Playing Catch up

It's been a busy few weeks around here, so sorry for being light on the crafty posting these days. Here's the brief, bullet point list of some of what's been going on...

- I finished knitting and blocking my Hela cardigan. I tried it on for kicks and nearly died of heat stroke. The words "Get me out of this thing" may or may not have been yelled to Jon during the process. Once I pick out a zipper, I'll begin the steeking process.


- I (along with the kitties) cast on for Jon's Icelandic Sweater, Stapi, last Wednesday, but have not touched it since. He picked out the yarn colors and pattern on our trip to Toronto in March.




- Jon and I discovered the most fabulous ice cream bars! If you like Almond Joy, you'll love these So Delicious Dark Chocolate Almond Coconut Bars. Yum Yum!


- I'm a bit behind in my bee blocks, so I'm going to be busy this weekend playing catch up. If all goes well, 3 out of 5 of these will be on time!



- I'm also participating in the Doll Quilt Swap #9 this year. My partner likes bright colors and graphic designs, so it's right up my alley. I've been tossing around ideas in my head for quite a while now and hope to finish up the quilt this weekend. My quilt from round #7 was featured on Angela's favorites list on the Doll Quilt Swap blog last week. Thanks, Angela!

Fenton, MI Road Trip

My mom and I took a mini day trip up to Fenton, MI to visit Heavenly Scent Herb Farm. If you love looking at pretty flowers, gardening, or visiting cute boutiques, this is the place to go! The store is filled with herbs, fun kitchen tools, gift books, and home decor.


The greenhouse is filled with lots of basic herbs, plus a few unusual varieties thrown in for good measure.


The farm has a miniature faerie garden and has lots of supplies for creating your own faerie garden at home. Seeing this photo kind of makes me want to get into model train building, but I will never go down that road. :)


I loved this shade container garden. I think it's the first time begonias have ever looked pretty to me. There are begonias, double impatiens, ivy, maidenhair fern and one other type of fern in this container.


One part of the garden has this giant flower kaleidoscope. You can twist the kaleidoscope to see the flowers in front of it form really pretty fractured images.


I loved this area of the gardens most. The pergola and fountain look so formal, but the raised beds on either side are actually vegetable gardens. It's definitely the prettiest veggie garden I've ever seen!


Here's a picture of my favorite flower (an honor also shared with Baptisia) - Bear's Breeches.


If you're in the area, definitely stop by for lots of inspiration! They have a Summer Faire coming up at the end of August with lots of artisans, workshops and a delicious catered lunch. My mom and I will be returning to visit soon.

You can see the rest of my photos of the gardens on flickr here.

After visiting the farm, we stopped at The French Laundry for lunch. I didn't take any pictures at the restaurant, but it's a fun mix of Zingerman's Deli and a typical French Cafe and the food was delicious. They even had several vegetarian sandwiches on the menu, along with lots of soups and salads.

baking and knitting (or what not to do during a heat wave)

The first thing that comes to mind when you think heat wave is "let's bake something in a 475 degree oven," right?

I didn't think so.

After a tough first day back at work on Tuesday (emergency data recovery anyone?), Jon was in serious need of some food for the soul. I found this recipe for soft pretzels on Tuesday night, so Jon and I made a batch of pretzels to try. The recipe involves a few steps and lots of time waiting in between, but it's not too difficult if you lose your perfectionist tendencies when it comes to shaping the pretzels.


I think we'll definitely be making these again. It's another excuse for us to try out fancy mustard and we're always game for that. And next time we'll get course salt for the top.


Along with the pretzels, I also made a batch of these Spelt Walnut Dark Chocolate Chip cookies found on the blog, Food Loves Writing. These cookies are so delicious. They are thick and chewy and and the sprinkle of sea salt on top gave them just the right amount of kick.

I have been devouring the food websites Foodgawker (via Knitter in the Kitchen) and TasteSpotting. These sites show gorgeous photos of food and you click on the link to read the recipe and see more pictures (they even have a crafting companion site, Craftgawker).

And because I didn't get hot enough baking in 95 degree weather, I've been torturing myself by knitting the yoke of my Icelandic Sweater. It's so addicting to work each row of the colorwork pattern (and our basement is fairly cool in the summer), so I can deal with the temperature as long as the wool doesn't touch my arms or legs.


I have about 15 more rows to go before I get to steek this thing and turn it into a cardigan...I will keep you posted on how cutting my knitting project in half goes.

Pantry Upgrade (or Why we no longer face avalanches when opening our cupboards)

We have a pretty small kitchen in our house and right now a kitchen remodel is neither in the budget nor wise in this economy. Our cupboards were packed to the gills and we had trouble finding things or even remembering what we had in our cupboards. We'd been wracking our brains to come up with a new way to add storage to our kitchen and when I saw this post by Amber, it finally dawned on me that we could add a hutch at IKEA to this one nook in our kitchen for extra storage. Before our pantry upgrade the nook had a tiny bookshelf for our cookbooks, our pan rack and the kitties' food dishes.


After looking online at IKEA, I wasn't able to find to a hutch that we liked, so we settled on getting this Billy bookshelf. Then when we got to IKEA, we found this Hemnes bookshelf with doors and decided to go with this option instead. The Hemnes shelf was more expensive, but it's made with real wood and is versatile enough to be used in another room in our house should we ever decide to remodel the kitchen or move to a house with better kitchen storage.


Ahh...much better! Ever since finishing up this project, we've spent a wee bit too much time staring at this cabinet and smiling. :)

We culled our cookbook collection a bit to fit on the shelves (we both have a fondness for collecting new cookbooks) and the cookbooks here are books that we use frequently. As you can see, our main cooking interests are smoothies, canning, bread, japanese food, vegan/vegetarian food, and baking.

For dry pantry storage jars we used:

1. Burken lidded canisters in the large and medium size for dried beans, nuts, fruit, grains, seaweed, pasta, and sweeteners.

2. Anchor Hocking 1-Gallon Glass storage jars for white and wheat flour, rice, dry cat food and oatmeal



3. Pint and Quart Mason Jars for everything else that was too small to put into the Burken jars.

I typed printed the contents of each of the jars on paper, trimmed the tags to size and attached the tags to the jars with clear tape to label each jar. We can easily peel off a label and make a new label if we ever have to switch around the contents of the jars.

Now that we have freed up so much space in our cupboards, it's so much
easier to keep everything organized and within reach. It's exciting to
cook again because we actually have an excuse to open up the new cabinet
and pull out a jar of food to use. We definitely should have done this
sooner!

P.S. That bright green binder on the bottom shelf is my organized recipe binder seen here.

reFresh: California Salad

Jon and I stumbled across this cookbook, reFresh, while we were in Toronto in March. We bought it as a souvenir of our trip and headed to the Fresh restaurant chain featured in the book for dinner.

The restaurant food was delicious and it looks like most of the dishes on the menu are included in the book, too. You can check out the menu here to get a peak of the types of dishes in the book. The book has lots of great sauce and dressing recipes too.

The cookbook has the most interesting set of salad recipes I have seen so far and this recipe, by far, is my favorite.

California Salad

Ingredients:
Spring Mix
Sliced Hearts of Palm
Sliced Avocado
Toasted Pecans
White Beans & Spinach Pesto
Marinated Tofu
Tofu Marinade
3 1/2 cups Tofu
1/2 cup Apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup Tamari
1/4 cup Water
1 1/2 TBS. Sunflower Oil
Mix and marinate a block of cubed tofu for at least 1 hour

baby shower

I've had requests left and right from family and friends to update this blog, so here goes.

I spent this past week recovering from school and crafty commitments and now I'm wondering how in the world I got everything done that I got done while I was in school. It feels really nice to come home and read a book on the couch instead of working on a project. Now I'm wondering if I'll be able to finish my list of projects to finish by the end of May. It's starting to look doubtful.

I spent most of last week throwing a baby shower for my friend, Chikage. She's expecting a baby girl in the next few weeks, so I...

...made some bibs and burp rags. The bibs are backed with white flannel and the burp rags are quilting cotton backed with chenille and are 12"x18".


...sewed a nursing cover (tutorial here)


and knitted a Berry Baby hat (ravelry link here).

For the shower, my mom decorated the cutest cake ever...

And, she also decorated these sugar cutout cookies for shower gifts. (Jon and I helped, but my mom did all of the detail work on these).


The shower turned out so well and we were able to get everything finished within 2 hours because Chikage kept everyone on track with her super fast/turbo speed gift opening.


Now we just have to wait a few more weeks to see the new baby. I can't wait!

Mediterranean Olive Bread

Here's the recipe for the delicious bread I made last weekend. I love all of the olive, sun-dried tomato and walnut bits in this bread and the olive oil makes it especially tasty.

Mediterranean Olive Bread (from The Joy of Vegan Baking)

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons ground flaxseed (equivalent of 3 eggs)
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
3/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup nondairy milk
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/3 cup chopped pitted kalamata olives
1/3 cup chopped sundried tomatoes

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease an 8 or 9-inch loaf pan
3. Whip the flaxseed and water together until thick and creamy
4. Combine the flours, baking powder, rosemary, basil and salt.
5. In a separate bowl combine the flaxseed mixture with milk and olive oil
6. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and fold until most of the dry ingredients are moistened
7. Add the walnuts, olives and sundried tomatoes and fold until combined and all of the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter will firm and sticky.
8. Place the batter into the loaf pan and spread evenly.
9. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean (40-45 minutes)
10. Let cool for about 5-10 minutes before removing from pan and placing on cooling rack.

afternoon treats

- Talking to Jon on his way to class

- catching a cat nap


- Discovering a new brand of Peanut butter (and a dairy free recipe for homemade Nutella - thanks Jodi!). I will definitely be trying the Cinnamon Raisin kind next.


- Finishing up another quilt top (in all it's wrinkly goodness) - made using this tutorial

catching up

I spent Sunday catching up on life around our house. Now our pantry is stocked, laundry is finished (and put away!), soups are stored in the freezer and my head is clear and ready for another week. It feels good to get things accomplished.


I made the most delicious loaf of Mediterranean Olive, Sun Dried Tomato and Walnut bread from The Joy of Vegan Baking. So delicious! I'll share the recipe later this week. The second favorite recipe I made was the Pickle Soup from Love Soup...so yummy!


I started working on my failed Ravelympics project again. It's coming along much better now and I hope to have it finished by this weekend.


Jon and I have been burning the candle at both ends, so it was nice to have a day to get caught up on things and relax before the start of another busy week.

Greek Pizza

My mom made us this delicious pizza a few weeks ago and I wanted to pass along the recipe. In keeping with my mom's style of cooking, it's a quick and easy recipe, but there are no measurements or exact ingredient amounts included. :)


Greek Pizza
Ingredients:
Pizza Dough
Tomato
Cucumber
Red Onion
Avocado
Kalamata Olives
Greek Dressing


Directions:
1. Divide pizza dough of your choice in half and form into a circle. Bake the dough in the oven.
2. Chop one tomato, a cucumber, and a red onion and combine.
3. Slice avocado.
4. Cut olives into thirds.
5. When the pizza dough is finished cooking, spread the vegetables on top and drizzle with Greek dressing.

on fire...literally

Jon was in a cooking mood on Saturday night, so he pulled out The Joy of Cooking and got to work preparing double-fried french fries (with potatoes and sweet potatoes). I heard him clanging around upstairs for quite a while and he yelled downstairs to say that the first batch of the fries came out great. Things were quiet for a while and then Jon yells "I need some help up here."

Next time I'll know that when Jon says "I need some help up here," he really means, "FIRE!" How sweet of him to spare my nerves by calmly asking for help.

Jon was beating down flames from a small grease fire with a kitchen towel. He had waited until he had doused the fire with corn starch and flour and smothered the big flames before he yelled for backup...yikes!

After vacuuming, scrubbing, mopping and airing out the kitchen and the stove, Jon still wasn't ready to give up on his fry cooking adventure. He finished deep frying the french fries and made these adorable little cones to serve the fries in (aww!).

Our little snack was a delicious treat and a great reward for mad firefighting skills.

best tomato soup ever

Before you read this post, go over to the Empty Bobbin to see her newest quilt...it's absolutely stunning!

• • •

This soup recipe is almost as delicious as that quilt, so prepare yourselves! :)

I got this recipe out of the book, Veganomicon, and made it for the first time a few weeks ago. This is seriously the best tomato soup I've ever had in my life (other people agree, too) and it will make your house smell so mouthwateringly delicious!

Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Beans

Makes about 8-12 servings

Ingredients:

2 bulbs garlic

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium yellow onion (diced very small)

1 cup long-grain brown rice (I used jasmine)

2 bay leaves

2 teaspoons dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

2 teaspoons salt

fresh ground pepper

2 (28 oz) cans crushed (or diced) tomatoes

1 (15 oz) can navy beans/cannelloni beans/pinto beans

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut the tops off both of the garlic heads. Place the garlic on two small sheets of tin foil and drizzle olive oil over the top of each bulb. Wrap the bulbs in the tin foil, place on a baking sheet and roast in the oven for 45 minutes.

Saute the oil and onions in a large soup pot over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, until translucent.

Add the rice, bay leaves, thyme, marjoram, salt and pepper and cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes.

Add the crushed tomatoes. Fill each can up with water and pour into the soup mixture (56 oz of water total).

Bring to a boil and then lower heat to medium-low for about 45 minutes.

When the garlic from the oven and let cool until it is cool enough to handle. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the skin and then mash up the roasted garlic with a fork. Add the garlic to the soup when the rice is nearly tender.

When the rice is finished cooking, add the beans to the soup and heat through. Before serving, remove the bay leaves.

our exciting life...

Jon and I have been going back and forth about purchasing a breadbox (I know, the exciting things we discuss...). Shinji likes to jump up on top of the fridge and chew through our plastic bread bags, so we normally have to put our bread in the fridge (ew) or in the cupboard. When I saw this breadbox at Target last week I *almost* bought it, and once Jon and I went back to the store together, he totally wanted it, too, so we picked it up.

In honor of our new bread box and lack of bread in the house, Jon made these two really cute loaves of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day bread. It was such a nice treat to come home freshly baked bread after spending the day working at my internship.

In other carb-loaded news, we found a local pizzeria that makes three different types of vegan pizza. Since switching our diet, I've really been missing the ability to order a takeout pizza (not the actual pizza itself...cheese and I are not good friends), but just the idea of calling up a restaurant and ordering a takeout pizza. This pizza was so tasty. It was topped with pesto, walnuts, garlic, tomatoes, broccoli and red sauce and was absolutely delicious! We will definitely be ordering this again.

One other item that magically appeared in our Target cart on Friday was the Super Mario game for the Wii. While I was diligently working all weekend, my sister and Jon played Mario for hours on end. They made it to the halfway point of the game this weekend and now their seat outlines are permanently imprinted on the couch. :)