Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am shamefully overdue in posting, so I am going to do one big mish mash post of everything. My grandmother from Fargo came and stayed with us towards the first of the month. She toured between my parents' and siblings' houses and saw all of us and the new baby. I brought home a jar of double cream for her and my mother to enjoy. I have tried a number of times to recreate this culinary delight in my kitchen and I have come up with an adequate substitute, but nothing beats the imported $7/jar real deal! Here it is pictured with Christmas Scones that Grandma, Mother, and I enjoyed in the afternoon with coffee (of course!).








Melissa is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the domestic department! I went to her house two weeks ago for knitting party and to fool around with lemon meringue pie. Now I can make rhubarb pie and pastry crust like nobody's business, but I can honestly say I'd never made NOR eaten lemon meringue pie before. Her dad and brother just love this kind of pie and she wanted to make a 'from scratch' version for Thanksgiving (and did I mention that she has 25 people staying the night in her apartment?!) We found a decent sounding recipe on epicurious, Melissa went grocery shopping, and we managed to produce a tasty and delicious dessert! The lemon filling is really nothing more than a cooked cornstarch/eggyolk/lemon juice pudding. The pie itself is a baked shell filled with the cooled lemon mixture, topped with the meringue, and baked until set although we torched it a bit afterwards with my kitchen torch. I have made dry meringue cookies before, but this meringue was very moist so I can see why you would not want to serve it to young kids or elderly guests (unless of course you use pasteurised eggs). I was very impressed with the way it turned out, and this was only a practice run! I think Melissa is baking the real ones AS I TYPE THIS! Cheer her on! Those little quiches were the practice runs of handling and crimping pastry dough, and they were a mighty tasty teaching tool!

Here is the latest in my seasonal line of scrubs! Actually it is just my new Thanksgiving Tom Turkey scrub that I finished the day before yesterday! Hot off the sewing machine and worn to work in the same day! I bought this fabric back in July on one of my final trips to Waterloo before Melissa's wedding. I made her a scrub out of the same fabric and she wore hers last night. I liked this scrub so well that it is in the washer as we speak and I will wear it again tonight for my shift! Maybe it will brighten things up for the people unlucky enough to be in the hospital over the holidays!
And I did some baking last night...oh wait, wrong picture! Actually I made two more batches of bath bombs last night. I had purchased all of the citric acid IN TOWN to make those! Pictured on the right are scented glycerin soaps that I molded for my girlfriend gifts this year. And once again the month is winding to a close and I have too many things to do and not enough time to complete them. It really is a pity that I have to sleep! Speaking of which, I had better get my nap in before I start getting ready for work tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving To You and Yours!

Party at Melissa's!

We had TWO (count them TWO!!) knitting parties this week. The first involved dinner at Cancun and knitting at my place and the second of which was held the next day at Melissa's house AND she cooked for us! I just love going to her house because it is always clean and smells much nicer than my place! I MUST invest in more candles! I also love her cat Timmy! He will come and sit ON your knitting bag and bat at your yarn! I finished the back panel of the sweater I'm knitting for my niece. That is the yarn that the woman at the Charles City yarnshop basically GAVE to me that day (don't worry, I sent her a check the next day) and it isn't what is called for in the pattern but I figured it was close. I used a size smaller needles than were called for after trying out "the dreaded gauge swatch" and by gosh, when I blocked it and measured it, the measurements were spot on! Way to go Katie! Now I just have to summon up my courage to begin the front panels and pray they match up! We also included Brenda who we always thought was a non yarn person, but she quickly asked at the first party if I had any "spare yarn" and a crochet hook since she used to be a bit of a hooker when she was younger (hooker as in crocheter--get your minds out of the gutter!). I laughed at the "spare yarn" quip and promptly set her up with some yarn and a hook and it all came flooding back. I spoke with her last night and she had almost 2 scarves done and a number of dishcloths! Yay! We need more yarn people around!

RIP Dr. Jekyll

A moment of silence please for Dr. Jekyll, Summer's pet rat, who died earlier in the week. He really was a nice little rat although it did take a little time getting over his little ratty tail. I never would have thought it possible for a rat to show affection, but he really did. Summer was fond of wearing hooded sweatshirts and she'd either put him in the front pocket or inside the hood! He liked to crawl around on the back of the couch and get into your hair too! Summer seemed to think he was about 2ish years old when he died. As a healing gesture (ok, maybe it was just in poor taste, let's be honest) I bought her some Gummi Ratz candy at the dollar store just because they looked cool. We opened them up and looked at them but I just couldn't bring myself to eat them. Summer is doing well with her grief and has since gone out and bought two new rats of the Siamese breed and I'm told they have markings akin to the cat breed of the same name. I have yet to meet them.

Ta-Da!!!

I found this recipe a long time ago over on Not Martha and have scrounged and hoarded up ingredients for a while...only to have them sit in a bowl under my bathroom sink for almost a year. I have recently discovered the utter delight that are bath bombs, or Bath Ballistics as they are known over at Lush. I have ordered and enjoyed some lovely Ballistics from the good people at Lush, but they are an indulgence that can be enjoyed only occasionally due to the price (they TRULY are worth every penny though!) So I got to thinking about the bath bomb ingredients I had stashed away after reading the ingredients label on a Lush Ballistic and decided to fool around with it early this morning when I could no longer sleep. It really is a simple recipe and the trick is to not moisten the citric acid/baking powder mixture or it will begin to fizz in the bowl (even the two drops of food coloring that I deliberately placed ON TOP of the puddle of oil, so as not to apply it directly to the dry mixture, sunk below the oil and fizzed a little!). It is a lot like making pastry dough because the only binding agent is the fragrance and almond oil. You fluff it around in the bowl until it gets crumbly and then mold them together with a christmas ornament mold. I got 4 1/2 bombs out of the recipe and let them dry while I went to lunch with a girlfriend. The recipe said they needed to dry for at least a day before they'd be ready. I carefully put one in a plastic bowl for my girlfriend, and by the time we came back out to the car, it seemed dry and firm. Well I couldn't wait to try it out so I took a bath with the 1/2 bomb runt and I couldn't believe how much it fizzed! I used some Orange Lily scented fragrance oil that I got at Target's Dollarspot and it was quite nice. I had also bought some cherry scented at the same time, but once opened it smelled like cherry NyQuil so I threw that one out. I bought some soap scents at Hobby Lobby for fooling around with different batches, OR I thought I could just bypass adding almond oil AND scented oil and just use scented bath oil. Then there are all the add in possibilities: rose petals, glitter, lavender buds...do I hear frilly stocking stuffers and gifts?