WEB EXCLUSIVEAcross the country, the coronavirus outbreak and ensuing shutdown have been devastating to large and small businesses alike; the City of Oaks is no exception. Home to more than 30,000 small or locally-owned businesses, Raleigh is already seeing announcements of permanent closures of some of the city’s most loved restaurants, retailers, salons and boutiques. There will no doubt be more in the weeks to come. On this page, we will keep a running list of local businesses that have announced their closings as a resource for readers and residents and a record of the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Remember, now more than ever, it is important to support your favorite small businesses in whatever ways you can if you want to see them thriving once again. We will miss these great local businesses!
Raleigh Closures
Fresh Levant Announced (temporary) closing September 6
WEB EXCLUSIVE This Friday (5/1) at 4 p.m., chef Katsuji Tanabe of High Horse will take over our Instagram (@raleighmagazine) to show us, and our readers and followers, how to make his famed margarita, chicken tortilla soup and churros. Scroll for the ingredients lists and recipes to get yourself prepared for the live cooking demo. These dishes would make a great spread for a stay-at-home Cinco de Mayo celebration!
Spicy Margarita
1 cup frozen lime juice or Minute Maid lime aid or fresh lime juice 1/4 cup simple syrup 2 oz. tequila 1/2 oz triple sec 1/2 of a jalapeño Chili powder
Place all ingredients in a blender with ice and blend until smooth. Divide into glasses and serve.
Chicken Tortilla Soup
2 cloves garlic 1 small onion 2 chiles such as guajillo, chile negro or chipotle 3 slices bacon 1 qt. chicken broth 1 cup cooked chicken breast or thigh 3 corn tortillas 1 sprig cilantro 1/4 cup pepper jack cheese 1/4 cup tomato paste 1 cup pork rinds 2 Tbsp. sour cream 2 Tbsp. fish sauce 2 Tbsp. salt
In a small pot, add bacon and cook until soft. Add onions, garlic, fish sauce (or salt), tomato paste and dry chiles. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.
Add 2 cups of broth and bring to a boil.
Remove pot from heat and blend the soup in a blender. Strain and place the soup back into the pot. Add more stock and check for seasoning.
Meanwhile, cut the tortillas into thin strips and fry until crispy.
Chop some dry chiles, break up the pork rinds and shred the chicken.
To serve, divide the soup into bowls and mix in chiles, pork rinds and chicken. Top with fried tortilla strips.
Churros
2 cups water 2 cups flour 1 Tbsp. oil 1 tsp. salt 1/2 cup sugar 2 Tbsp. cinnamon 3 cups oil for frying
In a small pot, bring water and salt to a boil. Add flour and cook for 3 minutes. Let cool.
Form the dough into balls. Fry them in the oil and toss with sugar and cinnamon.
If you’re feeling claustrophobic, sick of your home’s four walls, you’re not alone. Logan’s Garden Shop landscape architect Mike Riha says the Raleigh store’s sales are up over the last year.
“People are sitting around, staring at their backyards, thinking, ‘I can create a better space,’” Riha says. He calls it crisis gardening. “Most people are buying plants— ornamental or vegetable.” Riha squashes the notion that it takes a “green thumb” to grow veggies; in fact, he says, as far as gardening goes, it’s almost no fail.
“Growing herbs or tomatoes is easier with prefabricated boxes,” says Riha. “It controls Mother Nature.”
So, whether you want to upgrade with a fun water feature or create the perfect area to chill out outside, there are lots of ways to make your outdoor living space a hangout spot you can enjoy long after the quarantine is over. Here are some ideas to get you outside and gardening or refreshing your patio or back yard.
Outdoor rug from Furnish NC
An Outdoor Rug Need something to jazz up your patio space without big renovations? Consider a large outdoor rug! Not only is this a good way to include color in your backyard, it’s also an inexpensive way to change up a space without having to go through the process of painting or staining a deck.
Plant Flowers When it comes to simple backyard ideas on a budget, you can never go wrong with planting flowers, an ideal way to add a natural pop of color to your landscape. Plant hydrangea bushes or tulip bulbs along the fence if you have a major green thumb. Or go to your local plant nursery and buy a few pots to fill with your favorite blossoms.
A Fire Pit The best backyard designs are the ones that include a fire pit. There are kits and great YouTube videos with step-by-step instructions for building your own but it may not be an ideal endeavor for the casual DIY-er. “This project requires a higher aptitude for building to be successful,” says Riha. If you decide to buy instead of building, your biggest decision is to go with a pit that burns either wood or gas—consider someone will be chopping or collecting all the wood to burn. And make sure you include ample seating around your fire pit—you don’t want to be too cramped when you’re roasting marshmallows!
Mood Lighting If you’re looking to have one of the most beautiful backyards on the block, invest in outdoor lighting. Drape string lights down across your outdoor living space to give it a starry night feel. You can also line any patio or garden path with torches and lanterns for soft lighting.
Mosquito Service Mosquitoes are a major problem in warm weather. If you don’t want to spray on smelly repellents every time you go outdoors, consider a mosquito control service. Rich Cohen, owner of Raleigh-based Mosquito Joe, says his company was starting to see an uptick even before the official stay at home orders were announced. “The driving force is that people are staying home and they really want to spend as much time outside as possible,” says Cohen. He offers three options: A synthetic barrier spray that lasts three weeks, a botanical barrier spray that also lasts three weeks and an all-natural spray that lasts two weeks. The cost varies depending on your yard’s size but the company is offering discounts for first time customers due to the outbreak.
Photo courtesy of Pretty Handy Girl
Create a Stone Path You don’t need a garden; just create a clear path from your house to the hammock or backyard fire pit. “You only need 10-15 stones and stone dust,” explains Riha. “It’s an easy, low-budget, do-it-yourself project.” You can also add a little flair to your pathway by adding yard decorations like glow in the dark rocks or garden stakes.
Hammock A hammock is a fun backyard fixture that everyone will appreciate. Suspend a hammock between two trees and fasten the ropes with either industrial hooks or tree straps. Affordable hammocks with stands are also an option if a sturdy tree isn’t available.
A Portable Bar Say goodbye to making multiple trips inside with a bar cart on wheels. Load your cart up with glasses, small appetizer plates, a pitcher for lemonade or water and an array of snacks for a convenient outdoor fueling station. And if it starts to rain, you can easily transport your cart back inside to keep the party going.
A Fountain Need some ideas for a small yard? Invest in a fountain! Fountains are a great way to add a water feature to your outdoor space without costing too much or taking up lots of room. Riha says adding a fountain is another ideal do-it-yourself project—as long as you can lift the weight and dig the hole.
Plants and a renovated backyard won’t cure the coronavirus but they can certainly improve your mood—and your mental health should be a top priority if you’re cooped up with the kids, the dogs and a spouse. So take some time to get outside!
For those of you quarantining by yourself, you may be starting to get lonely. Even those of us with roommates, significant others or staying with family can tend to feel isolated or gloomy spending so much time at home. While it’s certainly not the happiest of times right now, we all have to try to focus on the positives of our situations and to make the most out of them. For Happiness Happens Month, we asked local life coaches for simple ways to find happiness during the coronavirus pandemic.
Brittney Asch: Asch Counseling and Development
Host virtual game nights. There are lots of ways to use technology to spend quality time with loved ones. The “Houseparty” app has a way to chat with friends and family face to face while playing built-in games. Other games you can play with friends include Code Names and Skibblio. My recommendation is to use one device to play on and one device to video chat.
Find ways to make meaning out of this time and give back. Write letters to residents at a local nursing home who can’t see their loved ones. Convert a neighborhood “little library” into a food pantry. Put encouraging artwork or messages on your windows for neighbors walking by to enjoy.
Learn a new skill. Try out a new recipe, make homemade pasta, learn to cross-stitch…
Create a nature scavenger hunt and go for a walk in your neighborhood.
Lamont Taylor: Changing the Game Life Coach
Have nostalgia family night. Watch an old school movie, play a game like Charades, Name That Tune or War, or have a dance competition. Zoom with family and friends to get them involved.
Laura Reichert: Triangle Life Coaching
Make a vision board and consider inviting friends or family members for a virtual vision board party. A vision board shows what you’re seeking in life and prompts you to consider what you want.
Before starting your board, ask yourself what your goals are and what you want your life to be like. Decide what areas of life you wish to address, such as relationships, family, sports, health, school or your career.
Gather supplies, including a large poster board, crayons or markers, magazines with plenty of headlines, pictures, scissors and glue. Browse through the magazines and your own collection of photos for images that reflect your goals and dreams. Choose words that are centered around the things you desire, the place(s) you want to live, or anything else representative of your thoughts and emotions. If you can’t find the right words, write your own with markers.
Arrange and rearrange the pictures on the poster board until you love how it looks, then affix your collage with glue. Display your vision board in your den, bedroom or somewhere you’ll see it every day so you can get excited about the prospect of achieving your goals.
Secretary Mandy Cohen, an internal medicine physician and head of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, has been the face of the state government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic—you’ve likely found her a composed, reassuring presence during televised COVID-19 updates alongside Gov. Roy Cooper. But far beyond the scope of her job, where she oversees a department of 16,000 employees with an annual budget of about $20 billion, Cohen has been working since January of 2017 to make the state a nationally recognized leader in innovative healthcare. Here are some things to know about Cohen.
1. A graduate of Cornell and Yale Medical School, Cohen also holds a master’s degree in public health from Harvard. She had no ties to North Carolina and was living in Washington, D.C. before Cooper appointed her to lead DHHS.
2. Cohen served as the chief operating officer and chief of staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration. She helped implement policies for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program as well as the Federal Health Insurance Marketplace under the Affordable Care Act.
3. Cohen is well-respected on both sides of the aisle, navigating a rocky divide between Democratic Cooper, who wants to expand Medicaid under the ACA, and the Republican-majority state legislature, which does not. Cohen has helped guide the state through a transition from fee-for-service Medicaid to a managed care model by which the state contracts with insurance companies that are paid pre-determined rates to provide healthcare services (currently, the Medicaid Managed Care has been suspended and NC Medicaid continues to operate under the DHHS-administered, fee-for-service model). The plan has been nationally recognized for its innovative approach to managed care.
4. Cohen spearheaded a pilot initiative, Healthy Opportunities, to test the impact of providing high-need Medicaid enrollees with housing, food, transportation and interpersonal safety interventions with the goal of improving health and reducing costs. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services authorized $650 million in state and federal Medicaid funding for the initiative.
5. Cohen implemented an Opioid Action Plan with more than $45.5 million in grant funding dedicated to fighting opioid misuse. The plan also updated the Controlled Substance Reporting System to help doctors identify patients at risk of misusing opioids. Overdose deaths declined, since the plan launched, for the first time in over a decade.
6. With partners and stakeholders across the state, Cohen led an Early Childhood Action Plan with an ambitious vision for better outcomes for North Carolina’s children from birth through age 8.
7. Cohen stands up for what she believes in. She made the case to include maternity coverage in the ACA before former NC Rep. Mark Meadows and congressional leaders in 2014, while eight months pregnant. And she publicly criticized the state House’s proposed budget for 2019-2021 last fall, arguing it harms the people of North Carolina by making “massive cuts to DHHS that will potentially impact everything from health inspections of restaurants to the safety of drinking water to child protective services.” The General Assembly adjourned this year without passing a budget.
8. Cohen says her mother, a nurse practitioner, inspired her to study medicine.
9. Healthcare business, news, research and opinion publication Modern Healthcare named Cohen to its 2019 list of Top 25 Women Leaders.
10. Cohen, a self-described music lover, lives in Raleigh with with her husband Sam, who is a health care regulatory lawyer, and their two young daughters. Follow her on Twitter @SecMandyCohen.
