Anna Mooney's Food Blog

The Spread at Willa’s 1st Birthday Party

Ham, Salami, Cheeses, Cucumbers, Strawberries, Blueberries, Blackberries, Breads, Crackers, Mustard, Honey, Apples, Lemonade

The party was a few months ago so I can’t remember everything. By preparing all of our snacks instead of buying party trays, we saved quite a bit of money.

Willa’s First Birthday: Strawberry Cupcakes

It was really hard to find a recipe that called for fresh strawberries. They almost turn out as muffins if you aren’t careful.

I think I used this recipe for the cupcake part:

Ingredients:

for cupcakes—

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/3 cups pureed fresh strawberries (from about 2 cups whole strawberries—puree in a blender until smooth)

1/2 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp lemon zest

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

4 egg whites

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line or grease 24 cupcake tins.

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Whisk together the pureed strawberries, lemon zest, milk and vanilla in another bowl. Also set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and egg whites gradually, beating after each, until combined. Alternate between adding the dry ingredients and the wet strawberry ingredients to the butter mixture, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined.

Scoop batter into prepared cupcake tins, filling up 2/3 to 3/4 the way full (depending on the size of your tins…I have really small cupcake tins so I filled mine up all the way). Bake cupcakes for 25 minutes or until golden. Be sure to test using a toothpick to make sure they are completely done in the center. Let cool.

from eatliverun.com

I made a strawberry cream cheese icing. Powdered sugar, strawberry puree, cream cheese, or something to that effect.

More from our DIY wedding:

Perhaps Joseph waited until the last minute to build us an arbor but hasty construction be damned, the arbor was perfect. He purchased cedar logs from a man on the side of the road and split them by hand. With the same logs, he built the entire split-rail garden fence that you can see in the background. My bouquet had some leftover roses so a few wonderful lady friends arranged them in the arbor’s joints. The morning of the wedding, we were able to walk around the neighborhood picking dogwoods and other flowers. We used those flowers for centerpieces and also on the arbor as well. April is really an excellent time to get married since everything is in bloom!

Well, I promised a few blogs about our DIY wedding.

I would have posted the entries as we went along, but as some of you may know already our wedding was a surprise. 

On April 1st 2012, we invited 80 or so of our closest friends and family over for lunch.  40 of them came since they thought it was just a lunch.

After everyone was here, I went inside and slipped into my wedding dress. 

A close friend presided over the ceremony.

The guests hummed the bridal march.

We had a great sushi spread brought to us by our friends at Aya Sushi.  They also did an excellent job with the photos.  Shoin Fukui is a master photographer.

None of this has much to do with these photos.  These are the cake stands that I made for our cupcakes.  We tried to keep everything simple and did as much DIY stuff as possible.

For the cake stands, I went to a thrift store and bought candle sticks, vases, and plates.  I used Gorilla glue to attach the plates to the vases or candlesticks by laying the plates face down and centering each candlestick or vase.  Heavy books made excellent weights to hold everything together while the glue dried.  In hindsight, I would have been more careful about wiping the excess glue.

Then, I just spray painted them all white.

The cost for the vases, plates, and candlesticks was about $8.  I think I used 2 cans of spray paint which was about $12.

photo credit: top photo by Melinda Haines, TN

These photos are so old that we can’t remember the dishes.

Pretty sure this is when Joseph was going through a raw foods stage, which was, of course, short-lived.

I believe this to be and Avocado and Heirloom Tomato Salad of sorts with what we think is Pecorino. 

I think it had lemon juice and fresh pepper.  Sorry guys.

Asparagus Risotto with Pine Nuts

Baguette with Chevre and Fresh Strawberries

Catching up on the old blog.  Apologies.

Anonymous asked: Lol half of your followers are on tumblrdatinggame(.)com

fantastic.

Angry Man Dinners: Rebuttal: A Complete Guide to Hipster Racism

angrymandinners:

I recently shared a music video on my friend’s Facebook wall for her birthday. I’ll share it with you, it’s called “Indianer” by Birdcloud. If you recently read Lindy West’s article “A Complete Guide to Hipster Racism” and watch this video, you’ll no doubt identify the lyrics, the background…

My boyfriend works in a funeral home and writes books.  Here’s a video of him at work for your viewing pleasure.

If you are excited by the idea of a zombie romance novella that comments on big agribusiness, then make a pledge to help fund his book, Kill Town, USA.  If you aren’t interested in making a pledge, you should still check out the Kickstarter website.  There may be something out there for you.

Anyway, here’s the link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/391896136/kill-town-usa-novella

Also, this was Joseph’s and Willa’s joint costume.  She looks so sad to be a monster!  But she had a good time. 

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