Baking: Thanksgiving

We do Thanksgiving... big. This entails inviting everyone who doesn't have their own friends/family thing to go to. This year was only 16 people, so smaller than other years (and larger than others), but we'll still take it. Besides the normal turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, greens, and so on, my bragging rights really come after dinner. Here's part of the reason I haven't been sewing:

The pear-pomegranate pie in front is mine. The next is a friend's pumpkin cheesecake, a bowl of fresh persimmons, another friend's pumpkin whoopie pies, and my (boring but requisite and tasty) pumpkin pie. Besides the amazing tastiness of the pear pie (it went away quickly!), a lot of people commented on the lattice top. I've never had a problem with doing a lattice (although parts of me want to do fancy braiding things with skinnier strings of dough... wonder if kumihimo is a possibility). I always wonder how people do the dough leaf-cut-out things, because mine never look like leaves, even if I follow a pattern.

You'd think that the plethora of orange food would have brought out our inner Oompa Loompas... fortunately no.

When I look through your eyes...

I've recently (mentally) dug up an old presentation: Art Theory for Engineers. I kinda irritated some co-workers a few years back, when I not-at-all-subtly suggested that their uninformative and over-stuffed PowerPoint presentations looked awful, and they'd actually be more effective if they thought about eye/brain intake and color theory. Which was true! They prompty ignored my advice and kept presenting ineffective slides.

I mean, yes, the school mascot is kinda funny to have in print and completely enhances all of your cool scientific data. Especially graphs. Totally helps on graphs and points out the pertinent information. And flying-in or swirling out bullet points? Very impressive, because no one else thought of using that.

Oh sarcasm...

Where does art theory come into slides? It's all in your eyes. What were your eyes designed to do originally? See stuff that thinks it's about to eat you. Pretty important. Therefore, your eyes (and brain) are fantastic at picking out fine movements (based on high-contrast light and shadow) and bright out-of-place colors. Bright color, fine details. Let's take a look at what makes ads effective:

image from Crate and Barrel website

Lovely turkey dinner, just in time for Thanksgiving! What's the first thing your eyes focus on? Probably the turkey. Why? It's the bright white fine twine on the leg trusses. That's detail and contrast. The second thing your eyes focus on? Probably the wonderfully fluffy mashed potatoes (and you know they've got the right of butter in there, along with the potato skins for extra contrast). They're the next brightest thing, and in close proximity to the string/turkey. Then you follow the shiny silver immersion blender across to the left, which leads you to the patterned orange and yellow dishtowel, up to a similarly-colored wine glass, and back to the turkey. On your second pass, you'll probably notice that the knife block points to a lemon-yellow cassarole pot. You probably still won't notice the bowls of Granny Smith apples or cranberries in the background, not to mention the colander of whole potatoes in the front right.

So, what are they selling? Obviously since it's Crate and Barrel, they want you to buy kitchen stuff. From the picture, it's mostly about the food that happens to be sitting in and around kitchen stuff. Food is a fantastic motivator (hooray for the primitive brain), so it makes sense to make you hungry for, uh, roasting pans.

Let's try another:

image from Banana Republic website

This one's actually pretty clever at moving your eye around. It wouldn't be nearly as effective if the lettering weren't there.

Okay, breakdown time. You first look at her face. It's the only non-neutral color in her cheeks and lips, as well as the brightest part of the whole picture. Details make you then look at her eyes, which (cleverly) are reading the taglines! Because we read left-to-right, you then follow the last of the text over to the white part of the pattern in the sweater, which then leads down to her hands. Because her jacket is open, you follow the V-shape back up to her face via the bright strands of blonde-highlighted hair. Repeat loop. You probably don't realize what color her shirt is, or that it's even in the picture at all.

How's that? Impressed yet? Next time will be why some ads (and slide presentations) are ineffective.

Have you got any tips for effective presentations?

New kitchen lesser deity

In addition to my previous list of Kitchen Gods, I've recently re-discovered this blog: The Homesick Texan, who's happily stuck in New York City but missing the food of the South. While I haven't actually made anything from this scrumptious-looking site (I keep promising myself to make biscuits... arg!), the pictures and stories to go with the pictures are fantastic and drool-worthy (I'm sure she'd be horrified to hear "drool-worthy" as a descriptor of her blog).

Now, let me explain: I am a Northern girl. Very much so. I've never even been through Texas on road trips. I have no idea what Texan cuisine is all about. I do, however, have some idea of Southern cooking, having lived in Atlanta for three years. Not a lot, but some. I'm quite relieved to be back above the Mason-Dixon line, and don't intend on returning south except for friends' weddings or somesuch. But some of that Southern cooking really can be good for the soul (but not often for the waistline... eh... sacrifices). I'm not so hot on grits, but I'll take any variety of barbecue, stew, or cornbread.

Sewing: B&W&P dress inching along

It's so nice to come home from a long day at work, followed by the gym and tasty dinner, and totally crash for the evening. Which is why I've only done a little more on the dress:

Hey, check that out... forgot the purple sash. Go, me.

Obviously, I haven't shortened the hem of the lining yet. I figured it'd be easier to do once the outer skirt was done. It also looks a little shorter on the sides than the front. I think this is just a picture-image problem rather than a real-life problem. I think.

I ended up using that hem tape stuff after all. If you look reeeeeally closely, you can still see the dark/light layers through the seam, the hem tape, and the folded over (i.e. backside of the!) fabric. Doubling over the tape makes for a pretty hefty seam, but also gives the skirt some body and not-as-clingy look. We'll see if it stays that way once the lining's shortened.

New problem: If you know me, you know that I have very pasty-pale skin; the pictures make me look like I have a decent tan. I just realized that I already know that I look pretty bad in off-white. Huh. Why the heck did I choose a color that looks terrible on me?

Well, one more (major) seam to go...

Baking: More End of Summer

Even though the La Nina off the coast is determining otherwise, there was one last outing to the u-pick blueberry farm for jam ingredients. (Yeah, sometimes it's just hard to let go.) End of season berries still make good stuff:

The color of the contents of the jars are actually more like that of the top jar. If you look at them in the light (or with camera flash), they appear strangely pinky, like the bottom jars. Eh.

Now having made three kinds of preserved fruit goodness, here's the weird thing: I don't eat that much jam. What to do...

Sewing: B&W&P dress problems

Pesky dress.

The biggest hurdle in finishing the dress is that work has ramped up. And I just want to sleep when I get home.

Okay, another part of why I haven't had any progress on hemming the pesky B&W&P dress is the problem of see-through-ness. I've pinned up the dress (taking out about 7.5 inches, and it looks pretty good. Except when I tried to mock-up the normal rolled hem. The pattern was very evident. Too see-through. The twill tape I've been using on the seams is only half an inch wide, which would be difficult to manipulate into a hem. So, I got some 2" wide hem tape, which I assumed would be suitable for hemming. But I can still see the fabric pattern through it. Thinking about using a strip of the lining or something, but that would require more hemming of the strip. Or something.

Still working on it, but mostly in my head.

Any suggestions out there?

Baking: End of Summer

Blueberry tartlet a la mode with nectarine syrup.

Craft: Ye Olde pen and ink

Work and other general life has ramped up, therefore, the B&W&P dress remains unhemmed. Soon, I hope.

As a break during work, I've picked up a calligraphy pen again. I took the first class in 3rd grade (hated the class, but found the calligraphy fascinating). My Chancery font (the common, slanted one) has always been terrible... just can't keep the slants consistent. My Gothic and Unical fonts (the Germanic and Irish-ish ones) are pretty good, though. I need to re-find my copy of the Speedball (yes, as in pen) textbook. So many ways to write an "S"!

Following the realization that letters could look different from the Printing Teacher's directions, I have consciously changed my handwriting three times in my life. I've also taken steps to make sure that my signature is something that I think looks good (and is legible). Guess I'm kinda bragging there...

There's a couple of links on the side of this page for beautiful works of calligraphy from different cultures, like China and Arabic Ottoman and Persian. Completely amazed by some of the zoo-graphical Arabic designs. This link is cool hand-lettered manuscripts from all over. John Langdon does "ambigrams" (the words that look the same upside down), and shows how to create them.

I've also just found this really neat blog on calligraphy. No, not just the thick-thin-lines calligraphy, but the more general use of the word, which applies to writing and communication in general, also including history of the art and accouterments. Check out The Calligraphy Alphabet.

Sewing: More Progress on B&W&P Dress

My goal was to sew a dress before summer finished. If I hadn't sewn the zipper in backwards last night, I'd have had something to show yesterday.

B&W&P Dress, mostly finished!

All of the internal seams are bound (yay me!)

Seams so neat!

The hem isn't done, and won't be done before summer's over, since my summer finishes, uh, yesterday. And I need a hook-and-eye thingy. Maybe I'll actually finish it next week. Next week-ish. -Ish. Here's my questions:

1. I think it's a bit long (or I'm a bit short... yeah, probably more likely), and I intend on shortening the hem (or growing me, yeah right) a little. How much should I take it up? AND...
2. I have seam tape for the inside, which will hopefully be inconspicuous. OR I could bind the bottom of the dress with purple satin, like the straps and belt. Which will look better?

The Style Thing

I have some issues with sewing and creating clothing that I would want to wear out of the house. Here are my (larger) problems with sewing totally awesome clothes for myself:

1. Sense of style. I'm pretty boring. I don't wear the latest trends, it's unlikely to find me in frilly blouses or giant pendant necklaces, I don't wear high-heels, purses make me glaze over. I look good in slacks and a button-down shirt, which is what I wear to work, along with the pair of brown or pair of black, sensible flats. Otherwise it's jeans and t-shirts and my faithful hiking boots. I do know if something fits me well, but I've no idea if an outfit looks good or not. I currently favor the stylings of Anthropologie, ModCloth, Banana Republic, and Boden, but I don't have a handle on knowing whether it fits me or not. Have I ever bought anything from any of the above stores? No. Have I drooled over them? Yes. Well, and I'm also kinda cheap and don't want to pay the prices of some of those shops.
   
2. I'm allergic to wool. This means no lovely woolen trousers, tweed jackets, cashmere sweaters, or mohair scarves for me. Yes, there are lined crisply-creased houndstooth pants, but the hems and waistbands are usually still woolen on the inside, leaving a fantastic red ring around my middle and ankles by the end of the day. Even my beloved woolen peacoat will give my neck a rash unless I wear a scarf. I do love a nice pinstriped suit (which tends to be wool).
   
3. Pink. I despise it. It looks fantastic on a lot of people (women and a few men), and even yours truly, but I hate everything that color stands for and represents. I will not wear pink, other than (possibly) a few stripes or dots in an otherwise-other-colored fabric. Basta.
   

While the pink issue is relatively easy to avoid (except some summers when it replaces red), the other two are harder for me to get around. Wool is all over the place in winter, especially with the fashion industry's recent "discovery" of mohair and cashmere. (Side note: If you find non-wool sweaters that are not ribbed turtlenecks, please let me know!) However, there's enough cable sweaters that will layer over shirts (can't anyone make a thick, warm cotton sweater?!) My biggest problem is the style thing.

The fact that I'm calling my issues "the style thing" just shows how clueless I am. Fashion frankly scares me, but yet, I desire it. I want to look more modern and indie and non... uh.... non-obsolete. At the same time, I don't want to look ridiculous or strange. I also don't want to light myself on fire, which actually is a job hazard for me (this is part of the no-frilly-blouses bit). Plus, there's the whole outfit-making-thing. "Accessories" to me means "stuff you don't need" rather than "stuff to make you look better." For me, you take pants + shirt + shoes = outfit. This apparently is a misnomer when you get into that super cool layering thing, which means at least three shirts of different lengths and decorations, plus maybe a vest or a necklace or something else, and have you thought about your hair? I just don't see it.

What are your suggestions/rules for trying new fashion thingies?

Sewing(?): Handsome and Valuable

Here's a thing that was in my box of pins:

It's not actually bent, it's kinda 3-D, about an inch long. I've no idea what it is, nor how it got into the pins. There is a stamp on each side, one says "handsome" and the other says "valuable." What the heck is this?

Sewing, Tutorial: onestringbags

On my introductory blog entries, I mentioned onestringbags, which I found via instructables. These are the best things for avoiding the plastic produce bags at the grocery store and farmer's markets, and super easy to make. I love them. However, here are a few things I've learned by using these things:

Pros: No more plastic bags! Run under faucet to clean Lightweight (doesn't add much to fruit-per-pound totals) Inexpensive People ask where you got them and you get to brag

Cons: Does not work well for berries or very soft fruits Still have to remember them, along with the canvas bags

Eh. Not much you can do about that last one. Anyway.

I realize now that I do them a little differently from the instructable, so here's a tutorial on making my version of onestringbags. The biggest difference is that I fold all of the edges over, just so that there's more layers of tulle and the seams have more to hold onto. I apologize in advance for the poor pictures, but it's hard to photograph pesky delicate light green tulle.

Materials:

• length of tulle (get the stuff that's in the sale bin, probably in some wacky color, but your vegetables won't mind)
• length of string or cording
• thread (time to use the weird scraps!)
• sewing machine

Step 1: Cut the tulle into the size you want. (To keep it slightly more simple, I have a fold on one side edge. This piece is about 20"x36", so the final bag will be about 19"x18"-ish.) Lay the tulle flat. Find the top edge (where the drawstring will be... see mine?), and fold the sides in, about 1/2". Pin a little.

Step 2: Fold the top edge down, over the drawstring. I think the drawstring works better if you give it some space, so I make this fold about 1" to 1.5". Pin the drawstring to the fold, just so it's outta the way when you start sewing.

Step 3: Sew the drawstring in, giving it some space (I give it about an inch). Make sure to tie knots in the ends of the threads. Good knots.

Step 4: Put the side edges together. Pin the sides together, keeping that 1/2" fold on each outside face (it's sooo much easier to sew through four layers of tulle than just two). The edges might be a little messy and it may not lie quite flat, but it won't matter when you stuff the bag full of apples.

Step 5: See the layers? Good.

Step 6: Fold up the bottom. No need to keep the sides separate anymore, and it doesn't hurt to have something more than just twisted threads holding your plums inside. Pin it all!

Step 7: Sew the edges. Tie knots in the threads!

Step 8: Overhand knot to tie the drawstring. Now, go to the farmer's market and get stuff (ooh, I think peaches are in season...)

Preserving Someone Else's Harvest

Here's the first round of pretties: strawberry-raspberry preserves and apricot jam.

As mentioned before, I live for the summer farmer's markets. There's two stands in particular that we always visit first, before running through the rest of the booths. One booth is a berry farm (current produce is blackberries, blueberries, and end-of-season raspberries), and the other is a great family farm that's known for its cherries, apples, peppers and squash, but they also have some stone fruit, eggplant, melons...

The problem with going to the farmer's markets before breakfast is that I get a lot of fruit. Far more than I can eat, even in my mid-summer fruit bonanza. I'm not sure why it's sooooo cool to buy an entire flat of raspberries, but it is. It just is. Maybe it's because you actually know what to do with several pounds of delicate summer goodness. Or you have a household of teenage boys (do they eat fruit, or just eat in general?)

I've wanted to try canning for a while, but I don't think of it as something you get into casually. You need the jars and the timei to make the stuff and the giant boiling water pots and... well, then you also need someone to eat the stuff. My mom never canned, but I remember Grandma's red wine jelly every winter. The grocery store down the street was closing, so the jars were 25% off... opportunity knocked!

Sewing: Progress B&W&P dress

A large part of why this blog is called "Jerryrigging" is that I often just figure out ways of making things work the way I want them to. My grandfather said that jigsaw puzzles are pretty easy if using a hammer. My ways might be the "proper" ways of doing things, or I've found a cool way of doing things and am pretty proud of myself until I discover that I've inadvertently re-invented some really old technique.

For example, when I was little, I got a bag of super swirly, shiny marbles, with a shooter and everything. I pulled out maroon craft felt and, with looping stitches, crafted my own drawstring bag. Then, in order to protect my marbles from my brother's (obviously inferior) marbles, I took some more grey drawstring-string and sewed it onto the bag... my name in cursive! My mom was pretty impressed. To me it just made sense: after all, I wanted my name on the bag, and printing wouldn't work because it would be too many little pieces of string. Then Mom told me that couching was pretty advanced, so I should show it to my needlepoint-master grandma.

Now, take this dress I'm currently working on (hereon dubbed the Black and White and Purple Dress, because I'm feeling uncreative, and it's sorta like the punchline to a bad 3rd grade joke). It's the first time I've worked with slippery fabric of any kind, fairly translucent fabric, and slightly stretchy fabric. And I don't like the ribbon straps that they suggest, so I'm using strips of satin. And the translucent fabric means the whole thing has to be lined as well as the seams bound so that they don't show through. AND I wanted the fabric pattern to go against the grain because I like it more vertical-ish than horizontal-ish. So. What kinds of precautions have I taken? Basically none. Probably a dumb thing (or several dumb things) to do, but it'll be a learning experience. And learning experiences are always good, right?

The one smart thing I did do was ask a coworker how to manage the seams so that they wouldn't show through the fabric and lining. I have packages and packages of twill tape that have (so far!) worked wonders on the arm hole seams. This middle bodice seam, however, is a little trying:

Oooh, that's fairly unattractive!

In the center there, where the two sides overlap, there's six to ten layers of fabric at a time, mostly because of the satin ribbon bits. However, it is holding, and is certainly better than trying to merely zigzag that mess!

The parts I'm currently more proud of include the straps. The pattern (New Look #6557, view A) requests lengths of ribbon for the halter top ties. I'm not much of a ribbon girl, so I just cut lengths of purple satin and sewed them up. Not the most even of stitching jobs, but I think it's within my tolerance levels (ask me again later, and it might be the bane of my existence). Anyway, here's the front of the bodice, basically done:

Strings without strings!

So now it's on to the back pieces, then the skirt. I'm not the fastest sewer in the world (and it's mostly as a treat for cleaning part of the house), so this may take a little while. Unless I procrastinate from cleaning the house...

Complaints: Pink

Pink.

Word association time: what does pink make you think of? Gumdrops. Frosting. Flowers. Little girls. Frills. Princess. (Hey, there's royal purple, but no royal pink.) Feminine. Valentine's Day. It's subjugation time! Little boys do not wear pink without people wondering about their later choices in life, and most men equally avoid the color in clothing. Men don't like pink; they like women wearing pink (or any other color). There's a pink aisle in toy stores filled with dollies and dress-up clothing, which, frankly, scares me.

What a silly word. It's not stately or dignified: it's fluffy and frivolous. There's no substance behind pink, no threat of damage nor promise of carry-through. The word even sounds like it possesses the strength of a cooked noodle and the vitality of laboratory fruit fly.

It's not even a real color. I mean, it's not part of the rainbow (there's no pink in ROY G BIV). Really, it's technically "light red," white added to crimson pigments. People will try to fool you by giving it an alias, like magenta or carnation or bubblegum or salmon or raspberry (who wants to eat raspberries that color?!). Don't be fooled. Some languages don't have a single word for pink, while Russian has a further distinction of "light blue" from regular blue.

Don't get me wrong, pink can do good, like gay pride and breast cancer awareness.

I hate pink.

P.S. This website of color names is fascinating!

Gardening: Flexing the Growing Muscle

I've tried growing tomatoes in giant pots for the past few years with mixed results (mostly dependent on whether my current apartment gets sunlight or not), and I've finally settled in a great place that has no sunlight. That means: no tomatoes. Well, very tiny tomatoes at the veeeery end of the growing season, small in number and size.

So, when a coworker decided to divide and give away strawberry plants, I figured, what the heck, give it a shot. So, into the tomato pot with the strawberry plants! The plants look pretty healthy, for their non-direct-sun-locale. And just look at what they've given me!

My, how big and tasty!

Oh, yes! strawberries for me! I may have mentioned before that I have a two-week period every summer of gorging myself on berries. (Recipe for best dessert evah: strawberries dipped in sour cream dipped in brown sugar. MMMM!) So, please feast your eyes again on my summer garden bounty!

Wait, is that a dime?

Okay... they're teeny! And, there's only four of them for the entire year. But they are tasty and sweet, for about 2 seconds. Sigh. Maybe the plants wil be more established next year?

Sewing: The rehearsal dress

Last summer, I got married. For the rehearsal dinner, I tried to find a nice red sundress, or a dress with red in it, partly because I like red and look good in red, but mostly because my fiance was Chinese, and it would be good to have a good-luck-red dress. There were no red dresses to be found, because last summer was the Year of Salmon Pinkness. I have a strong dislike (hate is such a powerful word) for pink, so this would not do. The obvious solution: despite not having a successful dress in the past, make my own dress! Of course!

The first challenge, find a fabric. Like I said, last year was the Year of Salmon, and there were no red fabrics to be found (other than silk, obnoxiously bright brocades, or sparkly prom-dress sateens). I found this nice red-and-white-flower-on-black print. Okay, yes, it's cotton quilting stuff, and I know you're not supposed to use it for clothing, but it was the first sorta-red thing I found and didn't hate.

This could work. I hoped it was red enough. There was certainly more red in it than any other pattern I'd seen. Maybe I could add a trim? No, it'd never match. I'll just do that fabric, and hope it's red enough. And not too black.

After taking far too long to make the fool thing (New Look #6885, view A), it turned out pretty cute!

Hooray!

Just before the rehearsal dinner, this was approximately my stream of thought: Is it red enough?! too black? my future mother-in-law will think I'm bringing death to the family with the white flowers and/or the black! My own mom will think I'm depressing! Am I channelling my inner-high-school-girl? It's too short! It's too tight, but not fitted enough! The stitches are far too wimpy and will break while I'm sucking in my tummy riiiiiip! and I'll be embarrassed and have to cancel the wedding and never see my lovely fiance again and and and...

So I wore a store-bought dress.

I did wear this little thing a few weeks later, and was actually complimented on it. Score!

Complaint: Shopping

Have I mentioned that I hate shopping? It's one of the most frustrating and body-image-problem-creating ventures ever invented. You drive to an over-priced department store (because the cheap-o places have crappy clothes that fall apart after the first washing), and wander through strangely shaped aisles of racks upon racks of gaudy-colored shirts that somebody thought were a good idea. There's a cute little sundress, pretty much just like the one you wanted, but no! your size isn't there. Well, try on the neighbor, which is the wrong color but the right size, and wait in line for a teeny fitting room that smells of feet, and of course it fits you on top, but most definitely not on the bottom, so you put it back, because it's what your mom taught you to do because the salesclerks will chatter and roll their eyes at you anyway. So much for looking up-to-date or trendy or... new. You wander over to the clothes that you always wear: nice, safe t-shirts and maybe a nice shirt for work. They mostly fit, and it's fine because the people who will see you in them the most is your stay-at-home-cat, and he doesn't care as long as you scratch him behind the ears for 5.6 minutes before he swats at your hand.

Why anyone actually goes shopping to relax or as a reward is beyond me.

Can someone please explain to me the benefits of such actions?

Kitchen Gods

I love food. While my eating habits should be supplemented with a little more exercise, there's very little better than cooking and baking and sharing a good meal with friends.

I'm not a religious person, but I really do appreciate a good explanation into how things work. For this reason, I have a list of Kitchen Gods, each useful in their own way, and I know they'll help me fix whatever mess I've gotten my food into. I also have a list of Lesser Kitchen Deities, to whom I look for guidance and recipes. I get recipes from all over (lots of cookbooks, and periodic web searches), but there are a few I go to consistently.

Here are my Kitchen Gods:

• Alton Brown. C'mon. He's funny. He's informed. He makes me forget how much I hated living in Atlanta. He has food anthropologists and food historians on his show. And sock puppets. And he's on tv. What more could you ask for?
  
• Harold McGee. The guy who wrote THE book on how food works. It's not a cook book, it's literally how food works. Not a quick read, but definitely an informative one, backed up with peer-reviewed scientific papers on the history of dairy products, possible health benefits, and protein denaturing.
  
• Joe Schwarcz. While not strictly a Kitchen God, he has some great but why? books out there. As one of the head honchos at McGill University's Office of Science and Society, he gives talks and has a call-in radio show that tries to explain current scientific knowledge to anyone who asks about anything. I met him once and was almost fan-girl speechless. Sad. But Dr. Joe is awesome.
  

And the Lesser Kitchen Deities:

• Seriously Good. KD Weeks is a Tennessee-turned-Oregon-turned-Tennessee chef and all-around experimenter with foods and stuff. He's got interesting recipes with everyday materials, especially when the farmers' markets are in full-swing.
  
• Chocolate and Zucchini. Clotilde is a French woman who loves to cook and bake. She messes with recipes and gets delicious results, especially her desserts. Besides her eloquently-worded stories to the recipes, the pictures are scrumptious.
  
• Manjula's Kitchen. I found her while looking online for Indian recipes. I can't get enough of her delicious vegetarian tasties! And watching Manjula make bread doughs on her YouTube stream is like magic.
  
• Herbivoracious. He's vegetarian and into haute cuisine, like super-fancy amuse bouche and molecular gastronomy. I've never made any of his recipes, but the mixes of flavors is intriguing.
  
• Post Punk Kitchen. Found while trying to to figure out how to eliminate eggs from various recipes (and yes, they tell you how). They also have some suggestions for other dietary limitations.
  
• Epicurious. A great search engine for looking up recipes. Following the user reviews is pretty reliable, although there aren't many people who are adventurous eaters.
  

Who are your Kitchen Gods?

Baking: Wedding cake results!

Question: When you take the cakes and raspberry-ganache from the last post and assemble them, then keep in mind the patterns from the friend's wedding invitations (see above picture), what do you get?

Answer:

Um, yes

And here's a shot at the wedding, with the professional baker's cupcakes, and the bride's hand-painted topper:

Baking: Wedding cake

(Note: today's exercise appears to be using as many hyphens as possible.)

My best friend is getting married tomorrow. About a year ago, she (after serving as an amazing maid-of-honor for me, as well as support network and champion-logistics-navigator and compromise-queen) asked if I'd be willing to make her wedding cake. Not a whole monster huge, multiple-layer behemoth. Just a simple flourless chocolate cake for the two of them while the rest of the wedding guests ate cupcakes. Flattery gets you oh-so-far, so I agreed.

She wanted the cake to be about 6" wide (to look like a top tier of a wedding cake), to be flourless (less gluten and dairy), and taste good (chosen over looking wedding-cakey). No problem!

Finding a recipe (and not just "a recipe" but "THE recipe") is actually harder than you'd want to think. Instead of making a range of desserts for dinner guests over the past year, they were all subjected to chocolate cakes and drilled for opinions on consistency, texture, and chocolate-ness. I explored different recipes, baking times, and percentages of cocoa, from 50% to 78% and mixtures thereof. By the way, 78% cocoa did not work well: there wasn't enough fat to incorporate all of the butter and left an oily blob on top of the cake, along with the fact that a 1/2" slice was not finish-able after a nice dinner.

The recipe I'm using is from Baking Illustrated, from the Cook's Illustrated people, and lovingly nicknamed "The Anal Cookbook" by another friend because of the extremely-particular directions and ingredients and explanations for such details. Despite its decidedly non-food-ish moniker, every recipe I've tried really works and tastes great (although I admit to enhancing their peanut butter cookies... not enough peanuts).

Sadly, one of my the triumphs in my head with the Anal Cookbook's flourless chocolate cake recipe was determining that one 9" cake was enough batter (go-go-geometry skills!) for two 6" cakes. Totally works. Makes the conversions much easier, even non-existent.

So why is TWO layers of 6" flourless chocolate cake important? Because it was determined (English teachers cringing at the passive voice?) that it would be nice if the cake looked, ya know, wedding-cake-ish. Tall. And the 6" wide still. And maybe it could be decorated...

Enter a lucky break: BakeWise, a present sent from a fellow foodie-couple. I'm currently in love with this book. Unlike the Anal Cookbook, which has determined the exact single recipe that everyone should love, BakeWise lists several similar recipes and explains not only the differences between them, but which ingredients make it so. Like the ganache recipe I'm using. This book lists five FIVE! ganache recipes, and tells you how to change between the silky-smooth and the satin-smooth.

This, my friends, is what you get from two pounds of chocolate, a whole lot of eggs and butter, and a full-on baking afternoon.

So now to drive down to the wedding locale, frost the cake (is it still called "frosting" the cake if it's ganache?), and decorate it. Oh no, you can't see a picture yet, because the almost-bride might be watching! And, I haven't done it yet. It will come (and hell yes, I'm getting pictures!)

Things that get me going

Cleverness and tradition. For the most part, these terms are probably considered unrelated and/or exclusive.

A friend posted an article containing furoshiki links to her Facebook page (which I will re-post here).

So, waaay back when, just what did they use instead of kerbillions of plastic bags? Why, cloth! Such a novel concept! And sooo eco-friendly! And when you've unwrapped your present, you can stuff your new handkerchief in your pocket and use it to wipe your nose.

I'm not sure why this simple square of fabric has its own name (furoshiki), but it probably means it won't be your next snot-wiping hankie. They also seem to be pretty large, thereby making a useful bag once tied. There's a tutorial for sewing the edges of furoshiki (I might keep this in mind for sewing a set of napkins). The Japanese environmental ministry has a pdf of how to fold furoshiki for various-shaped contents. And there's YouTube videos demonstrating tying the bags (this one shows three ways).

Am I the only one who thinks that a length of black satin could turn into an evening bag?

Baking: summer

I love farmer's markets and u-pick farms. I live for summer foods, fresh from the field, rather than "fresh" from the grocery store. In winter, I dream of the fresh fruits and vegetables, especially the berries. Every summer, there's a two-week period, where the bulk of my diet consists of strawberries (possibly diluted with some ice cream at night).

Why, hello, my pretties! What to do with a whole flat of raspberries?!

What's that? You want to be made into a pie? Well, if you insist!

The Rainier, Bing, and Tieton cherries were jealous of the raspberry pie. I try to please.

Sewing: the early works

I'm not a total noob: as much as I wanted to, I wasn't about to start the whole sewing thing with a massive Victorian costume gown. Pillows. Yes, pillows were more my speed. But, not just two pieces of cloth and a zipper (that'd be boring and too easy!) Olive-green brocade pieces arranged in a houndstooth pattern:

Um. Yes.

Did I know what I was doing? No. I'd vaguely remembered something about fraying and zig zags and edges, so I did that. I think. They'll probably fall apart in a couple of years.

Skirts are a good place to start for clothing:



Yup. They work. The red one is just... well, nifty cotton print. The tan one is actually very fine corduroy and I added ivy leaves. Not having a serger, I made the skinniest zigzag on my machine and took a very long time. And I figured out that the advisory of "sits two inches below natural waist" is a total lie, more like 4 or 5 and in danger of sliding off altogether. So the corduroy actually was taken in about two inches before its debut. The striped one was made in a smaller size.

And then because skirts were going pretty well... a dress! Okay, so this cool green fabric with lots of circles... yeah, I totally didn't think of what it would look like from a distance.



When I saw a picture of me at my friend's wedding (which is why I'd made the stupid dress in the first place), all I could think was "bullseyes! lots and lots of bullseyes!" Awesome. Now, this is not good. I know. It's just not very attractive. It serves as a reference, reminder, and warning to myself. But hey, I managed to line the bodice and get it all attached. Progress!

Probably my most successful venture came by accident. If you don't know (and are therefore not yet addicted by) instructables.com, you will be! Oh yes. It's pretty much crack for my ferret-brain. Aaaanywho, I found the instructable for onestringbags, and have made lots. If you're already bringing canvas bags for groceries, stuff a coupla these guys in for your produce. Get cheapo-discount tulle (there's always some awful color in the discount bin) and a string, and use up those last bits of weird-colored thread.

Rainier cherries, how I love thee

This post is getting pretty long, so I'll hold off on the successful dress (yes, there's 1!) until next time...

Sewing: In a galaxy far, far away...

Seventh grade's Home Ec (er, Personal and Family Life Sciences, now called Family and Consumer Sciences) requirement did not go very far with me. The teacher had to deal with boys trying to juggle eggs in class, and they hadn't yet learned to juggle. Suffice to say, she hated our class and we weren't terribly fond of her either. The week she introduced sewing, I had a particularly nasty strain of something-or-other, so my mom taught me sewing on her machine, through my flu-induced-haze. Apparently, my canvas tote bag and stuffed chocolate chip cookie pillow were done incorrectly.

Skip ahead a few years. And a few more.

To call me a fashion plate would be laughable and would reflect poorly on the state of your optic nerves. I hate shopping. Mostly because I don't get fashion or couture, and it's probably a jealousy thing on my part (shhh! don't tell anyone!) By the way, pink is one of the worst inventions known to mankind. I know what fits me, but I never know what actually looks good or modern or non-old-fogie-esque. I'd like to be fashionable, but I'm not.

One day, I realized that the curtains I'd just hand-sewed to keep prying eyes out of my first-floor apartment would have been sooo much easier to do if I had a sewing machine. So, I got one.

And then I had nothing to make with it.

Thus began the hacks... dun dun duuuuuuun!

About me

My college background involved running between Science Hall (logic, logic, calculus, chemicals, logic, math, instruments, logic) and Art Hall (throw paint, no rules, solvents for everyone, acids in open containers, inks, stains, metal filings). Sanity lay somewhere between the two, or at least finding a balance between the hours spent in each building. Well, and freaking out the art majors, who were easy to convince that they were going to die from fumes. Ah, Schadenfreude...

I'm now a science-person by trade. On occasion (read: bad days), I need to activate the other half of my brain. This blog will be the art/craft outlet. Past dominions include calligraphy, printmaking, small metal work, collage, and, most recently, sewing.