Bagel Maddness

In this past years of trying to eat healthier and get in shape, I have taken to really reading labels on food again. I used to do this a lot in college, mostly because I had to for many of my classes. It was something that was always interesting to me but not a dire thing that I lived by. It was not until I took a food and nutrition class that things like additives and preservatives became a concern for me, and I made some small changes. Margarine and butter like spreads were banned from the house. I tried to make some efforts to cut back on corn syrups and other additives, but then life took over. I was a busy working person and had less and less time to look at things, and the husband was right in the same boat with me, too busy to notice. Once I left the working world for my new calling as a homemaker, label reading came back into vogue for me.

We began to eat healthier foods, and most of our food began as pure elements into the finished product rather than prepared fair that was matched together in a menu. I was, however, still packing on the weight in a way that I did not particularly relish. One of the biggest culprits I found, breakfast. I love breakfast... it is my favorite meal of the day. I started to notice, however, that I was eating large breakfasts every day regardless of how hungry I was. One of the biggest issues in the big breakfast and portion size was the bagel. I love bagels, I could eat them just about every day, and sometimes I even substitute them in for dinner and lunch. It was looking at this staple of our house that I found a calorie culprit. I am not a big fan of eating only one half of a bagel, and that was the serving size on the package. Then I looked at the total calories when eating both sides. Yikes! Too many for a meal, and that was not including the cream cheese or peanut butter on top, or the yogurt or fruit on the side! I needed to find smaller bagels.

This search for smaller bagels resulted in finding only those tiny bite sized ones that people would use to make bagel pizza bites. This also, surprisingly only came in plain most times as well. I did finally find one type made for a local discount grocery chain that were small enough with few enough calories to qualify. I was, however, disappointed in their construction. No real chewy skin, few raisins to speak of, and the cinnamon flavor was severely lacking. I decided to go down the path of homemade. This, unlike my attempts at replacing English muffins, went smashingly. I turned to my trusty Reinhart's Artisan Bread Everyday book for advice. He had a wonderfully easy recipe for bagels. I thought this had to be too good to be true. I spend about 20 minutes tops at the mixer, let things rest, shape and then into the fridge for two days to ferment. This is by far the hardest thing about the recipe, remembering to start these with enough time to have a new batch before you run out of them. From there it is a trip to the boiling water concoction and into the oven. So easy, and so worth it to make bagels from scratch. I still have to work on my shaping skills, but they come out wonderfully.

A few notes on things I have learned from this. Make a double batch of the dough. It really is worth your time and effort to make two sets as the boiling liquid uses barley malt syrup, the only expensive item in the recipe. I like to get the most bang for my buck, so making a double batch means only making one batch of poaching liquid and less waste as the liquid is discarded after boiling the bagels. I also find that I eat them so fast that a double batch makes me have to work on this remembering two days in advance business. I also let my bagels cool completely, place them into a plastic bag, and then freeze them. This keeps them in good condition longest. Remember that with out stabilizers and preservatives, mold can creep into these breads faster. I hope that this recipe review is helpful. I find myself turning to his book more and more for things. Hopefully I can work on my English muffin technique more soon to come up with some notes on how that quest is going. I think I may have the right recipe, just not the right technique yet. Practice makes perfect, and eating my mistakes is at least not that painful.

English Muffin Experiments

The quest to find an English muffin recipe that I like as well as the store bought variety continues. I have tried several recipes, and this one ended up with the same results: not enough nooks and crannies for my liking. Through these experiments, I have come to find that there seem to be two schools of English muffins. The first is the Thomas' or Bay's school of thought, more like a crumpet and less like a roll. The dough on the outside is definitely all roll with some good chew and a little crust; the inside reveals a velvety softness that is held aloft by huge air pockets. Fork split is the only option as knife cutting mars the pockets left by the leavening. The other type is decidedly more bread like and no where near a crumpet. This has its merits too, but it is not what I am look to replicate. I would love to replace the expensive store bought ones for a cheaper but just as tasty and craggy delicate product.

This time I tried the recipe from Reinheart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. This recipe was one that is completed in one day, but it made a bread style dough. From the outset I was afraid that this one would end up like the old Fleshman's recipe I had tried. These muffins that are more dough based are more like a lightened up dinner roll style dough. There is kneading and shaping involved. I kept thinking that perhaps somehow these could end up with the airy middles, but that was not to be. They cooked up really tall and the browning I achieved on this set is probably the best I have ever reached. These also take some time in the oven after the initial skillet cooking. They had great flavor and were very soft and pleasant, but not what I was looking for in terms of school one of English muffins. I did make sure to fork split them just in case I was wrong, but alas, no really big nooks or crannies to be found. The crumb was nice and the muffin was rather light, but it was not the recipe I was looking to keep.

If you do fall into the more substantial English muffin school of thought, these were very easy to make with little hands on time. Their flavor was good, and we enjoyed using them with eggs Benedict as well as with some homemade jam and marmalade. I am looking at a new recipe that I think may finally be the winner. This one is more of a batter like dough that needs to be spooned into crumpet rings on the griddle and the muffins do not go into the oven at all. The pictures look promising, and other home bakers who have blogged about their use of the recipe have pictures that look exactly like what I am questing to achieve. As soon as we get more bread flour and finish off the last of these muffins, I will dive in and let you know my results.

Baked Goods

Ah baked goods! They are the reason why I am now jogging three times a week. I love them so much, and I cannot be stopped from making and eating these treats. I can however monitor their size. This pie is in the new lineup of mini baked items that I am making. It helps me keep the size of my portions smaller. As with the mini cakes, this is a mini pie. I found a 6" pie plate on Amazon, and this size plate uses a pint jar of the cherry pie filling I made. It also takes a single crust recipe to make a double crust pie! It makes me so happy to also not have a huge pie sitting around that we get sick of before finishing it. I also made a fancy top to the pie by using a mini cookie cutter to cut heart shapes out. Sadly, the filling did bubble out of the outside hearts, but the center one remained clear as to what it was.

I also made zucchini bread this week. I used the first zucchini that I successfully grew out on the balcony. I planted a zucchini plant last year but was unable to get any zucchini successfully off of that plant. This year, I think I will do better as they are in a deeper container, and I know not to water them quite as much. There are several more zucchinis growing on the two plants now, and I cannot wait for them to get bigger so we can have more bread as well as grilled and fried zucchini for dinner.

Interestingly enough, there were no seeds in the zucchini, so the bread did not have as much juice from the squash. It turned out a bit dry, and while I would like to blame it on the squash itself, I also think I over baked it a bit. Even with these setbacks, I still feel it is the best zucchini bread I have ever made since I grew the squash myself with no help from anyone but nature.

The balcony garden is doing much better this year, and I will take pictures this afternoon to share with you. Lots of things are blooming and producing. I have eaten almost all the radishes, and I am planting replacements as I pluck each one out of the dirt. I hope to get three or more harvests out of them.

On the couch to 5K today, I kept with it and finished out strong. I am really proud of myself. I did not let myself slink back to week three. I feel so refreshed and recharged to take on the day. Speaking of which, there are projects to be tackled, World Cup games to be watch, Long Now to be attended, and a kitchen floor in need of a good washing.

Jogging for Dessert

I know that I have said it before, and I am going to say it again. I love desserts... apparently too much lately. I gained weight after leaving the working world before we left for California and briefly lost some, then gained it all back. I blame my love of all things dessert. When we went to Vegas I ate more desserts at the buffets than anything else. A whole plate of them I am sad to admit, and so it comes with great regret that I am back to the couch to 5K jogging program. I just cannot give up that slice of cake or pie or pudding or cookie after dinner. Something has to give, and for now that is my rear being attached on the couch. I know that I have chronicled my exercise program start last year when we were at the old apartment that had a weight room. I have also been tossing around the idea of buying an elliptical, but when I really got down to thinking about it, we live in California. It never gets so cold that I would have to exercise inside like I would in Illinois. So, with out the weight room to hide me, I have started trying to redo my progress on the couch to 5K by jogging outside. It was terrifying at first. People will probably laugh at how out of shape I am even though I don't look it, but really I decided their opinions did not matter. I wanted to be in shape. I want to be able to run and catch that train and make it without getting on board and panting like I ran a marathon in the 500 feet I ran. I have decided this is the best course of action, and I have to stick with it. Day one was Monday, and it went well. I am going to leave for day two as soon as this posting is done before the predicted afternoon rain showers show up. I always learned in my exercise and behavior classes that one of the best ways was to publicly state your goals. So, here it is. I want to do the couch to 5K running plan on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week. I also want to make sure that traveling is not a hindrance to this, so no vacations from the program aside from Chaos Wars, which is physically very demanding.

The first picture in this entry (before the exercise commitments) is my first attempt at making flan. It turned out really well and was a perfect compliment to my cake baking obsession of late. Most of the cakes I make need just egg whites, and I hate to throw out the yolks. Custards take up the slack of the yolks perfectly. I guess that means when I make cake one week look for a custard the next! I made these to go with our taco night on Monday. The peas in the other picture came from the patio garden. I am thinking about ditching the beans next year in favor of a round of peas only. This may be amended if the beans suddenly start to do something good. Perhaps I will sneak in a late fall round of peas out there. I used them in a beef stew that I made last night for us to combat the nasty rainstorm we were having. Lately it has been more like California winter than spring or summer here. I made some lean bread to go with it from the freezer. Have I mentioned how wonderful those new bread baking books are?

Well it looks like it may be sunny enough for the jog and hopefully some product pictures. Now... off to jog away that flan!

Coconut Cake!

The last week and weekend was a busy one. My parents came to visit from Illinois, and it was a fun time. They arrived on Thursday, and after finding out there was water in the basement back home, we tried to relax and have fun. I made homemade gyros and pita breads with a nice Greek salad while my Dad tried to find an earlier flight home. For dessert I made the chocolate strawberry pie recipe of my sister's.

On Friday, we went and leisurely walked around the Union Square area after a great dim sum lunch. It was fun doing some window shopping, and my parents picked up some kitchen items to take back with them. I managed to be good in all the kitchen supply places but broke down and bought myself two shirts. They are super comfortable and look great. On Saturday we went wine tasting in the Santa Cruz mountains. It was a fun trip, and I really enjoyed myself. Most tastings were free, and most of the wineries were small and very intimate. I enjoyed the small family run ones the most. Dan and I even bought six bottles of wine along the way.

On Sunday, we dropped off my parents at the airport and started working on cleaning up the house and resetting ourselves for the week. There was laundry to do as well as picking up all the items that were left around by myself during the whirlwind of activity of the visit. Now the chocolate strawberry pie is not Dan's favorite. He is a huge fan of coconut though, so I decided to make the coconut cake that we saw on a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen. Currently you can get the recipe on their website for free. If you are interested, I would go and get the recipe now before it goes away from being a free one.

It was a really easy recipe and only required two odd items, coconut extract and creme of coconut. They are both available at most local grocery stores. This cake was the official final nail in the coffin for me with boxed cake mixes. This took just as much time to make as a boxed cake, and the results are just so much better. I had made boxed cupcakes recently, so it was a good comparison in texture and flavor between homemade and boxed. The texture is just so much better. I also tested all the items one by one as I was making them. The low sweetness of the cake balances out the very sweet frosting. The toasted coconut is also a great texture on top of the whole package. I cut this recipe in half successfully for one of my mini cakes, and it halved easily with wonderful results. The only adjustment I would recommend is cutting the time used to toast the coconut. I had to cut my toasted with some raw because it was all too well done and not enough raw. Now, I just need to find something to do with the saved egg yolks. Any ideas?

Today I am off for a five mile walk since I could not yesterday due to the rain. I am also hoping to finish up the olive filigree pants that I started yesterday. They are coming along beautifully. I am hoping that I can finish them today and get them photographed tomorrow, but they are predicting rain again. I guess that means more sewing if I cannot photograph to list. Well I am off for that walk. I cannot wait to test out the new walking route and see if it is exactly five miles. I am also timing myself to see how long I take. I would ideally like to take less and less time each walk. Here is to getting in shape to continue eating cake!

Apron Finished

I finally finished up the Kaleidoscope apron that I talked about earlier. It was an interesting project, and even though I used the corrected pattern and directions, I still had to fiddle with the project a lot to get it right. I am not sure if some of this came from my using the opaque projector for the first time or not. I would say that if I was to do this project over again, I would make sure that the image I was copying using the opaque projector was small enough to fit into the 3.5 inch viewer. Moving it around an image was rather challenging and involved a lot of patience. If it were not for the small size of the projector, I would go and buy an old overhead projector instead due to its convenient image projection size. They are just so large to store in our small space. I really liked how the project turned out though. The pin tucks on the obi like top piece are a wonderful design touch. I also feel like this apron hides any tummy that I am currently trying to battle. While I would not say that this project was particularly challenging, I would say that it is an intermediate project as I had to play around with enlarging the pattern as well as deciding how large to make the side seams since there were no indications in the pattern directions. I ended up doing them twice because the first time I made them too short and the red part of the apron did not fit the black top. I still have to add buttons to the ties. That is going to be something reserved for later today as I would like to find four matching buttons out of the button boxes, no small feat to be sure. This project was in keeping with working out of the stash, so the fabrics were from the box of stashed pieces. That means I would love to use buttons from the random button box to have a total stash buster success! I even used up black cone thread ends from the serger to sew it up!

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was a really fun day. I received these wonderful flowers from one of my best friends. They arrived just as I was getting ready to go out to my big birthday dinner. Dan took me to Fleur de Lys in San Francisco. It was a wonderful meal. I will review it in more detail Monday once I get my pictures off the phones. Needless to say, I enjoyed myself. I also feel the need to take a long walk around the neighborhood to burn off some of those calories.

I also got some awesomely thoughtful presents from Dan. He went back to the antique store and picked up one of the cake stands that I really liked. While it has a distinctive lean, I still love it. I want to make a cake right away to use it, but I have to wait until we finish up those rocky ledge bars. That recipe made just too many for two people. Next time I am definitely doing a half batch of those. I also received some books that I had wanted for some time. One of them is Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hays. I am always trying to define exactly what it is that I am to people, and hopefully this book will give me more things to tell people about what I do. I know that homemaking is not exactly the most glamorous to many people, but I surely enjoy it.

I also received two of Pete Reinhart's books, Artisan Breads Every Day and The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. I am looking forward to reading these books and studying up on the art of bread. I love making bread, and while I am not that great at it, I hope to improve with these two texts. Look for pictures and updates here as to my progress. I have already made the pretzels with Annie out of one of the books, and she served us a luscious loaf during a dinner party last weekend. I hope I can reach her level of bread baking through these new instructions.

So much inspiration and reading, but for now I am off to laundry and some sewing. I still have inspiring projects for both myself and Fabulous Pants to work on. I wish, like many people, that there were more hours in a day!

Truly Content

Today is one of those days where I feel truly content with life. I am currently sitting on the couch watching wave after wave of gentle rain come into Oakland from over the bay. I love grey rainy days. I suppose I would be better fit for the Pacific Northwest because of this, but I think overall the sun is better for my mood. Too many rainy days like this in a row, and I get incredibly brooding and down to match the weather. I am reveling in these later than normal storms this season, and I am also thankful for the water. It will be appreciated later this summer when we get into our usual pattern of months without rain.

I bought myself these lilacs yesterday during my busy day out. Nothing speaks of spring to me quite like lilacs. I have a close association with their scent and spring, especially when their perfume and the smells of fresh rain mix. We had lilac bushes at our house where I grew up, and the best lilacs were a huge tree that had gone wild on the neighbor's yard behind our house. Mr. Hahn was not someone you wanted to cross, as he was a "get off my lawn" type of adult. As a child he scared me, but I always would try to creep close to his wild lilac bush that had turned into a tree. When I could, I would steal smells from the tree, but I would never dare take any of the flowers. I would, however beg my mom to cut me some off our little bushes. It was quite sad when the trees were taken out of the yard to be replaced by some other landscaping when I was a teen. That is why, when I saw these at a flower stand in the city yesterday I simply had to have them. I have been sitting next to them to be enveloped in their perfume. It brings me such wonderful happy thoughts and memories.

Yesterday I also broke out of the normal routine and started my exercise program again. I am back to square one. I ran and walked, but mostly walked, the stairs in the building. I am not sure how many times I went up and down, but it felt like a lot. I was going for time and did a whopping total of ten minutes. It is a pathetic start, but it is a start. I am hoping to add a minute or two tomorrow. Today I am going to do some yoga. My calves probably could not take stairs again today. I need some deep stretching.

I then headed into the city for a fun lunch with Dan. Then I was off to buy myself an opaque projector. I have always wanted one of these for those situations when you get a pattern in a book that needs to be enlarged. For all of those fun occasions, I have had to either try to enlarge it by hand or head off to the copy shop. While at the copy shops, I usually spent most of my time frustrated that I could not get the enlarger to work well. You would think after my short teaching career I would be good at this skill, but I am horrible. The opaque projector is supposed to fix all of these problems. I am going to try it out today since it is so nice and dark due to the rainstorms. I want to copy the Kaleidoscope Apron that was posted to Etsy's Storque a while ago. Luckily I waited to work on this project because in going back to that posting I found out there were pattern and direction problems with the copy supplied. If you are interested, the corrections can be found Lark Book's corrections page. Now I will hopefully be able to get the projector working and in correct ratios to enlarge the pattern the 400% necessary.

I also made cookies yesterday. Sweets are my definite downfall, and I have just come to the decision that I cannot cut them out, so I need to add exercise instead. These were a wonderfully rich cookie, so I don't need much of them to get my fill. Hopefully this makes them last. If you are looking for the recipe, it can be found at Martha Stewart's website They are called rocky ledge bars, and they really remind me of rocky road ice cream in cookie form. Definitely a delight for those with a sweet tooth.

In news of the balcony garden, my whining about wanting more new plants to show up must have worked. There are a ton of radish shoots that have pushed through. I also have spotted a beet shoot and a few red sails lettuce shoots. The green onions, pansies, and herbs that I planted have yet to do anything. I am going to try both patience and pleading again. I am not sure what worked last time, but I would like to think my anticipation somehow spurred Mother Nature into giving me some more instant gratification. Well off to enjoy this rainy day with some pattern copying, sewing, and tea!

Having Your Cake...

This weekend was all about having my cake and eating it too. I wanted a pretty quiet and domestic centered weekend, and I was able to achieve it for the majority of the time. Saturday was filled with a walk around the vast neighborhood to pick up some needed things and luxuries from the local stores. We picked up coffee and mustard, kitchen supplies from the commercial kitchen supply store, and some Nutella for crepes. We worked on various hobby projects and watched some television that we had on the dvr.

One of my most favorite things to do on days like this is look around antique stores. I am not a fan of the nicely organized ones with all hand picked items. I like ones that are kind of a jumble of many different things with completely no organization to them. It is fun to scan around like you are in a gigantic "I spy" game come to life and find something truly great that you want to take home with you. We headed out to my favorite place for this as I am currently on the hunt for a great cake stand. I found quite a few in different places tucked away for safe keeping, hopefully, until such a time as I can buy one. Dan had his eyes on a particular coffee set that seems to have finally found a home. He was a little disappointed. I did, however, help out with cheering him up. I found a basket of various glass percolator tops from long forgotten coffee pots. I have an odd love for percolated coffee, even though I know it is not the best way to make coffee, nor is it considered the best tasting by coffee aficionados. When we got married, we registered for the coffee percolator, but we were sad to find, at the time, that there were no glass domed ones. We received our somewhat boring plastic knob one and thought that someday we would get a replacement. While I do have my now beloved 1940's Silex glass domed lid for the stove top, the electric one is our go to coffee pot. We decided to take on a few of the orphaned tops and modify our current percolator. After quite a few drill bits being destroyed from our starter bit set, we called it a night. The next day, new bits and a specialty bit later, we had a perfectly modified and working glass topped percolator!

During the Sunday hardware store run in the rain, I decided to go into the garden center for a tomato cage for the now cage-less plant, I found a very flooded rosemary plant to take the place of my now rather defunct one. While I love the thought of trying to nurse the old plant back, it is rather deflating to look out the window and see the brown evergreen there with just a few green spots on a couple of branches. I think I am ready to let it go and replace, so I rescued this plant from the drips through the canopy.

After completing the coffee project, it was time for a good cleaning of the kitchen and some baking. I decided to make the yellow cake that I had always wanted to make out of my Cook's magazine. I had been reminded of it while watching America's Test Kitchen the day before. It turned out really well. While my attempt at the frosting was a bit disastrous due to my butter being too warm, it still tasted great despite the off texture. I have to admit that I am becoming more and more a convert to from scratch cakes. Although my Devil's food attempt a few weeks ago was not so great, the cake was really dense, this one was rather light and delightful in flavor. It also does not take that much longer to make a cake from scratch as it does from the box. I also like the fact that I can make my mini cakes for the two of us, so we do not have a big cake knocking around for a week getting stale as we try to responsibly eat it with proper portions. With a cake mix, this becomes less possible as you have to halve eggs, which is never an easy thing to do. While I think the cake would have looked prettier on a cake stand, it tasted quite good on its own. I guess I will have to see what my up coming birthday yields for cake stands, but overall this weekend I was quite able to have my cake and eat it too!

New Week, New Goals

This week is already off with a bang! Things are getting increasingly busy as dance performances loom in the not too distant future! Friday was filled with house cleaning. The house had been rather neglected since the beginning of the winter crafting season, so I too to and started a deep clean of the house. Lots of items were sorted, organized, and put back in the places they belonged. Dusting, vacuuming, and scrubbing of the living room, craft room, and bedroom were completed along with the usual Friday chores of laundry and business for Fabulous Pants. It was awesomely productive. Saturday was filled with dance sessions at the Fat Chance Studio. It was an awesome day there, as lots of the professional troupe were in attendance. We could get many perspectives and opinions on how to do different combinations as well as some wonderful performance tips and advice. It was, by far, one of the most enjoyable dance class sessions I have ever attended in my many years of dancing. The studio was filled with dance, laughter, and zaghareets.

Sunday was a recoup day before plunging headlong into this new week. I made some really great food out of both Cooks and Cooks Country magazines. We had their version of the Dutch baby pancake, and it dethroned our usual recipe for our new official recipe. We got to use two of our Meyer lemons in the batter, which was extra satisfying. I also picked up some blood oranges for a marmalade I am making for our friend.



She is always the gracious host for us during Bear's games, so it is only fair that she gets her favorite jam made for her in return. I hope to get that all made today. I have a good looking recipe in mind, but I am not sure if it will be bitter enough for her. I may do some more searching to compare what I have and what others suggest.

I also made some awesome s'more brownies from scratch! They were well worth the effort, and I believe that I am officially swearing off boxed mixes all together. I made a gram cracker crust on the bottom, added the brownie batter over that, then I melted some mini marshmallows once they were baked. I found this recipe in a Cook's Country from a few years ago, and it was a clear winner. Dan and I showed great restraint though and only took one each.



Today I am trying to be better about accomplishing things. My new idea is to adopt Google Task to try to get more done. I have downloaded an application for it to my phone, and I am hoping that having this new virtual to do list will allow me to be more productive. I have yet to cross a thing off that list, but as I finish this entry, I can finally tap that little box for my check mark to appear! Making marmalade is next, and then working on finishing up house cleaning and cutting out curtains. Hopefully I can get it all done before another studio session tonight! And now for that check mark!

Rainy Day Yields Inspiration

Today is the third day of rain here in the Bay Area, and I am finding myself rather renewed. I spent most of Thursday working on prepping for teaching Annie sewing as well as working on a special order that I hope to finish up today. Friday was kind of an exercise in frustration and disappointment. Annie and I hoped to make cheese, but we could not find the starter and rennet to save our lives. We licked our culinary adventure wounds and went back to the sewing room to work on aprons. The sewing went well, and soon Annie will have a new apron!

I went to class at Fat Chance Belly Dance this past Saturday and had a great time. Now that I am performing at Rakkasha with the group of students at the studio, I have more rehearsals and classes to attend. I also have signed up to do the student salon, so there is a lot of dance to participate in lately. The neatest thing was getting to attend a class taught by Carolena, the founder of the dance form. It was in a way a huge dream come true. I know it is corny, but she was one of my biggest inspirations when I started dancing. The class was so interesting, and I got so much out of the session. The rain showed up later that evening, and it was a welcomed thing. It made me sit down and just relax a bit and let myself rest. I was pretty wiped out from the dance sessions and all the fun of running around with Annie.

The rest of the holiday weekend was filled with reordering and picking up the house. The china cabinet was reorganized and reconstructed to make it much more functional. I also worked on my embroidery project that has spanned many, many years. I hope to get it finished in 2010, but it may be a stretch.

Today I am feeling like I have lots of energy to get things done despite a bad night's sleep. I am going to go and make a spice cake after this entry as well as finishing up the special order. I also want to dust the house and clean up in general. I am also making my final determinations as to the balcony garden for this year. I hope to make the order for all the seeds today or tomorrow. After all of this, I want to work on making a database to find recipes more easily in our collection of Cook's magazines. I am tired of going through each issue to find the one recipe that I need. Hopefully that will help. Well I need to stay with this wave of inspiration while I still have it. Spice cake pictures and recipe review tomorrow!

The Fruitcake is In!

The fruitcake was made this past weekend, and it is now swaddled in its wrappings waiting to come out on Christmas eve. Being from a fruitcake eating family, I never really got all the jokes about hating it until I had a really awful factory one. The light bulb was lit then. I have decided to continue making my own from scratch even though it requires up to four hours in the oven. This year I decorated my top and it turned out nicely. Now, in three weeks I can tell you how it fully turned out for taste this year.

An Apple A Day

Yesterday I did get some things accomplished. I got a bit more sewing done, and I was good and started in on the house cleaning again. While the cleaning did not get totally finished, hey there was a hockey game and parents on the phone, I did get some things cleaned up. In this time, I also managed to get an apple pie made. It turned out pretty good, with the exception of being too watery.



I made a Dutch pie for the first time, and I really like it. I have always loved streusel type toppings, and this seems like another great application of it. I did not use enough tapioca this time, so I had my opposite problem, too runny. Lately I have been using too much of the tapioca and my pies are too gummy. I am hoping to find tapioca flour in the future to avoid the small gummy ball texture and more evenly distribute the thickener across the filling. Well keeping it short today in the hopes of getting more sewing done. Hopefully today proves to be a bit more productive in that area.

Reorganization and Restarts

My bread making skills have been steadily improving as I get more and more practice with the methods. I was really proud of this first attempt at French bread. It turned out to be more like Italian bread though as the loaf was too large and not a small diameter like a baguette. After the second rise, I knew it was too big!



It was still very good and came out of the oven golden brown!



I did not slash the loaf deep enough, so it expanded out of the side, however it was still delicious. I think I will be working on this more and buying bread less. The pan was also wonderful. The bottom of the loaf was really crusty, just like from a bakery. It also released the loaf with out any extra butters or oils. It popped out with out any fuss.

On Friday, Dan and I did something that we never do. We went out and bought the newest thing on the day it came out. We got ourselves new Droid phones! The last time we got new phones was when we got our first phones in 2003. It was a long time coming, and I am really happy to have a new smart phone. There has been a huge learning curve, but I am catching on very quickly as the user interface is really easy to figure out. Usually we wait for things to get older and almost ready for new models to come out before buying, but for once, we treated ourselves. That actually took up most of our day on Friday. Then, we both started to feel a bit sick. We spent all of the rest of the weekend feeling a bit awful and working on the house a bit. We reordered Dan's office, and I did the same to the sewing room. Most of it remained the same, but I switched up where my desk and storage shelves are. My desk is now in a cozy nook sheltered by the shelves of supplies and fabrics. The sewing area remained the same as it was working well before. Now, though, I can actually get the bins of fabric off of the shelves with out any tricky maneuvering or yelling. The only bad thing about the arrangement is that I am looking at the electrical panel for the apartment. All in all though, a good switch.

After the weekend of rest, I am off to a roaring start today. I have already gotten banana bread made and out of the oven, the whites and bed sheets laundered, and some light pick up around the house done. I hope this reordering of things continues. I would like to get harp playing back in the routine, and I am going to try to start that again today. I hope to add it to my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday schedules. Well I am off to sew since I am feeling the urge to finally complete the first Christmas project and move onto the next sewing one. I am also hoping to get some light housecleaning accomplished today as well. Wish me luck on the cleaning and that the crafting does not fully take over!

Cake and Choreography

I made a cake this week from scratch. I usually don't put in the effort on cakes for some reason like I do on other things. Lately, that has been bothering me. I have been trying to remove a majority of the premade and box foods in our diets, and I have been feeling much better about my cooking skills and food choices as of late. Part of my hunt for better food has involved looking through old issues of Cook's Illustrated that I have but never was able to cook out of due to time issues. I really love this magazine as it takes a more scientific method approach to cooking and improving recipes. In my searching through for a dessert this week, I found a recipe for applesauce cake found in their September and October issue from 2006. It was a little bit more work than a mix or packet, but the results were really that much better. I decided to take a page from Jane Brocket's Blog and take a picture of my cake on a fancy plate.



The china only gets used on special holidays, but I have to say that looking at cake on this dessert plate makes me think I should crack them out more often. China just makes everything look better.

Today I am going to work on jogging again and also hit the choreography. I have gotten mid way through the tough opening of the song and look forward to the free flowing part that I seem to have in my head already. I am excited and think today will be a very productive session, and hopefully, I did not just jinx myself! I am hoping to finally get the shirring foot to work this weekend. I am going to work on trouble shooting with Dan to see if he can figure out what I am doing wrong. He is a wonderful sounding board and usually finds the obvious things that I seem to always miss in these situations. I really want my skirt for the start of level 2 at Fat Chance Belly Dance next week. While I could have had this skirt done last week if I would have hand gathered it, I really want to learn to use my machines for these things. It will speed up any projects that are similar in the future. Here is to hoping for a successful day.

Baking, Blackwork, and Berries

The English muffin experiments were more successful on Friday. The new recipe worked better for me and also worked well being halved. The other recipe did not work very well when halved to begin with, so trying to force it into success was going to be difficult. This time I think the kneeding went well via the Kitchen Aid, but I still must have added a little too much flour. There were not as many nooks and crannies as I would have liked. I did decide to try cooking them on our large cast iron griddle. I think that this worked out much better than using the small griddle that I used before. I could get more muffins on at one time, and if I had been more patient in allowing the iron to head up evenly, I think the browning would have been even more even than it was. Here they are all lined up:



I also had a wonderful time at Needle in a Haystack for my Blackwork class. It was taught by Lucy Barter of the Royal School of Needlework. I learned a lot, and even though my work from that day does not seem to show it off as well, I stitched for a good four hours. It was a great class, and I recommend any classes taught by Lucy highly. She was delightful. I learned about shading techniques and also tried my hand at working on linen. I have never had the guts to work on an even weave fabric and usually use Adia style cloth in my cross stitch and embroidery projects. I do have to say the results of stitching on cloth is beautiful, but I think I would resort to using a magnifying glass in the future. It is very hard to look at the threads and find the holes between the weave when you are staring at a piece for more than five minutes. I am surprised that I did not lose a contact. This was my humble attempt at the dragonfly design she provided us with:



Here is a close up of the stitches:



On Sunday I decided to celebrate the Spring Equinox by buying some early season strawberries. I got a good deal since there were not that many people at the market due to the overnight rain and morning winds. They smelled so good that I could not pass them up. Now I need to come up with a dessert I can make with them, so they get finished before I leave for the Vegas Trip this Friday. They looked so pretty, I had to take a picture.



On the plate for today is the start of a new, more intense exercise program. After trying on clothes all Saturday and finding that my bottom does not seem to fit into clothing as well any more, I am back to the treadmill. I also want to add in weight training and some yoga. I am going to also try to do this five days a week. I hope that I can keep committed to it. I am also working hard on finishing up the embroideries for that belt. The faux shisha are coming along, and I am dreaming of some other embroidery stitches I now want to add around the belt. I think it is going to be a knock-out when I am finally finished. I also found a great new set of music while at dance class on Friday. I am pretty sure I have my music picked out for the show, but I don't get the cd until Wednesday. I guess I will be choreographing in the airport! :) Well lots to do before this trip, including getting an appointment with my hairdresser. I need to call her.....

On Breadmaking and Boats

You can see some really interesting things when you look out our windows onto the Oakland-Alameda Estuary. Yesterday I saw a pirate style ship sailing along.... well motoring along actually. They were headed up wind and had the sails down, but it still was neat to see motoring along.



It was a nice thing to cheer my otherwise dismal day yesterday. I had a really bad headache the whole day, so not as much work got done as I would have hoped. Also, my attempts to practice with the shirring foot resulted in much frustration as the machine quit gathering the fabric for some reason. I must have had a dial set wrong. I decided to give up and watch some basketball and tried to work on the belt. I did make progress on the belt, installing more faux shisha as well as covering more rings.

Today is starting out much better. I packed up the tutu and other things for Claudia's birthday as well as some pants I took up for my sister. I also have started some English muffin dough that is rising currently. Bread is the newest cooking obsession that I have, and after a great streak of beginner's luck, lately things have not been going so well. I think that I am both adding too much flour as well as over kneading all the doughs in my Kitchen Aid. Today I did things like set timers and refuse to add more flour when it still looked "too sticky." We will have to see what the results are going to be once I get through the first rise. I find making bread to be rather satisfying, even if it does not turn out. My white bread always seems to work from the recipe that I have from my Grandmother on my Dad's side. It always turns out perfect event hough I had to cut it down from the four loaf full recipe. She was feeding a farm, so I can understand that, but with just Dan and I, four loaves is over kill. Sourdough has been a flop as of late, but I am also determined to iron out the wrinkles on that and figure out why my sourdough is not really ever sour. English muffins lately were really dense, and I blame over kneading and too much flour on that one. I will have better data on that after today's batches. I am also trying a new recipe for those to see if this one works better for me.

Laundry is also coming along, and after this posting, I am determined to get that shirring foot working again. So much for getting that skirt done for class tonight, but at least I am not going to let myself give up on learning how to use it this time.

This weekend I am attending a class on blackwork. I am really looking forward to finally learning how to do this technique correctly. Currently, I cheat. With true blackwork, the front and back of the embroidered fabric look the same, so you have to plan your runs and make sure you know where you are going. I have two items in the shop currently that have my attempts at blackwork, but, luckily, you cannot get a peek at the backsides that are not as perfect as the fronts.





Both tins are available for sale in the Etsy shop. Hopefully I can add more designs after I take my class. Oh and those hair flowers, I hope to have them listed now on Monday. Due to the headache they did not get completed. I am working on getting that all in order today as well. So much to do and so little time before bread is done rising and class at Fat Chance is calling.

Terrific Tuesday

Yesterday was more productive than I thought it was going to go. As soon as I had finished up my "rah-rah" posting yesterday about all that I was going to accomplish, Erik wrote to ask if I wanted to get lunch. I, of course, can never turn down the opportunity to get lunch with someone. I figure he will be back to work again soon, and my fun lunch dates will go away again. I quickly went down to the gym and got my two miles in and then got ready for the day. We went out for a really nice burger in Emeryville. I was worried about getting the tutu materials and the housewares run done, but Erik came though. We went to the craft store and got me the tutu materials. I worked on that yesterday, and I am close to completing that today.

I ended up doing the housewares run today. I also treated myself to some of the herb plants that I am missing from the great scorched earth war against the fungus from a few months ago. I have the plants currently in quarantine to prevent any white flies or anything getting into the good plants. I learned my lesson on bringing in new plants with out treating them for issues first. Here they are after a good dosage of fungicide and pest soap.



I purchased mint, oregano, thyme, and a dill plant to join the sage, parsley, and chives in the box. The basil is doing well, but I need to take off some leaves that are not looking so hot. Hopefully that will also make the plants grow better with bigger leaves as well. I have really enjoyed this small box gardening, and it is always nice to go to the window and just cut what I need when I need it rather than having to buy it. I hope to plant the new plants into the box tomorrow.

I am also working on my sourdough bread experiments today. After some great beginner's luck, I have hit quite a bumpy road with this baking. I first started out with the Joy of Cooking and her recommendation of making a starter with commercial yeast. That worked for the first couple of time until my starter collapsed due to a war with the very strong natural yeast we have in the Bay Area. I started a natural starter, a rather scary process for me, and then used the Cook's Magazine recipe for sourdough. I had really consistent results for bread with their recipe, but I ended up with loaves that tasted more like white bread than sourdough. I am now working on a little booklet Dan found on the internet, but I seem to have my technique off, so the loaves taste a bit better, when they actually bake up. Today I am working on just going back to rustic hand formed loaves and will work on the bread more before trying to put it into pans again.

So for the rest of the day my goals are the tutu and more work on the belt. I also want to work on some of the gimp graphics I started last night for a new on line project to be launched soon. I will fill in the details when that is all finished up. Housecleaning is also something I would love to accomplish, but it may be a bonus for today and pushed off for something to do tomorrow. Remember I am trying to be more realistic with these goals.

Unmotivated Monday

So I am totally unmotivated today. I think I am going to blame it on the new arrival into the household, our new tv. It is a large tv and it is like a small movie theater screen in our small apartment. I love it, but it takes the motivation to do things right out of me. I suppose the numerous messes left behind by our new bundle of joy are not helping matters either. The apartment is kind of hard to navigate, and the new boxes to the box piles are a bit disappointing since we were getting so close to being "box free." Needless to say, I took the opportunity to take the weekend off and do things like lazing around and watching the big tv. (Do you see a trend yet?) I did also do some good and productive things. I finished off the special order last week, which took a load off my shoulders. Now I am just going though my normal anxiety of wondering if the pieces I made are going to fit correctly. I measured many times and cut once, so hopefully Norm's steadfast advice will come though again.

I did do some productive things over the time since my last entry. On Wednesday, I spent the day with a friend. I meant to get the sewing totally finished on that day, but it was great to see Erik and hang out. Being over at his place is always an adventure, and I am never sure what projects we will end up doing, but they are always fun. This time, hydroponics. I think he was inspired by my window and Aerogarden the last time he was over and wants in on some of the home gardening fun. He, though, admitted that he is not good at remembering to water plants, so hydroponics seemed like the logical conclusion for his engineering mind. Engineers, you gotta love them! We, read he with my moral support, also built a soil moisture detector. It was amazing to watch him just put it together out of his imagination and a little internet help.

Thursday was my usual try to get things done in the morning with tutoring in the afternoon. I ended up getting all the cutting and a bit of sewing on the custom order done that day. Friday was the frantic, "This needs to get out the mail TODAY!" sewing session. I am proud to say that it got finished. I just wished my need for pressure to get anything accomplished habit would change. I guess I have always been a pressure person, so it may be a long time coming. I also went to Fat Chance for dance on Friday night instead of Tuesday. I just did not feel up to going on Tuesday, and it was nice to have the option of going on another night if I wanted to go but not on the particular night I was used to going. Options are great.

Today, I am hoping to get myself off the couch after writing this and into the gym. We will see how this works out. Big tv is pretty neat and also may be lonely if I leave the apartment. I also wanted to get a ton of baking done. Hopefully I can get some banana bread going after jogging and some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies accomplished today. English muffins may have to wait for tomorrow. I also want to get my sister's pants hemmed and Claudia's birthday present planned and the list of items needed for it written out. Once all that is done, I am going to settle in for some tv viewing and some hand sewing on that cross stitch belt that I mentioned months ago. Yes, it got put down again and forgotten. I would really like to get the embroidery done on that and get the belt finished this week if at all possible. The weather, being like it is, will actually help, since I find my best hand sewing occurs on rainy days. This week is supposed to be all rain. Pictures of baked goods to come tomorrow. Till then, I plan to stay dry and cozy with a cup of tea. Off to the gym for me now though!

Monday, Monday

The weekend was a good rest and well needed break of the normal pace. Instead of going out and doing a bunch of things, Dan and I mostly stayed at home. We meet up with a friend for lunch on Saturday and did some grocery shopping, but that was it. The weekend was also suitably rainy and crappy, so it was not a surprise that we hid indoors. I took the opportunity to get some organization done in the office area. I have stacks and stacks of different crafting magazines that I kept for the projects. I have decided to go through them all and rip out the projects and get rid of the adds and place the projects into organized binders. These magazines are chock full of adds, and most of the pages are going into the recycling bin instead of taking up room in the office. It was, in an odd way, relaxing to pull apart magazines, hole punch, and place the articles into binders. I also decided to work on my cross stitch frame. Currently the dowels that hold the fabric did not fit well through the frame holes. I also had to thread one side on first and then the other side of the frame, so it was always hard to get the fabric lined up well. I decided to get out the last scrap of sand paper we had since we "gifted" most home improvement supplies in our move and sand down the dowels. I am now wondering why it is that I did not do this sooner. It was much easier to work on getting the fabric not only centered but also taught with the ability to move both sides freely on the dowels. Hopefully this will make me get back to work on the cross stitch design in there that I have been working on for years. It is an "off time" project that I pick up and drop off when convenient. Also over the weekend, I cleaned up some of the piles on my desk. In doing so, I found the brochures for the Afghanistan exhibit that Dan and I visited over the holidays this winter. I will take pictures today and show them off tomorrow along with talking about the exhibit. What an oversight on my part to not share sooner!

Today is a delightfully rainy Monday. I love rainy days, and most of my love for them is the added focus I seem to have on those days. We don't get many rainy days though, so I find myself wandering more often then I would like. I have a ton that I need to get done, and today I am determined to get it all done in a timely manner.

On the plate for today:
I really want to get back to jogging. Hopefully the treadmills are back in working order this week. I have decided that while the elliptical is better for my hips, I really do like jogging on the treadmill better. I also need to get the special order finished today. There is so much work to do, but I MUST get it done today.I also want to get the photographs for tomorrow's post compiled and edited. As a bonus, I hope to get some peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies in the oven. That is all I am going to put up for goals. I want to meet them and perhaps get to exceed them. I am also going to continue the magazine purge tonight with my evening television viewing. Hopefully I can get this purge done this week. Ok, lots to do and I really want to achieve my goals, so off I go! Pictures tomorrow, I promise!

Busy Days

I know that it has been a few days again since I wrote, but things have been pretty busy around here. I was contacted by a dance colleague and wonderful customer of mine, Ashley Lopez, who is both a dancer and instructor in San Jose. She needed a new pair of custom pants, so I have been of line working on making some tailoring adjustments and crafting her perfect pair. She picked out her pair from a new fabric I had in stock but had not made into pants yet. It is a beautiful raspberry sari fabric that she chose, and I am sure it is going to look killer on her.



I still have enough fabric left for one more pair of pants to be made if there are any takers out there.

Friday was a great day. Dan took the day off from work to decompress while I finished up the pants. We had tickets to see Kodo that night up in Marin. We went up and saw another wonderful show by them. Saturday and Sunday were filled with the usual domestic things, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and the like. Monday I spent out fabric hunting for another new special order. I found the perfect fabric for the client, and I am going to muslin up the piece to day to see if there are any adjustments that need to be made before I move onto the actual garment sewing. Yesterday was spent running around the city looking for a new pair of knee pads for dance class. I ended up finding ones I thought were perfect, but they did not end up fitting over my calves. Oh well, such is life. ;) I guess I am back to the drawing board with that one. I also got some supplies for the household yesterday as well as my Valentine's Day cards. I need to fill them out and get them in the mail, pronto!

On the list for today, I need to get these cards filled out and mailed first. Second, I am going to work on this pattern and hopefully get the muslin cut out today and perhaps sewn. I am still working on my now very late Christmas gift for Da, so that also needs to get worked on some today. Other than that, I want to try my hand at baking baklava. I will take pictures to post tomorrow for you all. I hope it turns out! I also need to order new bulbs for the AeroGarden. One is already burned out. Bummer I know, but I need to keep the now thriving garden happy. Well lots to do and so little time. Pictures hopefully tomorrow!