 in Asheville, take exit #7. From 240 going East, turn left at the light. From 240 going West, turn right at the light. Now you're on Tunnel Road going east. At the very first light, turn left and then take a sudden right on New Haw Creek Road. Go about 1 ½ miles. On your right you’ll see a baseball field. Turn right at the beginning of the ball field on Bell Road. Pass Evergreen Charter School on your left. You’ll see a new development on your right, (Ozark Springs Road) and then our big garden on the right. At the end of the garden, you’ll see two big black mailboxes that say 111 and 109. Turn right there. As you come up the driveway, the cabin will be on your left. You can park either in front of in back of the cabin.
For more information, call (828) 298-2270 or (828) 299-7031
email:
swellcookin@hotmail.com
Log Cabin Cooking & Music
111 Bell Road
Asheville NC 28805
Office: (828) 299-7031
Fax: (828) 298-5607
