Click over to my new blog. I’ve been playing with my sewing machines, come see what I’ve made.
Robot Boy
This semester is so much lighter at school that I am getting back into my sewing groove. I made this yesterday for my boy.
The pattern is from the latest Ottobre Design magazine.
For years, we have been teasing Oli that he has a “skipping button” since he skips a lot. Oli decided that the green button is his real “skipping button”. We pressed it many times this morning and it does, in fact, work. I can’t wait to see what his other buttons do. Good thing I sewed each one on firmly — I predict they will all get a bit of use.
Queen Bee
I made this hat last week. This is a pattern I’ve been wanting to try for a while — it’s from one of the Stitch & Bitch books.
I love that this hat would fit a wide range of head sizes from toddler to adult. I haven’t decided what to do with this one. I knit it with someone in mind but now I want to keep it because I’m kind of crazy-obsessed with honey bees. And this may be the closest I’ll come to having a hive since my husband isn’t exactly sharing my desire for backyard bees. Maybe I’ll let it just sit for a bit on my desk while ideas of what to do with it buzz around my head.
Hot Breakfast
I know how to make a couple boys happy on a Saturday morning — make fresh cinnamon rolls!
These were made with brioche dough. The recipe is from one of my favorite baking books — Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. When I first got my mitts on this book (from the library), I quickly memorized the basic boule recipe and have made it almost weekly. It is so good that bread is now my “assignment” for family gatherings because this bread is way better than any you can buy. I tried a few other recipes, like this brioche. After checking this book out of the library for maybe the 8th time, I decided this books makes my very select cut of cookbooks and bought a copy. Now it sits on my kitchen counter, beckoning to me to bake more bread.
So what’s a girl to do? Back to the kitchen I go!
Little Critters
Mojo needed new mittens. We were trolling through mitten patterns on Ravelry (my favorite knitting site) when we both saw these and squealed! Unfortunately, the pattern is only in Finnish. Fortunately, I know how to make mittens so I improvised.
Now, Mojo has happy, fluffy friends to go to school with her. And I sense a hedgehog obsession coming on. Good thing I have lots of yarn left over.
Freezer Cooking
I love to cook but doing it every day gets old. One way I manage to put meals on the table without burning out in the kitchen is by bulk cooking. An example is this — I bought 10lbs of chicken legs on sale this past week for 59cents/lb. That’s a good deal and a lot of meals can be made from it. When I got home, I immediately cooked all the chicken and parceled it into meal-sized portions.
(yes, I put it on my porch to cool down before making it to the freezer — it was freezing outside).
Then, I plan meals based on what I have. Out of those 10 lbs of bird, I can make:
1 chicken nacho layer dip (gone)
1 meal of chicken taco stew (with bulk cooked & frozen beans, hominy, squash & home-grown veggies — all from the freezer)
buffalo chicken dip (superbowl)
chicken pot pie
chicken & dumplings
enchiladas
lots of broth for soup
and lots of chicken scraps to feed our slightly underweight doggie
Having the chicken already cooked makes meal prep so much easier — I can just assemble & cook or toss in the crockpot. Later this week, I”m planning to bulk cook some pork I have. I imagine it will become more mexican food (carnitas, anyone?). Stay tuned!
The Last Pair
I have finally finished my winter slipper knitting. DNA’s pair was the last one off the needles. He was skeptical that these would fit him.
After three runs through the washing machine on hot, they shrunk down and have found a home on his feet.
He loves them and wouldn’t take them off even for a photo. I’d call them a knitting success.
Sprouted Wheat Crackers
For a while, I’ve been wanting to make sprouted wheat bread. You can buy this stuff at a health food store but it’s really pricey. Besides, I like to do things the long, drawn out way in the kitchen.
The first step is to sprout the wheat. Put 2 cups of wheat berries in a jar and cover them with water. Let them soak overnight. The next day, pour off the extra water (strain through a cheesecloth or use a handy-dandy sprouting lid on your jar) and rinse them.
Rinse them a couple times each day. Mine sprouted within 2 days. When they have a tiny “tail”, they are ready.
Spread the sprouted wheat on a cookie sheet and dry it. I used my oven set on 200 degrees. I let it dry for a few hours and that did the trick. While it was drying (baking?), the house smelled so good — really malty and toasty.
After drying, grind the wheat (this is complicated, eh?). I use a grain mill. If you don’t have one, you are out of luck. Maybe you could grind the wheat a bit by bit in a coffee grinder? Or a super high-powered blender? Or maybe just skip this recipe. My yield was just over 3 cups of flour.
At this point, I had several days invested in my sprouted wheat loaf. I was getting closer to baking time so the excitement was building. I used my regular pizza dough recipe to make the loaf. I kept mixing and kneading (and kneading….and kneading). The dough had no “spring.” There seemed to be no gluten development.
At this point, I knew a loaf of soft, fluffy bread was not going to happen. Time for another plan. So, I made crackers.
I rolled the dough thin, brushed with water & sprinkled with salt and then cut them into squares & pricked them with a fork. After baking for 20 minutes at 350.
And they are good. Very good — tasty accompaniment to homemade soup. Were they worth all the effort? Not really.
Soup Base
I love soup! Really, I do. I could eat it every day of the year. However, I am picky. I do not like canned soup so I end up making lots of pots o’ soup myself. Often my soups have a chicken stock base (homemade, of course) but there are times when I do not have stock on hand. Then, the soups have a water base. Which, you know, makes a pretty insipid soup. I have never gotten into the habit of using bouillon cubes but have, in the past, used soup base. I like it but it’s pretty expensive and can be full of equally as mysterious ingredients as bouillon. When I saw this recipe for a homemade veggie bouillon, I thought, “why the heck not!”. I had to run out and buy all the ingredients because, you know, celeriac and fennel are not normal veggies in this house. Neither are shallots.
The recipe came together pretty quickly.
According to the recipe, I should have had around 3 and a half cups. I wound up with way more than that.
It smelled pretty good but, man, was it salty tasting! Which should be no surprise since this is just a base — you add a teaspoon for every cup of water in your soup. I was left wondering if this would really work.
Meanwhile, I put all the veggie peelings and leftover bits in a stock pot to boil.
Then strained it and had even more stock to play with.
Finally, I made soup. Using some veggie stock and a few spoonfuls of soup base, I cooked up a pot of cream of broccoli soup.
It was the best soup ever! I think I’m going to like this homemade soup base. And, fortunately, I have tons of it so I can make (and eat) soup every day!
And just for some fun math (oxymoron?), I figured out the cost of the soup base. To buy all the ingredients cost around $10.33 (leeks, fennel & celeriac are pricey) not including the salt….but that would be cheap anyways. If you use a teaspoon of soup base per cup of water, my size batch (a little more than 6 cups) should yield around 288 cups of soup for a cost around 3 cents per cup. That seems impossible to me but, then again, I could seriously have screwed up the math. So this stuff is good and cheap and soup! My favorite things!
Big Day
Guess how many days my kids have been in school this year?
I can hardly believe it has been that long. It seems like school just started.
To mark the occasion, we needed a special lunch-box treat. Mojo helped me make them — she had the idea to use a shot glass to cut out the zeros. Our hands were covered with melted marshmallow and rice krispies by the time we were through. This was one time when cleaning up was the best part!
Living my simple life 