Eat More Salad

Tags

Fitness Magazine, Publicity

Still settling into the new workspace (those bookshelves finally arrived and they are amazing. I highly recommend them, especially at that price!) so I still don’t have pictures to share yet. But I do have some exciting news to share.

This summer I was contacted through etsy by Fitness magazine about a possible feature in their holiday gift guide. I sent them some high-res photos, then a sample set, then…. I just waited. The admin at etsy who was my liaison with Fitness said that all I could do was wait until the magazine came out because you never know what will make it and what won’t. I was out for some supplies and passed by a magazine rack (I rarely pass one without stopping. I have piles of Martha Stewart, Veranda and Whole Living stacked a mile high). Lo and behold the new issue was out and, drum-roll please….
I made it in! It took every ounce of restraint not to do a happy dance in the middle of the store, so instead I scooped up 8 copies and grinned like a madwoman the entire way to my car.

Thank you so much to the folks at Fitness for including small businesses in their publications. As a small business, I plan to return the favor by including Fitness back into my life. My thrice weekly yoga practice has dwindled to one session a month (if I’m lucky). With the Holiday Rush already underway, I have realized that I will never find time to make it to the gym. I’m going to have to make time. And I know just the magazine to bring along to the treadmill.

Wine Table, As Promised (at last!)

Tags

food and drink, outdoor living, tutorial, wine table, wine tasting

There she is at last! To be completely honest, we finished the wine table in early July. But it is summer which means birthday parties, vacations, holidays and all the rest of it. Every time I would think of something I wanted to blog about, I would stop myself and remember that I promised the table would be next. Even still, I am cheating you a little because I’m only showing you our finished results. The full photo tutorial will follow (the kids do go back to school next week after all), but for now, feel free to bask in the beauty of a fully functional home wine-tasting table.  With honeybees, natch!
On one end there are French lemonades for the kids and on the other, French wines for us. I put potted plants down the center when it isn’t full of ice and bottles. The color of the wood will patina over the next few months and I might even give it an interesting stain in the spring.

We toasted with Malbec and Pinot Noir of course, but we’ve also recently discovered Vouvray. It tastes like a non-cloying Reisling.

The honeybees were a happy accident. The gutter we bought to use as the center didn’t work at all and we thought the project was a bust. Then I remembered the planter my mother had just bought me and it happened to fit perfectly. I called her to find out where she bought it and raced out to see if they had more. By chance, they had the exact number and sizes needed to fill the center of the table. Clearly fate means for me to drink my wine al fresco.

I love this wine stopper. I make all different types which I sell in my shop here, but all these pictured are from my personal collection. I discovered this old hot water faucet handle in the attic of my mothers Victorian house, so it was far too sentimental to sell.

I hope you forgive me for taking so long with this post. I will do my best to get the how-to up soon. My husband and I made the entire thing from scratch so there’s lots of room for personalization to your own tastes. Until then, cheers!

So Many DIY’s, So Little Time

Tags

DIY, entertaining, must have, outdoor living, picnic table, wine

I must have this. Must must must must. Must. I don’t make it a habit to host wine tastings (though we do taste plenty of wine at Casa Parker), but that is not going to stop me from pestering my husband to build this with me STAT. I’m picturing wine bottles and beer at summer picnics, juice boxes at the kid’s birthday parties and potted flowers the rest of the time (a centerpiece set lower than the table doesn’t block anyone’s view!)

If this photo is filling you with the must-haves as much as it is me, just click the photo to visit the tutorial. If you beat me to it (and since we have plans this weekend, you likely will), send me some pictures of how yours turned out! I will post pictures of ours when it’s done and if you’d like to show off yours just let me know and I’ll post it too. Of course, ours will look a little different than the photo above because instead of plain old corks, our bottles will be decked out in these:

Click the photos to see the current Milk & Honey line of wine stoppers. Santé

Balsamic Heirloom Tomato and Goat Cheese Bruschetta

Tags

bruschetta recipe, food and drink, hedonism, heirloom tomatoes, how-to, milk & honey, milk and honey, party food, photo tutorial, recipes, vegitarian food

image via sunset

Sorry I haven’t been around in the past week but I do have a very good reason: it was my birthday! True to my hedonistic nature, birthdays are never a one-day affair but a flurry of dinners, celebrations and gatherings with plenty of friends, family, wine and food.

This year started on my birthday eve when I my husband took me and the kids out to our favorite sushi restaurant for The Love Boat (a two foot long wooden boat, complete with sails, covered in over 70 pieces of sushi and sashimi). My kids think it is the most amazing thing they have ever seen and would prefer if every restaurant served their dinner on Japanese warships.

The main-event of my birthday celebration will be a day spent touring the Charlottesville wineries with a big group of friends and family next month. But even though schedules didn’t allow for it on my actual birthday, we still didn’t let the day (or excuse for a party) pass us by. We had our extended family over to barbecue. It rained all day, but that doesn’t stop us from having a ball (after the second bottle of Pinot I doubt anything was going to stop us from having a ball). My husband grilled fresh oysters which he served with his homemade mignonette sauce (best tip- use champagne vinegar instead of the plain white variety). And I made my current obsession: balsamic heirloom tomato and goat cheese bruschetta. I’m certain there is a less-wordy name for this recipe. Ambrosia works well. Or perhaps just “heaven”.

Here’s the absurdly simple yet absolutely sublime recipe. Please excuse the image quality on this post but the sun refused my party invitation so these were all taken inside.

First things first; get your grubby mitts on some heirloom tomatoes. We found ours at The Fresh Market but if you can get them at a local farm-stand, all the better. They are ugly, misshapen, gnarled little buggers that come in a rainbow of odd colors. They are the epitome of wabi-sabi in that their imperfections are exactly what make them so perfect. Next you’ll want to whip up some poor-mans pesto. If you happen to have a dashing man hanging around your kitchen, as I did, ask him to pull the leaves off the basil and finely chop them. Or you could do it yourself, but then someone else would have to take the picture. After chopping the basil, put it in a little bowl with a good amount of chopped garlic (the jarred refrigerated kind is fine) and drown it with extra virgin olive oil (don’t measure it, just pour it on for a few good glug-glugs of the bottle), then crack black pepper and sea salt over it, mix it up and set it aside. While he’s chopping basil, make yourself useful and chop up the tomatoes. When you slice the tomato in half, use your (hopefully washed) fingers to dig out the seedy pulp from the insides. You just want the meaty part of the tomatoes for this. Chop them up into whatever size chunks you prefer. Then dump your pesto mixture on top and mix well. Then drizzle heavily with balsamic vinegar and stir it through. Set it aside to do its magic (ie: marinate). In the meantime, get some good crusty french bread and slice it into 1/2-inch thick rounds. Lay them out on a baking sheet and put under the broiler until barely toasted.

Next get your goat cheese out. I like the plain crumbled kind with this recipe. They also come in thick, creamy, flavored varieties that are delicious on steak. but for this, the tomatoes are the star, so the plain works best.

Drain the tomato mixture if needed, or just use a slotted spoon to transfer the mixture to a clean serving bowl. Spread a piece of the warm bread with the crumbled goat cheese then top with the bruschetta. Divine.

This was a big hit at the party, but I also love to whip up a batch to nibble on while we drink wine on the deck. Hopefully the heirlooms I planted in the raised garden bed will keep me in bruschetta heaven all summer long. In my constant (losing) battle to institute “Meatless Mondays” at our house, so far this recipe is the closest I’ve come to victory.