I Bake a Geode; I Sew Something Special and I Enter My Creations in the Fair.

I know that a few of you come here so that you will feel better about your own pathetic lives.  If you are one of these individuals, then today's post about baking is for YOU.

Some of you have enjoyed my baking misadventures.

The loaves à la toddler:

The unleavened tooth-breakers:

And now this:

Yes peeps, it all comes THAT EASILY to me.

Several months ago, I purchased a bag of light rye flour from the Arva Flour Mill.  If it's good enough for the White Stripes, it's good enough for me:

My kids are fond of rye bread, which puzzles me.  I enjoy it, but it's not exactly the go-to for the under-ten set.

I found a recipe for Rye Bread in Fanny Farmer, one of my favourite cookbooks:

I needed a break from quilting this gift for my neighbours; baking was the answer.

(Yes, the lines are supposed to be crooked like that, although I think that bit of drunken quilting at the top of the dark brown bit is especially wonky and probably not entirely intentional).

I also needed to "not think" about the book that I was not writing while hosting Japanese students:

I would bake.  Baking is wholesome and satisfying.  And I had a full bag of rye flour.

Let's get back to that bread.

When I started to kneading, I couldn't figure out why the mixture was so damn stiff.  I reread the recipe.

Doh! (get it?)

I forgot to add the milk.  :-)

I was not pleased with myself, not pleased at all.  This is what I get for multi-tasking, which I clearly SUCK at.  Obviously, I was not going to begin again so I poured in the cup of milk that I forgot to add and tried to "mix it" in with my trusty wooden spoon.  I wasn't mixing as much as I was pulverizing.  Not even Boney M could get me out of my funk.

I ended up with this after 10 minutes of kneading (and mofo'ing):

I let it sit until it doubled in size and then I punched it down - KAPOW! BAM! BAM!  My favourite part of baking bread.

Because I don't want to chronicle the rest of this baking debacle, let's just leave it at this:  My bread was like a rock.  But it sure looked beautiful:

Laughing my hand off here.

The interior of the loaf tasted good but the crust could chip a tooth.  Let's call my loaf The Geode - crack that hard bitch open and you might find a treasure inside.

********  Intermission ***********
have any of you read The Sisters Brothers?

So I was a total slacker this summer and couldn't even post one blog entry.  Please don't tell me that you can't or shouldn't start a sentence with the word so because I don't care.

This summer, I was too busy sewing, playing soccer, yelling, drinking and complaining.  Isn't everyone's summer like that?

I wrote the first part of this blog (above the asterisks) sometime in July and then I wrote some more again in August, but I just couldn't get it together.  And now I'm finishing it the first week of September.  Oh well.  None of my loyal readers give a fig.  Right?

Okay, back to it.

Intermission's over.

*************

The good news is that I did finish the weiner dog quilt:

The pattern is from Boo Davis' Dare to Be Square.  I don't normally make cutesy-pie quilts but something drew me to this pattern - I think it was the seventies vibe.  Boo's quilt in the pattern had a solid blue background, but I like to mix it up a bit so I went for blue and grey.  I also threw in some pink in the dog's body because every little boy needs a little or a lotta pink in his life.

The quilt should really be called a wall-hanging or play mat, due to the enthusiasm of the quilter (i.e. lots of stitches per square inch), and as such, it is as stiff as my loaf of rye.  :-)  It was well-received by the recipients, although they practically had to tear it out of my arms.

In other creative news, the crafty denizens of Bruce Street have been working on entries for the Western Fair.  How could we resist such tempting categories as Wacky Lamp or Horrific Hat?  And I musn't neglect to mention that we can win TOP DOLLAR.

Gwen made "Munchkins", a family of three hapless dolls:

I made Reading Lamp:  a lamp and shade covered in crumpled pages from Trixie Belden and The Mystery Off Glen Road and J.R.R. Tolkien's Book of Lost Tales.  I bought the lamp from the Goodwill for $3 (you can still see the orange sticker in the pic below).  I already had the books and the glue gun, so it was a cheap project.

Before / during:

I burned my fingers quite a bit with the hot glue while crumpling up all those pages and sticking them onto the base and shade.  It's clear that the life of an artist is fraught with danger.

Here's the big reveal:

Stunning, I think.

In a fit of pure genius, I made Hat Head:

I had purchased the bag of doll heads from a yard sale many years ago and had been waiting for just the right project. 

This is why I go to yard sales, peeps :-)

Who needs a meat dress?  Eat your heart out, Gaga:

I love Hat Head!  I think it's my favourite hat ever, even beating out the burr and teezel hat that I made ten years ago, which sadly, I do not have a picture of.  I do have a picture of a teezel though :-)

HH is also a nod to Pretty Ugly, my Western Fair crepe paper and Barbie doll creation from 2004, now languishing in a landfill.  My evil offspring tore off most of the heads and bodies from the lamp, shortening its moniker from Pretty Ugly to just Ugly.  

I also entered some knitting (a vest for Gwen and a bag that I made for myself), and Dynamite - a quilted wall hanging that I sewed last Spring:

I don't think that I have much of a chance of winning in the quilting category (you can win between $300 and $500 in the category that I entered), but I am quite proud of my piece.  The Quilt Police will find many things wrong with my quilt, not least the wonky shapes, which are completely intentional. On the plus side, it's my own design (I haven't ever been confident designing my own things); I attempted free-motion quilting - definitely not my strength as a quilter; and I think the design is interesting to look at.  I will admit to being very curious about the other entries in this category.

Here's Art Bag.  I repurposed a pair of handles from a purse that I purchased at the Goodwill, and I lined the bag with a wine-coloured taffeta skirt (also a Goodwill purchase).

I knit the bag over many months, took a very deep breath and tossed it in a washer full of hot water (to felt it).  Here it is, only a couple of rows in:

Lastly, here is the pinafore that I made for Gwen.  It actually looks quite hideous in this photo, and is much prettier in person.

The kids and I will be venturing to the Western Fair next week and I am quite excited to see how we made out.

I love being creative; I would die if I didn't make things.

image from:  http://findings.creativemornings.com/post/87107476756/creativemornings-you-cant-use-up-creativity

Go make things!



Optional musical pairing:  Hooray! Hooray! It's A Holi-Holiday! by Boney M

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).

******************

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

Snow Way! It's Another Snow Day!

Fresh on the heels of my late night Grammy watching, I rose this morning to hear the deejay confirm what I hoped not to hear:  "all school buses in London Middlesex are canceled".  Ai!  Kids would be stoked; me not so much.  I let them sleep in because really, why WOULD I wake them?  I am definitely CUCKABONGA, but not THAT CUCKABONGA.

It is 10:21 am and I have decided to blog about the day.
Kids are homeschooling (each other - hahahaahahha!) at the kitchen table and Gwen just whined and bitched at her brother, who presumably hit or kicked her.  Can you tell that I am concerned?  I should be, actually.  A week ago, Gwenzilla gave Nathanimal a "Level 10" smackdown that saw us hanging at The Children's Hospital for two hours, while N received 3 stitches above his right ear.

But for now, I'll let them fight in peace.  :-)

My grand plans for the day, before I learned all buses were canceled, were to finish two short stories, go to the gym, grocery shop, make some soup, do some laundry, and shovel some snow.  Now I've got the kiddos to help me with all this.  And so, I have decided to chronicle our day, for fun.  And because I know that whatever we do, it will be awesome and EVERYONE needs to hear about it.  Heh heh. This is what I've accomplished so far, after rising at 6:15:

• put in a load of laundry - so fun, cleaned my bedroom floor (last night, while I watched Beyonce dirty dance with Jay-Z, Gwen laid out 8 fashionista outfits from my closet at the foot of my bed for me to choose from this morning. grrrrrrr.  Here's a pic of some of the ensembles.  Love that purple orange combo, G!)

• ate breakfast (coffee, rye toast with cinnamon honey and apple), read newspaper, checked email and Farcebook.  I know.  SO INTERESTING.  
• cleaned up breakfast dishes, worked on short story for very brief period, finished cutting out quilt templates and selected fabrics.  This is what I'm making, btw:

This is a modern version of a clamshell quilt that I am in love with.  I want to marry it!  The clamshell is a traditional pattern and can look very fussy, depending one one's choice of fabrics.  The tone-on-tone tans and funky pops of colour definitely make this version very fresh and modern.  I will be making my own version with greys, purples and pale greens.   I have posted a pic of some of my fabrics below.
image from craftsy.com

Looks quite ugly now, but trust me, it will be magnifique.  I am rethinking that pink and grey in the lower right though. 

In case you are wondering how I am managing to blog, it's currently "recess" :-).  Now let me continue that list:

• kids got up, they got dressed and fed themselves.   I oversaw their efforts while tidying up the kitchen and dining room tables so that I could put them to work. 
• dumped another load of laundry on bed, hand washed lingerie (For those of you rolling your eyes at me, I am not trying to sound "all Martha", btw.  I really did do this.  It took 5 mins, tops.  I put my linge in to soak earlier in the morning, and then all I had to do was swish it around, give it a bit of a scrub, rinse, wring and hang to dry).  Snap.
• forced children to "work" at table (they both have books with math and English lessons). 

• Nathaniel helped Gwen with reading.  I decided that we would bake bread as part of our snow day.  Again, if you are thinking that I am some uberorganized hausfrau, I can assure you that I am not.  Can you hear me swear as I take this picture?

• yelled at children to FOCUS.  HOCUS POCUS FOCUS!!!!! while I looked for bread recipe.  Found it!

• made bread dough with N's assistance. Yes, we washed our hands. Yes, I am going to attempt to bake a baguette.  Yes, I am really am loco.  

• Kids each kneaded dough for 6 minutes.  They seemed to like this.  I did not like flour all over my floor and counter, but I bit my tongue and sucked it up.  

doesn't this look delightful?

bread before first rise

• Cleaned up floor and counter.  Complained loudly while doing so.  
• at 9:54am, I decided to write this blog and wrote down all the shit that I'd already done 
• handwashed silk blouse that has been sitting in laundry room waiting to be washed since New Year's Eve.  Lamented vomit stain.  KIDDING.  Just wanted a reaction.  As if I would vomit on NY's eve.   As if I would EVER vomit on myself.  

It is now 10:49.  I am giving myself (the rest of recess) another 10 - 15 mins to blog.  

12:31pm - more of list.

• made lunch for evil offspring - Montreal style bagels with cream cheese and apples.  Kids tried to sneak down to basement to veg in front of screens while I was in the loo.  I screamed mightily when they came up.  
• forced children into snow pants.  Went outside and shoveled, and entertained self and dog.

Nathanimal and Django.  Nath had to "take him down" after he let him off-leash in spite of repeated warnings from me not to do so.

One of Django's tricks that I hate.  It's called "HUG".  Nath taught him this wretched trick, which basically amounts to the overlarge 80 pound poodle jumping on people.  He knows better to try this with me or most adults, but if you're a kid, look out!


And still more of my list:  

• shaped loaves and got them ready to go into oven

wow, they almost look like an adult, as opposed to a toddler, made them

• you are supposed to spray the loaves every 5 minutes with water so that they get a hard crust. 

• Seriously?  And so that's what I did, after making myself a cup of chai.  
• Sighed.
• I also learned that because French bread has no oil in it (oil is a preservative), that is why your baguette is stale the next day.  Who knew?
• And then I cheered, because this is what they looked like, after all that spraying and baking:

Oh mon dieu!  C'est parfait!!!!

I can't wait to try these! I think they're my best effort to date.  Yay, me!

Okay, I'm done with my list, let's face it, no one wants to hear more and it's time for me to veg.  Have a great rest of snow day, peeps!


Music Pairing:  Bob Marley, Stir It Up