100 Days to the Wedding!

Chris and I were taking a short break from wedding planning for the past week or so. It was getting to the point where it was all wedding, all the time. It was my idea to take a break but it wasn't too tough to get Chris to agree to it.

Now the planning is back on, with just 100 days to go! 

I planted flower seeds back in June with the hopes that I could use some of the cut flowers for the wedding. Everything I planted is labeled as blooming through the fall or until frost. I can't get too attached to any particular bloom because some or even all of them may not be doing well at that time. (Luckily we have a local flower farm nearby, and we'll be talking to Dorothy about what she'll have available in the fall.) I thought the "green envy" zinnias I planted would be my favorite flower. I couldn't wait when I saw this first bud. 

Here are the flowers. I love the color when they first bloom. Now some of the pink and red zinnias are starting to bloom and I think they will be a great complement to the green.  

I'm going to bake cupcakes for the wedding. Here is my second test batch of carrot cake cupcakes. The recipe I used called for adding a little crushed pineapple and it was great. This was my first try using decorating tips for the icing. I'll be testing some chocolate cake recipes next, as per request from Chris. If anyone knows any good chocolate cake recipes I'd love to hear about them. 

Another big wedding project I'll be working on is sewing table runners. I finally found this fabric to use. The pattern is called Bavarian Toile. Just finding the fabric was a long project. I liked these Amy Butler patterns, but Chris didn't love any of them. "Too girly." We even spent hours in a fabric store one day and left with nothing. I think finally settling on a fabric is what made me feel like we deserved a break from wedding stuff. 

Here's a close-up. So now all I have to do is take these 11 yards and sew 13 table runners. Easy, right? 

I know that I was worried that planning a wedding in 5 months wouldn't be enough time, but now I can't imagine mulling over all these decisions for a year or more! Deadlines are my friend. 

Gorgonzola!

This is my new favorite veggie meal. Chris deserves all the credit. Okay, maybe Ocean Boulevard deserves a little credit, because the inspiration for this meal came from a dinner we had there last spring. 

Kale recently replaced collards as my favorite leafy green. I wash it well, remove the stem in the middle of the leaves, and tear the leaves up a bit. I put a little butter into a pan and add the kale. Once it has cooked for a few minutes I add a little honey and balsamic vinegar, cook for another minute or two and it's done! 

To go with the kale for our dinner pictured above, Chris dabbed a little olive oil on some slices of bread and toasted them. Then he caramelized some onions and topped it all off with some gorgonzola cheese. 

The Pastoral Outer Banks

Here's a shot of a cow-bird symbiosis unfolding in Currituck County. When we first drove by one the birds was sitting on the cow's back. 

Chris and I went kayak fishing on the Mann's Harbor side of the old bridge. Here is Chris catching bait with his cast net. 

He caught several fish for live bait, but we didn't catch anything with our poles. According to Chris we should have gotten started at 5 a.m., which didn't happen. This is probably never going to happen. We paddled around instead. 

Harbinger Lavender Farm

My mom and I visited the Harbinger Lavender Farm for their Open House last Saturday. It is a small family farm where they grow lavender (using no chemicals) and make products with dried lavender and lavender oils. We even had lavender lemonade and lavender sugar cookies. They grow Provence and Grosso varieties at the farm. 

The farm is located across the bridge from the Outer Banks in Currituck County, so they have sandy soil just like we do. The plants love it. The lavender ladies recommend mulching with white sand or gravel for the sun to reflect light and keep the plants dry. The humidity of our area is a challenge for them -- at the farm they set the plants wider apart so that air can circulate around them.  

The ladies recommend that lavender plants receive at least six hours of sun per day and excellent drainage. In the fall they prune their plants by one-third into a dome shape. In late winter they add lime to their fields. 

After looking around we hit the field and clipped a bunch of lavender to bring home to dry. Hang lavender upside down to dry so the stems remain nice and straight. Drying will take about two weeks. At the farm they hang their bundles in an old barn that is dark, dry, and well-ventilated. They propped the door open and I took a picture. It smelled great in there. 

Seafood and Spice

For a few weeks I was on a major seafood kick. I would stop by the seafood market on my way home from work and cook it up. Now the tourists have invaded and I don't want to drive anywhere. But here are a few of my latest favorite dishes. 

Shrimp and Grits

We visited Tybee Island in February for Kate's birthday and had a great version of shrimp and grits at a restaurant there. I've been making shrimp and grits with okra and tomatoes ever since. First I prepare the grits according to the directions on the package. I love Bob's Red Mill grits. Then I slice a couple of spicy sausages. I use aidell's sausage, the cajun style andouille flavor. Then I peel the shrimp. If you're cooking this dish with a friend and the friend asks if they can help you with anything, look busy and say: "oh, maybe you could peel the shrimp while I'm getting everything else ready." If I'm using large shrimp I de-vein it so it has a nice butterfly shape. Also a good thing for someone other than you to do. 

I cook the sliced sausage while I dice the tomatoes, okra, and garlic. Throw in these three ingredients with the sausage. Add a little butter and white wine. Add a little salt and pepper at some point, but not too much if you're using spicy sausage because it adds lots of flavor. Wait to throw in the shrimp until everything else is almost cooked, because shrimp only need a few minutes. Cook them until they are pink and no longer translucent. Add some green onions just a minute before you turn off the heat under the pan. Serve over grits. Drink the rest of the bottle of white wine with dinner. 

Blackened Trout

This is an easy way to prepare fresh fish. I have experimented with making my own blackening seasoning, but for this dish I just bought pre-mixed seasoning at the seafood market. While I heat up an iron skillet I coat fillets of speckled trout with the seasoning on both sides. I add butter to the pan once it's hot and cook the fillets for a few minutes on each side (for thin fillets like these a few minutes will do; add more time for thicker fillets.) Only turn them once. Top with a pat of butter and sprinkle some chopped cilantro on top. Chris made the potatoes, and I just lightly steamed the sugar snap peas to go along with the fish. 

Lemon caper flounder

I stole this flounder recipe from Back Porch restaurant in Ocracoke. Lightly dredge flounder fillets in a breading of flour, cornmeal, salt, and pepper. Pan fry it a few minutes on each side. For the sauce, melt a little butter (I just did this in the microwave), add some lemon juice and a lot of capers. Pour over the flounder after assembling a plate with flounder and white rice. I used Basmati rice and it was excellent with the sauce. I also made a tomatillo and corn relish to go along with the flounder. I also couldn't resist the softshell crabs at the seafood market, so Chris panfried a couple of those to go along with the flounder. 

The softshells were so fresh they were still alive. They cleaned them for me (removed the lungs and intestines) at the seafood market. The woman came out of the back with the cleaned crabs and was chuckling (in a creepy way, I thought) about how the crabs were still moving. 

"They don't know they're dead yet," she said. 

"Yeah," I said, "I feel kind of bad about that." 

"Just don't name them," she said. 

This meal was awesome with the new Radler beer from the local micro-brewery Weeping Radish. 

I said yes

Chris asked me to marry him and I said yes. Actually, I got a little choked up (who, me? Me who cries at those black and white Rice Krispies commercials?) and I couldn't say anything for a second. So I just nodded enthusiastically until I could squawk out yes. Because I started suspecting something when Chris asked me to pick out a ring, it wasn't a surprise, but I don't think I could have been any more excited if it was.

Since everyone I talked to and everything I was reading said that it takes six months to plan a wedding at the very least, I was anxious to get started since we want to get married this fall. Turns out that planning five months out seems to be working just fine. Within a week we were able to reserve the location and the photographer that we really wanted. We're also planning on doing quite a few things ourselves, with the help of my very talented mother and sister. And hopefully a few friends, too. I'll be baking cupcakes instead of hiring someone to bake a cake. I'm thinking about carrot cake, even though the time I made carrot cake cupcakes for Lori's baby shower all of the carrot sank to the bottom. So I'll do a few trial runs and take notes. My mom will be in charge of the flowers, and hopefully we can use mostly plants and flowers from our own garden. We'll start researching some fall-blooming plants. I like these. There's a great how-to on making your own bouquet on Real Simple's site.

No matter what happens with the cupcakes, catering, music, or decorations, at the end of the day we'll be married. I asked Chris what he was looking forward to the most about being married and he said, "having breakfast with you."

Oh Snap!

If you want an instant gratification garden, plant sugar snap peas.

My sugar snap plants have taken off. These first two pictures were taken about a month ago, on April 27. 

Here they are today. I filled this container with several snap pea plants, and planted nasturtium seeds around the border. I thought it might get a little too crowded, but everything seems to be thriving so far. Fast and easy, sugar.  

Sugar snaps grow best in cool weather, so I don't think they will survive the summer heat. They can also be planted in late summer for a fall crop.