And for me, it is cleaning/laundry day. But when that is done, AC doggie and I will definitely get out into the woods. And, there will be late afternoon sewing. There are only 10 more blocks to make for the Churn Dash quilt on the design wall.
When Betsy Maislen was here some weeks back, a journey made to pick up a used sewing machine she purchased from a quilty friend here. She spent a few days with me. And there was some sewing, of course, as she tried out her new machine and began to get familar with it.
While she was here, my Simply Moderne magazine, No 28, arrived.
The cover showed a quilt designed by Wendy Sheppard and Darlene Szabo, ”Love Letters.”
Betsy fell in love with this quilt.
When she went home, she made it—and pretty quickly too.
Here’s Betsy’s ”Love Letters” quilt.
Betsy did an AWESOME job.
The quilt is meant to be a gift, so someone is going to be happy.
She is still in love with her new-to-her sewing machine.
*You can order the pattern if you like it from Simply Moderne magazine.
Family all called in during the day, and we had such nice visits. I always treasure calls from my family.
I got out my little electric mower and did the first mow. Look how pretty the grass is now.
Deeply embedded in my person is a need to bring order to chaos, by using my hands. That certainly includes spring clean-up gardening. And it includes cutting and making quilt blocks, watching a quilt grow on the design wall, and continues on until the last stitch is sewn into the binding. Cooking and chopping veggies, working puzzles, household cleaning and laundry—for me that involves bringing order and banishing chaos. I could go on…
LOL. And today, trimming AC doggies nails, cleaning his teeth, and brushing him with the Furminator tool falls into this pattern. He’s now shedding his winter coat like crazy.
Look at this amazing patch of daffodils that has naturalized over the years from one bulb.
A late summer task is going to be digging up the daffodils that line the front walkway in order to divide them. They aren’t blooming as much as they used to this year. I’ll spread the extras around the garden—probably putting a lot of them into the bed at the front of the house—on the far side of the lawn where the hill drops down.
Meanwhile, the Churn Dash quilt is growing on the design wall. I’m getting there.
And I’m thinking that I can take the off-cuts from the 3-inch strips and make a VERY scrappy Bear Paws block that finishes at 16 inches square. Here’s my trial block—which I will take apart to spread out the color. I think it will work. The side sashings are a bit wider than the block sashings—so I’m not sure I’ll have enough of that cream Cotton+Steel Dottie fabric. No worries. I’ll just make the sashings scrappy. And, horrors, I may have to use some non C+S neutrals!!
All of which means that I am close to calling it a day on this huge project to use up the Cotton+Steel stash as much as makes sense—before I just put what’s left into the regular stash.
And, the projects from this year’s The Color Collective are calling to me.
I planted daffodils in the front meadow in the fall of 2004.
There is a drainage field below the rock wall which I suspects nourishes the daffodils. There are also day-lilies just below the wall as well. Both are thriving.
I can never get a picture that makes me feel like I have captured the glory of these daffodils, which have spent the last 18 years naturalizing and spreading.
Here’s a picture taken from the road and blown up a bit to isolate the daffodils.
They are so cheerful. And, many of the ones doing the best are the ”exotic” ones, so of which look like tiny peonies as they have so many fluffy petals.
I love our long, cool spring here in Maine. Spring can be such a tease in northern New England. But the grass is lush and green now, the trees are leafing out, and I’ll have to mow now some time over the weekend.
I found a smelly rotten egg concentrated mixture I’ll mix up and spray today or tomorrow. I hope it works to deter the deer and porcupine.
Eating the rainbow at lunch today: roasted chicken and all kinds of veggies.
When I feel I’m getting full, I stop eating and put the leftovers into a bowl for my dinner meal. Sometime I just add more meat and veggies to the bowl and call it a night. Sometimes I add a tortilla heated over the flame on top of my stove—and add some butter when it is done. Sometimes I’ll also have a little dessert fruit. Mostly, I make an herbal tea, but sometimes I’ll have a coffee.
I am enjoying having my main meal in the middle of the day.
But speaking of rainbows, I just signed up for Tara Faughnan’s 10-month long Traverse Block of the Month—hosted by Sewtopia and starting in July. The project comes in two manufacturer choices (Windham Artisan Cottons or Kona cottons ) and two color ways. I chose the bright in the Windham Artisan Cottons. I love shot cottons. They have so much depth.
My experience with the ”Sugaridoo” quilt showed me it’s easy to make one row a month of a block that is fun.
Rainy days often cause for some reflection—and this day is one of those.
A friend sent me this Wendell Barry’s poem the other day—and today seems a good day to read and think about it. I had not read it in quite a few years.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
Here’s ”Pot-Pourri 3.” It went to a great-niece—so the blocks are meant to be ”girly” for this little toddler.
And remember that all the fabrics are Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society from my stash. It takes a lot of different fabrics—in a deep stash—to make a quilt like this one.
I pieced the back from bigger pieces of my Cotton+Steel stash, and isn’t it fun?
I used the pantograph ”He Loves Me” by Anne Bright—and you can see how it works in the solid deep rose ombre fabric below. I ordered a pale, pale pink thread to use.
Below, you can see some of the fabric variety.
AND, here’s ”Eye Candy 3,” which is meant for my niece’s little boy, who will arrive in mid-June. I had such fun making these Churn Dash blocks with their fussy-cut centers. And I had enough of the sashing fabric to separate the blocks.
Again, the backing is scrappy.
I used the ”Bayside” panto from Lorien Quilting and a pale jade colored thread—like a sea foam color.
Below is a close-up of some of the blocks. I will also print this picture and the close-up of the quilt above to use in the cards I make.
Winter and early spring are fading away now, so I will have less sewing time. The lawn already needs mowing and I need to organize spray as the deer and porcupines have eaten the newly emerging perennials down to the ground.
But, I made 7 baby/toddler quilts this winter—and I still have a lot of strips cut for Churn Dash blocks out of the Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star stash. So I’ve been making a bigger quilt from these blocks, with no sashing. Six rows of 10 are done. There are enough big pieces left to piece a backing. So, this project continues.
Blocks will, of course, move around. I’m liking the secondary patterns. It is VERY scrappy and VERY busy. It is also very fun to make.
Today is cleaning/laundry day. And AC doggie needs a good run. But tomorrow will be a rainy day, so maybe there will be some sewing.
I posted a video of this apple corer/peeler/slicer last November, but I’ve been using it a lot of late to make baked apple slices. It is just the coolest and funnest tool.
First you use the lever to stick the unit to the counter. Then you release the handle so you can draw it all the way back. Next, spear the apple’s center on the prongs.
Here’s a little video of how it works—note that it was clumsy to turn the crank and video the action at the same time—which caused part of the peel not to be…peeled. That doesn’t usually happen. And it is easy to just slice off that bit of peel with a sharp knife.
I cut the apple in half and then separate the slices. The core will pull off the unit easily.
The baked apple slices were and are delicious.
Next up: a new compost pail. This one is stainless steel so it won’t rust. And it is made from one piece of metal, so the joins won’t rust. The handles are really sturdy and won’t come off. And in that big top, there are TWO carbon filters: a square on in the very top, and a round one at the edge. Reviewers online say the filters last 4 months and longer.
You can see the depth of the top here.
The round filter fits into groves on the inside of the top—so it will stay put and not fall into the compost.
AND, the unit holds more than my last one, so there are fewer trips out to the compost bins back of the garage.
There are daffodils EVERYWHERE in my yard, and they are so pretty with their bright, happy flowers dancing in the spring breeze.
It started with thinking about a dessert I could give to a visiting friend that we could both eat.
Baked, whole, cored Granny Smith green apples. We both stuffed the cores with butter and maple syrup, but my friend could add dried fruit and spices if she liked. And she did.
They needed something cream after baking, so I bought a pint of Haagen Dazs vanilla as it is the ONLY ice cream in our local grocery store that isn’t full of fake ingredients and additives. It’s still…real food.
I moved on to using my apple corer that peels and slices and baking the thin slices with butter and maple syrup. Delicious.
But I’ve got a fair amount of frozen fruit in the freezer, so why not add those to the mix?
Peaches, cheeries, blueberries, and strawberries…
Delicious.
And this pan produced 4 rich desserts topped with the HD ice cream.
YOU could add spices…
Like cinnamon and/or a little nutmeg.
Or toss with sugar, which I don’t use.
Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes. I didn’t cover my pan.
Creative Cooking: Roasted Cauliflower and Garlicky Green Beans
Note: oops. I wrote this post back on April 12 and forgot to post it the next day. That would be about the time I started having issues with a crowned jaw tooth that needs either a root canal or to be pulled. I’ll try the root canal first, even though I’m so not a fan of root canals. But the tooth is the last tooth in line and provides a lot of chewing territory. Life is full of bad choices one has to make, but we make them and move on.
***
The other day I went to grill some lamb chops at noon, only to realize the propane tank was empty and had to be replaced.
Here’s what I had for lunch anyway:
I pan fried the lamb chops in my cast iron skillet and roasted a cauliflower head. Lamb has good fat it renders quickly, so no extra fat is needed in the skillet.
For the cauliflower, I started to heat the oven at about 400 degrees, and while waiting for the oven, I just sliced the cauliflower head into “steaks” about an 1/2-inch thick, put them on a flat pan (covered with parchment paper), sprinkled with salt and herb mixtures, and drizzle then with a good olive oil. I also use my convection oven feature, but you don’t have to. Convection makes the oven hotter faster. Indian spices are also really good when roasting cauliflower—I wish I could use them.
After about 10 minutes in a really hot oven, check the cauliflower to see if the bottoms are browning and turn them over. You want the pan to be hot as the beautiful browning comes from the bottom, not, so much, the top. Don’t let the bottoms burn in a hot oven.
It does not take long to cook cauliflower at high oven heats—maybe 25 minutes or less.
I order my olive oil in gallon jugs from Organic Roots—and it is absolutely delicious. Mostly I just use it to dress salads, but I did use it for this cauliflower, and it was really good. Olive oil is pretty fragile, so I never sauté with it. And a jug like this one lasts me, living alone for the most part, about a year.
Also, know that most olive oil you find in the supermarkets has been ”cut” with inferior veggie oils. You can research that for yourself, and there is plenty of information about that problem with olive oil and, also, with honey. Commercial seed oils are so not healthy for you—and you can research that problem for yourself too.
I’ve really enjoyed buying frozen packages of these organic string beans (and corn too) all winter. I just put what I want for few days in a saucepan, cover the beans with water, bring to a boil, and drain immediately. Then I have ingredients to add to a meal or to salads.
Once drained, I dress the warm beans with finely chopped garlic, herbs (dill is lovely), salt, and the Organic Roots Koroneiki olive oil. One could add other ingredients as well: chopped onion, some sweet red/orange/yellow peppers, etc. Just use what you have on hand.
In this meal pictured above, I also had already cooked some of the frozen corn (also heat just to boiling and drain) so I just combined the beans and corn.
I replaced the propane tank when it finally stopped raining. The new one is really heavy to drag up the hill to the back deck—but I managed. It’s also heavy to lift to the spot on the grill where it hangs, especially as that spot is under a permanent shelf that gets in the way. But this time, all went really well, and I grilled some hamburgers Saturday to put on my lunch (which is now my main meal of the day) salad.
Boy did those hamburgers smell good. Like, sun and summer.
I like having what I think of as ”assets” in my kitchen.
The leftover gravy from the recent lamb shanks and leeks cooked in the Instant Pot would be such an asset. And I knew I would have that leftover gravy, so I planned for it by making sure I had a package of meat to use, just as I knew I had those garlicky green beans in the refrigerator when I made the lamb shank dish in the first place.
I will often add other ingredients to assets to make new and different meals. And in this case, I made a rich and hearty soup that extended the life of the gravy. A soup is a whole new asset in and of itself.
First, I defrosted a packing of lamb stew meat—part of the whole lamb I get in the fall. I could also have used ground lamb. Or even, ground hamburger.
I chopped up some additional savory veggies (onion, carrot, celery) and sweated them out in my Creuset cast iron enamel pot—using beef tallow as my sauté fat. I added herbs and salt, of course. And when the veggies were starting to color up/carmelize a bit, I added in the meat—which cools down everything.
I cooked that mixture until the meat started to brown and most of the liquid in the pan was cooked out.
At this point, I add in the leftover gravy, more water to make the ”soup,” and a package of frozen mixed veggies I had in the freezer.
Heat the soup until it comes to a hot simmer, and it is basically done. Look at that gorgeous broth color.
I didn’t add something white (potato, cauliflower, rice) as the gravy was thickened with sprouted rice flour in the first place. But what is fun now is to add things into your bowl of soup.
In this case, I added some grated mozzarella cheese and some pasta cooked on the side before I added the soup.
If you add pasta to a big pot of soup, it cooks ”out” pretty fast—in that it dissolves into the broth—as you reheat the soup—which means you lose the ”al dente” of the pasta. Here I used a bit of rice pasta macaroni—as that is what I had on hand that also needed to be used.
And, as I don’t want soup where the whole of it has been repeatedly reheated (that’s a histamine issue, in part) I only heat what I’m going to eat for a meal. I also don’t want for soup to hang around very long (another histamine issue), so I opt to freeze portions to have in the freezer for other meals. Plus, by freezing some if needed, I don’t get tired of a big soup and can move on to other cooking/eating.
I added in some raw heavy cream for another bowl of soup. What gets added into or onto a soup is only limited by a lack of imagination. One could add bacon crumbles. Or top grated cheese with some chopped green onions. Or add different spices: like hot pepper, cumin, any of the Mexican or Indian spices. Or add in beans. Or do all of the above. You could also put the soup over a bowl of noodles or spaghetti and top with whatever goodies float your boat at the moment.
The main goal is to have rich, nourishing food that makes you feel happy when you eat it.
Louisa Enright's Blog 