I have just gotten a flurry of e-mails today about a ton of interesting events in April. So get out your calendar and mark these dates:

• 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 6 is a fundraising dinner for the Center for the Study of the American South featuring  Southern Foodways Alliance director John T. Edge and pitmaster Rodney Scott of Scott's Variety Store and Bar-B-Q in Hemingway, S.C. Other chefs who will be involved include Ben and Karen Barker of Magnolia Grill, Whitney Brown of Scratch, April McGreger of Farmer's Daughter, Sam Suchoff of the Pig, Bill Smith of Crook's Corner and cookbook author Sheri Castle. The event is at 3Cups and costs $125. Call 956-0556 962-5665 to reserve your seat. There are only 50 tickets.
• 2-6 p.m. Sunday, April 10 is the annual SEEDS Pie Social and Skill Share Auction at the SEEDS garden at 706 Gilbert St. in Durham. The suggested donation for the pie social is $10 for four slices. Pies are being donated by Toast, Watts Grocery, Scratch and more. The skill share auction allows you to bid on things or opportunities to learn interesting skills from fellow community members from reupholstering a chair to brewing beer to flying a plane. All proceeds benefit the Durham Inner-City Gardeners, a youth-driven, urban farming leadership development program. 
• The annual Piedmont Farm Tour will be 1-5 p.m. April 16 and 17. Tickets cost $25 advance, $30 on the day of the tour for a carload. For more information and to purchase tickets, go HERE.
• 6 p.m. Thursday, April 21, Herons restaurant at the Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary is offering a winemaker dinner featuring Tommy and Amie Baudoin of Morgan Ridge Vineyards in Gold Hill, N.C. The four-course meal will cost $85. Call 447-4200 for reservations.

The 12th annual A Chocolate Affaire will be from 2-5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13 to benefit the Cornucopia Cancer Support Center.

The event at the Carolina Club includes live music, silent and live auctions, desserts from area restaurants and wine from 3Cups.

Tickets cost $60. To order tickets call 401-9333 or www.cancersupport4u.org.

The Durham center's stated mission is: "to be a place where anyone touched by cancer can find support and resources to live life to the fullest."
 

Here a few interesting upcoming wine tastings:

Chapel Hill's 3Cups is hosting a holiday wine and food tasting at 7 p.m. Dec. 16. At the least, the menu may include ham, seasonal root vegetables and the loads of carbs that grace the holiday table. The tasting costs $25 ahead of time or $30 on the day of the event.
For more information or to register, call 968-8993 or go HERE.

A Southern Season, the gourmet food and kitchenwares store at University Mall in Chapel Hill, has two upcoming wine tasting events that sound like fun:

• 5 p.m. Dec. 17, a tasting of French champagne. It costs $17.
• 5 p.m. Dec. 31, the wine department will start the New Year's Eve festivities early with a champagne and caviar tasting. It costs $17.

To sign up, call 929-9133 or go HERE.
 

Chapel Hill's 3Cups is hosting a wine social at 6 p.m. Thursday with the help of longtime Carrboro Farmers Market volunteer and Tour de France fan Kelly Clark.

Each year, Clark indulges her obsession for the Tour de France by researching the special foods and food traditions of the stage cities along the tour. Then she plans a menu, pairs it with wines. As she wrote in an e-mail: "We watch, we eat and we drink!" So 3Cups asked her to provide appetizers based on her research for a wine social featuring wines from the Rhone-Alps and Languedoc areas.

The cost is $20 ahead of time or $25 the day of the event. Click HERE to book your spot.

(Based on my acquaintance with Kelly Clark, I would have to say she is a truly adventurous and accomplished home cook. I would bet the food will be very good.)

Colin Bedford, executive chef at The Fearrington House, will be cooking this Thursday night at 3Cups. There are still 11 spots available for the event.

It costs $25 per person for three courses and dessert. The courses include:

• goat cheese panna cotta with elderflower jelly, crab salad, beet and vanilla chutney.
• house-smoked mahi with fennel salad, jasmine raisins, red onion jam, raspberry and chive creme fraiche.
• bacon-wrapped shortrib with tomato salad, blue cheese mayo and crispy shallots.
• for dessert, lemon possett with earl grey tea and rosemary shortbread.

Call 968-8993 for a ticket.

Someone may have finally solved the epic parking problem at The Courtyard.

A company called Franklin West, LLC has submitted a plan to renovate and expand the retail and office complex at the corner of Franklin and Roberson streets, perhaps best known as the former location for businesses like Pyewacket, 3Cups, Sandwhich and Locopops. The plan would add 19 apartments, a 90-car parking deck and new stories onto some buildings.

The former owner, Spencer Young, drove out tenants like 3Cups beverage shop in part because he refused to pay rent to neighbor P.H. Craig, who owns the back part of The Courtyard's parking lot due to a strange legal arrangement that goes back decades. Craig barricaded his portion of the parking lot, putting The Courtyard out of compliance with its permits and prompting local officials to intervene.

Wachovia foreclosed on the property last year, and county records list the bank's subsidiary NFPS, Inc. as The Courtyard's owner. Franklin West LLC formed in March with John Weigle of Durham as the registered agent. The relationship between Wachovia and Weigle is unclear.
The new parking deck would eliminate The Courtyard's need to use Craig's land.

Next Tuesday, Counter Culture Coffee is hosting renowned coffee farmer Javier Recinos, co-owner and operator of Finca Nueva Armenia in Guatemala. They have a series of events for coffee connoisseurs in Chapel Hill on Tuesday, April 27.

• 11 a.m. - Noon, Coffee School at A Southern Season
.

• 6 p.m. an "Evening of Coffee Knowledge & Competition" at 3Cups, a talk about coffee farming and sustainability followed by a latte art competition hosted by South East Regional Barista Champion Lem Butler. 
The event is free to the public.

Counter Culture hopes to have a small sample of the much-anticipated new harvest from Finca Nueva Armenia at each event. 

Local food entreprenuer Lex Alexander, who owns 3Cups and used to own the Wellspring grocery stores, is giving a talk on this topic: The Essence of Eating Well.

The event is 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 29 at the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont in Chapel Hill. The cost is $10. All proceeds will be donated to the Carrboro Farmer's Market. 

Alexander sold his Wellspring grocery stores to Whole Foods. For several years, he worked searching out new food products for Whole Foods stores. 

Call 966-5500 to reserve your spot. 

Click below for a flier about the event. 

Documents:

Chef Bret Jennings of Elaine's on Franklin will be at 3Cups for a Sunday Supper event at 6 p.m. Sept. 13. Tickets cost $30 in advance and $35 at the door. 

The menu includes:

• Waldorf salad w/ local fuji apples served with
  2007 Goisot Bourgogne Blanc
• Curried Castlemaine Farm chicken salad
  with 2008 Clos Roche Blanche Pinot d'Aunis Rose
• Fresh Brinkley Farms field peas w/ corn and tomatoes with 2007 Catherine & Pierre Breton Nuits d'Ivresse Bourgueil
• And for dessert, saltine toffee

To reserve a spot, go to this link. 

I just got word of the menu for Watts Grocery chef Amy Tornquist's social at 3Cups later this month.

• Roasted butternut squash and pea shoot salad with spiced pecans and Elodie Farms goat cheese with dijon vinaigrette
• Deviled ham-filled eggs with artichoke pickles
• Creamed pea soup topped with house ham
• New Orleans barbecued shrimp over local tomatoes with garlic basil sauce
• Succotash cakes topped with corn and tomato salad and shitake bacon
• Banana pudding parfaits 

Sounds delicious. Mark your calendar for 6 p.m. Sept. 16.

The social costs $23 in advance and $26 at the door. Go here to reserve tickets.