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The first time we went out looking for an eye-catching crib for our new Hot House page, this North Downtown beauty turned our heads. First we noticed its understated color (and of course that signature sweep of the roofline didn’t hurt either.) But the reason we kept looking was the entryway on the right, with its open-yet-protected design. We swear we heard it say, “Come on in.”
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Secret Ingredient
Starr Hill beer has been brewed right here in Charlottesville since 1999, first on Main Street and now in Crozet in a former food processing building. The massive scale of the building, along with plenty of refrigeration, makes this a dream spot for Starr Hill Brewery (starrhillbeer.com; open for tastings Saturdays from noon to 4pm, 823-5671). If fond memories of Starr Hill Music Hall are fading away, take home a growler of fresh beer, call some friends, and turn up the tunes.
To “deglaze” means using a liquid to detach delicious bits of food that have cooked, caramelized and stuck to the pan. Usually one deglazes with alcohol such as wine, sherry, brandy or beer; however, any liquid will work, including water, broth and vinegar. The Amber Ale will contribute a malty sweetness, a hint of hoppy bitterness, and its characteristic beautiful brown tone to this vegetarian chili recipe; it would be perfect at a Super Bowl party or as a long-simmering winter meal. For a twist, omit the chocolate and instead deglaze with Starr Hill’s Dark Starr Stout, which is brewed with chocolate malt.—Lisa Reeder
Get This Gear
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Is your instinct to choose “quick” foods when you are short on time? Consider instead the merits of slow cooking. Tougher, less expensive cuts of meat become tender; beans become creamy and digestible; your kitchen smells like heaven. “Multo” Mario Batali has developed a line of enameled cast-iron Dutch ovens that offer the same functionality as the venerable Le Creuset at about half the price. Give yourself and your food some time to relax. Available at the Seasonal Cook (seasonalcook.com, 295-9355).—L.R.
Great Tastes
Chilly? This one’s for you. Starr Hill the restaurant may not be around anymore, but some people still remember this bowl o’ beans.
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1/2 oz. cumin
1/2 oz. chili powder
1/2 oz. salt
1/4 oz. black pepper
1 bay leaf
pinch of cayenne pepper
2 large yellow onions, diced
1 jalapeno pepper, sliced
1 tsp. garlic
1 Tbs. butter
2 cans (16 oz.) black beans, drained
2 cans chopped tomatoes, drained (reserve juice)
1 can corn, drained
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup Starr Hill Amber Ale
fresh chopped cilantro
lime juice
Sauté jalapeno, garlic and onions in butter until translucent. Add beer to deglaze, and reduce. Add beans, tomatoes, chocolate, corn and bay leaf. Combine with remaining ingredients, including reserved juice. Simmer to reduce for two hours on medium-low heat. If liquid is absorbed, add canned tomato juice or V-8 to achieve your desired consistency. Top with cilantro and lime juice. Starr Hill also serves the chili with cheddar cheese and sour cream. Makes about 10 servings
Ground Rules
New Year’s resolution: Grow your own. Tired of worrying about E. coli in bagged spinach and turning over bedraggled heads of romaine that look like they’ve been through hell to get here from who knows where? With a bit of planning, it should be possible to walk outside and pick some kind of green every month of the year.
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If I’d been on my toes in August and September, I’d be munching on little lettuces from a mesclun mix with colder crops like collards and kale coming on, but I lean more towards ornamental gardening and my vegetables have been limited to tomatoes, basil and jalapenos. Beginning where we find ourselves, however, the plan for this month is to use Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest (1999, Chelsea Green Publishing) as a primer and make a list of greens with a schedule for sowing that begins in February. Stay tuned for further developments.
Winter makes us yearn for greens inside and out. The leafless landscape looks bare without them. Broadleaved hollies and laurels with fine-textured conifers like pines and spruces make dense backdrops to display flowering trees, shrubs and perennials and are essential to the living walls of garden rooms.
Native red cedars give pleasing weight to soft meadows of copper broom sedge and American hollies sparkle in the sun in low spots along I-64 towards Richmond, but the Mediterranean-born boxwood claims the mantle for the classic evergreen of Virginia. Some treasure it for its soft texture and the aroma of an easy, elegant past; others despise it for associations with the worst of the Old South and the scent of cats. Love it or leave it, boxwood has three requirements, without which, like a doomed relationship, it will never thrive.
The soil must be kept “sweet” so the roots can take up nutrients. Boxwoods prefer a pH of 6.5-7.2, higher than our native clay, so soil tests every few years and regular applications of wood ash, compost or perhaps a bit of lime may be necessary. Protect them from drying winter winds and baking hot sun (do not plant them on a southwest-facing ridge).
Finally, boxwoods are fastidious and greatly enjoy being “plucked”—clipping or breaking off live twigs to open them up to air circulation (no electric trimmers!), a task that can coincide with collecting holiday greenery. Each spring, shoot the interior with a strong spray of water (or leaf blower) to dislodge old leaves.
Don’t smother them with 3-4" of heavy mulch. Boxwoods have a shallow root system and are particularly sensitive to over-mulching; better not to mulch at all than use too much. Limit it to 1-2" of well-rotted leaf mold or compost, taking care not to bury the crown. If you’re using the ubiquitous shredded hardwood, keep it to 1" (the length of the first joint of your thumb) and fluff it up every once in awhile to let rain penetrate.
In addition to fussing around with the boxwoods, winter is a good time to do necessary pruning on deciduous trees, cleaning out the interior of a crape myrtle, for instance, to better show off the beautiful bark, or removing a limb that’s too close to the house or overhangs a walkway. Trees don’t need a lot of pruning, though. Shearing is for privet hedges. Have a reason for every cut, don’t leave stubs and if you need a ladder, hire an arborist.
Here’s to starting the year off right with a good plan, a careful hand with the mulch and pruning implements, and the very best of intentions.—Cathy Clary
Garden questions? Ask Cathy Clary at garden@c-ville.com.
On Your Windowsill
The cyclamen is a charming beast, with its blooms shaped like butterflies that appear in the dead of winter, when we all need bright color most. If you buy a cyclamen, it’ll probably be in the full beauty of its blooming cycle. So how to keep it looking chipper?
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First of all, prolong the blooms by putting your cyclamen in a sunny place. These plants like cool temperatures—no warmer than 68 degrees during the day, 40-50 degrees at night. They also like to dry out between waterings, since they grow from tubers that are prone to rot if doused too often. Feed the cyclamen every three to four weeks, and pull out dead stems with a sharp tug.
The real challenge comes in the summer, when the blooms have all gone to that great compost pile in the sky. Can you force yourself to stop watering and exile the cyclamen to a cool, shady place to let all the leaves die back? If so, you might be rewarded with a new crop of pink or white butterflies to cheer up your midwinter days.—Erika Howsare
-Grow greens
-Soil-test boxwoods
-Go easy with those shears
Help Line
Question for Anne Williams, host of WNRN’s Acoustic Sunrise: How should I store my CDs to keep them organized and damage free?
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Answer: First of all, says Williams, if you can avoid big temperature swings in the spot where you keep your collection, that’s a good thing. “Most radio stations try to keep a constant temperature,” she says. “We also have a dehumidifier that runs a lot during the summer.”
Locate your CD shelves someplace where sunlight through windows won’t land right on them, and don’t keep them in a rarely used room that might get hotter and colder than other parts of your house. And while CDs, unlike cassettes, can’t be damaged by the magnets inside computers and TVs, if they’re warped by high temperatures or sunlight, they won’t want to play.
Of course, CDs are—as you surely know—prone to being scratched. “We’ve all lost the ability to play them and gotten sad about that,” says Williams. Once it’s done, it’s done—but sometimes a stubborn CD isn’t scratched, it’s just dirty. For these occasions, WNRN personnel keep CD cleaner on hand.
As for organizing a CD library, we’re guessing you have a smaller collection than your average radio station. WNRN divides CDs by show category—rock over here, acoustic over there—and then alphabetizes by artist. But, says Williams, “You should figure out how you want to use your collection and what alphabetical system is best for you. Some people like to browse: ‘I’m in the mood for some classical…’ But if you’d much rather have Bach next to the B-52’s then that’s the way you should do it.”
One final tip? “Some of our specialty shows keep their inventory locked up,” says Williams. If your collection deserves its own late-night time slot, consider investing in a key.
Coffee Table Library
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We’re usually word people around here, but we liked Paula Pryke’s Table Flowers just for the big, shiny pictures. This is a book so color saturated, you almost have to shield your eyes from the blinding pinks and purples of hydrangeas and tulips. Each chapter offers, mostly through visual instruction, tips for your next event, be it holiday dinner, kid’s party, or wedding reception. Browse suggested tabletop color schemes from monotone and regal (lilac upon lilac upon lilac) to dizzy displays of tie-dyed roses (really!) and striped circus-like napkins. Learn how florists make their arrangements so darn flawless: Yes, there’s a secret to making long-stemmed flowers stand up straight in tall glass vases. We’re not sure we’ve ever hosted a dinner party worthy of such dazzling floral displays, but now we’re inspired to throw one.—Lee Vanderwerff
Hot Pick
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Talk about a conversation starter! No, we don’t mean the comments this alphabet coffee table will inevitably draw from your guests. We mean the conversation you’ll have with your spouse about whether it should go in the bedroom of your sophisticated second grader, or in the living room of your sophisticated selves. Spotted at The Artful Lodger, 970-1900.
For Earlysville potter Suzanne Crane, it’s all about the local. Crane is a former English teacher who learned her craft (and discovered her talent) by taking pottery classes at PVCC. Now she’s traded grading papers for creating handmade, botanical-inspired ceramic pieces that are rooted (pun intended) in local materials and plants.
 Dan Zimmerman clued us in to a creepy-fun site. |
With builder husband Matthew Crane, Suzanne has steered her small operation in the direction of architectural pieces, creating handmade tile backsplashes, sinks and murals. She describes the bizarre experience of peddling her tile samples from a 10’x10′ booth next to acres of mammoth big-name brands at the national trade shows that she and her husband attend, but stresses, “Competing is not the issue here. What we’re trying to do is catch a special group of people who want something very, very different.”
For Suzanne, what’s different about her tiles is their local origin and the fact that “each sink is unique as a fingerprint”—mainly because she presses a different leaf or vine into the wet clay of every piece she makes. Sometimes it’s even a bit of plant life from a client’s own garden—local times two.
To get your own piece of Earlysville art, you can make the drive over to Mud Dauber Pottery, Suzanne’s studio and gallery, or check out samples of her work at www.suzannecrane.com.—Lee Vanderwerff
Who: Dan Zimmerman, partner in local design/build firm Alloy Workshop
What’s on his browser: 99rooms.com
What it is: An oddly absorbing series of animated photos from East German industrial buildings, where sounds of footsteps and dripping water lend a haunting air. It’s interactive, too: Find and click the object that allows you into the next room.
 Leaves of grass: Suzanne Crane’s botanical tiles give a bathroom some pedigree. |
Why he likes it: “I feel like through collage each of the rooms are being added to—not unlike a renovation. Some of the [animations] are obvious and jump out, and others you have to look for. I don’t necessarily get practical ideas for projects here, but conceptually, it serves as inspiration.”
So autumn has left you with piles of leaves adorning your gutters, and you’re realizing that your neighbors don’t buy your excuse that all those leaves are just leftover holiday decorations. Cleaning out your gutters takes an afternoon, a sturdy ladder and a healthy dose of caution.
 Leaf out! Cleaning gutters takes more guts than skill. |
Most maintenance experts recommend cleaning your gutters twice a year. Start by placing a gutter scoop (what, you don’t have one of those? A garden trowel is an easy substitute) and a rag in a bucket with a handle that you can take to the top of the ladder. Start cleaning out the area by the downspout, where most debris usually gets stuck. Work your way down the gutter, scooping out leaves and dirt into your bucket (hello, compost pile).
Dried patches of dirt can be loosened up by wetting them with a garden hose. When you’re done, give your gutters a final clean by spraying them all down with your hose. Finally, if your downspouts are clogged, try blasting water pressure through the pipe from the bottom up. If your gutters are damaged, or if you have a house taller than one story, it’s probably smart to call a professional to handle the job.—L.V.
Got a nest to feather? You’ve also got a lively scene of local home and garden shops to stay on top of, which is why we’ll now be bringing you regular updates on the retail scene. Here’s the latest news:
A couple of established Downtown spots have improved their digs so as to better furnish yours: Quince now peddles its accessories and furniture from a large space across Garrett Street from its former location—a cavernous storefront that once housed Home. In turn, Quince’s old spot was taken by the fashion arm of Posh, letting that purveyor of hand-picked antiques devote its entire original spot—in the Downtown Design Center, just over the railroad tracks—to home items.
 All kinds of unexpected things are behind glass at Partridge & Grace Designs. |
Meanwhile, Partridge & Grace Designs, tucked away since April on Third Street NE, sells a whole variety of things in frames—tiny silver spoons, antique maps, botanical prints—and offers framing and art consultation services. We were intrigued by a shelf made from a salvaged railroad tie from colonial-era India, and also by a framed 1945 Fortune magazine cover. Why don’t they make them like that anymore?—Erika Howsare
Writing about sales makes us feel weird; it’s so hard not to sound like a screaming radio voiceover when you wield phrases like “dining room furniture, 20 percent off!” Sometimes, even going to a sale makes us feel weird, as though we were falling for a carnival barker’s invitation to step right up and lose our shirts. But there’s no denying that January can be a great month to save money on new stuff, as stores purge before spring. If you’re not too burned out after last month’s march down the gift gauntlet, let us gently inform you of a few local bargains.—E.H.
—Beddie-buys. Bedroom furniture on sale at Kane Furniture, along with dining room furniture, artwork and accessories.
—Seasonal steals. Holiday stuff for a song at La Bastide in the Townside Shopping Center. Next Christmas, you’ll be able to say, “I got that half off! Now have some full-strength egg nog.”
—Cheap sleeps. Moyanne in Lynchburg will have a trunk show on next year’s lines of Bella Notte bedding, January 25 and 26; they tell us this is one of the only chances to get these high-end linens on sale.
"The home place is full of ordinary objects. We know them through use; we do not attend to them as we do to works of art. They are almost a part of ourselves, too close to be seen. Contemplate them and what happens?"—Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience
Back in May, we told you that Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center (CATEC) students were building a house to be certified under LEED standards—the school’s first green building project. Well, we’ve got bad news and good news. The bad: That project ran into some timing troubles and didn’t earn a certification. The good: CATEC is trying again, this time in close consultation with the Gaines Group of architects, and still expects to complete the country’s first high schooler-built, LEED-worthy house by next fall. Recycled-newspaper cellulose insulation, energy-efficient windows and a slew of other features will help qualify the house for the LEED label.
 CATEC students are making a little bit of history: the country’s first LEED-certified, high-schooler-built house. |
Technicalities aside, the real benefits are educational. Charles Hendricks, a staff architect with the Gaines Group, says that starting young builders early on a green agenda holds the promise of real progress. “It’s going to help the industry change,” he says. Plus, “It’s going to give the CATEC student an advantage in getting a job” as green building becomes more prevalent.
For the students, Hendricks says, it’s not a tough sell. “They’re very excited about it, completely on board,” he says. For the rest of us, it’s nice to know that as time passes, it’ll get easier and easier to find a builder who knows what you mean when you say “green.”—Erika Howsare
The prospect of millions of Americans walking laps around their houses in order to unplug power-sucking appliances might be a welcome vision for exercise advocates, but entrepreneurial types know that most folks simply won’t make the rounds very faithfully. That’s why they’re introducing a raft of products meant to ease the burden of cutting back on “vampire” power usage (devices that draw electricity even when they’re off).
 Those plugs are sucking energy, but new gadgetry makes it easier to stop the flow. |
You don’t have to walk laps if you have a GreenSwitch, for example—a whole-house wireless system that connects multiple switches and outlets, as well as your thermostat, to a single switch near your house’s main entrance. The basic GreenSwitch package starts at $1125, and the company (greenswitch.tv) says installation takes only an hour.
A couple of other gadgets for powering down: the Smart Strip, a power strip that lets you turn off printers and monitors automatically when you shut down your computer, and the Isolé power strip, which turns devices off when it senses that no one is actually in the room (incredible, no?). You can take off your cross-trainers now.—E.H.
Looking for some daily green instruction? Check out Plenty Magazine’s wide collection of themed green blogs, at plentymag.com/blogs.php. We like “Action,” and its myriad of sister blogs, because they give smart, savvy, easy tips without any greener-than-thou attitude mucking things up.
 Think you already read plenty of blogs? Bookmark the Plenty blogs; you’re bound to learn something. |
These blogs speak with the assumption that you always look for a recycling bin over a trash can, try to lower your energy use, and are generally on the carbon-neutral team. So, with any eco-pretension pushed aside, Plenty’s blogs offer up advice about everything from how to find organically grown flowers that aren’t soaked in chemicals to how to use a pro recycler’s eye in all of your grocery store decisions. Plenty’s green gardening blog scopes out ways to grow your own sprouts, squash, and flowers in a smart way, by helping you cut excess wastes like plastic packaging out of your gardening purchases.
And our favorite, “Green House Effect,” zooms out from specifics to general updates from the world of sustainable building. Any blog that links us to a videogame about building a sustainable home gets a big fat ‘A’ in our book.—Lee Vanderwerff
Getting out of bed on a cold morning is only made easier by the promise of a steaming hot shower, but your hot water heater could be the culprit hogging energy (and making your utility bills soar) this winter. Making your hot water heater more energy efficient is easy, and doesn’t mean sacrificing your steam-bath mornings.
 Water bursting forth from the faucet at scalding temps? You can save energy by turning the heater down. |
The U.S. Department of Energy recommends, first of all, simply lowering the temperature on your hot water heater. If the hot water coming out of your faucet is so hot that you have to cool it down by turning on the cold water, too, your water temperature is too high. A safe and efficient temperature is 120° F. Turning the dial to that temp (instead of the manufacturer’s standard of 140° F) also helps your pipes last longer by slowing down mineral buildup.
Another energy-saving trick is insulating the heater tank with a specifically designed blanket that can save you 4 to 9 percent on your energy bill. Installing a blanket on an electric heater is fairly simple, but if you have a gas water heater, it’s probably best to call a pro. Look for more energy saving ideas at the Department of Energy’s website, www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/.—L.V.
What’s better than a donation to a good cause? How about a donation that costs you nothing? Somehow, somebody talked a whole pack of retailers into forking over cash to charities when their customers buy things, and one of the beneficiaries is our own Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC).
The engine behind the pain-free giving is a website called igive.com, where shoppers register and choose a favorite charity; then, when they’re browsing online stores, a pop-up window informs them what percentage of their purchases will go to that nonprofit. “Now that I have it on my computer and I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping, it keeps popping up everywhere,” says Melissa Wiley with PEC. Indeed, there are 687 places to buy and donate online.
Examples? Register with igive, then shop online at The Container Store, and 2.8 percent of your purchase will go to your chosen charity. Pick up something at Sur La Table, and it’ll be 4 percent. Other local charities you can designate: Shelter for Help in an Emergency (SHE) and the Wildlife Center of Virginia, among others. Suddenly that new set of placemats not only looks good, it does good.—E.H.
“In 2005, homes in Virginia ranked third highest in the U.S. in the number of bedrooms they have, with 26.5 percent having four or more bedrooms. …House sizes have expanded even as the average number of people in each house has decreased, requiring more energy to heat and cool.”—from a Southern Environmental Law Center report, “New Directions: Land Use, Transportation, and Climate Change in Virginia”
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Like many people whose parents prod them into piano lessons, Elva Holland had an early relationship to music that was more about self-discipline than escape. But lots of kids in parentally-enforced music lessons grow up and leave the scales and etudes far behind. In Holland’s case, the lessons seem to have stuck more closely.
Then again, Holland herself is still close to the setting where, as a child, she labored over the keys. A Charlottesville native and a UVA Law graduate, she’s come home to live with her mother in the same house off Grady Avenue where she spent most of her childhood. In a pair of front parlors, layered with timeworn photos, soft chairs share the space with two pianos. Music-loving parents got Holland started on lessons as a youngster, in the days when only one white teacher in Charlottesville would take on black students. Standing in the parlor, Holland remembers sleepy Tuesday-morning lessons with a rueful laugh. Still, it’s perfectly clear that she’s glad she went through it and that, in this house, music has always been a joyful, essential element.
Holland doesn’t play much anymore, but her life is still infused with music. She’s a practicing music attorney with nationally known clients like Jae Sinnett and Ahmad Jamal, and she’s active with the Charlottesville Jazz Society. Her two children have gotten the music bug too; a son played in the Charlottesville High School orchestra and is now a music-business major at Virginia Commonwealth University. And Holland listens—to jazz, Latin, R&B—with the intensity of someone for whom, as she puts it, "music is like breath."
"Tuesday mornings, right in this spot, Mr. Smith’s chair was over there and I would be sitting here…I didn’t want to practice. I didn’t so much mind getting up early in the morning, but in summers we had to take summer piano. Mr. Smith would come by in the evening, so at 7:30 when you’re just having fun, you have to come inside. By the time you were finished it was dark.
"Every year we did a recital, and we couldn’t use music—we had to memorize it. In January, right after Christmas you got your music for your recital in June and you started learning it, and you had to have it memorized by March. For the longest time, the black kids played at First Baptist and the white kids had University Baptist. [Mr. Smith said,] ‘Why should my kids not be able to have recitals in one church?’ So we all ended up at University Baptist. My girlfriend, my very good friend—when you got older you had to do duets—so every year we did duets together. Our senior year, when we did that last duet together at University Baptist Church, we jumped up off that piano and we were like ‘We’re done!’
"Kids that are raised in the arts do better in class. It teaches you discipline. It teaches you listening. I call it ‘the quiet of loud’ because when you really get into the music it makes you listen and it makes you think.
"I really have to give all the credit to my mother and my father. Even my grandmother—she was always singing all through the house. If somebody came in here [when I was a teenager], they would have heard jazz downstairs, Mahalia Jackson in the kitchen, James Brown from my room….Music is my life. It is my lifeline."
What’s your favorite spot at home? Tell us about it at abode@c-ville.com
Gifts from on high
http://monticellostore.stores.yahoo.net/plants—seeds.html
Looking to get a little Jeffersonian in your gift choices this holiday season? Instead of marching your December houseguests through Monticello’s gardens and parlors, give them a taste of Charlottesville’s favorite founding father that they can take home with them. Monticello’s online gift shop offers a wide selection of period plant seeds, from the Lewis and Clark Seed Sampler, a collection of Monticello’s Favorite Flowers, or any from a laundry list of vegetables (beets, kale, pumpkins) that dotted Jefferson’s own garden. If seed packets aren’t your idea of excitement, though, Monticello’s shop has some other interesting finds. For example, if your Saturday yard work (or TV-side lounging) is just too classy for the ordinary t-shirt, you may require the added nobility of a $48 Jefferson work shirt—a TJ-approved muslin number with wooden buttons. Requisite presidential busts and the always-essential "historical chocolate" are also available to round out your gift list.—Lee Vanderwerff
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Color-coded
etsy.com
When I came across etsy.com, touted as "your place to buy and sell all things handmade," I was on instant Kitsch Alert. I imagined lots of unfortunate sweaters and Elmer’s-crusted popsicle sticks. But, what I found was stuff that’s not kitschy at all, but unique, well designed, and interesting. For cheap, too! My favorite way to search this site is by color. Spin your mouse over ebbing dots of color and click to find a fuschia embroidered belt or a sunny set of paper notecards. Once you’ve found one item you like, Etsy will show you a web of who else liked it and what other items they have their eye on. With thousands of colorful thumbnail close-ups of beads and clasps and bookmarks, this site is like a candy store for adults who can’t resist cool-looking things.—L.V.
Bittersweet
thedevilqueen.blogspot.com/
Blogger and DIY-er John from Arkansas doesn’t just have a chip on his shoulder. He has an entire aging Queen Anne Victorian on his back. Currently on year five or so of his long journey to renovate the house he’s dubbed "Devil Queen," John shares his personal trials and mistakes as well as DIY tips he’s learned through lots of trial and error. Even though he clearly gets frustrated (and goes so far as calling his project a "whore of a house"—ouch), after five years, he knows what he’s doing. He reports on fixing faulty water heaters in a house that was built before indoor plumbing and gives steps for carefully puttying and sanding antique hardwoods so that you won’t have to tackle the same job again any time soon. Faithful to the online social network of DIY-ers and to getting the job done right, the Devil Queen blogger is a voice that is both hilarious and helpful.—L.V.
Step factor
walkscore.com
You probably are already pretty aware of how "walkable" your neighborhood is. Is it possible and convenient for you to walk to grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, schools, parks, libraries and bars from your house, or does it take you 10 minutes via car to even get to the gate of your gated community? Walkscore.com factors the walkability to a whole slew of destinations in order to give any address a "walkscore." Its calculations and scores, based on Google Maps’ listings of local businesses and residences, are sometimes a little flawed (it doesn’t factor in bodies of water that might be in pedestrians’ paths, and some business listings are outdated), but overall, this tool could come in handy if you’re researching neighborhoods that you’re considering calling home.—L.V.
Custom flavors, on ice
 Design-your-own cone: If supermarket ice cream just doesn’t deliver what you need, try ordering custom flavors from a local kitchen. |
So your BFF has a birthday and you know her favorite treat is apple pie ice cream. You design her ice cream’s base and ingredients, name it and write a note. Then it shows up at her door, shipped in dry ice. Such is the scenario imagined by Lynsie Watkins, whose new business enterprise—Perfect Flavor, a sustainable, environmentally-conscious boutique ice cream kitchen (what will they think of next?)—is set to be in full swing by mid-December.
The idea was born when Watkins was flipping channels and saw Paula Deen make ice cream without an ice cream maker. "I was so blown away by it," she says, "that I started creating different flavors." Neighbors started calling for their own bowl of lemon-curd custard or strawberry ice cream, people started asking Watkins to cater their events, and the idea took off.
Watkins’ interest in the local food movement, fueled by a move to Charlottesville, has led her to create a business that aims to be as local and sustainable as possible. "When I was growing up in Northern Virginia, I didn’t know where my milk came from," this ice cream maven confesses. In her adult life, Watkins is trying to change that. "We use all local products for everything we can," she stresses, and she has based her kitchen in Waynesboro "because we’re closer to the suppliers that way." Get your fix—starting at $49.99 for four pints—at www.perfectflavor.com.—Lee Vanderwerff
How to polish your pieces
 There’s more than one way to get the gleam. |
Hauling out that old silver tea set or those cute little sterling dessert forks for your holiday meals? You’ll have to polish more than your lingo (hint: your better families just call it "the silver"). Especially if it’s been in storage for a while, silver may be tarnished, so you’ll want to shine it up before it graces your table.
Renee Baker, who works at South Street’s home shop 2 French Hens and collects vintage jewelry, told us that she’s relied on Wright’s Silver Cream ever since she brought a tub home from her grandmother’s house. Wright’s comes with its own foam pad for scrubbing, and—along with "good old-fashioned elbow grease," says Baker—works just fine. She’s much less enthusiastic about so-called "dips," which require no scrubbing but, she says, are "too harsh. …What’s so beautiful about silver is the age and the patina, and I just think that the silver dips strip everything away."
Baker hadn’t heard of another method we’d read about: Line a bowl with aluminum foil, fill with hot water, add salt and baking soda, then submerge silver pieces until they look clean. An electrochemical reaction does the cleaning here. If you’re feeling skittish about possible damage to a family heirloom, try this method out first on something less valuable.
Oh, and one final tip: Never wear rubber gloves while polishing silver; they corrode it. Instead, go for cotton or plastic.—Erika Howsare
What makes a table a farm table?
 A farm table made by John Casteen IV exemplifies the genre: sturdy and simple. |
We keep spotting heavy, rustic "farm tables" dotting kitchens and dining rooms around town—not to mention the displays of certain retailers—and got curious: First of all, what the heck is a farm table? Turns out, they’re either antique tables from country houses or reproductions of same. Local craftsman and owner of Fern Hill Furniture, John Casteen IV, weighs in: "Most older farm tables were designed to do double-duty as work surfaces and dining tables." So, Casteen says, sometimes their dimensions don’t exactly lend themselves to our purposes—ie, dinner parties rather than butchering or canning.
Still, even with contemporary reproduction pieces, "what makes it a farm table is the design, not the dimensions," Casteen says. "They tend to be free (or almost free) of the kind of jewelry furniture makers put on fancier stuff—inlay, carvings, that kind of nonsense." But, what they are is "simple and pretty, made of vernacular materials, and they’re designed to address what we now recognize as a modernist ideal: form and function are united."
To unite form and function in your own pad, check out Casteen’s own design at http://fernhillfurniture.com or browse the farm table line-up at Les Yeux du Monde or Verity blue.—L.V.
Finding a real home for a Charlottesville favorite
 Pining for the tomatoey days of yore? Help Market Central ensure their return. |
If you’re a devotee of the City Market, you might be fighting withdrawal since the Saturday morning fixture ended its season for the year. But there is a way to stay connected. Four years ago, a combination of vendors and customers interested in the future of Charlottesville’s farmers’ market got together and formed Market Central. They are in the midst of a membership drive, having attained nonprofit status last year, which allows them to take your money and give you a tax deduction in return.
For an annual membership fee of $10—heftier donations welcome—Market Central will keep you updated through newsletters and e-mails on their efforts to secure a permanent site, as well as plans to add amenities such as real bathrooms with running water and permanent stalls for vendors.
The market’s current open-air location on Water Street is one of the last pieces of undeveloped land Downtown and thus an unsecured base for a weekly event like the farmer’s market. Market Central’s focus is on creating a conduit for the public to influence the use of this space. Future plans include building on the market’s long-standing ties to the community through educational programs tied to cooking, healthy eating and the sustainable gardening that feeds them.
Hungry to get involved? Send e-mail inquiries to marketcentral@bnsi.net.—Cathy Clary
 Anita Davis’ Pilow Mint will sing you a lullaby. |
If you’ve seen the chalkboard signs for Pillow Mint around the Glass Building lately but were unsure exactly where this mystery shop was hiding, look no further. Pillow Mint is tucked into the back side of the Glass Building, on the opposite side from the X Lounge. This two-month-old boutique offers customers a friendly bowl of complimentary, er, pillow mints, as well as walls of "contemporary fine bedding" of both the adult and kiddie variety. Also on the shelves are childrens’ books, royal-looking slippers, paper star lanterns, candles, and lots of other good-smelling stuff. "Zen" alarm clock, anyone?—L.V.
"From the earliest human gatherings to the era of radio and television, the setting for transmitting family and cultural lore was the gathering place defined by the fireplace, chimney, and semicircle of seating."
– Anthony Lawlor, A Home for the Soul
You got questions? We got answers. If you’ve always lived with a heat pump and a knob on the wall that you twist to make things get hotter, using a fireplace might carry visions of primitive tools—splitting wedges and pokers—and a whole bunch of flaming, smoky, insurance-policy-canceling danger. Yes, managing a fire in your house is more complicated than other forms of home heat, but it can be well worth it. After all, nobody writes Christmas songs about heat pumps.
 Don’t forget about the chimney: You’d better have it cleaned now and then, or it will remind you of its presence by catching on fire. |
Here’s everything (well, a lot of things) you need to know.
How do I build the fire, anyway?
Obviously you weren’t a Boy Scout! Here’s the basic idea.
You’ll need three main materials to start your fire (well, besides a match.) The first is crumpled newspaper. The second is kindling, which means small twigs, sticks and other thin scraps of wood. The third is split logs.
After checking inside and around the fireplace for anything you wouldn’t want to catch fire (duh), make a loose pile of crumpled newspaper in the fireplace, then stack kindling above it (lean pieces inward to form a pyramid, or stack like Lincoln logs). Leaving space for air to flow, stack a couple of smaller split logs over the pile.
 When it comes to efficiency, woodstoves have it going on—at least compared to open fireplaces. They’re less polluting, too. |
Light the newspaper in two or three spots around the perimeter of the pile. These will light the kindling which in turn gets the logs going; this process might take about 10 minutes and a watchful eye on your part. Once the logs are burning, you can begin to add more and heavier logs. Pour yourself a nice glass of Cabernet and enjoy.
Does it matter what species of wood I burn?
Yep, it does—both in terms of clean burning and in terms of getting the most BTUs for your buck. (That’s British thermal units, a measure of heat produced by your crackling fire or any other heat source.) Stay with harder woods; Bryan Parlee, a salesman with Acme Stove Company, tells us that hickory, locust, white oak and apple are good bets, while pine and cedar are no-nos.
Can I cut down a tree on my property for firewood?
Hold on, Tex. "It’s always good to burn dry seasoned wood," says Parlee. "It burns cleaner and hotter." Seasoned wood has been split and dried for at least six months; season your own or, if you’re buying firewood, ask when it was cut. "When you burn damp or green wood," Parlee explains, "it will create more creosote in your chimney."
Creosote? What’s that?
"When the gases burn off your wood," Parlee says, "they cool down and solidify." The resulting substance, when it builds up inside your chimney, can catch fire. And nothing ruins a cosy night around the hearth faster than having to call 911.
So, if I have a big buildup of creosote, what should I do?
Call a chimney sweep. According to Parlee, there’s no hard-and-fast rule about how often to have a chimney professionally cleaned, since every house is different. But a general guideline is to do it twice a year if you use your fireplace quite often; if you’re a recreational user, once a year is probably enough.
O.K., the chimney sweep came over and told me I need to have the chimney lined. What does that mean?
"If you have an older chimney, and you’ve had a chimney fire or had a chimney sweep tell you you have a cracked liner, it’s a good idea to have your chimney relined," says Parlee. A chimney liner, he explains, is essentially a 6" or 8" flexible stainless steel tube wrapped in insulation, which installers feed down into your chimney from the top. "If you have a cracked liner, it keep the creosote from settling in [the cracks]," says Parlee, who estimates the cost of relining at $1,600 or more.
Meanwhile, down in the fireplace, I’ve got tons of ashes building up. What should I do with them?
Well, you definitely shouldn’t just dump them at the edge of the yard. Warns Parlee, "When you take the ashes out of your fireplace, they can stay hot for a couple of days. Put them in a closed metal container with an air space underneath it"—for example, elevated on a couple of concrete blocks, to allow circulation. "It’s not a great idea to put them on a wooden porch," he continues, "because if wind were to blow your ash bucket over, it could start a fire." A paved driveway, he says, is the ideal cooling location for the ash bucket.
And after the ashes are cool? Then what?
As luck would have it, if you are a gardener, you can make good use of the ashes to amend soil and protect certain plants from pests. Ash contains calcium and potassium—good for balancing acidic and low-potassium soils, but not so good for acid-loving plants, including rhododendrons and azaleas. Ashes are also a good addition to the compost pile, and some gardeners sprinkle ash around the base of their plants to discourage insects, snails and slugs.
Not a gardener? Ashes on icy sidewalks make a safer walking surface. And there’s always this not-too-green option: When they’re completely cool, simply throw them away.
Speaking of green, am I causing air pollution with this thing or what?
If it’s an open fireplace, the answer’s yes. You’re sending particulates into the atmosphere through your chimney (up to 50 grams per hour, according to experiments by Canada’s Combustion and Carbonization Research Laboratory (CCRL)), and you also may be contributing smoke and carbon monoxide to the indoor air that you’re breathing.
 Behold the insert: a 500-pound way to make your fireplace work harder. |
Because they burn hotter and are meant to be airtight, enclosed woodstoves are much less polluting and come with fewer hazards to indoor air quality. Parlee tells us that newer stoves are built better: "Stoves now have new regulations they have to meet. No stove can emit more than six grams of particulate an hour. All of your newer woodstoves and inserts have a reburning system that burns extra gases a second time, reduces creosote and grams of particulate."
Inserts? What are those?
Essentially, says Parlee, they’re a way to retrofit your fireplace and make it act like a woodstove. "An insert slides into the fireplace opening and weighs 200-500 pounds," he says. The insert has doors and looks like a woodstove whose front is flush with the front of the fireplace. "Typically those are installed with blowers," he says, which push the heat into the room. Getting an insert for your fireplace can cost $1,500 or more.
Sounds kinda weird.
O.K., Picky, you have another option: a freestanding woodstove. "[You] place it on the hearth right in front [of the fireplace]," says Parlee. Blowers aren’t necessary here: instead, heat radiates outward from the stove.
If I decide I don’t want to burn wood at all, could I convert a wood fireplace to gas?
Yes, you could. "You call a certified gas technician, they run a gas line from natural gas or from propane tank into that fireplace," says Parlee. From there, you have options: gas stoves, gas inserts or decorative gas logs.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Can I actually heat my house solely with a fireplace or woodstove?
Trying to heat your house with only a fireplace will probably end in tears. "When you burn wood in a fireplace it’s fun," Parlee says, "but all of your heat’s going up your chimney." Indeed, the CCRL study found that fireplaces have an efficiency rating of between 10 percent and negative 10 percent—meaning that they may actually make your house colder, as they draw warm air from throughout the house to feed combustion.
The efficiency picture gets rosier with woodstoves. "[Inserts and woodstoves] are designed to heat your home," says Parlee; advanced combustion systems, says the CCRL, can approach 70 percent efficiency. "Woodstoves will heat from 300 square feet up to 3,000 square feet, depending on the layout of the home," says Parlee. "If you have a large open floor plan with cathedral ceilings, it’s tough to keep that heat." A more closed-in house plan will work better with a woodstove.
So are you saying I should never use my fireplace? What was all that about how much fun they are?
Well, they are fun. And there’s no reason not to enjoy the occasional flaming log on an open hearth (just try roasting chestnuts inside a woodstove!). Just don’t think of it as clean-burning or efficient.
Got a light?