Food and Flowers: Spring Bulbs and Produce

Food & Flowers

a monthly feature showcasing seasonal flowers and produce as we find them (totally impromptu) growing at Hope Flower Farm and at farmers markets in Virginia. Food in flowers and edible flowers in food.

We are really, really excited to bring you this new series to the blog. Food and flowers has been a long time passion of mine dating back at least to 2011 when I had a wedding bouquet filled with produce. Our floral designer, Holly Chapple was full into my crazy and built a wedding bouquet with baby carrots, brussels sprouts, herbs, peppers and okra. Since then, we've always found excuses to play with this same theme: like this gallery for foodie brides on Food Network last year. But this year, we decided we both wanted to create a lot beautiful content about food and flowers just for the fun of it. Since Holly, Chris and I are all Loudoun County, VA lifers, we'll be focusing on the produce and flowers that make our region of Virginia great. That means we work with what nature gives us that week. We're not ordering specific produce online. We're not buying flowers from wholesalers. We're going outside onto Holly's farm and to the farmers' market to see what we can do. It's ultra real (and therefore attainable- just go to your market! Be creative!), and it's going to push us to think on our feet. We hope we can show you the beauty in every day and what living with flowers and living with food can do.

Oh, and if you're not familiar with Holly...and did we mention Holly is literally a world renown floral designer? Like she's been in Martha Stewart Weddings and a million other features and teaches classes in China, Russia, Canada, and the UK regularly? No big deal (That was obvious sarcasm. She's one of the most amazing people I've ever met and I want to steal her life force so I too can be a life enthusiast and never stop doing amazing projects all hours of the day). 

Future food and flower features will include more recipes and food ideas, but for this first run we thought we were going to have to cancel since it was the day before Easter, families were coming to town and we were going to "just go and see...." what was at the market. Holly shopped for her family's Easter meal and we documented (we were having Thai food for Easter with my family, therefore no cooking required). But we didn't pick up any farmers market goodies for a shoot. Because we were "just going to see". LOL. Never. Later that afternoon Holly and her daughter Hannah had baked off some pies and quiches for Eater brunch in advance and they were going to make arrangements anyway....sooooo we went and played.

But if we did make something from what we saw.....

For April at a Virginia farmer's market here's what we would recommend making:

• Beet and ricotta salad
• Baby potato and steak spring salad
• Radish, rye, burrata plate
• Spring pea soup
• White pizza with microgreens
• Hearty toasts with farmers' market cheese, radishes and greens
• Soft eggs in salad with bread

Watch the video of our gathering!

Some flowers: lilac, daffodils (multiple varieties including doubles) 

Some food: kohlrabi, onions, radishes, asparagus, herbs