An Edible Marriage

Well, since my last post I graduated college, got married, went on honeymoon, packed up my entire life, and moved to California where the new hubby and I have been in limbo for a few weeks between a storage unit and my dad's house. Needless to say, things have been a bit crazy...

Anyway, first things first - I must give props to the deliciousness that graced our wedding:

Edible Flower Bouquets - I wanted my bridesmaids and I to have completely edible bouquets, so I grew lots of edible flowers in my own yard, but ended up using flowers grown by the folks at Colinwood Farm.

Also, my friend Sarah figured out how to make roses out of bacon!! She put a dab of hot glue on a skewer, topped the glue with lettuce, and topped the lettuce with bacon baked in the shape of a rose bud. The glue gave the structure integrity while the lettuce acted as a barrier between bacon an glue. Brilliant!  While I was freaking out before the wedding, my bridesmaids assembled our bouquets with bacon roses, pea vines, bachelor buttons, squash blossoms, calendula, nasturtiums, and my favorite - columbine! Then immediately after the ceremony we chowed down.

Madres Catering - These ladies were an absolute pleasure to work with. They were totally chill and down for anything. They used local and/or organic produce and let us provide the meat and bread from our favorite folks at the farmers market (Skagit River Valley Ranch, Stokesberry Farms, and Tall Grass Bakery).  After our ceremony, we were greeted at our reception venue by Madres' lovely staff and a selection of appetizers. We chose to have a "heavy appetizer" style reception so our guests could be free to eat and drink as they please without having to conform to a set dinner plan. Here is our menu with pictures where I have them:

Salad Cups! 

Soup Shots 

Shots of zesty tomato soup that I found to be an important injection of calories between hugs and conversation!

Crostinis with:

Shredded chicken tinga

Roasted cumin mushrooms with parmesan

Dilled salmon

Polenta Triangles with Roast Tomato Chutney (so good!)

Bacon Wrapped Cesar Potatoes

Roast potatoes with Cesar dressing, wrapped in bacon (delicious!)

Sausage Bites with a Trio of Dips

Skagit Valley sweet and hot Italian sausages wrapped in pastry dough

Slider Bar:

Cuban pulled pork

Beef patties

Vegan roast veggies

Condiments

Tall Grass Bakery brioche or mutli-grain slider buns

NON-ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES:

Heather's Groovy Drink Mix

(Heather is one of the owners of Madres, she is a wizard with a blender and whatever happens to be in season!)

Dry Sodas

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES:

Homebrew!

Made by me, Alex, and our friends!

(and supplemented with Elysian beer and Charles Shaw wine)

The only one not on the list is the beer we toasted with - a brew that Alex and I concocted together:

Lavender Ginger IPA

(Also Sarah designed this gorgeous drink menu!)

Trophy Cupcakes - Dessert was a couple hundred mini cupcakes of three different flavors: Snickerdoodle, Triple Chocolate, and Hummingbird (a more savory dessert cake made with banana, pineapple, and coconut).

In addition to Trophy cupcakes, Alex's sister made gluten-free vegan cupcakes ( you can see a few at the edges of the photo above, at the base of the tier).

T'was a delicious wedding indeed!

Catching up on my neglected blog!

I've been neglecting this blog and there's two reasons:

1) Between the end of winter and the slow start of spring, it's pretty easy to get jaded about cooking.  The farmers market still only has potatoes, kale, turnips, and if your lucky - some onions and carrots.  And even the freezer stash of peppers, broccoli, ginger, peas, and corn is starting to become monotonous.  It feels a bit like I'm in hibernation, patiently waiting for summer vegetables.

2) Alex and I are getting married this summer!! So I've been totally preoccupied by wedding planning.

Alex and I have also been eating out more than usual - partially because our cooking inspiration is in a lull, and partially because we've had some sun here in Seattle and we chase it any chance we get!  Here's some quick restaurant reviews of where we've been hanging out lately:

Skillet - If Alex and I ever created our own restaurant, this would probably be it. Creative breakfast and breakfast-inspired foods all day long.  The bacon jam on their burgers is amazing, and we swear there's a secret ingredient in the french fries (coconut oil?!). Also, Skillet is conveniently located on the South-West corner of Union & 14th Ave. and they have floor-to-ceiling windows, which makes this an excellent spot to be on a sunny day!

Captain Blacks - It looks like an itty bitty little ramshackle pirate-themed bar, until you walk out on their gigantic West-facing deck... this is the spot to be on a sunny day!! Oh and also, they have a pretty decent beer selection and you can often find a Skillet truck right next door.

Kimchi Bistro - We went here for our friend, Kris's birthday and OMG this is some of the best Korean food I've ever had! We need to go here more often!

Pinky's Pig & Chips - It's a food truck located in the parking lot of the gas station next to the liquor store in Wallingford.  This place is run by two guys from Detroit who seem to have found they're calling in life and they're stoked about it. They will blow your mind with their sassy molassy sauces and their meats will undoubtedly induce a multidimensional flavorgasm.  Oh and their sandwiches are huge, especially for the cheap price!  I definitely recommend starting with a slider and working your way up to a full size sandwich.

Wedding planing has largely consisted of foody things so far, of course. I'm totally stoked to be working with Madres Catering, they're a smaller company run by three mothers who simply love to cook and live by the motto, "Find a job you love and you'll never work another day in your life".  They focus on local/in-season ingredients, they have strong influences from Latin American cuisine, and they're excited to accommodate all my ridiculous requests like using only Skagit River Valley Ranch meats and severing homebrew made by us and our friends!

For dessert, it's not official yet, but Trophy Cupcakes is the plan.

What else is edible at a wedding? Flowers, of course! I'm growing all the flowers for our wedding, so I know they're edible and organic. And since there's a lot of text in this post, I think it's high time I posted some pictures.  Here's what my edible flowers look like so far - from top to bottom: Marigolds, Red Calendula seedling, Yellow Calendula that came back from last year, Pink Daisy's and Sweet Cicily that also came back from last year.  In addition to these, I've also planted Dahlias, Day Lillies, Nasturtiums, Dianthus, Bachelor Buttons, Chives, and all sorts of Brassicas. ...this should be a delicious wedding indeed!

 

Edible Flowers

There's something really exciting about eating flowers. Maybe it's because they're so intricately beautiful, or because it's not usually something you find at a restaurant or the grocery store. Even the farmers market rarely sells edible flowers. I have to say I feel rather special when I have space to garden. And with edible flowers I can have my pretty flower and eat it too! So here is what's on the menu today:

Calendula!

Calendula is in the sunflower family and is also called "pot marigold". I love to pick all the petals off and sprinkle them on salad like yellow (or orange) confetti. They have a fresh crunchy taste with slight bitterness, very reminiscent of mild lettuce.

Violets and Pansies

Pansies and Violets are all edible members of the genus Viola. The ones shown above in my garden have a mild flowery sweetness to them, almost like a rose.

English Daisies

Another sunflower family relative, these are in the genus Bellis and have a flavor almost like celery with a mild bitterness.

Dianthus

Dianthus is a genus in the Carnation family and has a surprisingly sweet and bitter flavor that makes your tongue tingle almost as if each taste bud is saying "it's sweet! not it's bitter! sweet! bitter!"

Nasturtiums

I love nasturtiums (NESS-ter-SHUMS), both the flowers and the leaves have a thrilling sharp bitterness to them and the seeds can be pickled to make capers!

Squash Blossoms

Here's a flower I hope most people have had. Stuffed squash blossoms can be a popular seasonal dish. Squash make two different kinds of flowers; male and female. The female ones make squash when they receive pollen from the male flowers. So be careful to only eat the male flowers if you want to get any squash. (Look for the powdery yellow pollen inside the males)

Brassica oleracea

B. oleracea could be anything from cabbage and brussel sprouts to broccoli, mustard, and bok choi. The flowers can be diverse, though they all have four petals which won them their original name of Cruciforms. They're colorful and have a mild flavor.

Cilantro!

Cilantro flowers make coriander when they go to seed, but the flowers are incredibly flavorful also. I swear the flavor is half way between coriander and cilantro - super yummy!

Borage

Borage has a mild flower that is a beautiful addition to any salad. UV radiation from the sun causes these flowers to turn from blue to purple to pink.

Some other flowers to note that have already bloomed and died this year: most herbs (i.e. sage, rosemary, thyme...), onions/chives, and peas.

Mmmm pretty!

Dinner for one

Ahh yes, late night dinners at the end of the quarter. I have to say I did pretty darn well for whipping up something to shove in my face between Economics and Physiology. We have the best garden I think I've ever had since I left my parents house and it's finally starting to produce. So I made a salad out the few things that are big enough to eat: Spinach, Cilantro, and Chives (flowers and leaves). Then I quickly fried up some duck breast from the duck we roasted last night and voila:

I didn't even put dressing on the salad, the cilantro and chives added plenty of flavor - horray homegrown food!