Apple of my eye: Early apples, like Honeycrips and Galas, have been available at markets for a few weeks now, but more varieties are quickly becoming abundant. Photos courtesy of ASAP
Got those change-of-season allergies? It’s no coincidence that WNC’s apple season officially kicks off when the sniffles start — a local apple a day keeps the doctor away, right? If you didn’t get your fall supply at the North Carolina Apple Festival earlier this month, don’t worry. September is all about apples in ASAP’s Get Local campaign, which puts the spotlight on a featured local product when at its best. That means not only can you pick your own now, you can find them featured on restaurant and bakery menus around the region. Especially in apple country: Henderson County.
“For lunch, we offer a Curried Chicken Salad with local julienned apples and spinach greens, and we also have a classic Waldorf chicken salad sandwich with loads of diced local apples in it,” says Matthew Lineback, sous chef at Season’s at Highland Lake Inn. The Flat Rock restaurant’s menu was created by Executive chef Peter Fassbender. For dinner, the restaurant offers a pork loin chop with local apple compote, spaetzle and braised red cabbage with a local apple cider gastrique. Or, opt for a duck breast with roasted local Fuji apples, farro, shitake mushrooms and bacon.
Highland Lake Inn sources the majority of their produce from an organic garden on the inn’s property and from Mountain Food Products, a local distribution company that buys their apples from Hendersonville's Apple Haven Orchard. They also make frequent stops at the Mountain Fresh Orchard stand on Highway 64 and McAbee’s Fruit Stand off Upward Road. McAbee’s, they note, carries applewood chips, which can be used for making applewood-smoked bacon.
David Workman, co-owner of Flat Rock Village Bakery, is also a familiar face at McAbee’s, where he buys apples for the bakery’s apple-and-cheese danishes, turnovers, pies and tartlets, personal pies you can have all to yourself. And Rob Keener, executive chef and new owner of Square One Bistro on Main Street in Hendersonville (he also owns Flight Wood Grill), is also a client of Mountain Foods. “I make a local apple turnover with homemade butter pecan ice cream and utilize local apples to make puree/juice for martinis,” he says. “I also plan to get a food-dehydrator and fabricate some apples for my garnishes.”
But sharing sources is where their similarities end. “I like Golden Delicious early in the season while they are still crisp,” says Workman, who picks Granny Smith and Mutsus mid-season. “I prefer the Rome and Gala varieties; Rome for eating and garnishing and Gala for cooking,” says Keener. Even among Highland Lake Inn staff, apple allegiances vary. “I like Honeycrisps because of their crispness and slight tartness,” says Lineback. For chef Fassbender, it’s all about Pink Ladies because of their sweetness.
Pseudo variety wars aside, local chefs agree local apples are important. That’s music to the ears of Henderson County’s new agri-business development director, Mark Williams, who’s tasked with helping growers stay in business. “The restaurant community sees the benefit of serving locally produced products from apples to heirloom tomatoes,” he says, sharing his excitement about seeing their menus and the entire area come alive around apples during September.
He’s happy to report that all that buzz has gotten Henderson County’s apples noticed outside of the region. A buyer/processor from Pennsylvania was recently here checking out area growers.
“To me, it’s a great life to be in apple production,” says Williams, who grew up around apples and whose family still owns a local orchard. “But, it’s also got many challenges.” That means, he says, it’s up to us to support apple growers and our region’s farming industry. Thanks to Season’s, Flat Rock Village Bakery, Square One Bistro and many others, that should be as easy as pie.
For a complete list of participating Get Local eateries, visit the Get Local page of asapconnections.org.
Early apples, like Honeycrips and Galas, have been available at markets for a few weeks now, but more varieties are quickly becoming abundant. Look for Jonagold, Fuji, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Mutsu, as well as Candy Crisp and Cameo in the coming weeks. As summer turns to fall, also be on the lookout for winter squash — like butternut and delicata — and keep your eyes peeled for the reappearance of broccoli, cauliflower and greens, such as kale and spinach.
For a complete list of area farmers tailgate markets, visit ASAP’s online Local Food Guide at buyappalachian.org and search “tailgates.”
Diversity abounds this week: three mainstream titles, two “art” films and a something-or-other (I’ll get to that in due course). There’s a lot to be said for diversity, though from the looks of it, some of this particular batch of diversity looks pretty darn dubious from here.
The only of the movies opening that I’ve seen is one of the art titles—the very excellent Farewell, which opens on Friday at the Fine Arts, and the review for which appears in this week’s Xpress. That means, of course, that I’m saying no more about it here, and that I’m approaching the week’s other offerings on a purely speculative basis.
All things considered, the best bet this week looks like the indie comedy/drama It’s Kind of a Funny Story, which opens Friday at The Carolina and the Fine Arts. The film is the latest collaboration of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who brought us Half Nelson (2006), and while it appears to be a bit more of a bid for mainstream acceptance, it’s worth remembering that Half Nelson for all its grittiness contained some strong doses of humor. It’s also interesting to see Zach Galfianakis broadening his range by tackling a more serious role. (In light of this, The Carolina is running Galifianakis movies this weekend in the Cinema Lounge.) The challenge is going to be whether the film can navigate that tricky area of not utterly romanticizing mental illness—and there’s a definite risk of that in a coming-of-age, young-romance movie set in a psych ward. Still, I’m more than slightly curious—and hopeful.
The next most interesting title for me is Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take. OK, sure, it’s a pretty obvious attempt to develop another franchise à la A Nightmare on Elm Street. And, yeah, it’s been a long time since Craven came up with anything especially worthwhile—or, in many cases, even bearable. Plus, it’s in the “new” wonder gimmick of 3-D. Now, all that does weigh against the movie, but I’m interested all the same. After all, maybe Craven is due for a hit—not just a hit, but a good picture (the two are not the same thing in a lot of cases). There’s also the fact that the best—and most effective—3-D I’ve seen is still the My Bloody Valentine remake from 2009. (Sorry Avatar fans.)
Fans of uplifting sports movies may be interested in the fact-based uplifting horse movie Secretariat. I admit I’m not excited. Yes, the cast is good—though I swore some time ago that I was finished feeling sorry for Diane Lane invariably ending up in not-very-good to downright awful movies. And this may be another of those. It’s obviously being positioned as a “crowd pleaser” and Lane as the possible successor to Sandra Bullock in the Best Actress Oscar sweepstakes. And for whatever reason, Disney has taken to hawking the movie to churches for its moral values or its PG rating or who knows what. My guess is that if you liked Seabiscuit (2003), you’ll go ga-ga over this, too. But, yes, that’s only a guess.
OK, I find Katherine Heigl off-putting for some reason. I find Josh Duhamel lackluster. I don’t expect much from movies that try to elicit laughs by focusing on people so completely lacking in common sense that they can’t manage to change a diaper. As a result, my level of interest in the new romcomdram known as Life As We Know It is way, way below sea-level. This, of course, means that my co-critic Justin Souther will be seeing this. Hey, he’s going on vacation this month and I’m getting the good out of him before that happens.
And then there’s this family-oriented thing called Like Dandelion Dust. Like last week’s apparently egregious Chain Letter (which will be gone by Friday after its disastrous opening weekend), this sneaked in late in the day. And like Chain Letter, it’s another of those Carmike exclusives—and there’s usually a good reason for that exclusivity. This does have some recognizable names—Mira Sorvino, Barry Pepper, Cole Hauser (I said “recognizable,” not desirable)—and it comes with some film festival awards. But it smacks of low-rent fare that couldn’t snag a real release. Choose for yourself.
About the only thing of note holding on this week is Get Low at The Carolina. A lot of titles—Animal Kingdom, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Mao’s Last Dance at the Fine Arts, The Extra Man, The Kids Are All Right—are taking their leave this week. If any of those interest you, you only have through Thursday to see them. My top recommendation would be The Extra Man, a film that truly benefits from being seen on the big screen. Worry not, much art film fare is in our near future.
Special movies this week start with Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man (1994) at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 7, in the Cinema Lounge at The Carolina as this week’s Thursday Horror Picture Show. World Cinema has Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987) at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 8, at the Courtyard Gallery in the Phil Mechanic Studios building. The Montford Park Players’ presentation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is on Saturday, Oct. 9, at The Carolina (and will happen every Saturday this Halloween month). The Hendersonville Film Society is offering Lemon Tree (2008) on Sunday, Oct. 10, at 2 p.m. in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing in Hendersonville. The Asheville Film Society has the Mervyn LeRoy-Busby Berkeley musical comedy Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) on Tuesday, Oct. 12, at 8 p.m.
So far as I’m concerned the best and most interesting release this week is Splice—a flawed but fascinating sci-fi horror allegory that I hope receives a warmer welcome on DVD than it did in theaters. It most certainly deserves one. Whether or not The Karate Kid remake deserves a warm reception, I don’t know, because I haven’t seen it. I definitely know that the reboot/remake/rehash of A Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t any good in theaters and isn’t likely to improve at home. Of course, there’s The Human Centipede—about which the least said perhaps the better.
Things are a little more interesting this week. On Friday, Oct. 8, starting at 11:30 a.m. TCM offers a run of five films from Rouben Mamoulian: Queen Christina (1933), We Live Again (1934), The Gay Desperado (1936), Golden Boy (1939) and Silk Stockings (1957). The first and last are the best of that set of titles. Queen Christina is quite possibly the best movie Greta Garbo ever made. It’s a surprising film to come from MGM and its pretty straightforward depiction of Garbo’s character as bisexual is surprising even for a pre-code movie. Today, it’s perhaps best remembered for its amazing long close-up of Garbo’s impassive face at the end, or possibly for the “room stroking” scene that Bertolucci referenced in The Dreamers (2004). All of the films, however, are worth a look.
That same evening, TCM continues its weekly Friday dose of Hammer Horror starting at 8 p.m. This week they have Plague of the Zombies (1966), The Devil’s Bride (a U.S. title for The Devil Rides Out) (1968), The Reptile (1966) and The Gorgon (1964). It’s an interesting set—and The Gorgon is perhaps my favorite Hammer of all time.
On Sun. Oct. 10 at 12:15 a.m.—or late-night on Sat. Oct. 9 TV Guide time—TCM offers the rarely seen Roy Boulting film The Family Way (1966) with Hayley Mills, John Mills, Hywel Bennet and Marjorie Rhodes. This is a gentle, sweet, finally quite moving film that was most famous originally for former child star Hayley Mills’ brief nude (from the back) scene and for having a Paul McCartney score. The nudity turned out to be no big deal and Paul’s score was totally unremarkable. The movie, on the other hand, is quite good.
14 thoughts on “Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler Oct. 6-12: A serial killer, crazy people, racehorses, spies and a baby”	
I suppose it’s too much to hope that Carlos the Jackal is anything like Lippy the Lion or Huckleberry Hound?
I feel like I’ve already seen “Life as we know it” due to the fact that they basically let us see the whole movie in a preview while I was at the movies to watch something else. I mean, come on, if you want people to see the movie, why give us the WHOLE story in a preview?? I will not be waiting around to see that one, no matter how likeable Katherine Heigle is- she should have never left Grey’s…
This is off subject, but being the huge Boyle fan that I am, I just wanted to share – check out the trailer for his upcoming film, 127 Hours:
Well, it looks better than the first trailer I saw, but it’s still not exciting me — though parts of it make me uncomfortable because I get increasingly claustrophobic with each passing year.
Well, we now know it’s assured an audience of three of us at least. I find it interesting — though perhaps not inexplicable — that The Tempest has become the Shakespeare play most likely to receive a “radical” film version. Looked at broadly, we have Derek Jarman’s version, Paul Mazursky’s Tempest variant, Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books and now this — and that’s not including Forbidden Planet.
So the long wait for the North Carolina primaries finally ended this week. As expected, Scrutiny Hooligans dominated the live blogging scene. In fact, from this pic at Liminal Screeds, you could say Scrutiny Hooligans carried Obama in Buncombe County.
So now its back to the political waiting game, but hey — life goes on. Even the hooligans are moving to a new location, and What to Expect, typically a mainstay in the political discourse, chose chocolate instead.
On the day after the election, Mountain Mama had nothing to say, as is normal on Wordless Wednesdays.
Virtual Inanity reminds us that there is work to be done locally with the Downtown Master Plan survey.
Pacho’s Via wrestled with the personal ethics of an economic-stimulus check (the check won), while Nice Marmot found time to make a list of things un-gettable.
Skippy Haha wants you to remember your mother this weekend, but Distort the Info wants mom to remember some things herself.
And if, after this week has finally gone by, you still need to vote for something, George the Bastard needs your support.
Contrary to reports Friday, Asheville City Council candidate Selina Sullivan remains in the race for today’s primary election, instead of dropping out after an arrest last week on charges of writing bad checks.
“Any communication she made about dropping out of the race was to the Citizen-Times or other media outlets,” Director of Elections Trena Parker told Xpress. “She has not contacted us.”
Why not stay in? If her Republicon colleagues on the national level can engage in unethical behavior without much damage (unless they’re gay), surely something as minor as a series of financial improprieties are nothing to get worked up over (even if she is an accountant).
Perhaps Sullivan is banking on her unproven claim of racial discrimination (or a backlash to her support of Obama, as she also claims) to insulate her from repercussions.