Bailey Van Tassel

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27 Mar 2021
Cooking

Guest Post: Andrea Uzarowski on Simplicity & Flowers with Toast

Chamomile on toast

Andrea is a chef and a damn good one. She is transformative and coaxing, allowing ingredients to shine as intended by nature. I adore her, and her cooking. I have been sending my herbs and edible flowers to Andrea for some retreats that she caters and am in awe of how she uses the ingredients.

Here is a peek into Andrea’s world, and some gorgeous inspiration for using herbs and flowers.

//

Simplicity rules.

A long time ago I heard the expression, “never lose your childish enthusiasm!” which stuck with me for most of my adult life. Why, as adults are we so quick to forget what brings us joy? Why do we not appreciate the simple things in life? Mind you, simple things can mean something different for everyone. I personally love truly simple things: the smell of freshly cut grass, clouds rolling in over the mountains, the first scents of Autumn, and the budding new life I search for impatiently each winter’s end as Spring nears.

Never lose your childish enthusiasm!

Toast with pickled calendula petals

I grew up in a family with three siblings. We each had our roles, duties around the house. Mine always kept me close to the kitchen and garden. While I recall not being overly fond of pulling weeds from the garden plots each summer alongside my mother by our house near a grand lake, I also recall and crave the taste of strawberries, still warm from the sun and sweeter than anything I could ever taste. Or sitting in the sour cherry tree with my sister for hours, eating all the fruit the tree had to offer and that our bellies could handle.

I recall running to the garden barefoot, in the middle of a summer storm, pulling fresh carrots and radishes from the dirt, eating them while feeling the summer rain on my skin.

Those were such simple things.

As a chef, my job is to cook. I create menus for my clients then execute them with my team. Simple, right? So why, making chamomile-infused syrup to drizzle over a yogurt-granola parfait seems so exciting? Or, pickled calendula petals were met with the excitement of opening a present on Christmas morning? The reason is simple: we lost our childish enthusiasm in the process of becoming adults.

Ask yourself this: what’s the worst that can happen if you decide to try cooking something new? You burn it. You season it wrong. You overcook it. You don’t like it. So what? Are these valid reasons to walk away from something that can bring you simple joy? Why not, take nasturtium leaves and add them to your next batch of homemade pesto? Why not, dry up some chamomile then use the dried buds as a curing rub for your next batch of lox? Why not? Food is simple. Play with your food with childish enthusiasm and feel the little skips your heart will make each time you discover something delicious!

Mushroom toast with pomegranate and chives

Andrea Uzarowski is a chef, mother, friend, and garden lover.

Find her on Instagram @FreshFoodFurther

TAGS:edible flowershomegrowntoast
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Hi I’m Bailey

Hi I’m Bailey

Teaching you how to grow veggies in any space while show you how to live a garden-inspired life.

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There is no better strategy than to get to know your own garden, seasons, weather, and microclimate. No reading, no influencer, no tv show knows better. 

To start, deep dive into your specific zip code’s US hardiness zone. If you’re international, Google your city with “hardiness zone” tacked on and see where that gets you. 

Next, get to know your zip code’s monthly weather averages, which is even better than the broad hardiness zone info. A zone 9 in Southern California versus South Carolina is very different because of humidity, storms, pests, etc. 

Frost dates are cool to know as well, but with time, *you* will be able to tell if it’s going to be a cold March or a mild one, and if planting after Mother’s Day has ever led you wrong or instead always been the perfect timing. 

What you’re looking to know is this: when will my seeds/seedlings germinate or thrive best for the time they’re outside? Will there be enough sun and heat for my spring/summer crops, or enough cool but not too cold for my fall/winter veg? It’s about 90 days that you need, and then if you’re starting seeds inside, that can get you a bonus 2 month head start. All seeds are different but these are good generalizations. 

There is simply nothing that can beat your experience, and that my friends is what makes gardening so beautiful, so intuitive, so humbling, and also so confidence building. 

Lean in.
baileyvantassel
baileyvantassel
•
Follow

There is no better strategy than to get to know your own garden, seasons, weather, and microclimate. No reading, no influencer, no tv show knows better.

To start, deep dive into your specific zip code’s US hardiness zone. If you’re international, Google your city with “hardiness zone” tacked on and see where that gets you.

Next, get to know your zip code’s monthly weather averages, which is even better than the broad hardiness zone info. A zone 9 in Southern California versus South Carolina is very different because of humidity, storms, pests, etc.

Frost dates are cool to know as well, but with time, *you* will be able to tell if it’s going to be a cold March or a mild one, and if planting after Mother’s Day has ever led you wrong or instead always been the perfect timing.

What you’re looking to know is this: when will my seeds/seedlings germinate or thrive best for the time they’re outside? Will there be enough sun and heat for my spring/summer crops, or enough cool but not too cold for my fall/winter veg? It’s about 90 days that you need, and then if you’re starting seeds inside, that can get you a bonus 2 month head start. All seeds are different but these are good generalizations.

There is simply nothing that can beat your experience, and that my friends is what makes gardening so beautiful, so intuitive, so humbling, and also so confidence building.

Lean in.

4 days ago
View on Instagram |
1/4
Goes to the beach to play, comes home with driftwood branches for the garden✨. 

Apparently it was the highest tide in 35+ years causing all this debris to be washed up on the beach. I saw the perfect 5’ curved branches and just had to whip up some pea trellises! 

There’s nothing like the feeling of hard work done by your own hands.
baileyvantassel
baileyvantassel
•
Follow

Goes to the beach to play, comes home with driftwood branches for the garden✨.

Apparently it was the highest tide in 35+ years causing all this debris to be washed up on the beach. I saw the perfect 5’ curved branches and just had to whip up some pea trellises!

There’s nothing like the feeling of hard work done by your own hands.

5 days ago
View on Instagram |
2/4
House hunting priorities went from ‘open floor plan’ to ‘open land’ after I started gardening. I didn’t have this passion when we got married - my poor husband. 

It’s a tall order in Southern California and arguably not a thing unless you’re the multi-millionaire kind of wealthy (we’re not). So, I wanted to leave the state. Also not a thing when you own a business here. So, I wanted just enough space for a few garden boxes. 

On the listing for this house, there was no shown space for a garden. But we came anyways, and found this empty patch of mulch. 

Time, vision, and a dedication to the dream ☁️. I also had like three other versions of this space before this one, just to keep me gardening well before I had raised beds. Who was around when I built berms?? 

Any garden design questions? Leave them here and I’ll answer them all 👇🏼

#gardendesign #raisedbeds #kitchengarden
baileyvantassel
baileyvantassel
•
Follow

House hunting priorities went from ‘open floor plan’ to ‘open land’ after I started gardening. I didn’t have this passion when we got married – my poor husband.

It’s a tall order in Southern California and arguably not a thing unless you’re the multi-millionaire kind of wealthy (we’re not). So, I wanted to leave the state. Also not a thing when you own a business here. So, I wanted just enough space for a few garden boxes.

On the listing for this house, there was no shown space for a garden. But we came anyways, and found this empty patch of mulch.

Time, vision, and a dedication to the dream ☁️. I also had like three other versions of this space before this one, just to keep me gardening well before I had raised beds. Who was around when I built berms??

Any garden design questions? Leave them here and I’ll answer them all 👇🏼

#gardendesign #raisedbeds #kitchengarden

2 weeks ago
View on Instagram |
3/4
Virginia Woolf talked about having a room of her own (for writing of course). 

But I too believe that every woman should have a room of her very own - a space for her dream to be worked at. 

I didn’t even know I was building mine the first time around, and ever since that first garden have fought to keep one.  For me, the garden is where I can impose however much or little of myself. 
It can be wild or kept, and often I have to dance with factors far outside myself just to keep it going. 

I realize too that I live in a place in my own mind often, and then bits of real life replicate that dreamy space. Tiny present moments that create the feelings of contentment and peace will match up with the little world I’m striving to create externally. 

And I have come to realize that our rooms - whether indoors or outside, or within a journal, are vessels. We enter with our changing moods, coloring the walls with our predispositions. 

Each day, with these little ones by my side, I hope to showcase more and more of a world where we can build houses by our own hands and hearts - solidly on foundations of hope, perseverance, resilience, optimism, joy, commitment, authenticity, and boundary-less love. 

The world begs for your youness, and that is it. For you to create out here what is also in there. 

Beautiful outfit: @thisisthegreat_ 💘
Virginia Woolf talked about having a room of her own (for writing of course). 

But I too believe that every woman should have a room of her very own - a space for her dream to be worked at. 

I didn’t even know I was building mine the first time around, and ever since that first garden have fought to keep one.  For me, the garden is where I can impose however much or little of myself. 
It can be wild or kept, and often I have to dance with factors far outside myself just to keep it going. 

I realize too that I live in a place in my own mind often, and then bits of real life replicate that dreamy space. Tiny present moments that create the feelings of contentment and peace will match up with the little world I’m striving to create externally. 

And I have come to realize that our rooms - whether indoors or outside, or within a journal, are vessels. We enter with our changing moods, coloring the walls with our predispositions. 

Each day, with these little ones by my side, I hope to showcase more and more of a world where we can build houses by our own hands and hearts - solidly on foundations of hope, perseverance, resilience, optimism, joy, commitment, authenticity, and boundary-less love. 

The world begs for your youness, and that is it. For you to create out here what is also in there. 

Beautiful outfit: @thisisthegreat_ 💘
Virginia Woolf talked about having a room of her own (for writing of course). 

But I too believe that every woman should have a room of her very own - a space for her dream to be worked at. 

I didn’t even know I was building mine the first time around, and ever since that first garden have fought to keep one.  For me, the garden is where I can impose however much or little of myself. 
It can be wild or kept, and often I have to dance with factors far outside myself just to keep it going. 

I realize too that I live in a place in my own mind often, and then bits of real life replicate that dreamy space. Tiny present moments that create the feelings of contentment and peace will match up with the little world I’m striving to create externally. 

And I have come to realize that our rooms - whether indoors or outside, or within a journal, are vessels. We enter with our changing moods, coloring the walls with our predispositions. 

Each day, with these little ones by my side, I hope to showcase more and more of a world where we can build houses by our own hands and hearts - solidly on foundations of hope, perseverance, resilience, optimism, joy, commitment, authenticity, and boundary-less love. 

The world begs for your youness, and that is it. For you to create out here what is also in there. 

Beautiful outfit: @thisisthegreat_ 💘
baileyvantassel
baileyvantassel
•
Follow

Virginia Woolf talked about having a room of her own (for writing of course).

But I too believe that every woman should have a room of her very own – a space for her dream to be worked at.

I didn’t even know I was building mine the first time around, and ever since that first garden have fought to keep one. For me, the garden is where I can impose however much or little of myself.
It can be wild or kept, and often I have to dance with factors far outside myself just to keep it going.

I realize too that I live in a place in my own mind often, and then bits of real life replicate that dreamy space. Tiny present moments that create the feelings of contentment and peace will match up with the little world I’m striving to create externally.

And I have come to realize that our rooms – whether indoors or outside, or within a journal, are vessels. We enter with our changing moods, coloring the walls with our predispositions.

Each day, with these little ones by my side, I hope to showcase more and more of a world where we can build houses by our own hands and hearts – solidly on foundations of hope, perseverance, resilience, optimism, joy, commitment, authenticity, and boundary-less love.

The world begs for your youness, and that is it. For you to create out here what is also in there.

Beautiful outfit: @thisisthegreat_ 💘

2 weeks ago
View on Instagram |
4/4

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