Portland Street Food Flavors Culinary Conference

If you are culinary professional -- you do something with food, for money -- you could be in the IACP, the international Association of Culinary Professionals. There are lots of food-oriented professional associations, but the IACP is the awesomest one, if only for its incredible annual conference. Just take a look at the program for this year's conference, April 20-24 in Portland, Oregon.

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There's more in just one day of this four-day conference than you can reasonably take in. But you could try for some in-depth programming on artisanal salt, terroir, seafood, oolong tea. A half-dozen writing workshops, digital food photography, urban food and farming, obesity. Panels where experts like Shirley Corriher answer cooking and baking questions. (They answered one of mine in 2008.)

Night tours take in eateries, watering holes and craft breweries. Offsite programs concentrate on professional skills and local businesses. Big names in the food world attend -- this year's marquee names include Madhur Jaffrey, Ruth Reichl, Michael Ruhlman and Ann Willan. The hardest part is deciding what to attend.

And there's the city itself. Portland's culture of street food is on proud display. Conventioneers get a special hour of their own at a street food cart festival going on during the convention. Check the link above, for some of the amazing street food in Portland, from crepes, risotto balls and Czech goulash, to classic grilled cheese, barbecue, Thai and vegetarian.

Art + Food: Alimentum Reading at Cumberland Gallery Tonight

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Alimentum, everybody's favorite "bookazine" dedicated to the literature of food will be staging a reading tonight (Feb. 4) at Cumberland Gallery in Green Hills at 4107 Hillsboro Circle. As part of the exhibit THE FOOD SHOW: ART FEEDS PEOPLE, a benefit for Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, Paulette Licitra, publisher and editor, will read from Alimentum-The Literature of Food along with other writers beginning at about 6:30 pm. Donations of food or money at the door are requested for this event as well.

Fifteen percent of all sales during the show will be donated to Second Harvest, so go check out some art and listen to some great work being read aloud. More info can be found at the gallery website.

Big Night at the Belcourt

As the upcoming Belcourt Wine, Food & Film night demonstrates, all roads lead to Nashville.

Tuesday evening's film offering is Big Night, a terrific 1996 production about a wonderful little 1950s Italian restaurant where the food is prepared with passion. It just needs one special boost that will keep the joint afloat. When an admiring rival says he can get singer Louis Prima to stop by and give the place his celebrity endorsement, the brothers who run it (played by Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub) prepare an extra-special secret recipe of timpano, a many-layered, multi-day production.

Filming Big Night required five timpani. The maker of those was Green Hills resident Diane Bishop, whose modesty has probably prevented her from ever seeing her own IMDB page. She notes that Stanley Tucci's mother's recipe was used, and that a couple of the timpani designated for exterior shots were baked with just pasta inside, while the ones to be cut were baked with all the required layers. She's a phenomenal cook, as you'll see in Big Night's big reveal.

If you feel a tendresse for timpano, here's the recipe according to a cookbook co-authored by Tucci's mom, Joan Tropiano Tucci.

As with the last two Wine Food & Film nights, this one is $25, the food will be provided by Whole Foods, and Hoyt Hill of Village Wines is providing the beverages. The taps open at 5:30 and the film begins at 7. Go to belcourt.org for tickets.

Two Chefs Share Two Visions at ChaChah Benefit Dinner

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Nashville chefs Jeremy Barlow and Arnold Myint will be sharing the kitchen at ChaChah on Monday, Feb.1, to benefit Nashville Pride.

The "2 Chefs/2 Visions" event will feature two appetizers, two entrées and two desserts from two of the most creative chefs in town. Your $75 donation to Nashville Pride also gets you two drinks. A wine flight pairing will be available for an additional $25.

Cocktails start at 6:30 p.m. The three-course menu is served at 7:30.

Tickets can be purchased at www.nashvillepride.org. Nashville Pride's mission is to "maintain a sense of community and awareness of, about and for gay lesbian bisexual transgender people and culture throughout Middle Tennessee."

ChaChah
2013 Belmont Blvd.

Crema Has More Than Just Coffee Artistry

Though they are pretty good at that, too.
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My favorite coffee shop in town has also been known to gallery some pretty impressive art in the space next door. That space is now leased out, so now Crema is decorating their own walls with colorful paintings and sculpture.

From Jan. 22 until Feb. 27, Crema will be featuring local husband and wife artists Aaron and Michelle Grayum and their parade of clowns, circus tents and whimsical creatures for their Circus of the Umbrella art show. Each piece features the painting talents of Aaron with the sculpting talents of wife Michelle, all on the same canvases. They look like a lot of fun, and a portion of proceeds from the sales will be contributed to the Wonderful Life Foundation as well as to Haitian relief efforts.

You are invited to an artists' reception at Crema at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 22. Drop by, enjoy some great coffee, look at some charming artwork and help out a couple of good causes.

Click here for the most detailed directions ever posted on a Nashville restaurant website.

Bake a Cornbread Beauty and Bag a Bounty

Time to heat up the cast iron skillet and work on your cornbread recipe -- then submit it to the National Cornbread Cook-Off as part of the National Cornbread Festival.
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With Lodge, Brown Stoveworks and Martha White all based in Tennessee, and the event held in South Pittsburg, Tenn., it is truly a locavore event. (Well, actually, Martha White is now owned by those Ohio Yankees at Smuckers but works to keep its local identity by promoting cornbread and the Grand Ole Opry.)

Submit an entree recipe that uses Martha White cornbread mix and is cooked in a piece of Lodge cast iron cookware. Ten finalists will compete on April 24 for a $5,000 first prize and a $3,000 Five Star oven. (A word from our sponsor: Five Star's performance is so impressive that this Tennessee product deserves to be far better known. It's built like a tank, heats like a blast furnace, and the pieces mostly come apart and go into the dishwasher.)

'Red Shoes,' Red Wine, Good Time at Belcourt

The second of three Wine, Food & Film pre-Oscar events hosted by the Belcourt Theatre will feature wines from Village Wines, food from Whole Foods and a screening of The Red Shoes, a gorgeous, color-drenched classic from 1948 that won two Oscars. (It lost the Best Picture gold to Olivier's Hamlet).
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nicked from gaiaonline.com, also at other sites, originally from a poster

For the Jan. 11 event, Village Wines proprietor Hoyt Hill is assembling a wine tasting, and the Whole Foods team is cooking up nibbles. Festivities start at 5:30 p.m., and at 7, the evening's main attraction appears: a restored, rescued The Red Shoes, digitally revived from old prints. Is it a beautiful essay on ars longa, vita brevis? Is it about the magic of colorful shoes? Or is it about someone who just can't stop dancing?

The price is easy on the post-holiday wallet -- $25 a ticket, $20 for members. Bearing in mind that the November event sold out, visit belcourt.org for information and tickets.

White Christmas with Suzy Bogguss & Friends

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If Christmas at Gaylord with Louise Mandrell isn't your cup of nog, or maybe it's a little too pricey at $67 maybe the Loveless Cafe has the solution.

Suzy Bogguss is bringing her White Christmas special to the Loveless Barn for four performances only, at 6 p.m. Dec. 20-23. There are even rumors of a visit by Old St. Nick himself. If you've ever had a chance to experience a performance by Bogguss, then you know what a treat this ought to be. Her warm vocals and gentle swinging orchestrations of traditional holiday classics should be fun for all ages.

Dinner will feature a traditional Loveless buffet meal with all the fixins and guests will enjoy family style seating. The Loveless will donate a portion of the proceeds to two local nonprofit organizations: Second Harvest Food Bank and All About Women.

Tickets are available for $39.50 and childrens tickets are available for $24.50. Call 646-9700, ext. 4 for reservations or visit www.lovelessbarn.com for more information.

Embrace the Holidays, Opry style

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Paula Deen loves her some drumsticks
You know how you never visit the Grand Ole Opry or the Loveless or Pancake Pantry until an out of town guest makes you go? And then after you go, you remind yourself how much fun it was and wonder why you don't do it more often? Well, the holiday season at Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center can be a lot like that. Go ahead and melt that icy, cynical Grinchy shell around your heart and consider taking a trip up Briley this holiday season. You know your relatives want to go, and if nothing else, it will burn up a few hours that they might instead spend asking, "Why don't you get a REAL job, 'Mr. Blogger'? " (Sorry, that might just be me.)

Here's your insider's guide to what's going on culinarily out at the Opryland megaplex during A Country Christmas:

Don't Let the Waffle Party Pass You By

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Don't forget: Today is the much-loved annual Waffle Shop at the Downtown Presbyterian Church, a Nashville holiday tradition since Model T's chugged along downtown streets, dodging mobs of Christmas shoppers on the busy Church Street retail corridor.

Today's event is 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at the church, Fifth Avenue North and Church Street. Just $6 buys you hand-pressed waffles, turkey hash and grits. (Proceeds go to the church's building restoration fund and efforts to help the homeless.) If you want to be sure to score some of the goodies, line up early. The waffles are always hugely popular.

While you're there, visit the church's craft and bake sale, or take a tour of the spectacular Egyptian Revival church and its newly renovated 1913 Milnar organ.

Wine Wednesday: Eating and Drinking Literally (or Literarily)

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Chefs look many places for inspiration: people they've worked with, places they've visited, cookbooks they admire. But few diners realize that chefs also read authors who write passionately about food, seeking creative insight for the kitchen.

Laura Wilson, ex-executive chef of our bygone favorite Ombi has been helping out as chef de cuisine at Tin Angel for the last few months. If you're like us and miss her deft touch with old world dishes, well, then we should all have eaten out at Ombi a little more often and brought more friends along and maybe it would still be around. But that's beside the point...the good news is that she's back, and her creative juices are flowing again.

Cooperating with Tin Angel owner Rick Bolsom and general manager Brooke Anderson, Wilson and the kitchen staff have created what they hope to be an ongoing series of dinners based on writings by some their favorite food authors. They describe the series this way in their e-newsletter:

Holiday Bread Sampling at Provence Hillsboro Village

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Provence will be sampling holiday breads on Saturday. Drift in for lunch and try chocolate cranberry bread, sweet potato pecan bread and oatmeal apple cider bread, along with pear cranberry tarts and pumpkin tarts. Order your pastries for pickup on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and get a free bag of bread you can use to make an uncommon stuffing (that's dressing to you Nashvillians). Saturday, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Provence Breads & Cafe, Hillsboro Village, 21st Avenue South.

The Food Network Should Just Move Their Headquarters Here

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Following in the footsteps of Alton Brown, The Neelys and the Deen Boys, The Queen Deen is on her way to Nashville to help kick off the holidays. That's right, Ms. Paula will be joining Montgomery Gentry, Louise Mandrell, Jeannie and Craig Schulz (wife and son of the late, legendary Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz),The Radio City Rockettes and the TSU Marching Band to flip the switch at the Gaylord Opryland Resort to illuminate their 2 million-plus holiday lights.

Now I know that lineup sounds like it was put together by the same people who developed the Jack in the Box menu, but it's not as incongruous as it first appears. Louise Mandrell will be the host of Gaylord's "Joy to the World" Christmas dinner and show and the Schulzes will be there to kick off the opening of the Peanuts "Ice" exhibit at the resort. TSU's band and The Rockettes are always worth traveling to see, and Montgomery Gentry...well, maybe they're just there to eat whatever Paula cooks.

If you're an avid celebrity-watcher and have properly steeled yourself for the onrushing holidays, point your car in the direction of Gaylord on Thursday, Nov. 19 in time to get there by 5:30. On second thought, maybe you'd better just leave your car in the driveway. That may be as close as you can park.

Have Late Lunch at Past Perfect, Fight Cancer

Past Perfect, the restaurant and saloon at 122 Third Ave. S., is offering a way to enjoy a late afternoon nosh and benefit cancer research. Today from 2 to 4 p.m., 100 percent of the money from food sales will go to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Donations are also welcome.

Are you ready for Christmas ... Village?

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After watching Food, Inc. Friday night, my family is still trying to find a locally raised turkey for Thanksgiving. We haven't even started thinking about Christmas yet. But apparently the rest of Nashville is, so here we go.

This weekend is the 49th annual Christmas Village sponsored by the Nashville Pi Beta Phi Alumnae Club to benefit several Nashville charities, including the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center. In the history of the event, the Pi Phis have raised more than $6 million for their philanthropic causes. Plus this looks like it may be the last year ever for the event to be staged at the fairgrounds, so you might want to drop on by.

Hurry to Franklin for Slow Food at Red Pony

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Slow Food Nashville is hosting dinner tonight at Red Pony Restaurant, the styley place in downtown Franklin.

Appetizers of beef skewers and tostaditas are paired with Yazoo beer. A first course "sampler" of goat cheese and beet salad (attention Carrington!), boudin cake and chicken liver pate is paired with Arrington Vineyards gewurztraminer. A second course of sauteed prawns is paired with a sparkling cocktail of Corsair Gin. The entree is birria, a Mexican stew of goat and vegetables. Dessert is apple tart and a dessert martini.

A Wine Rock Star Comes to Nashville

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Well, actually he's more of wine and folk star....

This should probably be a joint post with Nashville Cream. Most oenophiles know Kermit Lynch as one of the world's most renowned importers of wine and as a vintner based in Berkeley, Calif. He was a pioneer in teaching Americans about good wine -- and French wine, in particular. He was named the James Beard Foundation's Wine Professional of the Year in 2000 and has received the French Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.

But before Lynch got serious about wine, he was a Bay Area folk musician in the late 1960s. This summer Lynch came to Nashville to work with local session players to record Man's Temptation, (pictured) an album including some of his Americana compositions. Early reviews of his work praise his soulful voice as he covers some classic country nuggets as well as four of his own originals.

If you'd like to judge for yourself, Lynch will be performing Wednesday night at The Basement and sharing some of his experiences in the world of wine. Your admission also gets you one free glass of wine. It could prove to be an interesting opportunity to see a genius in a whole new light.

Smitten With Bittman

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The subject of this week's dining review is Mark Bittman, the New York Times food writer and author of Food Matters. Bittman will be at MTSU on Nov. 10 to speak about his book, which focuses on the connections between food policy, health and the environment.

During my phone interview with Bittman, who was charming, I tried to convince him to stick around Middle Tennessee at least long enough to grab a meal. I had a couple of suggestions of places to eat between downtown Nashville and the Murfreesboro campus, but where would you have recommended?

A Molto Bene Time is Promised for Everyone!

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Looking for a place to hide out from your Alabama Crimson Tide and Tennessee Vol fanatic friends during their annual tilt next Saturday? May we recommend MAFIAoZA'S Nashville Italian Festival at their 12South location at 2400 12th Ave South for 3:00-10:00 on October 24. A celebration of Italian food and culture, the Festival promises to be a great time for the entire family.

With a kid's carnival, food demos (not to be confused with Demos'), wine tastings and live music, those wacky MAFIAoZA-types will prove they know how to have a good time, even if we have always quibbled with their capitalization practices. Thank goodness for Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.

There will also be contests to satisfy your competitive spirit, including a meatball and sauce cooking competition. I'm holding out for the "Guess the Number of Red Bull Cans in the Porsche to Win the Car" giveaway.

I knew those three years of calculus would come in handy someday. Let's see...the volume of a cylinder is π x (radius squared) x height. The volume of a Porsche equals a pharmaceutical sales rep plus John Rich plus a box for his cowboy hat. Divide the quotients, carry the two. I got this in the bag!

Wandering Wino: Put on your High Heeled Sneakers

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A lot of interesting opportunities competed to lead off this week's edition of The Wandering Wino, but in the end how could you ignore the prospect of scores of burly men walking/running/drinking their way through the Belmont/Hillsboro and 12South neighborhoods wearing red dresses? And they want you to join them.

From the Nashville Grizzlies website:

Hold Saturday, October 24th for what will be a great new event for Nashville and the Belmont-Hillsboro and 12 South neighborhoods; the inaugural Grizzlies Red Dress Rampage to benefit the historic Belcourt Theater and the Nashville Grizzlies Rugby Football Club. Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, every dollar donated (or very nearly all) will go directly to support these two venerable organizations.

Here's the concept:

WHAT: A fun 5K pub crawl/run or walk from the Village to 12South and back with stops at five of the best local "watering holes" in the neighborhood. There will be a 30 minute rest period at each stop and each runner will be provided a tasty Yazoo beer at each location as part of their registration fee.

Feed Bag for October 16

So much happening this weekend, but you may have to spend an evening unpacking the sweaters and breaking out the row covers for the garden -- the frost is headed for the proverbial pumpkin.

* Music in the Vines. Wrap up and bring a picnic tonight for jazz from Reed Pittman, Arrington Vineyards, 6211 Patton Road, Arrington. 395-0102. Arrington was pouring its wares at Oktoberfest last weekend -- the raspberry dessert wine is a natural for a flourless chocolate torte. Just sayin.

* Music and Molasses Festival, Tennessee Agricultural Museum, Saturday and Sunday. Watch molasses made, buy homemade cakes and pies, take a trail hike, get the kids a pony ride and more. Admission just $5, with children under 4 free. 440 Hogan Road.

* Festively Local is a three-day music, food and art festival featuring sustainable eating and local music sponsored in part by the Nashville Scene and Yazoo in the lovely south central town of Pulaski today through Sunday. Camp or stay in a hotel and plan on groovin', all to benefit Food Security artners of Middle Tennessee, Youth Speaks and Oasis Center. Get more information and tickets at the website.

* Cabana restaurant offers a heads-up on Twitter that it will offer a Twitter special this weekend. Follow their tweets to get the special code.

* Attention downtown workers: Rocketown will have free burritos next Tuesday (10/20) at 1:30, but get there early to get a spot in line. NBC will be filming for Sunday Night Football, so be prepared to mug for the camera. Rocketown is located at 401 6th Avenue South.

* Wednesdays in October are Coffee for the Cure Day
at Dunkin' Donuts. Buy a coffee (including iced coffee and espresso) and 10 percent of the price goes to the T.J. Martell Foundation to help find a cure for cancer.

Feed Bag for October 8


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* Oktoberfest and Germantown Street Fest in Germantown October 10. Dueling festivals showcasing beer and sausage (Oktoberfest) or a run and the neighborhood (Street Fest). Between the two, there will be plenty to eat, see and do. To me, the best part of Oktoberfest is the bake sales here and there. One year I bought pickles from the church ladies on Monroe. Fantastic.
* Bypass the beer and go for the biscuits at Loveless Cafe's Fifth annual Biscuits & Bluegrass Saturday, October 10. Biscuit-eating contest, children's activities, a guitar pickin' and more. If you go, report back to Bites.
* Fall Fest at Belle Meade Mansion, Saturday October 10. There's a wine garden, the music is nice, and there are tons of kids activities. $10 admission, children under 12 free.


* Southern Festival of Books, all weekend long. Kudos to organizers for bringing in some great local eats to showcase: such as Fleur de Lis, Dog of Nashville, Bolton's, NYPD pizza and Provence. Great music offerings, too, from local heroes Jon Jackson, WIll Kimbrough and Tommy Womack on the Cafe Stage.
*  If you're into cooking voyeurism, the Southern Festival has a cooking stage, too. A couple of years back I had a slot, and now I watch with special interest as the cooks prep food on a stove that isn't quite hot enough to stir-fry or bring caramel to the right temperature. No sink, either. Talk about a chef challenge.
* Don't forget the Good Food for Good People dinner at Fido on Friday night at 7:30. $50, seven courses. Pumpkin gnocchi with sage brown butter and pepita encrusted shrimp, is what I'm talking about. Call Fido for a spot.
* Acorn is offering a New Deal prix fixe menu each week -- one entree choice this week is pork chop with October beans. Dessert this week is chocolate soup with peanut biscotti. Doesn't that sound great?  

Tags: Feed Bag

Pack Your Nikes Tomorrow

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Friday October 9 is officially "Walk at Lunch Day" in Nashville. Sponsored by the Nashville Community Health and Wellness Team, the event seeks to encourage Nashvillians to eat healthy and be more active by promoting lunchtime exercise. The Nashville CHWT has signed up local businesses to sponsor walking groups for this day in particular and hopes that participants will continue these walking groups throughout the year.

But you don't have to be a part of any group to participate. Pack a bag lunch and get outside to enjoy this transitional fall weather, or at the very least park a little farther away from the Ruby Tuesday at the mall. There's a chance of rain, so you might want to bring a jacket. We promise you won't melt.

If you're interested in participating in a more organized activity, The Green Hills Action Partners (apparently an offshoot of the Justice League of America of which I was unfamiliar) is sponsoring an official walk event and Metro Public Health will be sponsoring a water station within Centennial Park for walkers walking at lunch.

Pep step on over to the Nashville CHWT website for more information on all these events.

Good Food for Good People Dinner at Fido Oct. 9

Good Food for Good People--the nonprofit organization behind the West Nashville Farmers' Market--will host a seven-course dinner at Fido on Oct. 9, starting at 7:30 p.m.

The $50 admission, plus proceeds from wine and beer, will benefit Good Food for Good People's programs to promote improved access to local, healthy and sustainable food in Nashville.

To make a reservation, email events(at)cafefido(dot)com.

A complete menu follows after the jump.

Delvin and Tayst Team Up For Dinner on a Farm Oct. 11

Almost any conversation about locally grown sustainable food in Nashville ultimately circles back to Jeremy Barlow at Tayst restaurant or Hank and Cindy Delvin at Delvin Farms in College Grove, Tenn.

On Oct. 11, Barlow and the Delvins will team up to host Dinner on the Farm, with a pig roast and buffet drawing from the Delvins' crops. The evening begins with wine and passed appetizers--grit cakes with greens and goat cheese; caramel cones with spicy apple relish; and hushpuppies with wildflower honey and trout--in the orchard and moves to dinner tables under a covered area outside the barn. Woodland Wine Merchant will select a red and white wine to go with the menu of roast pig; skillet cornbread; fall squash napoleon with ricotta; lettuce with pears, toasted nuts and sweet potato dressing; pasta with spaghetti squash, peppers, preserved figs and sorghum; and apple pie, cobbler and caramel apples for dessert.

Tayst's serving staff will perform live music--though Barlow promises he's just there to man the pig.

The cost is $85 per person, with 10 percent of proceeds benefiting Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee. The evening begins at 5 p.m. For reservations, call 383-1953.

The MBA Spaghetti Supper: If It Ain't Broke...

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Jimmy Kelly, the Nashville Gas Christmas Parade, Faucon salads, the MBA spaghetti supper. A lot has changed in Nashville in 55 years, but not these hearty perennials.

One of those lovely pinafore-wearing (look it up) belles is my sainted mother-in-law, then the future wife of my husband's father and mother of several MBA boys.

The spaghetti supper is the first important co-ed social event for St. Cecilia, Harpeth Hall, Hillwood and other west Nashville girls looking for sweet west Nashville boy flesh. I mean, gentlemen/scholars/athletes. It's a safe place for parents to debut their sweet darlings and the most hormonal-est meet-and-greet you will ever see in your life.

And the spaghetti isn't bad either. You can find out for yourself October 2, 5-7 p.m. at MBA on West End Avenue.

In the recipe collection left by my SM-I-L was the recipe for spaghetti sauce. The annual routine was for many cooks to make a batch, then at serving time, all the batches were put together. Not sure if it's still done that way or whether it's cooked in large batches.
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With tickets just $5, you'll hardly find a better deal, or more fascinating social anthropology.
Stay for the football game, against traditional rival Battleground Academy, for some serious Friday night lights action.

Mucho Monday Chronicle and Invitation


It's good for me to go out with Chris. When I go out to eat professionally, I order, I eat, I make notes. I don't tell who I am, so I never get any swag, treats or rock star treatment. But Chris does, so we did.

We pulled up to a bar stool at Rumba earlier this week and Speedy started suggesting beverages. We drank caipaifruta of the day, a caipirinha made with muddled fresh fruit. That day it was muscadine grapes so it tasted like Kool-Aid. Dangerous. We drank a Pacific Pearl. We drank a crazy pear thing with pears, cinnamon and cayenne.
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I got the Mucho Monday deal: chicken coconut soup, Pad Thai and Tres Leches cake for $22. Chris and RUAbelle got a sampling of small plates.
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Speedy on the left, snacky tasting things on the right at Rumba

Speedy sent us home with a brownie-like bar cookie with coconut and cardamom. Great with coffee.

Good food and good company. Chris and I are going for a repeat at Rumba on Monday October 5, 5-7 p.m., to award commenter Erin her Baconnaise (for pin-pointing the mystery popcorn cart) and to sample Charles's award-winning bacon (well, pork belly) bread pudding. It's a Dutch treat happy hour to put faces with names, rub elbows and try an exotic tipple. Meet and greet, or enjoy and remain anonymous -- either way, that's Bites style, too.

Celebrate Global Cultures and Foods at Centennial Park Oct. 3

The Celebration of Culture kicks off on Saturday, Oct. 3 at Centennial Park, showcasing traditions, art, food and dance of more than 40 cultures. The food court will include Fattoush Café, Las Paletas, Abay Ethiopian restaurant, Woodlands Indian vegetarian restaurant, Gonzales Taco House, Fleur de Lis Flavors snowballs and Bolton's Spicy Chicken& Fish, among others.

The 13th annual event is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with free admission.

Saddle Up for Red Pony Wine Dinner Oct. 8

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Red Pony Chef/owner Jason McConnell jumpstarts Franklin's annual Wine Down Main Street in November with a five-course meal paired with wines from the Caymus Collection. The $100 admission to the Oct. 8 event supports the Boys & Girls Cub of Franklin. 6 p.m., Hallmark Volkswagen, 620 Bakers Bridge. Full menu and tickets are available online.

Ham it Up in Spring Hill Oct. 3

The Spring Hill Country Ham Festival, the sixth annual fundraiser for Tennessee Children's Home, promises to be some party this weekend, with pig races, hog calling, a petting zoo, fireworks, live music and more country ham and biscuits than you can say gravy over.

The above video from last year's event offers a glimpse of what you might expect.

10 a.m. to 7 p.m., 804 Branham Hughes Blvd., Spring Hill

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