Truly Domestic Day

Yesterday turned out to be a truly domestic day. I spent most of it in the kitchen and not at the sewing machine as hoped, but the chicken stock tutorial is really coming along. I worked on the stock for a while, it is not as time involved as it may seem, and then turned to bread making. Lately my luck with working with yeast has been lacking. My bread has been tough and dense, and the crust not much to write home about. I decided to give it another go yesterday seeing as I have lunch meat around but no bread for lunches. I was amazed at how well it came out. It was, by far, my best loaf of white bread. It rose as it should and cooked through. The crumb on it was just right, and it did not have huge air holes.



I found that part of making my bread better was throwing caution to the wind and ignoring my user's manual for the Kitchen Aid. This all came to me after watching an episode of America's Test Kitchen on PBS last weekend. It was a pizza episode, and I wanted to watch to see their crust methods. While watching them, I realized that they use their dough hook on setting 4, which, according to the user's manual, is a big no-no. I had always thought the bread was not kneading fast enough or hard enough on setting two, so this time I took it up to 4! It was a good idea for me. Hey, I am not advocating you break your Kitchen Aid; I can break mine though. The bread had perfect crumb and went through all the risings without loosing the yeast's power. It was a true success.

I then launched into a Greek feast for dinner. We had grilled lamb with homemade tzatziki and homemade flat breads. Bread making was apparently in as my flat breads also turned out. Those usually do, but after reaching successful sandwich bread again I did not know if I had used up my bread points for the day. Needless to say, we are going away from store bought bread again.

I did manage to get some more red work embroidery done, and if I can ever get the red cording into the shop, I will have some new organizational tins up.



I love mine for carrying around my embroidery tools onto the subway. They are also great to store bindi in or moo cards. I do have two up in the shop right now. One is a rectangular tin with blackwork on the top. I love that design! It is a fun one to stitch. The other is a circular one, with a removable lid. It is great for bindi or for holding all your cut ends when you don't want to go off to the garbage or when one is not near, like on the airplane or train. It holds needles perfectly and can even hold a pair of nail clippers if you want to be really mobile with your sewing and not take scissors with you.

Today is full of cleaning the kitchen, freezing up the stock, and trying to fit some sewing in before I have to leave for 826 to do tutoring. I hope to write up that stock tutorial tonight and have it up for you all tomorrow.

Early Fall and Cold Winter?

Yesterday was rather interesting. I got some hairflower pictures edited and listed the item up in Fabulous Pants Store. They are a great set of magnolia style flowers that I gave iridescent middles to. They are simply gorgeous.







I spent a lot of time on the web researching different things that needed to be looked into. Once I got frustrated with all of that looking about, I left for the type of research I like better, books! I went up to the library and dug around until they closed. I found a few good books with some new jelly and jam recipes that I cannot wait to try out. Hopefully there will be some that I can find the ingredients to! They are quite exotic and may require some food hunting to accomplish the goals. I hope to sit down over coffee with my canning buddy and find somethings that interest us both.

While I listed up some beautiful hairflowers that are definitely summer, and the weather is also finally acting like summer around the Bay Area, I cannot help but wonder if this is going to be a harsh winter with an early fall. I have noticed that I am turning into quite the stocking up for something type as of late. Aside from the usual familial stocking of jam and canned fruit for the winter and next year, I find myself stocking up on meat and staples as well. Our freezer is overflowing with meat that I have bought that was on sale in large packs. It is just Dan and I for most occasions, so I went though breaking down whole tenderloins of pork, large beef roasts, ground beef packages, and full chickens into meal sized portions for us and vacuum sealing them before freezing them for later. All of this was, of course, on great sales, hey I cannot pass up 76 cents a pound chickens. I justify it as being something that will save us money in the long run, which it will, and then I joke that it is my flu defense food bank. That if this H1N1 is really bad we can barricade ourselves in the apartment and survive nicely for a few weeks. I wonder though if deep down inside there is some sort of animal instinct kicking in making me want to hoard to get through an awful coming winter and early fall season. It is something to ponder I suppose, and as I was pondering these thoughts last night and this morning, I saw that we are supposed to have a more rainy than normal winter this year due in part to El Nino.

On the note of overflowing things, I am going to work on a tutorial today for making chicken stock. Right now I am overflowing with extra chicken cuttings and a carcass from last night's dinner. I have found that since I started making my own stock and using that in recipes I am much more happy with my results in flavor. It is also great to have on hand in case I need to whip up some quick chicken soup for a sick husband or friend. It really is easy, and when you freeze it into the hockey pucks, they are also convenient. I do this same thing with the turkey after thanksgiving, only that takes place the same night, so I don't have to find a place to put the carcass in the fridge full of leftovers. I also have some bread to bake for sandwiches as well as flat breads for tonight's Greek lamb dinner. Well I guess I am off to the kitchen and some sewing machine action later this afternoon!

Cookies Won

Yesterday it was a contest between digging though books at the library to expand my jam and jelly recipes or to make cookies. Cookies won out hands down. I made white chocolate chip macadamia nut for Dan. Now I know that the white chocolate lovers out there sometimes get upset about the constant pairing of their chips and the macadamia nut, but it really is a winning combination.



I listed up some destashed jewelry making items yesterday. I placed some lanyard clips on the Etsy Store. The current listing is for a lot of 30, but I do have several more lots of them here. If you are interested in a larger quantity, please just let me know, and I will set up a special listing just for you.





Today I am going to finish up the deep clean of the house. There are still the bathrooms to tackle. After all that is finished, I am off to the library for that book hunt and some pants sewing as well. I am still working on the hand sewing and finishing of the elephant and peacock belt. It is finally coming along. I am still finishing off the tassels for it and need to hang them out before their final trim. Only eight more of those to go. I am also working on some hairflower listings today once I sign off of the blog. I will post the pictures here of the newly listed ones tomorrow. Check back to see them as they are quite lovely.

New Blooms

I am ready to finish up things that I started in the Fabulous Pants workshop as well as begin some new things this week. I am taking a cue from my rescue violet and trying to bloom anew this week. The store is starting to dwindle on pants selection, and it has been an eternity since I listed a belt up there. I have many projects started, but it is time for me to finish them and let them bloom in the store. I have several hairflower pairs that I have finished and photographed, so look for them this week in the store. I also have some more supplies that I am going to upload to the store soon.

The house is in need of some attention as well. After a truly delightful weekend of relaxation, the house is showing my lack of work. There are dishes from last night's dinner that need to be washed, tables to be dusted, bathrooms to be scrubbed, and floors to be swept. The food fest was interesting. I got a wicked sunburn on my usual crispy shoulder regions, which means I am relegated to the baggiest of t-shirts. Hopefully it passes soon. Showers are still painful, and as usual many applications of sunscreen did not work. Thankfully the fog is back, and the momentary Midwestern summer conditions we had for the past few days seem to be in the past. It was fun to wear short skirts and tank tops for a few days, but I am happy to be back under the enveloping fog.

I may also be taking a trip up to the local library today or tomorrow. I hope to check out some more books with jelly and jam recipes. I am looking for something new and interesting that I have not made before. It appears that there may be several options at the library or other branches. Hopefully they will do book transfers for me, so I do not have to try to navigate to other places. I will do a review of any of the books I find.

I guess it is time for the house to bloom into new cleanliness now. Off for some deep cleaning.

Tomato Time

The tomatoes on the patio are really starting to come along, and while I am still skeptical that they will ever get red, they are growing in size. This week canning with Annie, we decided to embark on tomato hijinks. We bought a flat of Roma tomatoes at one of the farm stands and began our canning. First we sorted them out by size and washed them all.



We then set out peeling and coring all the tomatoes. I had forgotten my Blue Book at home and had to resort to the USDA guidelines on line. We packed our quarts, but did not pack them full enough. We were not making sure to drain off the excess liquid while packing in the fruits. This resulted in floating tomatoes in our jars. We also left too much headroom as well as being too excited and forgetting to wipe off the rims of the jars. This resulted in substandard canning, and we had to open all the jars and redo all the work we did.



Luckily we had only done a third of the packing. A call to my Mom was made, and the canning guru led us through what we did wrong and how to improve on our poor results. We fixed up the quarts and went from four quarts to three. When we moved onto the pints, we packed them full and made sure to drain off the liquid as we packed so that they were very full. We also got juice on the counter quite a bit in the attempt to fully pack the jars. Sometimes we went overboard.



In the end we had two quarts of tomatoes and 7 pints of tomatoes packed and a few quarts of the cooking juice with lots of tomato goodness. I took five of the pints and left the juice and the rest of the pints and quarts for Annie.



After a dinner break, we moved onto the golden cherry tomato and ginger jam. (Recipe can be found in The Joy of Cooking post New Joy of Cooking era) It was something we were really excited about and required a two day cooking process. Annie plumped and steeped our tomatoes the night before. We then went through the cooking and jamming process for this. It turned out really gingery, but I can see it mellowing out a bit after cooling and being in the jars for a little while.



The only bad thing about this recipe was that it only made three half pint jars. If we do this one again, I think we would double it at least for the effort you had to make for this jam.



This weekend I am going to attend the Eat Real Fest in Oakland. I find it interesting that canning has become something that the "in" crowd is getting into. I guess my Mother and Grandmother are more foodie than I ever thought. The film festival continues around here as well. Hopefully we can clear off more DVR space as well as let me get some hand sewing done on those belts I am still working on. Signing off for the week. I look forward to reviewing the festival for you on Monday.

Canning Party

This week is the official Canning Across America canning party week. While my family has been canning for as long as I can remember, it seems like it is becoming something interesting to others again, and I could not be happier. This week is filled with canning events and parties as well as classes. We are even having a session in Jack London Square in Oakland this weekend. Today,though I am having a private canning party with Annie again. We are tackling tomatoes as well as a yellow cherry tomato and ginger jelly. I am moving into new territory with the jelly part, seeing as the only jelly we ever made in my family was grape and the occasional wild black berry jelly. Here is my strawberry from this weekend. I love the deep color this batch seemed to take on. I also made it with out pectin, and I am enjoying the sloshiness I see in the jar versus the commercial pectin ones.



I also listed some more destash yesterday. They are jumprings, and while it is hard to make certain supplies look artful, I think I did an okay job.





Well I gotta run to catch my train. More canning pics tomorrow.

826 Tent Rebuild

Last summer, I helped trouble shoot some problems with the reading tent at 826's in school room at James Lick Elementary. It was a fun project and involved hula hoops, rope, and grommets. Off of that exciting experience, I was deemed a tent expert, and while I would say that I am far from an expert on building reading tents, I am more than willing to help in any crafty project. I was asked to help another lovely volunteer in taking down the original reading tent, a corner stone of the 826 Valencia Pirate Store and Writing Lab. It was a nerve racking project as I know how pivotal this piece is to the whole feeling of the room and store. It is one of the signature things in the space. The original tent was seven years old, and after that many years of kid usage, it was time for a revamp and lift. I took several pictures of the original tent for comparison and notes in the rebuilding process to get the same look with the new and recycled fabrics.





The tent is laced onto a cording and then artfully draped to several points on the ceiling. The makers then clipped the tent sides together to make it billowy and look like once sewn piece of fabric. The center pole is an old tree trunk.



From there, we moved out the furniture, donned our dust masks, and began taking down the structure. After all the years of hanging there, you can imagine how much dust was trapped in the folds of the fabric. A reading tent is not something you can easily dust or clean. As we dropped each fabric panel, a huge snow storm of dust would come down on top of us. After a while, it began to look like a stereotypical girl pillow fight, only replace the feathers with huge tufts of dust bunnies. There were all sorts of surprises for us as well. Old erasers and sometimes small game pieces would come down with the fabric. Finally it was all collapsed.



After it was all taken down from the center pole, we took the fabric off of the wire and decided what we could keep and what we had to throw. The keep pile got taken outside and was shaken vigorously to get as much dust out we could. The other keeps that could be washed came home with me and went into the washer. After this dusty job, we ended for the night because the dust needed to settle out of the air before we could clean it up.

Wednesday's process started with my running around to get fabric for the replacement panels. After all the fabric was purchased, and 45 minutes on the Muni system for a 10 block trip, I made it to the writing center. I found that the wonderful intern staff had already cleaned up our mess that we fled the night before. It made starting in on the next phase all the more enjoyable. We started by cutting the lengths of fabric and then sewing in the channels for hanging. From there we fused velcro on the edges of the fabric pieces so there would be less gaping issues that the old tent had. This was a brilliant plan for the most part. The gossamer panels did not take to the adhesive very well, so there is some hot glue gunning or something similar to happen after the tent settles and the fabric stretches. We hung fabric and draped into the late night hours, finally wrapping up the job with Dan's help around 11:45 pm. Here are the two quick pictures I took right before we left.





I like the addition of blue to the tent and the replacement of the antiqued looking gold with the bright gold gossamer. We also shifted some of the panels around to bring more light into the tent area by placing gossamer strips where light sources outside of the tent are. While not exactly the same, I think it stayed true to the original and looks great. There are still some gaps that have to be fixed, and that will happen in two weeks. After that, I think I can declare this a finished project and wonderful success. I would not have been able to do it though, without my partner in crime, Lily. She had such a good eye for the colors and panels, where they should be placed, and how it all should be draped. I had so much fun with the project. Thanks so much Lily!