Recent Adventures

Finally, a blog with pictures!  And since it’s been so long, this is an all-round update, with Judith stories and crochet and baking and more.  Our everyday adventures :-). 

Peanut Butter Cookies

squiggly peanut butter cookie

A friend of mine asked me to do peanut butter cookies for her sister’s wedding.  And she wanted them to be heart shaped.  With initials.  So I checked online for recipes for peanut butter cutout cookies.  But the reviews for each recipe I found said either that the recipe was tasteless, or that it was way too soft to roll out.  So I used the recipe that my sister makes, because I know people like it.  (This was only like my second time ever making peanut butter cookies.  They’re really not my favorite!)  The dough was soft, but not too soft to roll out between sheets of wax paper (my pastry teacher would say “pastry chefs are laughing!”).  Honestly, I wasn’t fully satisfied by my handwriting on the initials, although both Lance and my friend said they were beautiful.  But I was thrilled with how these squiggly ones turned out! 

Teaching Preschool

February 27 was my first day teaching the preschool co-op.  I got to teach about Summer, and yellow, and squares.  I searched the internet for fun ideas, and found some great resources.  We traced the squares in an “Itsy Bitsy” book, had homemade yogurt popsicles on an indoor “picnic” for our snack, and made paper bowl suns for our craft.  All-in-all, a good experience, and I’m already looking forward to teaching “Taste” April 2.

"can I have it now?"

The Moose-Bear Boat

As I was working in the kitchen one day, Judith came scooting around the corner on these friends, using her legs like oars to propel herself along.  She said it was her boat.

Must be rough water

Tamales

Lance asked me to make tamales!  (Actually, what he said was “With all of your recent discoveries/experiments with different recipes and things, I was wondering if you would find a good recipe and make me some tamales?”)  So I went searching.  And found a recipe.  And bit the bullet and bought some pork and cooked it in the crock pot until it fell apart (gross!) and added salsa.  Then I made the masa according to the package directions, and assembled them.  I made only as many as one batch of masa made, because I wasn’t sure if Lance would like them.  But he did...especially with some mole sauce and fresh cilantro.  He at about one third of what I’d made and I froze the rest.  He’s requested that I try to make sauce-from-scratch ones next.  We’ll see.

Assembly line ready

the finished "present"

as served, with green mole and fresh cilantro

Crochet Projects:

Crowns:  at the request of a friend I made a crown using this pattern, modifying it in some places as suggested in the pattern’s comments.  And then I experimented with another smaller, simpler crown that I could possible put beads or jewels on.  I’m pretty happy with the result, especially because I was mostly feeling my way through what I was doing.  Which paved the way for:

Cupcake Nametags:  at MOPS this week we had “cupcake wars”, a competition between tables to see who could decorate the best.  And in the interest of table spirit, I decided to try making some crochet cupcake nametags.  I think they turned out rather well – and I didn’t have a pattern at all, just a picture that gave me somewhere to start.  (I suppose, if someone requested, I could try writing the pattern down :-)

crowns...bottom is from a pattern, top is improvised

crochet cupcake nametag

And progress continues on the big blanket for our bed.  I'm ready to crochet the border!  Look for a big reveal soon!

Bubblebath Fail

In an effort to save money but still be green, I tried two different recipes for bubblebath using castille soap.  Neither worked at all.  The bubbles lasted for approximately thirty seconds, and then the water was just cloudy.  I’ve seen some other recipes for DIY bubblebath that just add a little water to body wash, but since I’m trying to avoid sodium lauryl sulfate, that’s not what I’m looking for.  Guess I’ll have to write that one off.

The Joy

Lots of learning, lots of chocolate, lots of gifting...of course there’s joy!

Joy to you!

Barbara

By hook, cook, and laboratory!

(because I didn't want to write two blogs - and I don't have pictures - my two DIY experiments are included here today :-)

Purple Cauliflower (cook)
See this gorgeous thing that I found at the Farmers' Market?

I'd already been planning to get cauliflower because I was assigned to bring the side dish to our Sunday night small group meeting, and I wanted to re-make this dish (from Pinterest, of course!).  I just couldn't pass up the glory of the purple one!  Here's how it turned out:

all chopped up, tossed, and ready to roast 

It looks a lot like I was letting Judith paint vegetables.  :-)  I really expected that (like with the purple bush beans that I grow) the color would leach out of the cauliflower during cooking.  I even saved some out to take along to group to prove that it had really been purple.  Instead the opposite happened!  Lance compared it to blanching broccoli - which enhances the color.  The roasted cauliflower was a deep, dark purple.  The picture below really doesn't do it justice, but it was the best I could get.

After cooking

And it tasted good too!  (Notice the small amount left above - and that was only saved se I could take the picture.)

Most people assumed I'd done something to make it purple, but it really just grows that way.  Wikipedia says:  Purple color in cauliflower is caused by the presence of the antioxidant group anthocyanins, which can also be found in red cabbage and red wine. Varieties include 'Graffiti' and 'Purple Cape'.  I'm almost tempted to try to grow some, but I'm afraid mine would be full of aphids.

Bunny Slippers (hook)
shhhh...I made these for a friend.  She had posted a picture of some made for children, and waxed so eloquent about them that I thought, why not?  I searched around for a pattern, but couldn't find one, but I found this one that was pretty close, and I modified it to fit her feet instead of a baby's.  Then I experimented with eyes and the tail.  I think they turned out pretty well, but we'll see what she thinks!

DIY Dishwasher Detergent (lab)
We came to the end of our dishwasher detergent supply this week, and I decided to experiment with making my own.  (Pinterest, how you inspire me!)  So I found this recipe, and got the ingredients (Borax, Washing Soda, and Lemi-Shine).  The first two I could easily find at Winco, the local discount grocery store, but I spent a good two hours driving around trying to find the Lemi-Shine.  When I had checked online, it said the local Walmarts had it in stock, but I couldn't find it at the first one.  And since I was at other stores I asked around, but everyone kept referring me to orange cleaners.  When we finally found it (at a different Walmart), Judith said "Mama, is that the Lemi-Shine?" and proudly carried it up to the checker.  And she pointed it out to Daddy later in the day.  

Anyway, I combined the ingredients as instructed, put the result in a container, and have been quite happy with the washing power of my new detergent.  It is the first time I've used a powdered detergent, so that feels a little strange, but the dishes are certainly getting clean.  That's the main thing.  And it's all natural, and pretty cheap to make.

DIY Liquid Soap (lab)
I was in a DIY mode after the detergent, and noticed this recipe on Pinterest.  I'd just noticed that our three liquid soap dispensers were running low, and was planning to purchase a big refill bottle next week.  For a couple years now I've been buying the gigantic refill bottle and re-filling the small pumps by each sink.  This saves a lot of money over buying new small bottles, but using this DIY recipe, I can control the ingredients, and save even more money!  So when Daddy came home from work on Saturday afternoon, the three of us took a walk to the local CVS (for Glycerin) and to the 99 cent store (for a bar of soap - we got Yardley's English Lavendar).  Then I got out the cheese grater and experimented.  Basically, you melt the soap in the water, add some glycerin, and let it cool.  As a lot of people noted in the comments to the recipe, it looked like skim milk when the melting part was done.  Fortunately, I'd read through all the comments, and I knew that it needed time to gel.  However, I wasn't entirely sure of my success yet, so I didn't start pouring it into bottles or anything, just let it sit on the counter for a couple of hours.  Oh how I wish I'd trusted it!  By about three hours later it had congealed to the consistency of egg white (less charitable comments said "snot"), and like egg white it wanted to stick together!  Getting the soap from the big pot to small bottles (through a small funnel) was not easy!  (I kept thinking how much easier it would have been to pour the "skim milk" in.)  But I persevered!  And used lots of paper towel.  Now I have three full bottles of hand soap that's nearly the same consistency as what I buy (it gelled further overnight), as well as 3 pints of soap to store!  (Anyone need some?)  It smells very nice - not-too-strongly lavender, and it definitely cleans hands.  The only thing that's a little strange about it is the relative lack of suds.  But I learned (again from the comments, as well as from a discussion with Lance, who used to work in his aunt's health food store) that suds are typically caused by things (like Sodium Laurel Sulfate) that are added to the soap by manufacturers, and really aren't necessary for cleaning anyway.  I'm so excited with the success of this experiment!  For about $1.50 (the glycerin cost like $6, but I only used 1T) I made enough liquid soap to last us for a year!

Next experiment:  bubble bath!

The joy
As I know I've said before, I was created to create.  I really enjoy making things.  I take great joy in finding ways to be "greener" and save money at the same time.   And that purple cauliflower?  Oh. Wow.  What beautiful variety God created for us!  

Joy to you!
Barbara

More from the hook and cook

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, this has been a busy week for me.  Here’s what I’ve created this week:

Crochet Flowers

I’ve been working on these for about a week (I’d been thinking about them ever since I saw them on Pinterest.)  You can check the pattern out here – basically you crochet flower, stem, and leaves, then sew them all together and run floral wire through the stem to make them stiff.  The floral wire was by far the hardest part for me – and I’m still not entirely happy with it, because it keeps sliding out the ends of the stem.  Individually, I think they look pretty cute, but they make me very happy all bunched together in a vase like this.  These are all for gifts, but I think I might make myself a bunch just to have around.  I’ve never been a fan of fake flora, but these are so far from looking real that they don’t disappoint me the way ordinary faux flowers do.

Happy flowers!

My favorite one - and all because I didn't have enough of any purple to finish a whole flower.

Valentine’s Heart Boxes

I made 19 of these!  They’re a dark (or milk) chocolate box filled with dark (or milk) chocolate truffle hearts.  I didn’t track how many hours I worked on these, although it probably would have been good to know, just so I could figure out my hourly wage from them.  I started on Wednesday, experimenting with different methods of filling the boxes so that they were hollow but stable.  And that took some doing.  I finally settled on pouring several tablespoons of chocolate in the box, then slowly tipping the mold around in a circle several times so that it coated the sides thickly enough that they’d hold up.  Even so I broke a good third of them, and had to melt them down and start again. 

They're very cute - but looking at the picture closely you can see how very fragile they are!

Spicy Chocolate Wafer Hearts

These are for Lance.  He likes these wafer cookies (from Alice Medrich’s Bittersweet) with cinnamon and a little cayenne pepper thrown in.  Since these are a slice-and-bake cookie, I experimented a little with the heart shape.  At first I tried cutting them with a dowel underneath the “log” of cookie dough, thinking that might give me the indentation at the top of the heart – instead it just meant I had a hard time cutting all the way through the log!  So I pretty much just cut circles and then shaped them by hand.

Window Sandwich Cookies

These are becoming a Valentine’s Day tradition for me – and I love the way they turn out, both aesthetically and visually.  Basically, it’s two sugar cookies (I use the basic sugar cookie recipe from Southern Livings’s Incredible Cookies) filled with chocolate buttercream.  I just cut a “window” out of the top cookie as I’m cutting them out – like you do with linzer cookies.  This year there were no mishaps with little fingers stealing buttercream out of the window!

Butternut Squash Ravoli

On Saturday night we had guests for dinner (fulfilling that goal of hospitality!), and I invited them to come early so that we could cook together.  First, we made half-whole-wheat pasta, rolling it out with the pasta attachment to my KitchenAid.  Then we placed small dots of butternut squash filling (I pureed baked butternut squash with ricotta cheese, walnuts, and some Italian seasoning) on one sheet of pasta, wet the dough all around the filling, and topped it with another pasta sheet.  Then we used a heart cookie cutter to cut out the ravioli.  I have to say that using that cookie cutter is a fun idea, but wastes an awful lot of dough!  It’s definitely a special-occasion method.  Because these use fresh pasta, they only take like 2 minutes (max!) to cook.  I also experimented with a tomato-ricotta-mushroom sauce.  The combination was great, even though both “recipes” were untried.  And the best part?  Judith ate three whole ravioli! It's the first time she's asked for more of something we were "forcing" her to try.

Aren't they cute?

Bittersweet Chocolate Cheesecake with White Truffle Sauce

Of course when there’s company I get to make a fancy dessert!  This one is extra rich, which was a good complement to our not-too-heavy dinner.  The recipe (from Betty Crocker’s Everything Chocolate) doesn’t call for a crust, but I made one anyway.  I should have left it out – I’m not entirely sure what I did, but the crust baked so hard that we couldn’t cut it with a fork, and had to pick it up like a cookie.  It still tasted good though!

Sunday Morning Apple Coffee Cake

I found this recipe here, while I was searching last night for a coffee cake recipe for our community breakfast at church this morning.  Instead of using 5 apples, I used two apples, with a cup of chopped pecans and a cup of dried cranberries.  Since the recipe uses baking powder, and I know that baking powder batters can sit for a long time, I put everything together last night, and just baked it this morning in time for church.  It took much less time than the recipe calls for (20 minutes less!), and I’m not sure whether that’s because it had been sitting for so long or if there’s another reason.  It was good, though – not too sweet, but still satisfying.  I’ll likely make it again.  (Sorry.  No picture.:-)

The Joy

My heart is fed when I bake - and even more so when I do so with a friend.  And most of these are gifts - I love to give gifts!  There was joy aplenty for me, in spite of the stress of busy-ness.

Joy to you!

Barbara 

By hook and by cook

Here's my weekly (well, it's the first one, but I intend for it to be weekly) update on what I've baked/cooked in the past week, and what I've crocheted.  Where applicable, I'll include links to patterns and recipes, but I'm not going to type out anything that's not already online somewhere (unless specifically requested!).

In the Kitchen this week:
(see Monday's post)
Brownie Cookies
Also known as "deep dark decadence".  They're dark chocolate "brownie" batter, with dark chocolate chips and macadamia nuts.  Needless to say, they're a family favorite.  The recipe's from the Williams Sonoma Cookies book, so I'm not going to list it here. 

Brownie cookies - fresh out of the oven

 "Valentine's Day" meal

We celebrate V-day early, and ate at home to save money.  As shown below, my husband got pan-seared ahi while I had an oven-roasted portabello.  On the side we had apple, walnut, gorgonzola salad with maple-balsamic dressing that I found a recipe for at this blog.  For dessert we had chocolate mousse cups, which I didn't take a picture of because they weren't beautiful.  They were an experiment based on a triple-layer cheesecake that I make - I made a normal chocolate mousse mix, scooped 1/3 of it into the bottom of two dishes, and added increasing amounts of (extra) whipped cream to layers 2 and 3.  They were tasty, but a little grainy...and I didn't add enough cream to layer 2, so there was very little difference from layer 1.  Next time I think I'll just try this recipe that I found on Pinterest.

Valentine's Day dinner

Not much else was cooking last week, but I'm gearing up for Valentine's Day!  This coming week should be busier.

Crochet Projects
Chemo Caps
Two of my friends from church are going through chemo right now, and when I saw this pattern on Pinterest, I was immediately inspired to make them.  The first one (pictured below, stunningly modeled by my daughter) took me much longer than it should have because it took me about five tries to get the band around the hat to be the right size.  When I followed the directions as printed, it kept fanning out exponentially and just wouldn't fit.  I finally followed some directions I found (Pinterest again!) for making a foundation row without using a chain, and then crochet the rest of the band in a smaller hook size.  I made the second hat in red, and it went much more quickly.

chemo cap

Lance's Scarf

Isn't it beautiful?

At Christmas time, when I was making a number of scarves for presents, it occurred to me that my husband might like one!  So I asked - and he said he'd wear one if it wasn't "too phoofy".  So I searched through my pattern books, and through the yarn at the craft store to find some combination that would be both impressive and non-phoofy.  Here's the result.  And I must say (bragging!) that I love it...the pattern (basketweave stitch) and the yarn.  And Lance's does too.  He's actually worn it every day since I gave it to him. 

There was drama though, because I was (proud) enough to want to take a picture to post on Pinterest - and then I somehow forgot to put it away before he came home...and he saw it, and came out the next morning wearing it.  When I burst into tears (it was supposed to be a surprise! and I'd been so careful - I thought - about keeping it hidden), Judith said (in a conciliatory tone) "Daddy, you can't have this now." and took it and "hid" it in her room.  (She and I wrapped it and gave it to him before our Valentine's celebration.)

I'm also continuing to work on my afghan, as well as some secret gift projects that might show up here next week.

The Joy - do I even need to write this?  I love to be in the kitchen, especially when chocolate is involved.  And crochet gives me almost as much joy, especially once the project is done and I can give it to someone and see their joy.  And I took joy, too, in my little girl's efforts at playing peacemaker, even when her mama was irrational.

Joy to you!
Barbara

Busy Kitchen

Yesterday Judith's friend came to play again, so I took the opportunity to spend some time in the kitchen.  (It's wonderful to have Judith entertained by someone else, even if they do require mediation with regularity.)  As I was cooking, it occurred to me that I haven't yet blogged about any food!  That's pretty bizarre, considering that I used to have a separate blog just for baking.  It seems that after the insanity of December (I was baking nonstop for four weeks!), I haven't really been focusing on baking, although I could have written about the Chocolate Cream Tart with Pecan Shortbread Crust I made for Lance's uncle's birthday, and my adventures with Spaghetti Carbonara for the same dinner. 

At any rate, here's what I was working on yesterday (at one point four of these were going simultaneously!):

• homemade greek style yogurt - I started making this more than a year ago when I started finding ways to get extra protein.  The store bought stuff is yummy, but so expensive, so I googled alternatives.  This website got me started, and I've improvised my own methods to compensate for the equipment I don't have.  It's especially wonderful because Judith loves it (she thinks it's ice cream) and I make a batch for Lance and her that I sweeten with local OV honey.
• no bake "cookie" balls - Pinterest got me turned on to these!  They're pretty close to "raw" (if only I could bring myself to leave out the chocolate chips, they would be!), and with the flaxseed in them, they're pretty healthy for my little girl, especially because I sub unsweetened coconut for the coconut flakes.  And with local honey (raw) in them, they help with seasonal allergies too!
• butternut squash, red lentil, and garbanzo stew in the crock pot - Pinterest again.  It won't surprise anyone who knows me that I made this without all the called for spice.  (Well, not all - I did add the garlic, and some bouquet garni.)  It was a little overly sweet that way, but considering that I'm juststarting to tolerate butternut squash (it's always too sweet for me), it was pretty good.  (And it felt fantastic to be able to throw all the detritus in my composter instead of in the trash!)
• cooking the garbanzos for above stew, and baking the leftover squash to freeze for later - I'm kind of a slow food junky.
• whole wheat biscuits - I googled "whole wheat biscuits" because I wanted to try some with the stew.  And I was totally appalled by how many "whole wheat" recipes were actually half whole wheat.  In fact, this one was the only one I found that was totally whole wheat.  They were yummy!

In the future, I intend to do a weekly "This Week in the Kitchen" kind of entry, unless I bake something totally fantastic that I simply have to blog about right away.  :-)

The Joy:  It's really not hard for me to find joy in the kitchen.  I'm so wired to image my Creator by creating in this way.  Every time I bake it's worship - and my body and soul rejoice!  I'm also finding joy in following my goal to eat healthier.

Joy to you!
Barbara