mid-week inspiration

Strawberry Lemonade and Mid-Week Inspiration

May 20, 2015 by Asharae 3 Comments

Every once in a while I love to share a few of the things that have been inspiring me lately – I call them my “mid-week inspiration” posts. I know that come the middle of the week I can use a little something to inspire me to make it through to the weekend, so I like to share some of that with you! This week I’m focusing on one in particular – it’s a podcast called The Boredom Experiment.

This podcast is created by two of our very favorite wedding photographers, known as We Are The Parsons. Jeremy and Ashley Parsons are the kind of people who soak up life to its fullest extent – and when they feel they aren’t doing that well enough, they take a step back, reevaluate, and try something new. It’s been a beautiful thing to watch their business grow and flourish, to read their captivating way of telling stories, and admire all they’re doing from afar.

The Boredom Experiment is the chronicle of their year as they take a break from social media. It’s thoughtful storytelling woven together with music, with the words of Jeremy and Ashley’s kids, and with such real emotion that it’s easy to imagine you’re cozied up with them in their revamped Shasta trailer, sharing stories and laughing over a glass of wine. We haven’t yet met Ashley and Jeremy in person, but I imagine we’d be kindred souls.

A few weeks ago I shared about a thought-provoking Ted Talk I enjoyed. The Parsons’ podcast is in the same vein. As we become more and more desensitized to the lure and the influence of social media, our phones, and other things that suck our time away without us realizing it, these voices of reason become ever more important for us to hear. I urge you to follow along with Tim and I as we look forward to another Boredom Experiment podcast each month.

All this thinking is making me thirsty – how about some strawberry lemonade to quench our thirst? Last week we went strawberry picking with our small group and returned home with a gallon bucket, overflowing with fresh strawberries. We’re reaching the end of strawberry season here in NC, so now’s the time to take your family strawberry picking or snag some at your local farmer’s market before they’re all gone! Further north you’ve probably got a few more weeks left of your growing season, so enjoy it!

I adapted this recipe from one I made last summer for blueberry mint lemonade. This method of lemonade-making has endless possibilities, so don’t be afraid to experiment and have fun with it!

Strawberry Lemonade

Asharae Kroll

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Prep Time 10 mins

Total Time 10 mins

Ingredients

3/4 c fresh squeezed lemon juice 5-6 medium lemons
3/4 c sugar
1 c fresh or frozen and thawed strawberries
1 c hot water
3 c cold water

Instructions

Using a blender (or a large pitcher and an immersion blender - my preferred method) combine fresh squeezed lemon juice, sugar, and hot water. Blend until sugar has dissolved. Add fresh or frozen (thawed) strawberries and blend again till berries are well blended.
Add 3 c cold water, blend till combined. Pour through a fine mesh sieve if you wish to remove some of the strawberry seeds.
Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Grapefruit Margarita and Mid-Week Inspiration

March 25, 2015 by Asharae 4 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve written a Mid-Week Inspiration post, so I thought it was about time I share a few of the things that have been inspiring me lately!

The Nester – Oh my goodness ya’ll. I had the incredible honor and sweetest surprise this weekend to be featured on Myquillyn’s site! Whoa. I’ve been following her blog for a year or so now, and read her fabulous book last summer. If you haven’t heard of The Nesting Place, go pick up a copy today! I read it at just the right time last year and it’s really helped me to embrace this season that Tim and I are in.

We’ve felt like our living situation has been so temporary for the past few years, so I had been avoiding putting things up on the walls, unpacking boxes, and the like. After reading her book, I created a gallery wall in our dining room and one in our living room, I began unpacking more of our things, and I started to fully embrace our current space – in all its ugly-wood-paneled-1970s glory. Even just this past week I unpacked all our books (they’d been in boxes since we lived in Seattle over three years ago!) and began decorating our front hall with a couple antique store finds and a hand-lettered piece I created. All that to be said, if you need a little (or a lot) of encouragement to step past your fear, embrace the space you’re in, and learn how to make it beautiful with what you have, go read Myquillyn’s blog and buy her book. You can thank me later.

This Ted Talk – Finding my Analog Self in a Digital World. Brian Faherty, owner and founder of Schoolhouse Electric, speaks about the increasing difficulty of getting away from technology, and its impact on our connectedness with others. He argues that technology and our increasing connectedness to the entire world is decreasing our connectedness with those around us. Yes and yes. He’s really on to something.

He speaks about a desire to create digital-free zones – places and times to disconnect from technology and reconnect with others. I resonate deeply with his sentiments. I find it’s all too easy to be on my phone or on the computer and realize at the end of the day that I haven’t even really looked up or stepped away to have a meaningful connection with Tim or my friends or family. I crave time away from all the screens – time to have a real conversation with a friend, share a meal, or enjoy a new experience.

Our Garden – After writing about Brian Faherty’s Ted Talk above, I realize that our garden is sort of my “digital-free zone.” It’s a place I can get away from the computer, dig around in the dirt, reconnect with the changing of the seasons and the patterns of the weather. It’s a place where I get to practice mindfulness – a discipline that I’m so naturally drawn to, but I so often neglect.

Taking care of this little rectangle of dirt is extraordinarily rewarding. With just a little time and attention, some sun and some water, we’ll have spinach and peas and carrots and beets and tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and basil and the list goes on. We get to rejoice in seeing this little plot of empty dirt transform over the next several months, from death to life, from empty and barren to overflowing with color and sustenance. What a joy.

Marie Forleo – If you’re an entrepreneur, a business owner, a blogger, or curious about being and doing any of those things, you should check out Marie’s blog. I’ve been watching her videos non-stop the past couple weeks. She’s hilarious and engaging, unabashedly herself, and incredibly encouraging – particularly to women entrepreneurs. Fair warning – the “unabashedly herself” can sometimes include some language. The advice and encouragement she has to offer is well worth your time though.

One of the videos I watched recently was so affirming to me. She calls herself a “multi-passionate entrepreneur” and goes on to explain all the things she loves to do. I resonated so much with that – I love photography and videography, food and sharing recipes with others, hand-lettering and calligraphy, sitting and listening to other people’s stories, and on and on. Simply hearing an extraordinarily successful woman share that she too has a ton of passions was so encouraging!

Now, onto the margarita-making! This recipe is my go-to for margaritas – it’s simple, fresh, and delicious! You can use any type of grapefruit – we just happened to buy these blush-colored ones the day I photographed this recipe. If you use a darker colored grapefruit, your margarita will be even more pink! Some people don’t like the tart flavor the lime can give to a margarita, so I suggest using Rose’s lime juice instead of fresh lime if you like your margarita to be a little sweeter! And if you don’t like grapefruit at all – try this recipe anyway! I’ve gotten rave reviews on it, even from friends who claimed they hate grapefruit!

Grapefruit Margarita

Adapted from Apartment 34

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Servings 1

Ingredients

2 oz 1/4 c Tequila
2 oz 1/4 c fresh squeezed grapefruit juice
1 oz 2 Tbs fresh squeezed lime juice (or Rose's lime juice, if you like a sweeter margarita)
1/2 oz 1 Tbs Triple Sec
1/2 oz 1 Tbs agave
kosher salt for salted rims

Instructions

(Optional step) Place kosher salt in a small dish. Rub a lime wedge around the lip of your empty glass. Flip your glass over and place the top of it into the salt. Rub it around a few times to ensure the salt sticks to your glass.
Place the rest of the ingredients in a shaker with ice, cover and shake vigorously. Pour over ice and serve.

Notes

You can easily double this recipe to make two margaritas in one shaker.

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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.

Pico de Gallo and some Mid-Week Inspiration

August 6, 2014 by Asharae 5 Comments

Every once in a while I like to share a little mid-week inspiration here on the blog. I find it so helpful to take a step back and look at the things that have been inspiring my days lately. These are a few of the things I’ve been enjoying – I highly recommend checking them all out!

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. This is the first cookbook I’ve ever read cover-to-cover. My dear friend Paige gifted it to me for my birthday back in May, and I spend the last few weeks moseying through each page, devouring each of Deb’s stories and recipes. Most nights I’d sit in bed and read through a few recipes until I got so hungry I either had to get up and grab a snack or make myself go to sleep.

Two of the weddings we’ve photographed this summer even used The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook as their guestbooks – an idea that I’m obsessed with now. “Sprinkle a little love throughout our guest book and we’ll add it to our next meal!” Adorable right?

Although I feel that this cookbook is filled with more wintery comfort-food recipes than summer ones, we’ve enjoyed making several of Deb’s recipes. So far my favorites have included her corn risotto-stuffed poblano peppers, baked ranchero eggs, and big cluster maple granola. So good.

Courtney and Ryan Thomas’s Story. These dear friends of ours have been on quite the whirlwind journey of letting go of their own plans in exchange for the Lord’s. Their story of adoption is truly beautiful – you can read it in their own words over at their blog. They adopted their daughter Nara just over a year ago and recently have felt called to return to her home country of Ethiopia and serve as full-time missionaries there. They’re currently on a three week “trial-run” trip to work with the ministries they’d be serving in and see how Nara does being back in Ethiopia.

I love these sweet words they wrote on their blog several months ago, “We know that God is already working on sweet Nara’s heart and preparing her for what is to come. We have prayed big things over her from the start and Courtney has said from the beginning that she wants Nara to be a little Esther. We even considered Esther as a middle name for Nara. Esther, like Nara, was adopted. I’m sure her life was hard and considering her circumstances she probably felt as if there was no purpose or calling on her life. However, it turns out, as a result of the events that God sovereignly orchestrated in Esther’s life, she had the chance to save her people. We want the same for Nara. Before we even brought Nara home we both decided that we did not want to “Americanize” Nara, but to prepare her to one day go back and help the people of Ethiopia. We just didn’t realize it would be this soon!”

We’ve been filming bits of Courtney, Ryan, and Nara’s story throughout the past couple years, not knowing what the final film would look like. We now have the opportunity to tell their story in an even more professional way through a film contest that The Music Bed is putting on. We would LOVE your votes to help us tell their story more fully through free music licenses, gear rentals, and sound equipment! If Courtney and Ryan discern that full-time ministry is what they’re being called to, we’d love to share their story in a way that would help them raise support in the future.

Female Entrepreneur Association. I’ve been recommending this site to all my friends who are starting up their own businesses. Their mission is to inspire and empower entrepreneurial women around the world. First of all, Carrie has the most fabulous accent, so she’s fun to listen to. She posts inspiration each week – anything from how to set goals and create a successful business manifesto, to overcoming your fears, to creating social media strategies. If you sign up for her newsletter, she’ll send the blog posts right to your inbox – I’ve found that super helpful for my scatterbrained self.

Pinterest. On what days does Pinterest not inspire me? If you don’t enjoy using Pinterest, I’ll either accuse you of not being a “visual” person or try to convince you that you’re not following the right people. They’ve smartened up their site in the last several months so that finding people who pin things you’d find interesting or inspiring is much much simpler!

When you click on a pin, try scrolling down below it. Have you discovered the “Also on these boards” and “Related pins” sections? If not, then you’re missing out! I also like to click on one of the “Pins from..” profiles at the top of my own home page. From there I explore who those people “Pin from” – that’s a great way to find new favorites! Take some time to explore and find new boards or people that inspire you. This board is my personal favorite this week. I just love all the colors and textures – reminds me of summer!

Speaking of summer. How about a perfect summertime recipe? The tomatoes in our garden are producing like crazy right now, so it’s the perfect excuse to make loads of pico de gallo, bruschetta, or caprese salad.

This recipe is really just a guideline (you know how I roll). You can add more or less of any ingredient to suit your preferences, and you’re welcome to leave out the jalapeño entirely if you don’t like spicy salsa.

Pico de Gallo

Asharae Kroll

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Ingredients

3 medium tomatoes
1/4 or a red onion
1 jalapeño diced (seeds removed for mild or with some seeds to add heat)
Handful of cilantro leaves finely chopped
Juice of 1 lime
1/8 tsp kosher salt
Dash of pepper
Dash of garlic powder

Instructions

Toss all ingredients in a bowl.
Let rest in the fridge or at room temperature for at least 15 minutes (more if you can stand to wait) to let the flavors get happy.
Enjoy with chips, on tacos or quesadillas, over eggs, or straight out of the bowl.