The sweet taste of sugar

I must confess - I am a sugar addict. 

It starts in the morning with iced coffee sweetened with artificial sweetener or simple syrup. If we are at a favorite coffee shop I might add on some sort of sweet as breakfast otherwise cereal with fruit and either sugar or artificial sweetener again. 

I try to find time to bring a "healthy" lunch to work. Salad of some sort, yogurt and fruit. I usually get bored sometime during the day and start snacking on something that contains sugar or salt. A diet soda to wash it down - bored stress eating.

I finish the day with a meal of some kind and occasionally a sweet to end the day. 

If I am bored, stressed or overly hungry I often will reach for the wrong type of quick snack that leaves me with a sugar crash yearning for more sugar. 

Sometimes life can get so busy and crazy that I don't notice I am wrecking myself until it is almost too late. Lately I have been not sleeping well. I have had no energy in the afternoon and I just noticed that my sugar and sugar substitute consumption was quite high. 

I knew I needed a drastic overhaul. I worry about my weight of course, but I also have wrist tendonitis and I know that sugar is a culprit of inflammation. I know I want to feel better so cutting sugar out is where I am going to start. This will be no small feat - take for example the Nectarine Oat Cake I baked today. Not even a bite and that hurts. 

The goal is no sugar for 30 days. Today is day one. This includes artifical sweeteners. Also no prepared products with sweetener - honey, stevia, molasses etc. I am good about reading labels but need to be diligent. This means lots of fresh whole foods. I will let myself eat fruit. A couple of pieces a day. 

Yesterday I needed to get my pantry and fridge in order so I could be prepared for this adventure. I bought fruit and greens for smoothies and found two amazing cereals that have no sugar. One is a Museli and the other a locally made hot cereal. I need cereal. It is how I start my day off right. 

Today I put together a orzo and garden vegetable salad for me and Mr. Ramon to take to work. 

I think the hardest thing will be my coffee. I always drink sweetened coffee. I have not had any coffee today since the thought of black coffee made me sad. So I feel tired. Iced tea maybe? With lemon. 

I expect to have a lot to share with you as I experience this over the next 30 days. 

Here I am!

I bet you thought I disappeared. Me too. Summer is coming to an end here in Seattle and there has been a mad scramble of weddings, BBQs and events. While I have loved seeing my friends and celebrating with everyone for so many reasons, I think that the end of summer has me down. I have a lot of things coming up as we transition into early fall - pickling, readying the garden for winter, last ditch yard efforts, basement cleaning and the such. I will be sure to share it all with you. 

The neighborhood my store sits in had a block party with yummy food trucks. Mr. Ramon brought these delicious items back to me for lunch. I can't remember the name of the food truck but the food was divine - some little pork taco type snacks and some type of warm sugar sprinkled donut. Mr. Ramon know just how to make me happy. 

We have been eating a lot of zucchini. I love it and am not even close to sick of it yet. One night I just sauteed one of our sweet onions from the garden in butter and olive oil then added the sliced yellow zebra zucchini and cremini mushrooms, some thyme, salt pepper until just soft. Sprinkled some parmesan on it and yum! Eating from the garden tastes so good. 

While we wait and hope that our larger tomato varieties both paste and slicing ripen before the weather turns. We have had many cherry tomatoes and they are sweet like candy. Perfect for a quick salad.

On Labor Day Mr. Ramon and I had the day off so we went to Whidbey Island again with the dogs. We took our friend Kalin and her two dogs and let them all run on the beach for a few hours. It was such a gorgeous day. It really made me wish summer would never leave. 

I hope you are enjoying the end of summer. What fun things are you doing to make these days last? 

Tomato Summer Squash Gratin

When planting our first garden together this summer I knew that squash would be easy to grow and provide us with some actual "eating from the garden" satisfaction. I also know that squash can overrun a garden and leave you with piles and piles to work through. 

We decided to plant several summer squash and a early winter squash. We put in Spineless Beauty Zucchini, Yellow Zebra Zucchini and Yellow Crookneck Squash - all organic starts from our local nursery. We have had a nice steady flow of squash this summer and have enjoyed them grilled, in bread and raw in salads. 

I was super excited to grow my own tomatoes but knew I needed to be ready for disappointment if summer just didn't bring enough heat. But the good news is - I can get beautiful local, organic tomatoes at our neighborhood co-op. 

I think the idea of a summer gratin sounds delish. Actually the idea of anything gratin sounds good to me. To "gratin" something means to top it with a browned crust of breadrumbs, grated cheese, and/or butter. In this case I want to take care how I prepare the veges as these two items can get soupy and mushy when cooked due to their high moisture content. But once you have a good technique in place you have a wonderful summer dish that is good fresh out of the over or room temperature. 

Summer Vegetable Gratin 

• 1lb of summer squash sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
• 1lb of zucchini sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
• 4 large tomatoes sliced in 1/4 inch slices
• 2 onions sliced thin 
• olive oil
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• salt/pepper
• 1 cup bread crumbs fresh or dried
• 2 shallots minced
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Toss sliced summer squash and zucchini with 1 tablespoon of salt and place in colander to drain. Drain for about 1 hour. Arrange squash and zucchini on a folded kitchen towel or several papertowels, cover with another towel or more papertowels and press to remove any additional liquid. 

Preheat over to 400 degrees. Oil a 13x9 baking dish. 

Arrange tomato slices on a kitchen towel or several paper towels. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of salt and let stand 30 minutes. 

Preheat a skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil and sautee your onions on medium low heat until they are soft and brown - about 25 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. 

Place another towel or paper towels on top of tomatoes and press to remove liquid. 

In a small bowl combine garlic, 3 tablespoons oil, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and thyme. In large bowl, toss zucchini and summer squash in half of oil mixture.

First layer the zucchini and summer squash in the bottom of the 13x9 baking dish. Spread the onions over the squash evenly. Next layer the tomoaotes over the onions overlapping as necessary. Drizzle the rest of the oil mixture over the tomatoes. Bake until tomatoes are brown on the edges and vegetables are soft. About 45 minutes.

In a bowl mix the bread crumbs, shallots, parmesan and salt/pepper to taste. Turn oven broiler on. Sprinkle bread crumb cheese mixture over vegetables and put under broiler until topping is brown and crispy. Remove from oven and let sit 10-15 minutes before serving. 

We enjoyed this with a yummy roast chicken on the patio with some good friends. It was a perfect summer meal!

Pie Contest!

My friends Danielle and Steve hosted a Ping Pong Tournament and Pie Contest this past weekend - what a blast. They live in West Seattle and have a lawn with an amazing view. They provided drinks and we brought our own picnics. What a fun idea. Add in ping pong and pie and the fun is non stop. 

Danielle reached out to me the week before the event to see if I could pull together some signage for the pie table as well as some award ribbons for the top pies. What a cool thing to be asked to do. Of course I said yes even though I knew I had a crazy week ahead of me. I did some research on award ribbons and came up with some ideas for signage based on vintage tablecloths. You can find them here on my Pinterest page. (I love to start a project with a mood board - gather all my inspirations and ideas together).

I had great hopes of folding ribbon perfectly and creating stunning award ribbons. Well that didn't happen. Did I mention I am not really crafty? Armed with a hot glue gun I burnt all my fingers and made a big mess all over my desk but, I finally made it through with some decent results. 

I started with a variety of ribbons and some flat wooden circles from the wood craft area in Michaels. I painted the circles yellow for this project to match the ribbon (these have holes like buttons in them - but I am covering them up with the award name so they work perfectly).

For each award I cut out lengths of ribbon then glue gunned them on individually. Many of the awards I looked at were made with one long length of ribbon folded and attached. I could not quite manage that and have it look as good as I wanted. I then glued on the tail ribbon to the back. I experimented with different combinations and came up with some pretty cute ribbons. 

The other pieces I worked on were the signage for the table, judges and winners of the contest. I printed them on card stock so they would be stiff enough to stand up. 

The funny thing that day was that I was so excited about the event that once I got there I forgot to take any pictures of the pie table all set up . I also did not take one single picture of the pie I baked - which to my surprise won first place. I really could have kicked myself. 

The Dress

I have been collecting pictures of wedding dresses since I was a little girl. It was fun to look back over them and see what I had imagined myself in. 

I was having quite a dilemma. The thought of wearing a white dress was so frightening. Heck, I don't even own white underwear. So how was I supposed to feel comfortable in something that reminds me of a huge white marshmallow? On the other hand, formal colored dresses felt very "prom" like to me. I wanted something elegant, colored and in my budget. 

Around the time Mr. Ramon and I were engaged we were in Portland shopping, eating and hanging out. We were on the hip Mississippi Ave. and went into a shop called Flutter. We were searching for wedding props - but I always peruse the vintage clothing. I was immediately drawn to a rack of amazing gowns. Now it is hard to explain what I was seeing - but dresses made of tulle, sequins and satin. All looking quite disheveled in a beautiful way. I knew instantly that this was the look I wanted. The big sign above the dresses said "Urchin Re.Design". I took note and knew I needed to find the person that made these and see if they could make me a dress. 

I could not let this leave my mind and upon returning to Seattle emailed Sonia Kasparian at Urchin to see if she could make me a dress. I was sure that this type of service would be out of my budget. After a few emails back and forth we decided to meet at her studio for a consultation. 

To start off I needed to know what style of dress would work best on my figure. I enlisted a bunch of my favorite ladies and my mom to head to David's Bridal to try on dresses for shape only. Exactly as I expected - the experience was really tough on me. Trying on huge white dresses in front of 100 mirrors was a bit scary. But I narrowed it down to empire waist and a fuller skirt. I had pictures and ideas to take to my first meeting with Sonia. The consultation with her was the beginning of what was to be 6 months of back and forth trips to Portland for custom fittings and great conversations. Not to mention she was able to make me my dream dress within my meager budget.

Sonia is unbelievably talented. She makes new dresses out of recycled dresses, tablecloths, vintage fabric etc. She hand dyes, hand embellishes and builds you a custom dress that is one of a kind. She has a house stuffed with fabric, leather, feathers, jewelry, beads and embellishments of all kinds. She also makes veils, headpieces, shrugs, jackets and on and on and on. She made me feel like the most beautiful version of me on my wedding day

Here is an example of her work - another bridal commission. 

Here are some pictures of my dress. Black was not my original intention. We talked about a lavender underskirt and a darker tulle. At our next few meetings the color changed and we moved to black as the top layers. She also found this exquisite French black lace with sequins that she hand sewed to the empire waist and on the bodice. I made quite a few trips as the entire top was fit directly to me. She also made me a shrug out of an old sweater and the same lace on the dress.

Let me tell you I felt like a princess during this process. I also loved that no one knew anything about my dress. I went alone on Mondays to my appointments. I even tried to keep Mr. Ramon in the dark about what I was doing. The night of our wedding I found out he really believed me that I was wearing white and when I came down the stairs in my dress he was in awe. 

Overall - hands down the most amazing experience ever. 

This year Vera Wang and a handful of other designers showed colored wedding dress collections. I think this is a really awesome trend and when done well is so beautiful.