Asharae – Page 18

Blueberry Mint Lemonade and a Review of Daring Greatly

September 15, 2014 by Asharae 3 Comments

I finished reading Daring Greatly by Brené Brown the other week and can’t stop thinking about it. She has started a beautiful and extraordinarily important conversation about shame and vulnerability.

As a shame researcher, she provides a framework, the words, and the definitions to talk about shame and vulnerability. Those don’t sound like fun things to read about, but the way she writes keeps you absolutely captivated with stories woven into each chapter – sometimes it feels like she plucked them right out of your own life. Brown addresses everything from gender shaming to shame in the classroom to using (and preferably not using) shame as a parenting tool to the feelings of shame and the fear of “being wrong” that hinders innovation and creativity.

I flipped through her book a few times trying to find a quote suitable to share here. I’ve scribbled and underlined and circled and asterisked (is that a word?) all through her book, and one part I keep coming back to is in her chapter titled “Understanding and Combating Shame.” She defines “shame tapes” as “the messages of self-doubt and self-criticism that we carry around in our heads,” and she gives the metaphor of a gremlin as the tricky little liar that tries to fill our heads with that nonsense.

“Understanding our shame tapes or gremlins is critical to overcoming shame because we can’t always point to a certain moment or a specific put-down at the hands of another person. Sometimes shame is the result of us playing the old recordings that were programmed when we were children or simply absorbed from the culture…Sometimes when we dare to walk into the arena the greatest critic we face is ourselves.“

Now, when Tim and I are facing a difficult decision, combating self-doubt, or just having a crummy day, we’ll ask one another, “What are the gremlins saying?” It has been an incredibly helpful framework for us to put words to the things that are discouraging us, the lies we’re listening to, and the doubt that we’re facing. We’re still learning how to take a step back from all of that and listen to the words of peace and encouragement and direction that the Lord whispers to us instead.

I hope you’ll go pick up a copy of Daring Greatly – and when you do, come back and let me know what you think of it!

We made this lemonade for the first time after going blueberry picking this summer. It’s ridiculously delicious. I’ve made it with both fresh blueberries and frozen ones, and with and without mint – use what you’ve got on hand! Even though blueberry season is long gone, you can still enjoy a little taste of summer by using frozen berries! I hardly feel like summer has begun, and somehow we’re already talking of fall. What. When did that happen? (Um. Also. Some of our friends have already gotten snow. Let’s not even go there.) Don’t get me wrong, I love wearing boots and sweaters and scarves just as much as the next girl, but right now I’m still craving sun-kissed skin and ocean waves and lemonade. At least I’ve got one of the three right now.

And soon to be two of the three. Tim and I are headed to Martha’s Vineyard this weekend to photograph and film his cousin’s wedding day! Family, the ocean, a ferry ride, the salty breeze. We could not be more stoked. I’m trying to contain my excitement and refrain from using too many exclamation points. (!!!)

That’ll kick off our grand road trip the next few weeks shooting weddings – we’ll be traveling from NC through New York City on to Martha’s Vineyard, out to visit friends in Massachusetts, camping near Niagara Falls, onward to see friends who just started working at Taylor University, and then up to Chicago where we have two weddings the following two weekends. If any of ya’ll are along the way and want to grab lunch/coffee/dinner/schedule a photo session/provide a place for us to stay (wink wink, nudge nudge) – let us know!! Also. If you have suggestions for budget friendly things we should do/see/eat along the way, send them our way!

Blueberry Lemonade

Adapted from Kitchen Treaty

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Ingredients

3/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice about 6 medium lemons
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1 cup hot water
3 cups cold water
Handful of mint leaves optional

Instructions

Combine fresh squeezed lemon juice, sugar, blueberries, and hot water in a blender. Blend until sugar has dissolved and berries are pureed.
Pour into a large pitcher, using a small sieve to remove the pulp. Add cold water, tear mint leaves and add, stir to combine, and chill in the fridge for an hour or so before serving.
Serve over ice. Use a small sieve to strain the mint leaves out at this point if you don't want them in your drink.

Caprese Salad with Honey Balsamic Reduction and some Mid-Week Inspiration

September 10, 2014 by Asharae 1 Comment

This week I want to share a few of the things that I’ve been inspired by lately. I hope a few of these words speak to you and perhaps encourage you to read these books or visit these blogs. Enjoy!

Tsh Oxenreider and her family’s year-long round-the-world trip.

I’m completely in awe of this trip Tsh and her husband are about to set out on with their three kids. I haven’t even gotten a chance to read her book Notes From A Blue Bike which I bought back in the spring, but it’s next on the list. I love reading stories of families who are thinking outside the box – the ones who are willing to make certain sacrifices in order to pursue what’s most important to them.

The Oxenreiders are doing something which seems so radical to some, but as Tsh explains it – “Traveling is in our blood.”

I love this quote from her blog. I think it applies to so many things, particularly when it comes to taking a big “next step,” in anything from vocation to marriage to family to going on a year-long trip around the world.

“I think sometimes we feel like there needs to be this extrinsic, sign-from-God sort of reason to do something this big. But really, what if God simply delights in us following our desires? What if we’re partly fulfilling our vocation (in the literal sense of the word) by acting on our deepest passions?”

Yes. This.

These photos of the Ingalls homestead from Joy Prouty.

Go look at them. And read her words. Altogether they make me want to melt in a puddle of happiness. I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I was a kid – and these photos reminded me of how much they ignited my imagination – perhaps my secret longing to build my own house, grow my own food, and raise chickens and goats has something to do with those books. I even remember a short-lived phase where I insisted on calling my parents Ma and Pa.

I think Little House on the Prairie is moving up on my list of books to re-read. But right now I’m trying to convince Tim we should read The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle aloud – it’s another of my childhood favorites. We started reading it on Sunday, and he was sweet enough to read a few chapters to me before I started snoring on the couch. Sunday afternoons man. They’ll getcha.

Anna Watson Carl and her blog The Yellow Table

I’m a relatively new reader of Anna’s blog, but I’ve been loving everything she writes. She’s a chef and a writer based in NYC and she’s publishing a cookbook this fall. It’s been a lot of fun to follow her journey via Instagram and her blog. She writes with refreshing honesty about combatting the doubts and discouragement and realizing her need for rest, refreshment, and new perspective.

I came across this post of hers recently and it really resonated with me. I too have trouble slowing down and truly resting. Working from home and running my own business is a blessing and a curse in that regard. I’m home all the time, so it seems it would be easy to relax and simply enjoy being home. The flip side of that is that I’m also always at work – there’s always more to be done – more emails to send, more blog posts to write, more photos to edit. And it really never ends. I’ve taken to (almost) never checking my email on the weekends because I simply need a break from it all. I’m slowly letting go of the guilt I can sometimes feel when I let an email go a couple days before I answer it. My heart and my brain simply need to rest sometimes.

This recipe is inspired partly by the plethora of tomatoes we have exploding from our garden right now and partly by our honeymoon over four years ago (no, we didn’t go to Italy, but we did eat at an amazing Italian restaurant in Georgia of all places.) We ordered caprese salad as an appetizer and it maybe changed our lives. Mine at least. The waiter explained that they had created a balsamic vinegar reduction to drizzle over the tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. All I remember is that that dish forever changed my dislike for tomatoes. The sweet, salt and peppery, tart combination left me yearning to figure out how to recreate that dish. Until now I’d never actually tried. I came across this recipe for a honey balsamic reduction and adapted it into my usual caprese salad ensemble. The result – delicious.

Caprese Salad with Honey Balsamic Reduction

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Ingredients

For the Honey Balsamic Reduction

1/2 c balsamic vinegar
2 Tbs honey

For the salad

3 Medium tomatoes any variety - we used Black Krim, Lemon Boy, and Better Boy tomatoes
Mozzarella buying the pre-sliced rounds makes this easy - I even slice those in half since they're so thick
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh basil chopped

Instructions

For the Honey Balsamic Reduction

Combine the balsamic vinegar and honey in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until syrupy and reduced to 1/3 c, about 10-12 minutes. Let cool to room temperature. Store leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge.

Assemble the salad

Layer the salad in this order - tomato, salt and pepper, mozzarella, honey balsamic reduction, fresh basil.
Enjoy!

Notes

If you're short on time or feeling lazy, you can always skip the honey balsamic reduction and drizzle a few teaspoons of balsamic vinegar over your tomatoes instead.

Roasted Tomato Salsa

September 4, 2014 by Asharae Leave a Comment

Our garden is currently exploding with tomatoes – anyone want some? A couple weeks ago we had an abundance of cucumbers, but this week it’s tomatoes. Obviously that means I should share another salsa recipe with you. I mean, pico de gallo is great for any occasion, but if you want to put a little extra something special into your salsa, roasting your tomatoes is a great option!

Tomatillos are also coming into season, so if you’re really wanting to think outside the box, grab a few of those and add them to this recipe. And a side note – tomatillos are super easy to grow – at least in our hot southern climate. Last year we grew two tomatillo plants (you have to grow at least two so they can cross-pollinate – oh the things you learn when growing your own food!) They’re fun plants to have in your garden because the fruits grow in pretty little paper husks – once they fill the husk and start to break out of it, you know they’re ready! We still have a freezer full of tomatillos from last year, so we decided not to grow any this time around.

Speaking of an abundance of veggies – one of the things I’ve always loved about living in the country is how many people have backyard gardens, and how willing they are to share their produce. “Eating local” and “growing organic” isn’t a newfound fad around here, it’s a way of life. I remember when I was a kid we always had people from the church my dad pastors dropping off bags of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and peaches on our front doorstep. Sometimes we’d look in the bag and wonder “what exactly is that vegetable?” Inevitably the mystery veggie would make its way into some soup or casserole. Another story for another day.

Recently a sweet lady in our church offered up an open invitation to my mom to stop by her house and pick pears whenever she wanted. My mom stopped by Dixie’s house to take a few pears off her hands and called me as she was leaving, “I ended up with more fruits and veggies than I know what to do with! I’m bringing some by your house!” When she arrived she brought in a bag of pears and a bag of tomatoes and exclaimed “I’m not done yet – come help me get stuff out of the car!” Two bell peppers, three banana peppers, seven jalapeños, two honeydew, one huge watermelon, five eggplant, twenty or thirty something pears, and two ginormous bags full of tomatoes later, we’d split her bounty down the middle. All that being said – many thanks to Dixie for the gorgeous yellow tomatoes below! We used them for everything from bruschetta to pasta sauce to this delicious salsa.

Roasted Tomato Salsa

Asharae Kroll

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Prep Time 10 mins

Cook Time 30 mins

Total Time 40 mins

Ingredients

2-3 c of cherry tomatoes halved
Optional 3-4 large tomatillos, halved (6-7 if using small tomatillos like I did)
2 or more jalapeños halved lengthwise and the seeds removed if you want a milder salsa
Juice from 1-2 large limes
1/2 - 1 c loosely packed cilantro leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
1 clove garlic minced
1/4 tsp cumin
3/4 medium tomatoes
1/4 c white onion finely diced

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
Grease a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and place tomatoes, tomatillos (if using), and jalapeños, cut side down on the pan. (I didn't do that for the photos, but your veggies will stick to the pan later if you do it the other way!)
Roast in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Remove pan from oven, carefully flip all the veggies so they're now cut side up, and roast for about 15 more minutes, or until roasted and delicious looking. Keep an eye on them during the last half of roasting to be sure they don't burn - char is good, burn is bad. Let cool slightly before adding to the rest of the ingredients.
While the veggies are roasting, you can begin to assemble the rest of your ingredients.
Place roasted veggies, lime, cilantro, salt and pepper, garlic, cumin, and fresh tomatoes in a food processor or blender and blend to desired consistency. If your salsa is too thick, you can always add another tomato or two to add more juice back in. Adjust to taste.
For a little more texture in my salsa, I stir the onion in at the very end. If you want a smoother salsa, you're welcome to blend that in as well.

Notes

For roasting, I used a combination of Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes and yellow tomatoes from a sweet lady in our church (not sure of the variety). To add some juice back into the salsa when blending, I used a combination of Black Krim, Better Boy, and Roma tomatoes. Obviously you're welcome to use whatever variety you have on hand - the flavor and color of your salsa will vary depending on what you use.

Guest Post by Tim Kroll – Focaccia / Pizza Dough

August 28, 2014 by Asharae Leave a Comment

This pizza dough recipe is a long-standing tradition in my husband’s family, so I felt it was only appropriate that he write about it! We’ve taken a little liberty with the recipe itself, and discovered that it makes an excellent dough for focaccia as well! Today I’m just sharing the recipe for the dough and photos of the focaccia version – if you’d rather make pizza, you can be creative with your own toppings!

A while back my in-laws gifted us one of those three-ring-binder-church-cookbooks full of recipes from families in the church where Tim’s mom grew up. I love it because I know that there is family history within the pages of that book – each recipe has a story behind it and belongs to a family that enjoyed it enough to share with the whole church. I know that on page 58 I’ll find a recipe for “Pizza From Scratch,” with notes scribbled in the margins. Without further ado, I’ll let Tim share his family’s story of this recipe.

My family likes traditions. Traditions like riding in the car all cozied up on Christmas Eve looking for the neighborhood with the best light display, gathering around the Thanksgiving table with the plethora of family on my mom’s side, celebratory birthday banners that appeared the morning of each of our birthdays – sneakily designed by someone in the family, and french toast every Sunday morning (but seriously, every Sunday morning). These are just some of the fun traditions I had growing up.

Another wonderful tradition that we started when I was in middle school was weekly homemade pizza. We’d usually rent a movie from one of the local rental stores and top the pizzas in whatever way our hearts desired. Inevitably my mom would try to sneak healthy things like green peppers or wheat germ into the recipe, but it still made for a tasty meal! I love how the pizza crust isn’t a thin crust, but also isn’t so doughy that you feel like it’s more bread than toppings. Growing up we usually made 3 or more pizzas, went downstairs to watch our movie while we ate, and put the left-overs (if we had any) in a ziploc bag to be enjoyed the next day for lunch. If I ever had friends over to share in the tradition, they’d always tell me (and mostly my mom) how delicious the pizza was.

When dressing the pizza, I fully recommend using a spoon to spread the sauce on the dough, and because I’m not a huge crust person, I would try to get the sauce as close to the edge as possible (within a half inch or so). Get a good mozzarella cheese blend to top the sauce, and then ever so carefully spread your desired toppings equally spaced along the top. I like to think that with all the years practice I’ve had growing up, I’m pretty good at spreading the toppings on the pizza in the most precise manner possible! (Asharae’s note: Tim takes this very seriously. Can you tell he’s more of a mathematician than I am?)

One thing to note, my mom loved it when she got a bread machine that could mix the ingredients together for her. Even if you don’t plan ahead, you could easily get inspired to make pizzas while reflecting on a delicious lunch, and still have plenty of time to make the homemade pizza dough and get it ready in time for dinner. I have used store-bought pizza dough in the past, but it never has been as good as this recipe.

I hope that you’re reminded of your own family traditions as you make this recipe, and who knows, maybe it will get a new spot in the rotation of your family’s traditions!

Simple Pizza Dough / Focaccia

Makes two large cookie-sheet-sized pizza crusts.

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Prep Time 1 hr 30 mins

Cook Time 20 mins

Total Time 1 hr 50 mins

Servings 6

Ingredients

For Dough

1 1/4 c warm water
2 Tbs vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
4 c flour
1 package dry yeast 2 1/4 tsp

For Pizza

Pizza sauce of your choice
Mozarella Cheese
Toppings of your choice

For Focaccia

Olive oil
Kosher salt
Italian Seasoning
Fresh grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

(With a bread machine) Place ingredients in bread machine in the order listed (unless your bread machine manufacturer recommends something different). Choose the Dough setting and the largest loaf size. Let the bread machine work its magic!
(By hand) Sift flour and salt together, set aside. In a separate bowl dissolve yeast into warm water, stir in 2 Tbs vegetable oil. Pour into flour and salt mixture and stir until it comes together. Knead vigorously until smooth and elastic. Shape into a ball. Place in a greased bowl, brush with oil, cover and let rise until doubled in size.
Once dough is ready, divide in half and spread on two floured baking sheets.
(For pizza) Brush crust lightly with olive oil (this keeps it from getting soggy from the sauce), top with sauce and toppings of your choice. Bake 15-20 min at 400. Broil for a minute or two if your cheese isn't bubbly enough.
(For focaccia) Once dough is spread out, make divots in the surface of the dough with your fingers. Try not to poke through the dough - these divots will hold the olive oil. Drizzle several Tbs of olive oil over the top of the dough, allowing it to pool in the divots you made. Sprinkle dough with kosher salt, Italian seasonings, and freshly grated parmesan cheese. Bake for 10-12 min at 400. Broil for a minute or two if you'd like the top to be crispier.

Notes

This dough is freezable. I usually make the full recipe and then place half of it in a freezer safe ziplock bag and freeze it till later. When ready to bake, simply let the dough come to room temperature first, spread on a floured baking sheet as usual, and bake as instructed.