Many Recipes of the Week

Wow. I’m way behind on telling you about the recipes I’ve been trying lately. How about a quick little recap as a way to catch up?

Sweet Potato and Poblano Salad with Honey and Rosemary
This should become your go-to potato salad this grilling season. I was sad when it was gone. In fact, there was a little fight over the remaining serving. To save from any fights breaking out perhaps you should make double.

Vanilla Ice Cream
I’d never made a custard base for ice cream before thinking it was too much effort. How much difference could it make? Well, I’m here to tell you it makes all the difference in the world. This was amazing. It was rich, creamy, silky, deliciousness on a spoon. Or I should say on the beater. I could be found licking the ice cream machine beater over the sink making completely inappropriate noises.

Hot Fudge Sauce
You knew this was coming, right? How can you top out of this world ice cream with store-bought hot fudge? This recipe requires caution. It is bittersweet, fudgy, and rich. If you’re firmly in the milk chocolate camp then you probably won’t love this. The next time I make this I will probably increase the sugar a bit and/or use semi-sweet chocolate to appeal to the milk chocolate and dark chocolate crowds.

Meze Platter with Hummus, Shrimp Salad, and Cucumber Salad
This recipe is actually three in one. It is also a major crowd pleaser. Four of us sat around grazing, I mean eating, from the tray and there was barely a bite of anything remaining. I did serve it with a selection of cheeses, salami, olives, and marinated eggplant and there was barely a bite of those left either. (Did I just make us sound like gluttonous pigs?) It really made a perfect tapas-like evening, complete with Spanish wine. If you’re planning to host a little get together I think you need look no further than this menu.

The Standbys

It’s all well and good to try a new recipe every week but that leaves a lot of eating to be done the rest of the week. Enter my list of never fail standbys that are in regular rotation in our house.

Tex-Mex Lasagna
Coconut Curried Shrimp
Broccoli Tofu Stir-fry
Grilled Steak Salad
Hot and Sour Soup with Shrimp
Ratatouille Pizza
Jamaican Jerk Turkey Burgers
Veggie Burgers
Chicken and Brie Sandwiches
Mexican Ham and Bean Soup
Butternut and Spinach Lasagna
Spinach Quiche

Shop Brimfield

Elise and I first shopped Brimfield together five years ago. It was a Saturday in May. It was hot, with temperatures well over 90. And it was packed both with people and things.

Our experience this past May could not have been more different. The temperature was more in line with what you’d expect for May. So where were the people and where were the things? Once we got past the vendors lined up directly along the road we found that field after field was empty, of both shoppers and vendors. It was kind of sad to see it so sparse.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t manage to find a few small treasures. Check out my cool vintage tin! The bottom is stamped with Made in Holland. Its previous owner was using it to store hummingbird food, or so said the piece of paper taped to the outside. It will now either find work in my kitchen or den making boring storage more interesting.

My other little treasure is a sterling silver serving piece. In my book it’s a pie server but I don’t if that is technically correct. When I first found this beauty it was tarnished and sad, sitting in a wooden drawer of other neglected things. It cleaned up beautifully and is now ready for a summer of fruit pies.

What did I pay for these finds, you’re asking? A grand total of $7. They were originally marked at a total of $9, but I drove a hard bargain.

A weekend at the beach in Maine

This is what a long weekend at the beach in Maine looks like. What the camera doesn't capture is how time seemed to slow. It didn't rush by unrembered like so many minutes of the work week. There was space in those minutes to sit and just be. Maine and its beaches are truly magical. Get there if you can because their motto really does sum it up: The Way Life Should Be.

[Not this] weekend sewing

Another not-quite-as-easy-as-I-expected project from Weekend Sewing that I actually finished and photographed a few weeks ago. Thinking that one can't have too many bags, I decided to try the Everything Tote using some home dec weight Amy Butler fabric and a fun print from Heather's Mendocino collection for the lining. I had heard that there was an error with the pattern and checked the errata page before I got started so I knew how how much fabric I was really going to need, which was a good start.

I had a minor OCD moment when I realized that neither the pattern or the errata mention that if you are using a directional print (like the orange I used for the lining) that following the pattern as written will result in the print being upside down on one side of the bag. This is because the bottom of the bag is placed on the fabric fold. I fixed this by cutting two pieces for the lining instead of cutting it on the fold so the octopi ended up all swimming in the same direction and all was right with my world. One other thing to note about the materials: you need about 1/2 yard extra for the lining fabric in order to be able to cut out the handle and binding pieces. Also, to give the bag some stability, I lined the binding and handles with a layer of flannel a la Bend the Rules.

Unfortunately, the pattern is just not quite right, although it's pretty easy to figure out what you need to do to make it work. For example, to create the gathering between the handles, the pattern says to gather the material until the two markings (where the handles join) are 12" apart. Well, they start out 12" apart, so you need to gather the material until it looks right to you. Because of this adjustment, the binding pieces end up being a couple of inches too long and you have to trim them flush with the raw edges before you add the handles. Also, the instructions for applying the binding and handles make no sense whatsoever. Fortunately, you can easily find better instructions for making a bag with bias tape binding and handles, there are a lot out there.

All that said, I quite like the way this bag turned out and would probably make another.

Baby's First Summer

I hope you didn’t think that in all the sewing for Little Miss Lou I forgot about Baby B. No, siree! I couldn’t possibly forget about sewing something special for that sweet, smily baby’s first summer. In fact, I started making her outfits way back in March during our last snowstorm of the winter season.

The must-have summer outfit for kids of all ages is the Oliver + S playsuit. It’s such a must-have that not one, but two, were needed. I know I’ve said how much I love it before but every time I make another I feel the love all over again.

The next outfit I made for her was the comfy jumper dress with matching gingham bloomers. I hadn’t actually intended on making her a dress this summer. Then I posted my first comfy jumper dress and the e-mail arrived. My sister was in love and couldn’t say enough kind words about it. Uh-oh. I couldn’t resist that. There is no possible way I could deny my sister or baby niece an extra bit of handmade lovely. And the fact that she looked adorable in it with her baby blues shining was just icing on the (ice cream) cake.

Strawberry Fields

Saturday was the most perfect of late spring mornings. After a week of gray, dreary days we awoke to bright sun, blue skies, and warm temperatures. It was the perfect day for picking strawberries! It took some prodding to get the dudely to agree that strawberry picking so early in the morning (before 9am, gasp!) was a good idea, but he eventually agreed.

We ended up at Tougas Family Farm where we were greeted with the nicest staff of people. It was so well organized. We ended up with our own row to pick from, a bucket for rotten berries, our picking tray, and a flag to indicate where we’d stopped.

The picking was easy! After so much rain the berries were begging to be picked. We only went about 6 feet in our row and ended up with 17 pounds of berries in a mere 30minutes. I’d gone with the hope of gathering 10 pounds of berries and was shocked when we arrived at the scale with nearly double that amount.

What to do with all those berries? Freezer jam. It was the sole driver in my wanting to go strawberry picking. I remember my mom making it years ago when we were kids and I loved it. I had to try my hand at it. It was so easy; I just followed the directions inside the box of Sure-Jell. I ended up with 8 – 16 ounce jars of jam. It’s about all the space I could afford to give up in my little freezer. But believe me I could have kept going because there were many, many strawberries left.

They didn’t last long though. We munched through about 2 pounds of fresh berries, froze a bunch of whole berries for later, made a fresh strawberry pie, imbibed in fresh strawberry daiquiris, and made strawberry cheesecake ice cream. And now they are gone and I’m wondering if it would be gluttony to go back and pick more.