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!

2010 Garden: Week 8

The garden is finally starting to fill out! We're getting lots of cucumbers, zucchini, beans and peppers these days. It's always nice to go outside to pick dinner for the evening. Jon made a delicious green pepper and onion stir fry the other night and I'm dreaming about it again for dinner tonight.


I've been a bit lazy about training the squash plants, but I was able to tie them up on Sunday and now the butternut and spaghetti squash have almost reached the top of the trellis. Next year, I will be on the lookout for vining zucchini and summer squash.

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.

2010 Garden: Week 7

The garden is in full production this week!


We've had lots of:

lettuce


beans (thanks for the tips, I did pick them right away last week)


and cucumbers! Here's how they looked 5 days ago. I think I shrieked when I first spotted this little vegetable on the vine.


Here's how they look today post-picking.

Now I need to do a bit of weeding, train some of the squash up the wooden trellis, and pull out some of the spent plants (mesclun, bok choy).

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.

remind me to never spend time sewing a cat bed

Our little kitties would much rather sleep in a ratty takeout box (our remnants of Thai food on the 4th of July - sacrilege really).

2010 Garden: Week 6

This post is a bit late, but here is the garden update from last week...


The good:
- The weeding is getting much easier these days (probably due to our summer drought right now)

- The pole beans took off. We put in taller bamboo stakes last week and the beans have grown higher than the stakes already. I am definitely growing pole beans next year! They take up so little space and yield lots of beans.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but on the left side the beans were halfway up the 4 ft trellis and on the right they are off the 6 ft poles.


- Our peppers are growing, slowly but surely! Jon and I are pepper-holics, so we planted 14 plants this year. We could eat these forever and never get tired of them (raw with hummus, on sandwiches, in salads, in stir fry, roasted, and so many other ways)


- We got our first banana pepper. I love the color of these.


- Our kale is looking so big and leafy. We made kale chips last week and they were surprisingly almost like regular potato chips. If you do make them, make sure to cook them long enough. The longer you cook them, the crispier they get.

- I finally got around to planting more seeds: 3 rows of radishes, 1 row of spring onions, 3 Swiss chard, 4 bush beans, and 1 row of mesclun. I'm trying to fill up some of the empty space in the garden.

The bad:
we lost a few plants (spinach, mustard greens, mesclun, bok choy) due to bolting. This happens every year and I never seem to find the "perfect" time to pick plants that can bolt. I'm afraid to pick them too soon because they might be too small so I end up waiting for them to grow fully and miss out on them completely.

The unknown:
Are these beans too small to pick? They are long already but super skinny.
 

The misc:
- We added two new plants to the garden last week, a nasturtium (for a spicy salad kick) and an heirloom chocolate cherry tomato. It's a little late for the tomato plant, but we had a spot open up in the garden (thank you, bolted bok choy) and added it to the mix. The tomatoes will be small, so hopefully we'll get a few by the middle of August.

The links:

- We tried roasted radishes last week (instructions seen in the NY Times here). They were so delicious! I'm hoping our new crop of radishes grows soon so we can have these again.

- Check out this gorgeous kitchen garden. I'm drooling!
- Martha Stewart has a free printable label for frozen fruits and veggies.
- have you heard about Basil Blight? I'm checking on my plants every day now.

- preserving herbs. I'm going to miss having lots of fresh herbs to choose from throughout the winter.
- a gorgeously photographed local foods recipe blog, Straight from the Farm