A Domino's Pizza franchise in North Carolina was forced to close its doors forever last week, and its owner puts the blame on disgusting videos two former employees posted on YouTube.
"My business was off 58 percent because of YouTube," franchise owner Kevin Hendren told the Hickory Daily Record. The store closed on Sept. 22.
The franchise's troubles began when two employees of his Conover, N.C., Domino's Pizza allegedly created videos of themselves showing one putting cheese in his nose and then putting it on a sandwich, sneezing on cheese sticks and pulling down his pants, wiping himself with a sponge and then using that sponge to clean a pan. The videos were discovered in April and have been removed from YouTube.
Hendren told the newspaper he will not reopen the Domino's franchise. "I'm just living day to day right now," he told the Daily Record.
Thanks to an agricultural education collaborative that's planted the state's leading crops between the State Capitol and the North Carolina Legislative Building, North Carolina's halls of power are lined with cornstalks and tobacco leaves.
"It's been a great way to take the museum outdoors and let people reconnect with where their food comes from," says North Carolina Museum of History youth and family programs coordinator Emily Grant, who worked with the state's Department of Administration and Department of Agriculture to create a series of agricultural vignettes in decorative planters where maple trees and azaleas once grew.
"Our standard landscape planting was starting to die out from the drought," Grant says. "We thought we could pick out plants from North Carolina to talk about plant use and abuse."
The project this year took more than five planters of varying sizes. "We don't have a big lawn where we can just plow the back," Grant says of the urban museum, sowing seeds for a Three Sisters garden of beans, corn and squash; cotton; tobacco; sweet potatoes and peanuts.
Lonesome Valley's Canyon Kitchen. Photo courtesy of Lonesome Valley
With the competition to sell exclusive mountain lots becoming increasingly cutthroat, developers have begun using black-eyed peas and collard greens to lure prospective buyers through their gates.
Planned communities in the Southeast have long relied on free rounds of golf, celebrity appearances and swanky wine-and-cheese soirees to show off their properties. But Lonesome Valley, an 800-acre spread in Cashiers, N.C., is perhaps the first development to acknowledge the quickest way to a Southern land hunter's wallet is through his stomach: The development last month unveiled Canyon Kitchen, a weekends-only restaurant helmed by superstar chef John Fleer.
"We have 200 lots here and about 50 that we've sold," explains food and beverage manager Sallie Peterkin. "So we've invited the public. We've got reservations coming out of our ears."
Fret not, Southern beer drinkers: While the region's craft beer scene has gone and grown up, its fans (if a newly released documentary is any indication) show no signs of maturing.
"Beer Y'all," billed as "rock-and-roll road trip across North Carolina," follows a scruffy septet of wannabe homebrewers on a nine-day pilgrimage to 27 microbreweries across the state. Like any great epic, the film has a hero (the guy in Allegheny County who lets the travelers crash on his couch); obstacles (drunken ping-pong); encounters with inscrutable seers (brewmasters who mumble about keg conditioning) and a moral that inspired the industry crowd at last night's world premiere screening to hoist their pitchers in appreciation: Beer shouldn't be taken too seriously.
While the dudes filmmakers marvel politely at the tanks their hosts show off, they have little patience for academic discussions of wort and hops. They'd rather get drunk and watch "Lethal Weapon 2." They like to nap. It takes 48 minutes before anyone in the film mentions how the ales taste, which leaves plenty of time for backyard volleyball playin', lazy guitar pickin' and mongrel dog scratchin'. That's Southern beer, y'all.
"Beer Y'all" will be screening in parts of the Tarheel State this summer.
The contest asked bloggers to come up with recipes that used sweet potatoes in new ways to encourage home cooks to get them on the table after the Thanksgiving dinner season.
Get the cheesecake recipe, see the winner and learn the difference between a sweet potato and a Southern yam after the jump.
Got a killer original sweet potato recipe? Well, post it to your blog and you could bag a more-than-sweet $1,000 prize. The North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission has just announced their 2009 Bloggers' Recipe Challenge. The $1,000 prize will be awarded to the creator of the winning recipe; five finalists will win $100 prizes.
Check out the instructions, directly from the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission, after the jump.
I'll certainly admit to having one heck of a lot of 'cue country exploration left to do in my lifetime, but thus far I've yet to encounter any venue outside of North Carolina slinging BBQ slaw alongside their meat. It's an essential side for Lexington style, vinegar-kissed chopped pork, and gets its characteristic pink tint from a dollop of ketchup or barbecue sauce. Also -- it's pretty darned delicious, and provides a pleasantly crunchy textural contrast with the rich, soft strands of slow-cooked shoulder.
"In the central North Carolina Piedmont you will often find what locals there call "red coleslaw" on the plate next to your chopped pork barbecue. This tangy variation replaces the usual mayonnaise-based slaw dressing with a catsup-and-vinegar-based dressing. In fact, it is not unusual for Upcountry slaw all over Dixie to be spiked with a big splash of barbecue finishing sauce. Whether a sweet/sour tomato-based, spicy mix, either right from the store-bought jar or from some dusty bottle of secret brew, this spicy addition turns the coleslaw sauce either red or a rich brown color and creates what most Southerners called "barbecued coleslaw."
Surely food experts and gourmets all over the planet will ... most certainly suggest that this "barbecue on barbecue" presentation robs the meal of balance. ... Southerners will scoff at this suggestion. Everyone down here knows that if a little barbecue sauce it good, then a whole lot is even better."
If you happen by High Point, NC, do stop into Carter Brothers BBQ (from whence the above pictured platter of BBQ came on this most recent Christmas Eve) for some of the finest chopped (regular or coarse -- they're both good) pork BBQ you'll ever have the pleasure of eating.
BBQ Slaw is recipe after the jump. Got one of your own? Might you please be so kind as to kick back with a Cheerwine and share it in the comments?
The good folks at Chattanooga Bakery have seen fit to re-release their previously discontinued peanut butter permutation of the traditional choco-coated cookie, and not a darned second too soon. I'm here to tell ya, this li'l fella is some seriously good -- if nigh on violently sugary -- eating. With a crunchy, fudgy cookie as the foundation, a hearty slathering of extra-sweet peanut butter in lieu of the standard marshmallow and a silky chocolate coating, the confection bears an astonishing texture and flavor resemblance to the perennial Girl Scout vended fave, Tagalongs®, a.k.a. Peanut Butter Patties®. Served frozen, per a suggestion on the box, it's simply a revelation.
The upside is that unlike the GSA confection, Moon Pies can be acquired year-round. The downer for those trapped north of the Mason-Dixon is that they're not especially easy to come across in stores. $17.99, plus $8.95 (give or take) shipping will net you 48 pies, but I'd daresay it's worth the investment at least once. Tell ya what -- if you don't like 'em, next time I see you, I'll spring for your R.C.
Just a few days ago, I noted my love for highly specific food traditions, tied to holidays and celebrations -- hoppin' john on New Year's Day, king cake on Mardi Gras, mint juleps on Derby Day. So, it seemed foolhardy not to avail myself of a Moravian Love Feast bun when I had the chance, seeing as how I was in North Carolina, and my in-laws have been attending the Christmas Eve Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church's Love Feast since back when Rudolph was a fawn. I'm not, by habit, a churchgoing gal, but was assured that all (even long-lapsed Catholic school girls like me) are welcome to share in the ritual.
What the heck is a Love Feast, you ask? Well, according to North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery (1955):
No church service is more distinctive than a Moravian love feast. Love feasts are held in connection with holidays such as Christmas, New Year's, Easter and on days of special significance to the church such as church anniversaries and a day set aside to honor missionaries.
During the love feast, each person in the church receives a large, flat yeast bun and a mug of coffee containing cream and sugar.
The love feast is symbolic of the fellowship of the church. The idea behind the simple meal is that those who break bread together are united in the fellowship the way a family is.
While there are regional variations in the components of the feast -- some congregations subbing in warm cider or hot Russian tea for the coffee, or embossing an "M" on the bun tops, rather than the Moravian star seen in the image above -- the recipe invariably calls for the inclusion of mashed potatoes. As a choir or orchestra performs, the buns are passed in baskets throughout the congregation, followed by cups of the hot beverage. After these have been collected, beeswax candles -- decorated with red paper frills to catch dripping -- are distributed to the assembled, lit from wick to wick, and carried in procession out of the church.
Perhaps this is just indicative of the sort of folks with whom I keep company, but I've known at least half a dozen people who've used a brain can as comedic decor, and it's certainly been the butt of jokesaround the blogosphere. I cannot, however, recollect any of 'em actually popping the top and feasting. My husband's Aunt Frances, though, couldn't get enough of them as a kid in Plymouth, NC, and told me how she'd hover right by her mother in the kitchen so she could gobble down brains and eggs straight out of the hot skillet.
Who am I to argue with Aunt Frances? I picked up the can in the picture above at Harris Teeter over Christmas in North Carolina, and fixed myself some brains and eggs for breakfast this morning. Picture after the jump.
It was while I was in high school that my family started a compost pile. My parents had composted religiously during the early, idealistic years of their marriage (they even kept chickens for a brief time), but as they moved from Santa Cruz to Chicago to Los Angeles to Portland, composting (and livestock) fell by the wayside. When we restarted the family composting program, we all had a lot to learn about what could go into the sink-side bucket and what items were still trash.
If you've been thinking about starting your own compost pile, but don't know how to go about it, Jonathan at Wasted Food has got the poop on backyard composting, via an interview with Brian Rosa, North Carolina's composting guru. They talk bins verses piles, composting with worms and how to ensure that your compost pile is the most successful one on the block.
Fall is a terrific time to start a compost pile or bin, as you can add all the leaves and bits of organic material that you clean out of your yard to the mound. If you make the time to turn it regularly over the winter, you'll have amazingly nutritious soil for your spring and summer vegetable garden.
With all this talk of majorfoodrecalls lately, it got me thinking: what if a store simply doesn't hear about a recall or accidentally leaves a can or two of some recalled food on the shelves?
That's what they're talking about in North Carolina this week, as inspectors have discovered several small stores that were still selling cans of Castleberry's products even after the major recall. Many small stores that don't get their products from major distributors are sometimes not even contacted by distributors or the company itself about a recall.
I guess the moral to the story is, if you own a store, keep track of the food industry yourself and don't just trust that people will contact you.
On Thursday morning, residents of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina were in for a bit of a surprise, especially those who liked Doritos. A damaged tractor-trailer-size shipping container washed up on the beach, bringing with it thousands of bags of the Doritos -- Cool Ranch, Nacho Cheese and Spicy Nacho -- that it contained. Locals, from shopkeepers to fishermen, grabbed as many bags as they could carry from the water and from where they lay strewn on the sand. One person even filled up a pickup truck with them - all in the name of "helping with cleanup," of course. The chips were almost entirely undamaged, thanks to their airtight packaging.
The feeding frenzy only lasted through the morning, as the container was secured, still containing an undetermined number of bags of chips, by the late afternoon. The boat that lost the container has not been tracked down yet, although the missing shipment is sure to be noticed when the crew reaches its eventual destination.
Just as there are many types of barbecue (Eastern North Carolina-style, Western North Carolina-style, Kansas City-style, and Memphis-style, to name just a few), so too are there many types of barbecue documentary.
The title may have tipped you off, this film chronicles the Lone Star State's abiding love for barbecue, from the Great Texas Mosquito Festival to a small east Texas church that raises money through sales of its "Holy BBQ."
Believe it or not, the film is narrated by former governor Ann Richards, and it features prominent barbecue-loving Texans like Dan Rather and Kinky Friedman.
With all this talk of 
Just as there are many types of barbecue (Eastern North Carolina-style, Western North Carolina-style, Kansas City-style, and Memphis-style, to name just a few), so too are there many types of barbecue documentary. 
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