After a Long Hiatus....

I am hopefully back to blogging after yet again another long hiatus. Things have been pretty busy around here after returning from Illinois in February. I had to get the garden in for the summer as well as build new structures out there for the new gardening techniques I am trying. There were two major performances, Rakkasah and Tribal Fest, for which I was wrapped up with preparations and rehearsals. I have been working on some special order commissions for the shop as well as gifts for the nieces and nephews. There are sketches for competition dresses for Chaos Wars as well as personal heraldry being done. I am working on restoring a beautiful beaded choli for the event as well as dance performances. There are quilts I have started and the usual canning and baking to be done. Through all of this time and reflection I came to realize a few things. I am not all that pleased with how I spend my time lately. That is change number one I am striving to make, and there will be more posting on that later. The other thing I realized is that I really do miss writing here. So, while this entry is short, realize that good things are coming. I am working on a toy tutorial today as I sew up a VERY late birthday present for a niece and start the birthday present for her brother. There are new things for the shop I am working on and designs for great headdress accessories that will show up on the Fabulous Pants shop page in Etsy, hopefully sooner rather than later. Stay tuned! I hope to have more in store, with pictures, for you in the coming days! I missed being here, and I look forward to connecting with you all through the blog again.

Wordless Wednesday - Rising Rye

Goodbye to Grandma

I know that I said I would write more often, and I was really on course. In the background of my life, however, there was a family emergency slowly unfolding. My Grandmother had fallen days after Christmas, breaking her hip and beginning the slow departure away from us. I decided to head home early in February to see my Grandma. I had a sinking feeling it was for the last time, but little did I know that I would not get to see her at all. I got in rather late on Saturday for a visit, so I planned on going the next day to spend most of the day with her at the nursing home. Sadly, she passed in the night before I got to see her. I was left with the consolation that she knew I was coming. From there it was the whirlwind of funeral planning, visitors to my parent's house who came bearing the meat of Christian mourning - ham,  phone calls to relatives, and the hardest of all taking care of things at my Grandparent's home. It truly became real to me the morning after we started alerting family, and the first visit from a relative came early in the morning bearing coffee cake and breakfast supplies. Old traditions die hard I guess, and making sure that you do not have to worry about feeling yourself at times like this seem to be still an honored tradition. 

 It has been a rough few months. I have felt rather conflicted about whether or not to address this on the blog, but I felt it was necessary. No one was able to bring themselves to do a eulogy at the funeral, and I feel at this point I am finally ready to do what we could not at that time. I cannot capture the specialness and wonderful character my Grandmother had in words, but I will give it my best try.

My Grandmother was one of the nicest, most caring people you could ever know. A lot of people will say that about someone when they pass, but for her it was very much the truth. My Grandmother was a self sacrificing person. She opened her home to my Great Uncle John and his wife Marge when she was in need of 24 hour a day nursing care. Grandma also often times took care of neighbor's children, so the parents could work to make ends meet. She loved kids. Every year at Halloween she would count the number of trick or treaters that would visit her door. She always had a nice thing to say to each about their costumes. Grandma was always a voice of encouragement to her grandchildren. If you needed guidance and a kind word, she was the one to call. This does not mean that she was a push over though as she was also a truth teller. When I started playing soccer on the boy's team, she would always tell me to not be upset when they treated me like one of their own and to not expect special treatment because I was a girl. It was a lesson that stuck with me and got me through tough times in the male dominated field of athletic training in college. "If you want to play with the boys that is fine, but don't be surprised when they treat you like one and don't complain about it either." It was solid advice.

Some of the most simple but useful things were taught to me by my Grandmother. When I could not seem to learn to tie a shoe, one of the most traumatic things that happened to me in kindergarten, she was there for me. I figured I would wear slip on or velcro attached shoes my entire life, but she had other ideas. She sat with me on her bed for hours until I got it down. It was a long process, involving the promise of fresh baked peanut butter chocolate chip cookies at the end of it, but by the time I left that day I was tying shoes. Grandma was also the one who taught most of us to throw a baseball and also to bat, making sure you used both hand the whole time. She would stop pitching to you if you did a one handed follow through. It was just deemed too dangerous, which was probably right. My love of athletics, in fact, was passed to me by my Grandma and my Mom.

I am a Cubs fan because of her, and she was so die hard, she would never miss a game. Grandma would stick by that team no matter what, even proudly wearing a Cubs shirt through some of the worst seasons. During the warm summer months, she would watch the team on the television and listen to the radio on the back porch, switching off innings to ensure she was hearing Harry Carry call the game. She would go in and out of the areas of the house as the announcer switches would take place. She was also a basketball fan, watching the Bulls just as religiously as the Cubs. No matter how bad my sports endeavors were, she would be there as well, sitting through soccer matches in pouring rain and snow. She and Grandpa would brave icy roads to see me play basketball and volleyball. They also made every dance recital, school play or musical, art show, Grandparent's Day function, the list goes on. In all of this, other pearls of wisdom came from my Grandma. After particularly bad losses, she would always put things into perspective. "For there to be a winner, there has to be a loser. This time you were on the losing end, hopefully next time you will be on the winning side."

My Grandmother was a hard worker. She worked in the Elgin Watch Factory when she was younger. She also helped my Grandpa build their house from scratch. Mostly the two of them did all the work with little outside help. The house is a testament to their hard work and determination. They would work full days at a job, and then come back to the house site and work until dark. She would then go on to make their house one of the most welcoming places. The cookie jar was always full, and there was always a toasted cheese sandwich coming you way if you ask. Grandma was also a meticulous record keeper. She kept track of the millage and gas usage of the car every year we went up to Wisconsin for the fishing trip. We found her notebook with all the costs and notes on building the house. She kept every card, letter, or piece of correspondence she ever received.

Grandma also gave me some of my quirky personality traits. People who know me through Belegarth often times think I learned archery out on our battlefields. Little do they know that I actually learned all my archery skills from my Grandma. She had a bow, arrows, and a target for practice in her basement. I spent many hours down there target shooting. Honing my skills at this pursuit was something she felt more than comfortable to allow me to do at a rather early age. It was some of the earliest responsibility and trust placed in me to be safe, responsible, and to do the right thing. I am one of the most respected archers in Belegarth because of Grandma. She was also a Vegas lover. Grandma and Grandpa would go to Vegas every year with the company. My love for the old glitz and glamor come from her stories of the early days of the new strip hotels.

Gardening was another passion of hers. I hope that someday her awesome skills with plants will rub off on me. She was able to nurse some of the most sick plants back to health and even get plants to bloom again of their own accord. She always kept a hibiscus plant, and it is still there at the house, blooming away. She loved a lot of natural plants rather than showy flowers. She loved bittersweet, Lilly of the Valley, impatiens, and daisies. She grew roses she received from a cereal box give away. Grandma would always discourage the picking of wild flowers or flowers that were not in our yards. "If everyone picks a single flower, there will be none left for people to see. They will all be taken, and sharing them with others is much better than taking one for yourself."

Artistic pursuits were always encouraged at Grandma's house. I painted projects with her on tray tables, tree ornaments, or just on paper. Grandma had a huge picture window in the living room that she would decorate for all the seasons and holidays. Grandma and Grandpa would also hold many of the holidays at their house. There are so many memories of the kids table and sneaking black olives into each other's cola. Santa delivering Christmas presents he happened to forget to deliver on Christmas, sometimes as late as June. Easter egg hunts through the large back yard were always a hit, especially if you found one of the eggs that contained the "big money."

Grandma was also rather sentimental. She would proudly wear shell or macaroni necklaces out in public and tell everyone who asked that her wonderful grandchildren had made them. She saved all sorts of napkins and pieces of paper from their travels. She was brave enough to travel to both Europe and Venezuela to see the Amazon at a time when world travel was not necessarily a thing that many people did. Grandma is one of my pillars of homemaking. When you stepped into her house, even if you had not been there before, it felt like home to you. I strive to make that same feeling in our house, even though we did not build it ourselves.

It is in that spirit that I finally had my gut check in this whole experience. Going to the house was somewhat hard, not seeing Grandma at the door was harder still, but seeing a framed piece of writing that I did in the third grade still sitting on her hope chest really made me open up the water works. It was a short paragraph, detailing what a great homemaker my Grandma was, and, after all this time, she still had that little paragraph framed and saved. I am sure she looked at it often, and my mom said it meant so much to her what a wrote. In the end it really is the small things that seem to matter. Of all the things I wanted to take with me were housewares. The cut glass "banana split" bowls she used to use with me on sleep over special occasions. The "malted" glass that she had decorated just for me and served milkshakes in. The metal mold that she used to make gelatin hearts for me the year I missed my first Valentine's Day party with the flu.

On the day of the wake, I wore my Mom's clothes as I oddly did not have any black with me. The night was filled with family meeting and of all things filled with laughter. Many people came, and I am sure she would have been surprised to realize just how many lives she touched in her own special and seemingly small but actually impactful ways. It was a true Irish style wake with plenty of story telling and reminiscing about her and Grandpa - their adventures and time together. I was in a small way glad that she and Grandpa would now finally be together for the Valentine's holiday. I knew that she missed him so much. The next day at the funeral, she got one of the things she wanted for her funeral - snow. The most beautiful snow globe style snow floated and fell softly through the air. It was in its own way beautiful tribute to someone who loved nature and the natural world so much. And as we walked around the plot area looking at all the family that has passed before us, all I could hear in my mind was a lecture I used to use when I taught high school on literary analysis. Snow in stories is a great unifier and a beautiful symbol of this as it falls on both the living and the dead equally.

I miss my Grandma very much, and while I know it will get better with time, I feel such a deep hole and loss. I love you very much Grandma and you will be so missed.

Wordless Wednesday - Happy Pi Day!

Happy Pi day to all... here are some celebratory pies!

Follow Up Friday - Cinamon Pears

I canned these pears at the end of the season in 2010. While I do not recommend keeping canned foods forever, I have just recently gotten to opening up the last of these jars. I decided to get one of the cinnamon stick jars out and open it up. I was quite surprised at the result. Let's just say they are definitely cinnamon pears. I used Penzeys Spices cinnamon sticks in the jars. One of the things that I love about their spices is their freshness. The spices are always packed with oils and flavor. In this case, however, that was not a great thing. I added one cinnamon stick per pint as recommended in my canning book. This ended up with pears that looked as though they had gone bad, but in reality they were just that filled with cinnamon.

As you can see from this after picture, the pears are almost the same color as the cinnamon stick. They had a hotness to them, kind of like red hot candies. If that is your thing, by all means please use a full stick of this wonderful cinnamon in your canning. I felt that it over powered the pear flavors and ended up tasting like I was eating the cinnamon stick. In the future, I think I will only use half of a stick in the jars or use powdered cinnamon. I love how the full stick looks in the jars, and perhaps a single stick in a quart would be perfect, but for now I will try to use a half stick in my pints. That does not mean that I am not enjoying these pears for their spicy hotness. I am, but I would like more of the pear to come through. Live and learn, and make notes for next time.

Chocolate, Orange, and Cranberry Tart

With people starting to make Valentine's plans already, I thought I would post this dessert recipe. I came up with this recipe for our date night. It is relatively easy, and it takes just a few minutes to whip together. As impressive as it looks, it is just as simple to make. The hardest part is the wait times. This dessert does need to be chilled so it takes time to make, but it could be made the day before the event and held in the refrigerator until needed.

Special Equipment:
~ 2 mini tart pans (4 inch diameter)
~ fine mesh strainer

Ingredients:
 Crust:
  ~ 3/4 cup all purpose flour
  ~ 1 tbsp cocoa powder
  ~ 1 tbsp powdered sugar
  ~ 1/4 cup butter
  ~ a pinch of salt if you are using unsalted butter
  ~ 1 tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
  ~ egg
  ~ 1/2 cup sour cream
  ~ 3 tbsp sugar
  ~ 1 tbsp flour
  ~ 1 tbsp milk
  ~ 1/2 tsp vanilla

Sauce:
  ~ 1/2 cup cranberries
  ~ 1/3 cup sugar
  ~ 1/4 tsp finely shredded orange peel
  ~ 1/4 cup orange juice
  ~ 1 medium orange peeled and segmented

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Using some extra butter, grease your two tart pans, making sure to get into all the tight corners. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and salt into a mixing bowl. Place the butter in a pan and heat gently until just melted, cool slightly. Add the vanilla extract to the cooled butter. Stir butter into the sifted dry ingredients and mix with a fork until it all comes together. Evenly divide mix between the two pans and press into the bottom and up the sides of the pans. Place in the refrigerator to cool for 20 minutes.

After the shells cool, make the filling by slightly beating the egg with a fork. Stir in the sour cream, sugar, flour, milk, and vanilla. Pour an equal amount of the filling between the two shells. Place the tarts on a baking sheet and pop them into the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 350, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the centers are set, and an knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool them on a wire rack for 1 hour. Cover and chill 4-24 hours.

Meanwhile, for the sauce, in a small saucepan combine the cranberries, sugar, and orange juice. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to a gentle boil. Boil until just slightly thickened, around 5 minutes. Transfer sauce to a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl. Push the sauce through the strainer gently to separate out the skin and seeds of the cranberries from the sauce. Add the shredded orange peel to the strained sauce. Cover and chill sauce 4-24 hours until well chilled. If the sauce is too thick to spread easily, gently warm the sauce a bit again and add a little water until it reaches a good spreading consistency.

To serve, pop the tarts out of their pans. Add a generous layer of the sauce over the top of the tart and arrange the segmented orange slices on top. Enjoy!

***  If you want to make one large tart for a dinner party of more than two, double the recipe in each section and use a 10 inch tart pan. ***

Wordless Wednesday - First Winter Garden

peas, rutabaga, carrots, chard

New Start, New Year, New Growth

While the new year holiday has long passed, I am still reveling in the idea of it being a new year. For me, a new year always represents a chance for new growth and a renewed excitement for personal development as well as improvement on the way things have been done from the previous years. This Christmas season was rather successful, with all but my Dad's gifts being sent on time. (And yes, I am going to start working on his gift finally tomorrow!) Once the holiday glow seemed to be finally ready to head back into its storage boxes for the year, I looked around the house to realize it was absolutely filthy. I guess with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays my cleaning, as usual, went by the wayside. So, I decided to make good on a promise that I made to myself around this time last year. We were moving from the old apartment to this new one, and upon finishing a 13 hour cleaning day at the old place, I promised myself to never let a place get that way again. Since one of my goals for the year is to follow through on things as well as finish up old projects, I decided to do a top to bottom cleaning of the house.

When I say top to bottom I don't just mean the whole house, I mean every nook and cranny of the whole house. Furniture was moved to ensure vacuuming could be done under every surface and not just around it as usual. This meant taking up the mattresses on the bed and going all under there, moving couches to make sure that was all cleaned. Shower stalls were scrubbed and then scrubbed again. Entire shelves were emptied, items sorted, dusted, and then either shelved again or placed in the donation pile. Floors were vacuumed, dust mopped, and then wet mopped. Papers were organized and either filed or shredded. Cabinets in the kitchen were scrubbed down thoroughly, and the top venting of the microwave was completely degreased. It has been a down right marathon of cleaning that I have not ever performed in a place that I was still going to live in, and I am so happy that I have done this. There was nothing more demoralizing to me than cleaning an old place top to bottom after moving out and realizing that I would not get to enjoy the squeaky clean that I had just created. I am currently enjoying the clean and organized house way more than I ever thought I would. I hope to keep up with the cleaning more in the new year.

Other goals I have for this year are also personal improvement aspirations. I hope to do more fancy cooking and to serve that cooking on the wedding china. So far, I have done it once this past weekend with an in home date night. It was fun, and I am looking forward to another one of them soon. Another food goal is to cook some ingredient that I have never worked with every other week. I worked on cooking a squash type that is new to me, and I still have quite a bit of that to work through. I also want to add some more things to my cooking schedule to remove more store bought items off the list. Yogurt is one of them, and I think that I may have it down to the point where i can share with you all. I also want to nail down that winning English Muffin recipe... it is getting close. I can feel that one being knocked out soon. The hardest thing for me on the goals list is the harp. I really want to be able to play that thing, and I want to commit to it more this year. I have gone through spurts and false starts with it since my husband finished it for me. I hope this year to move past lesson one on the DVD lessons I have. The last, but not least of the goals for the year is to keep in contact with friends better, including the writing of actual letters that you send in the mail. Unsolicited cards and mail from friends showing up out of the blue always makes my day. I hope to do the same for friends and family this year as I try to write more handwritten letters to people. This includes Thank You notes... yes I am bringing them back into my realm of being. I hope you all have not abandoned your goals for the year yet, and if you have perhaps now is the time to recommit to them. The year has just started after all. Forgive your lapses and try to move forward and commit to changing things you would like to see improved in your life.