Strawberry Season!

I love North Carolina.  I love that it's still primarily a rural, agricultural state. That we have mountains and beaches. But I really love the produce of spring and summer.

Strawberry season runs mid-April through late June in North Carolina, which means now is a pretty awesome time to go strawberry picking! There are tons of you-pick farms around the state, many in Wake County alone.  If you don't live in Wake County, you can find you-pick farms near you at this site.

Supporting local agriculture is a big deal in North Carolina.  When I was in graduate school, I did an independent study on community health planning, including how farm-to-fork and community gardens impact our lives, both economically and medically.  Besides the major metropolitan areas in NC (Charlotte, the Triad, the Triangle), the state is still heavily agricultural.  Supporting local produce means supporting your local farmers AND your state economy.  Not to mention, it's better for you and tastes better!

This past weekend, Aaron and I went strawberry picking.  Sure, I could go to the farmer's market and buy the strawberries I need to make jam, but it was a gorgeous day and it's cheaper when you put in some of your own labor.  We went to Buckwheat Farm in Apex.

Rows after rows of strawberries!

Aaron picking strawberries

Strawberries :)

This was just my bucket. Aaron had a full one as well.

We picked lots of strawberries and had homemade blueberry ice cream while sitting on the tailgate of the truck.  It did my southern heart good.

Isn't he cute with our strawberry haul?

The next day, I did my first canning of the season! With so much to work with, I made three different recipes: Strawberry Jam, Double Berry Jalapeno Jam and Strawberry Rhubarb Butter. I still have a ton of berries left over!

Left to right: strawberry jam, double berry jam, strawberry rhubarb butter

I used a different recipe for the strawberry jam this year.  The recipe I used last year kept turning out solid, not like jam.  I tried it two or three times and it came out the same every time, so this year I used a tried and true Ball recipe.  Aaron ate an entire 8 oz jar of the strawberry jam in two days, so it's safe to say that it turned out well.

The empty jar...in two days.

Aaron may love the jam, but fruit butters will always be my favorite.  This one might take the cake!

I'm really looking forward to the canning season this year because of Bertha, my 21-quart pressure cooker! I can finally can some vegetables, which you can't do in a water bath canner.  Now I just have to read the directions and watch the DVD so I don't send Bertha through the ceiling :)

Eat to Live or Live to Eat

I've cooked five meals a week for two weeks.  And I've taken (and eaten) the leftovers from those meals for lunch every day for two weeks.  Any change that is made in someone's life is rarely based on one reason alone.  Especially when those changes are significant.

About two weeks ago, I decided to change how we eat: how much I cook, how much we go out, what I cook, what I eat for lunch, etc.  It started out as purely financial - we're building a house and want to save as much for a down payment as possible by the time that it's finished (Augustish).  So we started eating out less and cooking more.  Then I saw a picture of me from my sister-in-law's shower. At first I told myself it was just an unflattering photo.  Then I stood on the scale and it told me that no, that picture was actually very accurate. I started thinking about what to do about that and I decided to start with food.

Let's be honest - I love food. I know they say that you are supposed to eat to live, but I live to eat.  Not necessarily to gorge myself, but to eat good food. So for me, any major change in regards to my weight and health always starts with food.

I sat down and planned five meals.  Normally, I cook about three meals a week and we would eat out between three to five times a week.  And when I eat out, I eat all the bad things.  Especially if it's Mexican. I have no self-control when it comes to queso.

Taking on cooking every night during the week while working full time is a big commitment, so I planned meals that I would like, but that were under 500 calories.  I also stick to meals that are said to take 40 minutes or less because who actually is as quick as the recipe says? If you are, I give you serious props.  I really just wanted to be excited about our dinners and for them to be doable so that after sitting in traffic, I still wanted to come home and cook.  I also planned out a snack for the week.  Pastries are my downfall, so I made some berry lemonade bars to eat throughout the week.  The rest of my snacks became fruit, not processed foods like my usual Special K pastry crisps.  I stopped buying Lean Cuisines for lunch because I don't really like them and they don't fill me up.  If I bring a Lean Cuisine for lunch, I'm 50% more likely to not eat it than if my lunch is leftovers from a meal that I like.

The change? After the first two hunger-filled days, I got used to my schedule. Breakfast, banana at 10, lunch at noon, some other fruit around 3 and dinner around 630-7.  I was good with eating between 1200 and 1400 calories. And I actually ate my leftovers and didn't go out to eat at lunch. And I lost some weight.

These are fairly significant changes, but not hard.  I still eat three meals a day, they're just between 300-500 calories.  I still have a morning and afternoon snack and I still drink my latte everyday.  But I look at portions. I do count calories because it helps me plan better.  Thanks to my new snacking habits, I'm pretty much getting a minimum of three servings of fruits and vegetables a day and getting five servings at least 2 days a week.

So, why am I writing this? Do I think I've found something new? No. But I'm a girl that's had a love/hate relationship with food and weight for most of her life.  I'm writing this because I feel like I've finally, at the age of 29, found a good place, a good balance of the two (though I still have a long way to go). I'm also writing it because many people don't cook anymore, they think it's hard. It's not.  It does definitely help to have a husband that washes dishes because I use all the dishes when I cook.  But making dinners, dinners that you want to eat, every night is very attainable.

But I'm also writing this for me. To be able look back, if I forget, and remember how to get back to this place.

Also, to give you my favorites of the recipes I've used this week:

Seared Flank Steak with Blue Cheese Polenta

 I love steak and the flavor was awesome, but the polenta is where it's at.  Polenta is a lot like grits.  I'm still making the polenta to go with other meals.

Smoky Shrimp and Chicken Gumbo

This takes a while to make, mostly because of the roux, but is worth it if you like gumbo.  It does have a bit of heat to it, but I don't think it's a lot.  It looks more like soup when you first make it, but then the rice soaks up the moisture and it becomes much more gumbo-like (very scientific term).  It also makes a ton! So far, we've had this for 2 meals and I've eaten it for lunch 3 times and there is still some left!

Dark Chocolate Banana Bread

Chocolate Covered Katie is one of my favorite blogs because she does dessert makeovers.  It's a great site for restricted diets as most of her recipes can be made gluten free, vegan, low-fat, high fiber, oil-free and refined sugar free. I ended up making this recipe because I had overripe bananas to use and the rest of the ingredients I already had on hand, but I will definitely be making this again!  Very filling and super chocolaty. Be warned - if you put this in an online calorie counting program, it will give you much higher numbers than she does.  I trust her numbers, though, because I've eaten this every morning for breakfast and still lost weight.

Sausage Spaghetti Pie

This came out of one of my cookbooks and I've made it quite a few times for Aaron and I.  It's really quick and really good.  I also love that it's under 400 calories.

Roasted Broccoli

This is not the actual recipe that I used, but very close to it.  I got this recipe from Papa Spud's, my local produce box, but they require you to be a member to get their recipes!  Before this, I ate broccoli, but did not love it.  This will make you love broccoli.  It tastes nothing like the broccoli you grew up with.  I actually go back for seconds with this recipe.

Note - All pictures come from the links to the recipes, I don't take any credit for the photos...mostly because I inhaled my food before any pictures could be taken!

Oh and I still most definitely live to eat. I'm just eating better :)

     

My Broadway Labor of Love

It's been nearly 4 months since I've blogged.  Nothing surprising there.  It's not that interesting things haven't happened, it's just that so many of them have happened!  After not blogging for so long, I decided that my next blog post had to be something pretty big.

We all know that I love cakes, both decorating and eating, and, like most southern women, I show my love with food.  In the South, if there is an emotion, we satisfy it with food.  Sad? We give you comfort food.  Happy? We give you cake! I'm no different.  So when my sister-in-law asked me to be her matron of honor, of course Insaid yes. Then, I started planning!

I planned Abbey's bridal shower with the help of another bridesmaid, Jen.  I really can't say enough awesome things about Jen, she just made shower planning so easy! We came up with a Broadway theme because that's what Abbey and her fiancee, Christian, like to do.  We came up with a simple menu, decorations, games, etc.  But I knew, deep in my heart, that I was going to do an outrageous cake.  Mostly because I love Abbey, but also because I apparently like to push myself really far.

To Pinterest I went! I found lots of good cupcake ideas, but I was taking a cake decorating class with my friend Sarah and learning how to do fondant, so of course I thought "Why not make a crazy elaborate cake?!"  Who wouldn't think that, right?

I scanned through multiple photos until I came across two cakes that I liked.

I took the skyline and theater stage idea from this cake

I took the playbill and roses from this cake

I loved the skyline and the "stage" part of the first cake and I liked the Playbills of the second cake. I decided to do a mix of the two cakes.  Thankfully, I did a trial run of the cake.  Other than what we did in class, I honestly had never messed with fondant before.  It was a whole new world of cake decorating for me and, me being me, I decided to go big or go home.  Usually, I go big or go home the day of an event and meltdowns ensue and it's just not pretty.  When I told my husband what I wanted to do, he reminded me of my past experiences and gently (read: demanded) that I practice first.  He's a smart guy.

And so I made my trial cake.  I used a box mix of maple cake because I get tired of always eating white cake.  I ordered the good fondant (Satin Ice) in a big 5 lb tub of white for the majority of the cake and then smaller packages of red and black fondant because those colors are so hard to achieve with tinting.  I didn't want to use the good stuff, though, so I used my left over Wilton fondant and tinted it for my trial run cake.

I made the Playbills first.  I made them out of gum paste so they would dry hard.  I was very proud of them!

My first playbill.  I measured 2" wide by 3" high based on the size of my top cake.

I made two the exact same size, then I angled one like they did in the picture. 

I used black water color to write out "playbill."  Writing is not my forte, as you will see. 

Again.  

Then I covered my bottom cake with fondant and used a stencil to cut out the skyline.  The skyline was much taller than my cake and I ended up having a lot of the building fold over the top of the bottom cake.  I used food coloring to water color the cake blue instead of using a blue fondant.  I made the top cake next.  The top cake was short because I overfilled the 6" cake pans and they didn't cook through all the way, even after being in the oven for 45 minutes!  I salvaged what I could and worked on the fondant for the curtains.

The first cake I covered with fondant other than the one cake we did in class. This is why you do trial runs!

See how much space there is below the skyline and how far up the buildings go? 

I added yellow windows on the trial cake, but left them off the real cake.  My fondant, as you can see, is also a lot thicker on this skyline than on the real cake. 

Oh baby. This took 8 hours to decorate and it wasn't even finished! No bottom borders, no monogram, nothing on top.  Still, though, not terrible for my first shot at this. 

My trial cake was pretty sad, but I wasn't too hard on myself because it was a trial cake, after all! It was also the first time I'd ever done something so elaborate and I knew that it would look better when I had the true colors on the cake, not just what I tinted to see the difference.

I learned a lot from that trial run!

• Schedule
• The trial run cake I did between a Friday and Saturday.  I baked the cakes Friday night and decorated them Friday morning.  It took me nearly 8 hours on Saturday to crumb coat and decorate the cakes, time I knew I didn't have the day of the shower.  So I came up with a schedule: Tuesday - make buttercream, Wednesday - bake cakes, Thursday - crumb coat cakes, Friday night - decorate the cakes! I followed that schedule and only spent about 2 hours Saturday morning finishing up details on the cake. 

• New cake mix
• The cake mix that I used originally was too moist and soft.  The bottom cake didn't hold up well under the fondant and the weight of the top cake, which was smaller than the real top cake would be.  I did some research (googled) and found this awesome recipe for white almond sour cream cake which uses white cake mix, but makes a much more dense cake that also happens to taste amazing! It will definitely be my new go-to cake mix (just make sure to make half the recipe!).

• Skyline
• The skyline on the trial run cake was too tall.  There was a lot of extra space on the bottom, so I chopped that off to make it shorter on the real cake.  The fondant was also way too thick the first time I did it, which made it hard to carve out the buildings.  They came out much smoother when I rolled the fondant out more.  I think it looks much better, like a real skyline, on the real cake.

• Better techniques
• Any time you do something the first time, you learn better ways to do it.  I learned better ways to drape the fondant so that I didn't have to do extra decorations to hide my sloppy work.   

The result was a completely different looking cake! 

Shorter skyline with thinner fondant.  I also used less color to achieve a lighter blue for the sky. I also used straws for extra support.  

I also added a gold border to clean it up a bit. 

The top of the real cake.  The bottom border is hard to see, but it has a slight gold tint to it as well. 

Finished product! I practiced that monogram at least 10 times and it still didn't come out as good as I would have liked.

Is it exactly like the Pinterest photos above? No. But am I happy with how it turned out? You bet I am! And the next cake that I make will probably be even better thanks to everything I learned from this cake! The best part is that Abbey also loved her cake!

Cake at the shower on my awesome cake stand (thanks Home Goods!)