I’ve always loved a locally-brewed IPA but recently that type of beer is not settling well with me. It feels too heavy. I also do not enjoy light beers such as pilsners, blondes or lagers. I’d almost decided to give up beer entirely. I’m more of a red wine gal anyway, but then one day I was sitting at Boojum Brewing in downtown Waynesville with my boyfriend watching some rowdy March Madness games when I looked down the bar and saw a woman drinking a red beer in a cute glass. I asked her what it was and she said it was a sour beer called Brambleberry Gose. I’d known of sour beers before but had never really explored them. 

Remember the game of bloody knuckles? You pretended to strike your friend with your fist and if they reacted with a nervous movement you shouted, “you flinched!” and then you got to punch them on the arm as their punishment? Ahh, good times! This instinctive reaction reveals a little more when we look at it under the energetic microscope and apply it to how we can change our conditioned responses to situations that bring us pain. 

Stephany Semones grew up in Haywood County and graduated from Pisgah High School. She then went on to earn a degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. A chance experience at a store in Nashville inspired her to open Pink Regalia, originally located in Clyde then on Main Street in Waynesville and now in Hazelwood Village.

Lentils have been an important staple of human diets for millennia. Evidence of domesticated lentils have been found on the banks of the Euphrates River, in what is now northern Syria, dating back to 8000 BC.