Mothers of Invention

Ahhhh, relaxation.

tinamh — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Okay, here in England tomorrow is Mother’s Day! So I officially get the weekend off!

I am spending my evening with a new book and a perfect ‘cuppa’ in my fancy teacup. Tomorrow my church is providing all the ‘mums’ with a homemade breakfast. Nice, huh?

I hope to have my finished sock (yes, just one ha ha) and another scarf (yes, ANOTHER scarf-ha) to post in the next day or two. (finally stopped pulling out and restarting that darn scarf for my mom!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend

Giddy

joanna — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:44:00 +0000

When I put my sewing machine away to scrapbook I didn’t realize how much I would miss it. Today I sat at my machine to sew these pants for Ella and Sarah to wear to ballet and for pajamas and I was downright giddy. I had so much fun. I finished these in just a few hours. I used this pattern to cut them out but any pants/pajama pattern would do. I put the slits on the side and added the bow and balls at the bottom. Unbelievably cute!

I pray that all you ladies are blessed with a daughter to sew for.

On a Rope

mlindbergfl — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:13:00 +0000

Well here you go, six shoes on a rope. Okay, so it really is elastic but that is the last step, to cut and sew the elastic…. by hand no less, which I could do without but can’t seem to fit the elastic under the machine foot to make it do it for me. I don’t know why but hand sewing is just not my favorite. I think I don’t really trust it to stand up to wear and tear.

Anyway, that is where they will stay for the meantime. I probably will do it on the way to Jacksonville tomorrow… or maybe on the way to church. The baby shower isn’t till three Sunday and I have confidence in myself that I can get them done from here. Maybe I shouldn’t have as much confidence???

Crafty? Of Course.

joanna — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:22:00 +0000

I know you’re probably going, “sheesh, does Joanna do anything but cook?” I know, it sure does seem like I slave in the kitchen all day long and sometimes I do, heck, sometimes I do that barefoot AND pregnant. Hahahahaha! OK, I think I may need a nap. But look, look what’s on my sewing machine! Projects. Woohoo! Now hold your breath while you anxiously await the pictures of the final products.

Creativity in the Kitchen

Johanna — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:33:00 +0000

I am going to follow the trend of mostly kitchen posting here! Thank goodness for Meagan, who is still using her sewing machine these days! I finally used up some of that meat in my freezer. I thawed out the pork roast and made some scrumptious Barbecue Pork Sandwiches! Thank you Tina, for the idea! Even though this is a super simple supper, it was really nice and I would not have thought of it myself. For some reason, in my brain, roasts have to be eaten sliced or chunked with gravy! Because my crockpot did most of the work on this one, I made my own sandwich rolls! Homemade bread, good pork, Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce – how could you go wrong!

Last night, feeling triumphant from making this beauty from scratch, I made Chicken and Prosciutto Tortellini with Alfredo Sauce! ::grins:: Well, it sounded good, didn’t it?

Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies

joanna — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:49:00 +0000

One of my very favorite baking websites is Joy of Baking. There are so many wonderful things to bake there, and I really like that she has a special section just for high tea. A couple of years ago I found a recipe for double chocolate espresso cookies and I went back to share it with Amy at Clothesline Alley and THEY ARE GONE!!!! I almost cried. Luckily for me (and for you, too) I had already copied the recipe into a Word document and now I shall share with you (does it seem to you this happens a lot, I’m getting some serious deja vu here.) The only thing I changed about the original recipe was that she had white chocolate chips and I have 60% cacao chocolate chips. For ideas on sugar alternatives see here and here.

2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup cocoa powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder (I once used instant coffee)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened (if you use salted butter, omit the salt)
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, plus 1 large egg yolk
7 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 325°. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. (I just spray it with olive oil spray)

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda; set aside. In a small bowl, stir together espresso powder, vanilla, and a tablespoon of water; set aside.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add egg and yolk; mix until incorporated. Add espresso mixture; mix well, scraping down the sides of a bowl with a spatula. At low speed, add flour mixture in small batches, mixing until just combined. Remove bowl from mixer, and stir in chocolate chunks. (I used my food processor and it worked OK, but next time I’ll just do it by hand.)

4. Using a 2-ounce ice-cream scoop, scoop heaping balls of dough and place 3 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Bake until cookies are set, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven; let cool completely before removing cookies.

Thank you, Stephanie Jaworski from Joy of Baking, for the wonderful recipe.

A Cuisinart Kind of Day

joanna — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:19:00 +0000

Yesterday I spent the entire day in the kitchen. I made, with my Cuisinart, baby food, bread, bruschetta, sliced fresh fruit, cookies. We’ll thoroughly discuss these cookies in the next post and if you don’t make them you’ll be sorely missing out.

The most delicious cookies on the planet. Are you drooling yet?

What’s good about these thinly sliced fruits is that the kids don’t mind the skin when it’s so thin. They ate it all in about 5 minutes. The fruits are one apple, one peach and one plum.
The bruschetta. I used one tomato, 1/2 an onion, 3 cloves of garlic, fresh parsley, dried basil, kosher salt, red wine vinegar and olive oil.

As you can see, it doesn’t look the best. Because it looked sort of funny and I’m not too fond of raw onion, I cooked my bruschetta.Here it is, topped with parmesean cheese. Total cooking time was about 14 minutes. If I was to make this again, I’d not put in the onion or at least use 1/8 an onion instead of half, and I’d hand slice the tomatoes so that they were more attractive looking. These were still very good and they disappeared quickly.

I made a couple of loaves of whole wheat bread. Not the best, but it sure was fast.

I didn’t take pictures of the baby food because…it’s baby food. The food processor sure does a good job of pureeing the food. I made a peach into baby food and butternut squash. Overall, I really like it and it makes being in the kitchen even more fun than it used to be!

Baby Shoes

mlindbergfl — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:44:00 +0000

Found the instructions on Pins and Needles

Pretty material, eh??

The Pieces of the pie… er I mean shoes.

Slightly assembled.

Almost done. I think I am going to sew a little ribbon bow on the side of each of the shoes to make it more distinct which shoe goes on which foot and hopefully to make them look a little less like two of the same foot shoes. I really did cut them in reverse of each other but the shoe pattern is almost flippable (is that a word??? It is at this time of night).

I also found out how to use my sewing machine a little better… Did I mention that I LOVE my sewing machine???? I mean LOVE! Well, I learned how to do button holes the automatic way (which I need some more practice with but thankfully you can’t see them in the finished project) and that my sewing machine does serging! I love it. I can’t stand doing projects that leave a raw seam open and this machine I got for Christmas does it all!!! I don’t have to waste the counter space or storage in my tiny sewing room to be able to have the best of both worlds. It is really cool how it does it too, it works on two stitches at the same time one diagonally forward and the other diagonally backwards. I thought it was really cool! Unfortunately since it uses so much thread, I now have to go buy more before I can finish the other set of pink shoes. But what makes one feel like they actually accomplish stuff in sewing then using up the gazillion yards of thread that they sell us on a spool?!?!?!? I know I feel like I have accomplished something when I get to the end of the thread line! (especially when the majority of the thread is not in the waste basket beside me.)

I Dream of A Vegetable Garden

marie — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:48:00 +0000

Since we sold our house last Summer and plan to buy another in a year or so, I’ve been trying to keep up with the houses on the market so it’ll be easier to spot a good deal. There are a few things I really, really want. One of which is a big yarn that I can grow my own vegetables. Such as, cucumbers, artichokes, peppers, zucchini and of course, tomatoes. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and even borrowed a book from the library on vegetable gardening. This is a really good book that I’ll probably buy once I have the means to have a garden. I’ve already leaned that you can set a beer trap to catch slugs and snails. My mom plans to test it out. Also, my co-worker has Sirius radio on the computer I use to do my work and today I listened to Martha Stewart radio all day. There was a segment on planting vegetable gardens and they talked quite a bit about seed catalogs. This piqued my interest. I love catalogs! How fun would that be to browse all the different types of seeds and to learn about different varieties! I found this link to a catalog list on the Martha Stewart website. I requested seed catalogs from Seed Savers, Kitazawa Seed Company and Johnny’s Select Seeds. I can hardly wait til they get here!

Cuisin-love

joanna — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:22:00 +0000

I tend to be a bit old fashioned, in case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t have a mixer…OK, so they sent a European-plug mixer, but still, I haven’t replaced it. I mix everything by hand. I’ve even made meringue by hand. Now that’s dedication. I don’t have a blender. I mash potatoes with a fork. I knead my bread myself. Recently, I’ve julienned and shredded by hand. I figure if my ancestors didn’t need all these new fandangled devices to survive in the kitchen then I don’t either. Except for the waffle iron. So what?, you say. Exactly!

Whenever I go to a Korean restaurant I am served this delicious side dish that is Korean radish, julienned and it’s sweet. As far as I can tell it has no name and there is no recipe. I really wanted to make this stuff and as it’s not in my new Korean cookbook and I can’t find a recipe online, I was just going to fake it. But the thought of julienning two whole Korean radishes really was very daunting. They sat there and sat there and sat there. They started to get soft. Eek, I better use them, eh?

OK, so today I tried to make some baby food for Lily. Green beans. For our wedding, Del and I were given a Chopster, a teeny little food processor. I’ve only ever used it to make my famous black bean soup…OK, famous may be over stating it a bit. Infamous may be better since I did drop an entire pot full of the stuff on my parent back screened-in porch. But, I digress. So, I tried to puree the green beans in my chopster and all it did was chop it. I guess that’s why it’s called a chopster. This is when I realized that I NEED A FOOD PROCESSOR. I am beginning to be a pretty decent cook and it’s sad that I don’t have one. Forget the “my ancestors” bit, let’s get real in the kitchen!

I go to my doctor appointment and when I get home THIS is waiting for me!!! I can hardly stop using it! I can’t believe I’ve been away from my beloved Cuisinart long enough to type this out. All this to say that I used my brand spanking new food processor to shred the radishes in 1.2 seconds flat and developed this recipe for a yummy Korean radish…salad, of sorts.

Korean Sweet Pickled Radish

2 cups Korean radish, julienned or shredded

1/2 cup carrot, julienned or shredded

1 T vinegar

2 T sugar

1 t salt

2 t wine

1 T mirin

Put it all in a bowl and mix it up. It’s good almost right away, but obviously if you let it pickle a while the flavors are better. Enjoy!