Fashion & Food

Fashion Week hit NYC by storm this week. If you missed it just head over to Instagram and search #NYFW and you’ll see what I’m talking about.  While the models and the clothes, accessories, etc. are the stars of Fashion Week, food is becoming much more fashioned then before. Thanks to the ease of taking a photo on our smart phones and then posting these photos to social media, food has become something that is shared often. I have no idea how many food-based accounts are out there just on Instagram alone; there is definitely something for everyone. 

I tend to follow accounts for one of these reasons:

  1. To stay up to date on what is happening with a product/artisan
  2. To get new recipe Ideas
  3. Restaurant Reviews
  4. Networking Opportunity

My feed is a lot of food, food, food and I love it that way. I am constantly inspired by beautiful plates posted by others and respect the amount of work it takes to get them looking that way.  I save recipes to make later and drool over those meals everyone is having. I find it interesting how each account has a unique take on the food they are posting. I hope you are looking on Instagram Stories at the meals I’m preparing at home.  I’m still learning how to get the best images but really enjoy sharing the love the comes out when I make a meal for my family. I always struggle with how much of just food to post and how much of the account should be focused on our products. I hope you like the balance I’ve found but am always open to suggestions on how to improve.

Why do you choose to follow certain accounts on Instagram?  What are your favorite foodie accounts?

Happy Friday,

Julie

Recipe vs. No Recipe

I’ve always loved to cook. I grew up in a family that cooked. I have very fond memories of working together with my grandmother, mother and sisters to put together a Hanukkah celebration at the St. Louis Botanical Garden.  I have fond memories of making pies late on Christmas eve with my dad and sisters.   Most of my cooking memories when I was younger involved family and the holidays. My sisters and I also used have what we called ‘gourmet lunch’ on occasion. Looking back I realize this was a way for our babysitter to get us to prepare lunch but we loved it.  Everyone drew a course and went to work making something for the group with whatever was available in the kitchen.  It was a Food Network Chopped before that came around.  Some of the dishes worked and some of the more creative ones weren’t quite as delicious or edible!  As I got older(high school age) and could cook by myself, my mom often asked me to help with dinner. I loved that being in the kitchen but what I didn’t love was following a recipe. I wanted to be creative, not measuring and following directions.

I love cookbooks for their delicious stories about food and the ideas they provide for mixing new ingredients together. Check out our Pinterest Board for some of our favorite cookbooks. Unless I am baking, I typically use recipes as a guideline for flavors and quantities but allow myself to stray.  I learned a great lesson from my son’s teacher last year… Once you have done something the right way (i.e. followed the recipe or built the Lego kit the way it is intended to be built) you can do it in a new way.  This is a great lesson for a three-year-old and for grown-ups. Then I came across this great article in the New York Times by Sam Sifton, You Don’t Need a Recipe.  In the article Mr. Sifton describes guidelines for cooking a certain dish but not a strict recipe.  He points out that it takes practice to have the confidence to execute a dish without following a recipe but we can all get there if we try. I got some great ideas from the flavor profiles he outlined and signed up to receive the What to Cook Newsletter and get no-recipe ‘recipes’ sent to my inbox each week.

I cook dinner 6-7 nights a week at my house so I am always looking for inspiration on what to bring to the table.  Some of the dishes will be winners with my family and some won’t; that is all part of the process. Follow our Instagram account(@juliesbeet) and check out our stories to see what I am cooking most nights of the week. When a dish works out, I often publish a recipe in the form of an Instagram post or place it in the Recipe Box on the Julie’s Beet Website.  I hope you’ll follow along! 

Happy Friday,

Julie

Salty Caramels – Yes Please!

No one knows salt better then the folks at Jacobsen Salt Co.  They have been mining salt in Netarts Bay, Oregon since 2011.  Their salts are used by famous chefs like Thomas Keller and also in my home kitchen!  In addition to carrying their flake salt for finishing and Kosher salt for cooking, we recently added their Salty Caramels to our marketplace.

These Salty Caramels are just what you would expect from a salt company.  The caramel itself is rich and creamy, with just the right amount of sticky so it doesn’t get caught in your teeth but you get to chew on it for a while.  The bright briny flavor of the flake salt is the PERFECT compliment to the sweetness and richness of the caramel.  Of course these are perfect eaten straight from the box but we’ve also added one to cup of hot chocolate(YUM!). I am sure they would be pretty amazing paired with a soft pretzel or baked into your favorite oatmeal cookie.

We’re having a contest this week to give away a gift set curated by our friend Jamie, at Adventures of A.P.E.). The gift set contains these caramels along with a collection of other amazing sweets from our marketplace.  Head to our Julies-Beet-Instagram-page for full details and be sure to enter before Sunday 2/18 at midnight.

Happy Friday,

Julie