Taste-Buds: Strawberry Fields Forever

Welcome to Taste-Buds! We are two food adventurists and super-foodies: Lisa - a chef and cake-smith and Nicole - a pro-foodie and food photographer, both of us close friends who, when together, are Taste-Buds!

We are here to talk about everything and anything food and food-related. If you have questions, we will provide the answers along with great pictures, recipe's, wine reviews, restaurant suggestions, local farms and seasonal farmers markets! We are hungry for life and nourished by food and we want to share it all with you...

We also provide private cooking instruction and are available for hire for small dinner parties and intimate dinners, so if you are in the D.C. Metropolitan/Northern Virginia area and want to experience part of our foodie adventure, send us an email at: tastebudsln@yahoo.com

Monday, May 31

Strawberry Fields Forever

Strawberry season! One of our favorite parts of spring!

Nestled in the rolling hills of Northern VA on a hillside is Wegmeyer Farm, a quaint independently owned strawberry patch. This strawberry patch is one of very few in our area. A pound of strawberries was $3.99.... yes, you read that right! Although a little pricey, the experience is definitley worth it!....Just make sure you leave with a full belly!

Both of us, growing up in the north are use to a later growing season for strawberries. (which is right about to begin) In Ontario, Canada, strawberry season came right on the heels of the last day of school! Being foodies and all, there really couldn't have been a better way to end the school year & start the summer than with strawberry pie, shortcake and fresh jam.... mmmmm!!!

If you haven't already had the opportunity to go to a "u-pick" strawberry field, find one! Nothing beats fresh picked warm strawberries right in the field!

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About Lisa and what she does:

Fair Flour Custom Cakes.com

Lisa Dann Casper is a chef, cakesmith and the sole proprietor of Fair Flour custom cakes. Her passion for the culinary world bloomed early in her life and eventually lead her to the Culinary Institute of America in hyde park, NY where she graduated with a degree in the culinary arts.

As a graduate, she has been a chef for Disney in Florida as well as a pastry chef in the outer banks of North Carolina where she created recipes such as the famed “hurricane” cake which won local awards for “best dessert.”

Her life’s travels finally led her to Northern Virginia where she began her cake business.

Lisa is wife to a husband who has had an enormous influence on her culinary career and she is the mother of two charismatic boys who have inspired and shaped her creativity and who have led her to discover the world of culinary in so many new and unending ways.

Lisa, indeed, is a fair flower herself - always optimistic and bright and there to make your day a bit more beautiful.

About Nic and what she does:

www.nrbernardphotography.com

I am a professional food photographer and stylist who will try almost anything once (note that it says almost!). When dining out, I am always looking for something I have never tried before - doing this helps to discover foods that (at the moment of discovery) I can no longer live without!...And, of course, there have been some not-so-fantastic foods as well, but hey - at least now I know to not go near those again!

Food is a passion - It can be playful, joyful and sensual. It is used in your life's most important celebrations - such as a wedding and it is used to bring people together in their time of loss - such as a funeral. Food is a part of some of your most memorable times with friends. The nucleus of a dinner party is the kitchen. When I stand around and chat with friends and family in their homes, the kitchen is where we always stand.

Food is a conversation piece, it can be a work of art, it is something you can look at in a photograph and, though you can't smell it, you still salivate.

Food can be the sole purpose for a road trip (the best oysters can be found for $9/dozen at Pearl's Oyster House in Memphis, TN!) - It is what you do when you meet up with friends or go on a first date, it is what you eat when you celebrate a birthday. It is as diverse and as colorful as the people who eat it.

Food is a celebration and an exploration of life itself - go fourth and taste it...

Ode to Wine by Pablo Neruda

Wine, color of day,

wine, color of night,

wine with your feet of purple

or topaz blood,

wine,

starry child

of the earth,

wine, smooth

as a golden sword,

soft

as velvet,

wine spiral-shelled

and astonished,

amorous,

oceanic,

never have you been contained

in one glass, one song, one man,

you are choral, gregarious,

and, at the least, mutual.

Sometimes

you feed on deadly

memories,

on your wave

we travel from tomb to tomb,

stonecutter of frozen graves,

and we weep

transitory tears,

but your beautiful

spring clothing

is different,

the heart rises to the branches,

the wind moves the day,

nothing remains

within your motionless soul.

Wine

moves the whole springtime,

joy grows like a plant,

walls crumble,

boulders,

abysses close up,

song is born.

I love to have on the table

while people are talking,

the light of a bottle

of intelligent wine,

let them drink it,

let them remember in each

golden drop

or topaz goblet

or purple glass,

that autumn labored

till it filled the vessels with wine,

and let the simple man learn,

in the rituals of his trade,

to remember the earth and his duties,

to propagate the canticle of the fruit.