It has definitely been a while since my last blog post because it was summer then! It is fall now in Arizona, which means the weather has {finally!} began to get cooler and the farmer's markets are busy. Although it is impossible to go every weekend we try to go at least a couple times a month. My favorite thing of course is the food trucks. Gilbert's Farmer's Market is the best market I have found in the valley and all of their vendors are incredible. There are so many kind people and delicious products!
One of the best things especially around this time of year are the fresh fruits and vegetables. Everything sold is grown locally and is perfect for any dish.
It was also fun to see the different pumpkins and gourds that they had set out just in time for the holidays. I told my sister she needed to buy some to decorate her college dorm!
Of course one of the main reasons we go is to taste all of the amazing food trucks. It has always been my dream to own a food truck, so when I am at the Farmers's Market I must taste all of the different trucks to seek inspiration for my future truck. Lately the Mustache Pretzels food truck has been at the farmers market. Not only are their pretzels cute but they taste incredible too! Between the four of us we shared two pretzels, their garlic parmesan and cinnamon sugar. Both were very good but my favorite was the Garlic Parmesan. Here is their website: http://www.mustachepretzels.com. I highly recommend visiting them if you are ever in the area.
Another one of the food trucks my sister and I tasted was Bites Mini Donuts. Let me just say I was very glad my sister and I were the only ones of our family that visited the Farmer's Market that weekend because I would not have wanted to share. Because there were too many flavors to choose from, we decided to do two separate flavors; half maple and half strawberry cheesecake. I can't even decide which one was my favorite because they were so delicious. They were so good. Here is their website: http://bitesminidonuts.com.
Here are our deliciously gooey fried donuts from Bites Mini Donuts Food Truck. {If you can't tell we have already eaten a few}
Along with the Gilbert Farmer's Market, we love to visit Trader Joe's for their unique products and fresh foods. In order to prepare ourselves for the holiday's, we felt it was necessary to buy every pumpkin, cinnamon, or apple product they had. :) The cinnamon pine cones outside every store kind of put me in the mood to bake holiday items. You may remember my cookie butter blog post from a while back. Thanks to my aunt for letting me know it was available, I found the Pumpkin Spice version of cookie butter. There are so many different ways you can use this product. We also bought a pumpkin cream cheese spread that is perfect, especially on homemade cinnamon bread, and Harvest Salsa that go very well with pita chips. Last but not least we were so excited to see that Trader Joe's sells holiday Danish Kringle. We had this once when we still lived in Illinois and had visited Wisconsin for our summer vacation. It was greatly missed by everyone in my family, so thank you Trader Joe's.
Using the Pumpkin Spice Cookie Butter I made a delicious crepe filling to go inside any basic crepe recipe. All I did was mix about a cup of the cookie butter with a softened 8 oz cream cheese. I mixed until it was completely smooth and then placed in the crepe.
I then topped my crepe with caramel sauce and chopped pecans. Delicious!
Since not all veggies particularly favored in our house, I have made it my goal to find ways to combine them in a delicious and healthy way that everyone in my family would enjoy. I found that if you make it extremely colorful it is harder to determine what the veggies even are and you can focus more on the taste. The veggies I chose for this meal were peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, onion, and {PURPLE!} potatoes.
I love Martha Stewarts soup recipes from tortilla soup to vegetable soup. The best part is they allow you to be extremely creative and choose what you want to put in them. I think I have already shared this recipe on here but I chose to put it on again just to show you how creative you can be with it. Everyone in my family LOVES this recipe even my picky brother. Here is the recipe for the veggie soup: http://www.marthastewart.com/318100/big-batch-vegetable-soup.
Another way to incorporate our fresh fruits and vegetable, I made a raspberry streusel muffin and spinach and mozzarella egg bake. I also made this recipe for mother's day this year and everyone enjoyed it. I personally don't usually favor eggs, but the flavor in the egg bake allows me to enjoy the flavor without even realizing there is egg in it. The muffins are incredible and can even be frozen and thawed for quick and easy breakfast or snack. Here is the recipe for the egg bake: http://www.kalynskitchen.com/2012/03/recipe-for-spinach-and-mozzarella-egg.html. Here is the recipe for the raspberry muffins: http://cincyshopper.com/raspberry-streusel-muffins/.
That is it for this week! Don't forget to check out my Instagram page @izzabeleandcompany. Be looking for next week's blog post just in time for Thanksgiving!
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