BBM Package from Australia!

Imagine our delight to find our Blogging By Mail surprise arrived all the way from Sydney, Australia! The BBM organizer, Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness, paired us with the wonderful Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. Interestingly, Steph grew up in Virginia, lived in New York for a while, and just moved to Australia this year. What a small world!

The box was PACKED with goodies. She included too much! (leftish to rightish):
A reusable grocery bag - This will prove handy on my impromptu grocery trips.
A postcard featuring a vintage cricket poster
A ceramic salt cellar - I have never used one of these, but it looks like it would be handy
Pink salt for the salt cellar - I looked it up, apparently this salt comes from underground saline water!
A copy of delicious. magazine - I'd never heard of this magazine but reading through it, it a top notch foodie must-read! Beautiful layout, recipes, interviews. I can see why Steph would include this as a fave.
A pack of chocolate malt balls - Mmmm. Need I say more?
Chocolate cookbook published by Australian Gourmet - These recipes look sooo good.
Chamomile and lavender tea - How did Steph know that Kevin loves tea?
A packet of wattleseed - a seed native to Australia, and often used in desserts, I'm looking forward to trying this!
Printed muffin cups - Just the handy excuse I need to make cupcakes ... Maybe something chocolatey from the cookbook she sent?

I've always dreamed of visiting Australia, and this package feels like it has to be the next best thing. Thanks Steph for such a thoughtful package and thanks to Stephanie for organizing it all. It was great to discover Steph's blog, and participate in such a fun event!

A Visit to Bull Run Mountain Farm

As promised, here are some photos Kevin took from our visit to Bull Run Mountain Farm. We've been really happy to support this farm, and are enjoying all the wonderful organic vegetables. In addition to locally grown vegetables and herbs, we've gotten some fruits and even some honey! It was a great day to be outside and learning where our food comes from. The photo above is our farmer Leigh giving us a tour of the farm.

This is one of the fields right in front of the farmhouse.


And last but not least, is a peek into some vegetables we'll see later in the season. Pumpkin seedlings in the greenhouse!

Summer Update!

Hello! We haven't been able to find the time lately to post about our latest summer food adventures, so we thought we'd give you a quick update. As our jobs have been so busy and life creeps in, combined with tag-team sickness, it sometimes is rather difficult to post photos as quickly as we take them, so please bear with us. We've got a free day today to play some catch up!

On 07/07/07, we took a trip up to New York City, to see some music and find some good pizza. We ended up at Grimaldi's in Brooklyn. It was wonderful pizza, Kevin thought it was the best pizza he had ever had. Apparently the secret is a coal-burning oven? I've read conflicting reports about coal for cooking as it relates to pollution. If anyone knows the deal about coal, please chime in!

A couple weekends later, as we wrote about previously, we went to Ocean City, MD. It was a great weekend. We also attended the Chincoteague Blueberry Festival. It was a nice little sort of bazaar market. At the market, we had some wonderful Blueberry ice cream from the Island Creamery, and sampled some Blueberry shortcake. Unfortunately, the pints of fresh blueberries, and blueberry pies were ALL SOLD OUT! Ahh well, we still had a good time, and also bought some blueberry teas from the Eastern Shore Coastal Roasting Company. (The tea is very good, by the way!)

The following weekend, we attended our CSA shareholder potluck at the Bull Run Mountain Farm. The potluck was wonderful, and it was great to get a tour of the farm, and see where our produce was coming from, and how farming is done. We left with a new appreciation for the work that small farms put into bringing food to our tables. We are very happy to have supported the farm this year, especially with this summer's drought. We'll definitely be posting photos of the farm.

Also last but not least, we got our Blogging By Mail package from Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. What a wonderful package it was, we'll be posting about this as well!

Stay tuned!