Kitchen (Mis-)Adventures Part 1

Once again,  I have many friends who are pregnant, and one of them is suffering from severe morning sickness.  Last year, Steph and I discovered "Preggie Pops" could help her get through the nausea in the am, but they are extremely expensive.  So I set to work researching to find a recipe to make ginger flavored candy to alleviate morning sickness.  Alas, I could not find one, nor could I find a flavoring oil that was ginger flavored.  But  I persevered, and eventually modified a recipe for old-fashioned hard candy.  Which I bring to you today.

When you have completed the following recipe, you will have a batch of hard candy and a batch of candied ginger, as well as a 1/2 cup of ginger sugar, which can be used in other recipes.  I like projects like this. Three for the price of one.  Unless you experience a day like mine today, in which case you get 3 for the price of 3, including two batches that get tossed.  But I digress.....

You will need:
1 lb. fresh ginger (it should snap apart between "thumbs" and not be wrinkly or show any signs of mold)
Approximately 1.5 lb sugar
2/3 cup corn syrup
1 fl.oz flavoring oil (I use LorAnn, comes in a 1 dram bottle and you use the whole bottle)
food coloring, your choice; a few drops

Peel and slice your ginger. If it looks all cactus-y and you fear you will never get all the skin off, just break the "thumbs" off to make smaller, easier to peel and slice pieces.  As for slicing, I use my Santoku knife. It is very sharp and allows me to make very thin slices.  If you have a mandolin slicer or a slicing blade on your food processor that makes THIN slices, you can use that, but otherwise, use the knife. You will get better results.  Do not worry about the fibers.  If you are slicing thinly enough, most of the fibers will be either pulled out or chopped.  I usually end up tossing about .5 in of thick ginger root because it is heavily laden with fibers and very woody.

Put your sliced ginger root into a heavy large saucepan with 5 cups water, on medium heat. Cover and let cook 35 minutes, or until the ginger is tender.  When you look at the ginger after this point, you will probably see many fibers loose in the water...these will drain out in the next step. Drain the ginger in a colander or sieve, making sure to reserve 1.25 cups of the ginger water.  Put 1/4 cup of the reserved water back in the saucepan, setting aside the remaining cup. You will use this for the candy.

Measure the boiled and drained ginger on your kitchen scale.  Measure out an equal amount of sugar (probably approximately a pound) and add the sugar and the ginger to the water.  Bring the sugar-ginger mixture to a boil on medium-high heat. This MUST be a rolling boil, where the sugar continues to boil even as you stir the mixture.  Stir frequently, i.e. continuously. Do not let the sugar stand still in the pan or it will burn (turn dark golden brown) and you will be starting all over again.  Once you reach a boil on medium high, lower the temp to medium and continue to stir.  Soon, the syrupy mixture will begin to look dry as the sugars recrystallize.  Remove from the heat and immediately spread the ginger onto wire racks to cool.  Once cool, you will have a pile of ginger sugar underneath your wire racks.

If your sugar is coarse, just toss in the fp and give it a whirl.  Store in airtight containers.  The candied ginger and the ginger sugar can be used in gingersnap and gingerbread cookie recipes. YUM!

Happy New Year/ Happy Groundhog Day!

Welcome to 2011! Okay, I know, I'm a month behind. I was actually sitting around thinking about closing down the blog because it was just becoming one more thing to do at the end of the day. But then I got a really sweet comment from a blog I follow and we exchanged emails for a few days. She helped me to see that 1)although I LOVE hearing from you all, the reason I write isn't for you, it's for me; 2) the blog DOES help me to focus a bit and reduce the crafty-craziness that I promised Jon I would work on for the new year. 

I have finished another box of felt food for my bestie in another city, participated in another I-spy swap, and made another stack of burpie cloths and taggies for yet another friend who is having a baby. I have no pictures for you however, because my camera was stolen. From my house, while we were home and being neighborly in the snow. I have made a police report and filed the loss with the insurance company, but I cannot afford to get a new camera until the insurance check comes in. And while Jon does have a camera, I HATE it. It is a true POS. It literally takes 45 seconds to recharge between shots, and it's a 2005 digital camera! I have taken pictures with it when desperately needed for family events, but it drives me nuts every time. 

My plans for the next post: I made cupcakes for the baby shower I went to Sunday afternoon, and a friend took pictures of the adorableness, but I need to get copies of them, which I should be able to do by the end of the week.  And if I can't get them by then, I will also be making cupcakes for the Super Bowl party. And even though it will just about kill me, I will use the crap camera.

Remember to craft for yourself, not for others. And get up and craft!!

Machine Quilting Issues

No pictures today, just some talkin'.  I'm trying to remember to stop by every few days to chat, but more often than not, realize that I thought about it, and realized I had something else to do.  Making that pledge to be more open about my process right before the holiday....what was I thinking?!  Anyway, yesterday I sat down with Stephanie's baby quilt to begin quilting it for real, and boy! Do I need some practice! My swirlys are lopsided and uneven, and my bamboo-ish filler design for the sashing is....leaving something to be desired.  I'm sad to say that I think this quilt will go down as a FMQ practice quilt that I actually gave as a gift to a close friend!! Oh, the horrors! 

Currently, I am on a break after sewing for 15 minutes, trying to prevent sore muscles and frustration.  Trying to figure out how to use my fingertips to move the quilt without having to pinch it up to move it.  I wish I could steal  snag borrow mom's sewing table; it has a nice hole to drop your machine into, leaving your quilt at the level of the needle, like a perfect extension table.  I asked for a nice extension table for Christmas, not the $200+ full-sized sewing table, but the little attachments you can add when quilting.  However, even if I do receive it (HINT HINT, I WANT THAT TABLE!! ;)  it will not come before I have done most of the work for this quilt.  Sadly, DH and I jury-rigged an extension table from a cardboard box and tape, but it's not a very smooth surface, so the quilt sandwich doesn't to move as nicely as it should.

Anyway, my break-time is over, and I must return to the quilt for at least one more round before we call this evening a total KO.  Eventually, I WILL defeat the process of FMQ, but it probably won't be tonight.

Adventures in Decorating

Today, I decorated the cutest cupcakes in the world. Bought the book, "Hello, Cupcake" and it has the best ideas ever.  Now I desperately need the companion book, "What's New, Cupcake"!!! Check out the adorable Snow Family and trees.....

Aren't they just precious???  I love that she uses every day candies and such to decorate her creations.  Starburst, however are NOT as easy as she makes it out to roll out, but once I got the hang of nuking them for 5 seconds to soften 'em up a bit, it wasn't so bad.  I will say that in the future, I will be buying appropriate decorating tips and bags, because the zippie bags she suggests just didn't work out the way I expected them to. It's difficult to cut the accurate shaped tips to create the leaves.  I will NOT do that again. 

But I do like her recipe for making a firmer cake that doesn't fall apart, I LOVE it!  She adds 1 cup of buttermilk in place of whatever amount of water the box calls for.  Then you use the required amount of oil, and use 4 eggs.  The cake has a much firmer, yet still light texture that was a breeze to decorate.  Which would have been marvelous to have when I made Stephanie's baby shower cake, and I had to glue it together with icing all over to make it the correct shape.  It all worked out in the end, the finished cake was beautiful and she loved it, but I had to keep shoving the cake into the freezer to get it to firm up a bit before trying again!

Exhibit A: Messy cake

Exhibit B: Beautiful cake

Messy exhibit will NEVER happen again, now!!  I can't wait to try new ideas with cakes and cupcakes!

Machine Quilting: A First

Today, I embark upon a new journey.  I have a quilt that is pieced, sandwiched and pin basted. It has been that way for 3 weeks. It has gone from teasing me with the promise of newness, taunting me that I'm scared, begging for me to come put a stitch in it, to yelling and cursing "Da** you, woman!! Come work on me, now!" (And considering that it's a baby quilt, it's going to need it's mouth washed out now to teach it to not say words like that!)

I have checked out books from the library on machine quilting.  I have bought a free motion foot for my machine.  I have surfed the web searching for hints and ideas on patterns and ease.  I have made some small samples.  Yet I have still to put one stitch in the actual quilt.  I'm scared to.

I'm scared that I'll mess it up somehow.  To be perfectly honest, what really scares me is the straight foundation stitching.  I still can't get my straight stitches even, much less perfectly straight.  Now, I know, perfection doesn't exist in home-made items, especially when made for small children.  But, this quilt is for a close friend's first baby.  She'll be using this everyday, and at some point, she'll start looking at it in detail.  What if she notices the wobbly lines?  What if the stitches are so uneven that she see them from a distance and seriously packs it up, only pulling it out when I come over?  Or, even worse, what if I get going, look at the stitches myself, and think they're horrible?  I can always pull them out and try again, I mean, that's why some wonderful person years ago created the seam ripper, right?  But I am afraid of disappointing myself. 

I have been so excited about this project for months, and once I started piecing the quilt, it just flew together.  Right now, it's perfect.  I'm afraid that my inexperienced machine quilting will take it from perfection to the rag heap.  And yet, I must do it.  She's already seen the quilt, she knows I'm making it, and she loves it already. Which means I have to finish it.  Which basically means I need to stop whining, log off the computer, and move to the sewing machine.  Here, I feel safe, though.  Here, I know what I'm doing. When I get to the machine, I don't.  And that scares me. 

Felt Food Mania

Okay. So I promised to do more updating and here I am. It occurred to me that I posted a while back that I had finished my first box load of felt food and mailed it off, or at least I mentioned it in the Finished column.  Yet I never posted any pictures or links to the inspiration and patterns that helped me create them.  (Many of them you will see were found at Helping Little Hands' Felt Food Cook-Along) Prepare for a bunch of links!

This box is the size of one of those medium Priority Mail boxes. And just look at what all fit into it!!

 Felt cookies from this website. No patterns were used, it's really simple. Just two cream colored felt pieces layered together with a fun frosting, sprinkled. The chocolate chip cookies were inspired by these blueberry muffins.  I loved her idea that the blueberries are not always on top, and since chocolate chips usually look the same in the cookies, I duplicated it.  After sewing the random curly-q's to the wrong sides, I sewed the right sides together, leaving a space to flip them through.  Now, I also think that they look better a bit thicker, so I used scrap batting from quilting projects to stuff them before hand sewing the cookies closed.  K says her little girl is in love with the cookies right now. 

I love these tomatoes.  I'll show you the website and pattern I found them on, but when you see it, you'll kick yourself for not seeing how simple they are! It's nothing more than a large circle gathered and stuffed.  Cut out a leafy top, sew it on and you're done! And the tomato slices were just as easy, you'll see!

I have been wracking my brain and wearing out my search engine, but I cannot for the life of me think of where I saw an idea for the hamburger and buns.  At the bare minimum, I probably saw one in a Flickr pool of felt food and was inspired to create my own pattern based out of the creation of other foods, like the sliced bread (below).  The only thing that makes the burgers cuter than a bug to me is the grill marks: black embroidery thread stitched in straight lines. I don't know about you, but my hubby never manages to get the perfect cross-hatch on a burger.

These are some of my favorite pieces, and until K's little girl got the cookies, she too was in love with the first slice of bread I made for her.  Rather than create 3 different links, I'm just going to make one, back to the Felt Food Cook-Along, because that's where all but the lunch meat came from.  The lunch meat is little more than a piece of pink felt (or 2 if you want more thickness or stability), cut with pinking shears and machine stitched around the edge for a bit of detail.  The rest of the food in the picture is the Sliced Bread, the Chicken Pieces/Chicken Nuggets in the Felt Fajitas, and The Amazing Changing Felt Pizza Crust/Tortilla. 

These bananas and corn-cobs were super fun to create! I think I need a set just to keep here at the house for me to play with!  When I make them again, I want to find a way to put magnets inside the individual pieces. When K's daughter played with them, she had difficulty getting the pieces back together.  Securing the magnets so that they won't be a swallowing/choking hazard isn't actually the issue, I have that figured out.  It's finding cheap magnets that aren't cost-prohibitive!

The carrots were super cute when finished, and I kinda went overboard cutting out orange felt, and I think I made 20-ish carrots!  The strawberries, while cute, aggravated me.  I made most of them too small, which makes them choking hazards, so I had to send her only a few, with the promise to make more, larger ones, soon.  And these oranges....I'm in love. (Here's the link for the peel)  They were actually the first food pieces I made, and they clinched it....I am a FELT FOOD MANIAC!!

The Process Pledge

I, Liz, pledge to talk more about my processes, even when I can’t quite put them in the in words or be sure I’m being totally clear.   I’m going to put my thinking and my gut feelings out there.

As I'm sure you've noticed, my last post was more than a month ago. I've been working, although truthfully not as much this month, but I started this blog to help me complete UFOs. If I'm not keeping the blog updated, it may mean the UFO pile is only growing, the WIP pile is shrinking and the completed projects are not making any new friends. 

So I hereby pledge to post at least every other day.  Even if only to say hi, and that I'm shirking on projects.  For the actual completion of projects? Well, DH will be on night shift ALL month, which means any night he's not at home is a night I can freely spend at the sewing machine without feeling like I'm ignoring him. So here's to a new start.  See ya soon!