Birthday Goodness

I had a wonderful birthday! Thank you all for the well wishes. My day started by waking up at 6 AM...when you get up at 4AM during the week it's hard to sleep past 6 or 7. Despite the early hour Nathan allowed me to open all of my birthday gifts. I received some beautiful jewelry from my in-laws, $$$ from the parents and grandpa and Nathan bought me a wonderful book, The Cheese Board which is all about bread, pastry, cheese & pizza!

After breakfast we headed to Concord for a few hours of antiques and hopes of finding something to spend birthday money on. I was not disappointed as you will see further on in this post.
After many hours of walking around we headed to the house to freshen up and go out for dinner.
We dined at the Crepe Cellar in Noda and it was by far the best meal we've had since I've moved here! It was fabulous!

We began our meal with mussels (sage, garlic, white wine).
(once again I didn't want to be the annoying person with the flash in a dark restaurant)

Nathan had the special swordfish with asparagus and risotto. I can't remember what all was in the risotto or on the sword fish but it was phenomenal.

I had a wild mushroom, spinach and goat cheese crepe with red cabbage slaw. Both were amazing and the slaw was the best I've ever had.

We finished our meal with a sweetened mascarpone & berries crepe and...

a Crepe Suzette (Grand Marnier butter sauce with vanilla bean ice cream).

It was a great birthday and here are my purchases with my birthday money.

Crazy Daisy Pyrex

New Blender (I burned up Nathans making soup)

Vintage shoes from Spain

AND this fabulous hat!!!

Farmers Market Update

So it just happens that the best farmers market that we've found around Charlotte is only 10 minutes from our house! We knew that there was a market in Harrisburg but we could never figure out when it was. A few weeks a go we were out running errands in town on and a Monday and saw that the farmers market was open. It is amazing!! All items are super local from either Harrisburg or Concord.
Here are a few pics of our Harrisburg Farmers Market purchases a few weeks ago.

Summerberry Farm

A few weeks ago we went blackberry picking at Summerberry Farm. I've never seen so many fat blackberries! For some reason whenever you go to pick berries it always ends up being the hottest most humid day of the week. We survived and came home with 2 gallons of massive berries.




I froze a lot but the rest I made into jam. I got my recipe from Food In Jars which is were I got the recipes for my strawberry jam and raspberry.

Blueberries is next on my list. Oh and I made cobbler with some of the blackberries using the Peach Cobbler recipe from my previous post. Yum!

Happy Birthday To Me!

Eggplant

We harvested our first eggplant yesterday! Isn't it beautiful? For a full garden update checkout Nathans blog.

Fresh Peach Cobbler With Biscuit Topping

Last week I bought a huge basket of peaches at the farmers market. We froze almost all of them but I had a few left that were about to go bad if I didn't do anything with them. I found this recipe and it is the BEST peach cobbler I've ever had. I don't like really sweet things and this has less than 1/2 a cup of sugar in it! We topped it with a little tart frozen yogurt...perfect.

Fresh Peach Cobbler With Biscuit Topping
Serves 6

Filling

* 2 1/2 pounds peaches , ripe but firm (6 to 7 medium)
* 1/4 cup granulated sugar (1 3/4 ounces)
* 1 teaspoon cornstarch
* 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
* pinch of salt

Biscuit Topping

* 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (5 ounces)
* 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon table salt
* 5 tablespoons unsalted butter (cold), cut into 1/4-inch cubes
* 1/3 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
* 1 teaspoon granulated sugar

Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees.

2. For the filling: Peel peaches, then halve and pit each. Using small spoon, scoop out and discard dark flesh from pit area. Cut each half into 4 wedges. Gently toss peaches and sugar together in large bowl; let stand for 30 minutes, tossing several times. Drain peaches in colander set over large bowl. Whisk 1/4 cup of drained juice (discard extra), cornstarch, lemon juice, and salt together in small bowl. Toss peach juice mixture with peach slices and transfer to 8-inch-square glass baking dish. Bake until peaches begin to bubble around edges, about 10 minutes.

3. For the topping: While peaches are baking, in food processor, pulse flour, 3 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to combine. Scatter butter over and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal, about ten 1-second pulses. Transfer to medium bowl; add yogurt and toss with rubber spatula until cohesive dough is formed. (Don't overmix dough or biscuits will be tough.) Break dough into 6 evenly sized but roughly shaped mounds and set aside.

4. To assemble and bake: After peaches have baked 10 minutes, remove peaches from oven and place dough mounds on top, spacing them at least 1/2 inch apart (they should not touch). Sprinkle each mound with portion of remaining 1 teaspoon sugar. Bake until topping is golden brown and fruit is bubbling, 16 to 18 minutes. Cool cobbler on wire rack until warm, about 20 minutes; serve.

Birthday/4th of July Weekend

Last Friday we headed down to Ga for my Grandpa's 85th birthday party. I did the cake and also took it upon myself to do sugar cookies too. I thing making sugar cookies is fun because there are so many options as to what shapes and decorating you can do. Unfortunately it is a very time consuming thing to create and half way through I always wonder why I decided to make them. I think I'm slowing getting a little faster because it didn't seem to take as long this time.

On Tuesday I made the dough and Wednesday I cut and baked them. Thursday I decorated the cookies and made the layers for the cake. Towards the tail end of my baking projects Nathan started making dinner and I had to take a picture of the explosion in our kitchen.



Everything turned out well even though the cake wasn't exactly how I had planned it. Oh, and half of the cookies got squashed by the crock pot on the way down but thankfully enough survived so we could still have some at the party.

Getting ready to blow out candles!

After all the birthday festivities ended and it got dark Phillip and Wesley shot off fireworks for us. Phillip has been buying the fireworks for the 4th on his way from Fl to Ga the last few years and this year he went all out. Every year they get a little more organized before they start shooting things off and this year it was the best so far. Thanks Phil!






Hope all of you had a wonderful weekend!!