"Nashville" news and stories

Bethany Thouin came to Nashville for the music, but stayed for the chocolate. Tired of struggling as a songwriter, the self-taught chocolatier -- she says she went to pastry school at Google University -- decided to dive headfirst into the world of confectionery arts. The mother of five opened her shop, The Cocoa Tree, in Nashville's historic Germantown district, and at first struggled to balance family and food, business and the home front. Seven years later, she's obviously got the hang of it; she's a burgeoning culinary celebrity with the awards, press clippings, television appearances, celebrity clientele and her own book to prove it.

Read on about Bethany's sweet life at the The Cocoa Tree after the jump.

Even before the recession hit, food banks nationwide were struggling to collect the donations they needed to provide their clients with complete meals.

"With the takeovers and mergers in the food industry, producers got much more efficient," Larry Reynolds, vice president of food resources for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, explains.

While food banks don't shun the canned cranberry sauce and cereal boxes collected by well-meaning church groups and elementary schools, they've long relied on industrial donations – overruns and errors, mostly – to fill their pantries with protein-rich items. But as producers cut down on waste in the mid-1990s, all they had to spare were samples of failed food trials.

"A lot of stuff we got was snacks and sugaries," Reynolds says. "New cookies, new crackers, new sports drinks. It's not exactly nutritious."

Years after the nation's last Kenny Rogers' Roasters served its final bird, country music stars are again making a play for their fans' food dollars.

Perhaps because so many of them hail from the South, where good cooking is considered sacred, country celebs have long been inordinately fond of the eponymous restaurant ventures. Once as critical to an Opry member's cred as a Nudie suit, signature restaurants have lately been on the wane, with once-proud institutions such as Twitty Burger and Minnie Pearl Fried Chicken going the way of the cassette tape. But a series of openings set for this fall suggests country musicians may still harbor culinary ambitions.

White-hatted crooner Alan Jackson doesn't have an endeavor of his own, but showed up this week at a Nashville area Cracker Barrel to introduce a new line of spices, clothing and home goods, including an Alan Jackson rocking chair. According to Jackson's spokeswoman Nicole Dona, the singer likes to take his daughters to the homestyle chain.

"The family will still stop now and then when they are on their way back from the lake," she writes in a e-mail to Slashfood. "He loves the breakfast and also the meatloaf sandwich."

True to cliché, countless failed country stars stream out of Nashville with their money spent, spirits broken and nothing but a nasty hot chicken habit to show for their Music City sojourn. It's an addiction many twangsters say they just can't kick.

"Lorrie Morgan turned me onto it," recalls Rocky Lindsley, a former back-up drummer for country music stars including the popular blonde singer. "I was paying a guy money to bring me that chicken [from six hours away]."

Veterans of the Nashville scene are partially responsible for a burgeoning hot chicken diaspora, introducing the city's fiery, tastebud-melting dish to brave eaters across the South. Lindsley, who now owns Rocky's Hot Chicken Shack in Asheville (east of Nashville), doesn't hesitate when asked to name his influence: "As a musician, I'm going to say who inspired me, whether it's Led Zeppelin or whatever, and I was inspired by Prince's."

Learn the bizarre side effects of hot chicken consumption after the jump.

Add Albertson's to the roll call of companies shutting doors due to the recession. The grocery chain has announced that they will be closing multiple stores in economically slammed locations like Florida, Texas, California and Nevada. Albertson's will still be the second-biggest supermarket chain in the U.S., but a bit of the bloom will be off the rose (or, if you prefer, ripeness off the tomato or mayo off the macaroni salad).

Of course, this means that there are bargains to be had at stores that are being terminated, with discounts of 10-90% off. I myself have picked up bags full of Indian specialties for 75% off (thus, my normally overpriced $4 jaipur vegetables are now a solidly discounted dollar), as well as staples like soup and beans for less than a buck and stacks of disposable foil baking pans for a dime apiece. I also scored some Bumble & Bumble hair products for under $10, but you can't eat those.

If you see an Alberston's with a "Store Closing" sign, it's worth checking out.