Smyrna Food Truck Tuesday, July 24th

The popular trend has finally hit Smyrna...the food truck craze that is! And oh, how excited was I.

It started 3 weeks ago, but tonight was our first venture out to the Smyrna Food Truck Tuesday in Taylor Brawner Park. Have I ever mentioned, how much I love my little town! If not, let me divert for one second to tell you how awesome this little place I call home is.....

Smyrna has not only put together a food truck event, but they encourage people to walk and bike there. This is one of the reasons we fell in love with Smyrna - it's a city that works on projects that reflect community such as widening sidewalks and creating pedestrian bridges that make it easier to be mobile in something other than a car to get to great events like Food Truck Tuesday or the various festivals in the Market Village.

Ok....diversion over. Back to important stuff like Food Trucks and the food coming out of these kitchens on wheels.

On tap tonight...we opted for Ibiza bites and King of Pops.

Ibiza bites was something of a southern latin fusion that included (from left to right in the pic below):

• Waffle fries with a lemon sauce and maple syrup...yes, I said maple syrup, and believe me the combo may not sound complimentary, but it worked!
• Lobster Mac 'n' Cheese with grilled corn....need I say more. 
• Coconut Fried Chicken with Slaw and Coconut Mango Rice...a little piece of paradise. (Just needed a pina colada or mai tai to top it off!)

And of course the June bug was there to do a little begging....and drooling.

King of Pops...these craft popsicles are pure frozen fruit fabulousness...flavors of choice this evening included Raspberry Lime and Apricot & something...we forgot.

 

Overall, a very enjoyable first Food Truck Tuesday for these Smyrnites and the June bug. We braved the 90+ degrees, but we got to spend some quality time with our neighbors and their new baby; plus we walked there, so the indulgent food was guilt-free...at least that's what I'm telling myself.
 

This weekend we head out to the Food Truck and Craft Beer Mecca...Portland, OR.

Stay tuned for Our Portlandia moments.

-Mo

Thunder & Mint-Raspberry Gin and Tonics

A little clip from our Saturday evening as we listen to some thunder on our deck...

A couple of Minty-Raspberry Gin and Tonics with a twist of lime and M.Ward playing on Pandora while listening to the thunder makes for a relaxing Saturday evening.

Even Juno is braving the Thunder...........

Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes

Need a dose of summer sunshine...for your belly rather than your skin? Try my latest cupcake experiment...Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes.

The Lemon Blueberry cupcake is based on the Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake recipe (from the cupcakeproject.com) with the addition of lemon zest from 1 1/2 lemons, and 1 1/2 cup of blueberries. And to top it off, I decided to try what I think would be the ultimate vanilla frosting/icing...a modified version of my Strawberry-like ice cream icing (sans strawberries).

To make, follow the vanilla cupcake recipe link above, and fold the lemon zest and blueberries into the batter at the end before you scoop everything into your cupcake/muffin pans. In my oven, it took about 18 minutes to cook the cupcakes, and my batter produced 18 cupcakes (ironically).

Let cool.

My version of the Ultimate Vanilla Icing:

• 5 Tablespoons Flour
• 1 cup Milk
• 1 Vanilla Bean
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup Butter
• 1 cup Granulated Sugar

Directions

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature.

Remove/de-seed the black gooeyness from the vanilla bean and add to granulated sugar in a small bowl. With the back of a spoon, break up any clumps of vanilla bean and incorporate it into the sugar. (You basically now have vanilla sugar). Transfer to a mixing bowl.

For info on how to de-seed, the vanilla bean, checkout this helpful video: http://youtu.be/nD3zH-43duA. 

In the mixing bowl, add the butter to your vanilla-sugar combo. With an electric mixer cream the butter and vanilla-sugar combo together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left.

Then, add the completely cooled milk/flour mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. Beat it until it all the ingredients are combined and it resembles whipped cream. If you love lemon, you could always add some more lemon zest, but it's just fine with out it.

Frost your cupcakes before you eat all the icing!

5 month hiatus...

Hello out there. I feel guilty that I haven't blogged in 5 months. Yes, it has been a little too long.
I don't have a good excuse, other than I've been focusing on a lot of different things such as:

• a new job
• trying to work out / run on a more consistent occasion (I'm getting ready to run the Peachtree on July 4th...there may be a little walking involved too.)
• go to bed earlier
• read more
• spend more time with my hubby & the junebug
• not watch so much TV (except for my absolute musts - New Girl and Grimm, which I'm totally in withdrawal from right now)
• oh yeah...and a major overhaul to our yard

Anyway, I think it's time to get blogging again...I still owe some Country Klub Recipes, and I'll be traveling to Portland later this month for some craft beers, good food and time outdoors, so lots to come.