The McKinney Farmer's Market

One of my favorite things about summer is the farmer's market. And being in a new city means that it's time to explore a new one - the McKinney Farmer's Market! On Saturday, I grabbed my favorite market bag, and when we stepped into the historic Chestnut Square, we found a vibrant, bustling market.

The area is filled with booths and vendors offering Texas produce. I can't tell you how my heart sings seeing things like fresh shelled butterbeans and purple hull peas, okra, and Texas peaches. There was also plenty of watermelon, tomatoes, squash, cantaloupe, corn, and 7 garlic varieties! We found fresh goat cheese, locally roasted coffee, local honeys, jams and pickled vegetables, jerky, meat, and maybe most exciting of all, homemade tamales from The Tamale Company. A local musician serenaded the crowd with his guitar, and there were even pony rides for kids!

We came home with quite a haul! San Marzano tomatoes and jalapenos for fresh salsa, juicy heirloom tomatoes, butterbeans and purple hull peas, okra that I'm using for Greek-Style Okra and Tomatoes with Feta, Chet's Italian garlic, a mild variety, for salsa and pesto, ears of corn for the grill and for these Corn and Squash Fritters, wildflower honey, green chile chicken tamales, peaches that will become peach cobbler, rosemary garlic goat cheese, Lucido's apricot jam, and Coffee Del Rey coffee beans.

I'm so tickled to have such a great market in our new city, and for once I'm thankful that we have a puppy that wakes us up at the crack of dawn these days, so I can actually get there when it opens at 8:00 rather than sleepily dragging in at 11:00 right before it closes at noon. And this has been such a fun week of meals as I work on putting everything to good use! Now that I think of it, it's almost time to restock!

My 10 Favorite Things in July

July is my favorite month of the year (and not just because it's my birthday month). It's because July is pure summer. Fall is nowhere in sight. We celebrate the independence of our country. We watch fireworks, and we light sparklers to swirl around the night sky. We eat thick slices of watermelon and sip cold beverages. We soak up the warm sun and cool off in swimming pools, lakes, or the ocean. We grill and spend lingering evenings out on the back porch talking with family and friends.

Granted, we barely partook in any of those July festivities as our lives have been in such transition this month, but that hasn't kept us from enjoying ourselves! We've had lots of big firsts this month, and lots of exciting things are going on, even if we haven't been able to sit in the back yard sipping rose wine. I guess there's always August for that!

1) Closing on our first house
Big transition Numero Uno! At the beginning of the month we closed on our first house, and now we're working on unpacking boxes and getting settled. Now we do things like mow the yard and submit forms to an HOA.

2) Inviting family over for lunch
This is totally why we moved back home -- we get to see our families now! One weekend, we invited my parents and grandparents over to see the new house and to have a little lunch. It was a BYOLC (bring your own lawn chair) type of event with paper plates and take-out from Rudy's!

3) The 4th of July
We kicked off Independence Day with a parade through downtown McKinney where we saw both a goat AND a horse painted like American flags, classic cars, and cute little kids waving flags. We cooked out with the Ranges (see Item 4), cooked out with my husband's family (see Item 5), and even swirled around some sparklers!

4) Cooking out on the 4th with the Ranges

Our wonderful friends the Ranges, already settled in a lovely new home in the area, were nice enough to invite us over for a cook-out on the 4th where we devoured burgers, vegetable and halloumi skewers, roasted radishes, corn, chips and guacamole, ice cold watermelon, and ice cream sandwiches. We were tickled pink to spend the day with them, and not just because they had a grill (as ours was somewhere between Boston and Dallas on a moving truck).

5) Celebrating the 5th of July with family

Basically, we just hopped from one house with a grill to the next during July. You do what you have to! I could really get used to seeing our families a little more often!

6) Antiquing with my mom
Another weekend, my mom popped over to McKinney for a little antique hunting. It was so fun spending a girl's day together!

7) Date night
 We didn't take many date night excursions this month, but we did spend a really nice evening at the BarnLight Eatery in Frisco for summery cocktails and southern fare. It was nice to get cleaned up and to go out for a fun evening together!

8) Adding this fluff ball to our lives
Not only did July bring us new jobs and a new home, but we also we added a cute little puppy to our lives named Charlie. It turns out that puppies are a lot of work, but he's so sweet and so much fun that most of the time, I'm pretty sure the hard work is worth it.

9) Cooking in our new kitchen
As more and more boxes are unpacked, our house is turning into a home! Our kitchen is fully unpacked, and we're able to start cooking again, which adds a wonderful sense of normalcy and enjoyment back into our lives!

10) My birthday! 

Last but certainly not least is my birthday! I turned 29 years old on Monday and had a great time doing it. We drove to Paris on Saturday for a family celebration over plates of chicken spaghetti, purple hull peas, fried okra, and blackberry peach cobbler with Blue Bell ice cream. On the actual day, I got fun cards in the mail, sweet notes from friends, presents in the mail from my husband's family, a phone call from my big brother, and my husband grilled swordfish for me. Gosh, everyone knows how to make a girl feel loved!

 

Cooking in a New Kitchen

Folks, we've hit a big milestone in our new house! We can cook again! As soon as the last box was unpacked, I couldn't wait to start making a meal plan. After almost 2 solid months of primarily take-out and restaurant meals, it's such a treat to eat real food again. And to spend time together in the kitchen again, cooking with a favorite Pandora station playing in the background. Here's what was on the menu:

Pan-Roasted Salmon with Avocado Arugula Salad and Couscous

Our inaugural meal was quick and simple, light and flavorful -- a great way to ease back into cooking.  Especially since we're still a bit awkward in the new kitchen as we try to remember where things are now stored, simple is good. We're not a well-oiled machine yet like we were in our old, familiar kitchen, but we'll get there again!

Seared Skirt Steak With Blistered Cherry Tomatoes and Polenta.

It seemed almost obligatory to include beef in our first meal plan in Texas! While the recipe calls for slowly cooking traditional cornmeal polenta, we opted for quick cook grits instead. We also added a bit more lemon juice to the pan sauce and a splash of Saint Arnold's Brown Ale to the pan.

Lemon and Asparagus Pasta with Pistachios and Mozzarella

Back to lighter fare, we whipped up a batch of this pasta minus the obscure and pricey Bottarga.  Especially when continuing to unpack a house, a one pot meal is a very beautiful thing. Who has the energy for dishes?

This week, we finally replaced our propane tanks that we had to leave behind in Massachusetts, so my husband dusted off his grill, and we're back to our summer routine of grilling as much as possible. I look forward to continuing to share our cooking adventures with you as we get more settled!

 

 -----------------------------------------------------

 

For anyone else dealing with moving this summer, I will leave you with some tips for that have helped us back onto the cooking wagon in our new home. They're definitely not earth-shattering, but they worked for us:

 

1) Tackle your kitchen boxes first (ok, and get your bed set up too). For us, the kitchen was the largest percentage of our boxes, so getting through them was a hugely satisfying accomplishment. Also, having a working kitchen really helps a house feel more like a home.

 

2) Pick meals that are quick and simple. You're exhausted, so it's highly preferable to shy away from time intensive recipes. If you have a quick recipe to look forward to, you're much more likely to get into the kitchen and cook when dinner time rolls around rather than succumbing to the temptation of take-out!

 

3) Pick recipes that don't require many specialty ingredients since you're still working on restocking your pantry and refrigerator. That way you can gradually restock which is easier on your wallet and makes for a quicker first trip to the store.

 

4) One pot meals are a great way to go. When your back is tired from unpacking, the less dishes you have to do, the better.

 

5) If you've relocated to a new state or region, try purchasing a few new ingredients that you couldn't find in your old home.  For me, it's exciting and helps inspire me to get back into the kitchen. Here in Texas, we're stocking up on things like local beers, local stone fruit, okra, and Ranch Style Beans.

 



If you need some more inspiration, here are a few more fairly simple recipes that I really like:

Kale Salad with Pecorino and Pecans
Chicken Orzo Salad with Goat Cheese
Grilled Pizza
Spicy Shrimp and Avocado Salad
Lemony Pesto Pasta with Edamame and Almonds (Time Saving Option: use jarred pesto)
Udon Soup with Swiss Chard and Mushrooms
Chili, Lemon, Basil Shrimp over Israeli Couscous
Beef with Snow Peas (Time Saving Option: serve over Minute Rice)
Tomato Goat Cheese Tart

The Old Red Lumberyard Junk Market

My mother and I share a love of antiques, and she has offered mentoring in the art of antiquing for as long as I can remember. This year she went with me to my first antique auction, and she taught me about the amazing Brimfield Antique Show. Now, she has introduced me to an event right in my own backyard: The Old Red Lumberyard (ORLY) Junk Market. It's a two day event held once a month from 9am-4pm on the Friday and Saturday before the 3rd Monday of the month. How's that for complicated? If you can figure out the date on the calendar, definitely stop by!

Saturday morning, Mom drove over to McKinney to pick me up. After parking at The Flour Mill, we first visited Fringe, The Event which is another monthly antique market that coincides with ORLY (and is conveniently located right across the street). Items are sold within the little shop, and even more items are spread on the lawn outside. I found the cutest antique shopping basket that I'm going to use to display cookbooks in my kitchen as well as a little bottle holder that's going to be perfect for bitters bottles on our bar cart.

Across the street at the ORLY market, there are even more treasures to be found. Booths are set up in and around the Old Red Lumberyard building (as the name suggests), and vendors sell everything from furniture to dishes to yard art to chess boards with pieces made out of antique salt and pepper shakers. You just can't tell what you might find -- which is exactly why antiquing is so much fun!



After making our way through all of the booths, our feet were tired, and we were in need of lunch. Since the market is right alongside the square in downtown McKinney, finding somewhere to eat was easy! Cadillac Pizza Pub is one of my favorites in the area so far, but Mom and I opted for hearty Texas fare at The Pantry.  With its rustic decor and local favorites like Chicken Fried Steak and Chicken Spaghetti on the menu, it seemed like an appropriate lunch after a morning spent at a Texas antique market!

And can I tell y'all that as much as we do miss Boston, it is so nice to be able to do little things like this on the weekends with our families, whether it's driving to Austin for a cookout or Mom driving over for antiquing, etc, etc. It's totally why we moved back, and it's truly a blessing to have family be a bigger part in our life these days! Here's to many more adventures in Texas!







Barnlight Eatery

Since we got our first puppy, Charlie, a little over a week ago, we've been pretty homebound. We spent his entire first weekend at home helping him get used to his new surroundings and routine.  During the week, we take turns coming home at lunch to check on him, and we rush home at the end of the day to let him out of his crate. We spend our evenings eating take-out while he eats his own dinner, and then we go for a walk and play (and unpack boxes) until it's time for him (and us) to go to bed.

This past weekend, we took a few trips out of the house to run errands, but on Saturday night, we decided that a real date night was in order. We wanted to try something new, which isn't hard when you're living in a new city, so we made a short trek to Frisco to give BarnLight Eatery a try.

The restaurant is decked out with weathered wood, mason jars, a chalkboard menu, and a few barn lights (naturally). The outdoor patio opens up to a grassy area that helps you forget that you're dining in a shopping center. The staff is friendly, and they serve what they refer to as modern Southern fare.

We kicked things off with drinks -- a classic margarita for my husband and a delicious Blackberry Citrus cocktail for me made with white wine, muddled blackberries, lime juice, and grapefruit juice. Even though liquor is available, I love that they offer a few wine "cocktails" that are light, refreshing, and perfect for summer sipping.

Things were still off to a very good start when our black-eyed pea hummus arrived with buttery toasted bread and vegetables for dipping. I sure do love being back in a state where black-eyed peas pop up on the menu!

Our entrees didn't disappoint either. My husband tried the fried chicken breast drizzled with apricot-cayenne jam and thyme jus and served with garlic corn mashed potatoes and an arugula and lettuce salad. The chicken was perfectly crispy, and the apricot-cayenne jam was fabulous. My chorizo meatloaf was smothered in a rich gravy and served with buttermilk mashed potatoes, crisp-tender green beans, and a sweet corn relish.

Finally, we dug our forks into a very generous piece of Key Lime Pie. Not too sweet with just the right amount of tartness from the key lime juice and zest, it was a good piece of pie!

We're so glad to have such a great little spot only a couple miles down the road from us. And after leaving all of our well-loved restaurants in Boston, it's exciting and encouraging to start discovering some new favorites here in the Dallas area!