TEST KITCHEN

With January being the quietest month of the travel season in western North Carolina, Dave spent some time this week trying out two new quiche recipes. Quiche is a baked egg dish and one dish will serve 4 to 6 people. When served right out of the oven, it has that "melt in your mouth" quality that makes it a great comfort food and one that's perfect to warm you on a wintry mountain morning.

The first quiche to come out of the Inn on Mill Creek test kitchen was a broccoli crown and ham quiche. This is a common quiche; however, Dave experimented with a twist on the recipe and made a combination hashbrown and croissant crust rather than the typical pastry crust.



Brigette and her mom, who was in town visiting, served as chief testers and reported that this one was "fantastic". Dave, despite liking the big crowns himself said that next time he'll be chopping the broccoli (nod to Saturday Night Live's Dana Carvey) a little smaller.

The second quiche was a sweet onion and full-leaf spinach quiche. This quiche was good because the onions weren't too overpowering but were enough to give it a good crisp flavor. Anyone who loves spinach will love this quiche. Like the broccoli, Dave says he'll chop the spinach a bit next time around.



Stay tuned to see what other yummy dishes come out of the kitchen this season!

GREEN EGGS AND GLAM

Last week, two of our guests-turned-friends, April and Michael, stayed with us again. Their bassett hound, Lady, also came to visit and our innpugs loved her (especially Csaba). April and Mike celebrated their first anniversary last year at the Inn. During their visit this time, it was a bit colder and we even got some snow, but that didn't stop everyone from having fun.

April and Mike brought us eggs from their own chickens. Green eggs, as a matter of fact. What...you don't think green eggs exist outside of a Dr. Suess book?



The chickens are a South American breed that lays blue/green eggs. Seriously.

April shared an excellent recipe for carmelized onion and cheese quiche, which we may feature soon as a breakfast item ("we" meaning Dave, because we all know Brigette's skills do not go beyond toast, and even toast is a stretch).

Not only did we benefit from April's great cooking, her artistic eye went to work in our Great Room. She helped us rearrange the decor and added some glam with a painting she's done.




The Great Room looks, well, great, even with a backdrop of snowy ice-covered bushes outside:



The snow was quite pretty during the day, but the temperatures dropped rapidly in the evenings so Dave built a fire in the Great Room wood stove and we watched several episodes of the short-lived Firefly on the 5x9 foot projection TV. It seems like everyone but us has seen this TV show. Several of our guests who came after April and Mike departed mentioned that they liked the show, too. It apparently has a huge fan base, which now includes two innkeepers. Don't tell us how it ends, though. We haven't gotten to the movie yet (which was made because of the huge fan reaction after the show's cancellation).

What could have turned out to be just another cold and boring stretch of January days ended up being a really great week. We keep saying how fortunate we are to have fantastic guests, like Mike and April (below, with Lady).

CONGRATS TO ERIC AND MICHELLE

We're happy to share some exciting news. Two great guests, Eric and Michelle, got engaged this past weekend at the Inn. We love when guests share their memory-making moments with us. Best wishes to the happy couple as they plan their upcoming wedding!

GAGA OVER GARDENING

Someone stop Brigette; she's on gardening overload. We've received about 14 seed and nursery gardening catalogs in the past two weeks, and the lists (plural) of what to buy next just keep getting longer and longer. Thumbing through page after page of beautiful flowers and shrubs is a great way to pass a winter's day.

One area that we hope to start work on is the area around an old well near the Lake House. Specifically, we're planning the summer blooming portion of the well garden.

We considered splitting the well into quadrants -- four sections of flower groupings -- since wood slats are currently doing just that on the ground above the well. However, we like a little challenge, so we're going to attempt a spiral effect with Agastache, Purple Coneflower and Lavender:



Something else we're going to do is to grow siberian iris from seed. We kept seeds from one of the other gardens last year --



-- and we'll keep you posted on whether or not we can get the seeds to germinate. We're following the 24-hour soak/3 weeks warm/10 weeks cold regimen.

WINTER AT BILTMORE

Now that we've got a little more free time, we're starting to get a chance to enjoy the area ourselves a little more. After all, our idea to move here was as much for a lifestyle change as a business venture. We think Biltmore Estate (where we were married!) is a pretty wonderful place, fortunately to be enjoyed any time of the year. (Check our packages page for information on our winter ticket prices, which are pretty amazing right now.)

Think there's not a lot to do at Biltmore in the wintertime? Think again:

Enjoy a quieter house. Take advantage of the fact that the crowds are much smaller in the winter and walk through the House at your own pace.

Sample a delicious menu. Deerpark Restaurant, located three miles from the Biltmore House, has a great prime rib and seafood buffet on Friday evenings from 5pm to 8pm. This is not your typical buffet. The generous array of southern-style and Appalachian dishes are served fresh and all food comes from the Estate, keeping with George Vanderbilt's legacy of a self-sustaining estate. Guests tell us the presentation is excellent and the atmosphere is quite nice.

Wine, wine, wine. Biltmore Winery offers several daily activities, including Behind-the-Scenes Tour at 2pm, Cooking Demonstrations at 3pm, Red Wine and Chocolate Seminar at 5pm, plus live music at the Wine Bar (Friday-Sunday, 1:30pm-5pm).

Make Valentine's Day sparkle at the Winery. Attend the sparkling wine seminar on February 14, at 3:00pm (sign up at the Winery Welcome Center).

Ease some of that gardening withdrawal brought on by winter. Free daily gardening seminars at the Gardener's Place start March 1 (and continuing into Spring): Creating an Indoor Garden at 1pm and Identifying Wildflowers at 2pm. The Gardener's Place is on the Conservatory's lower level.

By the way, walking the gardens isn't a bad option on a sunny winter day, even if it's just making your way from the House to the Conservatory through the Walled Garden. The landscaping is really four-season-friendly. We took this photo of the striking red twig dogwoods just past the house gate:

The Conservatory is packed with gorgeous plants, many of them huge to say the least.

More to do:

Take the Behind-the-Scenes Tour at the House. Check out rooms that aren't open to the general public. While the tour guides take you beyond the roped-off stairs and through such areas as Mrs. Vanderbilt's Bath and Dressing Area, they talk about the preservation and restoration process of the 175,000-square-foot (yes, you read that correctly) house.

Embark on a motorcoach tour of the Estate. Learn about the history of the land, structures, and former residents. Plus, you'll get to visit areas not usually open to guests.

For a wealth of information about Biltmore (where Brigette plans to be working as a tour guide in 2040), visit their website at www.biltmore.com.

WINTER RAILROAD HIKE

Hooray, the daytime temps are back up to the 60s so far this week. This is our kind of January.

The week before New Year's, our friends Renee and Tony came to visit. Innkeeper Dave and Tony took advantage of the pleasant North Carolina winter weather and hiked up along the railroad, which borders the north end of our property and provides for some really gorgeous views, regardless of the season.

Dave and Tony and the pugs were out for about two hours. Once around the first RR bend, the solitude was complete. They didn't see another person, no cars (of course, no roads out there), no other hikers, not even planes the whole time they were out. All they heard was the sound of the wind and a few distant woodpeckers. It's amazing to have such a natural wilderness literally within 5 minute's walking distance of our front door.



The arrival of passenger rail service and freight trains at the end of the 19th century made quite an impact on the area. It wasn't an easy thing to build a railroad through the mountains. Workers had to lay 13 miles of track over a distance of just three miles because of the difficult terrain. Several tunnels (five near us) and deep cuts into the rock were a necessity. Here are some of the tunnels:







And yes, even our creek, Mill Creek, got its own tunnel (on the north end of the Inn's property) when the railroad was built over it. This moss-covered creek tunnel is about four feet high, to allow the creek to run under the huge RR embankment:



Here's the rail line just past the Inn's property, heading east:



When the line toward Asheville was completed here at the eastern continental divide in the late 1800s, travel west became much easier and it all paid off for those who love the railroad. As you can see above, the stretch near us, called the Loops of Old Fort, has several cool tunnels and magnificent views. It must have been quite breathtaking for rail passengers to make the journey up and over the mountains on their way westward.

ICE AND THE GEYSER

The first four days of January have been pretty chilly...with the past few nights' temperatures dropping into the teens. Brrrrr! The Great Lakes weather found us! On a positive note, guests in the Lake House rooms have been very, very happy with their fireplaces (Lake View Suite, too). On another positive note, next week's temperatures look to climb into the 60s!

One cool (no pun intended) effect of the weather has been that our little mountain lake has frozen over and has been making awesome noises as the ice breaks.

We've left the geyser valve open the past couple of nights and as the geyser draws water from the lake, the ice shifts to a compressed area and then --crack-- it pops and then big cracks develop. The larger cracks echo in the forest.

Dave took some photos at the geyser, which is two miles away from us. Leaving the geyser on resulted in a little bit of ice buildup at the base. It was nice to see the rainbow on a winter day. We're still getting used to all the sunny days we have here. It's not something we saw much during Ohio winters.