Category — Harmony Boards

Harmony Boards received some very nice press a few days ago, thanks to my dear friend and daily walking partner, Lisa James of Gordon C. James Public Relations.

Delta Dental was looking for a company to do a story about for their blog. Lisa kindly and generously pointed them in my direction. There is also a plug for this site, so I was extra excited about that!

In other exciting news – Harmony Boards is reopening beginning May 28th for Thursday – Sunday orders. All orders must be placed a minimum of 3 days in advance and we will be closed Monday – Wednesday in an attempt to keep the necessity of shopping to once a week.

If you follow my business, Harmony Boards, on social media you may already know that I will be offering mini-boards for pick up on Mother’s Day weekend only.

I closed my business on March 18th to not only stay safe myself but to keep my father, who I take supplies and see often, safe as well. The way my business is set up requires me to grocery shop just about every other day for fresh produce and other goods. It is not like the restaurants who have been able to stay open, offering take-out, since those establishments have their produce and other goods delivered directly to them, without the need to venture out for any items.

When I was offered the opportunity to make the mini boards for Mother’s Day in collaboration with a local florist and venue in downtown Phoenix, it felt the like perfect solution and opportunity to keep Harmony Boards in front of people, to remind them that we are still here and will be back when it is deemed safe to be back in full force.

I had my dad, Connor and Dave over for a Labor Day BBQ and swim this past Monday. Of course, I made a Harmony Board for the occasion.

Another of the dishes I prepared was a quick, easy, healthy, and delicious side salad. I’ll be making it again before the summer is over … which, sadly, isn’t for many more weeks here in the desert southwest.

One of the salad’s main ingredients is shishito peppers. Most grocery stores are carrying them now and you can always find them at Trader Joe’s. I forgot to take a photo of the bag before I began slicing the peppers, so this photo is of the bag filled with the stem ends that I was throwing away. Sorry!

Many thanks to all of you who played along with the 10th Blogiverary Contest!

Congratulations to our five winners. If you recall, to win you needed to follow Harmony Boards on Instagram and get two of your friends to also follow. So it seems appropriate to share the winners with you by showing their Instagram home page header.

As I mentioned in THIS POST, I do a lot of the shopping for veggies for the Crudités Harmony Boards at Sprouts. My favorite produce available there is the orange and purple cauliflower.

I had one last crudités and one final fruidités board to make the weekend before I left town. (Fruidités is a word I coined to mean a half crudités and fruit Harmony Board)

I store all the cheese, meat, and fruit for Harmony Boards in my kitchen refrigerator. I store the vegetables in the garage refrigerator. I keep a list in my brain of what vegetables I had on hand, which in hindsight is a mistake.

Anyhow, I went to Sprouts and bought a load of vegetables, including a head of purple cauliflower. Then I came home, pulled out the stock from the garage refrigerator and there was a nearly full head of purple cauliflower. Usually, that would not be of concern, but since I was only 48 hours from hopping on a plane… a problem it was.

In my opinion, there is a nearly perfect way to use up extra vegetables and that is in SOUP! Happily, I also had a few leftover purple potatoes. All these purple vegetables made me excited about purple soup.

Of course, I’ve made cauliflower soup before, but never purple soup. Some of you might be thinking, “What about borscht?” Nope, never made borscht, because I despise beets! Sorry, you’ll have to find a recipe for borscht elsewhere.

Roasted Purple Cauliflower and Purple Potato Soup

Wishing you and yours a very Happy Independence Day.

Happy 243rd birthday USA! Are you old enough to remember the bicentennial? Doesn’t that number make you feel old!

I am typing this in the late afternoon on the Monday after Mother’s Day. I haven’t left the house or talked to more than two people all day and you can’t believe how much joy this brings me. The previous five days have been a whirlwind. It began on Wednesday with the second of my series classes at Les Gourmettes. Thursday I made some last-minute Harmony Boards that a customer begged me to do, even though I explained that less than 18 hours of notice was not nearly enough notice.

Thursday was meant to be spent shopping and prepping for the more than 27 boards that were already on the books for Friday and Saturday. But I made these two Harmony Boards for her on Thursday anyhow. Why is “no” so darn hard to say?

I did insist that she pick them up, I had not an extra minute for deliveries that day. It turned out to be good practice since the mini Harmony Board pictured above which I made for her was very similar to the ten I made the next morning.

I started with the minis on Friday at 4:30 AM since I had so much to get done before noon. I made the 10 boards above and then Kim came to the rescue and helped make four more medium monochromatic boards that were needed to feed customers at the Pop-Up Market that evening.

I worked the Pop-Up from 5-8 PM on Friday night and then started the process over again on Saturday morning. I again got up early to make more Mini Mother’s Day Boards to sell at the market.

Then Kim arrived and together we made two more of the green monochromatic Boards for the Pop-Up Market and an additional three medium boards for a 50th birthday party that evening in my old neighborhood. (Happy Birthday, Denise!)

I went to the Pop-Up and worked from 11:00 until 3:30 when Kim arrived to relieve me so that I could go home, pick up the three boards, deliver and set up for the birthday party.

I’ve been MIA this week because I’ve got a few too many irons in the fire. That phrase can be taken literally since I was branding dozens of Harmony Boards Thursday morning!

After shopping for my Wednesday night cooking class and delivering Harmony Boards, I worked at Les Gourmettes on Monday night.

Tuesday, I prepped for Wednesday’s class and made more Harmony Boards. Wednesday, I finished prepping, packed it all up, and taught my second of three series classes. The very special treat of this week was that Connor took the day off from work and came to Les Gourmettes. Marissa had attended a class late last year and was so happy that she had the opportunity before Les Gourmettes closes its doors. I wanted Connor to have the same experience. Both he and I are so happy he did!

I’ve been busy with personal stuff this week, so not much cooking going on. Except for last night when I taught the first of my 3-class series at Les Gourmettes. Today I’m going to catch you up on what’s been going on around my house and give you a valuable tip for cutting fig leaves and branches.

I have four fig trees in my backyard, which is three too many for my needs, but I’m going with the flow. I use the figs, of course, but I also put the fig leaves to good use on the Harmony Boards. They are best used under very soft cheeses and also when mixed in with other greens for the base of our Crudités and Frudités Boards, as seen above. All of the leaves on the board above are from my yard. We’ll talk more about the garden in a moment. First I want to tell you about the issue I was having with the fig leaves.

When fig leaves or branches are cut, they immediately begin to wilt, even when quickly put into water. I don’t know if this is caused by the milky fluid they put out when they are cut or exactly what it is that causes the wilting, but it’s annoying.

I discovered that if the stem gets a fresh cut under cold running water or is cut while immersed in water, the leaves are quickly revived. They will look great for days. Amazingly, the leaves will even stay unwilted when pulled out of the water several minutes later when I use them for a board.

When I was getting ready to post these photos I was thinking, “why should my readers believe that the wilted photo was taken first and the revived photo of fresh-looking leaves taken after?”

Why, indeed?!? To prove that this is the case, here are the same photos with their timestamps. The photo above was taken at 8:06 AM and the photo below was taken at 8:40 AM. See, wilted and then refreshed after being recut under cold water. Like Magic!

Today is my sister’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Sloane! I love you and I’m looking forward to celebrating with you tonight!

Also, this is the last post of April. If you don’t already know, there is a contest that ends today. If you’re not playing along, it’s not too late, just go read the rules HERE. You may still leave comments through Thursday evening since the winner(s) will be drawn on Friday.

If you are playing, please double-check all the April posts to be certain you’ve left a comment on each one, there are a total of twelve posts this April. The winning name(s) will be drawn and notified on Friday, May 3, 2019. Helpful Hint: To easily look at each post this month, there is an April calendar in the top right corner of this page. The dates in blue are days with a post. You can click on each of those blue days and scroll down to the comments to check and see if your comment is there. This is the page layout for a computer. On a cell phone, you’ll need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “View Full Site” to see the calendar in the upper right corner.

Since April is coming to an end, this is also the last post about Easter 2019. Here are photos of the Easter Harmony Board and Bloody Mary Board which I created, along with my table setting. Plus a simple recipe for the second salad I served for Easter. HERE is a link to the first salad.