creativecollective Archives - Food, Booze, & Baggage

Backyard Travels~Saxapahaw & Hillsborough

June 3, 2014 by Mariah 17 Comments

Memorial Day weekend in North Carolina usually means beach or lake for a lot of people. P and I tend to shy away from the crowds and the traditional.When we go to the beach, it is not the 4th of July, Memorial Day, or Labor Day weekends. While other people are sitting in traffic, we are typically sitting on the porch. These types of weekends are the prefect time to explore your own town, without the crowds. This Memorial Day we decided to do a little tour of our own backyard, and headed over to Saxapahaw and Hillsborough. It’s about an hour drive from Raleigh.

Saxapahaw has been on our list now for a while to visit and it was recently featured in the New York Times, so we thought this would be the perfect weekend to try to see the area before the crowds start showing up.

We started the day at Saxapahaw General Store, which we have heard great things about, and we were not disappointed. I tried the reuben with house-made pastrami and P opted for a twist on eggs benedict with a tomato basil hollandaise. They have a very large menu and it was SO hard to make a selection. It was all VERY tasty. They also offer house-made sodas, and we sampled a few of the flavors. After enjoying our lunch, we strolled around the store, while not expansive, it did have some interesting local finds, and I came away with lip balm, chocolates, crackers, and soap.

It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to take advantage of the lovely outdoor area offered by The Eddy, and enjoyed some sunshine, the view, and a few drinks. Saxapahaw is not big, so don’t expect too many choices in terms of activities. There is a farmers market along with live music on Saturday’s starting at 4:00pm, which sounded fun but we had other sights to see.

Next, we headed over to Hillsborough for a little more exploring. First stop, was Mystery Brewing. They have a wide variety of drafts, including some guest taps. Mystery has a very laid back feel with regulars and visitors alike, keeping them busy.

Upon leaving Mystery we headed up to the main street of Hillsbourgh that is a bit more populated compared to Saxapahaw. We checked out our options, and stopped in at LaPlace for a little snack. LaPlace offers 4 varieties of house-made sausages, so we could not pass up the sausage sampler for our snack. I wasn’t overly impressed and did not care for the texture, but P liked it. Following our snack, we took a lap around Weaver Street Market, a local co-op grocery, where I might have bought some more chocolate and a few other items that caught my eye. 😉 After, depositing my finds back at the car, we took a stroll through the residential area, admiring the many houses built in the 1800 & 1900’s.

As 5:30 rolled around we made a beeline to Panciuto. The chef of Panciuto was nominated for a 2014 James Beard for “Best Chef in the Southeast” and boasts a 95% local menu. I strongly recommend reservations; there was a line of people waiting for the doors to open at 5:30, most already having reservations. The drinks and food were excellent. I went with squid-ink spaghetti with smoked clams and crab meat, the flavors were quite good but the spaghetti had a bit of a tough texture. Our appetizer of beef carpaccio was my favorite dish but P’s “chicken-fried” steak was also pretty amazing. I would have loved to try dessert but did not want to be stuffed for the car ride home.

Do you ever make an effort to explore your own backyard? What’s on your list to explore?

The June 4th prompt is “Be a Tourist in Your Own City”

Pinterest, Oh Pinterest

March 31, 2014 by Mariah 17 Comments

I’m slightly obsessed with Pinterest. As with, most social media I was a late adopter, but boy oh boy it did not take me long to fall in love. It jump started my journey into clean eating, cleaning up my beauty products, and starting this blog. I love that it provides a place to easily store all those recipes you might try, places you might go, and DIYs you might make. I’m a bit pin crazy. I’m going to let you in on a little secret…I have about 3,000 pins on my personal board. That is the main reason I started a separate account for the blog because: a. I have too many pins and don’t plan on stopping 😉 b. I don’t want to overwhelm my blog followers with random pins and it is a bit embarrassing. I pin while we watch TV, it is hard for me to just sit there and only watch tv…it gives me a little something to do that does not require too much brain activity.

At least half of my personal pins are food related. Most of the meals we cook are new recipes. Every Sunday I share on the blog the meals we have cooked that week. Since I started this blog, I’ve shared 82 pins on my Food Board, at least 70 of these are new meals for us, probably more. I use Pinterest exclusively to plan our meals. I have a secret board labeled “meals this week” and pin the meals we are planning for that week, then at the end of the week I delete those pins and start over. This makes it easy to find the meals we are cooking without having to scroll back through all the pins on various boards.

I’m planning on increasing the boards for Food, Booze, & Baggage by adding boards about blogging and photography. Currently, I have these on my personal account as secret, but I want to start sharing tutorials and articles I’ve found helpful with building this blog and learning photography. It is a bit silly not to share with you guys. You have been warned, I’m stepping up my pinning game!

Ok, so why am I babbling on about Pinterest? Well, to introduce the 6th prompt of the Nectar Collective (of course), “When Pinterest Comes to Life”-where Melyssa challenges us to make something we have pinned.

I chose to do something that is on my 101 in 1001 list: # 83~Make Peanut Butter. Ok, guys this is stupid simple….all you do is dump the peanuts in the food processor, hit on, and watch the magic happen. I have a particular purpose for my peanut butter so I did add sweetener but next time I’m trying some honey. Clean-up was easy enough and this gave me a reason to use my new green mason jar. I only used 2 cups of peanuts which gave me about half a pint sized jar, so 4 cups should give you close to a full pint. I like to read several recipes when attempting something new, and then decide which one sounds best. Below are the ones I read before making my peanut butter.

Confessions of a Bright-eyed Baker: DIY Peanut Butter

Serious Eats: DIY Simple Peanut Butter

Aggies Do It Better: Make Your Own Peanut Butter

Make sure to visit the Nectar Collective Wednesday to add more lovely pins to your DIY boards! Better step-up your pinning game, you don’t want me to be out pinning you. Competitive pinning it’s a thing right? Competing for Queen Pinner, Gold Medal in Pinning or what about this….

I wish I could claim credit for this, but no….found it on Pinterest 🙂

Getting Crafty Around The House

February 17, 2014 by Mariah 22 Comments

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the blog. Seriously people, I had no idea how much time blogging was going to take up. I often wonder if it takes me an unreasonable amount of time to put posts together. Last weekend we went to Charleston for a long weekend with some friends…don’t worry there will be a post on that 🙂 Because I knew I would be unable to work on the blog, I spent the majority of my previous Saturday putting together posts. On that Saturday, while I sat on the couch, P went grocery shopping, did errands, and cooked dinner without complaining or being put out. He is truly the best and most supportive husband of all time. He always tells me how proud he is of me working so diligently on the blog, instead of seeing it as something that takes time away from us. I am not kidding when I say I hit the husband jackpot!!

As a way to give back a little, I decided to turn this week’s Creative Collective prompt into a get projects done around the house prompt. That way it’s blogging and an “us” project all in one…multi-tasking at it’s best!

Project #1: Blackboard for the Beer Fridge

P is an award winning homebrewer (see project #2) and we brew beer on a regular basis. We have a dedicated fridge to hold the kegs, and I wanted a blackboard that shows what we have on draft in there. This is actually my second attempt at this project- the first one was not as pretty.

Cheap frame from IKEA
Chalkboard Spray Paint
Magnets (these are strong)
Super glue
Chalk pens and regular chalk

Spray paint the frame “glass” (the IKEA insert is plastic and I’m not entirely sure if this would work on glass or not). Follow the directions on the can about how to apply the paint. After the paint has set (I would wait at least 24 hours), rub board down with the regular chalk, and wipe clean. This is a very important step to be able to erase the board like a traditional chalkboard. On the backing of the frame, place dot of glue in one corner and place magnet, holding for a couple of seconds. Repeat this step for the other three remaining corners and place two more magnets in the middle.

Project #2: Beer Award Ribbon Magnets

These are all the ribbons P has won from homebrew competitions. We actually have not entered one in a while but hopefully we will add to this collection. I wanted some way to display these and get them off the desk and this seemed to make a lot of sense.

Magnets (same as above)
Super glue

Place drop of glue on the back and place magnet on top of glue, hold for a second until set. Done.

Project #3: Memory Jar

This project was actually on my 101 in 1001 list. P and I live a really great life; I think it is important to keep the big and small memories. I loved this idea as soon as I saw it. While this is not the most ideal jar, I wanted to start the tradition and was tired of putting it off. It could be prettier but it is serving its purpose.

Mason jar
Chalk pens
Chalkboard label (I also used these for items in our pantry)

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

Check back at The Nectar Collective Wednesday to see what all the other uber creativity bloggers did with the prompt “Anything Goes Art”.

My Music Doesn’t Fit In a Box

February 3, 2014 by Mariah 25 Comments

I have to say I’m not knowledgeable about music. I enjoy music and love to see live music, but I’m not one of those people who can spout off a million band names and songs. I’m instantly happier if a bar has a musician or band, even if it is just covers. I believe music can touch your soul, make you feel energized, and boosts your mood. I have no idea how to, or even want to, categorize my taste in music; I like what I like. I tend to go for more indie type music and bands, and some of my favorites include the Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons, and Bishop Allen. I am so envious of those who have musical talent and I tell P all the time in my next life I’m going to be a musician, I can just feel it. 🙂

Melyssa over at the Nectar Collective challenged us to get out of our box and find some new music and create a playlist for our second Creative Collective post. Can I just take a second, and say (again) how much I love the Creative Collective. I’m truly enjoying doing these projects and seeing what others put together. Hop over and take a look at the list and see if any speak to you, you can join at anytime.

The first two songs listed are not new to me but ones I wanted to share with you. Bombadil is a local band we got to know after seeing them perform live at a music festival. If you have an opportunity to see them live, you should go…they are fantastic live and you really see how talented they are, they all take turns singing and play multiple instruments, it’s amazing.

http://open.spotify.com/user/1270831841/playlist/0ng1vxYrEDGM5TMoNAwzWw