Cheese Making Kit!

Today I ordered a Fresh Goat Cheese or Chevre- D.I.Y. Cheese Kit from Urban Cheesecraft on Etsy! I am super excited to make my own cheese!

Chevre making 101 coming soon!

Summer Bread Salad

This tasty summer salad not only will satisfy your need for fresh tomatoes, but it wont heat up your kitchen!

Ingredients:
1/2 baguette, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 pound of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
2 large sprigs of basil, chopped
1/4 of a red onion, chopped
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/8 cup olive oil
8oz fresh mozerella, cubed
10 kalamata olives, pitted and sliced

Directions:
1.) In a large bow, combine baguette, cheese, tomatoes, basil, olives and red onion.
2.) Toss to mix up.
3.) Drizzle salad mix with olive oil and balsamic vinegar
4.) Toss again and your done!

Enjoy!

Summer's Bounty: our trip to the local farmers market

Nothing tastes better than fresh, and nothing is fresher than local (not to mention it helps reduce your carbon foot print and supports local farmers!).

I try to go to a local farmers market at least once a week to stock up on our fruits and veggies for the next few days/week.

Today we went to the Everett Farmers Market near the marina. I was delighted to find so many vendors including CHEESE vendors! If you haven't noticed yet, I am a sucker for dairy products. Our basket filled up with some nettle gouda from Samish Bay Cheese, beets, arugula, fingerling red potatoes, shiitaki mushrooms, basil, yellow cherry tomatoes, goat's milk greek yogurt from Gothberg Farms, squash babies and flowers, italian sausages from Island Grown Farmers Co-op, and two super crisp heads of celery! My sweet husband surprised me with a bouquet of red dahlias and gladiolas!

Support local farmers! Not only does it help your local economy, but you have more control over WHAT you are eating. When you are eating a local grown, ripe picked, organic peach...you know all you are eating is spectacular peachy goodness. No chemicals, no wax, just great fruit!

Homemade Butter 101

What is french toast with out butter?!

To grace our breakfast this morning my youngest made butter from Twin Brook Creamery. It is, with out a doubt, the most delicious butter I have ever tasted. So creamy and, well, buttery! The color is an enticing golden yellow, courtesy to the purebred Jersey Cows of Twin Brook who are pastured and do not receive hormones to stimulate their growth or milk production!

To make this wonderful butter we poured 1/3 of a pint of whipping cream into a 1 pint canning jar and shook it for about 10 mins. We strained the butter from the butter milk using a piece of cheese cloth.

We are excited to make garlic butter next!

Got Milk?

My family drinks a LOT of milk. We simply love it with dinner, on our cereal, with cookies...the list goes on and on. Considering how much we were drinking it was time to find a healthier and more local source of our dairy bliss.

We stumbled upon fresh milk from Twin Brook Creamery at our local Central Market. This is the real stuff. I thought I loved milk before! This stuff gives a whole new meaning to delicious.

One of the things I love about buying this milk is we reuse the bottles! We paid a small deposit and we receive a cash credit towards our milk purchase when we return them to the store.

My daughter loves to make homemade butter so we picked up a pint of whipping cream and look forward to fresh butter for our morning toast!

P.S. We got some divine looking yogurt from Grace Harbor Farms...review to come!