Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Awesome, I've got a lot of stuff to start out with - now I just have to wait for a day off!

hanger steak!

Pork belly confit, from Charcuterie

I've never cooked edamame before, but have you considered giving the cooking water a good dose of salt before you put them in? Perhaps also salting them while they're still at least a little tacky so that the salt has something to help it adhere.

Herbs, Limes, Blueberries, Tomatoes

A solid white chocolate easter bunny that I can spend all day working on!

@LoCo, that would mean, then, that legumes we don't normally eat in a fully cooked state, such as peanuts and bean dips would still be sources for these lectins and other potentially harmful compounds. As they are rich in carbs, cooking can often make these carbohydrates easily digestible, resulting in an insulin spike (also bad as an energy food). Compared to other sources, they are also relatively low in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

Also, the argument that people have been eating cultivated items such as legumes for ages isn't exactly sound, as it's been widely accepted for a while that human nutrition declined with the advent of agriculture. Hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed better health, less disease, and spent roughly half the amount of time that agricultural societies had to in order to get their food, which is also the reason current dietary research is looking into existing hunter-gatherers and why they still have less health problems such as diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease than our supposedly advanced culture. The cultivation of legumes and grains meant that we could easily produce more quantity in calories, not necessarily quality. (sorry deepitbhatia for stealing the thread)

Also in terms of general health I would actually recommend against legumes (beans and peanuts). There's a lot of research, but:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0999/is_7190_318/ai_54561205

And an analysis of the zone diet vs. the contemporary diet:

http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/JANA%20final.pdf

Did anyone watch the ICA with Flay and the Rathburns? Did anyone notice that one of the Rathburns' sous chefs was a certain chef from another cooking contest who was cut way too soon?

Aged eggnog!

http://www.chow.com/recipes/10758

In the "Corner" district of Charlottesville (anyone can tell you how to get there) there is a sandwich restaurant called Little John's. If you walk around behind this restaurant, there's a place called "Just Curry" that serves great vegetable, chicken, and beef curries; the owner is from Guyana and so has slightly different curry recipes than what you would normally think. I think right now they have goat and lamb too. A little hidden, but great food. Cheap as well.

On the downtown mall, towards one end (the end where the post office is located) there is a restaurant called Bashir's Taverna. They're only open for lunch from Tuesday through Friday for lunch (11-2) and dinner on Friday and Saturday night. They serve Mediterranean cuisine (the owner, Bashir, is from Algeria, and his wife is from Brazil, so their influences are pretty varied), with a focus on North Africa. The food is absolutely GREAT, a very different place from the other restaurants in Charlottesville. On Saturday nights there is almost always a belly dancer as well.

Farther north on route 29, there is a restaurant called Kyoto in a shopping center called Rio Hill. Though both Japanese and Chinese cuisines are served, their Chinese food has to be some of the most authentic I've ever had; nowhere nearly as greasy and sweet as most Chinese restaurants are. They also serve up dim sum items throughout the day, although the dim sum rarely lasts past mid-day.

If you want ice cream, just across from Rio Hill, there's a place called Kohr Brothers that serves froze custard, great as an alternative to ice cream.

Also, if you're willing to make a short drive, just outside Charlottesville there's a place called Blue Mountain Brewery (just search online for it). It was just opened by the ex-Master Brewer of a brewpub in Charlottesville, who also took his award winning beers with him. They serve up all their artisanal beers along with a nice bistro menu made from local ingredients. Well worth the drive.

Hope you read this in time!

crispy!