Beach Eats: Pimento Cheese Wars

Saying that Tim and I are big fans of pimento cheese might be a bit of an understatement. Tim makes a tried and true version we love and you might recall my favorite dish from last year's Broad Appetit being the fried pimento cheese fritters. Related — we were bummed to miss this year's Broad Appetit, but were booking it to the beach for our honeymoon instead.

While honeymooning, we picked up a tub of pimento cheese spread during our first big trip to the market and all I can say is, our snack creations seemed to get crazier and crazier, each outdoing the last.

Things started out rather tame with a healthy dollap of pimento cheese on a wide, thin cracker:

Nothing wrong with that, delicious!

Then, things clearly went up a notch when we discovered a jar of pickled jalapeño peppers in the fridge:

Kicked up, yes!

If that weren't enough, on day 3 of the honeymoon after Tim made bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, this happened:

Yes folks, that's a jalapeño, bacon and pimento cheese topped cracker there.

We are ridiculous...and perfect for each-other.

Discover More:

Fried Green Tomato BLT's with Pimento Cheese | Twice Baked Potato with Pimento Cheese | All Recipes

P.S. — Anyone spot Basil's nose in that second pic trying to get a taste of his own?

Sparkling Mulberry Summer Cocktail

For those that do not follow along with my food blog, E.A.T., we not only get to try some amazing food, we also get to enjoy a cocktail or two from time to time!

You might recall we recently foraged for mulberries and ended up making this rosemary infused mulberry simple syrup — which in turn allowed us to create this rosemary infused mulberry Prosecco:

Ahhh....so good and so fresh.

This was just one of many recipes we're looking forward to sharing from our little foraging stint with the mulberry tree. Find the full recipe for this cocktail here.

Weekend Basics: Dads & Grads

It was a big weekend for us with milestones and celebrations for my son's high school graduation and Father's Day all falling within the same weekend!

We started the weekend Friday evening hitting up a Blanchard's coffee tasting at Ellwood Thompson's where we learned more about their partnership with Thrive Farmers and how certain food pairings can really bring out different flavors and tastes in the coffee you'd never expect:

Saturday we were up and out early along with my parents to attend my son Brandon's high school graduation:

 

It was such a surreal and proud moment at the same time. Brandon walked across the stage with a huge smile on his face and more accolades and honors than I can list. I could not be prouder of him at this stage in his life and am already looking forward to all the college prep work we'll be doing this summer as he begins the next stage at JMU this fall.

On the drive home from the graduation, we hit up a few roadside country sales (which are always the best — remember this one?) and came across some of the coolest antique industrial sets of metal letter and number punches:

These are the real deal and newly listed in the vintage shop here.

Since my parents were with us for Brandon's Graduation, we planned a Father's Day cookout at our house that evening and had Mary's dad over to celebrate too. We had fun firing up the grill and having a low-key family evening around the table.

In garden news, the summer plants are coming along! We've been having fun seeing the beginnings of tomatoes, some squashes and let me tell you how well the grapevines are doing — we'll update on all of those plants soon, but over the weekend we enjoyed still being able to take a pair of scissors out back and snip fresh arugula leaves from our trough planters for the salads we'd be making:

And! Our mouse saga has finally come to a close (yes, it's been a saga). After many months of teasing Mary for thinking there was a mouse or mice in the house, she has finally been vindicated. We decided to do a seasonal clean of the fridge, which involved pulling it out from from wall and as you can probably guess, once we did, we had a little surprise waiting for us that was past its prime. We decided not to take a photo and while we were sad this little guy didn't make its way into the live trap I'd set over the winter (so we could set it free), we were glad to finally have an answer to the puzzle.

We hope each of you had a nice summer weekend and Father's Day!

P.S. We just started season 7 of Dexter on Netflix! We don't get Showtime so are always a season behind, but are stoked to finally be catching up. We can't believe season 8 will be the end — are you watching?

Matching Tattoos: Honeymooning

As some of you might know, Mary and I talk on and off about getting some sort of coordinating tattoos. Though it's something we'll probably never do, it's always a fun topic of conversation and inspiration. I've talked about getting a butcher knife along the inside of my forearm or some other variation of hungarian foliage and we like the idea of coming up with something that could play off one another in some way.

On the way down to the beach for our honeymoon, there was one Tattoo shop that stood out along the drive back and forth from the cottage in Salvo, NC. It was a combined tattoo and garden planter center — weird combination, right? In any case, we laughed and joked every time we passed by it that finally getting those matching tattoos we've talked about for years would be a great way to commemorate the honeymoon.

Don't worry, we didn't do it. But, all of our honeymoon's tattoo talk inspired today's long overdue return and roundup of couples' tattoos we love:

Each image, their source & more designs in Mary's Tattoo Files Pinterest Board

For now, it's still just a fun topic of conversion between the two of us, but who knows — maybe one day we'll surprise ourselves and all of you!

* Find more of our favorite matching tattoos here *

Origins Farm: Stuffed Pattypan Squash Recipe

Earlier today we introduced you to the fine folks behind Origins Farm. Now we're going to share a new recipe we came up with after spotting and falling in love with the assortment of fresh pattypan squashes and other produce Origins Farm brought to the market — barley stuffed pattypan squash.

This is one of those really versatile recipes in that you can substitute and tweak stuffing ingredients to your liking or what you have on hand in the pantry and frige. We also added a little meat to our version, but you could easily make this a vegetarian/vegan friendly dish by eliminating that ingredient.

Ingredients: (stuffing enough for 10 pattypan squashes)

• Pattypan squashes (one per person if serving as a side, otherwise 3 per person)
• 1/2 cup organic pearl barley
• Fresh sage leaves from a whole stem, some chopped, some whole
• Medium red onion, diced
• Garlic clove, diced
• 8 0unces whole hog pork sausage
• Salt and pepper to taste

Grease baking sheet with olive oil or cooking spray and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook 1/2 cup dry pearl barley according to package directions and set aside for use in stuffing.

Meanwhile, slice thin point off bottoms of squash so they'll balance evenly on baking sheet. Compost, discard or reserve tips for use later.

Flip over and slice tops, reserving each to cap squashes later.

Gently scoop out insides of each squash with a spoon, careful not to scoop all the way through the bottom. Dice and reserve squash flesh in a bowl to use in stuffing later, and arrange squashes on baking sheet:

Let's make some stuffing!

Combine diced squash, onion, garlic and sage in a bowl. Cook pork sausage in a pan over medium heat, breaking up to separate and until lightly brown. Once cooked, mix in diced ingredients to combine:

Once mixed well, incorporate cooked barley into stuffing mixture and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste:

Generously stuff each pattypan squash with stuffing mixture and top with a small fresh sage leaf:

Top each squash with their original caps and drizzle lightly with olive oil.

Cover the entire baking sheet with foil and roast in oven for 25 minutes. Remove foil and roast for another 10 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before plating:

We love how versatile this dish is — each squash could be served as an individual side with a larger dinner or paired as multiples to make up the main meal.

I'm telling you, these stuffed squashes are bursting with flavor and natural ingredients — this is definitely a recipe that will become a regular rotation in our kitchen!

Have you cooked with pattypan squashes before? If you're in RVA, be sure to check out Origin's Farm at your local market and pick up a few for your next summer dinner.

Discover More:

Origins Farm Recipes | All Recipes

Produce for this recipe was supplied on behalf of Origins Farm, whose mission we adore. Learn more about the farm, the people behind it and how excited we are about our relationship with them here.

Eating With Origins Farm

Today we're excited to announce the start to a new partnership we're launching this summer with Origins Farm. We've teamed up to bring you a series of summer recipes that use key ingredients from their farm produce — which you've gotten a tasty glimpse of in a few of our Weekend Basics roundups from our trips to the South of the James Farmer's Market:

For those unfamiliar, Origins Farm is a small, family-run farm in Hanover, Virginia — owned and operated by husband and wife Alistar Harris & Rebecca Ponder. How cute and fun are these two?

Image from Origin's Farm

Just one of the many reasons we're so excited about Origin's Farm is how they grow in a self-described artisanal method and hand-harvest their 6 acres of farm land daily with a small team. They grow more than 50 varieties of vegetables and are committed to keeping things natural by working with Certified Naturally Grown, a farmer-run program, never using synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. Who does not love that!

Everything that arrives at the market has been hand-harvested and always looks so fresh and bountiful.

Tim and I are still newcomers to the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) concept, but have been learning more as we go and are excited to be a part of this season's Origin's Farm CSA program. Their program is unique in that you carry a debit card of sorts with a flexible spending limit and get to pick and choose what you like at each week's market depending on your tastes and needs. The program runs from May through October and once your CSA credit is fully spent, you receive a discount on produce thereafter. For those not interested in the CSA aspect, Origin's Farm can be found at markets throughout Richmond, including South of the James, St. Stephens and Byrd House where they offer produce for sale to both CSA and non-members.

Unfortunately, the 2013 season CSA shares have all been sold out but you can learn more about their popular program here and email the farm to be added to their waiting list if it's something that interests you!

This past weekend we left the market with a tote-bag full of squashes, beets, fresh greens and kohlrabi:

Just looks at all those bright and fresh colors!

First up, look out for the stuffed pattypan squash recipe we made with the Origins Farm fresh squash we picked up with other produce at the Farmer's market in our next post.

Learn more about the daily happenings and what's growing on the farm by keeping up with the Origin's Farm blog, Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram accounts (their Instagram is killer). You can also sign up for the newsletter to stay on top of what to look forward to at each week's markets.

As Origins Farm says it best — Grow Different