Relay Foods

As evidenced from an earlier post: I love farmer's markets.

There's a palpable energy there, from the convergence of shoppers and vendors. Regional farmers and artisan food-makers. Crafters and musicians. Dogs and baby strollers.

Sometimes dogs IN baby strollers.

But most of all, I love the treasure trove of edible goods that can be discovered all in one location on a weekend morning. I live for the joy of filling my grocery bag with locally grown vegetables, small-batch peanut butter and hand bottled pasta sauce. 

Local goat cheese sample? Pass the crackers. Hot pepper jelly? I'll take a small jar. Vegan cheese spread? Sounds oxymoronic, but what they hey!

Unfortunately, here's the all too common problem I run into with my farmer's market patronage: actually getting myself to market to buy these great things. 

Most markets in the area are only open for a few hours on Saturday mornings. So if I'm not in town or can't carve out time in my Saturday morning schedule (may or may not correlate to Friday evening activities...) I miss out on a weeks worth of local food enjoyment. 

Sad face.

BUT, a fortunate encounter at Raleigh HQ on First Friday revealed a brilliant solution to this problem: Relay Foods.

Imagine with me for a second: an online marketplace where you can browse food by category (fruit, vegetable, bakery, dessert, meat, etc.) add and remove items from your virtual cart, select your pick up day, time and location and pay for your order. All from the living room couch (potentially in your fuzzy bunny pajamas).

Well that's exactly the service that Relay Foods is looking to provide, but with a deliberate focus on supporting a local food community by connecting shoppers with quality, healthy and sustainable foods.

They offer locally farmed produce, milk, cheese and meats, as well as other Triangle area food items including: Cackalacky Spice Sauce, Big Spoon Roasters nut butter, and Nello's Pasta sauce. 

This means my farmer's market bounty can be assembled, bagged and waiting for pickup after work on a Tuesday evening.

With a huge smile on my face.

Relay is new to the Triangle (since the end of June 2014) but traces its history as a startup back to 2010 in Charlottesville, VA. As of now, there are 24 different North Carolina producers selling their products on Relay Foods, with that number to grow as business does in the area. Pickup locations (14 in all) are spread throughout Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, with home delivery also available for a higher fee.

After learning about them, naturally I had to give Relay the ol' college try. I browsed the website for some enticing NC products (Nello's Hot Pepper Pasta Sauce and Chapel Hill Creamery's Calavander aged cheese are a match made in heaven) along with regional flair from north of the state line (Bombolini spinach fettuccine out of Richmond, VA: you look great sitting in my cart). Add in some organic broccoli for a dose of greenery, choose my pickup location and payment method, and just like that my order was ready. 

That Tuesday, on my way home from work, I stopped by Sam's Bottle Shop in Durham to collect my edible bounty. I gave my name to the friendly Relay employee manning the delivery truck, she gathered all my items, paper bagged them and I was on my way.

Farmers Market: if you're reading this, don't be jealous. Nobody's taking me away from your Saturday morning goodness.

But there's no question Relay Foods will expand my appreciation and ability for local food buying and eating.

What's not to love about that?

Interested in giving Relay a try for yourself? Use the link below to get $30 off your first order of $50 or more:

https://www.relayfoods.com/friend/K3L9QP

First Friday in Raleigh

Oh beautiful Friday.

The most anticipated day of the work week gets even better the first week of every month. That's because downtown Raleigh's cultural and artistic hot-spots are teeming with free food samples, local craft vendors, wine, beer and live music.



Organized by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, First Friday is a fantastic opportunity for Triangle citizens and visitors to enjoy a self-guided tour of local art galleries, studios, museums and other alternative venues.

A walk around December's iteration of First Friday included: Crank Arm brew and local vendors inside HQ Raleigh (including great talks and pumpkin bread samples from Relay Foods), wine and beer while admiring new exhibits at CAM,  hot cocoa and local fashion at Raleigh Denim Curatory and great music with no cover (and $4 Foothills beer special) at The Pour House.

Keep up with featured events for the next First Friday, on January 2nd, and start the New Year celebrating all varieties of Raleigh art and culture!

Local One-Stop Holiday Shopping

With the gift-giving season heavily upon us, I've been brainstorming about the perfect somethings for each person on my holiday list. To me, nothing says "You're worth more than a gift card from the check-out line at Wal-Mart" better than merch from a local business.

Luckily for Triangle residents, there are PLENTY of fine independent establishments at which to do your holiday shopping. And three of those great places are located side by side by side on East Franklin Street in Raleigh.

Fabulous trifecta of local shops in Raleigh:
Wine Authorities, Edge of Urge and Lumina Clothing Co

Sampling pours at
Wine Authorities

Cheers to self-service

For the Foodie:

Shopping for the tastebuds of that special someone? Wine Authorities has you covered. They focus on stocking estate grown wines from different regions around the world (estate: meaning a family-owned winery that grows all the grapes that go into the final product).

Inspiration from the Capital City

The more time I spend in Raleigh, the more I'm inspired by the stuff going on in the Capital city.

The recent influx of young entrepreneurs, artistic expression, and community-focused development in the past few years is sprouting a seemingly endless supply of Raleigh spots worth exploring.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to take an entire day perusing the city (accompanied by an extremely patient girlfriend), and got to check off a few things that had been on my Raleigh to-do list for quite a while.

Here's how the day unfolded:

Tom Shields's Forest of Chairs brings

wooden furniture back to their natural habitat

First stop was the North Carolina Art Museum's sprawling outdoor art walk: Art in the Park. 

NCMA commissions artists to create pieces that are interlaced with the natural surroundings, stretching across 30 acres of land between Blue Ridge Road, Wade Ave and 440. 

Varying in size, scale and subject matter, the Art Park exhibits sparked some great ideas and conversation, while we tried to decipher the artist's message about society and our current role interacting with nature. There were also some cool old chairs hanging out in trees.

We wandered through the Art Park trails, back up towards the NCMA main buildings, and came across the Rodin Sculpture Garden. 

Breakfast in Raleigh: Boulted Bread

While Durham could be considered the bakery capital of the Triangle, Raleigh has a very promising newcomer that's risen onto the local bread landscape: Boulted Bread.

Originally only available for pick-up orders or at farmers markets, Boulted Bread now has a storefront location serving up coffee, fresh pastries, and of course, bread.

After reading this great Indy article about the trio who started the shop, I had to stop in and check out Boulted for myself. And what better time to visit a bakery than at breakfast?

Sunflowers and Dell Curry

Walking into Boulted, your eye is immediately grabbed by the front display case, which is overflowing with croissants (plain, savory and sweet) breakfast breads and all manner of delicious looking baked goods.

Monday Boozin' on the Cheap: Lilly's Pizza in Raleigh

It was a happy accident that I found myself at Lilly's last Monday night (after checking out a new brewery in Five Points), but it lead to an amazing discovery:

Lilly's has $2 drafts on Monday's. 

Their pizza alone is good enough to cure even the worst case of the Monday's, but pair that with $2 beer and you might just forget how far away the weekend is.

Take note of the sensual pizza kiss

Big Star: Pesto, mozzarella, Parmesan, Gorgonzola,
fontina, roasted red peppers and pistachios 

"And it rules us all..."

Being a Durham resident, I'm veryyy familiar with the Lilly's Pizza in Brightleaf Square, but had never been to the Raleigh iteration before this visit. While the Glenwood Lilly's is significantly smaller than it's sister restaurant in the Bull City, it makes up for its lack of size in edgy character.

Drinking Raleigh Beer: Nickelpoint Brewing Co.

Big shout out to raleigh what's up? on her great post about new things to check out in Raleigh this month, which inspired me to pay a visit to the new kid on the Raleigh-beer-block: Nickelpoint Brewing Co.

English IPA

Beer Happy

Meeting of the Minds

Although their taproom just opened in the Five Points neighborhood, according to their website the brewery was founded in 2013.

Nickelpoint focuses on traditional English Style beers, which was evident when I visited, as they had a Blonde Ale, English IPA and Porter on tap. There was also a higher ABV Double Barley Steak Cake Stout, which I almost had to order just on principal of the name being boss.

Free Yoga and (not free, but Tasty) Hot Dogs

Starting last night (08/27/14) and every Wednesday through September 24th, City Plaza in Raleigh is host to free Yoga held on the turf adjacent to Happy and Hale. 

It will feature instructors from different Yoga studios around the Triangle, and if the inaugural session is any indicator, is a great way to relax your body and mind while being outside to bask in the late summer/early fall evening weather. 

Free Yoga in the open air

Big Boss Run Club

Running and Beer. At one time in my life I considered these to be two vastly different entities.

Running is a form of exercise, improves heart and cardiovascular health, strengthens leg muscles, burns calories and can aide in weight loss.

Beer is a tasty beverage created via brewing and fermentation, is alcoholic, consuming it does the opposite of burn calories and can aide in the emergence of the 'beer belly'.

But as I've grown to enjoy both beer and running separately, I see how they are actually pretty similar in a lot of ways. Both are used to de-stress and clear the mind, both are pretty healthy activities in moderation, both promote social interaction and spawn mini communities that come together specifically to enjoy their chosen interest as a group.

I wrote an earlier post about experiencing the running and beer loving communities overlap at Durham's Fullsteam Run Club. Recently I decided to check out another brewery-based running meetup, Raleigh's Big Boss Run Club.

Raleigh State Farmers Market

Full Disclosure: I already have a pretty major obsession with farmers markets.

The co-mingling of people, produce, baked goods, homemade jellies/jams/pickles, dogs and babies on a sunny Saturday morning never fails to put me in a great mood that can last an entire weekend. But while I've made many trips to the Carborro and Durham markets, I had yet to experience what NC's capital city market had to offer.

I'm happy to say I was not disappointed by my first visit there.

Shoppers peruse the array of fresh
fruits and vegetables

Downtown Raleigh Food Truck Rodeo - May 4th

The first installment of the Raleigh Food Truck Rodeo series kicked off this past Sunday afternoon, and was the culmination of everything there is to love about the food truck scene in the Triangle.

Fayetteville Street was brimming with men, women, dogs, babies, strollers, a guy kicking fresh poetry freestyles in an all-white suit (food trucks are a powerful muse), all gathered together in order to bathe in the vast sea of food truck deliciousness.

FRESH. Ice Cream

I have a deep rooted attachment to ice cream.

According to family legend, a few days before I was born my mom polished off an entire pint of Rocky Road without batting an eye. I like to think that thanks to this ravenous pregnant appetite, my infant body developed an undeniable physiological need for ice cream, as if chocolate covered peanuts and marshmallow swirl now course through my veins alongside plasma and white blood cells.

I say all this to properly explain how excited I get at the prospect of eating ice cream, and how much MORE excited I get when I find a Triangle ice cream spot serving a quality product that's not only naturally made, but also locally sourced.

FRESH in Raleigh has me practically giddy.

Peanut. Butter. Cup.

Deli-icious Truck

Crab Quesadilla with Black Beans

@DeliiciousTruck

Putting the Deli in delicious (or is it the icious?), Deli-icious has more going for it than just cleverly hyphenated word play. 

This truck puts out a solid lunch spread that goes beyond standard deli style sandwiches.

Raleigh World Beer Festival

Triangle Beer lovers
enjoying the Lonerider Tent

Like a kid in a candy store.

An often overused phrase to describe a moment of extreme joy and excitement, but a phrase that immediately comes to mind when I think back to my emotions while attending The World Beer festival in Raleigh last year.

Booth upon booth of craft breweries as far as the eye can see. A bounty of kegs and bottles of delicious beer. A four hour window in which to sip, savor and sample to your hearts content.


The World Beer festival is an over 21 candy store.

Starting down the Road

I want to begin with a Mission Statement of sorts. Nothing too formal, but at least a few words to outline my vision for how I want to use this forum.

First a little personal intro: