Look at me! I'm QUILTING!

First the quilt, then the story!



You can't see the fabric well, but the green has large leaf patterns, the yellow has tiny leaf and vine patterns.



It isn’t very often that I embark on a completely new adventure, but when I do, I dive in head first! This is my journey into quilting, a road that I hope will be long and satisfying. I will TRY to keep up with other projects, but I fear, dear friends, that this will likely become more of a quilting blog over the next year. It’s that serious! I am in love!

About a year ago, I went to the fabric store and saw a special quilting kit that was a farm scene made up of tiny long triangles of fabric which results in shading in the proper places (think taking a photograph on a sunny day and trying to reproduce it using nothing but fabric, but in triangle mosaic!). It was beautiful, and I came so close to buying it, but I think I thought it was expensive at the time (compared to other kits I’ve come across recently, it was dirt cheap!).

Several months ago, the Jones Creek Library had a quilt show and display. I had seen a small quilt in the same style as the kit at the fabric store, but there was only the one of its kind amongst those displayed. It turns out that this is the same person who designed the farm scene quilt kit. I was inspired to look through some quilting books to see if this technique had a specific name, but alas, no luck. However, in looking through the books, I became inspired to make a quilt based on one of my favorite book series. I won’t mention which one, because I have looked and NOT seen anything like it online, so I’ll keep it under wraps until I am ready to design and create it (probably with a little advice from one or two people)!

At this point, Halloween is coming up, and I start to form decorating ideas and collecting items to accomplish my vision. I got the idea to make “witch jars” from an email sent to me by a friend several years ago. I was going to turn my mantle into this crazy jar display! One problem…my walls are blue! Works REALLY well with my Christmas decorations, but not so much with Halloween. That’s when I came up with the idea to create a creepy “window” to hide the blue, as though the mantle was an actual shelf in a potion shop or a witch’s house. I had thought of making it with paper, but then I had seen the quilts at the library, looked at the triangle mosaic (that is what I am calling it from now on, whether it is correct or not), and got the idea to quilt the “window” instead! I even went so far as to buy the PERFECT fabric for some decrepit-looking shutters. But I had so much else to do that I resigned myself to admitting it would be next year at least before I could learn enough to make it the way I picture it. So to the back burner it went!

THEN a friend of mine posted that she was thinking of joining a quilting bee! PERFECT opportunity! So she sends me the information, and it turns out to be…the library people! I look into joining myself, but it turns out it isn’t the right kind of club for me, for various reasons (lack of experience on my part being one, the fact that the meetings are more about showing projects than learning being another big one), nor is it for my friend, as she didn’t join either. So we band together and form our OWN quilting bee, currently of only two! But it works.

My first quilting challenge was to find a pattern that would give me experience, use a minimum amount of supplies (in case I ended up not liking quilting after all). Unfortunately, most of the quilts in the books are either very much not my style or have a MINIMUM of 5 fabric colors! I needed something that would be relatively easy and relatively cheap. Luckily I came across a pattern posted on the library people’s blog, and it looked easy and had only 2 colors. Perfect! I had one color already, I just needed a second. I wasn’t terribly excited about this pattern, but for a first quilt, it was the learning experience I needed it to be, and it was alright to make mistakes since there just wasn’t going to be the emotional investment in it that I planned for others. Here is the pattern I used: http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/feathered-star-productions-inc/Web01.pdf.

So here are my lessons learned. 1. Unless you have a rotary cutter and accompanying cutting mat, it is better to fold your fabric lengthwise until it is a relatively short width, then MARK it, and use the line as a cutting guide (I was using the straight edge of a table, and my strips looked quite wavy in places). 2. Invest in a special clear quilter’s ruler that is well marked (mine is in 1/16^th inch increments); even ones for only $5 make a WORLD of difference! 3. Colored chalk works WAY better than fabric-marking pencils and are so much cheaper (this is a tip directly from my quilting partner, which I chose to ignore the first time she suggested it; ignoring it turned out to be a ”costly” mistake, as I bought a $3 pencil that doesn’t even show up on my fabrics!). The chalk may not be as accurate (no sharp little points), but it is close enough, and compensating is easy enough. 4. If you are using a sewing machine, your fabric edges better be STRAIGHT! 5. And lastly, if one square seems smaller than the others, just cut a new square rather than cutting down all the others to make them match the one! That’s just plain lazy! However, lack of emotional investment made this excusable THIS time, but never again!

The end result of this project is that I ended up with something that, despite all my protests of this “lacking any emotional investment,” I ended up really liking and am very proud of! I also know what to expect with other quilting projects, how to avoid mistakes, and that quilting is something that is likely to be an enduring passion for me. I have since looked up patterns and pictures, and in one afternoon, I found at least 50 quilts that I would like to make, some of them not even for myself! This will be a very fun adventure!

Haunted House of Horrors

"Don't be ridiculous. Martha Stewart isn't a demon. She's a witch. Nobody could do that much decoupage without calling on the powers of darkness." – Anya, “Wrecked,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Six

I may not have been blogging lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been super busy with crafting! Also, I’ve been a bit lazy. Life-long habit of mine! ;-)  Since last time I’ve blogged, I have learned how to quilt, joined a quilting group, started up a yarn crafts group (crochet and knitting), started up a social dinner group with a very specific group of friends from our college days, collected bottles and papier mache materials for next year’s Halloween decorations (and hopefully a HUGE party), and baked and decorated two birthday cakes, two Halloween cakes, and planning baby shower and wedding cakes, as well as sampler cakes! Whew! I also had a SUPER FUN craft night with a friend who wanted to make a fall wreath (all I did was fix mine, which was falling apart). Hers turned out TOTALLY amazing, and as usual, I am so jealous! She even cooked for me! Yummy, amazing fish tacos and fish tortilla soup! Thanks for indulging me on that one! ;-) If I’d had a normal stomach, I’d have wolfed down so much of that stuff she’d have thought I was nuts!

So now that Halloween has come and gone, here is an update of Halloween-specific crafts I’ve been up to.

So I step into Hobby Lobby one day, and I saw a Martha Stewart Halloween magazine-book, so naturally I HAD to look through it. I immediately saw two decorating projects that would be relatively cheap, easy, and quick that I could do THIS YEAR!

The first was to make spider egg sacks. This involved wrapping batting (in my case, polyester fiber filling) around an egg shape (Martha used Styrofoam, I used paper mache eggs because they were cheaper), then stuffing the whole thing down into the toe of a white stocking, then adding spiders on the inside, and hot gluing a few in place on the outside. Each one is hung up in an appropriately creepy place.

The second project, which I also found on her website as well as her book, involved cutting black plastic garbage bags (the large ones) into strips (still attached at the fused end), and then stretching sections of them at 2 inch intervals to make alternating wide and thin sections. This created a nifty spooky effect, and the strips flow in even the slightest breeze, making it even BETTER! I think her instructions say to cut the bags so they are a single layer, but I left mine so that I had a double layer of strips, since I used the cheap Dollar Tree bags. I’d recommend investing in the name brand heavy duty kind, though. The cheap ones tore frequently.

I hung both of these projects on the overhang above my door, and with the Glitter Skull Wreath I made, it looked like a pretty cool scene!

And here is the result of that bit of crafting fun:



Creepy Curtain Doorway




Egg Sacks!



I also found some cheap (very cheap K) “cemetery” fence, and since I had some Dollar Tree Styrofoam tombstones from last year, I made a small cemetery, and hung a small lantern (a garage sale find) with a battery-operated tea light from a plant hook I got from my mom, and the effect was very cute!

Then there are the cakes! I saw this idea on the Wilton website (http://www.wilton.com/idea/Halloween-Homebodies-Cake), which is a haunted house made with their Color Flow technique. I just HAD to do this for work, and when I got invited to a party where everyone brought snacks, I decided that it was just as easy to make two as it was one. After many mishaps and a HUGE learning curve (now I know why my instructor and the lesson books say to make SURE that all utensils are grease [i.e. butter and shortening] free!), I finally got all of my pieces made, some better than others (there was a point at which I was ready to give up, so my work got sloppy and rushed).

 

Templates and Supplies gathered




Fun little bats! I love these!



The Showpiece




Trees that didn't get used (had to remake them)



 





Fence posts (I was relieved when I FINALLY got them to not break!)



I’ve been trying to find a truly amazing chocolate cake recipe (I made the BEST chocolate cake one year for a friend’s birthday, but when I tried the recipe I could have SWORN I used the following year, it didn’t taste the same), and many people recommended the cakes on the Swan’s Down (cake flour) website. Many have come out great. For the work cake, I tried the “America’s Favorite Chocolate Cake” recipe, but it tasted exactly like the unsweetened cocoa I used, and was very dry. I suspect this was in part because I made 10 inch cake rounds, so I had to cook them for a long time, and the cooked parts dried out before the middle cooked fully. Even using moistening syrup didn’t work. Since I didn’t make both cakes at the same time, I decided to try a different recipe on the Swan’s Down site, the “Ultimate Chocolate Birthday Cake” recipe, which calls for less flour and incorporates sour cream. This was by far a superior recipe and was not even the slightest dry! “America’s Favorite” is NOT mine!

The reaction at work was astonishing, and that is understating it. Masses of people flocked by just to look at it before I started serving it. I can’t tell you how many times I had to answer the questions, “how long did it take you to do all this,” “is all of this edible, “ and “how did you make this part?” It was nuts! I told people I’d be cutting it a 9:00, and there was a line when 9:00 rolled around! A 10 inch round cake is supposed to serve 48 people. I’m not sure how many people came for cake, but it was DEMOLISHED in under ten minutes. GONE! People who waited too long were picking up crumbs off the board and scraping stuff off of the serving knife! It was crazy, scary and AWESOME all at the same time! I never felt so flattered! And overwhelmed. And frightened. Fortunately, there weren’t even close to that many people at the party, so I was spared the magnitude of the work scene, but people were no less amazed, and honestly, so was I! Every once in a while, I amaze even myself! J

There were times when it was very frustrating with all the breakages and mistakes, plus I kept running out of single ingredients and ended up making trips to the store for EACH individual one, but once things fell into place, it was fun, and I remembered why I used to love making cakes, and why Albertson’s was NOT the place to ply my trade (lack of creativity).

The cake I brought to work



Me with my cake!



I brought this cake to the party. It had patched together pieces, but I like this one better both for the way it looked and how it tasted.



And here are some random sandwich cookies that I made. They were REALLY good!



Made these with a special cookie cutter. Too cute and very fun!



I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween! I can’t wait until next year!

And here are the results for you to judge for yourself:

Yep, I can now make SUSHI!

This past Saturday turned out to be a really exciting day for me, what I call a “SQUEE” day, because in my joy, I tend to make squee-like sounds. I stopped by Hobby Lobby to get the last of the required materials for my planned Halloween decorations, and ended up finding a substitute that saved me money. My last stop that day was Hancock Fabrics to buy a couple of yards of material for my new crafting venture, quilting (this should be fun!). But the stop in between made me the happiest by far!

Vinh Phat Grogery. What a place! A friend of mine actually told me about it one day while we were having dinner at a Filipino restaurant (which unfortunately didn’t last too long and is no longer there). Needless to say, I owe this woman more than she can imagine! Walking into the store for the first time was quite overwhelming, to say the least. The aisles aren’t too narrow, but in many, not only are the shelves PACKED with things, right on top of each other, but there are also boxes on the floor holding even MORE merchandise! Add in the fact that the predominant language on the labels is mostly Asian, and a person who can’t even claim to have a second language (even though I took French for a total of 4 years in high school and college) can get lost pretty quickly. But after browsing, you can learn fairly quickly where things generally are, which makes shopping a bit easier. You also have to take time to actually look and read labels, but those moments can produces some true gems!

One such example was the previous visit to Vinh Phat, when I was looking at the stuff in the freezer and found masago, or flying fish roe, something that I LOVE to have on my sushi! But sometimes my brain doesn’t function, so I simply thought oh, how cool, and walked off. K About a month or so ago, a friend of mine and I went out to look for Halloween decorations, and we stopped by Target so that I could look for a now impossible to find popcorn (if anyone ever sees a box of Orville Redenbacher POUR OVER Cheddar, PLEASE call me immediately! But it HAS to be POUR OVER!). It was lunch time, and Target’s sushi has always been fairly decent, so I picked some up for lunch. Somehow this started my sushi addiction all over again, but all I really want now are rolls, not my usual sashimi. One of my favorites is Inari (or “brown bag”) sushi, which isn’t fish at all, but is actually a sweet fried soy bag or pocket, stuffed with rice. So I buy the pack of sushi that contains the Inari and some snow crab rolls. One of my brain synapses fired, and this lead me to a classic I wonder if I can make that moment. So I hit the internet, but no luck on finding a recipe of HOW to make the bags, only how to prepare them. My brain STILL isn’t quite functional at this point, but I DO remember that a friend sent me a link to an Asian grocery site, so I start pricing things, including a sushi mat to make actual rolls. THEN it hit me! Vinh Phat! Besides food, they also have dishes, pots, pans, decorations, utensils for eating and cooking, little Buddha statues, incense. You name it, they probably have it! So I cross my fingers and plan a trip.

Which brings me to Saturday. I look up and down through their kitchen ware, I find bamboo chopsticks that are about 200 pairs for $1.50, I KID YOU NOT (well, I can’t estimate numbers very well, so it may have only been 100, but it was a LOT), I find the most adorable blue fish-shaped plate that WILL be mine one day, sushi sets, tea sets, EVERYTHING, but no sushi mats after 30 minutes of extensive searching. So I resign myself to simply buy whichever ingredients I can, and I would just buy the mat and Inari bags online. Then I find Inari bags, already prepared (minus the rice) in a can! Okay, that’s nice. So then I am picking out my nori (the seaweed sheets), and I look over to find…the sushi mats at the end of the aisle! SQUEE! NOW I am in business. So I buy my pickled ginger, I HAPPEN to find the red picked radish that I like (usually it is yellow), so that’s another squee moment, then finally I go to grab a container of masago. But as I take a closer look to see if I can find anything new and interesting, I see…SESAME BALLS! SUPER SQUEE! These are the reason why I go to Great Wall! They are sweet bean paste inside a dough made of rice flour, rolled in sesame seeds, then fried up, and they are SO YUMMY! So naturally, I buy a bag. With plans on stopping by Fresh Pickins for avocado and cucumber, and Walmart for artificial crab, I am all set to recreate my delicious sushi box, with the added bonus of desert!

I have tried to make sushi rolls before, but apparently I didn’t have the correct recipe for the rice, and I also didn't have the right equipment (the mat) or seaweed. So I cooked the last of my calrose rice, followed the directions from various sites, and just went to town!



The makings of a snowcrab roll and Inari sushi



I had a large bag of sesame seeds at home, but you always see the black ones mixed in for sushi, so I bought some black sesame, and made my own mix. I had wasabi powder (that’s its original form according to a friend of mine) at home and mixed my own, but I am going to stick to the prepared paste now that I found it; mine still had that dehydrated taste, even after sitting for a while. With all my ingredients and equipment on hand, I rolled (and stuffed)!



Yes, I know my plate is small and over stuffed. I need a proper plate. That fish-shaped one would be nice! ;)



The final result was actually BETTER than I imagined! The taste was AMAZING! My rolling technique could be a little tighter, but I will get better with time. The best part is that I can make up a fresh roll at almost any time! I don’t like sushi that’s been sitting in the refrigerator overnight because the rice becomes hard, and it drastically reduces the palatability of sushi for me (somehow the grocery store cooler doesn’t do this to the rice). But if you reheat the rice in the microwave and THEN make a roll, it is just as good as when it was made with rice freshly cooked.

I haven’t been able to make other types yet because I ran out of rice, and I don’t know where I can find sushi-grade fish, but I DO know where I can find smoked salmon, so next paycheck will see some Philadelphia rolls! I still have a few shrimp in my freezer, so I may try my hand at Crunchy roll some day soon as well. If I can ever get a blender and NOT break it the first time I use it, I will try to make a ginger dressing sauce like they have at Koto’s, and then I will try to recreate their Bomb roll, which is really good, but is fully cooked since they tempura fry it (in other words, I don't have to worry about sushi-grade raw fish). I can’t wait! So if you don’t mind the not-so-fishy and artificial crab rolls, let me know, come on over, and we can ROLL with it however you want! Maybe I can even convince you to watch Memoirs of a Geisha with me for the umpteenth gazillion time! I certainly have enough green tea!

A Start to my FABULOUS Halloween: Glitter Skull Wreath!

A quick aside before I get down to it: I want to thank my dear friend, Emily, for designing the title for my blog! I spoke to her about my ideas, and she took it and turned it into something fabulous for me! Thanks Emily! I owe you either a batch of cookies or a pan of my famous manicotti!

Now, onto my first REAL project. ;)

Last year, as I was looking through a vast number of decorating emails, websites, and library books for Halloween decoration ideas, I came across a really neat wreath made with skulls, and I just HAD to make one for myself. Also last year, I stopped by the Dollar Tree and found the remnants of two glitter-covered Styrofoam skulls, and by remnants, I mean these two were pretty much in pieces or with huge dents…not usable. Somewhere along the line, I think I may have either imagined this wreath, or gotten ideas mixed up with each other, or perhaps I just forgot where I saw this project. But here is what I will SWEAR until I am in my grave that I saw/read: there were definitely glitter skulls on the wreath in the picture; the skulls were bunched together in groups of three; the instructions specifically said “spray paint large magnolia leaves with black spray paint.” Glitter skulls, I can admit it is possible it got mixed up in my new obsession to find glitter skulls last year (never did until this year), and I tend to group as much as I can in multiples of three, so my mild ocd may have been to blame for that part to creep in there, but I can’t think of ANY reason to imagine magnolia leaves! I mean, I just don’t really think about them. I had thought that I saved the email from whence this project originated, but when I went to look for it again, this is what I got: http://www.hgtv.com/holidays-occasions/halloween-skull-wreath/index.html.

However, I was determined to make it my own way! Thus starts the adventure. A classic “I can make that” situation.

Construction Zone:

For the base, I started out with a grape vine wreath purchased at Hobby Lobby when they were on sale for half-off. I’d been having this wreath for well over a year with plans for it to go into this very project. I spray painted it front and back with matte black spray paint. To give it an extra “creepy” look, but mostly because I thought it looked really cool, I added some artificial webbing.

Because the name of the game for me is to make things in as inexpensive a manner as possible, I purchased silk foliage and flowers from Dollar Tree. Just out of curiosity, why are they called “silk” flowers when clearly they are made out of plastic? The stems were cut from the bunch using wire cutters, and these, too, were spray painted black. I found a bunch of anthurium, or flamingo, flowers (I admit I had to look that up!), and I seem to remember seeing them in funeral flower arrangements before, so I thought it would be highly appropriate for this project! Besides, it kind of looks like it has a finger in the middle anyway.

I kind of liked the funeral wreath idea, so I decided to run with it by using a very large floral bow. It took me several tries to get it to look alright. Floral bows were never my forte. So I mentally marked out where the bow would go, and hot glued the foliage and flowers in place, starting with the large leaves, then the ivy, and lastly, the anthuriums.

I found some extra black tulle I had stashed away, and cannibalized a purple tulle “fairy skirt” I bought on eBay years ago before I started making my own stuff (the skirt looked pretty stupid when I got it, but picking out the stitches was actually fun!).so I folded the black tulle around the purple tulle and tied it periodically down the length of the fabric with clear fishing line. I then secured the tulle to the wreath with floral wire and bunched up the resulting poufs.

The skulls came next! I honestly didn’t know how hot gluing would work on top of tulle, but let me tell you, those things are NOT coming off without serious damage to the finish!

Then I attached matte black glass bulbs and the coolest purple shatterproof bulbs I have seen! The instructions actually say to use black and orange, but I had my misgivings about the orange on this wreath. Luckily, the first Hobby Lobby I went to had every single black ornament on the TOP two shelves, and the shiny orange ornaments were likewise out of reach. I kept walking around in circles hoping I overlooked something so that I wouldn’t have to wait on an employee to bring a ladder. I accidently turned down the wrong aisle, and there they were! They looked very Halloween-like, and I couldn’t resist! It felt like fate! So orange was OUT, purple was in! Before I put these on the wreath, I hot-glued the crowns to the ornaments, because I thought I’d be attaching them with more floral wire. The dangled too much if I used wire, so they ended up being hot glued into place, making that work quite unnecessary.

For the final steps, I attached the bow with floral ribbon, added a little extra artificial webbing (that stuff sticks to ANYTHING!), then added a wire for hanging (yeah should have done that FIRST), and up it went on my door! Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t do the reality justice. I am NOT a photographer! Except for the ribbon tail (which I may remove and add a longer one), for once a project turned out as good as or better than I had first imagined! Usually my execution doesn’t result in my original vision, but this time, I couldn’t have asked for better! I am thinking of using a black light in my outside fixture, since I have other decorations going up that would certainly benefit from the effect, and it might bring out the white skull and webbing better.

So in conclusion, for a little over $27, I got something AMAZING that would normally have cost well over $70 to buy it already made. What a bargain! I am pleased! If this blog had a kudos option, I’d give myself a whole mess of them!

Quiche and Comfort Food

When most people think of comfort food, they think of home cooked meals from mom, dad, or grandma. Not me! I am certain that there were other things my mother cooked (like crawfish etouffee for xmas eve, boiled crawfish or roasted pig for easter, and the occasional gumbo during the winter season), but ask me if I can think of more than a handful of dishes other than rice and gravy (what people from other regions would call smothered, as the version I know is a flourless, onion-based “gravy”) that anyone in my family has ever cooked, and I would have to answer with an emphatic “no.” I feel like I’ve eaten the same meal every night of my first 18 years of life up until the time I went to college. Strangely enough, guess what we eat during family holidays and gatherings! Yeah, see above. Needless to say, I am still bored with all those types of food and will rarely cook them for myself, because I get tired of them with the first bite!

Every once in a while, my parents would take me out to eat, and I can tell you that I’ve never experienced such joys! Back then, Chinese was just so different and unique! Now I can cook it with relative ease, and some things I can reproduce as good as or better than from a take-out restaurant! Part of my process of becoming who I am as an individual had a lot to do with eating out, learning I CAN cook, and learning how to experiment with ingredients you would be very hard pressed to find anywhere in the small town in which I was raised.

Now I’m not saying I didn’t learn any cooking skills as a child. Funny story, there was one time when my sister was watching me (she’s 11 years older than I), and she was cooking dinner. She told me to help her by pealing the potatoes. I actually started crying when she fussed at me because I said I didn’t know how to use a vegetable peeler, and she didn’t believe me. The fact was I really didn’t. I learned quickly, and wouldn’t you know I took that very same vegetable peeler with me when I left home? I have tried so many other types, fancy and plain, and not a single other peeler works nearly as well as that one!

So comfort food. For me it is hard to describe, because it isn’t anything that brings back nostalgia, it isn’t anything starchy like potatoes or pasta (both of which have to be swimming in dairy product of some sort before either are even remotely palatable- would you like a little pasta with your ricotta, ma’am?), it isn’t a specific type of meat, and it isn’t anything that has been familiar to me for very long. For some reason, though, eggs can often leave me with at least some feeling of contentment. Oh, not “regular eggs” like boiled or scrambled, but when it is part of something else, they can sing. And besides, egg is used as a type of “mortar” for so many things, like crème brulee, and cheesecake! Another type of food that I like to make is pies. I LOVE pies, or I should say that I love making pies. I usually eat one slice and leave the rest for others. So why not put them together? What a wonderful idea! J

I never really tried quiche before because I was under the illusion that it was nothing more than scrambled eggs with stuff in it, much like an omelet. I’d go to La Madeline’s, and always got something else; I mean how can anyone pass up Chicken Friand?! Bliss in a pastry! But one day, I just decided to make one, and it was AMAZING! I usually try to make one-serving meals, because I really dislike left-overs (microwave-heated food usually tastes really gross to me), but I got over that inhibition easily with this pastry wonder!

But first, the CRUST! There is only ONE recipe that I will ever use, and it is this one: 2 cups flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, 2/3 cup lard or shortening, ½ cup iced water; combine dry ingredients, cut in fat until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal with a  few pea-sized pieces, add water and toss to coat, form into a ball and knead a few times until a dough is formed, divide in half and wrap each piece in plastic wrap or wax paper, allow to rest in refrigerator 30 minutes before rolling out.

I happened to find it on a website called Baking911 (a friend directed me there for cake-related recipes) before they changed it to members only and required people to log-in (not sure if it is free, because I never had reason to sign up). It was a recipe called Ultimate Apple Pie, and it included this pie crust recipe. Since I can’t link directly to their site, consider this my disclaimer that this is NOT my original recipe, it belongs to someone else. I would go back to it so often that I finally just copied it into a word document for ease of access. Lucky for me that I was being lazy and will always have it as a result! I will ALWAYS use lard in my pie crust, unless I KNOW that a vegetarian will be eating it, since I don’t know how strict their anti-animal policy is, in which case I will use regular vegetable shortening. The sugar can be left out, but even if I am making a meat pie, I always include it. This has become so easy and fool-proof for me to make that I will rarely use premade crusts any more.

For the quiche filling, this is the recipe that I improved upon, I mean improvised ;P : http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Belle-and-Chrons-Spinach-and-Mushroom-Quiche/Detail.aspx

Here is where mine differs: 1. I layer the bacon directly on the bottom of the pie crust; 2. I saut  the mushrooms (I use portabella caps sliced thin and cut to approx. 1-inch pieces) and onions (and add in a clove of freshly minced garlic because I am incapable of cooking non-dessert foods without it), then layer that on top of the bacon; 3. I layer most of my cheese (I used sliced swiss, sliced provelone, and a little shredded cheddar this time) on top of the previous layer; 4. Tonight, I used frozen spinach, which I heated until thawed, then squeezed to remove moisture, then layered as best I could over the cheese – otherwise I would just layer the fresh spinach, as I have in the past; 5. I beat the eggs with an electric mixer until foamy and the color has lightened a little (the more the eggs have been beaten, the fluffier the finished product will be), then I mix in the milk or cream and seasonings (I never measure my pepper; I just add it until I feel there are enough specks to make me happy). Here is the final result:

I really would like to try this with pancetta instead of bacon, and use fresh mozzarella , ricotta, and parmigiano-reggiano, but I was trying to figure out some way to use up the cheeses in my fridge, and came up with this idea since it was such a success previously (although then I had used only cheddar).

Et voilà! Eggs + cheese + pie crust= comfort food! C’est magnifique!

A Piggy Invasion!

Pigs, pigs, everywhere! These Finnish Spice Cookies are as delicious as they are adorable! With an army of piggies like this one, it seems like there should be a story. Hmm.

The Finnish Spice Pigs

Once upon a time, a pig farmer from Finland got angry with his widower neighbor for looking lustily at his daughter. Fearing the neighbor would ask to take her as a wife, the Finnish farmer decided to send an army of his best trained pigs to devour all of the widower’s crops so that he could claim that, without a means to support a family, he couldn’t possibly allow the match to occur, out of concern for his daughter’s happiness and well being. So the stealthy piggies snuck out into the night and consumed everything in sight, including a sizable field of herbs and spices, then slunk back to their own pen, full and content. The widower was devastated at the ruin, and the pig farmer felt very guilty for what he had done, but could not bring himself to admit it was his doing. As a secret act of atonement, the pig farmer not only gave his blessing to the marriage, but also offered half of his pig herd as part of his daughter’s dowry. The biggest and fattest pig was slaughtered and served at the wedding feast, and all in attendance marveled at how wonderfully seasoned with spices and herbs the pig was! The pig farmer’s wife, who cooked the feast, accepted the accolades with confusion, and whispered to her husband, “I don’t know what they are talking about! I don’t even have any spices. The widowers’ crops were all ruined this year, and I always got my spices from him!”

Okay, not the best story, but it was still fun to write!

So FINALLY, ‘tis the season…to MAKE & BAKE! One of my favorite things about fall is the FOOD! I love the baking, and roasting, and candy making, and… well, all of it! And don’t get me started on mulled apple cider and wassail! Yum! So this weekend, I decided to try a recipe from a giant cookie cookbook I’ve been having for years. The book showed the cookies in the shape of pigs, so naturally I HAD to have a pig shaped cookie cutter! Too cute! I had thought about doing a Julie & Julia-inspired venture, and bake my way through every single cookie in the book, but there are recipes involving coffee that I just don’t want to touch, really, and others that are more for kids to decorate, rather than for a tasty cookie. But with “over 150 cookie recipes,” I’m sure I have enough recipes to keep me occupied for quite a long time! My next planned cookie is the Fall Leaves recipe, now that I have managed to find a nice set of leaf-shaped cookie cutters! I can’t wait! And I’m still debating where this small batch of pecans will go…into a caramel pecan log, or into spiced candied nuts (they taste JUST like the ones you can get at the Renaissance Festival)!

The fall and xmas seasons just never really felt like cake was the right thing to bake (with the exception of carrot and red velvet cakes, respectively). Pies, cookies and candies, however, are a different story! So this weekend was my official kick-off of the Autumn Baking Season. Yes, I am turning it into its own season! And isn’t food always a celebration?

"Waaaaaaall-E!" "Eve." "Eeeeve-a!"

“Directive!”

I had actually thought about making an Eve when the movie Wall-e came out, and didn’t think that coming up with a pattern would be too difficult. I was right, but someone beat me to it (since, again, I procrastinated), so I figured why not use theirs? Saves me time. I had wanted to make something to hang from the rearview mirror of my car. I used to have a dragon with little chimes, but when my Jeep went caput, that was one of the things my parents didn’t recover from it. Eve kind of matches my car (I used off white because white-white just didn’t look right to me), but she turned out far larger than I would have probably made her. I also didn’t pay attention to which hook I used, just did a “this looks about right” grab. I am no expert at embroidering, although you can argue that cross stitching is a type of embroidery. However, I can testify that cross stitching has very little in common with other types of embroidery. Proficiency in one does not translate to the other! But I think I did fairly well on her eyes for a beginner. I managed to make Eve in about 2 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the exception of embroidering the eyes, because I didn’t have enough light available to me at the time.

If you are interested in making your own, here is the link to the pattern, as requested by the creator: http://sukigirl74.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-crochet-eve-from-wall-e.html.

Most of the patterns that I have used for crocheting come from the website http://www.crochetpatterncentral.com/. I have found so many fascinating things on there, and all of them completely free!

Mmm...Donut (shoud have been posted 9/12/10)

I think even Homer Simpson would be proud!

 

This project was actually one that I did specifically for my boyfriend. He LOVES donuts (and not surprisingly, the Simpson’s, too)! I don’t think it matters too much which kind it is, but his favorite is chocolate glazed. When I saw this pattern, I just KNEW I had to make one for him, and probably one for myself, as well, eventually. For some reason I ended up making him a burger first (I made us each one), and it took me quite a while to eventually come around to this project. I did the main body during the first half of a high school football game because it was BORING (I’m not into sports, just the marching band), and the rest I finished off at home fairly quickly (even though I did procrastinate about a week in the finishing).

One thing that I was really happy about was figuring out the icing drips! I started a banana split project a year or more ago that I abandoned for several reasons, one of which was because I couldn’t figure out the drips on the topping (another reason is because one of my cats stole the vanilla scoop, and I have NO idea where it could be!). The pattern I saw online was one that was for purchase only, and I wasn’t having ANY of that! Haha! I deviated from the donut pattern because I felt the drips didn’t quite look like I wanted them to as written. Granted, the perfect donut usually doesn’t have drips, but I like my projects to have character! This is also why I put some “sprinkles” on my boyfriend’s donut, even though he prefers his food without embellishments. When I made his hamburger, I left the “sesame seeds” off the bun for that reason, and since it turns out he really doesn’t mind seeds on his burger bun, there was no real reason for me to have left them off, and I just refused to fall for that again! :D Make it sparkle!

If you are interested, here is the link: http://www.crochetville.org/forum/showthread.php?t=32761.

So why crocheting?

I got involved in yarn crafting because I wanted very specific items that weren’t easily accessible at the time. Years ago, I taught myself how to knit because back then, I couldn’t find any Hogwart’s scarves online that I liked. I actually found a scarf on eBay that were squares of felt sewn together! Yipes! Can you just picture the horror?! Eventually the scarves became commonplace, and so I gave up and bought two in Slytherin colors because my knitting tended to curl under at the edges. Turns out that even though I rarely wear scarves (it IS Louisiana, and the winters usually aren’t too bad, but guess which one I DO wear), I ended up collecting a nice assortment of them, some I’ve made, others were given to me, and the rest were purchases. I did crochet one that was REALLY awesome(technically it is a shawl)! Eventually I will make my way to othe shawls and hip scarves (I eventually want to be a gypsy fortune teller for Halloween, and I just love belly dancing, anyway!).

My foray into crocheting occurred because I was being cheap, and because Renaissance Festivals can be very expensive! I wanted a snood (there are arguments on the internet that this isn’t the correct term for it; it is basically a hair net, like the one Drew Barrymore wore in Ever After), but wasn’t about to spend $15 on something that was basically just string (I have since found some online for a more reasonable price, but I’d still prefer to make my own). I couldn’t find a good pattern online (mostly just small ones for buns), and I had to learn how to crochet, anyway, so I started looking online and in books. That’s when I discovered AMIGURUMI! All the tiny animals and food was just TOO CUTE! I couldn’t resist, and I fell in love!

Crocheting turned out to be much easier for me to learn than knitting, but it could be that I already had yarn work experience. So I started making other things, and promptly forgot about the snood. When I finally did remember about it, I tried to make my own pattern (I am fairly good at doing this, now), but it turned out HUGE, so I unraveled it! I do still have issues judging how big a project will turn out. This week’s project is a perfect example. When I first started making the donut, I thought to myself that there is NO WAY something that started so mall could turn out “slightly larger than an actual donut” as the pattern indicated. Boy, was I wrong! For now, I don’t mind living by trial and error. Even if I have to unravel quite a large chunk of project, I’m quick enough now that it isn’t as big a loss as it would be with knitting.

"Let's play a game called 'Who is your daddy, and what does he do.'"

I’m not sure if it would be more appropriate to say that reading and restaurants have “ruined” my life, or vastly improved it. On the one hand, reading has made me realize that nothing in the dullness of reality could ever compare to the excitement of other worlds found in books; restaurants have made me realize that previously home-cooked meals have all been dull, lifeless, and even monotonous. Conversely, were it not for books, my life would indeed be boring, and likely unsatisfying, could I not escape from this dimension into another as a completely different person; were it not for restaurants and my quest to find ways of obtaining better tasting and more interesting food, I never would have learned that I could travel to new worlds without ever leaving my kitchen!



Either way, it should be obvious that my two primary loves in life are books and food, in no particular order. To me, they are as necessary to my life as air and water are to everyone else. They are the foundations of my life, my inspiration, my escape from drudgery, my consolation when I am down, my reward when I am up. In short, books and food are my everything. But not everything I do is books or food, although they tend to color much of what I do.


A friend encouraged me to start this blog to show off some of my many crafting talents. I call this blog “Out of the Frying Pan…Into the Fiber” because that is just what my crafting involves: fibers of various sorts and in a multitude of forms! I bet you thought this was going to be a blog about the experience of turning into a raw foods vegan! ;-) My primary medium is yarn, and I LOVE to crochet! It just so happens that much of what I crochet is…food! The particular style of crochet that I like best, called AMIGURUMI, defined by Wikipedia as “the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures.” The article goes on to explain that “amigurumi have no practical use; they are created and collected for aesthetic reasons. The pervading aesthetic of amigurumi is cuteness.” I very much agree! Just hearing people squeal with joy at seeing one of my completed projects is reason enough to make them. In addition to crocheting, I have dabbled in knitting, am proficient in cross stitching, I have been known to throw together a costume or two (sewing is often involved somewhere), and plan to further learn crafts involving fibers, such as papier maché and quilting, in the near-ish future. I have big plans, I do!


These are my tangible passions, but what about the rest of me? I grew up in a small town, and I vowed to leave as soon as I could! I never could quite understand what was so exciting about driving around town and through the Sonic parking lot, nor could I figure out HOW this was socializing, if you are in your car, and everyone else was in theirs. But that was apparently the thing to do! Very few of my high school friends actually lived in my town, so I had no cause to do something I considered idiotic. My mother refused to let me leave the state, much to my dismay, so I ended up in New Orleans at Loyola, majoring in chemistry my freshmen year, then at LSU majoring in biochemistry for the remainder of my undergraduate years. I stayed at LSU for a Master’s degree in Biological Sciences, with an emphasis on (in this order) embryology, molecular biology, and reproductive physiology. Yeah, as you can guess, that got me nowhere. I am currently working for state government (nothing related to my majors) and attempting to become certified to teach high school biology. How does this tie in? Well, I do eventually plan on crocheting various bacteria for my science class! :D It’s on my list. ;-) But I really do love biology; it fascinates me to no end, and except for plants and ecology, I never find it boring! However, when I was in high school, I didn’t like it one bit! With the exception of anything that had to do with history (ok, maybe not Dr, White’s history classes, which were kind of fun and eventually led to ANOTHER interest of mine in an indirect way – Ren Faires and SCA, if I can ever get back into it) or civics, biology was my least favorite subject. Just shows the right teacher CAN make a difference in someone’s life. What WAS my favorite subject in high school was CHORUS! I am STILL kicking myself in the ass for not taking classes in college, or at least joining an extracurricular group, all because I thought theater people were “weird.” Silly me! My mistake. I LOVE musical theater! Of all the music genres, that is my favorite (granted, I don’t like ALL musicals, just more than most regular people). My day just doesn’t seem to go right unless I can sing in my car on the way to work! I also like 80s music, 70s (but not much of what was considered rock & roll), mostly late decade (probably my siblings’ influence, since they were all about 11-15 years older than me), some 60s, and lots of singer-songwriter stuff from those times. I seem to have a particular dislike of music from the 90s and 2000s so far (with a few exceptions).


So here I am stuck in a job the won’t take me anywhere (still a LOT better than other jobs I’ve had), and my life seems to be driven quite a bit by “how cheap can I get this, and can I make it myself for cheaper?” Ultimately, this is why I learned how to cook. Eating out nearly every day quickly ran me broke! And I swear that one day my “famous last words” will be “I can make that!” Some attempts have been more successful than others.


So the ultimate purpose of this blog is to show off and share the products of my many various “I can make that” statements. I have plenty of completed projects that have collected over the years, and I will eventually get around to posting them in my gallery. My goal is to produce at least one project a week (once I get up and running), but I may post about other projects, either past or present, and I may post a cooking blog now and then (I don’t consider these projects, per se, unless I am hosting a theme dinner/party). Many will be crochet, many will be papier maché Halloween stuff, since the season is upon us! I also have a few sewing projects up my sleeve, if I can find the appropriate material! I look forward to sharing my journey with you, and I hope you enjoy following me. I love making things for friends, so if you ever have a request, PLEASE don’t hesitate! At most I may ask for cost of materials, although if you WANT to give me extra as a tip, I won't refuse. ;)