There are some pretty amazing temptations here, and it truly is a lounge (and not a glorified chocolate shop with a couple bistro tables). You can order “liquid truffle hot sipping chocolates,” local beers, small production wines, locally-made ice cream, and the lounge features wi-fi.

The chocolates themselves are the real stars. The chocolate flavors and varieties include:

• Café Au Lait
• Cayenne
• Double Mint
• Fresh Raspberry
• Hazelnut
• Kentucky Bourbon, which includes 100% pure Knob Creek bourbon
• Lavender Honey
• Maple
• Masala Chai
• Mimosa
• Mole Negro
• White Jasmine

This also adds to the very fun chocolate scene in Asheville, which already features chocolates you can watch being crafted at either Chocolate Fetish or the new Kilwin’s.

The owner’s mission is to reduce the coffee shop’s carbon footprint, and to educate customers about green and environmental issues.

Besides the solar power, the coffee shop also:

• sells local and organic food
• features a recycling center so customers can sort their garbage
• sells a wide selection of fair trade coffee and teas
• uses compostable containers for the coffee shop trash
• encourages customers to reuse mugs instead of getting throw-away mugs

Best of all, they serve up a killer mocha!

It’s being held at the Western North Carolina Farmers Market, which is a fun place to hit any time of year (and is open year-round). May is also a great time to hit the 40-something tailgate farmers markets around here while in town.

The event organizers describe the Asheville herb heritage:

WNC is a place of natural beauty that has become almost a mecca in the Southeast for finding high-quality, often organically grown herbs and herb products. The Asheville Herb Festival has become a meeting ground for these dedicated herbalists to get together, show off their latest plants and products, and share their knowledge. “The herb festival is sort of like a family reunion,” remarked Rick Morgan, festival coordinator. “When we get together in the Spring, everyone has news to share– some good, some bad. It is a very friendly atmosphere.”

Since it attracts a lot of visitors, it’s probably a good idea to book a room early. Go here to find Asheville area accommodations with online booking.

What: Asheville Herb Festival
When: May 2 - 4, 2008
Where: Western North Carolina Farmers Market
570 Brevard Road
Asheville, NC 28806
Find out more: 828.778.4365

Photo of Asheville Herb Festival, © Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau.

This is a great event if you just love the smell and taste of fresh-baked breads (which you can, of course, sample along with local fresh cheeses, dipping oils and spreads). It’s also great if you want to learn how to bake breads. There are classes on whole grain bread techniques, classic French breads and quick breads.

Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, will also be on hand and will host a couple of classes. “Asheville and its surrounding area, with a very small population, supports more artisan bakeries than most states. The bakeries are all small but truly artisan in the purest sense of the word,” Reinhart said in a press release about the festival.

The afternoon workshops and lectures, to be held at various locations around Asheville, are all open to the public. Admission is free to all events, but space at the work-shops is limited to visitors who have bought a loaf of bread in the morning.

The festival is sponsored by the local bakeries, the Bread Bakers Guild of America, Greenlife Grocery, and the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project.

What: Asheville Artisan Bread Bakers’ Festival
When: Saturday, March 29, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Where: Greenlife Grocery Community Center
70 Merrimon Avenue
Asheville , NC 28801
(followed in the afternoon by classes at various locations)
Find out more: (828) 683-2902

Here is the blurb on the main Foodtopia page:

In the Foodtopian Society, we believe food can be much more than just what we eat to survive. It can be an invigorating centerpiece of daily life, a constant source of inspiration and fulfillment. It can change your life, or at least lift your spirits.

We believe food can be naturally grown, artfully produced and lovingly prepared, all within one vibrant community. We believe the long, relaxing meal is long overdue for a comeback. Today, we keep the tradition alive. We believe anyone can experience Foodtopian bliss. All you need is a passion for great food, and a few days to spend in Asheville, N.C.

The site features:

• Recipes from Foodtopia
• Food Adventures
• Profiles of Local Foodtopians
• Healthy Getaway Ideas
• Local Flavors
• Foodie Events
• Culinary Pictures

Photo of Laughing Seed Cafe, © Asheville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau

A great spot to sample some healthier comfort dishes is Early Girl Eatery. For breakfast, you’ll find Southern classics with a wholesome update such as biscuits with vegetarian herb gravy, spinach potato cakes with tomato gravy, and scrambled eggs with vegan sausage.

The dinner menu includes hormone-free pork loin and sweet potato pone, a vegan specialty featuring a tahini maple sauce. If you go, be sure to check the chalkboard in the dining area for the daily specials that are always tasty.

At Tomato Jam Cafe, you’ll find wholesome classic American comfort food that is heart-healthy, and made with organic and locally grown ingredients. The menu features classic comfort food dishes like chili, hamburgers (made with grass-fed sirloin), and a potato salad featuring steam red skin and sweet potatoes.

Rosetta’s Kitchen’s slogan is that they serve up “whole food soul food,” with an extensive vegan and vegetarian menu that includes grilled cheese sandwiches, a vegan nacho platter, vegan chili cheese fries and smashed potatoes.

Early Girl Eatery
8 Wall Street
Asheville, NC
(828) 259-9292

Tomato Jam Cafe
379 Biltmore Avenue
Asheville, NC
(828) 253-0570

Rosetta’s Kitchen
111 Broadway Avenue
Asheville, NC
(828) 232-0738

Photo of Early Girl Eatery, © Asheville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The great thing is you can find many gourmet winter soup options that are healthy and tasty. You can find vegetarian and vegan soup, organic soups, farm to table soups made with seasonal ingredients from local farmers.

There are some spots to find delicious and organic soups around here that are often overlooked by visitors, but are well known and loved by locals. One example is Greenlife Grocery, which is a local organic market that features several fresh-made soups each day.

The options include vegetarian and vegan soups, as well as soups with meat. Be sure to walk around to the bakery section for a large choice of locally-baked breads. You can also find some nice spots to enjoy your soup either at their indoor dining or outdoor seating.

There are also lots of classic soups, from French onion soup at Bouchon to traditional Italian soups at Fiore’s Cottonwood Ristorante Toscana to Southern comfort classics like tomato soup and grilled cheese at Tupelo Honey Café.

It almost makes me glad it will be winter on Saturday. Almost.

Photo © Asheville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.

ABC’s Good Morning America will feature the contest on Christmas Eve, and the Travel Channel filmed the competition to air in December. You can also get a taste of the amazing creations with these gingerbread house competition videos. The competition’s emcee was Jill Cordes, host of “The Best of…” on Food Network.

Contestants from all over the country bring their unique takes on the classic gingerbread house to be judged. Since gingerbread houses are so delicate, many drive several hours to bring an intact house to the competition. In fact, there is a gingerbread triage area behind a black curtain so that injured houses can get quick repairs upon arrival.

The hundreds of entries range from Victorian mansions, mountain cabins and Christmas trees to this year’s grand prize winning castle (pictured to the right).

The creations must be entirely constructed with edible materials, and it’s pretty amazing the details that are made from food. You will see entire trees, cars, people, and intricate decorations. There are columns made of candy canes, roof shingles of M&Ms and fences of Rice Krispy treats.

There are a few spots to see the amazing entries in the Asheville area:

The Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa
290 Macon Avenue
Asheville, NC
(800) 438-5800
Viewing of houses Monday through Thursday for public
Viewing daily for resort guests
Now through Jan. 6

Grove Arcade
One Page Avenue
Asheville, NC
(828) 252-7799
40 houses from competition on display daily
Now through Jan. 5

Asheville Visitor Center
36 Montford Avenue
Asheville, NC
(828) 258-6101
Featuring one gingerbread house on display
Now through January

This weekend, we went to Hickory Nut Gap Farm near Asheville, NC to let the kids go into the field and pick their own pumpkins. It was a perfect fall day, with warm temperatures, bright sunshine and the leaves turning shades of yellow, orange and red. It was still warm enough that a few children splashed in a stream at the farm.

We walked around to let everyone choose their own pumpkin, and to give the kids a chance to learn more about the connection between food being grown and food being eaten.

In fact, Hickory Nut Gap Farm provides produce, as well as meats through its Springhouse Meats operation, to several local restaurants, making it pretty easy to dine on locally-grown and produced food at various restaurants in Asheville, including Early Girl Eatery, The Market Place, Biltmore Estate Bistro, Table, Corner Kitchen and Richmond Hill Inn.

After our pumpkin-seeking adventures, I went into the farm store to find my own treats. Inside the small and modest store, there were some great finds, such as apple butters and pumpkin muffins.

The farm’s meats are all produced with livestock that is pasture raised and grassfed with no hormones and no antibiotics. Their Katahdin lamb that has a milder flavor. I settled on some lamb stew meat, figuring this is the perfect time to stock up for a hearty fall stew.

Hickory Nut Gap Farm and Springhouse Meats
57 Sugar Hollow Road
Fairview, NC 28730
(828) 628-1027

As I stood in line and waited, someone got in line behind me. She said she just moved here from Atlanta, and knew any place with this kind of line just had to be good.

She’s right. Locals love barbecue, and locals love 12 Bones Smokehouse, which is right outside of downtown but just enough off the beaten path that non-locals don’t always notice it. Situated in the River Arts District, there is also nothing fancy about the joint to lure in casual passers by. It’s in a nondescript building, and inside the decor is humble: cement floors, bumper stickers on the walls, grub served up on simple aluminum plates.

It’s the food that makes this place shine. The daily specials are the real treats, from brown sugar or chipotle blueberry ribs to jalapeno cheese grits and mashed sweet “taters.”

The soda is served up in enormous plastic cups, and you can choose from rarely-seen (at least, outside North Carolina) soda classics like Cheerwine, Cheerwine Light, Dad’s Root Beer and RC Cola.

The pulled pork barbecue is divine, and it’s smoked for hours to deliver an amazing taste and tender texture. You can choose from a dispenser with several styles of barbecue sauce.

12 Bones Smokehouse
5 Riverside Drive
Asheville, NC 28801
828.253.4499

Photos of 12 Bones Smokehouse, © Asheville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.