Canning Projects

The last few days have been filled with spring cleaning and the beginning of a new canning season. It all kicked off on Monday with a trip out to Brentwood for a canning and baking session with Annie. We have both been busy, and she is currently wrapped up in research and moving plans, so the girl day was just what we both needed. We worked on the strawberry and rhubarb jam that is pictured here. It was a recipe that called for pectin, and while no longer my favorite jam method, it was nice to do a quick batch over the long cook method. I have to say, though, that I enjoy the flavor of a cooked to the jelly point jam over the commercial pectin flavors. I also like the looser texture of the jam over the pectin. I feel that the powdered pectin makes a jam that is a bit too stiff.

We also worked on some pickled asparagus. It was pretty easy after doing the dill pickles last year. The method is pretty easy, and our skill at properly packing jars has increased immensely. Seven pounds of asparagus is quite a bit, but cooked down into six pint jars. We pickled the spears with some green and red pepper, jalapeno, and garlic as well as dill and mustard seed. I am wondering how these are going to taste, but I have to wait for a month before I can find out. Pickling takes time, and I would like to make sure they are mellowed and fully pickled through before I try them. I am not sure how to use them other than adding to a salad or in a Bloody Mary or eating straight from the jar, so any suggestions for cooking with these would be welcome.

Yesterday, Annie came over to work on some sewing lessons, as it was too rainy for her to check traps. It was fun getting together two days in a row to work on things. After she left, I took to canning up some oranges that I bought on Friday. I made an orange dessert sauce. I sliced the oranges up as thin as I could on the mandolin, and then they were heated through in a syrup of water, sugar, Grand Marnier, and white wine that was spiced with cinnamon sticks and cloves. I got a bit gun shy after seven oranges were cut out of the nine that the recipe called for, so I quit early. That was a bit of a mistake as I would have been at the called for eight half pints. Instead, I canned up the remaining syrup in the empty two half pints. I figure I can boil them down into a glaze for an angel food or pound cake sometime for a quick dessert. The orange slices can be used for cake, or as my recipe suggests, for an ice cream topping. They turned out a little more yellow than I expected, but I figure it is more of the syrup's doing that than the oranges themselves.

All in all, it has been a busy last few days. I am looking forward to finally getting to sit down and finish off that personal choli. There is so little left to do that it is kind of embarrassing that it is not done yet. Then I am going to work on the new fabrics I have gotten in to make up a prototype of the new products. Hopefully I can round out the day with some deep kitchen cleaning. It isn't that I want to do it necessarily, but it has been put off for too long and just needs to get done. Right now though, the rainy day outside is screaming for some hot tea and sewing at the machines.

New Hairfalls - Lime Green and Black

After long last, I am finished with the lime green and black hairfalls. I have been slowly working on them since October, and recently found them again in the yarn drawer. I got them out and began working on finishing them while watching movies and television over the past few evenings. The are now up for sale in the Etsy Shop. They are a really fun set, and one of my most full sets that I have ever made. A total of one-hundred strands of braids are in the pair. I am thinking about making one-hundred per pair a goal of mine from here on out. It seems like they are fuller than the average pair and look spectacular. They looked so good that I have already started a new pair to work on, a short set in red tones and black accents. I find them quite calming to work on while spending time watching my favorite shows.

Finding this lost project and finishing it up makes me want to finish up the belts that have been languishing in the shop for a while. I want to dig into the new products and fabrics I just bought so bad, but I think that finishing up the belts should be a priority. Part of me wonders if I drag my feet on these because secretly I want them to stay here forever. Perhaps deep down I want them to be my own and to not actually sell them. I am going to try to satiate this need for something of my own by finishing up a personal choli then setting to work on finishing up a belt today. After yesterday's house cleaning craziness, I want to sit at the machine and wind down. Perhaps the deep clean of the kitchen can wait until tonight or tomorrow. Crafting inspiration is here, and I intend to capitalize on it!

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!

Pineapple Sauce

Yesterday I somehow managed to get up early and get down to work on some projects before heading into the city for tutoring at 826 and dance class at Fat Chance. One of the projects I got finished was making a pineapple sauce out of the remaining pineapple from our Easter brunch. One thing that I have always loved is banana splits. My Grandma always made them for me when I would stay over at her house during the summers. They were one of my favorites next to her incredible chocolate malts! I decided recently after looking at the toxic yellow offerings for pineapple topping at the grocery store that I should try to make my own. Luckily I had some recipe guidance to go off, and after a long 30 minutes of stirring the mix at a boil. I had three half pints of pineapple sauce to my name. I am going to have to resist opening them until I get the strawberry sauce made later this spring or early summer when the strawberries are better. Needless to say, the ice cream maker is going to be running full tilt once the sauces are in place and bananas will be a weekly purchase.

I also have been slowly finishing up a set of long lime and black hairfalls. I have been kicking these around for a while now and wanted to finish them up. They should be completed soon, and I hope to get them listed in the Fabulous Pants shop early next week. While my falls still pale in comparison with those of Bastet, I try my best to live up to her craftsmanship and style. I also received my fabric shipment. The fabrics are even better than I thought! I cannot wait to dig into them on Monday. I may have to start on the weekend though since they are just so stunning. Right now my floor is filled with a beautiful piece of batik from Indonesia from which I am making a personal choli. There are two distinct sections to the fabric, and I would like a choli out of both the dark and the light section. The light section is a good three fourths of the fabric piece, and the dark section is the other fourth. It has taken a long afternoon of fiddling with the pattern pieces, but I think I finally have a plan that I can agree with that uses this small piece the most efficient. In other words, the pieces actually fit. I hope to get that mostly cut and ready to go as well as working on learning some new skills on the serger today. I am trying to do the "medicine" of learning in between the "sugar" of projects I want to work on. Hopefully it motivates me to take this serger task on full force this time.

I am planning a quiet weekend at home working on personal projects and relaxing a bit. Things have been such a whirlwind lately that I think a weekend spent stitching on a project or braiding some more falls would be a welcomed change. While I love being social with friends and going out on the town, I am truly a homebody at heart. I think I need to honor that a bit more this weekend and avoid the lure of more high impact social activities. I hope you all have a great weekend whatever the tone you decide to take is!

Tiny Little Dresses

Lately the sewing machines have been busy working on my niece Claudia's birthday presents. While I worked hard, I yet again underestimated this project. It was a fun project, and I used a pattern from Butterick for the clothes and dolls. I, however, did not follow the directions for making the dolls from this pattern. They wanted you to use buckram for the dolls and clothes, and I just did not feel like getting involved with buckram again so soon after the bra project. I instead just used heavy duty interfacing as much as I could to make the dolls and clothes stiff like the paper dolls they emulate. I loved putting all the outfits together from past costumes of my own. There are pieces from my Belegarth outfits as well as many of my dance costumes on those cute little dresses. In keeping with the theme of using up things from my stash of left over fabrics, the only thing I purchased for this was the jewels for the crowns and the fabric for the Dorthy style dress. That one was too cute to not do, so I had to go and buy some blue and white checked fabric.

The dolls have stands to make them stand up, and the clothes attach to hook and loop tape that is located on both the outfits and the back sides of the dolls. The only thing I was not too happy about what how the one doll's face turned out. The lighter felt was less dense, so the markers bled a bit more than I liked. That resulted in me needing to "even out" the lines which meant a more heavy eyeliner and larger lips than I had planned. I hope that she enjoys them as much as I enjoyed digging through the stash and finding beloved fabrics to use and pass on in this way. Each one let me reminisce about past sewing projects and just how far my skills have come.

Today I am awaiting the fabric shipment that I have made for Fabulous Pants I am going to have some new items in the shop hopefully in the next few weeks. I am embarking on a new product line, so wish me luck and check back here for details. Now, I am off to do some personal sewing. I am getting tired of the same old cholis that I wear to class. I think it is time that I whipped up some new ones! Personal sewing can be so fun! Also, it helps to keep me occupied enough that I will not be waiting by the door for the post to drop off my hopefully large box of cloth!

2010 Census

I took the 2010 Census today... no not the government one but the canning one! I went through the pantry and took a count of all the things I still have and how many empty jars I currently have on stock. I have a listing of all that I want to make this year, but I also wanted to make sure that I was running low on the things on that list. There would be nothing worse than to glut myself, for example, with one kind of jam. Then you feel bound to eat only that kind for a long time to decrease the over run of that particular product. It makes for a less enjoyable canning experience. I found that overall we have been pretty evenly eating all of the jams and canned items that I made from the canning sessions last year. We also have not totally run out of any flavors yet either! This makes me extremely happy about my moderation. Some flavors, as we all know, are simply more yummy than other ones. We all have our favorites, and one of mine was definitely the pear and pinot noir jam! That is hanging in there with one half pint left!


Overall, I think that I made good estimations for the amount that I needed for us to enjoy and gift to other people. There are still some recipes that I would like to perfect or start over with all together, i.e. that not so successful salsa. I am running surprisingly lower than I thought on things like tomatoes, so I should make sure to can a few extra pints of those. (I only have two left until the tomato season.)I also learned that I am short on jars for this year. I will have to buy a flat or two to accommodate all the new items I will be canning this year rather than buying from the store. I also have to get some replacements for all the gifted jars that will not return home for reuse. I am pretty pleased at our restraint and good planning for how much I needed to put up. Hopefully this year will be just as well thought out.

Easter Wrap-Up

This spring has been incredibly busy for me for some reason that I cannot put a finger on. I am working on lots of abstract things right now, business plans, dance practices, and design work. Needless to say there are not many concrete items that I can hold onto to show all that I am working on things. It makes it a bit tough. I did take some time out this week and weekend to enjoy myself and stop working on so many things. I went out for a wonderful lunch with a friend on Thursday. It spilled well into the evening. Friday we went to see a play, and Saturday was an improv show for another friend. Both were quite divergent from each other, but both were so fun. It is always nice to see live performances.

I did manage to pull off a good brunch for Dan and I on Easter morning. I made homemade hot cross buns and a fresh fruit salad. Dan made a wonderful omelet. We got out the wedding china and silver and ate as though we were at a restaurant. It was rather fun with all the parts of the coffee service out and some new silver acquisitions being present to complete certain elements of the "fine dining" experience. Dinner was a glazed ham and of course some Deviled eggs from the hard boiled ones we dyed. It was a fun and relaxed day spent with each other in front of the television with movies. Today I am working on finishing up that now very late birthday gift.... speaking of which... I see the sewing machine calling now!