Quotable Edibles

Favorite quotes from Small Bites and Food features Mark Rosenstein on molecular Gastronomy (March 31): "If I were 10 years younger," he says, "perhaps I would be devoting all of my energy into understanding that science. But I'm an emotional cook, not a scientist. There's an emotional side to alchemy, and I think some of […]

Food TV

Xpress has plenty of online content that doesn’t show in the printed paper. One example of that is a video that we’ll call “Battle Bacon.” It marks one of the first multimedia collaborations between staff reporter Jake Frankel and me. What better forum in which to start than summer’s WNC Magazine Chefs Challenge competitions? Those […]

“Growing Holiday Cheer”

The Inside/Out article, “Growing Holiday Cheer,” is my favorite of 2010 because it is typical of life; we take so much for granted. Case in point; buying a poinsettia for our holiday tables. We rush into the grocery store for some random item and discover poinsettias have arrived, colorful and wrapped in cellophane It's an […]

Green Scene: “PARI Presents a Look Back in Time”

My favorite stories are the ones that involve some adventure and a sense of discovery. My first staff assignment for Xpress promised to deliver on both counts. When the National Security Agency abandoned its top-secret spy station deep within the Pisgah National Forest in the mid-1990s, neighbors southwest of Brevard believed hush-hush government activity was […]

And furthermor­e…

As 2010 draws to a close, rather than adding one more strident voice to the general holiday hubbub, we thought it might be fun to look back over 12 months of rants, postulations and pleas by assorted members of this astonishingly diverse, emphatically opinionated and sometimes tragically divided community and try to identify some high […]

The most-viewed letters of 2010

Every week, the Mountain Xpress receives a steady bundle (or packet, in Internet terms) of letters, mostly through e-mail, from readers in our community. Whether the subject refers to a specific Xpress article, an experience in Asheville or a reader’s opinion on politics, the economy or any other topical matter, we always welcome contributions. Below […]

Losing the battle at home

You know him. He works in your office, works on your car, sat next to you on the airplane over the holidays. These men are quite different, one from the other, but they have one common ugliness — they think it's OK to beat their wives, girlfriends and children. The pleasant smile he sends to […]

Salting roads harms environmen­t

With so many environmental activists in our mountains, why is there no outcry about the massive salting of roads?  Come spring, our roadsides will be deprived of healthy vegetation and our streams and groundwater will be seriously compromised. Even a handful of salt can kill plants, including trees, and the tons of salt dumped on […]