Five Finds on Friday: Tim Edmond of Potter’s Craft Cider
On Fridays, we and The Charlottesville 29 feature five finds selected by local chefs and personalities. In honor of the recent Virginia Cider Week, today’s picks come from Tim Edmond, co-owner of Potter’s Craft Cider, which, in its short existence, is already winning praise far and wide. Edmond’s picks: 1) Soft Pretzel at Early Mountain Vineyards. “If you haven’t ventured to Madison [...]
Why I pour: A bartender’s history of strong drinks
As a younger bartender, I became captivated by the history, myths, and mystique of the finer and quirkier sides of mixology. I clearly remember one of my mentors telling me that I should know everything that I can about everything behind my bar. (Little did I know that that Jack in a Box contained oddities [...]
The Duchess of Malfi
05/26/2013 2:00 pm The Duchess of Malfi Blackfriars Playhouse, Staunton VA
Oh, behave! Should you connect with someone new while on a date?
Modern dating is full of etiquette land mines, from appropriate texting to when to “friend” request. But here is one I am most curious about since available single people are rare in the “middle” age bracket: What is the etiquette for connecting with someone else when out on a date? The situation: You are at [...]
Wine, cheese, and a Beer Run: This week’s restaurant news
Clifton Inn makes a Beer Run Tucker Yoder of the Clifton Inn teams up with Beer Run on a collaborative “Winter Beer Dinner” on Monday, December 3. Five inventive courses will be paired with unique beers inspired by winter from Bells, La Chouffe, Victory, 21st Amendment, and Liefmans breweries. Festivities and canapés begin at 6pm, [...]
Long journey home: A family’s experience with hospice care
Chronic heart disease and cancer are by far the top killers of American adults, and together with lung disease account for more than half of adult deaths each year, according to recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the population continues to age, the money the government spends on health care is disproportionately focused on patients at the end of their lives.
Oh, mother! Charlottesville street style
AMY, a full-time mom of two little ones, ages 2 and 5, was meeting a friend at Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards for some vino and pizza when I spotted her. She paired her mustard yellow Anthropologie sweater cape with jeans from Gap, Frye boots, and a classic Coach bag. Very understated in the flash [...]
Animal enamel: Brushing is the secret to your pet’s healthy teeth
Think of the worst toothache you ever had. Try to remember how it drove you nuts until you finally got the problem taken care of. Now try to remember some other things about the experience. How did the tooth look? Pretty normal, I bet, just like the rest of your teeth. And did it make [...]
A Farmhouse meal and a Champion brew: This week’s restaurant news
New brews It takes a champion to run the sales and marketing for family-owned winery Afton Mountain Vineyards, build-out an empty building in Belmont, brew hand-crafted beer, and raise a family. Somehow, Hunter Smith has managed to accomplish all of these feats, and the doors of Champion Brewing Company should open later this month. The [...]
Bowls of plenty: When it comes to Asian noodle soups, the broth tells the story
If every restaurant in the world served only pho, that would be fine by me. Pho is the Vietnamese beef noodle soup sensation that has been sweeping the nation the last 10 years or so. Charlottesville has been a latecomer to the pho scene, but there is one place doing it exactly right. Saturdays and [...]
Give a little (or a lot!): 75+ gift ideas to get your holiday shopping in gear
Fact: The holiday season is the best time to gather with family, reminisce about the good times, and share a hearty meal in the company of those you love. Another fact: The holidays are about loot. Getting it, giving it, wrapping it up until your fingers bleed from giftwrap paper cuts. Unraveling a brown paper [...]
Free Will Astrology: Week of November 19
Scorpio (October 23-November 21): In 2007 the band White Stripes did a tour of Canada. One of their final gigs was outdoors in St. John’s, Newfoundland. They came on stage, played one note—a C-sharp—and declared the performance over. It was the briefest rock show in history. Judging from the current astrological omens, Scorpio, I’m thinking [...]
Fruit of the vine: Wine events for November
Afton Mountain Our tasting room is open year-round. Here you can taste our wines with our friendly and knowledgeable tasting room staff, enjoy a glass or bottle of our wine on our patio with beautiful panoramic views, or relax at a picnic table in the grass or at the Pavilion surrounded by the beauty of [...]
Give brew its due: Bring beer back to your holiday table
Beer and Thanksgiving. The words conjure fond memories: an uncle asleep in the La-Z-Boy with a pile of cans on the end table; the Lions game on TV; a semi-interested crowd of family gathered around the set, making small talk. Tradition is great, but the days of discarded cans of Coors and sleepy football fans [...]
The locavore chef’s dilemma: What it takes to cook local through the off-season
Nowadays, restaurant menus are more likely to tell you where the chicken was raised than how it’s prepared. Four years running, the National Restaurant Association has voted locally sourced foods the top trend. But here in Virginia, where our soil takes a long winter’s nap, what’s a locavore chef to do when the growing season [...]
Across 30 years and an epidemic, Charlottesville’s gay and lesbian communities came out together
In early 1986, Hospice of the Piedmont needed help with a patient who had less than a month to live. The organization’s purpose, then and now, is to care for terminal patients, but this patient had AIDS, and AIDS patients were different. By the end of 1984, there were 10 reported AIDS cases in Charlottesville, [...]
Free Will Astrology: Week of November 12
Sagittarius (November 22-December 21): “They will say you are on the wrong road,” said poet Antonio Porchia, “if it is your own.” I suspect you may have to deal with wrong-headed badgering like that in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. In fact, you could experience a surge of discouraging words and bad advice that tries to [...]
Got leaves? Then it’s time to recycle them
It’s not all a jungle out there, and for that we should be grateful here in the red clay heart of Virginia. Ceaseless growth and decay below the equator harbors no winter sleep or spring awakening. Only deciduous forests of the middle latitudes change into seasons other than rainy or dry. In the northern hemisphere, [...]
Professor Apple: How Tom Burford sowed the seeds of the Virginia hard cider revival
It is tempting to imagine that the resurgence of Virginia hard cider had its genesis in a single moment: Monticello’s Director of Gardens and Grounds Peter Hatch and Virginia gentleman Tom Burford kneeling together with their grafting knives to re-propagate the Virginia Hewe’s Crab apple tree in Thomas Jefferson’s north orchard.
From the ground up: The good and the bad in building a new home
According to the United States Census Bureau, new home sales are defined as occurring “with the signing of a sales contract or the acceptance of a deposit.” That said, most new homes sales happen while the house is still under construction or not even started. Only 25 percent of new houses are sold at the [...]
Secret ingredient: Along came some cider
Fresh apple cider is the quintessential autumn drink in Central Virginia, and has a long and relevant history here that predates even Mr. Jefferson. When European colonists arrived in the 1600s, they invested in survival by planting apple orchards. Because apples don’t bear true to seed (due in part to their survivalist tactic of mixing [...]
Cider-palooza: First annual Virginia Cider Week is coming to a restaurant near you
Cider may be indelibly written into American history, but no matter how many pints John Adams drank with breakfast, it’s a beverage that confuses us. Cider, to everyone but Americans, implies the presence of alcohol; here, unless we preface it with “hard,” we picture the hot, spiced variety that warms us up after a romp [...]