In a dash of wellness-meets-kids-meets-food news, Asheville’s Ira B. Jones Elementary School may have a winning twist on legumes: The school’s “Tuscan smoked turkey and bean soup” concoction made the semifinals of the Recipes for Healthy Kids competition, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials announced on March 9. The soup evolved as part of a collaborative … Read more
Just what is a CSA farm share anyway? It’s Community Supported Agriculture, the folks at the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project explain. The basic idea: When you become a CSA farm share member, you pay the farmer in advance for "shares" of the season's bounty. When the radishes, kale and more start growing (or eggs start … Read more
The seventh annual Green Building Directory, a joint project of the WNC Green Building Council and Mountain Xpress, hits the streets March 23. The handy guide is your key to local resources for environmental building. In that spirit, here’s a review of local sustainable-building news. It’s alive! If you’ve ever admired a living roof (see … Read more
Last week was marked by record rainfall and what could possibly be the last snowfall of the season. Asheville received 2.63 inches of rain March 5 and 6 — and another 1.44 inches of rain on March 9, which broke the precipitation record for that date set back in 1927, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times. … Read more
"At one point I couldn't imagine myself as a 50-year-old rapper, but now I think, why not?" says local hip-hop artist Agent 23. "Tom Waits is killing it and Tom Waits is essentially a storyteller with an old, grizzled personality." Of course, Waits isn't a rapper. But 23 points out that hip-hop and its possibilities … Read more
It’s been more than a decade since local band Braidstream has performed a concert in a public venue. The first time I saw them was during Asheville’s New Year’s Eve First Night celebration in 1999, where they played to and mesmerized a standing-room-only audience at the Basilica of Saint Lawrence. On March 20, the group … Read more
Local maverick-bluegrass outfit Town Mountain is getting ready to release a new album, Steady Operator, on Pinecastle Records. The official release date is in May, but the band is throwing a pre-release party on March 19, so that their Asheville fans can get a copy of the new disc before anyone else. Town Mountain is … Read more
On a Thursday night at the end of February, Leigh Glass and The Hazards took the stage at MoDaddy’s. Attendance was sparse, which is a shame since the band put on a really solid show. It was comforting to watch a band put such genuine energy into their performance to a smaller crowd, a true … Read more
The Beards of Comedy will be coming to the Magnetic Field to kick off a two-week tour that will wind all the way to Omaha, Neb,, wrapping up April 8 in Atlanta at the Laughing Skull Festival. The Beards have been described as a fiercely follicled foursome of hilarity to be reckoned with, and as … Read more
Local author Stephanie Perkins has got to have one of the most bubbly personalities in Asheville. On top of being adorably enthusiastic about blue-hair highlights, exclamation points in e-mails! and, of course, teen romance (her debut book, Anna and the French Kiss, was one of Malaprop’s best-selling Young Adult novels of 2010), Perkins is also … Read more
