Great Green Gobs

Do you know what this is?

NO, it is not the brain of The Great Gazoo, nor is it a bioweapon.  It is not a golf ball covered in fungi and it is not a meteorite.

I guess you'll just have to read the rest of this post to find out!

????????????????

Do you know what this is?

Or this?

This is a ten year old hooligan hard at work in the kitchen, cutting butter into pastry.  :-)

The kids and I have been watching MasterChef Canada (http://www.ctv.ca/MasterChefCanada.aspx) as of late and the boy is obsessed.  He has been begging to cook a meal for us for the past two weeks, and finally I have relented.  This is the boy who still wipes his mouth on his arm and who has been known to scoop gigantic mounds of Nutella out of the jar with his hand.  All BAD.

BUT, he loves sushi, smoked salmon (he steals it, the piglet!), rare steak and rainbow trout.  He's a mini-gourmand, I suppose.

The boy doesn't want to use a recipe:  "if the Masterchefs can do it, [without a recipe] so can I!"

Ahhh, youthful exuberance.

I tried to explain to Nathanimal that the cooks on Masterchef are professionals.  No dice.  Then I said that they had received culinary training before the show was taped.  No dice.  Then I said, "fine.  You won't cook then."  Why does it always have to turn fugly?

This is what Nath wanted to make for tonight's appetizer:

I wasn't feeling the yolk-stuffed ravioli with sage sauce... and I did not want to make fresh pasta so I convinced him to adapt his menu.  It was hard, but I did it.

And so we are making Jude's Chuck Roast out of The Four-Hour Chef (my new favourite book) by Tim Ferriss; Chinese broccoli from Fanny Farmer; steamed red baby potatoes with fresh dill; sautéed mushrooms in butter; a kale and cabbage salad with dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and a balsamic vinaigrette; and for dessert, Apple Crisp (out of my other favourite - The New Canadian Basics Cookbook) 

Here is Nathaniel posing with his Apple Crisp before it went in the oven

and after it came out:

We served it warm with Vanilla Bean ice cream from President's Choice.  It was delish.  Nath cut and juiced the lemon, and assembled, measured and combined all of the other ingredients.  The only thing he didn't do was cut up ALL of the apples.  I helped him with that.

Here he is cutting up the shallots for his beef.  He is carrying on about how the onions are making him cry, the big baby.

And here is the roast before it went in the oven.  

I want to say that it's a blade roast (we were supposed to use chuck or rump, but the butcher didn't have it).  

Here's the recipe courtesy of Tim Ferriss, in my own words:  

Dump roast in Dutch oven.  Dump in 4 cups of Beef broth, one can of beef consommé, and some chopped onions and/or shallots.  Cover cooker and place in 350 degree oven for 2.5 - 3 hours.  I think that this was a 3 or 4 pound roast and it was perfect at the three hour mark.  Make sure you serve some of the jus with the roast.  So tender and delectable!

Here we are, enjoying the feast:

Because I am NOT a food stylist, this doesn't look so great, and I had already eaten half, but trust me, it was!  In fact, I couldn't believe how good and easy it was to make this meal.  

don't forget the horseradish!

Because N's first dinner party was such a success, his sister Gwenzilla, who was feeling left out, has announced that she too will be cooking with Mumma (roast chicken, edamame, roast potatoes, green beans and little cakes for dessert).

All this writing about food is making me hungry!  Lunch break (chai tea, eggs and salsa on naan).

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In other news, I have been sewing up a storm lately.  Today I finished my clamshell quilt:

Oh you can't see it?  That's because there is a giant poodle on top of it!  

Here, this is better:

It measures 48 by 60 inches, for those of you care about these things.  I cut out all of those clamshells by hand, pinned and sewed them together, then quilted it together with fluorescent pink thread.  I made the binding, then sewed that on by hand.  A true labour of love.

Speaking of labours of love, some of you may remember this quilt - Pop Crazy - that I made for my daughter's birthday:

See this post if you're interested in learning more about it.  The short story is that different blocks of the quilt were made by seven ladies across Canada.  I mailed fabric to them and they sent the fabric back sewn up in an improvisational style of their choice.  I made my own blocks, cut and sewed together theirs, added grey to the background and assembled the quilt to my liking.  I quilted it, made binding and sewed it on.  Here's a closeup:

At the end of last week, this arrived in the mail:

What a nice surprise!  Lysa, who is one of the Unscripted ladies, is a fabulous artist.  She drew one of the patches that she made for me, made a wooden base for it and attached a calendar.  What a thoughtful and creative reminder of our quilt collaboration!  Here's the calendar pictured below her block:

My crazy quilting has made her block look a LOT wonkier than it originally did, but I'm good with that.  Oh and the F is for February and not the first letter in my favourite curse word.  :-)  You can find more of Lysa's work at lysaflower.com .   Thank you, Lysa!

Oh yes, and now back to the green blob:

It is an Osage orange, named for its size and "peel" that emits a citrusy aroma.  I thought it looked very springlike -- I am so tired of snow.  I will be writing more about these "oranges" in my next blog post, which will be a review of Lucy Knisely's graphic non-fiction work Relish.

I will leave you with her recipe for chai (I've made it and it's awesome!), which I am addicted to and a music selection from the film Big Night - a wonderful film about cooking, eating and love.

Enjoy!

image from http://www.lucyknisley.com

Soundtrack is Tic Ti, Tic Ta by Claudio Villa

Pop Crazy!

I love colour; it makes me happy.  My living room, office and tv room are painted different shades of green and chartreuse, my bathrooms are both blue, my bedroom is pale turquoise, my son's room is cornflower and my daughter's is pepto-bismol pink.  I selected the fabrics, furnishing and accents in all of these rooms to further activate the walls, making the colours seem even more intense.  I can't get enough colour.

Last Christmas, I made a quilt for my son's twin bed.  It is mainly blue rectangles punctuated by solid white.  I also made sure to include a wild card - a lone green patch - and some floral patterns and pink, just cuz.  I made a scrappy binding and backed the quilt with a warm brown solid and some more green.

My daughter was upset when she realized that there wasn't a quilt for her.  I explained that I had started working on her quilt but it would take me more time to assemble.  Furthermore, ladies across Canada were sewing just for her!

In July of 2011, I joined a Flickr group called Unscripted.  It is a quilting bee and the first one that I've ever participated in.  The group is comprised of twelve quilters across Canada who wanted to try out some improvisational quilting.  Each of us was assigned a month.  During my month, I had to select a block that I wanted the other members to sew and select and cut fabric for it.  The fabric would be mailed out with instructions and the other members of the bee would sew a block and then mail back the finished piece.

After sewing the block below for August, I knew that I wanted some hot colours in Gwen's quilt.  The "red" in the block is actually more on the orange side than it appears.

I told the bee members that I was inspired by the quilts of Denyse Schmidt and Malka Dubrawsky, two designers with a very modern aesthetic.  I cut and mailed out stacks of pink, orange and purple fabric to the ladies in my quilting bee.  I also added in some white to break up all that saturated colour.  I asked them to be creative and to sew the fabric together in any size or shape. I also asked them to add in some complementary fabric from their stash.  Yes, all good quilters have a stash.

The ladies did not disappoint.  As the blocks started to trickle in, I was ecstatic!  You can see below that I received many different styles of blocks - all unique.

My plan was to arrange the finished blocks to my liking and break them up with light grey and smaller blocks that I had sewn.  I had purchased a huge, high quality cotton flat sheet at the Sears Outlet last year for $12.  It was very soft (high thread count) and I knew it would complement the pink, orange and purple.

Here's a picture of the quilt, before I began to attach the binding.

As I write this, I am taking a break from hand-sewing the binding to the back of the quilt.  I have one side left and I am hoping to get it finished today.

3 hours later, I've finished sewing on the binding.  Here it is right before I pop it in the washer.

And here is the final product, fresh from the dryer!  I love it!

Here is some information about my quilt:

Pop Crazy was quilted by Christine Montgomery at Quitty Prickly .  Unscripted (my Bee Girls) contributed with some of the pieces, which I later cut up and resewed or worked into larger sections.  
Dimensions are:  78 x 72.  Machine pieced, handsewn binding.

Huzzah!

Quitty prickly refers to my uncontrollable bursts of spooneristic speech:  pail nolish, weans and bieners and bood fank.

Recently, a fellow canvassing for the charity Kare for Kids knocked on my door.  I wanted to ask him why Kare was spelled with a K.  I mean if they are going to bastardize the English language like that, they may as well stick a Z on the end of Kid and call it a day:  Kare for Kidz.

He asked me for some money to help the kids with "Bina Spifida".

I laughed at this.  I said "it's Spina Bifida, not Bina Spifida".  He said that he had been saying it that way for more than twenty years and no one had ever corrected him.  I told him that it was his lucky day, and then I forked over $20 because I'm a sucker.

Yesterday I was at Starbucks, in desperate need of some caffeine and when the barista asked me what I wanted, I said "a tai chi latte, please".  Pause.  Laughter.  "I mean, a chai tea latte!"  The barista smiled and said, " I knew what you meant".
She asked me my name, and you know what?  She spelled it with a K:  Kristine.

********

Today's topic:  A Word Block.

Yesterday, I sewed a block for an all-Canadian quilting bee that I'm in called Unscripted.  The block spelled out the word HUZZAH!  HUZZAH is an expression or shout of acclaim - often used interjectionally to express joy or approbation.  The librarian in me feels the need to cite Webster's online @ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/huzzah.  I like that it can be used in an "either/or" sense:

• to express joy             I found the car keys! Huzzah!
• to express approbation     The wild huzzah of the rampagers as they pillaged the village was worse than death itself.

But I digress.  The Queen Bee (boss of the quilting bee) asked for blocks containing one's favourite word.  Good lord, how to choose?  I have so many:  kibosh, chaos, canoodle, moxie, jinx, ersatz, queue, toea, qat, qi (can you tell that I'm a Scrabbler?).

Huzzah is one of those words that I would like to use more frequently because I love it - how can you not love a word that starts and ends with the same letter and has a double "ZED" or ("ZEE" for my American friends) smack dab in the middle of it.

And so huzzah was the winner.

The sewing of the block took me quite some time - two hours, in fact - which was MUCH longer than I had anticipated. I made up the letters myself out of paper and I am sure that there is a better way to do this but I learned quite a bit.  Let me also confess that it's only my second time working with the dreaded triangle and this time it wasn't a failure.  I let out quite the HUZZAH! at the end of it all.  The block's been posted to Kamloops, BC and I hope that Nicole of Victory and Peace enjoys it.  I stuck a funny sticker on the envelope that says "if you don't like what's inside, give it back!".