A few finished objects

I never blogged about it but I finished my Green Gable sweater back in June, it really was a quick knit once I got the hang of that top lace portion. The bottom stockinette got a little boring after awhile but it went quickly. I like this sweater a lot but if I ever make it again I might do a long tail cast on to make the neckline higher and tighter and I would probably do some bust darts and a little more waist shaping. I still like it a lot, the Cotton Fleece is really nice to work with (it can be splitty but if you watch where you put your needle you’ll be fine). I especially like that I can put the Cotton Fleece in the dryer (on low of course).

I also completed the Le Slouch I’d be trying to make for months. I bought the Rowan Summer Tweed I used for it months ago, at Yarniverse’s Leap Day Sale. I thought the tweed would have a great texture and be cool (it’s silk and cotton) for a summer hat. The tweed does look nice but it’s a pain to work with. I also made it a little too slouchy, I didn’t pay close enough attention when I was knitting the stockinette part so it’s really too long. But oh well, it still looks cute.

Sunday I cast on for another one, this one done in seed stitch with the leftover blush colored Cotton Fleece I used for my Juliet sweater. I’m hoping to make it less slouchy and more beret like. I also hope to finish it in a week (hah!).

I’m thinking about casting on the Rusted Root sweater in the next week or so. But I want something big to take to the beach with me so I may wait until then to cast on. Or I might *finally* take the plunge and knit some socks. Maybe.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler

This week’s delicious selection comes from Amanda of Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake.

I love Dorie, I really do. However, my hips, thighs and belly love Dorie a little too much. Which is why this week instead of making the entire cobbler I made 3 mini-cobblers in these little cake pans I found at Target. I did not properly half the recipe; I just eyeballed the entire thing. Luck was on my side because they came out great.

I have never cooked/baked anything with rhubarb in it. The only real exposure to rhubarb I’ve had comes from listening to Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and hearing their ‘commercials’ for Be-Bop-A-Re-Bop Rhubarb Pie. I don’t think rhubarb is a big thing in the South; maybe it’s too hot here for rhubarb? At any rate I could not find any fresh at this point in the summer so I opted for frozen. I did use fresh cherries though. The recipe was easily put together, really the only time consuming part was pitting the cherries. I didn’t use the food processor either; just my hands and I sprinkled the tops with raw sugar before I put them in the oven. I baked them for about 30 minutes at 350, until the filling started bubbling up and running down the sides of the pans.

I let them cool for a couple of hours, just because dinner wasn’t ready for awhile. But I kept them sitting on top of the oven so they were still slightly warm when we ate them. They were very good, I’m glad I didn’t make the whole thing because we surely would have devoured it. The rhubarb was a nice taste just a little tangy with a hint of sweetness. I have some leftover and I might have to make these hand-pies I saw on Angry Chicken’s blog. They look delicious!

Next week's selection is the Summer Fruit Galette chosen by Michelle of Michelle in Colorado Springs. I'm debating on what summer fruit to use, I'm thinking apricots, nectarines or plums. Decisions, decisions...

Memphis is really hot and I have cucumbers!

Oh my gosh I hate the heat. Summer in Memphis has reached the point of extreme, sweltering, oven heat. It’s hard to take a deep breath outside. Early morning was tolerable up until last week and now it’s just as bad. The high today is going to be 100F but with the heat index it’s going to feel like its 108F. Sob. I’ve lived here my entire life and I have never enjoyed the summer. We also are going on almost a week with no rain, although I did see some thunderstorms forecasted for tomorrow and Wednesday. On days like this I waste time looking up different cities high temp on Weather.com, for instance today in Seattle it’s going to be a balmy 75F with a low of 55F!!! I won’t see 57F again until October. Sigh.

In other news I got my first edible item from my garden last Thursday, a cucumber. It was pretty big too, I was a little worried I had left it on the vine too long but I cut it up and ate it in a salad Saturday and it was fine, not too seedy. I know it was just a cucumber but it was very fulfilling to eat something I had grown myself. The cucumbers are really plentiful it seems, I picked another large one Saturday morning and one again this morning. I love them in salad, but I’m looking for some more ideas on how to eat them, especially since it looks like I’m going to have a lot of them…

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Pudding

Great selection from Melissa of It's Melissa's Kitchen. It was a nice, cool treat since it's so stinking hot outside and no one really wants to turn on the oven. The pudding came together easily, my only problem was that once again my food processor was too small. I made a little bit of a mess. But it cleaned up and the pudding was worth it. It was not the super sweet kind of pudding that comes in a box but had a very rich flavor. I used 2% milk instead of whole and it turned out fine. I topped the pudding with homemade whipped cream and some chocolate shavings. Another hit! Next week's recipe with be Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler, a selection chosen by Amanda from Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake. Off to find rhubarb...

(Sorry for the not great pictures, my camera makes it hard to photograph food!)

A wedding, the roller derby and other odds and ends

Such an odd weekend, a lot of fun though. I often come across instances in my life where I can’t believe where I was/what I was doing hours before compared to what I’m doing at that instance. On Friday morning I was typing the drasha (something similar to a sermon) for my boss, an Orthodox Rabbi. Friday night I was drinking too much and trying to keep my composure while I drank too much at a bar in the ‘burbs. Saturday afternoon we were guests at extremely traditional Baptist wedding and Saturday night we were yelling, drinking beer and watching girls in roller skates knock each other down.

We are so much of an old married couple that we are rarely out past 10:00PM any night, even the weekend. However, this past Friday night a co-worker and friend of Doug’s invited us out (past 10:00PM!) and we went. While there we ran into some of friends of mine so they sat with our group. I drank 2.5 glasses of Woodchuck Cider and it was a little too much. I have almost no tolerance for alcohol so I was buzz-y. I did drink enough that in the morning I felt kind of crappy and realized why I don’t drink that often. Blah.

Saturday afternoon we drove to Olive Branch, Mississippi to attend the wedding of the daughter of my former boss - it was a very Southern Baptist wedding. The bride was lovely and it was a very sweet ceremony. It was however one of those “come to Jesus” type services where at the end, after the vows and the ring exchange the minister tells you to take this opportunity to dedicate your life to Jesus. I’m not sure if they do these elsewhere but they’re pretty prominent in the South. What was more interesting was where we went afterwards.

After the wedding we had just enough time to drive home, change clothes and hit the ATM before driving over to the Mid South Fairgrounds to go to a Memphis Roller Derby bout. It was flipping awesome, excellent people watching and PRONTO PUPS. We got there late so we ended up standing most of the night but that was no big deal. These girls are kick-ass, they all have names like “Gwen Reaper” and “Robin & Stealin” and they are fast. The Memphis team is called the Hustlin’ Rollers and they played Birmingham’s Tragic City Rollers Saturday. Memphis won by a large margin. Being there I realized how small of a town Memphis really is. Doug saw and spoke to his former co-worker/director Craig Brewer (Doug worked with him a long time ago at a bookstore I think) and another friend of his that he hadn’t seen in a very long time. I saw an elementary school classmate of mine that I was going to speak to but I lost him in the crowd and I also saw someone who I had not seen since 2001 and knew only briefly. I didn’t speak because I thought he probably wouldn't recognize me and even if he did it would have been an awkward conversation. In the end, the derby was a great way to spend our Saturday night and I can’t wait to go to the next one.

We spent most of Sunday vegging out. Doug worked on one of his models and I knit. We finally watched one of the Netflix movies we’ve had for at least a month. It was “Paris Je T’aime” and it was a film made up of several short films all about Paris, with directors like Wes Craven, the Cohen brothers, Alexander Payne and others. It was a nice movie with gorgeous shots of Paris. For dinner I made Lemon-Tarragon Chicken from the At Home with Magnolia cookbook. It’s such a good recipe, I’ve made it many times and it’s great every time. I served it with plain couscous to soak up the sauce. We had this week’s TWD selection for dessert (so good and so bad for you).

I was really proud of us because we went out and we were social and some weekends that doesn’t happen. This coming weekend I’m volunteering (for the first time) at the WEVL’s Blues on the Bluff concert. So we’ll do something else we’ve never done before this Saturday too.

Things from the past

When my mom gave over last Friday, she had been cleaning out her cedar chest and brought me a few things she thought I might want. My mom’s cedar chest has stored tons of keepsakes from my childhood, I’m very glad she kept those things in a safe place for us. She brought me several photographs of myself as a baby, some baby clothes (some that she even made herself) the footprints that they took in the hospital when I was born, the little “It’s A Girl” card from my bassinet in the hospital nursery, my Girl Scout sash (it still fits!), a New Testament gifted to me when I was born and other similar odds and ends. They all smell faintly like the inside of the cedar chest.

One of the other treasures she brought me was a little apron that belonged to my great-great grandmother Jennie. I never knew her because she died years before I was born, but I know she was very special to my own grandmother. She also must have been a very tiny woman because her little apron barely wraps around my hips. The pocket on the front needs a little repair because it has come loose from the apron itself but it should only take a few stitches to fix. I’m very happy to have it, I really appreciate things like that that have a story and it’s even better that it belonged to someone in my family.

I have been attempting to make my own apron for awhile now, I was using the pattern from Bend the Rules Sewing. I even got so far as to cut all the fabric pieces out but I haven't sewn anything yet. I really need to just bite the bullet and try to do it. It can't be that hard right? I wanted to participate in the Tie One On apron challenge for August, which is to make an apron with gingham fabric. I bought some brown and pink gingham the other week so I have the fabric I just need to take the plunge and actually make the apron. I'm not very good at cutting straight lines or sewing them either. All my seams are crooked. My mom is supposed to come over one Saturday soon when neither one of us is busy to help me make a skirt. Last summer I bought ? and it has some really adorable patterns in it that I am dying to make. I just don't want to spend a lot of money of nice fabric and then ruin it!

In the Garden - Week 13

SQUASH! I have squash people – in MY garden, real, live yellow summer squash. I am hopelessly excited about that development. We went outside and started poking around Sunday and I had not really been paying attention to the squash plants lately because they bloomed but didn’t seem to be doing much else so I was concerned there would be no squash. But Sunday I started moving the leaves around and lo and behold there was a tiny little yellow squash in the midst of the leaves. I found two others on another plant too. So hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll have big squash to eat.

The cucumber is still growing, I see little bitty cucumbers but they seem to be the same size that they were two weeks ago. Maybe they’ll have a growth spurt soon. The cantaloupe vines have started blooming too and the watermelon vines are growing a lot but no blooms yet. My cayenne peppers are producing lots of peppers, I intend to dry them but I need to look up the best method to do that.I have not (knock on wood) seen any horned tomato worms on my tomato plants in several days. I guess it would be too much to hope that they have disappeared for good. In addition to the first tomato I found a few weeks ago, which is get bigger and bigger, I found four more little green tomatoes. The plants also have tons of blooms which I am hoping will equal tons of tomatoes.

And in addition to the summer squash, I found two tiny baby butternut squashes on the vines. I love, love, love butternut squash. Its good roasted, pureed into soup, baked, stuffed, anything really. I was ecstatic to see those little butternuts. Let’s hope they keep growing and the pests/fungus/etc leave them alone.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

This week’s selection came from Amy of South in Your Mouth and it was perfect for our 4th of July cookout. This was the first time I had made my own ‘true’ pie crust. I have a small food processor but even when I halved the dough recipe it was still too much to fit into processor so I ended up using my hands (again). I really, really need to buy a pastry blender. The dough turned out fine, just like the book says. I made my dough on Thursday afternoon and refrigerated it until I was ready to make the pie on Friday morning. It was really difficult for me to roll out the dough because it was very hard and cold. But my strong-armed husband helped me roll it out and it was just right.


I used fresh blueberries (on sale this past week, score!) and put about 1 ¼ cup of sugar in the berries, with a little extra lemon zest than the recipe called for. The smell of the baking pie was delicious, the whole house smelled like pie. Everyone at the cookout really liked it too, I had vanilla ice cream on hand for people who wanted their pie “a la mode”. It wasn’t too sweet either; it had just the right amount of sweetness in the crust and the filling. The only ‘complaint’ I had was that the filling produced a lot of soupy-ness, it didn’t affect the crust (probably because of the breadcrumbs which were totally undetectable) but there was a lot of it after I cut the first slice. Other than that it was a really good pie and a really good experience. I’ll definitely use the crust recipe again with a different fruit, I imagine cherry or apple would be fantastic too.

P.S. Blogger is not my friend this morning because my font size and formatting is all wonky, sorry!

A Long Weekend

Weekends seems to speed by with the ease of lighting, even long weekends. I took a vacation day on Thursday, but still had to come in Thursday morning for about an hour to complete the weekly newsletter and email. I spent the rest of the day grocery shopping for Friday’s cookout and cleaning the house with a little knitting in between. I also made the pie dough for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection (Double Crusted Blueberry Pie!).

Friday morning Doug and I finished tidying up the house and I made the potato salad and got the burgers, sausages and corn ready for the grill. The family was due to arrive around one o’clock so I was in a mad dash to get the pie out of the oven and get everything ready. We had a nice time, there were only seven of us but it was fun. I served burgers with a little piece of cheese stuffed in them so it melted while they grilled, sausages, grilled corn, this low-fat potato salad recipe, chips & dip, the blueberry pie and my mom made a Pina Colada cake, which includes a can of coconut milk in it, so good! After the family cleared out Doug and I met our friends at their apartment in Germantown to walk over to the Germantown Municipal Park to watch the fireworks display. It was actually nice weather, overcast without the sun beating down on you. We threw some blankets on the grass and had a really good time eating bad food (Pronto Pups and funnel cakes) and just hanging out. The fireworks were great but they are really hard to photograph so I only got a few semi-decent shots. (I'm the non-blond below)

Saturday morning I always get up early and go walk the 5K trail at Shelby Farms with a friend before it gets unbearably hot. After I got home it started to rain and I got really tired and ended up taking a two and a half hour nap, which I almost never do. I know I probably needed the sleep but I woke up feeling like I had slept the day away. We had been invited to another cookout with more friends Saturday night and I was supposed to bring potato salad so I used this recipe and it turned out to be a hit. It was another nice night, the rain had made it cooler outside so it wasn’t so muggy. We hung around until the fireworks and then headed back home.

Sunday I made banana bread in the morning and we had our normal Sunday morning ritual of coffee and CBS Sunday morning. It was a very lazy day. Doug finished watching the third season of Deadwood that he borrowed from a co-worker and I caught up on some of my podcasts and got pretty far in knitting the hat I’m making for a friend who is leaving in two weeks. I also finished a cotton reusable grocery bag made from this Knitty pattern. We tried to finish the mound of leftovers we have from the weekend (sausages, potato salad and pie) and ended the night watching more Law & Order (we are so predictable).

Mondays after a long weekend are so hard; I just want to go back home and knit. My boss has been out of the country for a month and he is coming back this week so my quiet time in the office will be over. But I do have our Florida vacation (4 ½ weeks away!) to look forward to. I just want to sit on the beach, eat fresh crab and knit. I can’t wait to be lazy!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Apple Cheddar Scones

This week’s recipe was chosen by Karina of The Floured Apron. I looove scones, the coffee shop I go to used to carry these really delicious cranberry-orange scones and I would indulge in one every week. Sadly they no longer carry them so if I want a scone I have to make it myself. I really enjoy savory breads/quiches/tarts so the Apple Cheddar Scones really excited me. They did not disappoint, they were really good. I followed Dorie’s recipe exactly, using the dried apple and mild cheddar cheese. My cheese was very finely grated though because I used my microplane grater since I could find the cheese grater. Based on other member’s comments I knew the dough was very sticky so I just used my ice cream scoop instead of trying to get them into the perfect scone shape. This little adventure did make me covet a scone pan, maybe next time….

Next week’s selection is Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie, chosen by Amy of South in Your Mouth, which my family will get to enjoy on Friday at our 4^th of July BBQ. I’ve actually never really made a true from scratch pie crust (I’ve been too lazy!).

Making Jam

When we bought our house last year, we inherited some very lovely flowers/herbs/trees, including well-established lavender and rosemary, hydrangeas, two rosebushes and two fig trees. Of course we also inherited some really awful things like miles and miles of overgrown monkey grass and trees that had had all of their lower limbs lopped off by what I can only assume was an overzealous tree trimmer.

The fig trees really excited me. When I was a child a set of my great-grandparents had a huge vegetable garden, berry bushes and fig trees. I remember eating fresh figs at their house and the milky liquid that came out of the top of the figs when you pulled them off of the branch. Last year we were still feeling our way around the new house and working on removing all that monkey grass so I didn’t have the energy to keep all the birds away from the figs so we didn’t have any to speak of. This year I’ve tried to do a little bit better job at shooing the grackles and robins and English sparrows away from the trees. I’ve really been watching them, waiting for the figs to be ripe enough to pick. Saturday morning I went out and was able to get several ripe pounds of figs. I’m still not sure what variety they are, I think they might be Celestial but I’m not 100% sure. They don’t turn brown or purple when they’re ripe, their green skin just lightens up. Knowing that there was no way Doug and I would eat that many figs I wanted to make jam out of them.

Again, I grew up with my grandmother and my great-grandparents canning and making jellies and jams so I had a vague idea of what I needed to do. I Googled ‘making fig jam’ and got a few hits. Basically I needed figs, Sure-Jell, sugar, lemon juice, glass canning jars, a few large pots and some patience. It seemed as though it took forever to peel and cut up all the figs but I finally got them all chopped and threw them into a pot with the Sure-Jell, a whole lotta sugar, lemon juice, a little lemon zest and some water and boiled it for a few minutes and then let it cook for a little longer on medium heat. I sterilized the glass jars in the dishwasher and nearly boiled the lids and tops in hot water for 5 minutes.

After the jam cooled down a little bit and poured it into the jars. I got four 8 ounce jars filled with the amount of figs I had. In two of the jars I put some rosemary from my garden in with the jam, I thought that might be tasty served on top of warm brie with crackers. I snuck a little taste as I was putting it in the jars and it seemed to taste pretty good, so my fingers are crossed. After the jars were filled they got a boiling water bath for about 10 minutes. It was a pleasant experiment and I managed not to maim myself in the process (which is usually not the case). I’m keeping two jars for myself (one of each) and giving the other two to my mother. If I can keep the birds away from the trees I should have more ripe figs to pick in the next few weeks and I’ll probably make more jam. This time I might try using honey to sweeten it instead of sugar any maybe add walnuts to a batch.

Garden - Week 11 (I think)

Everything is growing, no confirmed casualties (yet). I'm still fighting the battle of the whiteflies. Slug problem has been taken of, new problem with horned tomato worms! I picked three off of my tomato plants in the past two days. Grrr. If it's not one thing its another. Despite the tomato worms I found my first teeny, tiny green tomato yesterday. It's from one of the heirloom tomato plants, either Cherokee Purple or German something, I can't quite remember.

The cucumber is also getting pretty tall, I have commissioned Doug to build some trellis frames for the cucumber and squash vines to grow on/up. I should have those by the end of the weekend. The butternut squash is growing wildly, it hasn't bloomed yet but I can see the buds on the vines. I need to give everything a good spray of insecticidal soap to treat those horrible whiteflies and anything else that might be crawling around on the leaves. The carrots are also pretty big too. The tops really look like carrots now. It's amazing to me that just a few months ago I planted most of these things (cucumber, squash, melons, carrots) from seeds and now they're huge. Here's to hoping they continue to grow and aren't overrun with an investation of anything awful.

Flickr Obsessed

In the past I have only really used Flickr to upload pictures to be posted on Ravelry. And last summer when I was in the process of creating my craft room I found a set of craft room photos there that I obsessed over and got inspired by. Well the other day I started looking at other pictures on Flickr, usually the photostreams of people whose blogs I read. Then I found the Memphis group and started looking through those and before I knew it I had wasted two hours of my life looking at photos! But they’re just so pretty…

my Flickr favorites

See?

Tuesdays with Dorie: Mixed Berry Cobbler

Who doesn’t love a good cobbler? I grew up on cobblers made with berries and peaches from my grandparents and great-grandparents gardens. I was happy to try out a new recipe, chosen this week by Beth of Our Sweet Life. The cobbler was easily put together and required little effort. I used frozen mixed berries, which included strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. I probably could have used fresh berries but we were having Saturday night dinner guests and the thought of having to clean and hull all those berries did not appeal to me.

I followed Dorie’s recipe to a tee, the only addition being an egg wash and a sprinkling of raw sugar on the top. I used a mini-cookie cutter in the shape of a flower to cut out the center and then left it on the top during baking. I cooked about 10 minutes less than the suggested time; my oven might run a little on the hot side because I usually cook things a few minutes less than is actually called for. The cobbler turned out well and smelled delicious. I served it at room temperature with vanilla ice cream. Everyone really enjoyed it and Doug and I finished up what was left yesterday. Nothing beats a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream floating in a sea of warm berries!

I’m really excited about next week’s selection, Apple Cheddar Scones, chosen by Karina of The Floured Apron, because I *love* scones!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Sundays are my favorite day. Doug and I get up early enough to watch CBS Sunday Morning, drink coffee and plan what we’re doing (or not doing). This Sunday I got up before Doug and decided to make pancakes. Mainly because I have a box of pancake mix that will expire in August so I’d like to use it up. I used my cast iron Lodge skillet I bought last Thanksgiving to make cornbread in. Every time I use my skillet I think about staying at my Nannie and Pa’s house when I was younger. Nannie is my mom’s mother, my maternal grandmother and Pa is my maternal grandfather. I spent most of my summers at their house out in the county until I was around 13. Nannie let me do nearly anything I wanted to and didn’t mind my ‘cooking’ experiments. I probably wouldn’t be half the cook I am today if it wasn’t for her letting me run wild in her kitchen. Last Thanksgiving I was hosting lunch at my house and I called to get her recipe for cornbread to make cornbread dressing with. It called for bacon drippings but I don’t keep bacon drippings (although I guess I could?) so I winged it. The cornbread turned out okay, but it didn’t taste like hers, probably because I omitted the bacon drippings and my brand new iron skillet isn’t ‘seasoned’ yet.

After pancakes and the news, we spent the rest of our Sunday doing odds and ends and making an ill-fated journey to the grocery store. OMG I hate people in the stores on Sunday. Everyone walks around like they have all the time in the world. I almost drop-kicked two middle-aged women shopping together because every time I turned my cart they were in the aisles blocking my passage, so irritating. I didn’t want to spend my entire Sunday stuck behind the ‘mosey-ers’ at Schnucks. I spent a good portion of the rest of my Sunday in my craft room knitting and listening to This American Life podcasts. I’m working on the Le Slouch beret for my friend Tzili and this martini dishcloth I started forever ago that I’m just tired of looking at. Late afternoon is my favorite time to be in my craft room, the room gets the afternoon sun and its always full of light from about 3:00PM until 5:30 or so.

Earlier in the day I had the idea to make pizza on the grill for dinner. I made pizza dough in the morning so it would have time to rise. I used this recipe from Epicurious for the dough and used suggestions from this article on how to proceed with the grilling. We used mild Italian Chicken Sausage, fresh garlic sautéed in olive oil and shredded mozzarella for the topping. I left off the tomato sauce because the acidity of tomatoes bothers Doug’s scarred esophagus. I made two smaller pizzas instead of one bigger one because I decided it would be easier to manage them. The lesson I learned was that you must watch the dough like a hawk once you put it on the grill because there is a great chance you might get distracted and wander around the yard for 10 minutes while your pizza turns to ash on the grill. The first one on the grill turned out burned on the bottom but the top was okay. When I put the second one on I watched it very closely and it turned out fine. I’ll make them again because I would really like to try a margherita version and a version with pesto. After the burned pizza crust I needed a glass of wine, luckily the friends we had over for dinner Saturday had brought us a bottle of red so I tore into it. I felt much better after a glass.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Peppermint Cream Puff Ring

When I first saw this selection I was a little intimidated, I’d never even thought about making cream puffs before. But I read the directions and decided I could do it. Because we have limited fridge space this week I decided to not make the ring but just individual cream puffs, easier to store and manage. I followed the direction on making the dough, and the puffs came out perfectly. I baked them just as directed and I had no problems with wet insides. I didn’t have a true pastry bag so I used some plastic icing bags and tips I already had to pipe out the dough and the filling. After I piped out the puffs I dipped my finger in a little bit of water and smoothed the top of the puffs a little bit, I discovered that little trick from a website that I now cannot find.

For the filling I split the recipe in half. Half of the cream I made into peppermint cream filling as directed by the recipe, using Kentucky Colonel mint from my garden. I was very minty, I’m not sure exactly how many leaves I used but probably around 20? For the other half of the cream I used a vanilla bean for flavor, I just love seeing the little flecks of vanilla in white cream. I made it just as I had with the peppermint cream, bringing it to a boil and refrigerating, the only exception being that I didn’t have to strain it because there were no leaves. I didn’t see crème fraiche at my normal grocery store and at that point I was too lazy to drive to the specialty grocery so I just sour cream. Both creams turned out nicely, but I will say even though I love peppermint I preferred the vanilla bean cream over the peppermint cream.

When it was time to open the puffs I used a small serrated knife, however most of the puffs opened with just a gentle pull. The chocolate topping was a little thicker than I liked so I added more heavy cream and another ounce of chocolate to make it easier to pour over the puffs. I topped them off with sliced toasted almonds and a sprig of my mint.

The cream puffs were good, not earth-shattering, but still delicious. In the future I’ll probably use the vanilla bean cream and maybe try making the chocolate pastry cream too. Probably the biggest thing to come out of this week’s dish was that I’m not scared of making cream puffs/éclairs now. I *know* I can do it and I’m not intimated anymore.

More Recipes & Bacon

I’ve become an Everyday Food addict. I love buying that little magazine filled with ‘easy’ recipes. I really like the way it looks stacked up on my cookbook shelf. I almost have the Everday Food: Great Food Fast cookbook, it was a gift last Christmas and I use it a lot. Some of my favorite recipes are in there and they never take a long time. The June edition of Everyday Food has several good grilling/summer food recipes but one baking recipe caught my eye – Coconut Pineapple Loaf Cake. I thought it sounded really good and really easy. I made it last Thursday, it turned out really well. It was easy enough to make on a weeknight and had a minimal ‘dirty-dish’ count. The pineapple made the cake moist and tangy and the coconut added a nice crunch, together they made it taste very tropical.

Several weeks ago I bought some Portobello mushrooms with the intention of grilling them. Well time passed it was several days later and I still not grilled them and that night it was raining. So I went to Epicurious.com and searched for Portobello mushroom recipes. I found this one, you make a stuffing of shrimp, breadcrumbs, parm, mayo, basil, onion, garlic and a few other spices, mound that inside the mushroom and bake it until the top and golden brown. OMG this is good, Doug *loved* it and rarely does he *love* food but he really loved this one. The recipe is perfect but I also added Old Bay Seasoning and used shallots instead of onion (just because I had shallots on hand that day). I’ve made it several times since and it really is a great recipe, it’s fairly easy too as long as you get shrimp that is already peeled and deveined.

Bacon is a guilty pleasure of ours. We both know it’s totally unhealthy and most of the time we eat turkey bacon when we have a hankering for bacon. And turkey bacon is good, it’s a little dry but it has that crunch and it’s only 20 calories or so a slice. Every once and awhile I’ll break down and get real bacon, but I almost hate to because when you cook bacon the scent of sizzling bacon lingers all.day.long. and then you have the bacon house. Anyway, we were making a Super Target shopping run a few weeks ago and came across Niman Ranch Applewood Smoked Bacon and Apple and Gouda sausage. We decided to buy some and try it out, as a treat. That stuff is amazing, pure pork heaven. I’ve never had such delicious bacon and sausage. Of course now we’re both hooked, the only redeemer is that we have to drive all the way out to Super Target to get it so we’re less likely to eat it very often thank goodness. We really heart Niman Ranch bacon.

My husband is wonderful because...

He built me a sweet little bookcase. I have more 'stuff' than I know what to do with. When I first wanted a craft room Doug built me a craft desk, big and wide with two big open shelves on either side of the base. He also built a hanging board for me to hand various crafty supplies on. I was inspired by this post from Alicia of Posie Gets Cozy. I loved the look of her bookcase. When I Googled 'pink bookcase' I found this lovely bookcase that cost a measly $520.50!!! I pestered Doug for two weeks to make me something similar and he had the time this weekend. Materials (for two bookcases but he only made one for right now) were about $80.00 total and it took him most of yesterday to cut it out and put it together and then it took me half of the day today to paint and seal it. But it looks great and I just *love* it. The picture isn't very good but it's painted 'Flower Petal Pink', a Martha Stewart collection color from Lowe's. And who doesn't need a pink bookcase?

This weekend has flown by, we went to dinner at Celtic Crossing in Cooper-Young Friday night and then went to a pottery sale by Melissa of Bridgman Pottery. I love, love, love her stuff, it's fantastic. We bought a mug/tumbler (but I might use it as a vase) and a berry bowl. But she has these wonderful herb markers and sea urchin vases and platters with ferns and little cups with bees. I loved everything there, I'm sure I'll be giving her more of my money in the future.

Saturday was WWKIP day and it was a lot of fun, I got to meet several people from Ravelry. Yesterday I also went to Stash because they were having a sock yarn sale and because I need to get some size 4 DPN's to finish off my Green Gable. I scored three skeins of pretty, pretty sock yarn. Now I just need to actually knit some socks. We went to World Market last night because my latest yarn purchase left me with no place to store my yarn and I needed another seagrass basket.Today I've painted, I've made my Tuesdays with Dorie selection for this Tuesday (and I didn't screw it up!), I bound off the bottom and one sleeve of my Green Gable and I've one more sleeve to finish plus some weaving in the ends. Pretty productive for a Sunday if I do say so myself.

WWKIP and the nearly finished Green Gable

World Wide Knit in Public Day is tomorrow and in Memphis there's an event at the Central Library from 10AM-1PM. I'm going and looking forward to seeing some of the people I knit with on Tuesdays at Cafe Eclectic and some people from Ravelry and Stitch & Bitch that I haven't met yet. I'm planning on taking a few things I've made, the Juliet sweater, my Booga Bag, my Sophie bag and maybe a scarf.

I'm hoping I'll be able to finish up my Green Gable sweater before the weekend is over. I'm knitting the last few inches of the bottom of the sweater and after that I'll have the ribbing at the bottom and the ribbing on the sleeves to finish up. It's gone pretty quickly, considering there have been a few days I haven't had a chance to work on it at all.

I'm going to cast on Wendy Bernard's No Purl Beret this weekend too. I bought some Brown Sheep Worsted in Jack Plum for the beret. It's going to be my 'going-away' gift for one the youth directors at work. She and her husband are headed back to Israel in July and I'm really going to miss them. I'm also planning on making her husband a kippah, I have the pattern for it but no yarn yet. I need to get both items knit up by July 18 at the latest. Gotta get to stitching!