cookbooks

Last weekend, we made the trek to the other side of town to attend a book signing in honor of Heidi Swanson's beautiful new cookbook.  I won't go on and on about how great the book is--everyone else on the web has already taken care of that.  (Don't believe me?  Trying going here or here or here.)

It is a gorgeous book, and I can't wait to start cooking from it.  As you may have gathered by now, I'm pretty passionate about cooking and eating "real food" and lately, I've been especially interested in the science and nutrition behind all the tasty goodness.  I'm sure that we learned about vitamins and minerals in science class, but science class was a long time ago.  I've definitely had some catching up to do.

I'd like to say that I'm clever enough to come up with delicious, healthy dinner ideas all on my own.  The truth is, I'm hooked on cookbooks.  Especially pretty ones.

Instead of a Friday to-do list, here are a few of the cookbooks--and other books--that have been occupying our kitchen counter lately:

Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food

Local Flavors by Deborah Madison

Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair

Nina Planck's Real Food books

I'm also hoping to soon get my hands on Heart of the Artichoke by David Tanis and the newest River Cottage cookbook, which I thumbed through at a bookstore a few weeks ago.  I've had the beet hummus recipe stuck in my head ever since.

Do you have a favorite cookbook that you'd like to share?  Let us know in the comments below...

Happy weekend--and happy eating--to you!

P.S.-- If you're in the Seattle area, don't forget that Seattle Tilth's Edible Plant Sale is this weekend.  Brave the rain and join in on the fun!

three

We just received a special delivery on our doorstep, a bag of cookies from a gaggle of our favorite neighborhood kids.  These are not Martha Stewart cookies, I'll be quick to point out, but that makes the little gift even more poignant.

And besides, these cookies taste great.  They will not last long in this house.

Tomorrow, I have every intention of making somewhere between five and eight dozen cookies.  I've got a head start, already, with the two batches of icebox cookie dough that are waiting in our freezer, and I'm not taking on anything that's especially complicated.  It's just that baking cookies has been a part of Christmas for me since I was small, and the holiday just wouldn't be the same without clouds of all-purpose flour, a pile of cookie cutters, and lots of colored sprinkles rolling across the floor.

If you still have a few free hours, here are some of the cookie recipes that caught my eye this season:

roasted chestnut cookies

chocolate-dipped fruit-nut balls

gluten-free jam tart cookies

limoncello macaroons

triple chocolate scotcheroos

four

As I've mentioned before, we're celebrating Christmas in Seattle this year.  One of the things I'm missing most about the holiday in Ohio is the time I usually spend with my brothers and sisters when everyone comes home for a few days.  Cookies tend to play a key role in our Christmas preparations.

Last year, though, my sister Meg decided that she wanted to build "a gingerbread house."  Plans were drawn up on my brother's laptop, templates were made, and when the design-build process was over, the end result was not, in fact, a house, but a gingerbread Space Needle, complete with cityscape backdrop.

There are rumors of a new gingerbread project for this year, but I'll have to be satisfied with looking at the photos, instead of "helping" by licking royal icing off of various kitchen utensils...

If you're thinking of adding gingerbread to your collection of holiday traditions, here are some resources for you:

a reliable gingerbread recipe

a collection of house patterns
some inspirational architecture
a book for next year
if bigger is better

six

It's funny to realize that our little household, as established as it is, is still relatively young.  During the holiday season, everything that we've done once or twice seems to be "a tradition."  For instance, spiced pecans.

To be fair, I grew up with spiced nuts at Christmas.  There's a passed-down recipe in the family recipe box at my parents' house and everything.  I don't particularly recall eating them during the holidays, though--cookies seem to play a bigger role in my childhood memories, for some reason.

In recent years, though, I've been experimenting with different spiced pecan recipes.  I don't think I've settled on one "traditional" recipe yet, but when I do, this one will definitely be in the running.

It's Martha's, of course, so there isn't a lot of explanation required.  I did use a locally-made honey chipotle chili sauce--which complemented the chipotle chili powder I tossed in, I think.  I'm also of the opinion that you could get away with less salt than the recipe calls for, but that's just me...

I made a few batches of these yesterday to share with some of our favorite neighbors, but now that I've given them all away, I'm realizing that I should probably make more, just because.

sixteen

As promised, here's the first of a few holiday gift guide posts.  Please note that while I've linked to some national retailers--and one international mega-retailer--it was merely my intention to give you the best representation of the item.  Please support your local merchants and booksellers whenever possible.

Stubborn Sparrow's 2010 Gift Guide: For the Cook

adorable mini cocotte set
a magazine subscription

"gourmet" recipe box (Okay, not really.  But still.)
a cook book like this or this or this
something to hang on the kitchen wall
one of a kind rolling pin
something to put on the ipod
food lit like this or this
salt sampler
a sweet ending

If you have other gift suggestions for cooks or bakers--or anyone else for that matter--don't hesitate to share in the comments below...

soup tuesday

I've written about soup before.  As you might recall, I am a big fan of soup.  My man, sadly, is not.  At best, he tends to view it as a vehicle for bread and cheese.  At worst, he just leaves the leftovers in the fridge, waiting for me to eat them all up.

I'm determined to keep making soup, though.  I figure that sooner or later, I'll come across more soups that my partner-in-crime will be happy to put in his mouth.  Now that it's officially soup season, I thought it might be fun to share some soups with you, too.  There are some lovely soup recipes out there, whole cookbooks dedicated to this practical--and usually fairly wholesome--dinner time staple.

For this first "Soup Tuesday," however, I won't be including a recipe, because you can find it here, on Molly Wizenberg's blog, Orangette.  While Molly's post begins with a sad tale of woe, it ends with a delectable lentil soup.

Lentils are pretty great.  We don't eat them all that often, but I'm out to change that.  Lentils are full of folate and iron, and if you eat them with rice, you get a complete protein.  Oh, also, I think they taste good.

This soup goes together pretty quickly.  I stuck pretty close to the recipe.  I usually do.  I am a recipe-follower, almost to a flaw.  It makes me feel safer, like I'm less likely to destroy dinner if I just step carefully in the footsteps of, say, Martha.  Or Molly.

I used the Aleppo pepper, because we happened to have some.  (The odds are pretty good that my fellow Seattleite, Molly, and I probably hit some of the same spice shops.)  And I used vegetable broth, because chicken broth doesn't come through our kitchen all that often.

I did make one major omission, though, preparing this Red Lentil Soup with Lemon.  I left out the lemon.  As it turns out, my man doesn't like lemon either.  Go figure.  And we didn't have any lemons to juice, anyway, which kind of simplified things.

In the end, the soup came out well, and both my man and I happily emptied our bowls.  This counts as a success in my book.  One soup down, several months of cold and rainy nights to go.  If you have a soup you think is worthy of Soup Tuesday, let me know.  I'd be happy to pass it along.  

In the meantime, like the great lady said, Bon Appetit!

champion

I have officially harvested my first pumpkin.  It is a little undersized, but given that it's the only surviving pumpkin of the season, I'm incredibly proud of it.

I've been so immersed in the gardening world for the past few seasons--I can go on in great detail about the ideal backyard compost pile and when exactly one should plant peas in USDA Zone 8-9.  It's easy for me to forget sometimes that I've only been growing food for five or six years.  There's a long list of things that I have yet to try planting.  After this summer, though, I can cross "pumpkin" off that list.

For a long time, I thought that pumpkins were beyond me because, with only some containers on the back porch and a ten-by-ten community garden plot, space is incredibly limited.  This spring, though, my man and I decided that the big wooden crate that last year's sickly blueberry died in would be plenty of room for two pumpkin plants.  And up to a certain point, we were right.

The vines tumbled out of the container and wandered eight or ten feet down the sidewalk, right up to our--very patient--neighbors' front porch.  The blossoms came on beautifully, but then, one by one, they withered and fell off the vine.  I talked with my friends at The Garden Hotline, who diagnosed the problem as "incomplete pollination."  It was a rough year for bees in Western Washington, with a cold, wet start to summer.  Apparently, this created some pollination problems that extend well beyond my little pumpkin blossoms.

I could have tried doing some pollinating of my own, by going from blossom to blossom with a little paintbrush, but the timing of it never really worked out.  In the end, we were left with one handsome little pumpkin, turning round and orange on the sidewalk.  It might be small, but I couldn't be more proud.

Pumpkins ripening on the vine really do mean it's fall, and as I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm thrilled about the change in seasons.  I've always considered myself an autumnal soul.  Maybe it's the September birthday.  Or maybe it's because I'm from the Midwest, where fall is one of the more tolerable seasons on the calendar.  Whatever the reason, I'm ready to settle in for a few chilly, gray months of falling leaves and mud puddles.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be spending my weekend baking, knitting, and spending time with family.  I'm also planning on doing some cooking, starting with tonight's dinner, enchiladas baked in this.  Maybe you've got a grand plan for your weekend, too.  If not, here's a to-do list to get you started:

Download a quilt.

Protect your dinner table.

Fall in love with fatherhood.

Find a use for that pumpkin.

Knit a lampshade.

Subscribe to something new.

Happy weekend, everyone!

being home

My new job has introduced a new schedule to my days, and while I'm not working nearly enough hours to pay the bills--that's something I'll worry about soon, but not right now--I have had quite a bit of time to kick around the house.  It turns out that when I have extra time, I do not feel at all compelled to do the dishes, organize my craft mess, or write long-overdue thank you notes.  Instead, I'm just making lots of food.

For starters, I've resolved to bake bread once a week, and since we're only on week two, I'm not going to start bragging here, but I will say that baking bread is a very straightforward process.  For those of you put off by the idea of spending lots of time in the kitchen, I'd mention that the recipe we tend to use around here--from The River Cottage Family Cookbook--only requires fifteen minutes or so of actual, hands-on doing.  The time spent waiting for dough to rise or bread to bake can be put to good use by sitting on the couch and thinking about how you should do some dishes or write a long-overdue thank you note.

I also made refrigerator pickles this week.  I didn't really use a recipe, but you could probably find a million of them on the Internet.  The most important ingredients are cucumbers, vinegar, and salt.

Ours is a dill pickle household.  My man refuses to touch sweet pickles, and while I'm willing to try one now and then--they remind me of my grandmothers--I'll still always end up choosing dill in the end.  Obviously, you can make your own choices in this matter.  I'm not telling you what to do.  I'm just telling you which is better.

I have one more day off before I'm back to work again, and I've got plans to do some more cooking, but I also want to get some knitting done.  I may have to make some tough choices tomorrow.  If you're looking for ways to make the most of your weekend, here's a to-do list for you:

Start collecting something.

Find out what Katie ate.

Make a garland--and maybe a cake, too.

Design your own fabric.

Make a baby so you can buy hats for it.

Roast some figs.

Happy weekend, everyone!

kale

My man made pesto yesterday.  This, in itself, isn't a big deal.  In an average summer, we're probably making some kind of pesto every other week or so.  Yesterday, though, was the mother lode, pounds of basil and a nice pile of homegrown garlic magically transformed by the food processor into about a dozen jars of goodness that will get tucked into the freezer.  We'll dole them out carefully over the course of the winter, each jar a reminder of the basil-y goodness of summer.

We have other ways of bottling the season.  I'll probably be making a batch of refrigerator pickles this weekend, with the giant pile of cucumbers that have taken over the bottom drawer of our fridge.

I'm a champion of pickling, curing, freezing, canning, and doing whatever is necessary to preserve the bounty of the summer and autumn, in order to eat well the rest of the year.  On the other hand, I'm also a proponent of cooking up whatever's in season.  And right now, one of those things is kale.

I'm making kale chips tonight.  They're tasty and easy and the end result feels--snacky.  Decadent.  Kind of like junk food.  Which they are, I suppose, but at least a snack food that started its life as an easy-to-grow, good-for-you green.

You can find kale chips recipes all over the place, and honestly, you might not even need one.  

Just preheat the oven to 350 F.  Wash a bunch of kale, and then pat it all dry with a clean dish towel.  Cut out the thickest of the kale stems.  Drizzle some olive oil over things, add some salt and pepper, and toss it around.  Lay the kale leaves in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake until things are crispy, about ten or fifteen minutes.

I have a busy weekend planned, but with the chilly almost-fall weather and a bit of cold, I'd really rather just curl up at home.  Here's a to do list for a weekend of not-doing-much-at-all...

Make your own notebook.

Tour a tiny house.

Cozy up to your teacup.

Look at books.

Be really bad for no good reason.

Stay in bed and cuddle.

Happy weekend, everyone!

last hurrah

Summer in Seattle is going out with a bang.  Eighty degrees and sunshine, with wispy clouds in a blue sky.  The neighborhood is full of kids in wading pools and parents fanning themselves and soaking in the rays.  Of course, the forecast for the weekend is chilly and damp. Which is fine with me, really.  As indicated in my last post, I'm ready for fall weather, with sweaters and cups of peppermint tea.

Actually, I love pretty much everything about autumn.  Rustling leaves, cider, root vegetables.  There are some things I'll miss, though, as summer slips away, and most of those things are food.  Right now, I'm cramming summer in, one mouthful at a time.  This is the last, best chance for tomatoes and berries and peaches, and I'm loathe to miss out on any of it.  I've been hitting the farmers markets twice a week, stocking up on anything that I can't count on seeing there three weeks from now.

This week, I made a gorgeous yellow tomato sauce and fresh pasta to go along with it.  I ate the leftover sauce for lunch the next day, spooned over a few crusty slices of a baguette.  I think I could eat a lunch like that every day for a year, without getting tired of it.  But maybe it seems that way because I know that, soon enough, the only tomatoes I'll be eating will be the ones that come from a can.

If you're feeling a little bit torn between summer and fall, like I am, here's a to do list to keep you busy for the holiday weekend.

Make a lazy salad.

Bring the outside inside.

Go back-to-school shopping.

Stock up.

Take a sight-seeing tour.

Pretend that you're a seven year-old on a sight-seeing tour.

Eat the last of the peaches.

Happy weekend everyone!

checklist

Nothing glamourous to share today, but I do feel the need to gloat about a fairly productive afternoon.  In the course of just a few hours, we managed to:

-finalize our shopping list for Saturday's big party
-arrange for the use of a vehicle (other than a Metro bus) to lug things around that day
-borrow coolers from our fantastic neighbors
-locate and purchase compostable cups and plates
-acquire sixty-some thrift store forks
-accomplish various other small things

The event is going to be a potluck.  While that might sound kind of--um--cheap, I really like potlucks because they're always such a great combination of community and food.  I love seeing everyone show up with potato salads and cake carriers.  It reminds me of the church suppers and family holidays of my childhood.

And besides, we've already done our share of cooking for dozens and dozens of people this summer.  It went well in June, but I'm not really inclined to tempt fate by trying it a second time.  We are providing sandwiches for everyone, along with drinks and at least one dessert.  (I absolutely have to bake a cake so I can share our little cake toppers with our Washington crowd...)

I'm trying to dress the sandwiches up a little bit.  We'll have Mama Lil's, of course.  And maybe some roasted veggies, if I can get my act together.

I'm also thinking of mixing up some fancy condiments, like this Mojito Mayonnaise, from Jean Kelley's cookbook, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes.

Mojito Mayo

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup finely chopped fresh mint

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

2 tablespoons minced shallot

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Mix everything together and put it on a sandwich.  Preferably one with pig on it.  Preferably at a festive, sunshiny potluck at a beautiful waterfront park on a fine August day in the Pacific Northwest.*

I've managed to make myself incredibly hungry just now, thinking about fictional pork sandwiches.  It might be time for me to take a dinner break...

I'll be back on Wednesday, though, to celebrate the--gasp!--100th post on The Stubborn Sparrow.  See you then!

*The ingredients are Kelley's, but I did adapt the recipe, just a bit...

moody

I had a day off today, which initially sounded very exciting and full of potential, but by ten o' clock or so this morning, it had already become clear that things just weren't going to live up to my expectations.

So I spent the day alternately bickering with my man and moping by myself.  It was all kind of dumb.

In these last few hours, I've been trying to salvage things a little bit.  Usually, this tactic involves food, and tonight has been no exception.

First, I made granola.  Or, to be accurate, am making granola.  It's in the oven right now.  In a few minutes, I'll go stir it and then let it bake for another ten or twelve minutes.  I like making granola, partially because it's the one baking recipe that I have entirely memorized.  I've been making it for years, and at this point, I can just kind of fake my way through with whatever ingredients are around.  It's a good granola.  Maybe I'll pass along the recipe sometime.

I was going to pull a double-header and reuse the mixing bowl for a batch of cookies, but now, due to a local butter shortage--a crisis which seems to be limited to our small household--I'm going to have to put that on the proverbial backburner.

It's too bad.  We had dinner at Delancey last night, and somehow, I let my partner-in-crime talk me out of capping our tasty pizza dinner with a bittersweet chocolate and sea salt cookie.  I've been thinking about that cookie for about twenty-four hours now.  I've even got Molly's recipe all cued up and ready to go.  Maybe tomorrow night, I guess...

I don't know why I've been so excited about food lately.  Maybe it's a nesting thing.  Or maybe I just have a little bit of extra time that didn't seem to exist in our pre-wedding life.  Whatever the reason, I've been drooling over back issues of Bon Appetit and plotting entire menus of things to serve on the fancy dishes we got as wedding gifts.

For tonight, though, I'm just going to have to be satisfied with a batch of granola and some heated up leftovers.  I'm not sure it'll be enough for me.  If it's not enough for you, either, take a peek at this--yet another food blog that's got me making grocery lists on tiny scraps of paper...

dinner

I'm not going to lie.  By three o'clock this afternoon, I'd already decided that we were having leftovers for dinner.  I was tired, it was hot, and I just didn't feel like cooking anything.

But then, I came home and looked in the fridge.  With our CSA box showing up every week, it doesn't take much dinnertime slacking to leave us with a crowded refrigerator and more than a few pounds of vegetables to eat.  So I figured I'd throw something together after all.

My man and I have developed a fall-back dinner option that we've resorted to countless times over our years of cooking together.  It originated as a MSL recipe that called for green beans, potatoes, and basil pesto, but over the seasons, it's turned into this:

1. Roast some vegetables:  Maybe it's potatoes, but we've tried just about everything.  Carrots and beets are common.  We've also done turnips, rutabagas, fennel, broccoli, garlic, onions, shallots, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting right now.  Just chunk them up into something approximately bite-sized, throw the chunks on a baking sheet, toss them in olive oil, flavor with salt and pepper and any other spices that grab you, and roast them at 385 or 400 degrees.  (My man goes higher, but that's up to you...)

You'll probably want to open up the oven and scoot things around once or twice.  If you're me, the veggies are done when they're making lovely sizzling sounds and they cut easily with the tip of a spatula.  If you're my partner-in-crime, the veggies are done when they've turned into little fried cubes of crunchy goodness.  My way takes about thirty or forty minutes.

Tonight, it's carrots and beets, because that's what we have.

2. Steam something green:  I like green beans or peas for this, but you could use broccoli or chard or kale.  Again, bite-sized pieces are a good idea.  Steam things until they are just done, maybe even a little under.

It's snow peas for us today.

3. Make some pesto:  If it's basil season--like it is right now--you can make fresh pesto by throwing a clove or three of garlic, a few handfuls of basil leaves, and about half a cup of pine nuts in a food processor.  Puree until things look pretty mashed up, then, while the food processor is running, add about a quarter cup of olive oil and run the processor until your pesto looks like--um, pesto.  Add some salt and maybe pepper, too.

I got this basil at the farmers' market the other night.  I paid two dollars for a giant bouquet of it and it smells amazing.  When we're not lucky enough to have cornucopias full of fresh basil, we use pesto from the freezer.  My man makes a huge batch of it every summer and it almost always seems to last from one summer to the next.

You can make any kind of pesto you want.  Arugula is good for this.  You can use walnuts or pumpkin seeds instead of pricey pine nuts.

4. Make some pasta: Tonight, I'm combining the dregs of three different bags of pasta.  We'll see how that goes.  I like fusilli for this, but anything that holds a little sauce should work.

5. Toss everything together: It will be green and gooey and if you're using fresh pesto, it will smell freaking amazing.  I usually do this with the stove turned off, but sometimes, my man likes to warm things up a little bit.

This is the point where you add extra things.   Like cheese.  We usually grate some hard cheese on top.  We also add a can of chopped olives, because we add a can of olives to about 75% of the things we make.  Sometimes, we sprinkle some more pine nuts in, just for crunch.  And usually a little more salt and pepper is a good idea, too.

6. Serve it and eat: If you're lucky, you'll have leftovers for later in the week.  This reheats well.  If it's a little dry the second time around, drizzle a little olive oil on top.

This might not be a traditional recipe format, but I think it just might work.  If you decide to try making our pesto-veggie-pasta thing, let me know how it goes...

Have a great weekend, everyone.  I'll see you on Monday!

monsters

I harvested my garlic this afternoon.  You can't tell from the photos, maybe, but these garlic bulbs are ginormous.  They're practically the size of baseballs.

If you're a gardener, then you know that this is not necessarily a good thing.  It certainly wasn't intentional on my part.  Remember a few weeks ago, when I was delighting in how capable my garden was of looking after itself?  Well, that might be true, for the most part, but I probably should have kept slightly better tabs on the garlic.

It might be fine.  We'll have to wait and see.  Before we store the garlic for eating, I'll bundle the heads together with some twine and hang them somewhere with shade and decent ventilation--the back corner of our kitchen, probably.  Hopefully, this extra step will help the garlic avoid mold (ick!) and maybe make it last a bit longer in the storage bin.

Not that it will be lying around for long.  We are garlic people, my man and I.  It tends to wander into most of the dinners I cook--and sometimes breakfast, too...

I've mentioned that my partner-in-crime is not a soup-lover, but I'm hoping that when we're flush with garlic from our CSA along with this little batch from the community garden, I'll be able to trick him into trying a bowlful of this.   I'll have to let you know how that one goes...

soup

We are having soup for dinner tonight.  This is kind of a big deal.  My man does not like soup.  It's not something I can begin to explain, and I certainly can't identify with it, but that's just how thing are.  Which is why I get excited when we stumble across a soup he actually enjoys.

The recipe is adapted from one our CSA farm sent along with a box of produce a few years ago.  I like that it isn't fussy.  You just chop everything up and throw it in a pot.  The ingredients are pretty straight-forward, too, unless you're someone who's still afraid of a pine nut.  Oh, and there's pesto--one of my favorite, non-fussy ways to really fancy up a meal.

I've never really posted a recipe before, so I hope you'll trust me and give this one a try.

Carrot-Fennel Soup with Dill Pesto

For the soup:

2 tablespoons butter

1 bunch thinly sliced carrots

2 bulbs of fennel with some of the green, ferny tops, chopped

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 1/4 teaspoons dill seed

4 cups chicken or vegetable broth

For the pesto:

1 cup fresh dill, chopped

3 tablespoons pine nuts

2 tablespoons olive oil

heavy cream or creme fraiche

Melt the butter in a big soup pot over medium heat.  Add the carrots, dill, onion, and dill seed and saute for 10 minutes, or until things begin to soften a bit.  Add the stock, bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and let things simmer for half an hour.  Transfer to a blender and puree in batches. Season with salt and pepper.

To make the pesto, either rinse out the blender or drag out a food processor and add the dill and pine nuts.  Blend until smooth and then, with the machine still running, add the olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper.

To serve it up, ladle the soup into bowls and plop some pesto into the center of each one.  Splash a little cream or creme fraiche in, as well, and use a spoon to swirl the pesto and cream into the soup.

And then you eat it all up.  Enjoy!

to market

If you've been reading awhile, you might recall one teeny tiny detail about our wedding that I haven't made much mention of here: My partner-in-crime and I are making most of the food for our seventy-some guests.

Before you start wringing your hands on our behalf, I'll stress the word most.  We are hiring someone else to roast the pig.  The original plan there was for my man and my foodie brother to roast the pig in a giant hole in my parents' backyard.  Somehow, my folks managed to talk us out of that one.

And dessert is definitely going to be a group effort.  My brother--off the hook with the whole pig thing now--is bringing a few pies.  My Aunt Kathy has pledged two sheet cakes.  "Our" cake--the one that will feature the little cake toppers I've been yammering on and on about--will be made my littlest sister.

Which mostly just leaves the easy stuff to us.  Potato salad, coleslaw, and corn muffins.  And a yet-to-be-determined vegetarian option.  (Yes, we know, the clock is definitely ticking on that one...)

We're using an old family stand-by for the slaw recipe, making the cornbread recipe from the 1976 edition of Joy of Cooking, and looking to Martha for some All-American Potato Salad.

So today, we hit the road with a battle plan, lots of spare shopping bags, and maybe a little bit of trepidation.  Our list looked something like this:

32 lbs potatoes

9 medium heads of cabbage

24 stalks celery

17 bell peppers

And so on.  I'm sure you get the idea.  In all honesty, the food shopping went better than I'd imagined.  We put the priority on local and organic and only had to make a few tough calls.  

Things on the drinks front, though, was a little more challenging.  Everyone on the Internet has advice for you on figuring out how much alcohol to buy to entertain a crowd of seventy people.  Nobody can help you calculate, though, how many people will prefer wine to beer, whether the Pinot Grigio will go down better than the Chardonnay, or who will turn their nose up at a perfectly good IPA.  There was a lot of guessing going on today.  A little bit of arguing and desperation, but mostly guessing.  And we're really, really hoping we guessed right.

We did get a little excited about the beer shopping, though, once we found the "Local Beer" section.  We bought a few "sampler" packs from Great Lakes Brewing Company, some Buckeye Beer, and a Cincinnati classic called Burger to help wrap things up at the end of the night.  We're happy to have lots of Ohio beer to serve at the party.

We were thrilled to see, though, when we finally returned from our shopping market extravaganza, that a nice little treat from Washington was waiting for us.

Our much-anticipated case of cider from Wildfire Cider has arrived! Ohio beer is great, but we're excited to be able to share a real taste of Washington with our wedding guests.  In fact, I very nearly cracked open the first bottle when I opened the box, but I managed to restrain myself.  I'll have to be very, very good about not sampling the wares before Saturday evening rolls around...

Tomorrow, we make the coleslaw.  Wednesday, the potato salad.  The corn muffins don't come until Friday.  Oh, and a vegetarian entree will have to get crammed in there somewhere, too.  Also, there's the pinata. And the pennants.  And I have an awesome new idea for the table numbers.

Nobody panic.  We've got a plan.  Really.

fresh

A few months ago, I had a chance encounter with a fellow bride-to-be who lives in my beloved Ballard neighborhood.  We're actually getting married on the same day in June--although our weddings will be two thousand miles apart.  She had a lot of beautiful ideas for her ceremony and reception, and by the end of the conversation, I was kind of wishing I could just skip my wedding and go to hers...

One of the most brilliant things she's done is to find a few of her "vendors" at our local farmers' market.  Both her "caterer" (a mobile wood-fired pizza operation) and her entertainment (some extra-talented buskers) are regulars at the Sunday market.  I was really taken by the idea--I cannot get enough of the market--and now whenever I'm on our weekly shopping trip, I start having fantasies of a "market wedding" of my own.

If you took it to an extreme--and I do adore extremes--you could really do this up.  Just imagine:  Obviously, you could find your wedding food at the market.  You could hit up one of the vendors for prepared meals, or get really nervy and put things together on your own.  For starters, I'd recommend some cheeses from Mt. Townsend Creamery, carrot crudites from Nash's, and maybe some wine from Seabreeze...

You could find your flowers here, of course.  Plenty of brides have rushed through the market on a Saturday morning--or sent a trusty bridesmaid--to pick up some fresh blooms for the afternoon wedding.  Depending on the time of year, you could also go with some seasonal fruits or veggies for centerpieces.  Heirloom pumpkins at a fall wedding?  Awesome.  Martha would totally approve.

When there's space for it, our market also hosts artists and craftspeople, along with the farmers.  That means you might be able to find your wedding jewelry here, too.  Handmade soaps for your bridesmaids?  Check.  Jars of gourmet hot sauce for the groomsmen?  Yup.

I know, I know.  Maybe I'm being a little gimmicky here, but I do think it's a really fun idea.  I hope there are brides out there somewhere doing something exactly like this.  In fact, I hope that someone is planning a wedding at their neighborhood market.  When you get right down to it, my favorite weddings are about food and community, and where better than the farmers' market to celebrate something like that?

slacking

Oh, friends.  I am extra sleepy tonight and feeling lazy.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't have some fun in wedding blog world, though.  There's always something happening somewhere.

First of all, Souris Mariage is celebrating Food Week.  There are plenty of decisions to be made about wedding food, and Mouse's posts about everything from the margaritas to the main courses have me drooling.  Mini-chimichangas dipped in chipotle sour cream?  Oh, yes, please.

And if you haven't already, take a look at the "Pretty Fall Wedding" on Once Wed.  All the bird details are enough for me to fall in love.  Oh, and then there are the cakes.  And the cupcakes.

If you're in the market for more than just inspiring eyecandy, Sarah over at Truly Smitten has a sweet little DIY project to share.  I'm already thinking of taking a stab at it.  Maybe you should, too?

I hope that's enough to tide you over.  If the universe is willing, I'll be back in full force tomorrow...