Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter

I'm an emotional person. Ask anyone.

I laugh out loud. And I mean *LOUD*.

I cry a lot. You know that Kodak commercial with the kid that shows his grandma her old baseball picture? I'm the one you can hear crying in the distance.

I get chills whenever I witness a fabulous performance of singing or dancing. CHILLS. Followed by immense jealousy that I can't sing and dance like them.

Last week was the Fall Finale of Glee (did I miss the memo on mid-season finales?) this made me have chills, and then I cried. (I just watched this clip 4 times and then the first 30 seconds 8 more times.) [update: the original clip was removed from youtube so now it's just the audio...)


Speaking of the sun being a ball of butter, I have two things I would like to share.

1. Buttery, delicious pecan pie.
2. Me balling -- well, bawling, but those who can't spell can see my segue.

First, the pecan pie. This was the first time I tried a no-roll-pie-crust. I set out to make small pecan tarts instead of one big pie. And then I realized that I had too much filling so I spent another 10 minutes (that's all it takes!) and made another crust for an entire pie. The crust turned out fabulous. I didn't blind bake anything: contrary to my quiche post. Why? I don't know. The likely answer is laziness.

Thanks to my housemate's trusty (although ancient) camera, I was able to capture one decent picture. For the filling, I used Martha Stewart's recipe. Mmmm. The sun must be mighty tasty.

From Food

Secondly: why was I bawling, you ask? Well, they were tears of happiness. I swear. Remember how I broke my camera and you all ran out to buy me a new one for Christmas? Well you can all return them (and get me gift certificates to the workroom) because Dustin gave me my Christmas present early! He spent hours researching for an inexpensive camera that performed well in low light and then went out today to bargain for a discount. He knew I would never have agreed to an expensive camera (and if Angela's ancient camera was up for grabs, I was thinking of buying it off her) so the Chinese bargaining skills came out and (although he wasn't able to pay cash for an extra no-tax savings) his mission was accomplished.

The battery is charging as we speak. No rain on my parade today!!!

Read more...

La Vie en Rosé

I used to *love* creamy pasta sauces. Fettuccine Alfredo. Mmmmmm.

And then I became conscious of my "personal spare tire" also referred to as the "muffin top." If only I had blown a tire, and not broken my leg. I would have had a spare.

Lately, at my favourite Italian restaurant: Marcello's, I will compromise and get a rosé sauce. I've never made a rosé sauce at home before, but last week (yes, this post is about last week since I have no new pictures) I whipped up a delicious rosé sauce.

From Food

I don't actually know how the experts make a rosé sauce, but this one turned out pretty tasty and was soooo easy. Too easy... I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. But until I look up a recipe and make it the right way, this is the way I will do it.

Step 1: Get a pot of water boiling. (Whenever making pasta, you should always get a big pot of water boiling first.)

Step 2: Go treat yourself to a beautiful Le Creuset braiser. Okay, that part is optional: but for all those getting married and creating a wedding registry, this is highly recommended. I use it for pasta sauces, stir fries, quick stews, steaks... and I refer to it as the skillet... but I guess the skillet is shallower.

Real Step 2: Mince up garlic and chop up whatever else you want to put in your sauce: mushrooms, zucchini, peppers etc...

Step 3: Olive oil in the shallow pan or whatever you're using to make your sauce. Add everything you chopped. Hold the fresh basil until later if using. Don't forget to season with salt and pepper.

Step 4: Before your garlic burns, add a big scoop of tomato paste (perhaps the organic local one that you got in your biweekly CSA box?) Add chicken or vegetable stock. Adjust either more stock or more paste until you get enough sauce and a nice consistency and nice flavouring.

From Food

Step 5: Your water is probably boiling now. Add (lots of) salt, and your pasta and cook according to package.

Step 6: Add the basil to the sauce. Pour in a small quantity of half and half cream. Or whatever cream you happen to have: light (4%), table (18%), full fat goodness (40%). Add small quantities of cream until you're happy with the creaminess. I think I added 3 tablespoons. I used half and half. Taste and season if required.

Tada! Pour sauce over pasta. Finish with some freshly cracked black pepper and parmigiano reggiano. Yes, I just wrote that with a Giada de Laurentiis accent. Mmmm... "creamy, tangy, the pasta is perfectly al dente..."

From Food

Read more...

Jumping Through Hoops

Kelly? Kelly who?

What a disaster! It's been over two weeks without a blog post. I have not done well.

Remember my deadline to finish the fabric hoops for the wall behind my bed? I met it. I swear. But I didn't like the colour of my bedroom walls. Dustin and I have been thinking of changing the wall colour since we moved in. I realize that ivory is boring, but I was beginning to feel like I lived in the middle of a flower in pollen-ville.

From sewing

I'm not making excuses for my lack of blog posts. Just giving reasons: I painted my room, I needed a weekend of daylight to take pictures (anyone want to donate a better camera?), and then I broke my camera (anyone want to donate any camera at all?)

Honest: my camera is broken. Not only is my camera broken, I found out today that the camera on my cell phone also does not work. So I couldn't even take a picture of my broken camera.

Before the death of my camera, I managed to take a few pictures. I was going to take better ones, but they are now all I have. I think I have a couple posts worth of pictures before I'll be MIA for a while: so enjoy!

My last two fabric hoops were a shout-out to my very first birdie sling, and an artistic attempt at representing my dress shirt from a class at the the workroom.

For my first birdie sling (photo courtesy of the workroom) I selected Amy butler's grey happy dots, and a beautiful watercolour fabric. The lining was an olive green upholstery fabric.

From sewing

The dress shirt class at the workroom was bitter sweet. When I have a new camera, I will hopefully post more about it. The resulting dress shirt was great: I was very proud of the craftswomanship. But it didn't fit. I know, the class was supposed to be a custom fit dress shirt. I don't know what to tell you. Fortunately, it fits my mother. So she gets two Christmas presents this year.

I had chosen a simple striped shirting fabric. Isn't the mini pocket cute?

From sewing

From sewing

The fabric hoops are great. A little collection of sewing stories. When I get my hands on a camera, I'll post a picture of the finished product.

Now I'm off to think of blog posts about the few pictures that I took before my camera's plunge to its death (literally: I dropped it.)

Read more...

Super greeky shower

Photo courtesy of Cris

I'm going to be an aunt! A real one, not the kind where your friends start to have kids and they have to call you "auntie." My sister, Kandice, is having a baby boy within the next week.

Last month, we (two of my sister's friends and I) threw her a big baby shower -- and I mean big. I've never seen a baby shower of this size, but apparently it's a common occurrence amongst her friends in Ottawa.

She wanted a toga-themed tea party. We thought: togas? Let's do Greek food!

Among other great foods, some of my favourite concoctions were mini pork souvlaki skewers, one-bite Greek salad and (my personal favourite) Greek cupcakes.

The mini pork skewers were marinated in some Greek spices (mine comes from Victorian Epicure) and then grilled on my parents luxury grill. A great way to present skewers (of any kind) is to cut a big head of cabbage in half, cover in tin foil, and then stab the skewers in whatever arrangement you so desire.

From Food

One-bite Greek salad is a slice of cucumber topped with a slice of cherry tomato, topped with a cube of feta cheese. Genius! I have my moments.

From Food

And now the cupcakes. What's that, Marigold? "There's no such thing as a Greek cupcake!" Yes, that is correct. But I wanted to bake cupcakes, and wanted to incorporate the Greek theme, so my genius husband (we make quite the pair) suggested icing them with Greek letters. Out came my memories of math class and I iced all the cupcakes with Greek letters that had once crossed my path in my four years of Engineering lectures. See them? Lambda, omega, phi, mu, gamma, rho, alpha, pi... As expected, I used one of Ina's recipes. Perfect Greek cupcakes!!! Happy greeky shower, Kandice!

From Food

Read more...

Quiche Lorraine

Does anyone know someone named Lorraine? I don't. So let's just call it quiche-Kelly.

From Food

Our CSA box came with a dozen fresh, organic chicken eggs. A week after we used them for our quiche-kelly we realized we could have made eggnog. Darn it. Don't tell quiche-kelly, it might hurt her feelings.

I made my usual pie crust from Ina. Look at all those butter bits!

From Food

Then I decided to blind bake it. I just learned that term. I'm not sure why it's called blind baking, but it's just a confusing way of saying to prebake the crust. My friend Jenn asked me if she should prebake her crust. I said no. I had only made quiche once before and I made mini quiches. I did not prebake and they were perfectly crispy. I should have done more research before giving my friend advice. I decided to blind bake this crust. Not sure if it made a difference. I guess I'll have to try again sometime without blind baking. But if I get another dozen eggs in our CSA box, I'm making eggnog. So who knows if I'll ever find out.

Boy that was a ramble. I digress. (Wait, one more thing: did you know that putting the fork holes in the pie crust is called "docking"? Okay. *Now* I digress.)

I did not follow any recipe. I do that sometimes.

I scrambled up 4 eggs. Added some salt and pepper. Started pouring in heavy cream. Stopped when my love handles jiggled at me. I think I put about half the 250mL carton in. Chopped up some cilantro. (Cilantro?! Why cilantro? That's what came in the CSA box.) Added some thai seasoning since there was cilantro in it. (My premixed Thai seasoning comes from Victorian Epicure.) Then I felt like I could squeeze in another egg, so I added a 5th. And then maybe a dash more cream.

I cooked up some sliced bacon, added some red peppers for colour (since it came in the CSA box) and then sprinkled it in the prebaked pie crust. Sprinkled some grated Toscana cheese (also from the CSA box) and then poured the egg mixture in. Said to myself "darn it. i could have squeezed in another egg. oh well" and then baked it for ... i dunno... 35 mins in a 375 degree oven?

Who needs a recipe? [cue Micheal Smith's cheesy music ".... you can do it, too..."]

From Food

Read more...

Flight of the Concord (Jam)

I went to pick up our second CSA box today. Not as exciting (no alien shaped things) but still full of delicious local foods. It made me realize how far behind I was in my blogging about the last CSA box. Without further adieu:

From Food

Concord grapes are my least favourite grapes. They are my friend Paula's favourite. That happens a lot. She likes the outside crust of bread, I like the inside. She likes the tips of the asparagus, I like the bottoms. She likes the melty outside icecream of the breyer's container, I like the cold, firm inside. She likes smushy concord grapes, I like grapes that are crunchy and not squidgy in the least.

So it was an absolute relief when Dustin suggested making a jam out of the grapes.

I googled and googled for a recipe, but I kept reading about this ridiculous "jelly cloth" that I needed to use to drain the liquid. I assume it was like a cheese cloth. Which I did not have. And didn't they always tell you that the nutrients were packed in the skin?

So I finally found this recipe from epicurious.com. No jelly cloth. But it calls for a food mill. Which I owned (thanks mom) but after I used it, I decided that it didn't really do anything.

I also didn't really skim the surface. Lazy, I know. But I needed every short cut I could get, because the first step was squishing every single grape between our fingers and separating the grape guts from the skins. Dustin helped. We bonded. And squished.

From Food

Here are my revised instructions:

1. Squish 2lbs of concord grapes with your fingers and separate the skins and the guts. (Yes, only 2lbs. Who has more than 2lbs of grapes?! Okay, if you do, then multiply the recipe.)

2. Food process the skins with 1/2 cup of sugar.

3. Add the guts and the skins to a heavy pot. Add another cup or cup and a half of sugar and the juice of a lemon. Or a half lemon. Or grapefruit. Whatever you have lying around. (I may have added some orange liqueur as well. Ina does in her strawberry jam recipe. I want to be like Ina.)

4. Boil it for a really long time. Maybe an hour? Stir it every so often. When it looks kinda thick, it's done! You can test it by dropping a blob onto a plate, letting it cool and seeing if it's thick enough for your liking.

Although concord grapes (juice, jam, or eau de toilette) always reminds me of church communion, the end product was still delicious. We made two small jars of jam with that basket of grapes. Those grapes were toast! Er, that toast is jammed... It all tastes grape to me!

From Food

Read more...

I am the very model of a modern major general...

I'm in love with a new collection of fabric that the workroom has recently ordered. In LOVE. It's called Rouenneries by French General (for Moda.)

Photo courtesy of the workroom

I want them all. A dress, a shirt, a skirt, a pillow, a duvet cover... the options are endless!

One thing I know for sure, I'm going use the jelly roll to make a lamp shade using this tutorial by rachel of p.s. i quilt.

"In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,I am the very model of a modern Major-General!"

Read more...