cooking and crafting

After a period where I was feeling undercreative (I don't think that's really a word is it, but you now what I mean right?) things seem to be picking up (as evidenced by actual blogging, new sweaters and so on). This makes me happy and hopeful that I can gain and maintain momentum.

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But to get to the point... I made soup. I usually make this quite often around this time of year. It's my Orange Soup (no actual oranges involved, just the colour). I cut a butternut squash in half, scoop out seeds (roast separately for snacking) and roast in the oven until cooked. I like to halve an onion to put in the cavities of the squash, some garlic cloves too, and rub with a bit of olive oil. Meanwhile also cook some red lentils in water or broth. That's basically all the ingredients, sometimes I put in some carrots too. I put the ingredients in the blender with extra broth (this time I had some made from the Thanksgiving turkey which my SIL would otherwise throw out). Heat, add seasonings (I sometimes add cider, this time I tried a glug of cider vinegar) and that's basically it. My husband is not a big fan of squash soup but he'll sometimes eat this -- the lentils make a big difference for him.

I like to eat this soup with a spoonful of salsa stirred in, and maybe a bit of grated cheese (or cheese on toast). Today I added some frozen corn kernals (I like some texture in my soup). It's also lovely with some fried up slab bacon cut into small chunks!

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My favourite thing I made yesterday though is this little book for my daughter.
Now I'm not claiming it's well made, but it's made which is the important thing. If I have a notebook anywhere in sight my daughter wants to draw/"write" in it immediately so I thought it might help keep what's in my notebooks legible if I gave her her very own notebook to draw in. She liked this idea and helped with some of the snipping of threads for sewing the pages together, and also with the gluing. I used some sheets of drawing paper for the pages and card and paper from the recycling to make the cover. I'm going to consult with the book's owner about how to decorate later!

Birthday Presents

My birthday was a week or so ago and one of my presents was Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (thanks mum). I'd been hearing of it around the internet. Having had success with the No-Knead Bread recipe, and finding that my daughter always needs my attention just when I'd trying to get something time sensitive, done this method seemed intriguing. So far I haven't been disappointed.

I'm really enjoying looking through the book and giving some of the recipes a try. I started out (as suggested) with the basic recipe (although I did sub a little wholewheat and a little barley flour in there I must admit) and ended up with a very nice loaf of bread. My daughter has been more than usually excited about having toast and marmite for breakfast recently.

I'm liking not worrying about finding something to cover my loaf while it's baking (as in the no-knead method) and the multiple variations. What I will be on the lookout for is some different containers for the dough while it's residing in the fridge since I'm currently using my large (4.5 qt) mixing bowls which aren't quite big enough for the initial rise really, and take up more room in the fridge (widthwise) than is really ideal. I'd love to find something not plastic.

My second batch of dough is from the bagel recipe (here I subbed one cup of wholewheat into the recipe and used malt extract instead of sugar). Despite some slight water logging issues a couple of times while boiling, the results have been very tasty. I may have a go at pretzels with what's left of this dough, but I definitely want to try the Bialys which sound so good (onions and poppyseeds, mmm). Next up is the oatmeal bread (I actually baked some already but haven't tasted it just yet).

Sort of related (and possibly TMI for some so stop now if you'd not into girl talk), for my daughter's second birthday (almost to the hour which I find very interesting) I got my period (as in the first one since my daughter arrived on the scene)! While I'm not so much enjoying the cramping and other less enjoyable aspects of being (presumably somewhat) fertile, I'm excited in so far as we want to have another baby sometime and this would seem to be a step in that general direction. Time to sew some cloth pads, and perhaps invest in a new thermometer I do believe.

Links for 2007-07-24 [del.icio.us]

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Nerve gas antidote made by goats

Multi Grain Rolls Recipe at Mothering.com

Wendy Cooling: I want to get every child in the country reading for pleasure - Independent

Identity theft: parents who steal from their kids - ParentDish
Well this is horrible to contemplate; sabotaging your own child's life.

The peace of paper » Little Boxes
A tutorial for making a cute little gift box.

Medical Imaging News Articles | Cholesterol-lowering diet can modify fetal Doppler velocimetry in mid-pregnancy | Radiology News

Links for 2007-07-23 [del.icio.us]

Everlasting Bagstopper - Knitty: Spring 2007

Baklava Loaf | Baking Bites

Parent's survival guide: How to entertain a brood of bored kids during the summer holidays - Independent

Jemima Lewis: You can't beat a traditional liberal education - Independent
"I am seized with jealousy of my husband, who had the closest thing to an old- fashioned liberal education that money can buy. He learnt Latin and Greek at eight, speaks fluent French, knows the Old Testament backwards and can still recite the Periodic Table. Life skills come easily to him because the basics are already there: if you can do Latin grammar, you can learn new languages in a jiffy; if you understand physics, you can (and will) wire up a digital surround-sound home entertainment system."

Andrew Franklin: The real reason why publishers miss good books - Independent

Jemima Lewis: We've created a genealogical nightmare - Independent

MOO | Stickers - Print stickers using your images
seen at howaboutorange

Sock it to me!
"[Mezzodiva] decided to self-publish [her] Campanula sock pattern (...) and offer it here for a nominal charge: To get the pattern, all you have to do is CLICK HERE and SPONSOR [HER] for the 2007 Weekend to End Breast Cancer."

nonaKnits: Sidewinders: The Prologue
links at end of each post to the next until you've knit yourself a sock, sideways!

Apron/Sunbonnet Combination - April 2001 Free Monthly Project
Saw an example of this pattern made up at flickr it's an intriguing idea; a garment that can be worn as an apron or a bonnet!

Links for 2007-07-19 [del.icio.us]

• No-Knead Bread - OregonLive.com
  I made some of the no-knead bread after it was in the NYTimes a while back and the second batch came out really nicely and I've been meaning to make more. It's a great way to make bread for someone like me who doesn't have much time to bake, but plenty of time to let things hang around to mature for a day! And I'm entering a bread baking phase at the moment.
• BBC NEWS | UK | Education | The dead parrot curriculum
• Guardian Unlimited | A precious provision
  "We were unlucky in the tragic hand dealt to our son, but blessed to have had British healthcare "
  This article resonated with me. It made me remember after my first daughter died at birth (I had a 40% placental abruption at 23 weeks) getting the hospital bill for the delivery and the autopsy and everything: Obviously those people who took care of us and our baby and were doing there jobs so well deserve to be paid, but (especially as someone who grew up in the UK and still hasn't got used to the way it works in the USA) it seems unthinkable that I should have to look at a bill for that when my baby just died. And thankfully we have good health insurance, but what if we didn't? In the midst of that experience or some other unexpected turn your life upside-down event I think people should be able to focus on the very real things happening in their lives and not have to worry about what their insurance will cover, and how to afford the rest. The money wasn't really a headache for us in our situation, but it could have been, and it certainly made me think.
  
• Knitty: Spring 2007 - Clessidra Stockings
  I think my mum would love these, she likes nice long socks. The question is should I just send her the link to the pattern or should I attempt to make her some for Christmas?
• Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less - New York Times
• Warming Report Warns of Increased Flooding - New York Times
• Dewey? At This Library With a Very Different Outlook, They Don’t - New York Times
• V-Neck Hippie Dress w/ 6 Strips - theElektron
  found via :Craft
• Top 7 Tutorials for Making Your Own Shopping Tote
  found via :Craft
• Tickle Turdle Wool Wrap Pattern
  I've been knitting wool soakers for my daughter since before she was actually here to wear them but I've never tried to crochet one. I'm definitely much more of a knitter, but I do crochet sometimes and I hear the crochet soakers make up faster and may be a bit denser too. (Of course I should also work on my ripple blanket again one of these days.)

Thrifting Thursday

I actually went to the thrift store yesterday after visiting the farmers market. I had thought I'd just run down to the market and home because the baby was due for a nap but she was not about to fall asleep (too much to look at I guess) so I also went to the pharmacy (insulin for husband), bakery (a treat for me, and a loaf of honey walnut bread), the thrift store and the co-op.

Daughter seems to have abandoned her usual napping the last couple of days. Don't know whether it's the developmental leaps she's working on, or some new teeth or just perversity of nature (entirely likely looking at her parents) but we're both exhausted by the end of the day. Speaking of which I should make this quick and close down the computer and the kitchen and get to bed so that I can get some sleep!

First though, here are my thrift store finds this week. The top two pieces of fabric are poly/cotton sheets. The bottom piece is some cotton, it's the sort of weight that makes me think of tea towels. I'm wondering whether to make an apron with it. Perhaps I could use some for a panel in a new mai tei. I think my daughter's favourite is the top fabric with the big flowers. She's always had a thing about floral prints come to think of it.

I haven't really looked at the book yet, the front caught my fancy, and it was only a dollar so I thought why not. I'm not really very good at coming up with coherent ideas about design so maybe it'll give me useful things to think about (if I ever have time to read it!).

Also from the thrift store -- a grey silk skirt marked down to $2:25! I think maybe someone washed it and it shrank a little since the lining is longer than the skirt, but that's easy enough to fix and it fits me. No picture though because the room with the full length mirror is where my daughter naps currently, and it's proving hard to get a picture of myself when she's not napping.

I'll leave you with a picture of the pretty chives and mint "fresh from the farmers market." See the icon? It's from A Veggie Venture blog -- the idea is "to encourage all of us to seek out fresh produce from our hometown farmers markets". What a nice idea. Click on the icon to go straight to the post about Blush the Sweet Tomato which I came to via Everybody Likes Sandwiches who designed it.

The lady gave me the chives for free because she was so pleased I wanted them -- apparently not many people had been buying them and they're so pretty even if you don't know how to use them for food! I chopped some up and put them in with the pasta sauce at dinner, but I'm enjoying having them around for decoration and scent too as I catch the mint wafting by me. Now if I could just remember why I was looking for mint at the farmers market... I also got a big bunch of rhubarb (more on rhubarb another time) and some mesclun greens that we had for dinner tonight in another incarnation of that warm salad I made the other day.

A Nice Day...

after a crummy night. Last night our daughter went to bed just fine and she and her daddy slept for about an hour while I messed around on the computer. She woke up needing to pee around 1am and didn't go back to sleep until at least 3:30. I don't know whether it had anything to do with having two big long naps during the day (usually one of them at least is short), or maybe it's more to do with her having just figured out that she can flip herself over and go crawling around the bed and that's just too interesting to agree to lying down and closing her eyes. She wouldn't even nurse to sleep. Uggh. And we had to get up in the morning.

Still we did manage to drag ourselves out of bed in the morning and get out the door in time to see the cow parade. The lovely MissM went in costume as we happen to have a set of cow themed sleepers courtesy of my mother (my brother works with cows and she's got a little obsessed). The weather was warm and humid and I have a red nose and forehead now because I forgot sunscreen. Our daughter also has a sightly red nose but I did at least have a sunbonnet for her, and she was getting hot and sleepy so her daddy took her into the shade later in the parade.

After the procession was over we went down to check out the rest of the party. We saw a sheep being sheared (which came with an interesting talk about the history of shearing and commentary on how it's done). Our baby girl was more interested in making friends with the sheepdog and playing with her balloon.

We had lunch from one of the local food stands (I had sweet Italian sausage, my husband had ham and cheddar sandwich and our friends had tasty looking pizza which I opted away from because we ate pizza last night). We didn't spend much time looking at the craft and other stalls but I did get something to store all the bananas we have these days. I've been thinking of getting one for a while (so that I can keep the bananas separate from the other fruit) and happened to spot this, at three dollars it seemed like a good deal.

We also stopped by the library for the end of the friends of the library annual book sale. Here's what we came home with. Mostly me. My husband picked up the book on tape (for his long commute) and the history book. I picked up "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" which we both read a while back and knew that we would both read again so why not pick up a copy to own.

My favourite find is probably the little children's book called "A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You" -- I love the illustrations. It's coming adrift at the binding a bit, but I couldn't believe no-one had picked this up.