You may know that I love to bake, but for the past several months I have really lost my baking mojo. I didn’t even want to look at recipes for baked goods. Nothing. That all changed on vacation. First I went to Long Beach Island, NJ and visited some of my favorite bakeries and ate many goodies. This past weekend I was in New York where I consumed wonderful cupcakes, Italian cookies and French delights. All of this has brought back my desire to become a better baker. Today I took inventory of my baking supplies and made my shopping list. This picture was taken in my pantry of some of my baking supplies. Fire up the oven!

On our final night in NYC, we decided to splurge a little and go to dinner at Bar Boulud which is a Casual French Bistro owned by Chef Daniel. The dinner had a few firsts for me, namely beef cheeks, pate and pork belly, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I didn’t take pictures of all my dishes because I was too excited about eating them, but here is a shot of the menu.

For lunch today we went to Veselka Restaurant for pierogis which were delicious with a capital D. After lunch we headed over to an Italian bakery called Veniero’s. I bought some cookies to take home and it has become quite a challenge to not dig into them. Here is picture of one of the cases at Veniero’s.

Mother’s Day this year also landed on our 12th Wedding Anniversary, so we decided to celebrate all weekend. Instead of going out to eat, this usually means we eat at home and cook something as a treat. And by treat, I usually mean beef, namely filet mignon. We aren’t huge red meat eaters, so when we want to celebrate, we like to do it right.

We have been to Hedgeapple Farm previously during Family Fun on the Farm weekends that take place in October, but had never purchased any beef there. It was always something we talked about doing, but never made the trip when it was time to buy. This time was different, I was on a mission to eat local so we headed out to the farm.

Hedgeapple Farm raises grass-fed black angus cows and then sells directly to the public from their retail outlet on the farm. If you want to learn more about grass-fed beef, you can read about it here. We knew we wanted to make filet mignon on Saturday night and hubby decided he wanted to attempt brisket on Sunday. Worked for me.

I expected the prices to be more and of course they were. I can’t remember exactly how much more they were than shopping at a warehouse or grocery store, but I remember thinking it wasn’t all that bad. It was definitely less expensive than eating out, plus it was a whole lot better. The woman working there could not have been more delightful and helpful, answering our questions and offering recipes.

I have to admit I didn’t know what to expect as to the taste of the beef. Honestly, before I watched Food, Inc., I didn’t even pay attention to what the cow I was eating had to eat. Never crossed my mind. When I took the first bite, I knew it was going to be very hard to go back to corn-fed beef. Oh my goodness, it had a flavor that I can’t accurately describe and it almost melted in my mouth like butter. Of course, it was a filet and it is suppose to be like that, but the brisket was just as good.

It really did have a different flavor than any beef I had eaten before and we will definitely be going back for more. As I said the cost was more, but I would gladly eat out less to make up for the expense.

You can find Hedgeapple Farm on the Interwebs here. If beef is your thing do yourself a favor and make a trip out there soon. Just make sure you leave some for me.

Have you been to Hedgeapple? Let me know what you tried and your thoughts.

Photo by me

When Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution was on awhile back, I watched it and became very happy that my daughter takes a packed lunch to school every day. I then watched Food, Inc. and realized that even with Little J taking her lunch to school, we still needed to make some serious changes as a family. The movie did not make me want to stop eating meat, but it did make me realize we need to be more responsible about what we decide to eat as individuals and a society.

It was really driven home for me when we visited a dairy farmer as part of Agriculture Day at Leadership Frederick County. You can read the recap post here. What it all comes down to is knowing the source of your food and eating as local as possible. We need to keep our food purchases local to not only be healthier, but also to protect the food chain. If you want to know what I mean by protecting the food chain, read this.

I’m not trying to scare anyone or be a downer and become some activist, but I do think we need to not take what we purchase at grocery stores at face value. I have started to read food labels much more and am totally shocked by what I see. High fructose corn syrup in hot dog rolls?? Really? Yikes.

Of course, we can’t make everything at home, grow it ourselves, or buy everything local due to expense and accessibility, but it is something that I am committing my family to as much as possible. I have joined a CSA which quite frankly scares me more than just a little bit. There are a lot of vegetables that I have no idea what to do with, but am ready for the challenge. I plan on learning how to make more things on my own and preserve things for the winter months.

Also we will be exploring all the great resources we have locally for getting food from the farm to the plate as much as possible. So while I will still be blogging about all the goodies I like to cook and bake, I hope to provide information on local food as I explore all of our options. I hope that you will share with me hints and recipes to make this all a little easier ;-)

Tell me your favorite source for local meats, veggies, fruit, dairy, etc.?

Last month I took a truffle making class at The Kitchen Studio. First off, if you have never taken a class there you should. What’s better than learning to make chocolate truffles? Making them with friends. I was fortunate enough to share the evening with April and Cathy. I was late, of course, so I missed the discussion and tasting of the different kinds of chocolates, but Cathy was kind enough to get me caught up.

Class was on a Friday night and the week had been pretty tough on me, but ending the week by playing with chocolate
was just what the doctor ordered. Chefs Christine and Caroline did a lot of prep work for us during the day and had prepared the flavored ganaches for us. There was hazelnut, aztec (with a kick of cayenne), cappuccino, and chai tea. Chef Christine demonstrated how to make a salted caramel center. Yes, chocolate, caramel and salt. I was in Heaven.

I have read many truffle recipes and watched them made, but this was the first time I actually got to get my hands dirty. Believe me you will get dirty, but having chocolate everywhere doesn’t suck. To keep the chocolate from melting too much it is advisable to wear latex gloves when rolling the truffle centers. Cathy and I worked with the aztec filling. It was a little harder than I expected, but Cathy tackled it like a pro by scooping it out. My job was to roll them into balls, but some of mine resembled the truffles that the pigs forage, rather than pretty balls of chocolaty goodness.  The good news is no matter what they looked like, they all tasted great!

Now it was time for coating the truffles and Chef Christine pulled out the chocolate temperer. This allowed us to put the perfect chocolate coating on the salted caramel truffles. This also marked the beginning of my next culinary adventure with chocolate. Because of this class, I have ordered a chocolate tempering machine that should be here in a week or so. Stay tuned for that.

The class was great and I now have enough confidence to move forward and try truffles on my own as well as many other chocolate concoctions.

If you ever stop by my house and see me walking around in sunglasses, it’s not because I had a rough night. It’s because Little J has discovered photography. While cleaning out our home office during the blizzard, we found an older digital camera and decided to give it to her to use. She immediately started running around the house taking pictures of anything she could find including her toys and Sierra. I could sense her frustration was building until she finally started stomping her feet and ran upstairs. Upon investigation, we discovered the problem was that she couldn’t hold the camera still so everything was coming out blurry.

Enter the tripod. I have a Flip camera with a small table-top tripod, so I attached that to the camera and off she went again. This time she would look at the screen after taking a picture, smile and announce “that’s a good one.” So while I applaud her creative choices in subjects and angles, I’m not a total fan of her work.

She has basically become my very own personal paparazzi. Let’s just say it’s a really good thing the pictures are digital and can be deleted, because some of them would downright scare the poor individual developing the film. I apparently need to teach her more about hair and make-up specifically that Mommy requires both of these things to be complete before anyone should even consider taking my picture. She is notorious for catching me when I first wake up and come down the stairs in the morning. Can you say bed head?I turn a corner, FLASH, there she is. She is especially fond of the surprise attack.

While I don’t want to stifle her creativity, I fear for the career path she is on if we don’t provide some limits. So consider this your fair warning, if you see Little J and her trusty camera know anything is fair game with her.

My friend Jen’s blog post the other day about reconnecting with her passion for running inspired this post. What does flour, sugar and butter have to do with running? Absolutely NOTHING. I’m talking about the passion part. I have no explanation and I really don’t know when it started, but baking has been my go-to activity when I’m feeling stressed or just want to get my mind off work. There is just something about following a recipe and creating something yummy that brings me so much joy. I WISH running or any kind of exercising did that for me, but alas it doesn’t. Bathing suit season would sure be a lot more fun.

Last week I was preparing for my presentation about social media at the Frederick Chamber New Media and Technology Conference when I began to get really nervous about it. I have presented on many occasions, but for some reason this one was rattling my nerves. Common sense would probably tell me to prepare more, but frankly I knew the topic inside and out. So what did I do? Baked, of course.

Now I should provide a little back story first. During Twitter conversations before the conference I had mentioned that I would bring some cookies to conference to share, so it was something I talked about, but didn’t know if I would have the time. I really didn’t have the time, but the baking Siren was calling me. I went to my list of recipes I want to try. Yes, I have a baking to do list. I am always on the hunt for interesting sounding recipes to add to this list. If you have something I should try, leave a comment below with it please.

The recipe I decided to try that night was suggested to me by @kimthewriter for Homemade Oreos I mean, seriously, how can you go wrong with an Oreo? I checked the pantry and had all the ingredients, so it was time to get to work. As I started measuring ingredients, I could already feel my shoulders begin to relax and a relaxed smile come across my face. I was in the zone. I had Little J there helping me with adding ingredients and shaping the cookies while we listened to some music and laughed. Everything was right in the world. Sappy, I know. Bear with me, I’m having a moment.

By the time we finished, we had a delicious cookie that we both had to keep ourselves from devouring them all. I had relaxed and with one more review of my notes was ready for my presentation. I took the cookies with me to the conference, because next to the actual baking process the next best thing is sharing them with friends. I was happy to leave the conference feeling that my presentation had been a success and my cookie container almost empty. Both were a sign of a great day in my book.

Your turn, hit the comments and let me know where you find your zen. Also give me some things to add to my baking to do list.

It’s no secret that I love food and am trying to improve at my photography skills. My friend Jessica kindly has offered to help me out on the photography front. We met at Moxie a few weeks ago to have lunch and to practice taking pictures of food. The lunch was good, the company was great and actually my photos didn’t come out half bad.

I started with the bake potato soup:

Main course was a grilled cheese with bacon:

Dessert was chocolate cake with strawberry butter cream icing:

And after:

I learned about the Macro setting on my camera which I had used before, but had no idea what it was called or its purpose. You can see the entire set of my photos here.

As I sit here on a Friday afternoon the snow is beginning to fall pretty quickly as the beginning of a predicted major snowstorm is upon us. I still don’t know why, but when a snowstorm is predicted the first thing I think about is what am I going to cook while the flakes fall. We already had a dinner party planned which is still going on as planned since all the attendees can walk. On top of that it is Super Bowl Sunday. Even without the snow it was going to be foodapolooza weekend.

I thought I would share what I will be cooking up, in the hopes you would share your weekend cooking and/or baking plans.

Saturday

Breakfast and lunch are always a toss up and depend on our mood. I’m thinking I may have to try out the French Toast Scone mix I got from King Arthur Flour. If I’m lucky and hubby is in the mood to cook, I may score a breakfast burrito.

The menu has an India theme for the dinner party. We are hosting so we are in charge of entree and appetizer and the other two families are bringing dessert and drinks. Here is our contribution:

• Appetizer: Indian-Spiced Roasted Chickpeas
• Entree: Chicken Curry with Basmati Rice
• Side: Homemade Naan and Cucumber-Mint Raita

I can’t wait to see what our friends are bringing for drinks and desserts.

Sunday

Breakfast will be something light since we will be eating early.

Early dinner will be Braciole with a veggie, to be determined. When the Super Bowl rolls around, we will pull out some chicken wings and other football appropriate goodies.

I’m not sure I will get any baking in, but I probably will end up whipping up a little something.

Now it is your turn. Tell me what you plan cooking or just eating this weekend.