This week’s Foodie Friday features posts by our ARWB members for clients of The Women Bloggers. If you have written any food related (not necessarily recipes, y’all) posts for any of our clients, link those. We’re a busy bunch!
This week’s Foodie Friday features posts by our ARWB members for clients of The Women Bloggers. If you have written any food related (not necessarily recipes, y’all) posts for any of our clients, link those. We’re a busy bunch!
I’m so excited to bring you this outstanding program for Megaphone Summit – Foodie Friday 2016, and I look forward to seeing each one of you very soon. After reading about our phenomenal speakers, head on over to Megaphone and register if you’ve not already done so. Hurry! Registration ends soon.
“I have always believed that each of us has dreams and desires and talents waiting to be uncovered. They start with a tiny see: a seed that we “cast” or plant, so that it can take root and grow. A seed must be cultivated with patience and love,and through faith it will take root and prosper. We cannot see what is taking place underground, yet we anticipate the arrival of that first bud, the spirit of the flower. For each of us, every seed we sow has great potential, but it is up to us to feed our dreams, nurture our ideas, an have faith that our talent will blossom. A seed, however, is just a seed, without hard work and care.
I did not wake up one day and decide that I wanted to be the head of a very successful company, but each step along the path from my kitchen table to the boardroom at Sister Schubert’s Homemade Rolls helped to prepare me for the next step. I tended each idea, each seed, with careful attention and with faith, and eventually they grew into a company that I am proud of, and I am grateful that it carries my name. I am still learning and growing, and I believe every day brings another opportunity to use the gifts God gave us: faith, hope and love.”
from Cast You Bread Upon the Waters
Patricia (Sister Schubert) Barnes is a highly successful businesswoman and philanthropist whose generosity literally reaches across the globe. She’ll be sharing the story of her success, of her cooking and of her life. “Never believe that where you are right now is where you will stay. Pray, have faith and try to be of service to others.” These are the words on which Sister has stood for most of her life and are demonstrated daily through her own personal experiences.
Named a semifinalist for “Best Chef, South” for 2014, 2015. and 2016 Beard Foundation Awards, Chef Matt McClure was born and raised in Little Rock, where he realized his passion for food. After studying at Vermont’s New England Culinary Institute, McClure honed his skills in Boston and worked at a number of restaurants including No. 9 Park under the direction of Barbara Lynch, a 1996 Food and Wine Magazine Best New Chef and a 2003 Beard Award winner for Best Chef of the Northeast. His next posts were at Troque, a boutique restaurant and wine bar and at Harvest located in the heart of Harvard Square, where everything was based on the region’s freshest seasonal products. After years in Boston, the lure of his home was strong and McClure returned to Little Rock, where he worked under Chef Lee Richardson at Ashley’s at the Capital Hotel.
During his tenure, McClure developed a deep appreciation for local ingredients, reinforcing his passion for Arkansas’ food culture. Showcasing the region’s farmers and culinary landscape, McClure’s menus are true to the High South, highlighting ingredients such as black walnuts, freshly milled corn meal, hickory smoked hams, peaches, melons and sweet onions. He describes his food as having Arkansas terroir which means he relies on common locally grown ingredients with their own nuances of flavor determined by the climate and soil in which they were raised.
Chef McClure will be preparing dishes with ingredients found locally. “Great local ingredients give me the ability to offer a unique culinary experience, and I am proud to be from this region as well.”
What started as Helen’s approach to making the ordinary things in life extraordinary became a family owned and operated business focused on sharing gifts of food around the table.
Helen Lampkin, learned to love cooking as a child while helping her Dad in the kitchen. When her oldest brother gave her a recipe for salsa she put her own spin on it and continued to share her brother’s salsa with family and friends for several years until she finally launched her company in 2003.
The first jar of My Brother’s Salsa hit the store shelves in 2004. Today, this family-owned and operated business has expanded from just her brother’s original recipe to nine different flavors of salsa; including black bean and corn, fire roasted, house, and tomatillo, along with seasonal small batch salsas in cucumber tomato (Mediterranean), Hatch green chile, peach tomatilla, and cranberry orange flavors. The company also recently began making their own line of whole grain organic tortilla chips.
Lampkin said she is also working to rebrand her small-batch salsas under a new sub-brand called Helen’s Table. She’s developing a whole line of new products, from functional art, to decor, tables, and chile roasters. In her spare time, she makes and sells handmade brooms.
These incredible, proven writers are ready to answer your questions about your writing issues and concerns. Need style advice? How about writing for publication? Want to know how to make your writing attract more clients? How’s your grammar? Can you become a better storyteller, recipe writer, restaurant reviewer or travel writer? Get your questions ready and be prepared to participate in the discussion.
10:00 Registration
10:30 Welcome & Introduction of Keynote Sister Schubert
11:45 Helen Lampkin and Ashley Pointer — Entrepreneurship
12:30 – 1:15 Break for Lunch (on the grounds of Pratt Place Inn)
1:15-2:30 Chef Matt McClure, The Hive, 21C Hotel
2:30 Snack Break on the Porch
2:45 – 3:45 Writer’s Workshop/Panel
We are extremely fortunate that Executive Chef Matt McClure of Bentonville’s 21C Museum Hotel The Hive Restaurant will be one of our featured speakers at the Foodie Friday pre conference of Megaphone Summit 2016 to be held at the absolutely beautiful Pratt Place Inn and Barn in Fayetteville.
Those of you who had the privilege to enjoy Matt’s presentation at the 2014 Foodie Friday session held at NWACC will remember what a joy he was. And I’m sure many of you have continued to enjoy his okratouille and chicken recipes he shared with us that day.
Matt was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his passion for food was ignited by hunting, fishing and his grandmother’s cooking. Following a stint at the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, he settled in Boston working at a number of restaurants including Troquet, Harvest and No. 9 Park.
Eager to get back to his home state to reconnect with the ingredients and foodways of his childhood, Matt returned to Little Rock where he worked under Lee Richardson former Executive Chef at Ashley’s (now One Eleven) in the Capital Hotel, developing strong relationships with local farmers and producers and rediscovering the agricultural resources of his home state.
In 2012, Matt joined the opening team of The Hive, located at 21C Museum Hotel Bentonville. At The Hive, the restaurant’s menus showcase the unique culinary identity of Arkansas. McClure’s cooking pays homage to the High South, highlighting ingredients such as black walnuts, freshly milled corn meal, hickory smoked hams, peaches, melons and sweet onions and demonstrates Matt’s longstanding commitment to support local farmers and purveyors. (Courtesy The Hive).
In 2013, Garden & Gun, featured The Hive in it’s Feb/Mar edition.showcases the refined, country cuisine of the High South, focusing on the local ingredients of Northwest Arkansas and the region’s traditional methods of cooking. Matt was a James Beard Award semi-finalist for the “Best Chef: South” award in both 2014 and 2015, and was awarded Food & Wine Magazine’s “The People’s Best New Chef” award for the Midwest in 2015. He is also an active member of the Southern Foodways Alliance.
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I'm not sure what brand of corn meal Matt uses, but I really like Arkansas' own War Eagle Mills.
The sorghum butter is really nice on biscuits, pancakes or waffles.
This photo is ridiculous.
It is a perfect snapshot of someone who lives in an idealist-thinking world with dreams of how things SHOULD be and a head full of sunshine, happy aspirations, and an imagination of butterflies singing throughout the hills and saying, “hey, come over here, this garden is magnificent! This garden is the Garden of Eden all over again!”
I am that dreamer.
That ridiculous photo captures good intentions and good will. I HAD good intentions to install raised garden beds in our backyard this year… after the deck was repaired… and a lower deck was built… plus a new sidewalk constructed… and then I would know EXACTLY where to put those buggers. I HAD good intentions to use these tomato plants as good will. How? They were going to be a gift of love for those friends and family members who weren’t able to pull it all together this year. Our Foodie Friday gal pal Debbie Arnold was the one who shared those awesome seeds in the first place. I couldn’t let her down, right?
Instead… they grew and grew and grew and grew some more. Every day they are stretching their wings and reaching for the sky. And every day I think, “man… I should put them in the car and bring them to someone before it is too late.”
Reality check.
It’s too late.
But it is NOT too late for us to share our community gardens with each other. I love seeing your instagram photos of your kids holding that giant squash and your proud blog posts of freshly created recipes with YOUR bounty. I am so proud of you!
And then I got to thinking… we have a community garden of sorts, a virtual community garden.
So, keep sharing.
Keep growing.
Keep reading and commenting and reaching for the sky.
May your garden be blessed with a zillion butterflies.
Arkansas Women Blogger member Lyndi Fultz writes about living and eating well inspired by life in beautiful Northwest Arkansas at nwafoodie. Much of her blogging inspiration comes from this gem of a place, which she refers to as the proverbial land of milk-and- honey. She doesn’t think you have to live in the big city to be a foodie. All you have to do is explore your own backyard. Light-hearted and approachable, nwafoodie is conversational with a healthy and simplistic approach to eating well.
My garden has exploded!
Well not actually that would be quite a mess and a very odd geological event. But I’ve got vegetables galore. I’m juggling multiple varieties of tomatoes, squashes and cucumbers, peppers of the rainbow, okra, and peas. So many peas.
And I love it.
I love taking the time and effort to grow my own food. I reap the benefits both taste and health-wise. There are so many more tasty varieties of vegetables that never see the produce section of the grocery store. The range in flavors and colors abounds. I also get to make sure that I have the varieties my family will eat the most. And when you grow your own food you are in control of what goes in, on, and around that plant as it grows.
Here are some quick and easy ways to use the abundance of your backyard.
Here’s a great recipe for those all those zucchini that grow bigger than your forearm before you know it.
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Jeanetta is an artist, blogger, and sometimes homesteader. She’s addicted to coffee, her garden, and chickens. You can see her art and read more stories at JeanettaDarley.com. Or follow her on social media @jeanettadarley
There is nothing I enjoy more than fresh garden food. Farm to table. That is my forever trend. I have had or been around a garden my entire life. Around six years ago, I transitioned from traditional rows to a square foot garden. Growing more in less space was the perfect solution for a backyard gardener on-the-go like myself.
Gardening is something that is often passed from generation to generation. My grandfather inspired my dad’s love for gardening, and my dad inspired mine. I remember being very pregnant with my youngest when making the finishing touches to my square foot garden. My dad was right there with me. This year I was able to finally convince him to install a square foot garden is his own backyard. History repeats itself!
There are several reasons why a square foot garden works for me:
Reasons why I love small space gardening:
Keep in my mind there are ups and downs in the adventure of growing food. Mother Nature is a beast. Some years you may have cucumbers growing out of your ears and peppers for Peter Piper to pick. Other times you may only have enough tomatoes to have one fabulous BLT and the rest are little runts that make salsa a time or two.
For me, it’s the adventure of the game. I learn something new every season.
I dive into unknown territory head first. I don’t follow the rules. I don’t grow what I know, but many times experiment and grow what I know nothing about. I enjoy growing different varieties: cucumbers of all shapes and sizes, heirloom tomatoes, peppers from mild to hot, and umpteen different greens to fill my salad bowl. I have three little helpers that I hope to inspire to have a garden one day. And maybe they’ll enjoy their veggies along the way as well.
Thankfully, I don’t have to rely on my backyard garden to feed my family. I am fortunate to be able to trust my true indulgence of locally grown goodies to the farmers of my local market. I am truly grateful of their knowledge, work ethic, and willingness to dig in the dirt and grow food in abundance.
This year has been somewhat different. My focus is in many different directions and my garden has taken a back seat. It’s frustrating to me in some regard, but I’ve tried to stay positive and be grateful for all my garden offers.
The one and only pepper I harvested from a plant the entire season, but boy was it huge.
The massive amount of over-wintered swiss chard.
The tiny harvest of tomatoes.
Growing something for the very first time.
Saving seed.
Thankfully, the hubs and I love swiss chard. It’s super easy to grow, super easy to prepare, and super easy to cook. And to top it off, it’s super tasty. Oh, and how can I forget? It’s super healthy! Make sure to harvest the chard in the morning or evening when it’s not so hot. Strip the leaves from the stem and wash the greens several times. Be sure and check for little critters that like to hide in the folds and crevices.
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Jodi Coffee, who blogs at The Coffee House Life, is the mom of three beautiful and energetic little girls that ALWAYS give her something to blog about. She loves to try new things — food, travel and adventure. In her spare time…wait a minute. What is that? She enjoys training for triathlons, and is currently chasing a lifetime dream of crossing the finish line of her first IRONMAN. She is a backyard farmer, a farmers’ market manager and enjoys helping bring healthy opportunities to her community.
When I was growing up we would spend every Christmas or Thanksgiving with my grandparents who lived in the Hill Country of Texas, a solid 6 hours from our home in the Panhandle. When you grow up in Texas, especially outside of the major cities, you just get used to having to travel longer distances to get places and so 6 hours was pretty average for us. But when you’re a kid that is still a long time to be stuck in a car, especially when your Hanson CD has repeated itself for the third time and you’re only a third of the way there.
Luckily my mom would always pack the leftovers from our Christmas plates, and so we were able to pass the time devouring cookies, fudge, smoked pecans, and all manor of treats that insured a massive sugar high. One of my favorites, though, was the Chex mix she would make – extra butter, extra Worchestershire sauce, extra garlic. It was so good.
These days it’s not safe for me to make massive batches of cereal mixes because it will, without question, be eaten in a matter of hours. But that’s where Wicked Mix comes in. It has great crunch and flavor I love that it’s a local company – in fact, the offices are just a few doors down from where my husband works. I love that it’s spicy and sweet, super crunchy, and packed with a variety of ingredients. And I also love that the founder was simply making something he loved and then saw that it was so good he needed to share!
While the star of the show in this cake is certainly the Wicked Mix itself – I used the Spicy Original, although chocolate-laced would be great too – I tried to replicate a little bit of the spice blend to give the entire cake a little sweet-and-spicy flavor. The mix of sweet, soft cake and spicy, crunchy Wicked Mix is sure to be a hit!
A few cook’s notes:
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Enjoy!
Heather Disarro is a food-centric lifestyle blogger who is passionate about embracing the beauty that surrounds us in our everyday lives. She is a Texan living the expat life in central Arkansas with her husband, two sons, and two massive dogs. Heather writes her blog, Heather’s Dish, from an office filled with dust, dog fur, toys and plenty of love, grace and music. She revels in the opportunity to bring the love of cooking to the world as a way to love others well! You can also find Heather on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+.
Healthy fast food is an oxymoron, but making healthy food convenient from nutrient-dense, whole foods from home takes on a whole new meaning. My choice of healthy fast food happens to be in the form of a Green Smoothie. It’s easy to make, store and grab on the go.
Drinking a green smoothie is a quick way to consume optimal nutrition in a single serving. Everything you need is at your local farmers market, the produce section of your grocery store or your back yard.
The best part of making green smoothies is there are no rules. No real measuring. If there is an ingredient you prefer over another, simply adjust. You can see one of my basic recipes in the video below. I saved it from a story I had made for my Snapchat friends.
So how do we make a Green Smoothie? Use any blender. The key is blending in stages.
I add fresh ingredients from what I have on hand. My process of selecting ingredients is more like a simple mental checklist.
Below are the categories I check off in my mind when I create a smoothie.
Select one or more greens from the ingredient categories and blend them together with your liquid. Feel free to use more than one type of greens. Once blended, add one or more choices of fruit as well as vegetables. Blend again. Add an ingredient from the fourth category to enhance the texture. To boost the nutritional profile of my smoothie, I add items from the Add-In list. Fresh ginger is very common in my green smoothie.
Liquid: Coconut Water, Water or Almond Milk
Greens: Kale, Spinach, Swiss Chard, Collard Greens, Romaine Lettuce
Fruits: Pears, Green or Red Apples, Melon, Grapes, Peaches, Cantaloupe, Pineapple, Mango or strawberries
Veggies: Cucumber, Parsley, Carrot or Celery
Texture: Banana, Avocado, Frozen Fruit (Smoothie Blend is available) (There are many frozen fruit options blueberries are nutritious)
Add-ins: Ground Flaxseed, Chia Seeds, Spirulina or Fresh Ginger
Depending on which ingredients you have blended, the color of your smoothie will vary. If it appears not as green as you had anticipated, be reassured it will still taste good. Think of it as mixing colors on a palette.
If you are new to drinking smoothies, I recommend serving one to yourself in the fanciest glass you have. There’s something to treating your body and mind.
In this world, where our busy lives seem to be in a state of entropy…you know that feeling of chaos and utter disorganization? Am I the only one who experiences this? What helps me is my choice for nutrition by treating my body to a green smoothie. Will you be giving it a try? What is your choice for a nutritious meal?
Please let me know in your comments.
In 2007, Arkansas Women Blogger member Kellee Mayfield and her family moved to Lake Village. Kellee was quickly given the nicknamed “Kelly Jo” and the name stuck. As an Oklahoma native, Kelly Jo writes about living in very southeast Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta which has been penned the most Southern place on earth. She also shares her art as well as the art of resourcefulness as being the key to really small town living. Kellee is a mother, wife and is in sales representative and clinical specialist for a medical device company. And she has a Southern drawl. Catch up with Kellee Jo at Delta Moxie, Instagram, Twitter, Periscope and Snapchat.
Celebrating First fruits from the garden: Greens
The weather is just starting to warm up. We are free of the frosts and freezes. Well, we hope we are! Fingers crossed. But we are ready for our gardens and to start enjoying those fresh homegrown or farmers market vegetables.
The first fruits from the garden that we can get our hands on are greens. Mustards, Collards, Kale, Chard. I love a mess of greens. But truth be told I did not grow up eating them. I didn’t learn to cook greens until after I was married. I looked questionably at the dark green leaves boiling with chunks of salt pork looking very much like a swamp witch’s brew.
I plant my greens early in the year under hoop houses. This helps keep them a bit warmer and protect delicate leaves from any heavy snow. When I cook my greens, I don’t boil them. And there is always bacon involved.
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Jeanetta is an artist, blogger, and sometimes homesteader. She’s addicted to coffee, her garden, and chickens. You can see her art and read more stories at JeanettaDarley.com. Or follow her on social media @jeanettadarley.
I cook according to the weather, do y’all? I make heavy soups on blustery days. I fix a pulled pork BBQ meal for my family on sunny Saturdays. And as soon as Spring Forward, Easter, and warmer days come around, I get the itch for coconut. All things coconut! Coconut cream pie, coconut cake, coconut cream cheese frosting – you name it! I love the sweetness, the tenderness, and milky-ness of coconut. And I confess that I eat hands full of it when I’m baking with it. Can’t help myself! So these last few weeks, I’ve gone crazy for coconut!
One of my absolute favorite coconut recipes is this Coconut Tres Leches Cake. Tres leches means “three milks” that are poured over cake and allowed to stand overnight, soaking in every little drop. I love this recipe not only because it’s creamy, sweet, milky, coconutty, luscious, and rich, BUT it’s as easy as can be! This recipe starts with a boxed white cake mix and three milks that come from cans and cartons. What’s easier than that! This recipe is one that needs to be made the day before you plan to serve it, but it’s worth EVERY second that you have to wait on it. Magic happens when those milks are being absorbed into this classic white cake. So don’t rush the magic, y’all. Just let it do its thing.
Then finally after the cake has absorbed the three sweet milks, it is topped with a layer of homemade whipped cream and fresh or toasted coconut. Don’t be afraid to try your hand at homemade whipped cream! It really makes all the difference! Besides, the other steps in this cake are so simple that this is really the only real elbow-grease required. And it’s little elbow-grease at that! Once you make your own whipped cream, you’ll never go back. God’s honest truth.
And you know what’s even better? If your time is short or you just have a need to serve this up as personal cakes rather than a big, whole cake, then you can skip the milks and just make the cake batter, scoop it into pretty paper muffin cups, and then top them with the homemade cream and coconut! Ta da! Coconut cupcakes just like that!
I’ve made this recipe for friends, my sister-in-law, my family, for my TV crew, and for shoppers at my store. And the word on the street is that it’s pretty dern fabulous! Y’all need to try it and serve it to your people on one of these pretty Springtime days. They’ll love ya for it.
ya
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EASY AND FAST OPTIONAL CUPCAKE RECIPE Prepare batter as written above. Omit the soaking milks step. Then top with whipped cream and coconut!
Amy Hannon is the owner of and heart behind EunaMae’s kitchen boutique in Springdale, Arkansas. She is a preacher’s wife, a mom of three, and her love language is feeding people. Amy hosts Cooking Today, a daily show on Northwest Arkansas’ KNWA/FOX24 where she cooks easy, good food right from her own kitchen.
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