Friendsgiving Potholders

Last week we attended a Thanksgiving feast for friends, aka Friendsgiving.  I whipped up some potholders as a gift for the hosts in case they needed extras to use during the meal.

Our hosts were so well prepared that they didn't need any potholders!  They had heating dishes waiting to be filled with the sides that everyone brought.  I was thoroughly impressed!  The meal turned out to be spectacular and we had a great time.

I used the potholder pattern in Modern Log Cabin Quilting and fabric from Lotta Jansdotter's new line Echo.  I ended up ordering a fat quarter bundle from Fat Quarter Shop because I wasn't sure which fabrics I wanted to use.  Now I have a bunch of extra fat quarters that I can use for another project!

I also embroidered "Friendsgiving 2011" on the back of the potholders so they weren't just a random pair of potholders.

Since the fabric was so pretty I just wrapped the potholders in some raffia.  Isn't raffia the greatest?

Gifts for Baby Henry

My friend and fellow crafter Sasha had a baby a few weeks ago!  His name is Henry and he is insanely adorable.  I was a little behind in sewing up some gifts for the new mommy and daddy, but I finished them up only a few days after he was born.

Having loved making my first quilt, I can’t believe it took me almost an entire year to make another quilt.  For me, sewing a quilt top is a different experience than sewing a garment—it’s instant gratification as you see the shapes coming together!  Seriously, I am hooked. 

I used the Sunshine and Sock Monkeys Baby Quilt pattern in Modern Log Cabin Quilting.  This was my first time making log cabins and I really caught on after the first square.  They were so quick and easy to make!  The pattern called for the squares to use different fabric, but I’m a needs-order kind of girl so I made all of the squares identical.  I kept the quilting simple and just stitched diagonal straight lines.  Thankfully the rascal cat was taking a nap while I put the quilt sandwich together!  He would have had a field day playing with all of this fabric!

Once again I really enjoyed hand sewing to finish the binding.  Not only do I like the look of a hand-sewn binding better, but I like that it allows me time to just sit with the quilt and admire it as I finish it.  Sort of like a test drive for the future owner.  I’m happy to say that this quilt is nice and toasty.  I may or may not have sat with it on for a while after I finished the binding before throwing it in the washer. 

What fabric did I use?  I’m so glad you asked because I kept a nice and tidy list this time!

Stripes

•          Moda Modern Workshop Exhibit Stripe, Blue/Teal/Green
•          Moda Modern Workshop Exhibit Stripe, Orange/Red/Yellow
•          Taza Color Stripe, Yellow
•          Taza Color Stripe, Orange

Polka Dots

•          Urban Circus Dots, Green/Orange
•          Urban Circus Dots, Yellow/Green
•          I Heart Dots, Blue
•          Amy Butler Love Sunspots, Wine

Inside squares: Urban Circus Elephants, Sky Blue

Back: Urban Circus Giraffe, Lime

Sashing/Border: Robert Kaufman Quilter’s Linen, Straw

Binding: Robert Kaufman Quilter’s Linen, Blue

I love this quilt just as much as the first quilt I made.  It was hard to part with!

I had some leftover fabric so I made a tag blanket for Henry to suck on and a small stuffed toy to keep him company.  Both were made using patterns in Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing For Baby and were very quick and easy to make.  I finally got the positioning of the ears correct so they actually look like ears this time instead of a bow.  Hurray for progress!

Galletas Maria

A couple of years ago I saw a recipe for Galletas Maria on the Food Network's Twelve Days of Cookies and I made them for an annual cookie exchange that I attend.  They were a hit, especially with Nick, so now I make them each year while Nick starts to put up our Christmas tree.  I had never heard of Galletas Maria before the Twelve Days of Christmas, but according to the Food Network, "Versions of these cookies — named for a Grand Duchess of Russia after her wedding — are popular all over the world, but especially so throughout Spain as well as South and Central America."

They're an interesting recipe, including coconut, peanuts, and oats, which all balance out nicely.  They are especially delicious fresh out of the oven.  The only drawback is that they get stale pretty quickly, so don't make a huge batch unless you're going to have a crowd to feed that same day.

Unlike most of the cookie recipes that I use, Galletas Maria are made without a mixer.  You melt the butter on the stove and then stir in the brown sugar. The sugar melts and absorbs some of the butter, but a lot of the butter ends up sitting on top of the sugar.

It seems weird, but everything mixes nicely as you add the rest of the ingredients.

A quick 12 minutes later, the cookies are done and are ready to be eaten.  Wait for them to cool for a minute or two and then enjoy!

It's Christmas Season!

Each Thanksgiving, after Nick and I have returned to our house, bellies full of delicious meals, we turn on a couple of old classics to transition us from Thanksgiving to Christmas: The Berenstain Bears Meet Big Paw and The Berenstain Bears' Christmas Tree. Clearly we watch Big Paw first (it is Thanksgiving-themed). After years of fiddling around with an old VCR, last year I was lucky enough to find the combo pack at a reasonable price and I snatched it up! If you aren't fortunate enough to have a tape from the 80s with the movies taped off of the TV, fear not, they are available on the interwebs.

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They are both pretty short but are hilarious and the songs are great.  If you've never seen them, I highly recommend.  They're not just for kids!  Although I've been enjoying autographed copies of the Berenstain Bear books since I was a kid since my dad taught Stan and Jan's kids.  The humans, not the bears.

Black Friday is important in our house, not because of the sales, but because it marks the first official day that we are allowed to listen to Christmas music.  We make sure to load up the iPod with a hefty playlist for when we're driving around doing some calm and casual shopping.  One of our favorite Christmas classics is the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack.  It's so good!

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We also have lunch at Chick Fil A and share a black and white milkshake.  It's a great tradition.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is reserved for putting up our Christmas tree.  Nick sets up the tree (we have an artificial one since we have a cat) and puts all of the lights on, and then we put the ornaments on together. While Nick is battling with the lights, I bake some cookies and start stringing the popcorn.

We're pretty big into Christmas around here, so I'll be posting about all things Christmas for the next month: homemade decorations, traditions, recipes, and activities.  Happy Christmas Season!

Pretty Things Thursday: Acornucopia

Last year, Nick and I drove up to Hawk Mountain for a nice Fall hike.  I came across a tree with this neat cauldron at its base and there were some acorns floating around in it.  We included it in this year's calendar and Nick came up with its title: acornucopia.  Get it?  HA we are nerds.

I hope you are having fantastic meals with your family and friends.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Lucky Seven and Figure Eight

I've been a busy bee working on my knit panels for my afghan.  I have completed two more panels in the past few weeks!

So far I have 10 finished panels.  At the end of the year I'm going to lay everything out to determine how many more I need to knit.  I just checked out the instructions again and it calls for 20 balls of yarn.  I have 20 skeins of yarn, so perhaps I won't need to use all 20.

My afghan is going to be slightly different from theirs anyway because I'm using a different stitch and making the panels much longer.  It'll be interesting to see how they all fit together!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Yesterday I made the first batch of pumpkin cheesecakes for Thanksgiving.  I'm making 4 in total this year, my most ever.  One went with me to work today for our Thanksgiving feast and the other will be brought to Friendsgiving, our Thanksgiving meal with friends, on Wednesday.  On Tuesday I'll make two more that will be taken to my parent's house and Nick's parent's house on Thursday.  Yes, we are having 3 Thanksgiving meals in two days.  It's going to be awesome.

As far as cheesecake is concerned, I'm pretty much a purist.  I like a plain dry cheesecake with a graham cracker crust, without any drizzles or toppings of any kind.  It might be snobby to say, but my own cheesecakes (meaning the ones I make using the New York cheesecake recipe in The Joy of Cheesecake) have ruined all other cheesecakes for me.  I don't even bother ordering cheesecake in restaurants anymore because I know it won't live up to one that I have made.  It's a sad state of affairs, but it forces me to make cheesecakes at least once a year, usually for Christmas.

My only exception to eating/baking plain cheesecake is baking pumpkin cheesecake at Thanksgiving.  A couple of years ago, my cousin brought a Trader Joe's pumpkin cheesecake to our meal and I have been obsessed with making the perfect pumpkin cheesecake ever since.  Over the years I have tried a few different recipe combinations for the crust and the filling.  Last year, I finally perfected it.  I use a modified version of the basic graham cracker crust and the pumpkin cheesecake recipes in The Joy of Cheesecake.

In my opinion, if you're going to bake dessert, you might as well go full fat/calories or it just isn't going to taste as good.  Run a few extra miles that week, but don't substitute ingredients so it's more healthy for you. Dessert isn't supposed to be healthy, that's why it's so good.

Along the same lines, don't cut corners and buy a pre-made graham cracker crust.  I've never used one so I can't say that they taste bad, but making a graham cracker crust is so insanely easy that there's no reason to buy one that is packaged.  Fresher is better and it doesn't get any fresher than crushing up the graham crackers yourself.  It literally takes 5 minutes, trust me.

The best part is, the standard amount of graham cracker crumbs that you need for a crust is 1.5 cups, and the kind folks in the food packaging business thought ahead and made it so that if you crush up one sleeve of graham crackers, you get 1.5 cups.  If this is a coincidence, it's a lovely one.  I break up the sleeve of graham crackers with my hands and put them in a gallon-size plastic bag.  Then I roll the can of pumpkin (or anything that is around) over the graham crackers to crush them up.  Then you pour the crumbs in a bowl, add some sugar and butter, mix, and you're done.  It couldn't be easier!

For the pumpkin cheesecake, I add some cinnamon, all spice, ginger, and nutmeg to the crumbs before I add the butter.  I tried a few variations of a crust using ginger snaps, but they turned out hard as a rock every time.  I found that using the graham crackers and adding the ginger snap spices works much better.  You then press the crumbs into the bottom of a spring form pan.

Once you mix up your cheesecake filling, you just pour it over the crust in the spring form pan.  Some recipes, including the pumpkin cheesecake recipe that I use, have you cook the cheesecake at a high temperature for around 15 minutes and then lower the temperature and continue baking.  Make sure you fully read your recipe before you start baking!  Also, make sure you bake your cheesecake far enough in advance so it has time to chill in your fridge.  I usually like to let it chill overnight, but if you're in a pinch, a few hours should do it.  Look, only a couple of small cracks!

The past couple of weeks that I've been cooking, I've been using a handy cookbook stand that Nick got me for Christmas last year.

 

It fits perfectly on the window sill in our kitchen and protects the pages from messes.

When we renovate our kitchen next year we're going to have to make sure to keep that wide window sill!

Pretty Things Thursday: Fallen Leaves

All of the leaves have now turned and a good amount have fallen off the trees.  I'm sure we're only a couple of weeks away from bare trees, so I'm enjoying the fall colors as much as I can!  These leaves always gather in the corners of the steps that lead up to our front door.  I love how they look against the old wood.

Doesn't the gray wood and the cement really make the colors pop?

I'm going to miss these colors when the gray of winter sets in!

Sewaholic Minoru Jacket

My fall coat is a burgundy corduroy trench that I’ve worn a few years longer than it has looked acceptable.  I love it, but it really is pretty raggedy and misshapen after many years of thorough wearing and washing. 

I’ve been searching for a replacement trench for a long time, but they are so expensive!  I just can’t justify paying that much money for a light coat, especially one that isn't exactly the design that I want, so my plan as of late had been to make myself a trench.  Then Tasia at Sewaholic announced her newest pattern, the Minoru Jacket.  I quickly changed my mind!  This baby went straight on my project list and I pre-ordered the pattern.

After seeing Molly’s version, I decided that I wanted the outside fabric to be a cotton twill.  I took to Fabric.com and found this amazing gray organic cotton twill.  

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Then I found this Michael Miller cotton print and thought it would look lovely as a liner. 

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How easy was that?

Tasia plans on hosting a sew along for the Minoru starting in January, which is perfect timing since I’m elbow-deep in Christmas gift making.  I’m making good progress and it’s really hard to not share what I’ve been up to.  All in good time though!

Mushroom Risotto

On Saturday Nick and I took a break from soup making to test out a recipe for our Thanksgiving dinner with friends, aka Friendsgiving.  Nick and I previously made the Risotto with Mushrooms and Pecorino recipe from Ted Allen’s cookbook, The Food You Want to Eat, and it was insanely delicious.  We thought it would be great to bring to Friendsgiving, but when we checked out the recipe, we realized that it only served two people as a main course or 6 as an appetizer.  Right now there are about 22 people set to attend the dinner, so that just wasn’t going to work.  We would need to triple the recipe.  Then we remembered that risotto, as Ted says, “doesn’t wait well.”  Since the dinner is about 45 minutes away in Jersey, I was a little worried about how it would turn out.  We decided that a test run was in order.

We found that risotto isn’t difficult to make, it’s just very labor intensive and you have to follow the directions without cutting corners.  First, we had to chop up two types of mushrooms: Portobello and shiitake.  You cook the mushrooms first in some olive oil and garlic.

Once they are tender and the liquid has evaporated, add some parsley, salt, and pepper, and then transfer them to another bowl.

Then you cook the onions with some oil until they get soft, and then add the rice, which you cook until it becomes translucent.  Next you add some white wine and continue to cook the mixture until it is almost dry.

At that point you add small batches of warm chicken stock to the rice and cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed. 

Then you add some more stock, and so on until the rice is al dente. 

Once the rice is nicely cooked, you add the mushrooms mixture, some pecorino cheese, pepper, and salt to taste.  The recipe also calls for prosciutto, but I’m not a huge fan so we left it out.

We then jumped in the car and drove the pot of risotto five minutes down the road to my sister’s house, where she, her husband, and my grandmother were waiting patiently for dinner.  We served it right away with a spinach salad with carrots and tomatoes, but the texture of the risotto was more pastey even though the drive was pretty short.  Here's a shot of the same meal that we ate the next night.  There was plenty of leftovers!

It tasted good, but Ted was right: it needed to be served immediately.  We also found that tripling the recipe made the ratio between the ingredients a little off.  It was hard to get the rice to cook consistently because there was so much of it in the pot and I was worried that some of it would be hard.  Thankfully it wasn’t.

As good as the risotto turned out, we realized that we were going to have to make a different dish for Friendsgiving, one that can be easily reheated.  Any suggestions?

Pretty Things Thursday: November Sunset

On Sunday Nick and I ventured out to the country to visit his sister and her family. Before dinner, we headed out to do a little geocaching. Thankfully I brought my camera along and got some shots of the beautiful countryside.

We never did find the one geocache, but we enjoyed our time searching in the crisp Fall air and orange sunset light.

Pick Six

It felt so satisfying to finally finish panel #5 for my afghan a couple of weeks ago that I've been knitting during my lunch breaks instead of embroidering.  And that means that I recently finished panel #6!

This is the last time I use one of these plants as a prop.  I was picking tiny brambles out of the panel for a half hour!  It does look pretty though.

Even though most of the knitting is in the shadow in this shot, I had to include it because of how the light catches the fluffy tips of this plant.  I'm not a plant person so I have no idea what kind of plant this is, but it reminds me of cotton.

I've been seeing some awesome knitting around the blogs lately, like the Snood madness going on over at Did You Make That, and it makes me want to abandon this crazy long project and try something new.  But since I have a crate full of yarn and a pretty knit afghan waiting for a mate, I'll forge on until it's finished.

Lemon and Cilantro Chicken Soup

One of my goals for this winter was to try out a bunch of soup recipes.  For our wedding, my sister and her husband bought us an amazing All Clad pots and pans set, which includes a huge stock pot. I have loved using it to make our spaghetti sauce and I think it's also perfect for making soups.

Last Saturday we had our first snow of the year so I thought it was fitting to make our first soup of the season. The recipe didn't quite work out, which is why you're just hearing about it now. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, although it did get better as we ate the leftovers throughout the week.

This week we tried out a Lemon and Cilantro Chicken Soup recipe from the Bon Appetit cookbook. It made the house smell amazing and it turned out pretty good too.

The first step is to saute the chicken.  Remove the chicken and then, leaving the chicken juices in the pot, make the broth by simmering a bunch of onions, plum tomatoes, spices, and chicken broth. Yums.

The recipe called for orecchiette, but our grocery store didn't have any so I substituted orzo. I slightly undercooked the chicken and the orzo before I added them to the finished broth to simmer for a bit, knowing that they would continue cooking in the broth. Both ended up being cooked perfectly!

The soup turned out pretty good but overall I think it was a little too lemony for me. If I were to make it again I'd add a little less lemongrass when making the broth. It's definitely worth making though. It was so light and clean tasting.  We ate ours with a side of tortilla chips. What a simple and easy meal that goes perfectly with a cold winter day!

Pretty Things Thursday: Vampire Bat Flick

Like all good cat parents, Nick and I dressed our little Flick up for Halloween.  And by dressed up, I mean we forced this vampire bat hat on his head, took pictures for 3 minutes, and then chased him around the house trying to get it off.  Still, isn't he the cutest vampire bat you've ever seen?

Even though he wasn't pleased with his costume, he forgave me and snuggled with me.  I think he loves my fleece winter robe as much as I do.

What I've Been Reading: October

When we were at the Grand Canyon I picked up a copy of Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time as a birthday gift for my brother in law, who is both a history and food buff.  The perfect gift!  It seemed interesting enough that I ordered myself a copy when I needed to reach $25 in order to receive free shipping from Amazon.  I’ve been diligently reading, but the font is quite small, the book is long, and the writing is a little dense, making it a very slow read.  I’m enjoying it but I’ll refrain from writing about it until I’m finished.

So I don’t leave you without some suggested reading material, let me recommend Little Bee, which I read some time last year.  It is an insanely fast read, but I don’t want to say any more about it because I don’t want to give anything away.  I will warn you that it’s quite haunting and upsetting, but it’s definitely worth reading and will definitely get you thinking.  And it will leave you crying in your train seat, like one of the books I read last month.  I see a theme developing here.