grin and share it

Eating pretty foods was never meant as a way to sneak myself into a diet, although you might say that eating more healthy has been a bonus. It was originally meant as a way to put joy back into eating, instead of covering it in a shroud of shame and "should"s. When your goal is to eat pretty foods you find yourself being more mindful, finding joy in cooking and baking and of course, in eating!

Last night we went to a favorite spot: Eat Street Social. I ate an amazingly delicious pear & squash bisque and munched on communal fries. You know what: those fries were ten times prettier than that soup, despite one being arguably "healthier". To quote another of my UNresolutions: Chill the fuck out...and eat what you want.

I digress.

Another Pretty Food favorite: Scott Peacock's Buttermilk Biscuits {taken from Martha Stewart Living}.



This recipe needs literally no tweaks to be absolute perfection, but I did add just a few notes.
Prep: 15 Mins | Total time: 30 Mins | Makes: 12


INGREDIENTS

5 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for working, as needed
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon Scott Peacock's Homemade Baking Powder {We used store-bought. No shame}
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed very cold lard or unsalted butter, cut into cubes {We used unsalted butter}
2 cups well-shaken buttermilk {Who reliably has buttermilk on hand? Not us. 2 tablespoons of white vinegar + add regular milk to the 2 cup line}
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted


DIRECTIONS

STEP 1
Preheat oven to 500 degrees with rack in upper third. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add lard and coat well with flour mixture. Working quickly, rub the lard between your fingertips until roughly half is coarsely blended and half remains in large flat pieces, about 3/4 inch in size.

STEP 2
Make a well in the center of the flour-lard mixture, and add buttermilk all at once. Stir quickly with a wooden spoon, just until mixture is blended and begins to come together into a sticky dough. (The dough will not form a ball at this stage and will, in fact, look unpromising.)

STEP 3
Immediately turn out dough onto a generously floured surface. With well-floured hands, knead briskly 8 to 10 times, just until a cohesive ball of dough forms. With your palms, gently flatten dough to an even thickness; then roll out to a 3/4-inch thickness, working from center of dough outward with a floured rolling pin. (Flour rolling pin as needed, but avoid flouring top of dough unless you want dusty biscuits.)

STEP 4
Dip a dinner fork in flour, and pierce dough completely through at 1/2-inch intervals. Flour a 3-inch biscuit cutter, and stamp out rounds as close together as possible, taking care not to twist cutter. Place rounds 1/2 inch apart on a parchment-lined heavy baking sheet. Place dough pieces that remain after cutting on baking sheet, too. Bake biscuits until crusty and rich golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove biscuits from oven and brush with melted butter. Serve hot.

Again, taken from Martha Stewart Living.

These were our spreads of choice- Skinny Jake's Fat Honey (MN), The Huber Family's Red Raspberry Spread {WI}, Velvet Bee's Honey Butter {MN}

I took a handful of biscuits up to our new neighbors upstairs and one immediately ran to the fridge to grab the Velvet Bee's Honey Butter, insisting I take it back downstairs to try it. It's possible I will never bring it back. As my good friend Sohail always says, "it pays to be nice, people."

This recipe is actually the reason "Eat Pretty Foods" even came to be. We needed to bring a fruit to a New Years Day brunch and I was on a total blood orange kick- seeing as it is one of the very few perks of the winter season (especially when you live in Minnesota). This salad is always stunning, barring one small detail: the dressing. The yogurt dressing for this salad is, well...how do I put this..not the most appetizing looking. That being said, it tastes amazing and I certainly wouldn't omit it just for looks. I adapted this recipe from A Beautiful Mess.

Citrus Salad with Yogurt Dressing
1 grapefruit
1 navel orange
2 blood oranges because I love them
1 cara cara orange {they're pink on the inside!}
1 tablespoon plain greek yogurt
1/4 cup (or slightly less) citrus juices
1 teaspoon honey
a few pinches of chopped, fresh mint

Remove the rind from the fruit and cut into thin slices. My fiancé thought it might be easier to cut the slices, then cut off the rind: this is false. But we tried it on one just in case. We used a few of the botched slices for juicing. In a small bowl stir together the yogurt, citrus juice, and honey. I tried putting the yogurt mixture into a squirt bottle to make circles of dressing- I thought that might be prettier- but because it's thin it just ends up looking watery and not particularly pretty. So however you can find to get that dressing on the citrus, spooning it on in little bunches or drizzling, go for it. Top with mint.
Enjoy!

We all hate resolutions. All of us. Don't be silly and say you think they're like, super neat, or something like that. I do kinda like goals. I also like being realistic. Here's how I'm tricking myself into improving my life in 2014:



1. Eat Pretty Foods
Not going to lie, I think I'm pretty clever for this one. You know what's pretty? Greens, pizza with veggies, allll the fruits. What isn't particularly pretty? Grilled cheese with fries. But damn it's good. Is this a "eat healthy" resolution? Sort of. Am I going to stop eating grilled cheese with fries? Shut your mouth, absolutely not. But I think basing my meal choices on prettiness might help me make better choices. Call me shallow if you must.




2. Oh boy. This one. When I was working my way through these I ventured onto Instagram and browsed through all the #resolution posts. I saw a lot of these. It made me sad, and comforted, but mostly sad. We all gotta work on this one. I was having a particularly dramatic body-hate breakdown one day when my fiancé looked at me and said "would you ever say this to Maggie [a best bud]?" "Of course not! But Maggie is so beautiful!" I cried. And then I actually thought about the question. Of course I wouldn't, and she would never ever dream up half of the things I say to myself. This morning I peeked into the mirror and automatically thought "that's not so bad"- baby steps, ya'll.




3. Oh. my. god. Do I need to relax. I freaked out quite a bit in 2013 and guess what- here we are in 2014: safe, loved, comfortable. Everything was fine. Nothing was terrible. Some really, really challenging things happened - as they tend to do- and there were bad days at work, and mistakes made, and fights fought and again, here we are, just safe and sound.




4. It's a funny thing, the social medias. We all put our best foot forward (and who could blame anyone!) and everyone thinks that everyone else's lives are better than theirs, but really we all have good days and bad alike. Don't get me wrong- I'm not going to start posting my ugly cry-faces on Instagram but maybe, when the ugly cry-face is happening, I might venture onto Instagram and remember my happy times, and smile because damn, my life is pretty dang neat. 




5. Not necessarily in the form of pie (but let's be honest, it's better in the form of pie) I'd like to show a little more love in 2014. I have great friends, the most wonderful of all-time fiancé, an incredibly supportive family. They probably would like to know I feel that way, just as much as I like hearing it from them.




Addendum: It's important to make realistic goals, right? So here's a sleeper- I'm gettin married! May 2014. Crushed it.


So there. Take that, 2014.