What's going on in my kitchen...

That would be homemade pickles & blueberry muffins. The muffin recipe is from a high school friend's mom, and they are delicious! You can find the recipe to make your own pickles on an awesome blog here.

Here is the muffin recipe courtesy of Margaret Martin Lancaster:

Blueberry Muffins, from Set For Life cookbook by Jane P Merrill & Karen M Sunderland

2 cups Whole Wheat Flour (my mom just used unbleached all purpose white flour - can also use 1/2 white, 1/2 whole.)
1 Tbspt baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup honey or sugar (mom used sugar)
1 egg
1 cupt skim milk
1/4 cup oil (think she probably used canola)
1 cup blueberries (she used fresh but frozen are prob fine too)

Mix dry ingred's together. combine rest of ingred's except bberries in blender. Pour into dry ingred & stir just until combined. Longer mixing makes muffins tough. Fold in 1 cup bberries.

My mom never really used the blender. Just combined in regular bowl.

Spray muffin tins w/pam - makes 12. Bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 min.

Cathedral Caverns & The Beach

Last month, Trey and I drove up to Elkmont, AL to check out Cathedral Caverns. It was the perfect excuse to do lunch in Huntsville and check in on these two babies...or shall I say a baby and a big girl?

Hudson has grown so much! He has the most precious huge smile, but of course, he wouldn't let me catch it on film.

Cathedral Caverns was pretty great, too. It was a fun little outdoor adventure, and it made me appreciate Alabama the Beautiful.

The drive was gorgeous...

You can learn more about the caverns here.

Then we were off to the beach for a quick weekend getaway, and these were the best pictures I got. Typical. If you are ever in the Sandestin/Seaside/Rosemary Beach area, you should eat here. If you go from 5-6, they have an "early bird special" where you can buy one entree and get the second entree free. It is a great way to get some amazing food without having to break the bank with a $34 entree. The restaurant is appropriately called Cafe Thirty-A.

Baking! Blueberry Pie and Focaccia Bread

My sweet little niece heads off to sleep away camp today. This will be her second year at Camp Mac, and she loves it! Trey and I wanted to spend some quality time with her. So, why not bake a blueberry pie from scratch? Because they seem to go hand-in-hand we all made some tie dye t-shirts, too. On Sunday, I made some Focaccia bread that was to die for...so here's the recipe!

Ella Grace - 9 years old and so stinking cute!

our pie!

egg whites to make it shine

our pie crust wasn't very pretty...but we did it ourselves

He is pretty stinking cute, too!

Focaccia

Add to your bread machine:

1. Warm Water - 1 cup
2. Olive Oil - 1/2 cup
3. Sugar 2 tsp (I use can sugar or sugar in the raw
4. Salt 1 tsp (I use Kosher sea salt)
5. Bread Flour - 3 cups
6. Active Dry Yeast 1 & 1/2 tsp
7. After it has kneaded for a bit, add 1 tbs of dried italian seasoning of any kind.
8. Let it do its thing on a dough cycle...once done, spread the dough on a greased cookie sheet, cover and let rise for 30 minutes.
9. In a skillet combine 1/4 cup of olive oil, dried oregano and garlic to taste. I love garlic so I won't even tell you how much I used! After the dough has risen for 30 minutes, drizzle your skillet ingredients on the dough. Add rosemary and grated parmesan cheese.
10. Bake on 400℉ for 20 minutes.

By the way, if you have an iPhone, you have to get the Hipstamatic camera app to play with. It makes your pictures look so cool!

Bread Making!

These ingredients...

made this loaf of bread...

For my 21st birthday, I asked my sisters for a bread machine. I baked a few loaves of bread without reading the instructions. It didn't go well. I got over my idea of being a bread making kind of girld. Karli and I had a long conversation about baking bread while on a train in Italy. It motivated me to get my machine back out. I decided to read the directions this time. Apparently, you are supposed to put the wet ingredients in first...then dry ingredients and last but not least the yeast. I don't know if I will ever buy a loaf of bread again because it is SO easy. Obviously, it has a ton of health benefits, too. It literally takes 10 minutes to pile the ingredients in the machine, and 4 hours later (if you cook a 2 pound loaf like above), you will have a fresh loaf. Here is the recipe for the loaf that I am obsessed with right now!

Flax and Cracked Wheat Bread

1. Water (warm) - 1 1/2 cups
2. Olive Oil - 3 tbl
3. Honey - 3 tbl
4. Salt - 2 tsb
5. Flax seed meal - 1/4 cup
6. Flax seed - 2 tbl
7. Cracked wheat - 1/4 cup
8. Bread Flour - 3 1/2 cups
9. Active Dry yeast - 1 tbl

(if you use quick rise yeast or bread machine yeast, use 2 tsp)

- If you have a bread machine, put it on European cycle for about 3 hours and 55 minutes.

ITALY!

What else do you need to say to follow up the word Italy? I finally made it over to spend time with The Perkins. I went to "help" with the newest family addition, Hudson James. What started as a week long trip to Bologna turned into an extended adventure including Bologna, Lucca (Tuscany), Florence, Venice and Rome. Is it really my fault that ash from a volcano in Iceland shut down all airports in Italy? Enough about that... I had an amazing time with my friend. Not only is she an amazing mother and wife (and cook, too!), but she is really making some huge sacrifices serving Christ in Italy with her husband and two kids. I can't say enough about how much I adore her sweet daughter Isabella. She gives every Italian she sees a confident, "Ciao!" You can definitely get a glimpse of her personality from these pics! You can follow The Perkins serving with Campus Crusade for Christ in Bologna, Italy here.

Villa Borghese Gardens
Venice

Spanish Steps

HUDSON!
nothing like going to the market for your veggies

ISABELLA!

Swinging it in Tuscany

Florence





Piazza San Marco
Last picture of the trip...I concur!