The Rebel Homemaker

Homemade bagels

2011-07-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

I made bagels for the first time ever this morning, and boy, were they ever delicious! I've been testing out recipes from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book the last few weeks. I have both that one and the Healthy Bread version checked out from the library. I'm working through a few recipes from both to figure out which book would work best for me to purchase for my cookbook library. Hence the bagels this morning. I mixed a half batch of the bagel dough recipe on Wednesday, so it had had a good three days of fermenting in the fridge. And it took less than an hour to have piping hot fresh bagels for breakfast in the morning!

I only made two bagels for the first go around. I used my kitchen scale to weigh out the three ounce hunks of dough.

Oven on, water boiling, and this was my first attempt at shaping the bagels.

I'm hoping with some practice that I can get them a little more evenly shaped!

Quick boil on the stove!

Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top, then into the oven.

Mine didn't brown up much like the book says they will, even with leaving them in the oven for an extra four minutes, but they tasted amazing!

The outside was crispy and the inside was soft and the taste was divine. We slathered ours with cream cheese and the homemade sour plum jam I'd made last week. Best breakfast I've had in awhile! I think this bagel recipe closed the deal for me to buy this book!

My new garden companion

2011-06-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, this feathered friend adopted my front garden as its home.

We spent a good half hour hanging out together while I watered the yard and pulled some weeds. It would walk gently over to whichever area I just watered and pick out the bugs that crawled to the surface.

This same crow has been my garden companion every day since. I've never been a fan of crows before as they tend to be very loud at 5:30am and then make a mess digging up holes in my garden. This crow is different. It never makes a mess when looking for bugs and treads lightly through the garden, avoiding munching on any plants. Yesterday, it perched on the hood of my neighbor's station wagon while I gardened. It reminded me of my chickens on their perch.

I need as much help as I can get battling the bugs in the front yard, so I'm thrilled to have this new addition to my garden! Now, if I could just train it to scare off the squirrels that keep planting avocado pits all over my yard, I'd be all set! What wildlife have you welcomed into your garden?

Knitting needle organizer

2011-06-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who is an avid knitter, so when I came across this Timeless Treasures fabric of sheep knitting, I knew I had to buy some for a future gift. Her birthday is today, so over the weekend, I sewed up this knitting needle organizer as a gift.

I used some of my own knitting needles as a guide to getting the size right. With the top flap closed and the case laid open, the organizer measures 20" wide by 14.5" high. There are two sets of pockets, one with openings starting at 3/4" and going up to 2" wide to keep all the long needles in size order, and another set of three wide pockets for storing circular needles. The circular needle pockets are made from Robert Kaufman's Metro Circles in black.

I added a flap for the top to keep the long needles from sliding out, and the whole thing folds up in thirds and snaps closed.

I am always so nervous giving handmade gifts, but this one turned out to be a great fit. My friend said she had needed a way to keep her supplies organized for a long time and this organizer was perfect! Yay! Now I just need to make another one for myself!

What are your favorite handmade gifts to give?

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story!

Harvesting Garlic

2011-06-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

I finally harvested all of the garlic from my front yard this week. The last few weeks walking by the garlic patch, the plants became quite fragrant. It was like driving though Gilroy! The stalks had turned mostly yellow and were starting to dry out. It was time. I unceremoniously yanked one out of the ground to see if it was ready, and it was! So I grabbed a bucket and yanked out the rest.

All 24 of the cloves I planted last October sprouted up and made new heads of garlic. The range of sizes, though, is crazy!

After brushing the loose dirt off the heads with a dry rag, I bundled them into bunches of 3 to 5 heads, tying them with twine at the top. This is soft neck garlic, which needs to cure for 4 weeks before storing. I plan to braid the medium sized ones to hang in the kitchen, while saving the largest for replanting and using the smallest ones to cook with first. In the meantime, I've hung the bundles on a rack in my husband's work shop, as a lovely garlic scented air freshener.

Did you plant garlic this year? What are your favorite varieties? I think I will be adding a few more varieties along with this White Sicilian variety to my garden this fall and would love some suggestions!

This week's sourdough experiment

2011-05-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

I've been baking almost weekly loaves of the Rustic Ciabatta bread from Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery book, so this week, I needed to change things up a bit. I was missing having regular loaves of bread around the house for things like french toast. My first thought was to make a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, till I remembered I was out of raisins! The recipe I was planning to use was the sourdough Grandmother bread recipe from Chickens in the Road, and while looking for the raisin bread version, I came across the apple streudel version. Thank goodness! I had some apples that needed to be used, so this was perfect.

mid-rise

Deviating just a bit from the original recipe, I use two cups of sourdough starter, two cups of water, and no added yeast for the two loaf recipe when making this bread, leaving the rest of the ingredients the same. It takes longer for everything to rise, but it develops more flavor during the longer proofing times and I don't have to keep yeast around when I want to make bread.

Is the bread ready yet?

Today, I made one plain loaf in a 5x9 pan, then made the apple version with the second loaf. The only thing I changed for the apple loaf, was to use water instead of butter brushed on the dough before adding the apple mixture for a lower fat version. Oh, and I had to bake mine for an hour as both loaves were in the oven together.

fresh from the oven

The apple bread - oh my. So delicious! Yup. Ate it for lunch. Don't tell anyone. I plan on drizzling it with some frosting when eating the leftovers this week. The braid on this was so easy to do and made such a great presentation. The original recipe link has several how-to photos on this quick process.

cinnamon apple bread

The sandwich loaf - is again a reminder that I have little patience during that second rise time! I should have let this loaf rise a bit longer while the apple version was baking, then it wouldn't have popped open on the side. I guess I need to make these loaves more often so I won't forget!

The First Blueberries

2011-04-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

The beginning of fruit season officially started at my house this week. After a lovely warm weekend with temperatures in the high seventies and low eighties, my blueberry bushes kicked into high gear and I got to harvest the first of the berries yesterday.

The chickens were right there just in case I dropped any.

I moved my plants up onto the bench and table a few weeks back as the girls were pecking at any berry and flower they could get to every morning. I keep thinking about planting my blueberries in the ground, but it's just so easy to move them around when I need to if they stay in pots.

When I planted them three years ago, I followed the directions on this site to pot them up. Blueberries prefer acidic soil, so when I water, I add 1/2 cup of white vinegar to my 2 gallon watering can when I remember. I should do it every time I water them, but I'm a lazy gardener. Also, I saved a giant bucket of pine chips from a local tree removal that I've been adding to the top of the pots occasionally, with a bit of compost to feed them a few times a year. Other than that, I don't pay them much attention until I see bits of blue amongst the leaves.

You can't beat homegrown blueberries on top of homemade granola for breakfast. Even if you only have a balcony for growing food, add a few blueberry plants to your life!

Messenger Bag in Central Park

2011-04-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

What do you all think of my fancy new messenger bag?

I had so much fun sewing up this bag earlier this week. It's the latest fantastic pattern from Kate over at Needle and Spatula. Can I just tell you that I love this bag? It's the perfect size for carrying everything I might need for the day. The best part? My new iPad fits comfortably so I can always keep it with me on the go. And I love all the different pockets to keep things organized.

The bag took me about 2.5 hours to sew up including cutting time. The instructions are thorough and the pictures that go along with it are so helpful for each step along the way. I didn't have any heavyweight fabric for the outer pieces, and I really wanted to use fabric from my stash, so I used the Central Park fabric backed with batting and added a mid weight interfacing to all of my interior lining pieces. This bag feels so soft and sturdy at the same time. I've already tested it out lugging it around Santa Monica for the day and it works great slung across my back while riding my bike. Now that I've made one version, I'm dying to make several more with other fabrics!

Kate is having a giveaway to celebrate her new pattern, so head on over to her blog and check it out!

Linking up to {Sew} Modern Monday and Fabric Tuesday! Be sure to check out all the other great projects!

Seedling Update

2011-04-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

I potted up my tomato, pepper, eggplant, and basil seedlings last week.

It's been a month since I started them and several of them had gotten quite large already. I used mostly compost and a little garden soil in the four inch pots to fill them up and prepare them for transplanting outdoors in May. I've been watering my seedlings with a bit of seaweed fertilizer to give them a little boost each week. I didn't fertilize my seedlings at all last year except for the bit of compost they were living in. My seedlings are much bigger and stronger this year with the extra nutrients! I can't wait to get these plants in the ground next month.

I was surprised at how many of the pepper and tomato seeds failed to sprout from what I had started last month, especially since most of them were newly purchased seeds. But as I was breaking up the empty soil blocks I began to see the beginnings of little sprouts. I patched up the ones I had broken open and gently checked the rest for new life. Most of the peppers I thought hadn't sprouted at all were just poking out of their seeds. I put all of the soil blocks with the tiny sprouts into a small tray with a lid and within a day or two, all of the peppers finished coming up. Next year, I'll make sure to keep a lid on any of the trays with unsprouted seeds until they have all come up. So now I've got a dozen peppers that are a few weeks behind all the others. Luckily, we have such a long growing season that this shouldn't matter. I still have a pepper plant in a pot from last summer that's putting out new blossoms.

These extra pepper plants have been staying outside on our hot tub cover as that is the warmest and sunniest spot in the yard. I don't have any more room inside under the grow light with the other tomatoes and peppers and eggplants, so the late peppers will have to endure the cold nights. I'm curious to see if that makes them stronger or weaker than the others. Next year, I'll have all the giant shop lights from my husband's workshop to use for many more seedlings and this won't be such a problem.

In the meantime, I started a new round of spinach, lettuce, and beets in a half flat outside two weeks ago. I'll be getting these into the ground in another two weeks to replace the leeks and celery.

I also started more flower seeds!

The cosmos came up so fast this time! I started both pink and orange cosmos and will wait until they are fairly large to plant them out in the garden. The pill bugs devoured my last round, all except two, one of which just put out a flower this week!

How are all your seedlings faring this spring?

Weekend knitting project

2011-04-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

Twelve hours in the passenger seat of a car = lots of time to work on my knitting skills! I was able to start and finish this set of fingerless gloves.

I love the way they came out! I spent some time practicing how to knit without looking at the needles at all. I have a long way to go with that. It seems like it would be easier with yarn that is all one thickness though. I even figured out how to fix the dropped stitch three rows back!

I think on the next road trip I might try knitting some socks. I can't be in the car for very long with nothing to do or I drive my husband batty. Knitting keeps both of us sane.

And I have to share this cute pic of my niece! She had to try out all of the hair clips at once when she opened her present!

Gifts for my niece

2011-04-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

(Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't been around much the last couple of weeks. My laptop died and I'm still waiting for my fancy new iPad to arrive next week. I've missed you all!)

My adorable niece turns five next week and we are celebrating birthdays early this weekend. My sister mentioned that my niece has been doing her own hair lately, so I made her several new hair clips to accessorize with.

I tried a few different techniques and used up some little scraps and some charm squares to make yo-yos, fabric covered buttons, and some flowers. I also attached a D-ring to a long piece of fabric that my niece can hang on her wall and display all of these clips if she wants to.

These were all so quick and fun to make! I was so excited to see I had quite a lot of empty buttons to cover in my giant button jar. I used to cover buttons all the time for clothes I was making about 20 years ago. Good thing I kept all the extras!

I also whipped up a little bag with some of my pink flowery scraps for my niece to store her things in.

I used the dimensions and the general directions for this pouch from the Strippy Charm Pouch tutorial posted on Moda Bake Shop this morning. I love the size and will be making a few of these for myself soon!

Once the birthday festivities of the weekend are over, it's back to work on my queen sized bed quilt in the browns and grays. I've decided to make it double-sided and am making several improv log cabin blocks with the leftovers for the back. The top is almost finished, but I'm going to sash the strips and I need to buy more Kona Snow for that. I should probably go do that now!

What projects have you all been working on lately?

Planting Bush Beans with Potatoes

2011-03-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

Most of the potato pieces I planted in early February have sprouted up above the soil line and the layer of straw.

Time to even out the soil mound and plant some bush beans! When I planted the potato pieces, I dug a trench down the middle of the planting area, laid the potato chunks on the bottom, then covered the trench halfway with soil and a topping of straw. I planted peas on one side of the trench, and left the soil mounded up on the other side.

Last year, I planted a few different kinds of green bush beans. This year, I'm trying out a trio of purple, yellow, and green beans.

I'll be saving seeds from this year's beans for planting next year. Such a colorful assortment of dried beans!

While loosening the soil in preparation for planting the bean seeds, I plucked out these tasty treats for the chickens.

These grubs used to gross me out (like, for sure!) but now they're fantastic food for the chickens to eat! They like tomato hornworms and pincher bugs, too. I love my bug disposal system.

Back to the beans, I planted 3 rows of the bush beans along side the potato trench, each seed about 4" apart. Then I topped the whole bed with another layer of straw to keep the soil moist. I still have half of the seed packet left and am considering planting more on the other side of the potatoes. I had originally planted some cosmo seedlings back in February, but all except 2 of them were devoured by the pill bugs. Should I try again with flowers, or plant more green beans?

I just finished the last of the frozen green beans from last year, and there's only one jar of dilly beans left in the pantry, so I'm looking forward to having fresh beans again soon!

Meeting the Long Arm

2011-03-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

This week, I was introduced to this beauty.

I took the first of two 3 hour classes to be able to rent this long arm machine at Sew Modern. Learning to long arm quilt was one of my goals for this year, and it's already becoming a reality!

You see, I have big plans for this stack of fabric.

Kona solids: Espresso, Coffee, Brown, Spice, Gold, Wheat, Sand, Snow, Medium Gray, Coal

I'm finally going to make a quilt for my bed. I picked up the fabrics the other week when I went to Sew Modern's launch party. I'd checked out Cherri House's City Quilts book from the library and was taken by her City Shops quilt. I knew right away that that was what I wanted for my bedroom. I've prewashed the fabrics and am ready to press and cut them this weekend at the LAMQG sew in. I'm hoping to get most of it cut out and at least a few blocks sewn up on Saturday. Any suggestions on how I should quilt this one? I'll be finishing my sliced coins quilt first and practicing with the long arm on that one before I work on this big queen-sized quilt. I'm nervous and excited about it all at the same time!

The importance of thinning in the garden

2011-03-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

I thinned one of my nectarine trees this week. Thinning is one of the most painful processes for me in the garden, but one that is absolutely essential. Last year, I was so excited about all the fruit on the nectarine trees, that I couldn't bring myself to thin them out like I was supposed to. The fruit on the earliest tree ended up small and not very flavorful. Once I realized that, I still had time to thin the fruit from my late season tree. I got tons of nectarines, but this time, they were all large, juicy, and very flavorful! I learned my lesson.

When thinning the fruit from your fruit tree, thin out any of the blemished fruit first, then thin to one fruit every 4 inches or so. Thin the fruit when it is about 1/2" - 1" in diameter.

unthinned fruit

thinned fruit. could probably have taken 1 or 2 more off

I thinned my apples, as well, to one fruit from every cluster.

And those seedlings that get planted too close together? They need to be thinned once they sprout too! I'm not a fan of planting like they say on seed packets. Things like: plant one seed every 1-2", thin to every 4". That seems so wasteful to me. I usually start multiple seeds in flats, then transplant to every 4". If I don't, I always want ALL of the seedlings to stay! Plants don't do well when they don't have enough room. Here's what happened when my calendula reseeded itself last fall. This is the area that I didn't bother to thin out:

This is the area that I pulled some of those seedlings from and transplanted them about a foot apart.

So, as hard as it is to remove those seedlings and thin that fruit, you'll end up with better yields in the end!

Summer Seeds Started

2011-03-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share with you my seed starting set-up since I started my summer seeds last week. I've got all of my tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in this large container and my basil in the smaller one.

The light is just a shop light from the hardware store and my husband built the stand out of some scrap wood we had around. As the plants grow taller, I can raise the light up as needed. I turn the light on when we get up in the morning and off when we go to bed at night.

I used a soil blocker to make my initial seed containers.

It's a good size for starting individual seeds and makes it easy to track what sprouted and what didn't. If a seed fails to sprout in one, you can reuse it for another seed or simply throw it in the compost pile. Once the seedlings get their true leaves, they'll be potted up into some of my larger 4" pots with more garden soil and compost to prepare for what they'll be growing in outside.

While I like that my seedlings start out in some of my own compost, I haven't decided if it's worth the trouble to pasteurize it and make a potting mixture, when I can buy a bag of premade mix. I made my own soil mixture from 4 parts peat moss to 1 part pasteurized compost with a little perlite mixed in. That was the last of the giant bag of peat moss I'd purchased years ago. I'm not sure what I'll do next year for seed starting as I'd like to avoid buying more peat moss. I'm hoping I can find a local source of sawdust to replace it.

Once all of my soil blocks were made, I went to town with my pile of seed packets. I'd already gone through them and made a list of how many of each I wanted to start, so I knew how many soil blocks to make. While I was planting the seeds, I made a map of each seed that I started with a little information about each one and taped it to the lid.

Here's the list of what I started:

Eggplant - (4) Rosa Bianca; (4) Orient Express
Tomato - (4) Polar Star; (4) Amish Paste; (4) Yellow Pear; (4) Red Pear
Sweet Pepper - (4) Vidi Crimson Bell; (4) Admiral Golden Bell; (4) Alma Paprika; (4) Jimmy Nardello's
Hot Pepper - (8) Cayenne Fiesta Blend; (8) El Jefe Jalapeno
Basil - (12)

a couple of tomatoes have sprouted!

I honestly don't know where I'm going to put all of those tomato plants! If they all sprout, someone's going to have to take some off my hands. And then I received several more varieties to try from one of my blog friends, Kate, this week. Thanks Kate! So many tomatoes to try and not enough room to plant them all!

I have plans to make chipotle peppers out of all the jalapenos I'll be growing, along with drying and crushing my own paprika and cayenne powder and red pepper flakes from the other peppers. I want to try making my own hot sauces, too. I'm also going to grow two kinds of mustard for the seeds to make some fancy prepared mustards.

What are you trying out this year in your garden? Anything you're going to experiment with?

Blog love and noreply-commenters

2011-03-11T13:44:00.000-08:00

First off, I want to thank a couple of fabulous fellow bloggers for giving me some great shoutouts this week. Kate from Needle and Spatula gave me the Liebster award, and Kristen at K*D Quilts gave me the stylish blogger award. Thank you ladies! So nice of you to spread the blog love. :) Check out their blogs for lots of inspiration and creativity!

Second, I wanted to ask all you noreply-commenters out there how you'd like me to respond to your comments. Are you a no-reply-commenter? Have you checked your blogger contact information to see if you have a contact email account associated with your blog account? Here's a great write-up on how to check!

On one of my posts last week, 4 out of 5 of the comments had no email address attached to them and I love to reply to comments, especially when you have questions. Many of you have blogs, but have no way for readers to contact you except for commenting on one of your blog posts. Would it be weird to post a reply on *your* blog in response to your comment on *my* blog? Or would you prefer if I just commented on my post after your comments? Would you check back on that post to reread the comments? Let me know what you all think about this!

Perhaps you are worried about having your email address out in the open? Just sign up for an email account to be specific for your blog and for commenting on other blogs. That's what I did. It's so easy to sign up for email accounts these days!

L.A. Modern Quilt Guild Meeting

2011-03-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

I attended my first L.A. Modern Quilt Guild meeting last night. It was... AWESOME. There was such a great variety of people all there for their love of modern quilting, 68 people total. We were all crammed in to the new shop, Sew Modern, to hear Jacquie from Tallgrass Prairie Studio speak and show off her quilts. This was my first exposure to her and she was incredible. Her quilts were stunning and they all had moving stories to go along with them. Her passion for quilting was so inspiring, it made me want to run home and sew all night. This was my favorite quilt that she brought along:

Before Jacquie spoke, about 20 members of the guild showed off their Robert Kaufman solids challenge creations. Gorgeous, creative quilts, all of them. I hope they do another challenge like this soon. I think it would be a blast to participate.

At the end of the evening, they had a bunch of door prizes to give out, and lucky me, I won one!! In the little gift bag was this box:

I peeked a little while I was still at the meeting and saw this strip from the Free to Grow line of organic cottons.

I've been wanting to get some of this line for a couple of months now so I was super excited already. Then I got home and pulled out all the strips. Oh my. How did they cram so much wonderful fabric goodness in one little box?! Look at all the fabrics!

There's some from almost all of the Free to Grow line. I'm so happy. And then there's this little strip of Tufted Tweets. Precious.

I'm so glad I was finally able to attend one of the meetings for this guild. I can't wait to attend the sew-in next weekend and get to know some of the local quilters!

Beet Green Frittata Recipe

2011-03-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

My chickens are laying plenty of eggs again and that means - Frittatas! A frittata filled with all kinds of vegetables from the garden is one of my favorite go-to dinners when eggs are bountiful. You can put just about any vegetable in a frittata - this week, I harvested half a dozen beets from the garden and needed to do something with all those delicious beet greens. So here's my beet green frittata recipe:

Ingredients: Beet greens and stems from 6 beets (swiss chard would substitute here nicely,) 6 eggs, fresh or dried herbs of choice.

Preheat the broiler. Separate the stems from the leaves of the beet tops. Finely chop the stems. Roughly chop the leaves. Chop any fresh herbs (I used green onion, thyme, and oregano) and add them to the pile of leaves. Whisk all the eggs together in a glass or bowl.

Heat a non-stick or cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add a tablespoon of oil to the pan and saute the beet stems till softened, about 5 minutes.

Add the beet leaves, the herbs, and a pinch of salt to the pan and saute until the leaves cook down, another 5 minutes or so.

Once the leaves have cooked down, spread them evenly around the pan and pour in the eggs.

Quickly mix the egg and vegetables together evenly.

Cook until the edges are firm and the top and center still jiggle a little when you shake the pan, about 5 minutes. If desired, add a bit of freshly grated parmesan cheese on top. Remove the pan from the stove and place it under the broiler in your oven for 2-3 minutes until the top is set. Depending on how hot your broiler is, this could go quickly, so keep an eye on it!

To serve, slide a rubber spatula under the frittata to make sure it releases from the pan and slide it onto a plate.

Serve warm or at room temperature with a green salad and a side of toast. Enjoy!

February Harvest Tally

2011-03-03T21:19:00.000-08:00

February was a quiet month in the garden here. I didn't cook as much as usually do, so not as much was harvested. The chickens, on the other hand, are laying eggs like crazy! Fried eggs for breakfast with a little homemade bread for dipping has been so wonderful these last few weeks.

Here's how the month looked for the harvest:

Lettuce - 2.23 lbs
Beets - 2.50 lbs
Spinach - 0.40 lbs
Chard - 1.63 lbs
Limes - 2.37 lbs
Celery - 1.0 lbs
Zucchini - 0.28 lbs
Kale - 0.38 lbs
Herbs - 0.25 lbs
Chicken eggs - 34

Total harvest for the month = 11.03 lbs of vegetables and 34 chicken eggs, which saved me about $40 again this month. Next up in the garden for March, I should be getting some peas and blueberries, and it's about time to harvest the leeks. I'll be starting my tomato, pepper, and basil seeds this week indoors to prepare for a May planting of summer crops. I've got plenty of other seeds to start soon, too, like lettuce, beets, and spinach that will be started in flats outside, and several varieties of green beans to be planted directly in the garden beds. Saturday should be a beautiful, warm day to get all those seeds going!

A little color

2011-02-25T15:02:00.000-08:00

I had a moment of weakness last weekend and ordered a bunch of fabric online. I couldn't resist Robert Kaufman's Metro Living Circles any longer! Of course, while I was surfing I was drawn into Ann Kelle's Remix stripes, argyle, and zig zag. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with any of these, but they sure do look happy together!

It was a slow week for me as I was down with a cold, but my garden is thriving without me just fine!

My peas are coming up slowly, they're about 2" tall now. I sure hope they grow quickly though as the branches I put in as a trellis look a bit silly all bare in a row.

And look!

My potatoes are finally peeking through the straw!

My plum tree has a light dusting of white blooms on it. Sometimes it looks like the branches have a bit of snow on them.

There's been talk of a dusting of snow here tonight down to 500'! Probably won't happen, but it sure is fun to think about seeing snow around L.A.

What's happening in your neck of the woods? Got any new sewing or gardening projects going on?

Buttercup Bag in Sanctuary

2011-02-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

I made myself this cute purse today!

Krista at Poppyprint posted one she made last week and it looked like a fun, quick project to work on and try out some of my Sanctuary fat quarters. This is the small version of the Buttercup bag from Made By Rae. It's the perfect size bag to throw in your essentials.

I'll be trying this bag pattern again, but next time, using a zipper. The magnetic clasps were difficult to sew around when putting the lining in and were too heavy for the lightweight fabric. I was glad that I quilted the outer fabrics, as this pattern definitely needs a sturdy outer fabric to get that cute shape.

In other quilting news, I picked up some black backing fabric for my sliced coins quilt and have some ideas for how I'm going to piece the backing. I'm hoping to get to it later this week and get it finished up!

Linking up to Sew Modern Monday and Fabric Tuesday!

Come to the Dark Side

2011-02-14T06:48:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! My husband and I rarely give each other gifts, but this year, I went all out making him something special. Back when I was making a silly amount of pillows last month, my husband said to me, "When are you going to make me a black, gray, and red pillow? Or a Star Wars pillow?" Some day, dear. Then the very next morning, I received an email that had this amazing graphic of all the Star Wars characters pixelated! It was perfect! I had to do some internet searching to find out where it came from originally and found Andy Rash's iotacons blog. He'd written a recent post giving permission to make crafty items from his designs, so I figured I'd just go for it! So, I went through my stash and found three fat quarters of light gray, dark gray and black, plus a little blue and red, and some white background fabric and went at it.

For Valentine's Day, my husband gets a quilted Darth Vader pillow.

This was such a fun pillow to make! It ended up 24" square, the Vader character is made up of 1" finished squares. I cut up the rest of the fat quarters to use as a border and for the back of the pillow.

I had a version of it finished last week, but decided the back should be quilted, too, and that an envelope closure was not good enough. So I took it apart and quilted the back and added a zipper under one of the white flaps. I had also planned on finishing the edges with binding for the second go-around, but by the time I got back to making the other changes, a week had passed and I completely forgot! I didn't want to take the stitches out a second time, so I left it.

Here's what the front and back looked like before the quilting:

I quilted the front with 1/2" quilting lines for the white background and stitched in the ditch around Darth and around the border.

Darth now sits prominently in a chair in our living room. It's awesome. And oh so geeky.

Thank you so much to Andy Rash for creating this fabulous design! Check out his blog - his stuff is incredible.

Entering this in the Blogger's Pillow Party for February! And linking up to Fabric Tuesday!

Sliced coins progress and other quilt alongs

2011-02-13T16:21:00.000-08:00

I'm finally caught up to where I should have been last Thursday on my Sliced Coins quilt for Don't Call Me Betsy's quilt along. I attached all of the sashing so the quilt top is now done!

I also went ahead and made the binding and gathered my scraps for piecing the back.

I'm still debating what color to use for the back of the quilt. I think I need to lay out all my scraps and see how much of everything I have before making a decision. I'm currently leaning toward black for the backing.

I'm also starting to think about how I want to quilt this one. Anyone have any recommendations? I don't want to spend too much time doing anything intricate on this quilt, so it'll probably be some form of straight line quilting, or maybe wavy line quilting.

Check out how everyone else is coming along here!

In other news, I decided not to continue with the Blogger's Block-a-palooza quilt along. Hopefully they'll do a modern block version after this one that will be more up my alley. I'm continuing to watch other quilters' progress on the Flickr pool though! There are some great fabric pairings going on there!

This leaves me with a little more time for other things - perfect for joining in Melissa at Lilac Lane's sewalong with the machine stitched cathedral windows pillow. I'll have to pick out my fabrics this evening! More Central Park? Or perhaps cutting into my Sanctuary fat quarters? Or even digging into my ever growing scrap pile? I can't wait to learn this technique.

February in the Garden

2011-02-09T21:52:00.000-08:00

The weather is continuing to be amazing here in sunny L.A. as it has been the last few weeks. It's starting to make up for the summer we didn't have last year. It's also making me feel like I should be starting my summer crops much earlier! I'll still wait till March, but it sure is tempting to get some tomatoes going.

I did start about 16 yukon gold potato chunks this last week.

I planted them in a slight ditch down the middle of one of my beds and lined one side with three rows of peas and a few cosmo seedlings. I pruned my nectarine trees the week before and kept some of the larger branches to use as pea trellises. Once the potatoes grow up a few inches above the straw, I'll be evening out the dirt on once side to build the ditch back up in the middle. I'll be planting green beans on the other side once the potatoes get going.

I never got around to planting more lettuce and beet seeds last month, but my current bed of beets and greens is still growing well. The beets have slowed way down, but I still have plenty of chard, lettuce, and spinach.

apple blossoms

Two of my apple trees are covered in blooms, the Anna apple and the Dorsett Golden, while the Fuji apple is growing much more slowly than the others. They have only been in the ground for a year and a half, so I'm happy with the progress anyway.

blueberries

I'm currently fighting with the chickens over the blueberry bushes. They're loaded with flowers and green berries, but it's the first thing the girls run to when I let them out of the coop in the mornings. I'm considering moving the blueberry pots to the front yard while the fruit is ripening, then moving them to the back yard once they change color.

Oh - this is my carrot harvest from the seeds I planted back in October:

Yup, that's all of it. I think it's the pill bugs in the front yard that eat up all my carrot seeds and seedlings. All of my clover and alfalfa sprouts disappeared as well. Even a couple of the cosmo seedlings I transplanted have been eaten down to the stem. Some day, I'll have a fence in my front yard so I can let my chickens out to help me with the bug population!

leeks and celery

My onion/leek/shallot/celery bed is coming along nicely. They should be ready to harvest once the days get longer in May or June.

My spicy greens circle is providing me with plenty of treats for the chickens. They get some of the wheat grass and the weeds from the front yard as well.

nectarines and nasturtium

The second of my three nectarine trees is just beginning to bloom, while the first is already finished blooming and has begun to fill in with leaves. The nasturtium is taking over and spilling out of the boxes beneath the nectarines. No flowers yet on most of the nasturtium, but that should change soon!

One more month till I get to start my peppers and tomatoes for this summer! I'm skipping eggplant this year after last year's crop failure, but adding more varieties of green beans, potatoes, and peppers. What are you planning for your summer garden this year? Any new varieties? Anything you aren't planting again this year?

Sliced Coins - Strips completed

2011-02-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

I struggled with the Sliced Coin Quilt Along this week. Not due to the design (which I'm loving), but to how my fabric choices all looked together. I was done sewing my coin strips together Friday morning and had them hanging on my makeshift design wall all day.

First pass with the coin strips

I kept coming back to them and either liking them or not liking them. Then I tried to photograph them and there was nothing I could do to make the colors come out on the camera. With that, I figured something wasn't right about the color choices. I liked it up close, but not from a distance. So Saturday, I unpicked all the blue coins except the one print that had a lot of beige in it. Over the next few days, I slowly pieced the strips back together, adding in a dark red and a few extra pieces of the main print.

New version of coins with sashing laid on top

I'm still not sure about it, but I think I'll like it once it's all sewn together and quilted. I'm pretty sure I'm going to use black for the backing at this point.

In other news, I also received a fat quarter bundle of Sanctuary by Patty Young for Michael Miller in the mail this week. It seems much lighter weight than fabric I'm used to, but it's soft and the colors are nice. I was hoping the orange would be a little deeper in color, but the whole line is growing on me.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with it yet, but maybe I'll try and redeem myself and make another sliced coin quilt with those. I still want to play with my Central Park fabrics a little more before I move on to these new ones. I've also got yet another pillow to finish up, though this one is very different from the rest!

How are all your projects coming?

January Harvest Tally

2011-02-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

For anyone new to my blog: Welcome! I have a small vegetable, herb and fruit tree garden and keep track of what I am able to harvest each month, then post it here to track my progress. With a year-round growing season in Los Angeles, I'm still picking quite a few vegetables throughout the winter months. My chickens started laying eggs again (a few days after my last post about them!) and my nectarine trees, apple trees, and blueberry bushes are all starting to bloom, so April and May should be a great fruit picking time which I'm really looking forward to. We've been eating a lot of salads and I'm ready for something new!

The harvest:
Lettuce:        2.55 lbs @ $8.00/lb = $20.40
Beets:             1.2 lbs @ $1.50/lb = $1.80
Spinach:       1.16 lbs @ $4.00/lb = $4.64
Chard:    3.22 lbs @ $1.50/lb =$4.83
Limes:           2.34 lbs @ $1.00/lb = $2.34
Zucchini:       0.55 lbs @ $1.50/lb = $0.83
Herbs:          0.36 lbs @ $5.00/lb = $1.80
Celery            1.0 lbs @ $1.00/lb = $1.00
Chicken Eggs: 8 eggs @ $0.25/egg = $2.00

Total savings: $39.64

Just under last month's total. The only things I currently have on my seedling table to go into the garden are flowers, so next month will probably be about the same. I have some sprouted potatoes and pea seeds to put in the ground this week, so those should add to the total in the next few months.

I'll leave you with a few of my favorite photos that I took during a break at the Learning Garden over the weekend:

Happy gardening!

Block-a-palooza progress

2011-01-31T13:40:00.000-08:00

I joined up with the Blogger's Block-a-palooza quilt along that started last week. It's 16 blocks in total, 2 a week from different bloggers. I've never done a sampler quilt and haven't sewn many traditional quilt blocks in the past. I guess they're just not really my style. So, why am I doing this then? I've been asking myself that question since I started. I'm using fabrics from my stash, some of which I've had for over a decade, so it'll be good to get these made into something. I also figure this will be a good way to practice my cutting and piecing skills on designs I wouldn't normally be using. And it's always interesting to see how all the bloggers cut and piece their blocks as they go.

This is the pile of fabrics I pulled from my stash to use for the blocks. I'm mostly basing my blocks around the multicolored swirl print since I had 2 yards of it.

And my progress so far with links to the block's originator:

Block #1 from Quilt Dad

Block #2: from Oh, Fransson:

Block #3 from Sasikirana Handmade:

All three together:

I'm still not sure if I'm going to continue making these blocks or not. I'm not really feeling the all the flying geese patterns. I do like the way the second block came out though. The flickr pool has a lot of different fabric choices going on, which is fascinating to see what other quilters are choosing to use in place of the Sunkissed line the blocks were designed for.

Are you participating in the quilt along? What do you think of the blocks so far?

Sliced Coins Quilt-Along

2011-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

I joined up with Don't Call me Betsy's Sliced Coins Quilt-Along this week. I've been needing a good excuse to make a new quilt, so this was perfect for me. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to only work on a few parts every week though - once I get started, it's hard for me to put down a project! This will be good for me, I'll be forced to work on other things around the house instead of locking myself in my sewing room for a week.

I'm using fabrics from my stash for this one, except for the solid. My inspiration came from this set of pot holders I made for my friend's mom for Christmas. (Hi L.C.! Hope you're enjoying them!)

My friend picked out this fabric from my stash and I pulled the others to go with it.

I loved the way it came out and kept the pile of fabrics together with plans to make something in the future. And the future is now!

I originally planned to use that off white solid for the sashing, but when I went to the store to get more, I decided against it. I drove to another local shop and they had two versions of Robert Kaufman's quilter's linen print in straw and a darker beige. Both looked great, but I went with the lighter one.

I've got the coins all cut out and ready to go. I only cut 2", 3", 4", and 5" coins, all 10" wide (I'm making the lap-sized version.) I had to go back and get more of the linen print to finish cutting the coins. I cut out a total of 106 coins from the various prints and plan on using a lot of the extras for a pieced back. I thought I had enough of the big leaf print for the backing, but I'm planning on using that for the binding instead. I'm considering using a solid black for the back - will that be too bold?

coins cut and ready to go!

Can I wait till Friday to go on to the next step? That's iffy, I'm a little excited about this one! Check out what everyone else is doing in the Flickr Pool!

Garden pictoral

2011-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

We've been enjoying 70 degree weather day after day here in L.A. which my garden is loving! I wanted to share some photos with you all of what's blooming. One of my nectarine trees is in full bloom and attracting all kinds of bugs - mostly it's covered in bees all day.

The calendulas I transplanted from my parkway way back in October are filling out nicely and some are starting to bloom.

The purple flowers I received free from the Master Gardeners when I was at the SLOLA meeting the other weekend. I love how the petals shimmer on this plant. It's a pericallis magenta bicolor.

Now, if only the seeds I started last month would get going a little faster! Several of my seeds didn't germinate at all, but the ones that did were transplanted into separate containers. I've got black pansies, orange, pink, and white comsos, sweet alyssum, snow-in-summer, zinnias and heliopsis seedlings started. I'm hoping to get these into the garden in the next few weeks if they bulk up a bit.

I even planted some sunflower seeds this week in the calendula triangle. I saw some in full bloom in a garden a few miles away, so I figured why not plant them now! Usually I'd wait until April or May (or forget all together like I did last year) so we'll see if these get going early this spring.

Happy gardening!

More, um, pillows

2011-01-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

I have more pillows to share. Shocker, right?! I'm joining in some of the quilt alongs, so I'll have other things to show soon that aren't pillows. Yay!

I made this first pillow a week or so ago. Since then, I've seen several diamond pillows on other blogs - we must all be on the same wavelength. I made mine with Kona Espresso sashing. I still haven't decided if I like it or not. It's a little bold for my tastes. The sashing was an interesting experience though, trying to get it to all line up.

I'm still using my layer cake, so I used 2.5" diamonds for these. I got two from each 2.5 x 10" strip. I used the leftover triangles in the scrappy pot holders over the weekend.

I also tried a version of the orange pillow I made for my sister in the green colorway. I think I like it better in the orange, but this green looks nice with the other pillows.

And last, I did a second version of my lattice pillow using the 3" squares and triangles I had leftover from the 3.5" squares version. I actually like this one better. I put a narrow border around the whole piece and did three rows of quilting down the sashing. I also used a few of the scraps for the envelope edge on the back of the pillow.

Who wants some pillows? I seem to be drowning in them!

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday!

Scrappy Potholders

2011-01-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

After making so many pillows this last month (I've made a few more that I'll post soon) I ended up with a large pile of miscellaneous scraps. I'm not good with scraps. I don't know what to do with them. In the past, I would've tossed them in the compost bin, but since I only bought one layer cake of Central Park by Kate Spain, I couldn't bear to throw any of them away! This is the pile I started with:

I thought about making some mug rugs, but I didn't see myself using them. I'd planned on making a few things for the kitchen, so I went with some scrappy potholders. This was mentally challenging for me. I like straight lines and uniform pieces. I made myself just go with the flow and grab pieces randomly and sew them together whichever way they wanted to go. After a few seams, I started to really enjoy this random process! I didn't bother straightening any cuts until I got toward the end and added some of the larger scraps.

I was surprised at how many scraps just the tops alone used up.

I grabbed a larger scrap of Kona Espresso to finish piecing the backs.

I only had a couple of triangular-ish shaped pieces left after that and was about to toss the rest after pinning the quilt sandwiches together. Then the large expanse of dark brown on this back bothered me.

Raw edge applique to the rescue! I had some scraps of Heat-n-Bond that I attached to the rest of the leftover fabric scraps. My original thought was to stitch a few leaves on a tree branch, but once I put the shapes down, they looked like petals. I went with flowers instead.

And here they are all quilted and bound!

It felt good to get out of my normal sewing habits and do some free form piecing. But I'm also happy to not have a pile of scraps in my way any longer! What do you all do with your scraps?

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday!

Chicken Alarm

2011-01-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

For the last four months or so, my three chickens have been pretty quiet. They would nap most of the day, or preen their new feathers, pecking lightly in the dirt.

This was a lovely reprieve from the last year of them squawking at the crack of dawn to be let out of their coop and singing their egg song for any number of reasons, often not related to egg laying whatsoever. That all changed today. As soon as the sun barely started making an appearance, the squawking began. Loudly.

Now, normally, I enjoy the sounds of my chickens, but they haven't laid any eggs since the beginning of December, and as much as I love them for their composting abilities and their bug eating talents, I miss having fresh eggs around. They even spent an hour singing their egg song this morning, so I'm hoping they're close to laying again! Even though they were singing for Betty (my one permanently non-laying hen,) I still have hope.

Nighttime

But until they start laying for real, I'd like a snooze button for my chicken alarm please!

Triple Layer Cheesecake

2011-01-17T21:04:00.000-08:00

After a hectic and busy week, this weekend was simply wonderful. The sun was out, it was a lovely 75 degrees, and I baked tasty desserts. Saturday, I made my first ever cheesecake and my first ever red velvet cake. The red velvet cake just tasted like any old cake (yummy cake, though!) but the cheesecake - oh my. It was not only delicious and decadent, but it looked great too! I was tasked with making cakes for my friend's birthday party so I immediately searched through recipes on Tasty Kitchen. On the front page was a triple layer cheesecake as one of the featured recipes. It was perfect for what I wanted to make.

I rarely make any desserts, so this was quite an adventure for me. I even bought myself a 9" spring-form pan. I figure I can use it to make fancy fruit desserts in the summer time in the future. Any way, I started preparing this cheesecake. I bought chocolate graham crackers for the crust since I didn't know how to use the Oreo's. (Do you scrape out the white stuff or not?) So, I crushed the graham crackers in my food processor, mixed it with melted butter and pressed it into the bottom of my new pan. Into the (still shiny and new and wonderful) oven to bake for 10 minutes. I prepped the three layers - peanut butter, milk chocolate, and white chocolate while the crust was baking. All easy peasy. I put the peanut butter layer in, then the milk chocolate layer, then just as I was about to add the white chocolate layer, I realized I forgot to grease the pan. PANIC! Ooops. At this point, it's too late anyway, and I just hoped for the best. The top layer went on and the whole thing went into the oven for an hour. More panicking as I looked at the interwebs researching what to do if you forget to grease a pan for a cheesecake. The horror stories!!! All these other things can happen when making cheesecake - the cake cracks, the cake sinks, the whole crust sticks to the pan... so I'm thinking the worst is going to happen. And I don't have enough time to bake another one if this fails! An hour passed and I pulled the cheesecake out of the oven. It's a nice golden color on the top - I guess that's what it's supposed to look like. What do I know, I've never made a cheesecake and I rarely ever eat them! It cooled for 10 minutes, I ran a knife around the sides of the pan, then let it cool for another hour. More panicking as the time passed. I ran the knife around the edge one more time for good measure, and took off the outer ring. Success! So far at least. That came off easily and the cake looked good.

Into the fridge it went, and I was off to the SLOLA (Seed Library of Los Angeles) meeting for a few hours. It was our second meeting and there are so many exciting things happening! I'm on the database committee and that's what I was working on most of last week and the reason I didn't get to blog much. If you're local to L.A. and you're interested in having a secure and diverse supply of local vegetable seeds, please join us! You can check out the happenings on the SLOLA blog.

Back home to finish the cake. Making the topping was so easy and fun and made the cake look so cool! I melted the chips in a bowl instead of in the bag, then scooped the melted chips into the bag for piping. And this was the result!

It came out perfectly in the end! The crust didn't stick to the pan at all, the cake didn't crack and it didn't sink either. What a relief! The cake was so rich though. We cut it into about 20 pieces and even then, those pieces were being shared by two people. I would love to make this cheesecake again, but with some lighter and healthier ingredients. If you want to make an amazingly delicious and fancy looking cheesecake - make this one!

Link to the Tasty Kitchen version in a 4" pan
Link to the baker's blog (this includes a link to the 9" version)

Central Park Rainbows

2011-01-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

One of my very good friends asked me to make some cheery pillows for her with some of the Central Park by Kate Spain fabrics I bought a few weeks back. I thought I'd try out a couple of new designs since I'm already in crazy pillow sewing mode (see here and here.)

The first one is a stacked coin pattern.

I think I initially picked out about 20 of the fabrics from the layer cake to use. My methodology was to cut 2"x10" pieces of each, then I stitched them all together in rainbow order along the 10" sides. I cut the long piece into two 5" wide strips. I thought I was going to have the colors going all the way to the edges of the pillow, with white sashing between the three columns, but it seemed a little overwhelming. So I unpicked several of the seams and went with a centered design instead. The finished pillow is for a 20" square pillow form and these were the final cuts:

(21) 2" x 5" patterned fabrics
(2) 2" x 11" white sashing between the rainbow panels
(2) 2.5" x 11" white side borders
(2) 5.5" x 20.5" white top and bottom borders

For the second pillow, I wanted to use a lot of the same fabrics, but this time, in a brick pattern.

I thought this pillow top was going to take a long time to sew with all the skinny sashing, but it ended up being fairly quick. The best part? No corners or rows to match! I started with my pile of scraps from the first pillow and just cut 2" wide strips from several of the fabrics. The lengths were already varied since I've used so much of these pieces for other pillows so far. I laid the pieces out on my cutting mat and kept adding fabrics until I had a big enough assortment for the pillow top. I went with 3/4" finished sashing (1 1/4" cut) for all of the inner white areas, with a slightly wider outer border.

I'm shipping these off to Portland this week - sending my friend a bit of springtime sunshine in a box!

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday!

Herbed Flat Bread and a Swiss Chard Recipe

2011-01-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

It has been a few months since I've tried any new recipes. I've been making my usual rotations of lasagna, risotto, tacos, sandwiches, soups, and pizzas, but this weekend I was missing having something new for dinner. I have a giant list of recipes bookmarked in my web browser that I haven't tried yet, so the one I picked was Swiss Chard with Beets, Goat Cheese and Raisins from Epicurious. Wow. It was so delicious with all the different flavors and textures!

I halved the recipe and it still made a good 6 servings. I was able to use swiss chard, beets and beet greens, green onions, limes, and a cayenne pepper from my garden. I substituted sunflower seeds for the pine nuts - much less expensive and gives it the same small crunch and extra protein.

I paired this dish with the another experiment for the weekend. I was working on a sourdough taste test with daily bread baking. I made a second batch of dough last Wednesday after making the baguettes, and I put the kneaded dough in a bowl with a lid and placed it in the refrigerator. Friday night, I pulled a couple of hunks of dough off and baked two dinner rolls with our meal. The taste was nice - a little of the sour tang - but still more on the French bread side of things. Saturday night, I wanted to redeem myself from the first attempt at making a cheesy herbed flat bread. About 2 hours before dinner, I pulled the dough out and made two rounds out of it to bring it to room temperature. An hour later, I flattened and pulled the dough into ovals about 1/2" thick and placed them on parchment paper on a baking sheet.

I let these rise for half an hour while working on the swiss chard dish. Just before baking, I sprinkled a mixture of chopped fresh herbs - parsley, oregano, thyme, green onion - onto the dough and added a thin layer of freshly grated asiago cheese. I baked them along side the beets that were already roasting in the oven at 450 degrees for about twenty minutes. Oh my. So good! And without all the mess of making the dough on the same day!

Try this with your favorite basic bread recipe! Or even a pizza dough recipe. I'd love to hear about your favorite bread making techniques!

Bloggers Pillow Party: January

2011-01-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

Since I've been making all these pillows the last two weeks, when Anna at Noodlehead posted about the Blogger's Pillow Party that Stitched in Color is having each month, I figured I needed to enter! My favorite pillow so far? This one!

I posted about it last week when I was finishing up my sister's pillows. I'd been sitting at my computer in the kitchen that morning, thinking about different ideas for other pillows, when I refocused my eyes and saw what I wanted to make. I'd been half staring out the window and my brain tuned in to the trellis on the fence.

That was it! I pretty much jumped up and ran to the sewing room to sketch out the pillow and get measurements. I went with a 3" finished square and 1.5" finished sashing. I picked out twelve fabrics from Kate Spain's Central Park layer cake for this pillow, cutting 2 squares of each - one for the center, then one cut in half diagonally for around the edges. I'm keeping the other half square triangles for a future, yet-undetermined, project. The top came together easily and I ended up loving this pillow more than I thought I would!

It's living on my couch at the moment, since that's where I will see it most often, but it also goes with my bedroom, too, so it'll probably move between the two spots depending on how many more pillows I make!

If you've made a pillow recently, link up with the Blogger's Pillow Party!

Is it spring already?

2011-01-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

I was just getting used to the idea of winter when I walked outside this morning and saw the first open blossom on one of my three nectarine trees.

I hadn't noticed all the buds covering the trees! My plum tree still has leaves on it, so I wasn't even thinking about the nectarines getting started this early. If the rains keep up, this should be a bummer crop of nectarines from May till July.

Now is the time (at least in Los Angeles) to pick up your bare root fruit trees from your local nursery and get them planted in your yard. Look for varieties that need less than 250 chill hours for your best bet on harvesting a lot of fruit. Dave Wilson is a big local supplier and his backyard orchard culture website has loads of information on planting fruit trees and keeping them small but with a huge harvest. The sooner your trees are planted, the sooner you'll have fresh fruit ripe for the picking. Don't have a yard? Get some super dwarf fruit trees or blueberry bushes and plant them in pots for your balcony. Summer is right around the corner!

Baguettes in the new oven

2011-01-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

I baked my usual sourdough baguette recipe in my new oven today. I figured since this one heats up so fast, I'd try the "spray the insides of the oven with water" trick for getting steam to make a crisper crust. I'm not sure it worked any better than what I was doing before, which was brushing the tops of the proofed baguettes with water just before putting them in the oven. I sprayed the inside of the oven just before putting in the baguettes, then twice after putting them in during the first 4 minutes. Next time I'll try putting hot water in a cast iron pan just below the baguettes to see if that works better.

I let the baguettes proof for an hour and a half in the pan this time and didn't get any tearing out the sides! Success! I'm still having some trouble with my slashing though. This one did okay.

This one - I didn't slash it far enough down the baguette. Can you see where I stopped?

The end didn't have enough room to rise, so it's much smaller than the rest.

See how the middle is so much higher than the end of the loaf? The whole thing should look like the middle part. It was plenty tasty anyway!

The last thing I tested out was flouring my baguette pan instead of spraying it with cooking spray. I'm not sure which I like better. I used a large, fine mesh strainer to lightly coat the pan with flour. The loaves didn't stick, so I suppose it works, but then it left this on my counter -

A big mess! I may go back to the cooking spray for that part. All that really matters though, is how awesome my new oven is. What have you all been baking this week?

De-stashing

2011-01-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Day, I cleaned up my shelves in my sewing room. I went through every piece of fabric, refolding large pieces and separating out the scraps and the strips. I pulled a giant pile of fabric that I knew I'd never use again.

Most of the fabrics were calico prints I'd purchased when I first started quilting twenty years ago. I stocked up every time the fabric store had 1/2 off sales. Some of the fabrics I'd used, but many of them I simply carted around from city to city thinking some day I'd get around to making something with them. I considered making quilts to donate with these fabrics, but I knew I wouldn't enjoy making them since I didn't like any of the fabrics anymore.

Today, a sweet lady who volunteers at a local senior center picked them up. She was overjoyed at the range of fabrics and thrilled that most were at least a yard if not more. She works with a group of ladies who make lap robes from donated fabric and she'd mentioned how rarely they get larger pieces to work with. It felt great to get rid of those fabrics that were cluttering up my sewing room and pass them along to a group who will make some beautiful quilts from them.

Now I can really see what I've got left that I truly want to sew with. It's a freeing feeling.

It's so shiny

2011-01-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

I have a brand new oven. It's so lovely. If no one hears from me again for a few weeks it's because I'm in the kitchen marveling at it's beauty and functionality.

See! Isn't it awesome?! My dear husband pulled out all his tools and installed it for me. It's always a fun day when we get to pull out the sawz-all.

He even got to use his engine hoist to pull the old oven out of the wall.

Why am I so excited about this new oven? Because my old oven took 50 minutes to heat up to 500 degrees. This new one only takes 10 minutes. TEN MINUTES. I'm in heaven. Of course, I'm going to have to adjust all my recipes to account for having an oven that retains heat after the door has been opened.

First thing I'm baking in my new oven - Christmas sugar cookies!

Sure, it's January, but I had cut these out and frozen a month ago to bake the day before Christmas. You know, the same day my oven died? But now we have cookies! And a new oven! Let the baking extravaganza begin!

Two more pillows

2010-12-31T14:58:00.000-08:00

I'm still positively giddy sewing with this line of fabrics (Central Park by Kate Spain for Moda for anyone that hasn't been following the last few days.) The color combinations are so bright and cheerful and the fabrics are silky soft. Nothing else is getting done around the house because I've just about locked myself in my sewing room to immerse myself in these fabrics. But what came out of that? Two more pillows!

One of the fun parts about making these pillows - I get to do math! I miss doing math. There's not much of it when planting in the garden or cooking in the kitchen. I've been sketching my pillow designs on graph paper first to make sure I'm cutting the right sizes to end up with an 18" finished square. I only have that one set of the 10" squares of fabric, so I'm trying to make the best use of each of them. I have a feeling I'll be buying more yardage though - I can't seem to get enough of it.

The orange pillow is the second one that I'm sending up to my sister for her living room beautification project. Here's both of them together:

The other new one is perfectly happy hanging out with the first three pillows.

Don't they make you want to run through a field of wildflowers in the sunshine? No? Just me then.

Time to bundle up and go work in the garden. These flower seeds aren't going to plant themselves. Have a safe and fun New Year's Eve everyone!

Final December Harvest Tally

2010-12-31T11:03:00.000-08:00

I managed to remember to weigh and record everything that came out of the garden and went into the kitchen for the entire month of December. I really only have one of my four vegetable beds producing food right now, plus the potted lime tree. We ate a lot of tacos to use all the limes and many, many salads since lettuce is my biggest crop this month. The next two months should be about the same until we start getting some of the early fruit coming in March.

I went to our local farmer's market and noted prices on the organic produce of the items we harvested this month to see how much money we saved growing vs. buying. It was a slow month, but we harvested $42.87 worth of produce. Not bad for December!

Here's our final breakdown for the month:

Lettuce:      3.21 lbs @ $8.00/lb = $25.68
Beets:               2.43 lbs@ $1.50/lb = $3.64
Swiss Chard: 1.31 lbs @ $1.50/lb = $1.97
Spinach:          0.76 lbs @ $4.00/lb = $3.03
Limes:               4.7 lbs @ $1.00/lb = $4.70
Hot peppers:    0.06 lbs @ $3.00/lb = $0.19
Zucchini:           1.09 lbs @ $1.50/lb = $1.64
Kale:                0.11 lbs @ $1.50/lb = $0.16
Herbs:             0.22 lbs @ $5.00/lb = $1.09
Chicken eggs:    3 @ $0.25/each = $0.75

Total produce = 13.90 lbs
Total savings = $42.87

Having written this all down, I'm motivated to get more plants into my garden for the winter. One of the things I need to work on is getting potatoes into the garden year round. And of course, the carrot issue. I suppose I should stop sewing for a day and get out there and work on the garden! Yeah, probably not going to happen this week.

Getting the "sour" into sourdough bread

2010-12-30T19:09:00.000-08:00

I've been using a sourdough starter for about a year and a half. I love using it. It means I never have to buy yeast granules - just flour, salt, and water for my bread.


sourdough starter

It's more time consuming than using fresh or dry yeast, but I've gotten used to leaving my dough to sit for hours at a time while it rises. Baking bread should be a slow relaxing process anyway. The longer the dough gets to sit before baking, the more flavor it will have.

Which brings me to my point. I had a bit of a happy accident this week after my oven died. I'd had a double batch of sourdough loaves rising that day. The dough had gone through it's first rise in the bowl and I had just separated it into four pieces to rest for a few minutes before shaping into baguettes. That's when I tried to turn the oven on. After realizing the oven was broken, I threw the four pieces of dough back into the bowl, covered it, and popped it into the fridge. That was last Thursday. I finally baked the bread Wednesday night. The flavor was amazing - the most lovely sour sourdough I've baked at home. Usually my dough only sits overnight before I bake it and the flavor is a nice mellow French bread style. This time, after sitting in the fridge for six days, the flavor was that rich, sour taste that people normally associate with sourdough. I ate a whole baguette myself last night. My new baking plan: Make a double batch of dough on baking day, bake one batch that day and put the other batch of dough in the refrigerator to bake a few days to a week later.

If you're looking to get that sour flavor into your home-baked bread, give your dough a chance to ferment in your refrigerator for a few days. You can pull off a roll-sized piece each day to bake to compare the flavors and see how long it takes to get the flavor you're looking for. You'll probably need to punch the dough down every few days so it doesn't overflow whatever bowl you put it in.

My new oven arrives Sunday - maybe I should be preparing some dough today for the baking extravaganza!

Pillow-palooza

2010-12-30T12:03:00.000-08:00

It's all pillows all the time at my house this week. I received two requests for pillows from a far away friend and from my sister using the Central Park by Kate Spain fabrics. I feel a little giddy with all the ideas I have in my head for what I want to make! I finished 3 pillows yesterday. I wanted to practice a bit and see how the fabrics all worked together. They turned out so great that I'm inspired to make many, many more! I finished up the first of two for my sister this morning - she's getting the orange one. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to let any of these leave my house as I love them all!

It's been interesting to practice some of my straight line quilting on a few of these. Using scotch tape to mark wider lines works much better than the chalk lines - and with no mess on the fabric! I also noticed that it's difficult to sew on the narrow strips with my walking foot. It tends to bump up next to the previous seamline since the foot is 1" wide. I may need to put on my regular 1/4" foot for those in the future.

I'm also a little addicted to the wavy line quilting. I love the extra motion it puts into the piece. I only bought 1 yard pieces of the orange, green, and purple fabrics and I can only get two pillows out of each of them. I might have to go back and get more before it's gone.

What do you all think of my pillows so far? Personally, I can't stop looking at them and loving all the fun colors! It's making these cold days bearable!

My first layer cake

2010-12-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

I broke down and bought the new Central Park by Kate Spain layer cake from Moda.

I'm so excited about cutting into this group of fabrics that I can hardly contain myself. Oh - for any non-quilters reading this, a layer cake is a collection of coordinating fabrics each pre-cut into 10" squares. I think this one has 40 fabrics all together. I went to 3 local quilt shops over the last two days to get some yardage to go along with the collection. Yesterday was Luella's Quilt Basket in Redondo Beach. Their selection of solids was lacking, but I came home with some gorgeous, bright prints to use.

Today was even more successful. I finally made it to F&S Fabrics and just about died when I walked into their quilting section. They have almost every color of Kona Cottons. Not just the Kona's either - they've also got some sateens, some poplins, and this beautiful cotton/silk blend by Robert Kaufmann, too. I'm thrilled to have a local source to pick up solids from now on! I'll be working on projects from this group of fabrics quite a bit over the next month, so be prepared for lots of quilting/sewing posts! And if any of you want some bags, quilts, pillows, kitchen accessories, etc. from this collection, just give me a shout! I would love to have specific things to make for people.

I also popped in to Sewing Arts Center to ask about their long arm quilting machine. I'm dying to try one of these and they rent out time on their machine at their shop! You have to take a class first to learn all the ins and outs of the process, but after that, just call in and reserve some time. Learning to quilt on a long arm machine has just become one of my goals for this next year. What are some of your goals for the coming year?

Oven-less for the holidays

2010-12-24T13:34:00.000-08:00

After 25 years, my wall oven has died. Nothing like a dead oven the day before Christmas eve. I had a double batch of baguettes proofing all day, a pumpkin seeded and ready to be roasted, along with several beets wrapped in foil from the morning harvest. Not to mention the cookies that still needed to be baked. And that's when my oven goes out. I've wanted for a new oven for the last year and a half as this old one took almost an hour to heat up to 500 degrees and lost heat easily when the door was opened. But now that it's a useless piece of junk, I look at it longingly, wishing it would come back to life and provide me with tasty food. As luck would have it, stores don't carry wall ovens in stock, so now I've got one on order that arrives January 2nd. So, while having the oven break for the holidays is a bit of a bummer, I have to say I'm pretty stoked to be getting a brand new oven for the new year!

I can't leave you without a few photos, so here's what our sunny, dew-covered garden looked like this morning:

Happy Holidays to you and your families!

Gifts for Family

2010-12-21T11:01:00.000-08:00

My sister and niece are arriving for a short visit any moment. I needed a gift for both and after seeing so many beautiful ones on Exuberant Color this last week, I was inspired to make a few. This is what I came up with:

My niece is getting this one with the butterflies and dragonflies. The fabric is so gorgeous, I decided to use it for the whole cover.

My sister is getting this more muted one. I pulled the paisley fabric from my stash and built the rest of the colors around it. Actually, all the fabric is from my stash! Love being able to use some of my fabrics for gifts like these!

I made a couple of quick fabric gift bags to wrap them, too. I have so much holiday fabric from years past, that I'll be making these gift bags for every gift instead of wrapping paper for some time to come!

I was one of the featured projects on Quiltstory's Fabric Tuesday today for my placemats from last week! How awesome is that?! Be sure to check out this week's projects too!

Sometimes you just have to walk away...

2010-12-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

Have you ever worked on a quilting/sewing/crafting project for hours and hours only to get it to a point where you step back and hate the way it's turning out? That happened to me last week. I'd spent two solid days sewing on a project and when I got about two thirds of the way through, I decided it was not what I wanted. All that work! Ug. I left my sewing room on Friday and let things lie over the weekend. Monday morning, I went back in and had a go at transforming some of the bits into something new. And I got 4 great placemats out of it!

Yup, still working on the Fruitcake fat quarter bundle. How do I still have some left??

I'd spent quite a bit of time sewing together 2.5" squares for the original project - 8 pieces, each 2 squares by 12 squares. This is the part that I reused for the placemats - as scrappy binding! I didn't want to spend the time taking apart all the squares for something else, so I cut them in half down either side of the long seam, and used it as a 2" binding.

old project

new project!

I put the trees together using leftover strips from the pillow and quilt projects and raw-edge appliqued them onto the background fabric.

This was also my first attempt at a wavy line quilting pattern. I like it. It was easy and fast and it doesn't matter if your lines are perfect! My mitered corners are even getting better with each one of these placemats. Small projects are great for honing techniques.

I still have the main pieces of the old project to do something with eventually, but I feel like I've redeemed myself after last week's failure. At least now I can move on to other sewing projects! I hope your projects are all going smoothly as the holidays continue!

Instant Gratification

2010-12-14T09:45:00.000-08:00

This sight has been brightening my day since Sunday.

These are mini spicy greens. I scattered them in a 1 foot wide ring surrounding my tiny lemon tree last Wednesday. They sprout up so fast and are so cute! Apparently I didn't do the best job of scattering evenly, but they are so easy to prick out and move, that in a week or so, I'll go out there with my garden tools and spread them out a little better.

The mix contains arugula, red giant mustard, green wave mustard, and kyona greens. The seed packet was a 1 ounce mixture I'd purchased 5 years ago. I tried eating the spicy greens in several different dishes, but never liked them. But my chickens love them! And my neighbor really likes the arugula. Once the plants are big enough to differentiate the variety, I'll transplant a bunch of the arugula to a spot my neighbor can get to more easily. And I'll be harvesting the outside leaves of the other spicy greens for my feathered friends on a daily basis once the plants are large enough. I think this planting will make a nice accent for my lemon tree while it becomes established.

This is why the sight of the sprouted greens makes me so happy:

This is the flat of flower seeds I started last Tuesday. See any sprouts? Yeah, me either. It's only been a week, but still... Please sprout little flowers! A few of the wildflower seeds I sprinkled in with the calendula have begun sprouting which helps ease the pain. I ordered a bunch of flower seeds the other night so my summer garden will be filled with vegetables and flowers - mostly orange, white and fuchsia. I can't wait to see how my garden will look in a few short months! Now I just have to stay focused and make it all happen.

What plans do you have for your spring and summer gardens this next year?

PW's Spinach Soup

2010-12-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

The Pioneer Woman (one of my favorite blogs ever) posted a recipe for Spinach Soup yesterday morning that I couldn't resist trying last night. It called for 10 ounces of spinach - I figured I had more than enough in the yard for that. I picked a giant basket full - about half of the leaves from all the plants I have. It only weighed 5.5 ounces. Swiss chard to the rescue! I picked another 6 giant swiss chard leaves and stripped them from the stems to get my greens total up to 10 ounces. This is the pile of spinach and chard that went into the soup.

I even chopped up one of the chard stems and cooked it with the onion for a little extra nutrition. It was a great quick recipe to use up cooking greens from the garden. It would make an excellent first course.

We ate it with a little crusty bread and a salad since we had an apple crisp dessert to eat after the meal. If you've got cooking greens in your garden, I highly recommend that you try this soup! It would be a good way to use up those beet greens too.

Link to the recipe at Pioneer Woman: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/12/spinach-soup-with-gruyere/

Scavenging for Holiday Decorations

2010-12-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

My neighbor two doors down had his giant pine tree cut down today. The workers have been chopping it apart all day and I've been wishing the whole time that I had a project I wanted to do with the huge stumps. Instead, I saw the pile of pine boughs while walking the dog this evening and I grabbed several pieces. The workers giggled as I picked through the debris. This is what I came up with!

At first I had this huge shiny red bow on it, but it was way overpowering, so off that came and on went the white and silver. We had some ornaments left over from the tree (mostly because we ran out of ornament hangers) so I strung some of those on with a ribbon. I tried using nylon thread, but that broke immediately and the ornaments came crashing down. Lost one of the silver bulbs, but there were plenty more left in the bin.

This is the extent of our outdoor holiday decor as the icicle lights never made it up on the house this year. There is quite a bit of holiday cheer in our living room, but now I get to share some outside cheer with the neighbors.

What kind of decorations are you putting up this year?

Harvest Tally

2010-12-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

I was gifted a lovely new kitchen scale last month to keep track of how much produce is actually coming out of my garden. I'll be logging all the produce we eat in ounces, and just what comes into the kitchen. If some of the food goes straight to the chickens, I won't be adding that to the total, there is a separate chicken egg total for that. I'm thinking that I'll post a weekly tally update. If it's not that interesting every week, I'll just post a monthly total. I started tracking everything on December 1st, and I'm using this month to get in the habit of weighing everything before it gets eaten. At the end of the month, I'll post the daily harvest list plus the totals.

Total produce in lbs: 3.6
Total chicken eggs: 3 (only one chicken is laying)

The rain we had Sunday night knocked several limes off the tree, so that's what were eating this week. I still can't believe I'm eating zucchinis in December. It's not right.

In other news, I *finally* started some of my flower seeds this morning. Half of the seed packets are from 2004, so I planted a lot of extra seeds. I'm wondering if any of them will germinate. I also dumped the remainder of a packet of dryland blend wildflower mix into the area with the calendula plants to fill things in over the next few months. I was hesitant about doing that since I was planning on putting other flowers there, but now it'll force me to fill in the other empty spots in the garden instead of concentrating on that one corner.

Off to pull some weeds and enjoy the sunshine!

December: In the Garden

2010-12-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

November was an interesting month. We had hot days and we had nights below freezing. It was a crazy mix! It was also a bit of a slow month for me garden-wise. I was distracted by my sewing projects. So here it is already December - the sun is out, it's a pleasant 60 degrees and before the month goes by again, here's a rundown of what's going on in my garden.

You've seen the bed of onions/shallots/leeks/garlic/celery.

Not much has changed except all of the garlic sprouts are up now and the plants are all growing well. The crows have been poking large holes in the bed looking for bugs lately, but they haven't disturbed the plants themselves. They make me get out and sweep a few times a week though.

I took down the last of the tomato plants and seeded that area with Red Winter Wheat in mid-November.

Those seedlings are popping up now and I under-seeded the bed with some red clover yesterday. I will be harvesting the greens from this spot a few times over the winter and spring to feed to the chickens. If I'm lucky enough for the wheat to give me some seed before I need to take it out for the summer, I'll have to get myself a grain mill. *crossing fingers*

I'm still getting zucchinis.

I only have one plant and it's putting out lots of fruits but not enough male flowers to pollinate them. I get a few baby zucchinis every week and occasionally the stars will align and a fruit will be pollinated, the days warm up and I get a nice big zucchini. As long as it keeps producing, I'll keep the plant in the ground.

My basil is still alive as well.

The freeze did a small amount of damage, but they've recovered already. I'm thinking about taking them out and making some pesto - maybe when the nights cool off again.

The corner triangle with the transplanted calendula is starting to fill in.

All but one of the plants I transplanted survived. It should be a lovely addition come spring time when the flowers bloom.

The bed of greens and beets is thriving.

I just started harvesting the swiss chard this week. I've been harvesting the spinach and lettuce often and they both are doing well with the cooler and shorter days. I've already gone through the first round of beets and the second sowing should be ready for harvesting in a week or two. I'm slowing replacing the harvested beets with lettuce seedlings - I need to add more seeds to the bare spots this week. I'll replace some of the older lettuce with beet seedlings too.

The broccoli and cabbage plants are not working out so well.

Cabbage loopers have been eating them since I started the seeds (makes for happy chickens, but not a happy farmer.) The hot days of last month didn't help either. The broccoli heads are tiny and the cabbage isn't forming heads at all. The kale is doing fine, though I haven't started harvesting it yet.

I *should* start new cabbage and broccoli seeds since the weather has cooled, but my motivation is low for those plants. Hand picking caterpillars is fun sometimes, but not every day. Since the garden is in the front yard, putting up row covers for the season is not an option either. I'm thinking that bed should be converted to something easier to grow or maybe filling it with a bunch of flowers.

The peppers that I'd put into pots last month have finished their run. The last day of November the temperature dipped below freezing for the night and the peppers did not do well with that. I think my cayenne pepper plant would survive, but later that same day, someone stole the half-dozen red peppers off the plant (sad face), so that one is done for the year too. Luckily I still have the peppers I'd dried over the summer to last me through till next year.

The perennial herb bed is filling in again.

The newest addition of white bunching onions is looking great - good thing too - the chives are sloooooow grooooowing. The parsley is getting bigger, the thyme is taking over, and the last of the dill seeds are dropping off. I'm hoping the dill will reseed itself in the spring when the weather warms up.

My lime tree is heavy with fruit.

I only harvest them when they fall off after a good rain or wind storm. I'm going to have to come up with more recipes using limes so they don't go to waste. They were a lovely accent to last night's tacos though!

I, sadly, have nothing on my seedling table. This is a terrible situation which needs to be remedied immediately! I have quite a list of flower seeds I'd like to start, plus beets, cabbages, lettuce, daikon radishes, peas, fava beans, and broccoli. And, of course, I still need to continue with the carrot experiment.

How are your gardens doing? Starting anything new or is your growing season done for the year? If any locals need some plants started, let me know! I'll be putting seeds in this week.

Holiday String Quilt

2010-11-30T18:09:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! I finished a holiday quilt before the 1st of December!

I started it last week the day after I made the string pillow. I had all those pale blue and green Fruitcake strips leftover from the pillow project and I thought those would make a nice lap sized quilt to throw on a couch for the holidays. I'll be packing this one up and sending it to my mother-in-law tomorrow. I might have to make a second one for myself!

I used the same paper-piecing method that I'd used on the pillow. I've decided that I quite enjoy the paper-piecing. I wasn't so sure with the first few blocks, but once I got into a rhythm and changed from used printer paper to newsprint, I became a convert.

The quilt top came together fast. I didn't have enough of the off-white solid to do full sashing, so I used one of the pale prints as the corner block between the solid strips. I like the subtlety of it.

I went with a scrappy binding, too. First time doing this and I really love it. For such a scrappy quilt like this one, it was a fun addition to finish it off.

For the backing, I squared up one of the large prints and set it into the off-white kona solid. I wanted a more neutral look to the back as another option for displaying it.

I used my walking foot for the entire process. I tried using my regular presser foot on one of the paper-pieced blocks and that didn't go so well. The paper slid all over the place and the fabric stretched like crazy. I immediately put my walking foot back on. I also decided that I'll probably never use safety pins for basting the layers together ever again. I only put about 20 straight pins in it to hold it together while quilting it and that worked out great for me. I might try spray basting if I do a larger quilt, but the straight pins were quick and easy.

I also realized that I'm an extremely slow hand sewer when I'm watching the tv and sewing on the binding. I did get to watch the documentary on Valentino's final collection though! I'll have to rethink that process for the future - maybe try doing the whole binding on the machine. My hands are not as nimble as they used to be.

This quilt will be shipped off to Florida tomorrow! I hope my mom-in-law enjoys it!

Holiday Weekend

2010-11-28T09:43:00.000-08:00

I had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend this year. My husband and I drove up to the bay area to have dinner at my sister's house, then spent the day at my parents' house on Friday. Two solid days of eating and playing games. We even went out Friday morning to find some deals on things we'd wanted for awhile. My husband picked up a new chair for his workshop while I got this stack of quilting goodness at Joann's:

A new cutting mat (mine had been warped for years - it's now in my husband's shop being used for fiberglass cutting,) a yellow chalk marker, an Easy Angle ruler and a 6.5" square ruler. I also bought this soft skein of yarn:

We woke up too early on Saturday morning, so I borrowed some of my mom's old knitting needles to start making myself a scarf before heading back home. When I asked to take these two needles home to continue knitting in the car, I was sent home with the whole stack of knitting needles!

Score! I don't knit very often and I haven't gotten past making hats and scarves yet, but now that I have a whole slew of needles to play with, I can try branching out into other projects. Thanks Mom!

I also wanted to share the stuffing recipe I made with you all. It's the recipe for Fruit and Toasted Almond Stuffing from last year's Vegetarian Times Thanksgiving issue. I used a few of my homemade baguettes for the bread, plus onions, apples, celery, raisins, almonds and herbs. I think this is going into the permanent holiday side dish rotation. But I'll take just about any excuse to eat a casserole dish filled with homemade bread. I forgot to take a photo of the stuffing since I was too busy eating everything in sight, but it looks just like the photo attached to the recipe on the VT site.

I'm off to spend the day at my sewing machine, furiously attempting to finish the quilt I started last weekend. I'll post photos as soon as I'm done!

Pretzels and Baguettes

2010-11-23T11:39:00.000-08:00

This was my Friday afternoon.

Three and a half hours of trading baking secrets with one of my girlfriends. She showed me how to make soft pretzels and I showed her how to make baguettes. It was a silly good time. We've both made our own recipes so many times that we've gone through all the pitfalls and worked out the kinks to know what works and what doesn't.

I started with demonstrating the kneading technique I learned in Vermont with the sticky wet dough. We popped that back into the bowl for the first rise period. Then my friend started the pretzel dough. She uses Alton Brown's recipe from the Food Network. We were chatting away while she activated the dry yeast and either the yeast was dead, or all the accidental stirring did something to the yeast. It didn't foam like she was expecting, so we threw it out and started over with some of my dry yeast. We stopped chatting to concentrate on the process - neither of us can cook and have a conversation at the same time. Glad to know I'm not the only one!

The pretzel dough came together quickly after that. I don't have a KitchenAid, so we took turns kneading by hand for the five minutes. The dough was so soft and smooth from the butter - it was a lovely dough to knead. The first trick to this pretzel recipe - let the dough rise for only half the time. My friend had tried both ways (30 minutes versus 55 minutes) and the half rise time worked better. I've noticed that on other recipes using dry yeast as well.

We only made a half batch - enough for four pretzels. My friend chopped the dough into four pieces then demonstrated the quick rolling technique for making the long rope.

A quick twist of the wrist and bam! A pretzel! One thing she made sure to tell me was to pinch the ends down into the pretzel so it doesn't pop loose when it's dropped into the pot of water.

We had the pot of water boiling on the stove ready for the shaped pretzels. Another tidbit she learned was that you can't halve the water and baking soda part of the recipe. Use the whole amount of water and soda in the pot no matter how many pretzels you make. And note that the water never gets past the barely simmering point no matter how long it's on the burner.

Thirty seconds in the pot of water and onto the cookie sheet. Luckily one of my chickens got around to laying an egg that day (she'd been molting for the last two and a half months) so we had an egg yolk to use for the glazing on the pretzel. The yolk was so bright gold in color, that the pretzels looked much darker coming out of the oven than my friend was used to. We had to pop them back in the oven for a few extra minutes.

We topped two of the pretzels with pretzel salt and tried the other two with my extra sesame seed/onion flake/garlic powder combination I'd been using on the baguettes. That was a winner! We barely let the pretzels cool down before we devoured the seeded ones.

Meanwhile, the baguettes were shaped and rising, though we had to kill some time before they were ready for the oven. I had added a pinch of dry yeast to the sourdough starter this time to make the process go a bit faster. The loaves came out looking fantastic and neither of them split open. We sampled some of the baguette, too. Someone has to do the quality control. We made the sacrifice.

My husband and I consumed the other two pretzels over the weekend. I'd frozen them and simply popped them in the microwave for a minute each. They tasted like they'd been pulled fresh out of the oven. That recipe is a keeper!

Got a favorite baking recipe with some super-secret tricks and tips? Please share! My kitchen is always open.

Holiday String Pillow

2010-11-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

All of the gorgeous string quilts I've been seeing all over the interwebs lately have been inspiring me to make one of my own. I was flipping through the Flickr pool of string quilts making notes on the styles I liked and what made one quilt stand out to me over another, with the idea that I'd make a queen sized bed quilt. But then I walked into my sewing room where my stack of Fruitcake holiday fat quarters was laid out on my cutting table and stopped in my tracks. I knew right then that I had to make a string quilt from these fabrics.

I started cutting away and with only a couple of hours to spare for sewing, I whipped up four paper-pieced blocks.

At that point, I just wanted to complete a project for the day, so I pulled out one of my many pillow forms from the closet and set those four blocks into a pillow.

I love it! I used the one large print for the back with a simple fold-over closure with the striped print. I have a few adjustments I'd like to do on it, but I ran out of time and may or may not ever get around to that.

I still have the other pale green, blue, and white colorway strips and when I get a few more free hours, I'm going to make a small quilt out of those. I can't wait!

A Fair Trade

2010-11-19T10:06:00.000-08:00

I got to spend the day with one of my friends and her super cute 4 month old baby yesterday. We made a date because I wanted to unload my extra lettuce, onion and shallot seedlings into her little raised vegetable bed. I have a problem with starting too many seeds and while I end up tucking a lot of the extras into strange places in my yard, my friends sometimes become the lucky recipients of my overzealous seeding. So while I got to unload some vegetables in my friend's garden and cook a dinner for her family, I was treated to a delicious lunch and these gorgeous potted succulents in return!

I think I ended up with the better deal! I'm still debating whether to keep them in pots for a grouping on my patio, or planting them in the ground along with the rest of my succulents next to the driveway.

I planted this group over the summer from cuttings I'd rooted of the last surviving succulents I'd ignored for years in pots in the backyard. What do you think? Keep these new plants in pots or add them to the collection along the driveway? Or keep them in pots and nestle them among the collection? Decisions, decisions...

Growing Black Beans

2010-11-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

I cook a lot of black beans at my house. It's my preferred bean for most bean dishes. In my quest for growing most of the food we eat, I tried my hand at growing black beans in the yard this year. Over the summer, I'd interplanted them with the corn and they did okay. I saved all the beans that had 6 to 7 beans per pod and replanted those early in the fall in about a 10 sqft space.

This is my bean harvest.

After shucking the beans out, this is all I got.

One cup of dried beans.

Was it worth it? As a food source - not at all. As a no-maintenance, lush green ground cover which adds nitrogen to the soil, and getting to spend half an hour in the sunshine sitting with my dog lazily shucking beans - yeah, it was worth it. Would I plant them again in the small space that I've got? Probably not. Maybe when I move out to the country some day, I'll plant 500 sqft of beans, but until then, I'll stick with black beans from the bulk aisle.

A Bed of Alliums

2010-11-12T15:16:00.000-08:00

One of my four main vegetable beds has been put to rest for the winter. I shouldn't have to do much to it except occasional watering until next May. I finished transplanting the remainder of the onions and shallots this week, adding to the previous grouping I put in a month ago.

new garlic sprouting in the foreground

Final count for this bed:

6 celery plants (2 older plants, 4 young plants)
16 leeks
40 Walla Walla onions
50 Red Marble onions
35 shallots
24 garlic bulbs

This is all in about 40 sqft. I thought I would've had this bed finished a few weeks ago, but I kept waiting for the peppers to stop growing. They didn't. I dug them out instead and put them in some pots so I could put those onion seedlings in the ground. They were looking a bit hairy in my seedling flat.

I saved four of the six remaining pepper plants.

Two bell peppers, a jalapeno, and a cayenne. They're tucked under the shade of the plum trees for the next few days while they recover from my not-so-gentle transplanting process. I'll find a nice sunny warm spot for them next week.

In other news, I'm still failing with growing carrots in my yard. The couple of rows of seeds I'd tucked in between the onions last month either failed to sprout or were eaten by bugs. I think I've only seen about 3 carrot seedlings from the dozens of seeds I planted. One of them had all the fringey bits eaten off when it was about 2" high. Does anyone have any tips on growing carrots in this area? I should probably do some experimenting with different areas of the yard and new seed varieties.

What are you all doing in your gardens this month?

Bounty of Avocados

2010-11-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

A few times a day I have a visitor who drops avocados off in my garden. Yesterday it was by the front door. Then another one near the chicken coop. Today...

Ooh! I see him!

"Hi! Dropping off an avocado for you!"

"I'll just put it right here next to the lettuce. You like avocado in your salads, don't you?"

He buried it up nicely for safe keeping.

Thanks for the avocado Mr. Squirrel!

What I really want to know is - which one of my neighbors has such a bounty of avocados right now? If only I could train the squirrel to put them in a basket on my doorstep...

Customized book bag

2010-11-09T19:32:00.000-08:00

I made myself a new book bag today out of some fat quarters I'd picked up on my trip to New England last month.

I made it to replace this canvas bag that my grandmother made for me more than twenty years ago.

I'll still use this one, but it was time to have a carry-all that didn't have my name on the front in puffy paint.

I wanted a bag that was just slightly larger than the old canvas one, but the same basic shape, and with several added features. I wanted a bag that I could carry a few books in, plus my reusable water bottle, with a zippered pocket for keys and cash, and an open pocket for my phone.

Before starting, I wrote down all those requirements and took measurements on how big to make the various pockets and loops. I cut out all the pieces before starting on any of the sewing.

I made the lining first, with the zippered and open pockets. I only had an invisible zipper on hand when starting this project, and I wouldn't use one again on any sort of bags. Lesson learned. One of these days I'll take a trip downtown and stock up on a bunch of regular zippers.

This is the finished lining with the side loops. The big loop is to hold my water bottle upright on the inside of the bag.

Here's a detail of the pocket. One is open for my phone and the other two have a zipper closure to hold my keys and cash.

Here's the outside of the bag with the handles pinned on.

Can I tell you that I love my walking foot? I hadn't used it in years - I remember vaguely having some trouble with it and I put it away without thinking about it until this week. Some of the other quilt bloggers have been mentioning using their walking feet lately, so I wanted to give mine another try. OMG. I don't think I'll ever go back! It made putting the lining into the bag and quilting the top edge easy as pie.

I know I need to use more fabrics that are already in my stash, but I'm tempted to make a few more of these with some of those cute new designs that are out. But after making one, I definitely want to make more!

I'll be linking this up with Quiltstory's Fabric Tuesday! Be sure to check out what everyone else is up to!

Seeded Sourdough Loaves

2010-11-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

In the last few days, I've made the sourdough baguette recipe I learned in Vermont twice. I had completely different challenges for both of them, though they both ended up tasting just the same, if not looking totally different.

The first batch, I tried replicating what we did in class - making the long skinny baguettes. The original recipe makes two approximately 24" long baguettes. My oven is not big enough to handle that. Nor are any of my baking sheets or pans. My plan? Make four smaller baguettes.

I made four baguettes. They did not come out as half length baguettes. The folding and rolling process resulted in four very skinny, very long baguettes. I tried proofing them in a makeshift couche. Between moving them from the couche to some parchment paper and trying to slide them into the oven onto baking sheets, two of them ended up curved around and bunched up. They tasted just fine, but I didn't photograph them since I was so embarrassed! After failing to get the first two into the oven, I rolled the last two onto my Italian loaf pan. They were a little longer than the loaf pan, but ended up working well. During this process of transferring the proofed baguettes, I completely forgot to slash them! It didn't seem to be a problem though, as none of them split open.

My husband and I devoured those baguettes quickly. It was time to make more and try to remedy my earlier mistakes. Things to remember:

Item 1: Use my Italian loaf pan. I don't have the tools for transferring long floppy pieces of dough to the oven, so my loaf pan will be my go-to tool. I'm thinking about buying one of the three loaf baguette pans as well, but I enjoy the fatter loaves for now.

Item 2: Make two loaves from the same recipe, just don't roll them any longer than the loaf pan. This ended up working great. I did the same fold and seal then roll technique but stopped as soon as the dough was the length of the pan.

Item 3: Remember to slash! Since all of my knives are in need of sharpening, I took the advice of a friend and used my X-acto knife to try slashing. It mostly worked, but I had trouble getting it deep enough. I think this will just take practice.

Item 4: Give the loaves enough time to proof before going into the oven. I forgot this one and put the second set of loaves in too early. (We wanted to have sandwiches for lunch.)

This time around, the only problem I ended up having was the loaves splitting out the side while in the oven. It was a cooler day and I only let my loaves proof for an hour. Baking with sourdough instead of the dry yeast can make things more unpredictable time-wise. I'll have to figure out a warm place to proof the loaves on these cooler days.

But the main reason I wanted to do a post about the baguettes was to show this method of seeding a baguette. We used this method in class and I thought it was just genius.

Start with a rimmed baking tray and fill it with a layer of your chosen topping. I used two colors of sesame seeds, garlic powder, and dried onion flakes. You can use any combination of herbs, seeds, and grated hard cheeses.

Lay a moist towel next to the tray of toppings which is at least as long as your shaped loaf. Just after shaping your baguette, gently roll the loaf on the moist towel.

Then gently roll it through the layer of toppings.

Allow to proof using your chosen method. I set mine in the loaf pan.

After not allowing a long enough proof, not slashing deeply enough, and baking for 20 minutes, my loaf ended up like this.

Here's the side explosion:

But look at that crumb!

Still delicious even if it's not perfect. If you're baking bread and having some failures, just keep trying! Every kitchen is different, so what one recipe says may not work for you. Keep at it and you'll figure out what works and what doesn't in your kitchen. I'll keep baking and learning right along with you!

Bananas!

2010-11-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

My new banana plant arrived in the mail today!

I've wanted a fruiting banana plant for years. When we first landscaped the backyard, we put in several non-fruiting red banana plants. At the time, we wanted a tropical landscape. It never occurred to me to put in a fruiting banana plant. We've long since taken out the giant red bananas that grew way too tall for our yard and looked tattered and windblown all the time. The spot where one of the bananas was growing has been empty since and I knew that was where my fruiting banana would eventually be planted. The chickens had done a fabulous job of picking out the remaining stump for me, so all I did was break up the soil a bit, add a giant bucket of compost, and water.

After doing a bit of research on all the different varieties available, I chose the simple Chiquita banana. It should only grow 6' to 8' tall and has good wind resistance. While there are many exotic varieties to grow, since I did not have the chance to sample the fruit before buying the plant, I went with the variety that I know my family likes. Perhaps down the line, after this one starts fruiting, I'll revisit the other varieties and add to my fruit tree collection.

I foresee many banana breads, banana chips, and frozen bananas in our future! Only a year or two to wait, but then buying foreign bananas from the store will be a thing of the past.

Watering holes

2010-11-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

While doing research on companion planting, I recently checked out the book "Great Garden Companions" by Sally Jean Cunningham from the library. One of the main points the author brings up is that it's not just about planting a combination of plants together, it's about bringing beneficial insects and animals into your garden. One thing these critters need is water. Water is definitely lacking in my garden and I've been meaning to remedy that for some time. It was at the forefront of my mind today during this heat wave, so I thought I'd make a go of getting some water features out in the garden for the birds and the bees.

I added two water areas - one about waist high for the birds, and one at ground level for the bugs. I grabbed two old dinner plates that we never use any more and some river rocks from the backyard. The rocks will give the bugs a place to drink from without getting soaked.

I tucked the ground level watering hole under one side of the nectarine trees.

The bird bath was almost as easy. I dug around in our outdoor junk closet and found an empty wire hanging basket. The plate fit perfectly inside! I hung this one in our feijoa tree as the local birds tend to make daily rounds in the branches.

Now I get to sit and wait and see what these new additions bring!

Propagating Houseplants

2010-11-02T19:30:00.000-07:00

While I take pride in tending my vegetable garden outside, houseplants are a totally different story. If they can't stay alive in dark corners with no watering schedule and no fertilizer, they don't last in my house. I forget my houseplants exist until I have an old half empty water glass and need a place to dump the water. Luckily, I have a spider plant and a pothos ivy plant that do just fine in this environment of neglect. It's a little embarrassing that I only have three indoors plants - it was time to add more to the house.

spider plant

pothos ivy

To propagate spider plants and pothos ivy plants, you'll need to gather a few things - pots, potting soil, and a pair of scissors.

First you'll want to give the pots a good cleaning. You don't want to pass along any bugs or diseases from whatever used to be in there. If you need to add felt protectors to the bottom of your pot, now is a good time.

Potting soil - feel free to buy a bag of soil at your local nursery. Or - if you have a compost pile, make your own! There's a great article here on Mother Earth News on making your own potting soil. I went ahead and pasteurized a few quarts of sifted compost in my oven. I have an old wooden frame covered with 1/2" hardware cloth to sift my compost. The big chunks get thrown back into the compost bin.

And since we don't cook meat here, I commandeered the meat thermometer for my gardening projects a few years ago.

Cover the pan tightly with foil and cook it in a 200 degree oven until the thermometer reads 150 degrees. Turn the oven off and let the compost sit in the warm oven for 30 minutes.

I added perlite and peat moss to my pasteurized compost to finish the potting soil since I already had some on hand. If I didn't have any, I would've pasteurized more soil from the garden.

Once the pots are filled with new potting soil, for the spider plant, simply snip off one of the hanging plantlets and set it in the pot so the little root nodes are touching the soil.

For the pothos, clip off a healthy stem with a node attached.

Remove the leaf at the node and insert the node into the soil.

Keep the soil moist for the new cuttings so the roots can develop. The cuttings should root within a few weeks. If they don't, just remove the old cutting and start a new one! Keep the tender plants out of the sun until they are established, then move them into their final spot in your home.

Cooking with Pumpkin

2010-10-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

I picked up a butternut squash at the farmers' market on Sunday to make a bread pudding with all those leftover baguettes that are in my freezer. I ended up only using about a third of the squash for the bread pudding, so I had to come up with some ways to use the rest this week.

The first experiment was butternut squash pizza. Yup. Pizza. And it was tasty! I made a whole wheat with honey pizza crust using my sourdough starter and added caramelized onions, the precooked butternut squash, and crumbles of blue cheese. I think some roasted garlic would've been a nice addition, but this is definitely going in the would-make-again file.

I still had another few cups of squash leftover after those two dishes, so I got a bit excited when I spied a pumpkin cookie recipe on Make It Do's website. I followed her cookie recipe except I used my butternut squash in place of the canned pumpkin. I ran out of butter (only had 3/4 cup for the cookies) so I made a cream cheese frosting instead of the butter/brown sugar frosting. I got a thumbs up from my husband on these! I look forward to eating them for breakfast tomorrow morning with my coffee.

After all that, I still had more! I popped the rest in a container and threw it in the freezer for the next time I get a hankering for risotto.

Pumpkins and other hard squashes are easy to bake. Simply slice them in half from the stem end to the blossom end (top to bottom,) scoop out the seeds and the stringy bits, brush olive oil on the cut area, then pop them face down on a baking sheet to bake at 400 degrees for about an hour, or until they are tender. When they are done, the flesh is scooped out of the skins easily. You can do this a day ahead of time and keep the squash in the refrigerator until you are ready to add it to your main recipe.

Hard squashes and pie pumpkins can be stored in the pantry for up to a few months, so stock up now while you can get them!

Repurposing Halloween Costumes

2010-10-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

I've made a lot of Halloween costumes over the years, some for myself, some for friends, some for my sister and some for my husband. I've kept all of my costumes. They live in the tiny closet in my sewing room as a reminder of years past. But this year, I was having trouble motivating to make a costume. Nothing was inspiring me...

... until one of the blogs I follow posted this fun crafting project for a boiling cauldron over on the Polka Dot Chair. It's such a cool idea and I think I have all the materials to put it together. It seemed like the perfect vessel for passing out candy to the trick-or-treaters on Sunday. And so it followed that I needed a witch costume! I haven't been a witch for Halloween since the third grade when my mom made me a black satin cape complete with a back slit to allow for my broomstick. (Thanks Mom!) I vowed not to spend any money on Halloween costumes this year since I have more than enough supplies around here to make something, so I went shopping in my costume closet and my fabric stash.

First up - the hat. I had to make this one from scratch, and luckily, I've made enough hats that drafting up a quick pattern was easy. (If anyone wants a tutorial on how to make a witch hat, post in the comments and I'll put one up.) I used some black fabric I'd purchased for a costume last year that never happened and found enough heavy-weight interfacing in my stash to finish it up.

Next - the outfit. Not wanting to spend too much time on this project, I opted not to make a whole new ensemble. Digging through the costume closet produced an old pirate costume. A white floofy shirt with a black corset vest. Depending on accessories, this could go from pirate to beer wench to renaissance lady to a witch. The white shirt was just too clean and neat for a witch, though, so I slashed up the sleeves and the hem and made it pretty ragged. And the white was too white. But never fear! I had a bottle of black Rit dye on my shelf! I have no idea what the project was that made me buy a bottle of Rit dye, but it's over 10 years old I think. I dropped the shirt in the bucket of dye and an hour later - a dark gray shirt! And the edges got a bit more tattered, so that helped.

For the skirt, I pulled out last year's time traveler turn-of-the-century skirt. It's dark and has several layers - it'll do.

Last - accessories. I needed some pouches for my potions and talismans. Using some leftover scraps from last year's accessories, I made a mini pouch to hang around my neck, adding some chicken feathers (my chickens have been molting the last two months - I have plenty,) an old button, and using a velvet ribbon for the chain.

A whole new costume for a few hours of work - no purchases needed!

What's in your costume closet?

Area for the Extras

2010-10-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I have extra seedlings left over from planting the main vegetable beds. I always have a hard time tossing those extras into the chicken coop or the compost pile, so a week ago, I decided to start adding another planting area in a section of the yard that has been unused for a few years. I added some compost and planted the extra lettuce, beets and swiss chard in half of the area, and sprinkled a layer of lettuce seeds on the other half. This week, I had a few extra celery and bunching onion seedlings that I put at one end of the bed.

I figure this can be my back-up area in case some of the other plants fail, and I can share the extra harvest with my neighbors. This spot will probably become my seed saving area in the future - a place I can let a few of each plant go to seed without interrupting the planting rotations of the rest of the garden. And I get to use more of our excess broken concrete pieces to define the area! I foresee another jackhammer rental in my future.

Herbs: Greek Oregano

2010-10-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

Early in the spring, I spruced up an area under the feijoa tree by the front door with some perennial herbs from the garden center. One of the herbs I purchased was Greek Oregano and I potted it up when it was quite small into one of my old ceramic pots. I wasn't sure if I wanted it there by the door or eventually over by another area of herbs on the side of the yard. It's been growing well where it is and I haven't thought much about moving it since I bought it. I haven't thought much about it at all really, since I rarely use fresh oregano in my cooking. Then, last week, I ran out of dried oregano while making something in the kitchen. That's when I realized it was time to pick some herbs!

The oregano was obviously neglected.

I trimmed it up, pulled out the old woody pieces and pulled a bunch of leaves out of the pot.

And I disturbed this guy.

And was reminded that I need to buy gardening gloves soon.

But I picked out the snail that was next to the spider, fed it to the chickens, and brought my bounty of herbs inside.

Time to pull out the dehydrator! My dehydrator used to belong to my parents, but after it sat in the garage for many years unused, they brought it down and now it sits just above my pressure cooker in the dining room. I suppose I could've dried the herbs outside or in the oven, but the dehydrator is easy and all ready to go.

I gently washed the stems and leaves, setting aside any damaged or brown leaves for the compost pile.

old woody section

fresh tender leaves perfect for preserving

I trimmed off all the leaves and spread them out onto the drying rack...

... set the temperature to 95 degrees and plugged it in.

The book that came with the Snackmaster said 2-3 hours for oregano leaves. 4 hours later, they still weren't dry. A few hours after that... still not dry. They were about halfway there, so I turned off the dehydrator and let them sit over night. They were finally dry by the morning. Next time, I think I'll leave the leaves on the stems and dry them on one of the mesh layers instead of the solid layer and strip the leaves afterward.

After making a mental note that I should dry more leaves next time, I poured the dry leaves still whole into an old clean jam jar and added it to my spice collection.

And I hope to never have to buy oregano in the spice aisle again.

Planting Garlic

2010-10-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

After a few weeks of hemming and hawing over whether or not to order garlic bulbs online, I took the plunge and ordered some White Sicilian softneck garlic bulbs from Seeds of Change on Tuesday. I thought about planting garlic from bulbs picked up at the farmer's market, but I wanted to know exactly what I was planting. I am thinking about getting some from the market anyway and using them for companion planting around the garden in case the other garlic doesn't work out. Anyway, this is what showed up in the mail today!

It even came with planting and harvesting instructions!

I also ordered sweet corn, bush beans, and echinacea seeds for next spring.

But back to the garlic. Yesterday, in anticipation of the garlic arrival, I pulled out one of the remaining zucchini plants that hadn't produced anything in two months. Today I added a layer of compost and loosened the soil down about a foot. I pulled apart all the cloves from the garlic bulbs, leaving the paper intact around each clove, and laid them on the soil about 6" apart to see how much room I needed in the bed.

Then I placed each clove about 2" down into the soil with the pointed end facing up.

I covered them back up with soil and added several inches of straw. Leaves would work just as well, but I happen to have lots of straw around for the chickens.

And sometime late next spring or early summer, I should have 24 garlic bulbs to braid for the kitchen!

Free calendula seedlings

2010-10-20T12:01:00.000-07:00

The parkway in front of my house goes through many stages every year. A month ago it was a brown mass of bermuda grass. After all the rain this month, it is now a calendula and poppy seedling explosion. I planted a colorful mix of poppy seeds two years ago which did well the first year. I added a couple of calendula seeds to fill in the empty spots and those have done even better. I let everything go to seed in that space so it's always fun to see what pops up when it rains. Seeing all these calendula seedlings this morning inspired me to transplant some of them to a bare spot in the garden.

It's a 4'x4' triangular spot next to the driveway that has been waiting for plants for a few years now. Some day I'll make it out to Theodore Payne's native plant nursery and find some perennials, but in the meantime, I have free calendula seedlings! If you are local and want some, come on by! I'm happy to share.

I planted the seedlings about 8" apart in the new space and added the few poppy seedlings that were in that shovelful of dirt.

I hand watered the area a bit with some of the rainwater from my rainbarrel as the soil under the feijoa tree is very dry. Hopefully these seedlings will survive the transplanting and provide some much needed color in this empty spot. I'll post more photos once they fill in.

To hold you over, here are some gratuitous garden close-ups.

Happy gardening!

Green Bean, Zucchini and Potato Stew

2010-10-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe on Epicurious for Green Bean, Zucchini and Potato Stew over the summer when I had green beans and zucchinis coming out of my ears from the garden. It's one of my favorite stews from this year. I made it again today to eat with the bread from my baking adventures. I still have several bags of frozen green beans from the summer's bounty, so I used those along with potatoes and onions from the farmer's market, the last yellow tomatoes from the vines out front, only a little parsley from the garden and a whole dried cayenne pepper. I add about 2 cups of water to the stew and finish it with a bit of balsamic vinegar. This time, I also added some precooked navy beans that I had leftover from the baked bean experiment.

If you have any green beans left in your freezer, or can still get them at the farmer's market, I highly recommend you try this stew!

Baking Bread the King Arthur Way

2010-10-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, a friend and I flew from L.A. to Boston, then drove up to Vermont to take a baking class at King Arthur Flour's Baking Education Center. I opted for the Baguette class since I've been making bread about once a week for the last year and had made some attempts at baguettes. Apparently I was doing it ALL WRONG. I had no idea there were so many little techniques specific to making baguettes!

Some things I learned at King Arthur Flour:

Mix the dry ingredients together to be sure the ratios of dry ingredients remain consistent, then add water to achieve a wet, sticky dough. (I'd been adding part of the flour and the water, then adding more flour to achieve the correct consistency.)
No sugar is called for in the recipe. Just flour, salt, yeast, water.
Use all-purpose flour. Bread flour and wheat flour are too stiff for making the long baguette shape. The all-purpose flour allows the bread to be shaped without bouncing back.
Don't be afraid of super sticky dough getting all over your hands.
I really really want a new oven that can maintain a high temperature after the door is opened.

Even though I have 4 giant baguettes in my freezer that I brought home from the class stuffed into my carry-on bag, I wanted to try the techniques I learned from class here at home today before I forgot them.

Sourdough vs. Instant yeast -

We used instant yeast in class, but I try to always use my sourdough starter in breads at home instead of dried yeast, so I had to adjust the class recipe a bit to use the starter. I fed my starter yesterday evening. Then at about 10pm last night, I used 1 1/4 cups of fed starter and 1/2 cup of flour to make the equivalent of the "poolish" we used in class. It was nice and bubbly this morning.

I added 2 3/4 cups of all purpose flour and 1 1/2 tsp of kosher salt to the poolish and mixed with my new plastic scraper. Then I added 1/2 cup of water to the bowl to start. I ended up adding about 3/4 cup of water total to make a very wet sticky dough.

Scraping the wet dough out of the bowl and onto an unfloured counter, I started "kneading". There were three steps of kneading the baguette dough shown in the class.

The first is a little hard to describe and difficult to photograph with sticky hands. Basically, you lay the dough on the counter, stretching it a bit, and dig your thumbs into the middle and tear a few holes down the middle of the dough. Then you fold the dough onto itself from the top and bottom using the scraper, pick it up and turn it, then repeat the thumb tearing. Do this several times. Your hands will be covered in dough, but that's okay! Just enjoy playing with the dough.

The second step involves cutting pieces of the dough off and stacking them back up. It's easier to use a metal scraper for this, but the plastic one they gave us worked just fine. Lay the dough on the counter and chop chunks off one end and pile them up until you've moved all the dough.

Pick up the dough and chop it again several times. The dough will be much less sticky at the end of this process.

The last part of the kneading process is also a difficult one to photograph as it requires both hands. First, since you still have sticky fingers from the earlier process, "wash" your hands with some flour.

Using a little flour in your hands, rub them together over a trash can until all the sticky chunks come off and your hands are just nicely floured.

Pick up the ball of dough with your hands pointed to the left.

pretend my right hand is holding the top of the dough like my left hand in the photo

Then turn the dough 90 degrees and throw it on the counter making the two ends meet each other on the bottom.

Repeat until the top of the dough is smooth, then place the dough back into the unwashed, unoiled bowl and cover.

Allow to rise for 1.5 hours, folding the dough once half way through.

On a lightly floured surface, turn out the dough and cut apart into two pieces. Fold both pieces and allow to rest, covered, for another 20 minutes.

Then form into the desired shape. Since I have way too many baguettes already in my freezer, I opted to try a boule and a flat bread that were both demonstrated in class, but which we did not make ourselves. I formed the boule, attempting the rolling technique from class, but not sure I quite got it. I placed it on a floured towel for 45 minutes to rise while the oven heated to 500 degrees.

I also tried to shape the flat bread like the instructor did in class, but that was much harder than she made it look! I had to do it twice, since the first time, after shaping it, I put it on the floured towel to rest, then when I tried to pick it up and transfer it to parchment paper, it collapsed and stuck to itself in a glop. I shaped it again and placed it directly onto the parchment. I brushed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with salt, garlic powder, dried thyme and basil, and a little grated parmesan cheese.

I baked both at 450 degrees for 25 minutes, adding steam for the boule and forgetting to check the flat bread at any time through the process. The boule came out looking pretty good, though I think it could've used another minute or two to get a crispier crust.

The flat bread...

Oops. I'll have to remember to check on the flat bread after 15 minutes next time. But there will definitely be a next time! I can't wait to try again! If you get the chance to visit Vermont, be sure to sign up for a class at King Arthur flour. Here's a link to their calendar of classes: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/baking/baking-education-center-calendar

Fear of the Pressure Canner

2010-10-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

I finally conquered my fear of the pressure canner today. Well, maybe not conquered, but at least I faced it! Hearing the weighted gauge rattle every minute is a little nerve-wracking. I kept thinking I should be wearing safety goggles. Or hiding under the table.

I have a heavy-duty All-American pressure cooker/canner model 915. It's fancy. My husband bought it for me about two years ago for my birthday and it has sat unused on the shelf in the dining room until this morning. I have been wanting to can up maple and onion baked beans for some time so I could stop buying them in the store. I almost bought more cans yesterday, but went to the bulk aisle instead and picked up a giant bag of dried navy beans. I followed these instructions for making baked beans and they came out alright! Four hours of stress and anxiety about things exploding all over the kitchen, but nothing happened, and I have 7 pints of baked beans to show for it. The only problem I had was trying to get the lid off after the pressure went back down to zero. I had to use a rubber mallet to turn the lid and get it loosened enough to remove it. I will definitely have to try this process again once I tweak the baked bean recipe a bit. It needed more salt and more maple syrup and definitely needed some color.

Got a pressure canner? Do you use it? I'm inspired to make soups and can those up for days when I don't want to cook!

Growing Beets

2010-10-14T16:49:00.000-07:00

I love beets. I didn't know this growing up as I'd never even had a beet until I was 28 years old. Now, I can't get enough of them. I even put them on a pizza a few weeks ago (I loved it, my husband thought it was weird.) I try to start new beet seeds every month to have a continual harvest available in the garden. If you like beets and haven't tried planting them in your garden, now is a great time to start!

These are beet seeds.

They are fairly large and are actually multiple seeds connected together. When they sprout, you'll often get several seedlings from one seed, but sometimes only one sprouts.

I'll show you how I start my seeds, but feel free to use whatever method you prefer. I start most of my seeds in a half-sized wooden flat filled with garden soil and compost.

11" x 14" x 3" wooden flat

It is a smaller area to water while the seedlings are young. It also gives me an extra month of growing space in the garden for other plants before putting in the new seedlings. Another reason to start seeds in a flat versus directly in the garden, if any seeds fail to sprout, you won't have an empty space in the garden.

Plant the seeds 1" apart and at least 1/2" deep (up to 1".) I use 1" chicken wire to help me space the seeds - makes it easy to keep track of how many I've already planted.

push the seed 1/2" into the soil, then cover the hole

Cover the seeds with soil and keep the soil moist, but not soggy. Most should sprout in a week. Transplant the seedlings 3 to 4 weeks after starting the seeds. I would err on the side of 3 weeks rather than 4 if you get busy doing other things.

This is what 4 week old beet seedlings look like.

This particular seed had two seedlings that sprouted. You only want to end up with one seedling per 4" planting diameter.

There are a few ways to thin beet seedlings:

Snip off all but the largest, healthiest seedling per sprouted seed. You'll snip them off at the soil level, leaving one undisturbed. If you are transplanting, you can do this either before or after you transplant them into the garden. This is the best way to thin if you planted your seeds directly in the garden. You'll want to thin them by the time they are 4 weeks old so they have room to grow full size.

*Or*

Gently pull apart the beet seedlings and plant each one as a separate plant. This is what I do. I'm terrible at thinning seedlings once they are in the ground. I either forget or I don't have the heart to kill off the extras and let them go to waste.

Here's one seed that produced three seedlings.

Gently pull them apart keeping as much of the root system and soil attached.

Plant each one 4" apart.

I plant my beet seedlings so that the soil is just above the cotyledons.

freshly planted beet seedlings

Add some mulch. Cover with shade netting (if you've got it) for a few days to allow the seedlings to acclimate without melting in the sun.

They should be ready to harvest 45 to 60 days after transplanting. This is what they look like after 45 days in the garden (70 days after starting the seeds.)

Harvest the beets by simply pulling the whole plant out of the ground, brush off the excess dirt then scrub the root and wash the leaves.

Cut the stems from the beet root (save the leaves and stems for another dish like this), wrap the beet in foil and bake in the oven at 425 degrees for 60-75 minutes until easily pierced with a fork. Allow to cool, then slip the skins off the beet. They should peel right off with your fingers. Enjoy them in your favorite beet recipe!

Beans and Greens

2010-10-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

I'll be posting a step-by-step tutorial about growing beets tomorrow, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this quick recipe with you for using those beet greens that often get tossed into the compost pile.

Ingredients:

beet tops (leaves and stems)
onion
black beans
olive oil
red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Start with about two whole beets per serving.

Clean the leaves and scrub the roots, then separate the beet root from the stems and reserve the beets for roasting later to add to another dish.

Then separate the leaves from the stems - you'll use both. Chop up the stems along with some onion (half a small onion per serving.)

Heat some olive oil in a pan over medium high heat and add the beet stems and onions. Saute about 5 minutes until softened. (If you like spicy food, add in some red pepper flakes and minced garlic and saute for another minute.)

While that is cooking, chop the leaves.

Lower the heat to medium and add the chopped leaves. Saute about two minutes, or until the leaves are slightly wilted.

Add in 1/2 cup of black beans per serving. (Rinsed and drained if they came from a can. Mine are cooked and frozen, I just throw them in.)

Heat through for another minute or two, then add a splash of red wine vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice or quinoa if desired. A quick nutritious meal in ten minutes!

Variations: Substitute swiss chard, kale, or spinach for the beet greens (or use a combination of greens!)
Substitute chickpeas for the black beans, and white wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar for the red wine vinegar.

A bed for Simba

2010-10-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

I have a giant dog. He's 3 feet tall and 4 feet long. I measured. He's needed a new bed for a while, but I hadn't been inspired to make one. Until I saw this fabric on Saturday:

It is "Man's Best Friend" by Leanne Anderson of Whole Country Caboodle. I picked up a yard and a half to make my puppy's dog bed. I thought about how I wanted to use it, looked at other fabrics I already had, and came up with this rough sketch.

I cut the bottom piece 36"x48" and with the leftover strips, determined that I could cut 4" squares from the dog print for the top. Then I cut five 4" long strips from the dark brown and off white solids. I ended up needing six strips from each.

I used the quilt-as-you-go, sew and flip method to make things easy for the top. I made the 5 long strips first, sewing the 4" dog print squares to one each of the brown and white solids.

Then, I started sewing the strips to the batting and backing using the longest pieces in the middle. (Side note: I would've used muslin for the backing, but I was out, so I used some really ugly fabric from my stash that I never would've used for anything else. I was great to get rid of that stuff!)

getting the first strip in a straight line along the 45 degree angle

testing the layout

Sewing, flipping, and trimming the edges, the top ended up like this:

Then I sandwich quilted the bottom piece with diagonal lines 3.5" apart to match the lines of the top.

I trimmed the top and bottom edges to match, added a zipper at one end, and sewed the two pieces together. And here's the finished bed!

I think he likes it!

Garden to Table: Quick Pickles

2010-10-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I trimmed out a mass of vines from my tomato plants, resulting in a pile of unripe green pear tomatoes. I brought them in, washed them off, and decided to make some quick pickles. I added a few radishes, a cucumber, and half of a hot pepper to the green tomatoes and a day later - delicious yummy pickles!

Here's what you do to make some quick pickles:

Wash and chop your tomatoes and anything else you want to throw in. Wash a couple of jars and lids too.

Fill the jars with the fruits and vegetables and add some salt and spices. I used dill in mine.

Add vinegar to the jars. I wanted more mild pickles, so I used apple cider vinegar and filled the jars halfway with the vinegar, then topped them off with water. White vinegar works well too, though you might need to add a little sweetener to tone down the strong vinegar taste.

Shake the jar to mix, pop it in the fridge, and enjoy some quick pickles the next day!

A pincushion, a pumpkin, and a jewelry hanger

2010-10-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

I have been in need of a receptacle for my thread and fabric scraps for almost a year as my husband commandeered my wicker waste basket to make an international standard topmiler. I'd been thinking I should sew a simple basket to collect scraps until I read a post from QuiltyGirl this week that included a link to this tutorial for making a pincushion/scrap basket/scissor pocket. It was exactly what I needed for my sewing room!

I love it! It works perfectly for me and I got to try it out today on this next item. Thimbelina posted a super cute little girls dress on her blog this morning which was from a tutorial on The Polka Dot Chair. I started clicking through the list of tutorials when I stopped on this lovely jewelry hanger. Since my necklaces had all been in a giant plastic bag for many months now, it was the perfect thing to display them on the wall.

before adding bottom pocket

I made a few minor adjustments to my version by making a simple fabric loop for the hanger instead of the large eyelet, adding a small pocket at the bottom for a few rings, and stitching the bottom half of the big loops to the main piece as my necklaces are pretty heavy.

And last, I made a little fabric pumpkin.

Many years ago, I had a pattern for pumpkins like these and made several for my mom and my sister, but never got around to making any for myself. I no longer have the original pattern, so I searched the interwebs and found this tutorial for making fabric pumpkins. I made a few adjustments since I didn't have any felt for the stem, but it was so helpful to jog my memory on how I used to make these.

Thank you to all the bloggers who are putting such fantastic tutorials out there to share with the world. You are much appreciated!

October: In the Garden

2010-10-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

One of the questions I get asked most often when locals find out that I grow vegetables is "What can I plant now?" That's one of the most frustrating things to learn about gardening in Los Angeles. Reading gardening books, they often list the first and last frost dates as starting points for when to plant annual vegetables. Since we don't get frost in Los Angeles, it leaves a lot of ambiguity. From my experience, we really only have two planting seasons here: fall/spring (October through April) and summer (May through October.) Once a month, I'll be posting about the seeds I'm starting, what's currently on my seedling table, what I'm transplanting, and what's currently in the garden. I hope this will give you a good idea of how to get started on your vegetable gardens every month.

Currently in the garden:

The basil is continuing to do well. I have some plants that I started back in March and a few that I started in June. I still harvest from both.

Older basil started back in March

Young basil started outside in June

My sad looking tomato plants. The only ones that are still producing a little bit are the yellow pear tomatoes. Those have done consistently well in my garden for the past few years. I'll take these out at the end of the month.

Young black beans. These were started from beans that I'd saved from an original planting in May. These were started in August.

black beans (basil is in the right corner)

Two zucchini plants. These had been started at the beginning of May and haven't produced much of anything in the last month. I'm still hoping to get a few more out of them before taking them out and replacing them with more onions and garlic.

two zucchini plants

I have four sweet pepper and three hot pepper plants left in the garden. The jalapenos are still producing and the sweet peppers have some fresh blooms on them, so I don't have the heart to pull them out yet. If the weather stays cool, these will probably come out in a month.

Three celery plants. These just seem to keep growing and have been in the ground since last December. I hadn't harvested much from them this summer, but my next door neighbor has been helping harvest the outer stalks for me.

celery

Jack-o-lantern pumpkins. I'll only get one big pumpkin before Halloween from the four vines. It was not a good year for the hard pumpkins and squashes in my garden.

Kale, napa cabbage, broccoli, and radishes. These have only been in the ground for a month, the seeds started two months ago.

Red Russian Kale

Wong Bok Napa Cabbage

Broccoli

Radishes

Swiss chard. These are older plants that were started in March that are still producing, but I also have some month old seedlings that were just transplanted last week.

Swiss Chard - Bright Lights variety

Spinach, lettuce, and beets. This group of seedlings was started in August and transplanted in September. I have been harvesting the outer leaves of lettuce and spinach for a few weeks, but the beets are not quite ready yet.

Spinach and lettuce

beets

And, of course, there are the two month old freshly planted onion and shallot seedlings. These have rows of carrot and radish seeds between them that have not yet sprouted.

That's it for what's in the ground. Here's what I've got on my potting table - they are all a month old now:

swiss chard, lettuce, and beets

white bunching onions, celery, leeks, and chives

shallots, red onions, onions, leeks

broccoli, napa cabbage, cabbage

All of these seedlings will be planted in the ground in the next few days, except the onions and shallots - they still have another month to mature. Carrot and radish seeds have been planted directly in the ground and I'll start another round of beet and lettuce seeds this month too. And I just realized I need to order some garlic to get into the ground right away!

Here's what you should be starting from seed this month: broccoli, cabbage, bok choi, lettuce, swiss chard, beets, radishes, leeks, onions, garlic bulbs, carrots, arugula, fava beans, kale, mustard, peas, and spinach. Plant some seeds today!

Garden to Table: Vegetable Stew

2010-10-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I'll follow a recipe to the letter. Other times, I just wing it. Often, when I don't have a plan for dinner, I'll walk through the garden and just start picking and see what I come up with. This is my basic vegetable stew recipe for using up garden vegetables, and adding grains and beans from the pantry. It's one of those "pick and choose" recipes.

Ingredients:

vegetables (whatever is in season from your garden, CSA box, or in your fridge)
grains (rice, quinoa, barley...)
beans (black beans, chickpeas, cannellini beans...)
spices (fresh, dried)
water or vegetable stock

Here's what I ended up with the other night:

Vegetables from the garden:

3 celery stalks
1 sweet orange bell pepper
1 jalapeno
a handful of spinach leaves
3 large swiss chard leaves
20 little yellow pear tomatoes

From the pantry:

1 onion
2 cups of cooked black beans
1/2 cup uncooked quinoa
1 tsp smoked paprika
4 cups of vegetable stock

First, wash and chop all your vegetables, saving the scraps to feed to the chickens later. Then heat some olive oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat.

Saute your firm vegetables in the olive oil for about 10 minutes. This would be your onions, celery, carrots, and swiss chard stems. I only had onions, celery and chard stems on hand. Use whatever combination you have easily available.

Add the medium-firm vegetables next (bell pepper and a jalapeno pepper with the seeds) and saute another 8 minutes.

Then add in any soft vegetables (here I added the yellow tomatoes, the spinach, and the swiss chard leaves) and spices and saute for just a minute or two.

yellow pear tomatoes, spinach, swiss chard leaves

Pick whatever spices you feel like using. Choose to suit your vegetable collection and your mood. I added a teaspoon of smoked paprika to my stew, but you can give it an Italian taste with oregano and basil, or maybe you're in a curry mood. Use your favorites!

Then add your grains, your beans, and your liquid. I used 1/2 cup of rinsed and drained quinoa, 2 cups of black beans (I keep a supply of cooked beans in the freezer, you can use canned beans if you wish), and 4 cups of vegetable stock (water is ok too.)

Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes depending on which grain you used (30 minutes for quick grains like quinoa, 45 minutes for longer cooking grains like brown rice.) Add salt and pepper to taste.

colorful stew

Finish with a little freshly grated parmesan cheese or a splash of balsamic vinegar and serve with some crusty bread.

What's in your stew? Share your favorite combination!

Make Your Own Granola

2010-10-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

Making granola is a weekly occurrence in my kitchen. It's so quick and easy and makes the whole house smell delicious. Try it at least once! You may never go back to prepackaged granolas.

Ingredients:

4 cups organic rolled oats (from the bulk aisle of your grocery store, not the quick-cooking oats)
1 cup chopped nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, etc. whatever you prefer)
1/4 cup seeds (sesame, sunflower, pepitas, etc. again, your preference or leave out if you don't have any around)
1/3 cup honey (locally produced if you can get it)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.

Spread evenly into a rimmed 12"x17" cookie sheet.

Bake at 325 degrees for 25-30 minutes, stirring once halfway through. Allow to cool completely and store in an airtight container for up to a week.

Feel free to adjust measurements and ingredients as you see fit! Sometimes I add in a splash of vanilla extract, a second cup of chopped nuts, and often add dried fruit after baking. Enjoy!