Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone! With the big holiday weekend coming up we're on a foodie related vacation today! We were invited to a big foodie event about 3 hours north of here, an Abalone Dive and Foodie Picnic! We've been super excited about this for months and now the day is finally here (well okay, it'll be here around 5AM tomorrow when we leave the house). Unfortunately with all the prep work (2 dishes for 100 people! Yikes!) we haven't had the chance to get a post prepared for today. We're hoping to get a post prepackaged to show up on Monday morning, but we might not be able too. Instead we've decided to provide you with some pictures from a local farm around here called Hidden Villa that we took about a month ago.

Also, we wanted to take this chance to announce a new feature that is in development and introduce our first partner BTTR Ventures! BTTR Ventures (pronounced "Better") is a small company focused on urban, sustainable food, and their first product is simply amazing: a home grow kit for food grade mushrooms! Many cooks grow their own herbs and produce, but growing mushrooms can be problematic and downright dangerous to do on your own. BTTR's solution is a read made kit that will grow a crop of edible oyster mushrooms every 10 - 14 days, grown from recycled Pete's Coffee grounds. Sustainability AND caffeine, Charisse and I are super excited about this.



Next weekend we will get the chance to tour their urban mushroom farm and get a great understanding of their product, process and future plans. We'll be taking pictures and coming up with recipe ideas to showcase the mushrooms in a number of dishes for you all. They sent us a sample BTTR Gourmet Garden, and our mushrooms are growing as we speak or at least as we type. We're really excited about these mushrooms (one of the few times we can use that phrase and not get concerned looks) and can't wait to try them out. Look for some pictures next week, and recipes soon after!


The BTTR Gourmet Garden can be purchased through Amazon.com or through participating Pete's Coffee locations! Any links in this post direct you to our Amazon.com affiliates area. Any purchase from Amazon.com made by going through our links gives us a small return, and helps keep this blog running and us cooking!

Pictures of the Farm! 
 (after the break)