Christmas Past

Christmas is already more than a month behind us and I’ve yet to share my handmade Christmas gifts. Today I shall remedy that.

First up are the Frenchy shoulder bags made for my old college pals. This continues to be one of the most satisfying patterns I make. Not only does it go together beautifully but it also generates a wonderful response from the recipients every time. I tried to match the fabrics to their personalities and I think I did it. E & K raved about them at our girls’ dinner out. I blushed and graciously accepted the compliments.

Next are some pillows inspired by all the tiny patchwork squares I was seeing at Posie. I used all my most loved scraps for these. The squares are each 2” so I spent a few early morning cutting sessions before work getting them ready. The pillows are 16” square with an envelope back for easy cleanup. I also “lined” the front panel with flannel to make them extra soft for lazy winter naps.

Finally, the one Christmas present that didn’t make it to Christmas, a Wee Wonderful teddy bear for Little Miss Lou. While helping me unpack Lou found my secret suitcase compartment where I thought I’d hidden the bear. She pulled it out and asked what it was. “A teddy bear”, I replied, “and-um-it’s for you”. Which prompted her to jump up and down on my bed where she proclaimed, “Now I won’t have bad dreams anymore.” I think I granted a Christmas wish.

Recipe of the Week

Recipe: Bacon and Brown Sugar-Braised Collard Greens
Source: Cooking Light

Ingredients: *****
Collard greens are a fairly recent addition to my veggie repertoire but they’ve quickly become a favorite. They are the side dish of choice when pork tenderloin or pork chops are on the menu. Of course, there is bacon and that is one of the great foods of life.

Preparation: *****
Until now I’ve only ever prepared collards one way, sautéed in olive oil with lots of garlic. I think this recipe uses a more traditional preparation, boiling. Before that all you have to do is wash the greens, fry up some bacon, and sauté the onions and garlic. Easy peasy.

Taste: **
I had such high hopes for this recipe but it was not good. Even the dudely who tends to look on the bright side of everything had nothing good to say about this dish. I think its downfall was the brown sugar. I had initially thought the sugar might temper some of the bitterness collards can have but no, no, no. It just made sweet collards. And sweet collards are not good collards. And that’s something coming from a girl who has never turned down a sweet.

39 and holding

To celebrate my last thirty-something birthday I'm all dressed up and heading into the city for some shopping, a late lunch and the theatre. Here's hoping your day is good too.

Recipe of the Week

Recipe: Graham Crackers
Source: King Arthur Flour

Ingredients: *****
This stuff is way better than you'll ever get out of a prepared box of crackers. There's whole wheat flour, honey, cinnamon, and canola oil. It almost makes you forget you're snacking.

Preparation: ***
The preparation was classic, and easy, for baked goods. It's all the rolling pin action that gets me. No matter how many times I use my rolling pin I just can't quite love it. The fact that you have to roll the dough so thin doesn't help either. When the recipe recommends liberally flouring your surface, do it! And even then keep your bench scraper handy.

Taste: *****
Considering this recipe made 2 1/2 dozen crackers and within mere minutes only about 18 of those remained I'd have to say it was a winner. (For the record I only had one of those crackers. A girl must watch her figure with spring just around the corner.) The dudely, with crumbs spraying from his lips, requested these be made again and again. Being a sucker for adoration I just might comply with that request.

Curing what ails you

I am finally surfacing from three weeks battling The Worst Cold I've Ever Had. Seriously, it was nasty: I sincerely hope you don't catch it. However, should you succumb to this or some other respiratory virus, I highly recommend dosing yourself twice a day with a hot drink containing the following:

Juice of one lemon
1/4 tsp vitamin C powder (~1 gram)
a generous spoonful of honey

It may not cure you, but it will soothe a sore throat and help shake loose some of the mucus. My husband insists I add a splash of rum or cognac to his but I prefer the non-alcoholic version. Best results are obtained when consumed while wearing pajamas and watching Alone in the Wilderness or some other show about somewhere really, really cold.

Psycho bunny, qu'est-ce que c'est?

I've spent a lot of time laying on the couch watching TV lately thanks to a particularly nasty virus.  I caught reruns of the first season of Project Runway and decided to find out what Jay McCarroll is up to these days. Hello, two fabric lines for Free Spirit.  In an interview from last fall he describes them as the following:

"It’s like cotton for a more cultured, crafter’s world, like, the artsy girls who make cute little tote bags or little outfits. It’s perfect for that."

You have to love someone who tells it like it is. Can't you just see some of his prints fitting right in at the Black Apple?

Recipe of the Week

Recipe: Mean Green Tortilla Soup
Source: Rachael Ray Show

Ingredients: *****
There is cumin and cilantro. Need I say more?

Preparation: *** (*****)
If you were to follow the recipe’s instructions word for word you’d end up dirtying more dishes than a pot of soup should ever dirty. Because of the recipe’s fussiness I could only give it 3 stars. With my tweaking, however, I believe it’s worth 5 stars.

First off, use thawed frozen corn and skip the whole nonsense of heating up your water, broth, and corncobs. I just can’t believe that with the other ingredients going on you’re missing out on that much flavor. Second, don’t bother browning your chicken and then finishing it in the oven while starting to sauté your veggies in yet another pot. Instead dice up the chicken and brown it in the soup pan, remove the chicken, and then sauté the veggies. In case you’re counting you’ve already saved yourself from washing TWO pans! And grating your garlic? No thanks. You’ve already dirtied a knife and cutting board so go with mincing by hand. Finally, use a blender to puree the tomatillos. There are way fewer parts to wash and with a job this small assembling the food processor just isn’t worth it.

Taste: *****
YUM-O. (I know, I know. I just couldn’t resist.) IF I were the type to throw a Super Bowl party this would be the unexpected centerpiece at the food table. But I'm not that kind of girl. However, this will definitely be making a re-appearance in our casa as we continue to trudge through winter sans football.

Beautiful

My sister’s family welcomed an addition just before Christmas. Their family has now expanded to include Baby B, a 6 pound 11 ounce girl with a head full of hair and the tiniest little feet with the longest little toes. In a word she is breathtaking.

So it was because of the impending arrival that I seemingly vanished in November and December. I was not, however, sitting about twiddling my thumbs. In whatever time I had free I was cutting, ironing, sewing, stitching, and shopping to help decorate a nursery from over 800 miles away. (Oh, and there was the Christmas sewing but that is another post all together.)

Click here for more photos and details.

My sister’s only request for the nursery was that it be pink, brown, and non-flowery with a big dresser for storage. With the help of a thrift shop, etsy, Joann Fabric, and Lowe’s, Nana and I did just that. Little Miss Lou, the big sister, declared it beauuutiful. With the addition of one beautiful baby we couldn’t agree more.

Age is just a number, really

My husband's grandmother made us this table cloth for our wedding last year, isn't it amazing? She's always working on something, using a crochet hook and cotton so fine that I would have to squint to work with them. She adores my crafts and sees right through the mess in my sewing room to the organized chaos that is several works-in-progress. I think we might actually be related, Baka and I; not only do we share a love of the handmade, we are both early risers, tea drinkers, delight in shopping and apparently share the same fashion sense, which might worry some,considering she is more than twice my age at 81 years young. I prefer to think of us both as timelessly fashionable.

Recipe of the Week

Recipe: Lemon-Scented Olive Oil Muffins
Source: Cooking Light

Ingredients: *****
You have to love a recipe where you read down the list of ingredients and everything is in your cupboard or refrigerator, especially post-holiday when my cupboards rival those of Old Mother Hubbard.

Preparation: *****
Preparation was a breeze. A bowl of dry ingredients and a bowl of wet ingredients meet to become muffin batter. Bonus: My new lemon squeezer is fantastic. It turned that lemon half inside-out in mere seconds.

Taste: ***
I thought the lemon flavor was great. I got a little carried away with the squeezing, though, greatly overshooting the 2 teaspoons needed. The lemon-iness may have been exaggerated. However, the muffin’s weird spongy texture is no exaggeration. Unless I crave a spongy, lemony muffin these aren’t likely to show up in my house again. Instead, I’ll stick with Lemon-Blueberry muffins. You should, too.

Hidden in plain sight

Behold, my new fabric storage system. Yes, I finally abandoned my mismatched collection of make-do plastic drawers and tubs in favor of a more elegant solution, the Granemo cabinet. Say what you will about IKEA, I have had nothing but the best of luck with the pieces I've purchased. Tory brought this particular lovely to my attention a year or so ago, but I convinced myself that it was too big and I would never need that much space. It turns out that not only can you never be too rich or too thin, you can also never have too much shelf space for fabric.

I was so inspired by the fresh look of my former sewing room, soon to be our sewing/music room (once we hang someone's Springsteen portrait), that I spent a couple of hours arranging my fabric by color. It was a revealing process; I had no idea how much I favor red and blue. And I've always thought I loved purple but I have fewer than six pieces of fabric from the violet end of the color spectrum. I feel like I should have learned something about myself from this process, but it hasn't come to me yet.

As an unexpected bonus, to get the cabinet through the door to the room we had to move the futon that was previously on the wall now occupied by the cabinet and it completely opened up the room. It feels twice as big and is so much prettier, I could stay down there all day. In fact, I just finished a couple of patchwork pillows that I'll show as soon as I manage to photograph them and have an Easy Lap Quilt waiting to be quilted with my new walking foot (there has been much shopping, but that's a whole other story).

The observant among you will notice that I hung one of the cabinet doors upside down. Although it is perfectly functional, it is driving me crazy and I see a return trip to IKEA in my future for some additional hardware so that I can fix it. So close, and yet, so far...

Christmas 2008 recap

I woke my house full of sleepy heads with the scent of baking waffles, and then we ate them with creme fraiche and cherry butter. For this batch I used the Really Great Food Company gluten-free pancake mix with an extra splash of vanilla. The cherry butter was a new find, I also mixed it with a little chocolate ganache and used it as the filling for a chocolate cake and it was spectacular.

Of course, there were presents. They were all opened for us by my mother-in-law who took child-like delight in ripping into the packaging. Ahem. She did hand over the gifts to the intended recipients and none of the rest of us had to risk a paper cut or broken nail.

I received this fabulous handbag from my loving husband who even let me go to the store with him to pick it out.

Also for me, a long-coveted cake stand which was put to use immediately for the birthday cake for my husband that is part of our Christmas tradition. You'd think that having a Christmas birthday would have been a burden on him as a child, but to the contrary, he grew up thinking that Christmas was all about him, tree, presents and all. Typical only-child syndrome, I suspect.

Then we all put on our assorted new finery and went out. First to feed a friend's chinchillas and then on to Coolidge Corner hoping to find somewhere to have coffee. I was surprised that the only businesses open seemed to be the Starbucks, JP Licks, a couple of falafel places and, of course, the theatre. Maybe everyone was in Florida? We did find our coffee and a warm place to sit so it all worked out.

After we got home I baked Apricot Dream Bars to fulfill my husband's annual birthday wish to have the house smell like cookies all day long.

Once they were out of the oven I put Baka to work stirring the wild mushroom risotto and sent the birthday boy outside to grill filet mignon for our Christmas/birthday lunch. We ate a lot, rested, and then had cake. It was a very good day. 

32 things

When I recently stumbled across 37 things to do before I turn 38 from hulaseventy I instantly knew how I was going to approach 2009. So this year, the year in which I turn 32, I want to:

1. try one new recipe each week
2. redecorate the living room
3. redecorate the kitchen
4. decorate my workspace
5. take a cheese making class
6. organize my recipe file
7. read a Jane Austen novel (or two or three)
8. figure out make-up
9. visit Kripalu three times
10. launch small j
11. go on a picnic
12. have dinner at No. 9 Park
13. make 2 crochet projects
14. take a picture a day
15. pick strawberries
16. buy fresh flowers every month
17. design 4 projects with Creative Suite
18. make my perfect skirt pattern
19. visit Eric Carle museum
20. take the Ben & Jerry's tour
21. get a backup system for the computer
22. have dinner in the North End
23. spend a weekend at the beach in Maine
24. visit ICA-Boston
25. take a hike in a state park
26. make the weekender & Sofia bags
27. have brunch at Gaslight & shop SOWA Open Market
28. buy a fabulous pair of boots
29. take a vacation to a warm destination
30. spend a long weekend in a new-to-me city
31. shop Brimfield
32. update the 'do

What's on your wish list for 2009?