Alright veggie-loving locavores, you know what time it is, right? It’s pick-your-farm-share time!
Read on to get some help with picking your share AND to hear about a new company that may make the whole farm-share experience more personal and easy to navigate. Continue reading
As soon as we picked eggs as our ingredient of the season, I knew that I wanted to try out a few cocktails that include egg whites. These are recipes that I’ve seen all over the web, on fancy bar menus, and well-curated Instagram photos, but, there was no way that I could bring myself to taste one. Until now. Continue reading
Eggs are our ingredient of the season, look for some egg-citing and totally egg-cellent posts in the months ahead.
I like to have a few hard-boiled eggs on hand. They’re a super easy snack, can be added to salad for an extra protein boost, or can be turned into egg salad for a quick lunch. But I admit that my hard-boiled egg snacks can only last so long before I get tired of them.
Today, I’m sharing a recipe for soy sauce eggs. They’re just hard boiled eggs that have been lightly simmered in a soy sauce mixture, adding a touch of flavor and color to the whites of the egg.
If you think you’re getting tired of hard boiled eggs, this is such an easy way to change things up and add a bit of flavor to your eggs.
This recipe comes from the cookbook 101 Easy Asian Recipes. I found the cookbook after binging on Ugly Delicious on Netflix. Here’s another version of the eggs where instead of simmering them in the sauce, you just let them marinate in the fridge.
I stored my eggs in the simmering sauce, and even poured some of the sauce over the eggs for extra flavor before eating. Some recipes suggest that the eggs can get too salty if stored within the sauce, but I didn’t find that to be the case.
My title is a play on Sarah’s post. While I also used kitchen ingredients for my dyeing (purple cabbage, purple onion skins, turmeric), you’ll see that somehow the whole process ending up being a lot less pretty and a lot more crazy. BUT! I think I learned a few things that will improve the process next year and may help you too.
That’s right, this month and next we’re focusing our attention on the incredible edible egg!
Of course, this is a great ingredient to feature at this time of year, with Easter just around the corner. But beyond that, I’m really excited to feature eggs because they are such a versatile ingredient.
I often take our featured ingredients as a challenge to try new recipes and ideas. This month we’ll bring you main dishes and desserts, side dishes and snacks, and cocktails! Yes, we’ll be cracking a raw egg into the cocktail shaker and giving it a go. If that’s not dedication to this little blog side project, then I don’t know what is. Continue reading
Ahh April. Predictably for this time of year, I’m wondering how we got here. Weren’t we just slogging through the end of January?!
At the same time, I feel that renewed energy and excitement that comes with warmer days, more sunshine, and the smell of wet soil after a good rain snow melt. Let’s not kid ourselves, I live in the mountains, and woke up to four inches of snow on Saturday. Fortunately, most of it had melted by Sunday night.
If I had to break the month down into a few common themes, it’s eating, getting outside, and observing the changing seasons… Continue reading
Since the start of the year, we’ve been focusing on monthly initiatives. A theme that sets the stage for some of the posts we’ll be sharing throughout the month. In January, we focused on good habits. During February we kept those good habits going with a particular focus on taking care of our mental health. This month, we mentioned in the Monthly Welcome that we want to put the focus on relationships, and in particular, to something called “friendraising” like fundraising, but with friends, ya dig it?
The communities we love to insert ourselves into are usually built around shared interests: cooking, hiking, parents, etc. Normally we find out about these groups through friends, community calendars, our city’s free weekly paper, or the internet, and sometimes we start our own groups.
Sarah began this series by discussing how and why to start a meetup group, and I followed up with a discussion about starting a Facebook group. While those ideas may sound like on in the same, they actually served different purposes. Sarah’s group was used to primarily promote events that she was hosting, while my group was a forum for sharing events hosted by other area groups… and in those posts we explain why one forum may be better than the other for certain purposes.
Today I’m talking about a special kind of book club : a cookbook club! I’ve taken part in a cookbook club for a few years now, and it’s been a really great experience. Here’s what we do…
A cookbook club is a potluck gathering where everyone attending prepares recipes from the same cookbook.
Our group meets approximately every two months. We rotate hosting duties. The host gets to pick the book and provides drinks. Sometimes the drinks compliment the book’s cuisine, other times it’s just wine and sparkling water.
Our group has a no-kids policy (little babies are obviously allowed). This makes for a more relaxing potluck, where you can enjoy the food and have a bit of conversation. About once/year there’s been a family-friendly event, but in general, it’s adults only.
This article was the inspiration for our club, and really I couldn’t sum it up any better than that. Cookbook clubs bring a group of friends to share a delicious meal. From one potluck to the next, you get to go on whichever culinary adventure you want, from Thai to Italian to Middle Eastern to dishes from the American South. The potluck is the celebration of this communal experience.
Our potlucks start by everyone introducing themselves and the dish they brought. If you’re not careful, these introductions can drag out as guests go off on funny or painful tangents about what it took to put their dish together. Oftentimes, it’s no trouble at all, but other times there can be the adventure of finding the right ingredients or the tale of how a dish had to be made and re-made to get it just right.
After introductions, plates are passed, food is served, and everyone relaxes into conversation and a good meal. And really, every time, the meals are delicious!
If you’re thinking about starting a cookbook club, it’s likely that you’ll also offer to be the first to host. Pick a time, date, and book.
Send out invites to your friends, and encourage them to invite others that may be interested. We’ve found 8-12 guests to be a great number, but you may have to work up to that as you slowly get the word out, don’t be deterred.
On the day of, there’s the usual straightening up of the house. Then do a few things to prepare for hosting a potluck. Prepare your table for the food, including trivets for hot dishes. Put out a pile of plates,silverware, napkins, and extra serving utensils. Prepare a drink station with the beverages, ice, and glasses. Put out hotpads and make your oven and stove available for any guests that may have to keep a dish warm. Make it easy for guests to help themselves so that you can focus on welcoming everyone and taking care of any last minute details.
As the guests arrive, start serving drinks. Once all of the dishes are on the table, start the introductions. Start with a short welcome, introduce yourself and your dish, and then go around the table having each guest do the same.
After introductions, let the guests help themselves to the food.
When the group I’m in started, it was small enough that all communication could be done by email. But after a while, that got a bit cumbersome, especially if a conversation got started and you were 20 emails behind. Eventually we moved to Google Groups, but for one reason or another, that was also hard for some members to navigate. Now we use a private Facebook group for communication.
Facebook works well for our purposes. We can use the poll option to pick dates, and sometimes hosts have used polls to help decide which cookbook to use. Once you have a date, it’s easy to create an “event” within the group where you can put pertinent details for that particular potluck.
To keep track of who is bringing which dish from the book, we use a Google spreadsheet, and keep it “pinned” to the top of the Facebook group’s feed. In that document, we have a different sheet for each potluck. Anyone attending includes their name, the dish they plan on making, and what category of food it is (main, side, dessert, vegetarian, etc.). This helps the host with knowing how many people to expect, and makes it easy for all guests to help round-out the variety of dishes. We’ve never had a problem with having an unbalanced meal; usually there’s a nice ratio of mains to sides plus a few desserts.
Sometimes the hardest aspect of this club is picking out the next book! I like to follow a few food-related blogs in an effort to keep on top of what’s coming out when looking for new releases.
When picking a book, be aware that not everyone in the club may want to buy it. It’s nice if the book is available in your local library or if enough members have the book so that you can pass it around before the event. Another thing we sometimes do is pick a book by a food writer who also has a blog, then allow people in the group to choose recipes from the book or the blog.
Below are a few suggestions for books, and I include a note when the author also has a blog. If you have any books that you would add to our list, please let me know!
*The photos throughout this post came from my Farm Share series, where you can find loads of meal inspiration!
Today I’m sharing the most scrumptious yet simple lip balm recipe. The addition of comfrey and calendula-infused olive oils adds creates a super nourishing base. The blend of unrefined cocoa butter + peppermint essential oils produces an amazing scent.
I’ve talked in greater details about essential oils in this post. This post reiterates many of the lip-balm making tips that are also discussed in our floral balm post.
Since the start of the year, we’ve been focusing on monthly initiatives. A theme that sets the stage for some of the posts we’ll be sharing throughout the month. In January, we focused on good habits. During February we kept those good habits going with a particular focus on taking care of our mental health. This month, we mentioned in the Monthly Welcome that we want to put the focus on relationships, and in particular, to something called “friendraising” like fundraising, but with friends, ya dig it?
The communities we love to insert ourselves into are usually built around shared interests: cooking, hiking, parents, etc. Normally we find out about these groups through friends, community calendars, our city’s free weekly paper, or the internet, and sometimes we start our own groups.
Sarah started this series by discussing how and why to start a meetup group and do a little friendraising for yourself. Today’s post is very similar in nature. I want to talk about starting a Facebook group. BUT as you’ll see, my group is NOT about hosting events…
It’s been a while since we’ve done any sort of DIY craft post! We’re definitely making like crazy, so that’s no excuse. If anything, it means that we have a backlog of Make with Me posts to work on.
Well, the DIY drought ends today. I recently learned a great way to wind yarn around an object and tie it off without any tricky knots or loose ends. This is so simple, and for some of you, this may already be a tool in your DIY toolbox, but I’m hoping that there are a few of you that will appreciate this new trick as much as I do.
Click on for our step-by-step guide and a short list of places where this technique may be useful.