Milestone, Carrots and a Giveaway

It was slow going at first. Awkward, not terribly inviting, but willing to try, explore, and bake bake bake. That was what this blog was like in the beginning and while it's no where near where it could be, I think it has grown quite a bit since the first post over a year ago and I'm always trying to improve. But today, I'm marking a milestone for Blondie's Cakes: the 100th post! Whew! It truly has been a learning experience, I've learned a ton about myself, about food, and about those of you that visited me every once in a while and left encouraging comments, thank you. I'd like to celebrate this milestone, and maybe lure some of you silent lurkers out, by having a little giveaway, but business first and treats later.

I am not a morning person and there are very few things that will get me out of bed before 10am on a weekend, but this past Saturday I had errands to run and so I got up at a very reasonable 7:30. What this meant was that I'd finally make it to the Green City Market at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, which is awesome! A ton of farmers and vendors set up booths every Saturday morning and you can get anything from fresh apple cider to these lovely French Cannelles, which made for a lovely breakfast:



to fresh farm raised eggs with rich orange yolks:



to these cool looking purple carrots and beautiful shallots:



I have to admit, I've never seen purple carrots and I was drawn to them purely because of their color, but if they were even half as yummy as I thought they'd be I knew they'd make a yummy carrot salad.

My mom has been making this salad on a pretty regular basis for as far back as I can remember and I have often found myself in the kitchen next to her shredding the carrots and chatting about what's going on in my life, discussing various family news or just listening to her tell stories of her past. Sometimes I'm sad that so many eloquent phrases that come up in our conversations cannot be translated from Russian to English. The poetic qualities get lost and fall flat. But the salad needs no translations, it's quick and it's the simplest thing in the world to make:

5-6 good sized carrots
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup raisins

Wash and shred the carrots to smithereens, sprinkle with sugar and fold in the sour cream. Once everything is evenly distributed, fold in the raisins and dig in. See? I told you it was easy.

I was a little sad that the carrots weren't purple on the inside, but the salad was yummy so who cares?


Now back to the giveaway. It's my first one, and I don't have fancy shmancy kitchen gadgets to give out, but I do have a pair of these cute sundae dishes which I promise to fill with all sorts of goodies, so trust me, you will want them.



There will be candy, cookies, tea, and jam and anything else that I'm inspired to add. I might even throw in a bottle of my limoncello if you live in a place where I'm allowed to ship it and if you are old enough.

How to win: In order to be entered into this giveaway you must leave a comment telling me what your favorite dessert is and why. It's that easy, just remember to either include a link to your site or an email address, so that I have a way to contact you if you win. I'm going to take all the comments on Friday night and pick the winner using some sort of random generation method. I might throw bones, ask strangers to pick numbers or maybe even use darts, but you can be sure that it will be totally random. Good luck, I can't wait to hear what you guys come up with!