A Basil Appraisal

One of my favorite fresh herbs is basil…I think I’m secretly part Italian somewhere along the line because I looove all types of Italian food. Something Italian is most often on the menu when Hub and I start cooking together…something requiring lots of garlic, tomatoes, cheese, and definitely pasta…and in the summertime, loads of fresh basil.

I don’t always have the best luck when it comes to growing my own basil. Last year was a dud. Most likely due to my lack of watering it. So this summer I made sure to give it the best possible care and the maximum amount of sunlight. Earlier in the summer, at around 2 in the afternoon, I would carry my big pot of basil to the front of the house to soak up the rest of the day’s sunlight. This doubled as my weight-lifting program too. I think basil prefers lots of sunshine and it sure seemed to make a difference this year. That and keeping it watered often, and to be honest, some Miracle Grow every now and then too.
Making fresh pesto from homegrown basil is one of my hallmarks of summer. There are heaps of basil recipes out there and many different twists...like changing the kind of nut used or adding other herbs. But I stick with the basic Basil Pesto recipe from my Cuisinart’s recipe booklet. It calls for:
1 ounce of Parmesan
¼ cup toasted pine nuts or walnuts
1 clove garlic (I usually do 2)
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup packed, fresh basil leaves (washed & dried)
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
There are many different things you can do with your homemade pesto. There are obvious things like adding it to your favorite pasta dish (as shown in my very last photo) and not so obvious such as stuffing chicken breasts with pesto and kalamata olives and then baking.
We came up with this very simple, open-faced sandwich recipe for lunch one afternoon and it was so very tasty…

Turkey Pesto Sandwiches on Crusty Bread:
First, slice & toast bread (we recommend ciabatta or a baguette) on a baking sheet on its own for a few minutes at 400 degrees. (This helps to ensure the bread doesn’t get too soggy once its loaded up with the pesto and other ingredients.)
Next, cover each slice of bread with thinly sliced turkey (we love Boar’s Head deli turkey), then spread pesto on top of the turkey, followed by slices of tomatoes. At this point we add a bit of sea salt and a grind of fresh pepper. Top off the sandwich with a few shavings of a good Parmesan cheese (or better yet, some Parmigiano-Reggiano if you have on hand). Pop these goodies back into the oven for about 8-10 minutes, until the toast starts to turn golden brown and the cheese is melted.

Fresh pesto is SO much better than any canned pesto you can buy in the store. And its pretty easy to make too. I wanted to try canning my own a couple summers ago but learned that there is a high risk of botulism when canning pesto (due to the low acid levels of herbs) so its not recommended. According to my Cuisinart booklet, you can freeze pesto but I have yet to try that as it always gets eaten up too quickly.

Tonight we're going to try a new America's Test Kitchen recipe...Manicotti...which calls for fresh basil. Perfect! We have some! Wish us luck! :)

The Fall Collection

The Fall Collection: New LillyBonBon Votives at a store near you...featuring birds and owls (of course) and the latest cuckoo clock designs! Okay, so maybe they are not exactly at a store near you, but they are in ONE very special store that I truly love...Truly.

Sorry. I just simply couldn't resist writing all that jazz above about my "new fall collection." But I really did just drop off some of these new votives above, in addition to my latest line of Sculpture Picks (birds & mushrooms) yesterday at Truly. They had so many fun ideas for how to display my little sculpture picks that I can't wait to see/hear what they finally end up doing with them. Also, they are now having Cupcake Sundays (which is sort of ironic since my sculpture picks can be used as cupcake toppers too!). I'm not entirely sure what this "Cupcake Sunday" entails, but it sounds like fun...so if you are in White Bear Lake on a Sunday...why not stop in and check things out? Or if you're not in White Bear Lake, you can shop online at Truly where they also carry a selection of things from some of their other designers too.

Also yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting one of my favorite shops, Rose Mille, located in downtown Stillwater. I love love love this stylish store for its combination of new & vintage things...French-inspired...beautiful things...clothing, trinkets, housewares, paper goods, and my favorite: cute crafting goodies...stuffed in old dressers and cabinets full of tiny drawers. It's almost like hunting through your grandma's attic and finding amazing little vintage things for craft projects. Not to mention you'll find THE BEST selection of ribbons & trims. Here are some of my finds from yesterday...

I also have a special place in my heart for Rose Mille because it was the very first store where I launched my very first LillyBonBon artwork. The owner, Michelle, really bolstered my confidence by her desire to see my things and her excitement to sell them in her lovely store. I remember it feeling so surreal at the time that this store that I had always absolutely loved and adored wanted to sell my things in it! Taking a little walk down memory lane, here are some old pics (from 2005) of my first beginnings there...

In addition to Truly, this is another store you must put on your list to visit if you are in the area. So beautiful! The owner also mentioned to me that she'll soon be adding online shopping to the Rose Mille website. I'm not sure exactly what kind of select goodies will be available online, but I know I'll be looking forward to this feature!

~Au revoir for now!

Remembering a Special Day

On the heels of a very bad weekend, comes a new day…a day to celebrate. It is amazing how one, seemingly small incident can cast such a pall over an entire weekend. I’m glad it’s a new week. A fresh start. I would like to say Happy Anniversary to my hubby today. Six happy, joyful years. There is nothing more satisfying than marrying your best friend. Our wedding day went by in such a blur. I wanted to grab the hands of the clock and slow the day down. So I could fully and thoroughly enjoy every little detail of the day. Every guest who attended. My handsome husband in his sleek tux. His guitar solo serenade. My beautiful bridesmaids. My sweet flower princess gently scattering rose petals. The funny stories told and the songs sung. The delicious food. The lovely cake. The laughter. The hugs & kisses. But it was the fastest day of my life. Yet it was the event that took place that was most important. And on this day I remember that it was this event, our marriage, that truly counts. Not all the other little details that took hours upon hours of planning and preparation.

Our wedding colors were a pale spring green and lavender, which I tried to render in my little PhotoShop frame color scheme. This photo was taken by a wedding guest at the reception on one of those formerly popular little Polaroid instant cameras (they had some catchy name which I can’t recall right now). Even though this photo is tiny and grainy and only about an inch tall, I’ve always liked it. Better than the professional photographer’s photo of our first kiss.

Happy Anniversary, my dear hub!

~xoxo~

For Hub...

Happy Birthday, my dear!

What an elaborately decorated cake!

It looks like you were enjoying it.

I found this cute photo of you on your 1st birthday.

Hope you don't mind...diapers and all! :)

~xoxo

Berry-Picking, Jam-Making

As summer seems to be zipping along at a very steady pace, I’m starting to catch subtle hints of autumn here & there…in the increased frequency of the hummingbirds at our feeder, in the slight change in daylight, in the chillier evenings, even something in the air at particular moments (although hard to define), and in my internal clock I suppose that makes me want to slow down a bit and pick up some unfinished knitting project from last winter (for some reason I can only knit when its cold out)…yet I’m still trying to cram in as much summer as I can and doing my best to complete some of my favorite summer traditions.

Unfortunately I missed the boat on my “strawberry picking/freezer jam making” ritual that I have engaged in over the past 2 summers, so I was happy that I was able to get in a little raspberry picking on the nearby creekside trails a week or so ago. From these raspberries, I decided I’d try making raspberry freezer jam to help replenish my dwindling stock of strawberry freezer jam.

In addition to freezer jam being scrumptious spread across toast, I also like to drizzle it upon vanilla ice cream, and a new favorite…to add a spoonful of sweetness to my fruit/yogurt smoothies in place of honey. After I made my first batch of strawberry freezer jam two summers ago (one of my new “acts of domesticity” after leaving my “corporate job”) and tasted how good homemade jam is (not to mention how really very simple it is to make freezer jam)…well, it’s become almost a necessity. There’s also something so rewarding and satisfying about picking your own berries and turning them into something that can fill up the fridge or have on hand to wrap up in fabric & ribbons for a sweet little hostess gift.

So…although I like the taste of strawberries slightly better than raspberries, and you need to use more sugar for raspberry jam, and you really should strain about half of the seeds (a somewhat tedious task), and it seems you need to pick lots more raspberries to get a batch of jam versus larger, plump strawberries, not to mention the tiny bugs that like to hang out inside the berry cavity so I had to go through them more carefully, requiring longer prep time than strawberries…it truly was just as rewarding and satisfying, perhaps even more so due to all the extra work!

Cabin-tiquing...

Why are owls so darn trendy right now? Although they are downright cute with their big eyes and plump bodies, I don’t totally understand the complete obsession with them that I’m seeing everywhere right now. Usually I have no clue if I’m ahead of a trend, in sync with a trend, or totally grabbing onto the coat tails of a trend…and this typically occurs unconsciously…because you can’t help but be inspired by the things you see to some degree…the things that appeal to you. I’m not claiming to have been ahead of the gigantic owl trend of the moment, but all I know for certain is that last fall I began making votives featuring my little owl cut-outs and they all were quickly snatched up. And since that time, this whole "owl phenomenon" doesn't appear to have lost any speed.

Birds in general seem to be a classic design element…although right now they seem to be spread across everything too, perhaps more than ever? So I wonder how long this owl obsession will persist? Will they fade into the background as they did in the 70s (I think...I’m too young to know the exact era?), or will they stick around as a classic design subject, such as the ordinary little songbird has? I know that I certainly am smitten with them right now and growing more so by the minute. I’m dearly in love with this little blue guy (below) that I found last weekend at a favorite antique store near the cabin…it’s the kind of antique store that doesn’t have too much junk, not overwhelming, and displays things nicely, which makes it much more fun to browse.
I also happened to find this little stump & deer planter. What made it all the more interesting was how this deer is the exact style and shape of a deer I found at an antique store near home. (Remember it in this photo?) That’s what I love about antiquing…finding the hidden treasures (which to each person are different) and sometimes finding nothing at all, but still enjoying the hunt.
Speaking of hunting, or fishing rather, while at the cabin we spent countless hours (as usual) out fishing. There happened to be this paddle-boating couple who appeared to have found mine & hub’s secret fishing spot…where you can almost always catch some good pan fish. It became clear to us that they had found it when we saw them day and evening going back & forth over our secret spot. How annoying of them! That’s our spot, we thought! But darn it all if they weren’t also the friendliest couple we met and one night on the lake, just after the sun was quickly slipping below the horizon, they offered and most insisted on taking a photo of us. They paddle-boated their way on over to get our camera and paddle-boated their way back to get us in the distance and by the time the photo was snapped, it was getting pretty dark. They took about 5 photos of us which resulted in every single photo blurred and rather crooked. But oh well, they were nice and they tried! (The moral of the story is that paddle-boating and picture-taking don't mix well.) So here it is in all its paddle-boating glory:
One more note from the cabin-front…I discovered these peculiar flowers, mostly all white, poking their way up from underneath fallen leaves. I’d never seen anything like it before. It was so odd in that it looked like a flower but it had no color on it. It seemed almost mushroom-like to me for some reason, perhaps because of its lack of green. We looked it up in our flower book and learned that it is called “Indian Pipe”. According to the book, it gets its nourishment from decayed organic material through a fungal relationship associated with the roots. Much like a mushroom I guess.

Getting back to owls…here’s my latest little sculpture pick…I think he’s a snow owl with the prettiest blue eyes.

So what’s next on the trend-horizon for our feathered friends? Maybe the hummingbird with its oh so long beak and slim body? I think the silhouette of it with its wings outstretched and long skinny beak pointed upward would make for an interesting contrast. What’s your prediction?

Early Bird

Yesterday was my early, early morning class. I say “early” twice I suppose because it really is quite early…for me at least. I’m not a morning person at all. But it does feel good to get going early and after a very energetic workout, I always think I can conquer the world. And these “early morning” days usually do turn out to be my most productive days. So I’ll acknowledge that maybe it’s a good thing to be a morning person. But most days I’m not so much.

So while driving into downtown, before the sun had even peeked over the horizon, I heard mention on the radio something about our local farmer’s market and I recalled that it is on Wednesdays too (not just Saturdays)…which yesterday just so happened to be. Since I was already out & about, I decided to head over to the Farmer’s Market after my class ended, where I figured I would be quite the “early bird” and get the best pick of the produce.

I hadn’t been there in a while because the last time I went I was a bit disappointed at the lack of produce…jams, syrup, bars of soap, sure…but no produce. Why in the world I thought there would be all this fabulous fresh produce in late June (especially in this northern region of the world) is beyond me…but perhaps it was my anxiousness for long-awaited hot summer days and the season to cook up something special with some very fresh ingredients. I’m so tired of buying produce at the grocery store only to bring it home and find out how yucky it is (for a variety of reasons).

I had a wonderful time yesterday morning, being out amongst all the other “early birds” (who, it seemed, were all toting their earth-friendly canvas bags...while I felt just a bit out of place with my powder blue gym bag slung over my shoulder) and picking out the best of the best produce from our local farmers. I wondered what delicious meals those around me were dreaming up to use their newly purchased produce in. And I bemoaned my own blueberry-growing problems with a berry farmer who kindly commiserated with me. We talked about the destructiveness of voles and other critters, but agreed on the sheer delight that comes when growing things does go well. I picked up some green beans, tomatoes, and blueberries (from the kind “berry farmer” man). But I think I’ll come back next week for more. The lettuce looked so good and green (imagine that…not brown and soggy). The potatoes were a vibrant red. And the bright orange carrots with their stringy green caps still intact were appealing too. I don’t know why I held back so much. But I guess I have an excuse to go again next week. Until my own tomatoes start to turn red. Why aren’t they red yet? I’m anxious and impatient so maybe next week I’ll talk to a “tomato farmer” about this.

A Mid-Summer's Lunch

On a recent hot & steamy afternoon, I was at my sweet friend’s home for a delightful lunch. I found myself surrounded by colors as cool & calming as the Sanibel seashore on a hazy morning when the sun is just starting to rise and everything looks painted in strokes of watercolor pastels.
She has impeccable taste and style when it comes to decorating and entertaining, as well as the innate ability to make most anything she touches more beautiful. She is drawn to colors such as robin’s egg blue, seashell pink, seafoam green, and fresh white. And although this is just her (& her husband’s) “temporary” home right now, she has transformed it into a lovely, tranquil, and cozy little “nest”. Wouldn’t you agree?