Obnoxious Blankets

 I made two more obnoxious jelly roll blankets.  I used up the last of my scrub top scraps for this one and backed it with a busy zig zag print.  I cut all my scraps 3 inches wide and used a 1/2" seam allowance and was never pleased with the finished width of the blanket.  When you sew the blanket using this method, you go from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 strips wide.  64 strips would be way to wide so I made the next one cutting the strips 3.5 inches wide to stretch my 32 strips.

 I lay out my backing fabric on the living room floor right side down, then my batting and then the quilt top right side up.  I smooth it out as best I can and then pin it to death.  I quilt the layers together using the strips as a guide which goes much faster than my plain fabric blankets because I don't have to measure and chalk lines.  Then I trim the batting and quilt top and fold over and hem the backing edges because I don't have the patience to mess around with quilt binding.  And it seems whenever I do this, someone always has to come along and lay on the quilt. 

 Here is the other one I finished!  A while back, I collected a bunch of holly fabrics for Christmas and planned someday for a Christmas quilt.  Of course they sat in a box in my sewing room and got moved up here from Iowa and then moved here from our old apartment.  Ever since I started working on jelly roll quilts, stash is starting to bite the dust!  I have batting on hand for 2 more but I have at least 4 groups of fabric stash mentally lined up. 

Winter is coming and you can never have too many blankets in your house for company.  We had 8 people stay with us last weekend and luckily the weather was warm.  I use our living room floor to assemble the quilts so for that reason I'm a little glad we still don't have furniture in it!

 Our Better Boy tomatoes have really slowed down but we have plenty of Juliets that are ripening.  I've been picking a lot of green tomatoes...

 ...and eating them like this!  Dip them in flour with some Greek seasoning, then egg, and then cornmeal and fry until the tomatoes are tender.  Num num!  I have 4 eggplants developing and I can't wait!

Surprise Fall!

 We had a snap spell of bona fide fall weather.  It got down to not quite freezing overnight last night and we put sheets over the tomatoes and eggplants just to be safe.  My brother also arrived for his week of drill and bureaucracy.  I'd bought 2 whole chickens on ridiculous sale a few months back and thawed one out in John's honor.  The high temp yesterday was mid 50's and perfect for roasting a chicken.  I kind of made the recipe up based on the wonderful Anne Burrell.  I enjoy her program every weekday at 1300.  I can only catch the first half of her show because I am in the shower every work weekday by 1320.  I took 4 Tbsp. of butter and softened and mashed it with 1 Tbsp potted garlic (I prefer Lee Kum Kee), a generous sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper, 2 tsp coarse kosher salt and a generous 1 Tbsp minced fresh rosemary.  I loosened the flesh of a 5.2# roaster chicken and rubbed the butter mixture under the skin.  I also generously salted the cavity of the carcass.  I coarsely chopped 2 carrots, 2 onions, and 2 ribs of celery and layed them in my enameled cast iron dutch oven as a base for my chicken.  I threw a cup of water into the pot and roasted the bird at 375 degrees until the juices ran clear and the temp registered 170 degrees.

I started on the pie early in the afternoon.  I got the apples at the grocery store and got regular old granny smith.  I never got to go to the orchard for strawberry picking in the field so I want to go for canning apples.  I used this recipe and it was awesome.  Next time I will use a larger pie plate and half the amount of the streusel topping.  I baked this pie for 65 minutes which was 10 minutes longer than required and the apples were still very firm.  Maybe next time I will try a different apple variety.  This recipe also calls for the filling to be tossed with a caramel apple dip mixture which of course was delicious, but in a time crunch, could be omitted.  Mmmmmm.....pie.  Autumn is the time for pie. 

Jelly Roll Jeans

 I am a saver.  My sister will tell you that I am a hoarder but I disagree.  There is a definite crowbar separation between those two things.  I love the idea that you could take something that is no longer useful as it's original intended purpose and use it to make something functional and totally different.  I've had a sack of old jeans sitting in my sewing room for some time.  Some were mine, some were Dave's and a coworker gave me a dozen pairs her son had outgrown.  They all had holes in the knees, pockets ripped out, crotch seams worn away, etc. 

Lopi has ripped up her dog bed cover twice in the short time she's lived with us.  She can't help it though, she is a terrier and terriers need to dig and before she lays down on anything, she has to dig at it to make it just right.  Well I thought a dog bed cover made of denim would be pretty tough and withstand her "bed making".  I set to work cutting 3 inch wide strips out of all the different varieties of jeans and pieced them together jelly roll style and this is what I wound up with.  I think it is quite pretty with all the random shades of blue.

She was running around with her rope toy and just happened to lay on her bed for a moment for me to snap a picture.  What did we do without this nerd?

 What's new around here?  The State Fair has come and gone and Dave and I went twice.  We used the heck out of our Blue Ribbon Coupon Book on our first visit.  Our second trip was on the very last day with my parents and Freya and John.  As we boarded our bus to the fair, passengers coming back gave us their books so Mom and Dad had coupons to use.  Our favorite food item this year had to be the Reuben bites from O'Gara's.  Num num!

 We visited the Creative Activities Building because I had knitting and Freya had scrap booking exhibited.  I am proud to say I entered 9 things and got ribbons on 5 of them and 2 of those were blue!  As my dad would say, "The sin of pride."  Here is my finished 3 piece baby set that won the top knitted item prize at the Washington County Fair.

 Now that my fair deadlines have passed for the year, I am working on baby deadlines.  I've had my eye on this pattern for some time.  Can you see the owls?  I am currently knitting a bunch of these for family babies.  My niece Becky is expecting a boy so this sweater will go to her with the blue stitching on the buttons and eyes.  My cousin Anna is expecting a girl and will receive this same sweater but with pink thread for buttons and eyes.  My cousin Britt is expecting a baby but they are not learning the sex prior to the birth so I am torn between yellow and teal thread.  The sweater itself is knit from a gender neutral sea foam teal/blue. 

 Dave and I attended the wedding of our nephew held on the terrace of the Stillwater Public Library.  I was dubious when I read the location on the invitation but it was bee-YEW-tiful!  Who knew that was up there?  What a great facility and you'd think you were in Prague by all the church spires!  This was the first small town library I'd ever seen that had a parking ramp beneath it!

 We also attended the first Gopher football game of the year last Thursday with Dave's dad.  The weather cooperated for the most part and we creamed Eastern Illinois.  I had fun but I have a hard time paying attention at large sporting events like this.  I start looking around at the cheerleaders and the band and I'm watching what Goldy is doing and....oh wait, we're playing again!

The garden has been moderately successful this year but we had such a late start and a cool and wet season so far.  I am already making plans for next year's changes.  I have been very pleased with our cherry tomatoes.  I started them from seed and planted them in a large pot which I plan to bring indoors when the frost comes.  We have 1 regular tomato plant and 1 roma tomato plant and they're slowly ripening.  The green beans might have a second round of produce and our eggplants look like they might produce something before the season is over.  We have yet to produce a single zucchini and have 3 runt cucumbers I hope will get bigger.  There are 3 spaghetti squash developing on the vine and I don't think we're going to get any butternut squash. 

Dave's parents always have an abundance of tomatoes and I've brought home 2 loads from them already.  I did my first day of canning this year today and boy are my dogs barking from all the standing in the kitchen.  I wound up with 6 quarts of tomato sauce and 6 pints of salsa at the end of the day.  After slowly emptying the jars all year, it is nice to be filling them up and storing them for winter.  Last year I made dozens and dozens of jars of salsa because it was the first thing I learned how to can.  Then I learned I could just reduce down and strain gallons of tomatoes and can it as sauce to use as a cooking base.  We gave away quite a few pints of salsa and ate and cooked with it and managed to use it all up but I wished I'd canned way more plain sauce. There were quite a few bitterly cold days that we weathered with velvety tomato soup made out of the tomato sauce.  I have next weekend off too and I'm hoping between our garden and Dave's parents that we'll have another truckload to fool around with.  I want to try canning marinara and pasta sauce if I have a surplus of plain sauce.  I am also going to try canning applesauce when the apples are ready.  More on that later.

Beaded Bag

 So here is the finished beaded bag I was alluding to last week.  I started this a couple years ago when I had a terrible case of start-itis.  If memory serves me, my local Hobby Lobby was discontinuing some or all of their Delica beads and had a big clearance sale.  Delica beads are Japanese and quite expensive because they are so well and precisely made.  They are the DMC of beads as far as color uniformity goes and are put to good use in peyote stitch projects because they are so uniform in size and shape.  I bought quite a few packets of various blue shades and mixed them together and strung them up in a hank with my bead spinner.  I didn't know how many I had so I thought of a simple drawstring bag beaded with single beads on one side of the fabric only.  That way I'd get the most mileage out of that seemingly small hank of beads.  I used size 8 DMC pearl cotton thread in a pale blue shade and knit a few rows of stockinette on my 0000 needles and made a few yarn over buttonholes for a drawstring to go through.

 I maybe got through an inch of beaded knitting before abandoning it in my bead knitting tin where bead knitting goes to die.  Once fair season came around, I began thinking of what I could enter this year and found this and decided to finish it.  Bead knitting really is not a complicated process but it is slow going because you are knitting with thread on practically piano wire.  Before you start, you thread all your beads onto the thread and have to keep sliding the beads down the thread.  Keep in mind, you might have 3 yards of strung beads on your ball of thread when you first start.  You might knit 6 inches worth of beads into place with 12 yards of thread and still have to keep sliding the remaining 2 5/6 yards of beads down the line as you go.  In any case, you will always have yards of unwound thread to deal with so I've found it is best to keep your thread in a bowl to contain this mass.  Here is my work in progress at rest in my bead knitting bowl.

 This is towards the end of the project and towards the end of the second ball of thread.  The bowl is also handy because as you work, the thread won't roll all over the floor.  In the end, I used just over 2 balls of thread and all but 30 or so of the beads. 

This bag may not look simple but it is.  It is just a plain strip of fabric knit as long as I possibly could with amount of beads I had.  The ends are knit in stockinette but the beaded part is all garter stitch with beads saddled between the stitches on only one side of the fabric.  The sides were whip stitched with the tails of the knitting and I made 2 twisted cords for the drawstring.  I think my favorite thing about bead knitting is the weight of the work because beads are made of glass.  As delicate as this object appears, it is heavy because of the beads.  I am very proud to say that this bag won the Grand Champion in the needlework class of the Washington County Fair and won me a gift certificate to a yarn shop!

Baked Cucumbers and Pork Pies

Yes you heard me correctly.  Baked cucumbers.  This is one of my favorite summer recipes and I just have to share it.  The wonderful and immortal Julia Child published this recipe in her Mastering The Art Of French Cooking and it is a rare and undiscovered gem of a dish.  It's a great way to use up an abundance of summer garden cucumbers and also tasty in winter with hydroponic supermarket cukes.  This is also one of the few recipes I will happily use the oven for in the summer heat.

 Start with 6-8 good sized cucumbers.  Peel them, cut the ends off and cut them in half.  Scoop the seeds out.  Slice each half lengthwise into 3 strips.  Cut each strip into 2 inch planks.  Meanwhile, combine 2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar, 1/8 tsp sugar and 1 1/2 tsp. salt in a large bowl.  Throw your cuke planks into the bowl and toss to coat.  Set aside for at least 30 minutes or for several hours.  At this point, you have the best natural air freshener sitting on your counter.  The whole room will smell like cucumbers!

 Here are my 8 cucumbers from the garden of my parents-in-law tossed in my bowl.  Next, wring them out in batches using 2 or 3 paper towels for each batch.  You will be amazed how much water comes out as well as how much has collected in the bowl.

 Here is the same bowl and the same amount of cukes after wringing out.  If you simply baked chopped cucumbers, they would turn to mush because of the water content.

 Next, spray a 12 inch wide x 1.5 inch deep baking dish with oil or rub with butter.  Toss your treated cukes with 3 Tbsp melted butter, 1/2 tsp dill or basil, 3-4 Tbsp minced onion, and 1/8 tsp black pepper.  Here are my cukes tossed with the above.  I absolutely LOVE dill and have never tried this recipe with basil.  I am always very generous with my dill.

 Bake at 375 for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes.  As you can see, they very barely brown and are still quite crunchy after baking.  They almost have that "squeak on your teeth" quality to them.  I usually end up adding another 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of salt to these after they come out of the oven.  Like I said, you can burn up a bunch of cucumbers with this recipe and 2-4 people can easily finish this off.  I also don't mind using the oven in summer for this because they are so tasty.  I am going to try using my crock pot on high for this and see if I have decent results.  Num num!

These are my second attempt at the pork pies I baked last weekend.  I first ate a real live pork pie back in Thirsk, England years ago on a trip there with my mother.  Mr. Granger of Are You Being Served? fame was always eating them.  They are North England's answer to the pasty.  Miners would often eat them because they were filling and portable.  I enjoy all the cooking shows on TPT on Saturday mornings and unexpectantly saw an episode of Around the Farm Table.  Here she was, in Wisconsin, making pork pies!  She very cleverly baked them in a jumbo muffin pan and I couldn't wait to try it out myself.  I baked them as described in the written recipe but unfortunately, I couldn't hack them out of my muffin tin and they were quite bland.  This second time around, I added 1.5  tsp salt to both the meat mixture and the pastry mixture and I baked them free-form.  I smushed the meat mixture into a 3/4 c measuring cup to form 4 meat 'cakes'.  Then I used a large circle cookie cutter to cut the top and a small bowl to cut the body.  I set the meat cake on the body round, placed the top round on top, and then folded up and crimped the body to the top.  I baked them for 45 minutes but I forgot to brush them with the egg mixture.  Otherwise they would have browned better.  These were so much more like the ones I ate in England.  Traditionally the meat shrinks inside the pastry casing and they would pour a gelatin mixture into the dough slits after baking.  The gelatin mixture would gel and prevent the shrunken meat from knocking around inside the pastry.  I did not do that extra step and thought these were just fine as they were.  My father in law loves pork and he concurred that these were just fine as they were.  These are not an every day entree because the pastry crust contains lard.  They are a nice treat every now and again though.

Speaking of not every day food...here is a picture of a deep fried grilled cheese sandwich!  Dave and I went to the Washington County Fair on Friday.  This was our favorite terrible food of the day.  It is amazing what you can find deep fried at fairs.  This was delicious though!  I am also proud to say that I took home the top 3 prizes in knitting this year:  Grand Champion for my bead knitted drawstring bag, Reserve Grand Champion for my red striped jacket, and Top Place Knitted Exhibit for my 3 piece baby set.  As well as the 2 top rosette ribbons, I also won the 2 $25 gift certificates to local yarn shops!  FREE YARN!  Next is the State Fair!

 We are approaching a major milestone in the Anderson household.  I've had this jar of crushed red pepper for at least 5 years and we've very nearly finished the entire thing!  You can tell it is old by the dated appearance of the label.  I've always been interested in baking but I didn't really become interested in cooking until Dave came along.  It really motivates you when you're cooking for someone other than yourself.  I love garlic and herbs and spices, always have.  I scoff in Chinese restaurants when items on the menu are marked "spicy" because I don't think they are necessarily spicy.  To me, garlicky does not equate to spicy.  It has only been in recent years that I've begun to appreciate heat in dishes, and heat and spicy are not the same thing.  Heat is just heat.  As someone who has been raised eating a bland, Scandinavian diet of "white food" (so called because the food is always bread/rice/pasta/butter/cream/potatoes...i.e. STARCH) this is a major accomplishment!

 You can see the bottom of the jar!!!  We've managed to use this up even though we have also recently discovered Sambal Oelek which is fresh red pepper paste and we even buy the 18 oz. jar of that!  Who knew we were such spicy people?!?  I have the next 2 days off and plan to spend some time fooling around in my kitchen as well as working on some last minute knitting.

This is some bead knitting that had been abandoned in my bead knitting tin.  I am hoping to finish it and enter it at the Washington County Fair next week.  I love these 0000 needles I got at the Nordic Needle in Fargo a few years back.  This will be a simple drawstring bag once finished.  Hoping to post pictures of the finished bag soon.  Have a great weekend!

May I just say...

 ...that I have waited almost my entire adult life to have fresh herbs growing somewhere in or near my house for cooking at a moment's notice?  I have fond memories of all the delicious foods I ate in Europe when I backpacked in '01.  Mind you, this was before the age of cell phones and selfies and posting pictures of food.  I took a 35mm camera and rolls of film (remember those?) and it was too precious to waste taking pictures of food, but I wrote about food in detail in my travel journal.  I have dreamt of recreating those meals with fresh herbs.  I dream about food, is it any wonder I am overweight? 

Dave and I are attempting our first full blown garden this year and seem to be having more luck with plants growing in containers due to the amount of clay in our soil.  Last summer we'd moved too late in the growing season in June to attempt a garden, but we did splurge and buy a $15 large pot of 5 herbs at our local farmer's market.  I am proud to say that 4 out of the 5 herbs survived the winter in our window sill and 3 of them are pictured above.  Last night I cooked a meal of fettuccine pasta with a from-scratch white wine Alfredo sauce with ham and rosemary and I baked a focaccia with sage and thyme.  Martha Stewart eat your heart out!  I am also having success with Italian basil I planted and am growing outside.  More on that later but I am really crossing my fingers that I can keep it indoors through the winter.

 Here is the focaccia rising on my baking stone.  It has 20 sage leaves chopped and kneaded into the dough and topped with another 10 as well as drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt.  Num num!  I used my "00" flour from Cossetta's for this recipe.  I think here we think of Stove-Top when sage is mentioned but it can be a very delicate rich flavor.  I still think about the sage farfalle pasta I ate twice in Rome and the sage topped foccacia I ate in Brindisi.

 Here is the bread after it is baked.  We sliced the whole thing in half and then sliced one of the halves into strips to eat as bread sticks for our meal.  I worked tonight and for my lunch sliced a portion of it horizontally to make open faced sandwiches with Swiss cheese and sliced garden cucumbers.  Num NUM.  The sage leaves are crispy after baking and I love just picking them off and eating them.  I am so thankful for my container herb garden!

And in knitting news...here is some more baby knitting I am hoarding for my personal collection.  This is of course a Sprinkle sweater knit from some Claudia Handpaints silk blend that I got on clearance from StevenBe's.  Dave took me there for the first time this winter and we were in the same neck of the woods as Ingebretsen's so it was a great shopping day for me.  I also knitted a star baby cap and multicolored sockies in the same colors to enter in the Washington County Fair as a knitted baby set.  This photo was taken after blocking but before I sewed the buttons on.

Fair Finishes

This week is the Ramsey County Fair and I finished up a couple more things to enter.

This is a Christmas tam knit from some Patons Classic DK.  I'd seen the pattern last winter in Simply Knitting and finally got around to knitting it.  There are holly leaves around the ribbing but you really can't see them and I think I should have used a darker green.  This was blocked on a dinner plate which I had never done but is the typical way to block a tam.

I knit these a while ago from a recycled cotton/silk blend and I knit them to keep for myself.  No I am not pregnant but I am feeling the need to start hoarding baby knitting for myself because I know I will never have enough time once we decide to start having kids.  This is a darling Erika Knight pattern I've knit before.  The ribbon used is a length of Sajou purchased at Liberty in London.  This way I got to use the ribbon without CUTTING it!

I kicked out another one of these for my dear friend Melissa but am borrowing it to enter in the fairs this year.  I also knit a toddler dress for her daughter but I will be hanging on to that until after fair season.  Melissa generously lent me the sweater I knit for Serenity last year to enter this year.  I was on call last night so Dave and I slipped off to the fair to see how I did and Serenity's sweater won the grand champion in the knitting class!  I entered 13 total items.  My Noro scarf didn't place at all and I got a white ribbon on my damask Christmas runner that I entered as a total afterthought but I got blues on everything else including my quilt!  The Washington County Fair starts on July 30th and I'm finishing up a few more things to show there. 

Seeing Red

I got a bunch of strawberries for $1.19/quart and made a bunch of freezer jam using this recipe.  Dave's mom makes this all the time and assured me it was easy. 

It was SO easy!  Mash your fruit, add your sugar, mix up you pectin and pour into jars.  I made 4 batches of strawberry jam and one batch of raspberry jam using the last of our raspberries in the freezer.

It is all safely tucked away in the freezer for a rainy day and for gifts.  I want to eventually get out to a strawberry patch for some field strawberries but I am busy for the next week and a half.  I have some gjetost in the fridge and I am hungry for it with this jam on some Ezekiel bread.  This is great as an ice cream topping too!

 In other news...I finally finished my red sweater!!!  I started knitting this over a year and a half ago when we still lived in the apartment.  I'd gotten this yarn on clearance at Micheal's and kind of went a little crazy and bought BAGS of the stuff.  It is a very soft fingering weight yarn with large gradually changing stripes of color.  I got a couple different colorways and wanted to knit a cardigan or a jacket out of it.  I used a free Drops pattern and starting knitting the pieces.  Because it is a fine yarn and small needles...it took forever.  The other caveat is that it is knitted in pieces and then seamed together.  It took me almost 3 days to sew it together and a lot of frustration.

The yarn is almost a boucle and bunched up while knitting so I had to keep sliding the lumps down the length of yarn.  I tried seaming with the yarn and quit after about 4 stitches because it was doing this.  This yarn is also very gossamer-y and I was afraid it wouldn't hold up and keep the sweater together. 

I remembered I had a large ball of leftover sock yarn and used that for the seams.

Invisible seams are kind of like lacing a shoe.  When the stitches are pulled tight, you can't see them so really I could have used neon green yarn to seam it.  Here are some of the stitches held open so you can see.

Here they are pulled tight and hidden.  This was a slow going process.  As eager as I was to get it done, I had to get up after a seam and come back to it.

Here is the final sweater!  The yarn reminds me a lot of Kauni but is much softer.  I haven't sewn the buttons on yet but I kind of like it without.  Now I just can't for it to get cold!  I was sweating to death while taking the pictures!

I love the stripes of color.  The back was knit in two pieces and sewn together up the middle.  The angles are produced from almost a mitered increase on either side of a marked stitch.  I have a blue/teal/purple colorway that I want to make into another one of these but I also want to knit a Little Sister's Dress and a Wingspan.  I will have to see how much I have and how far it will stretch.  This poor sweater was the first thing to get pushed to the back burner as baby, birthday and Christmas knitting came along.  Am I patient enough to wait another year and a half for a blue one?

Saturday Ritual

Tonight is another working Saturday so I baked treats to take along.  I worked evenings yesterday, slept last night and got up this morning and dinked around.  I usually lay down for a nap around 1300 and then report to work at 1900 and that first night is always the worst.  By 0300 you're fighting to stay awake and drinking pop and coffee and get almost nauseous from being so tired.  Some oatmeal fortified chocolate chip cookies will keep us energized and moving tonight.  Tomorrow I will crawl home and sleep like a baby.  My Sunday nights always go so much better.

 As usual my little helper stayed close to the kitchen in the eternal hopes that I would accidentally drop some food.  She is such good company!  Such a pretty Lopi dog!  MPTV is having pledge drive so I didn't get to watch my regular Saturday morning treat shows but USA is having an Indiana Jones marathon!  Yesssssss!!!

I started knitting these socks in Reno while watching Dave bowl.  I'd knit a pair of these for John a few years ago after he deployed.  They are "Soldier Socks" but we called them "Sailor Socks" in his case.  These are for no one in particular (but they'll probably go to  my sister in law because she is just as much a sailor as John for holding down the fort while he was gone!) but I wanted to enter them in the fair this year.  As soon as the weather warms up, I start getting eager for the fair!  I have so many things lined up to knit and I have most of next week off to get some serious knitting done.  Dave is done with school for a week before summer school and we might go fishing one of those days.  He can fish and I can knit!

 This is mint.  It grows like a weed and is a sure sign of spring!

 And if you steep it in boiling water, you get lovely mint tea.  Num num!

We just got home from Fargo this evening after driving up yesterday and staying overnight in a hotel with my parents and my sister and her family.  We visited my grandma and then went on to Hitterdal for my cousin Kjirsten's graduation luncheon.  I knit her a pair of beaded pulsewarmers and finished them in the car on the way in typical Katie fashion.  We'd last seen everyone at our wedding almost a year and a half ago and we hadn't seen Grandma for 2 years.  We had beautiful warm weather for the trip.  And we made it into town yesterday just in time to hit Prairie Yarns and I got a few goodies.  I am such a lucky girl because I got to go to two FABULOUS yarn shops in less than a month.  This also means I will be going on a yarn diet for a while!