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

Kombucharama!

The second part of the kombucha-making process.  If you're confused, you can read the first part of the post here:  Growing a Scoby

Day 1 of scoby (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) growing in a large-sized Bick's pickle jar:

Mixed-media piece in the background by Guinevere :-)

The scoby is getting bubbly on day 3:

  

Day 5:  cheesy, slimy goodness:

On day 8, the scoby is thick and juicy enough for a second feeding!  I will add more sugar to make it grow even more. 

After boiling four cups of water and dumping them into a pitcher, I added 1/3 cup of sugar and stirred until it dissolved.  2 Earl Grey and 1 Green teabag later, I had a pitcher of tea:

After letting the tea cool, I transferred it to a large Mason jar (1.6 litres) and added the scoby and its liquid.

It is necessary to wait until everything is at room temperature, or you risk murdering your precious scoby.  I learned this the hard way when I began baking bread.  I poured scalding water onto my yeast and turned out a loaf of unleavened bread, useful as a weapon but not as sustenance.  Hot water kills yeast.

Here's the 1.6 litre jar:

Doesn't it look pretty?

And don't my new, mid-mod curtains in the background also look dazzling?  I got them in the States and they were only $22!  I found them at a TJ Maxx and when I brought them up to the cashier they were hanging out of the package, willy-nilly, which is what happens when you shop in the clearance section.  I paid for them, the cashier stuffed them into a bag, and when I arrived home two hours later, I discovered that I had not one, but two sets of linen curtains.

SCORE!

I briefly considered returning one set, but you know what?

I DIDN'T. 

I WILL SURELY ROT IN HELL FOR MY TRANSGRESSION AGAINST THE CURTAIN GODS.  :-)

Okay, I need to focus and get back to the kombucha.

Doesn't it look pretty? [ignoring curtains here].

I am reminded of jellyfish.  :-)

huffingtonpost.com

***

Because I was having so much fun, I started a second scoby in a larger, widemouth vessel.  Thanks to the marvel of technology, here's the scoby after a week of percolating:

I transferred it to a larger glass vessel (I think it's around 4 litres), ensconced both vessels in a dark cupboard and ignored them for two weeks.  It was hard, but I did it.

Day 21

My scobies are finally thick enough (to use) to brew my own kombucha!

As soon as I start brewing, I will provide an update; however, I still need to steep myself in several hours worth of research.  As a librarian, that suits me to a tea!


Optional musical pairing:  The Tea Song by Yorkshire Tea

Addendum:

The third part.


For more information, read here:
http://www.picklesnhoney.com/2012/04/09/how-to-make-kombucha-growing-a-scoby/

Mothers, Babies and Scobies

So in another life, I used to be a knitwit.

Here are some of my creations:

Shrug knit with Noro Kureyon (Japanese hand dyed yarn)

Lanesplitter Skirt for Gwen (Noro and Paton's Merino)

Art Bag (Noro)

Storm Toque-r for Nathaniel (Noro - can you tell I like Noro?)

My life and my personality being what they are - ADD - I have been ignoring the yarn in my stash and focusing on writing the great novel and sewing quilts and patio cushions instead.

But for reasons unknown (KISMET?), I ventured to Ravelry recently - the knitter's online mecca - all things knitting all the time - and immediately noticed that I had a friend request.  Weird.  I proceeded to check out my fellow knitter's profile, as you can never be too cautious.  The last "friend" request I had was from a Scottish non-knitter who said that he loved to see "women's legs in knitted stockings and women's bodies wrapped in soft wool".

I kid ewe not. (See that? There are two puns in that sentence!)

While I was tempted to friend the woolly wiggler for the humour factor, I did not.  I was worried that I would be tempted to start sending him wool porn.

So... where was I?

Aha! - the friend request from Ravelry.

I saw that the lady was a blogger and so I read some of her entries.  You can tell a lot about a person from reading her blog.  Just like that, I learned about kombucha tea.  I learned that it tastes like tart green apples with an underlying sweetness and fizz.

I learned that it (supposedly) promotes a healthy liver, is great for digestion and prevents cancer.

And I learned that I can brew it myself, in the privacy of my own home, using black tea.

I marched down to the Quartermaster for a bottle of Kombucha, eager to sample this magical elixir.  I picked a bottle of tea that looked like it had the most sediment on the bottom (a.k.a. The Mother), as that is what is used to grow a scoby - the jelly-like, snotty layer of cellulose that keeps harmful bacteria out of the tea while it's fermenting.

Some up close and personal snaps of scobies, some more attractive than others:

inhabitat.com

tching.com

inhabitat.com

***

Aren't they pretty?

Quartermaster sells Kombucha starters, but at $18 a box, my inner cheapskate was not impressed.  I did not purchase the Mother in a box, but I did leave with a bottle of Kombucha and a package of locally made, overpriced, gluten-free chocolate and almond treats that are so fucking delicious, that I am going to try to make them too.

The magical moment?  When I cracked open the bottle of kombucha and took a swig.

LOVE. 

So yummy, light and refreshing, tart and sweet, and a sparkly explosion in my mouth! Mmmmmmm.

I can't wait to brew my own, but first I have to make a scoby.

Here's the baby scoby (a.k.a. the Mother, the starter culture, the mushroom) in the bottle of Kombucha that I purchased from the store:

You can also see a mother in a bottle of apple cider vinegar - it's that brownish, smoky thing that hovers at the base of the bottle.

The scoby pictured above is tiny but it will grow rapidly once it's fed, taking 2-3 weeks to mature.

I thought that I better get started if it was going to take a minimum of two weeks.

I rummaged through the recycling bin and found a pint-sized glass jar.  I washed it thoroughly and then sterilized it by boiling it for ten minutes.  I like to err on the side of caution when it comes to food and drink.

While I was waiting, I brewed two cups of black tea and mixed in 4 tbsp of sugar:

I carefully removed the sterile jar from the pot of water, and dumped in the bottle of Kombucha:

Aren't the two vessels of amber liquid pretty?

I then mixed them together to begin the fermentation process:

my kombucha starter, in a warm spot out of direct sunlight

I used a paper towel and one of Gwen's rainbow loom creations to seal the jar.  I could have also used cheesecloth, a coffee filter, linen or muslin but I went the paper towel route because that's what I had. You want to use something that's breathable that will keep the fruitflies out.  

I like that I can see the baby scoby sort of hanging down the side, near the top of the jar.  

I will post more pictures over the next couple of weeks as the scoby matures.

Grow, baby, grow!

***

Addendum:  I am posting a picture of Day 3, so you can see how it grows...  there are actually two scobies growing:

Day 5 - see that white line that covers the surface of the liquid?  That's the new scoby, spreading out:

Day 7 - it's getting juicy!

More juiciness to come :-)

Musical pairing:  Strange Brew by Cream.

Part 2 of Kombucha Making