To a lot of peas, which we helped pick (June 15th)
To “the beans, oh the beans!” (which eventually turned into 16 quarts of frozen green beans over the course of the summer) (August 9th) – we picked so many pounds of green beans, we ended up having bean picking Olympic games to keep ourselves occupied.
To more vegetables than we knew what to do with (August 23rd)
To watermelons and raspberries (September 13th):
To a really big pumpkin (October 11th):
To a lot of lettuce and kale (November 1st):
And even to broccoli and lettuce in December (Dec. 1st)
It was an amazing year. And we’ll be eating the fruits of it all winter long. Here is where all the pictures are – we missed 6 weeks in the middle when we were on vacation and a little forgetful, but other than that, it’s a complete pictorial history of our CSA season. It’s really fun to see how the vegetables changed as the seasons did. We’re looking forward to next year!
***Jon and Leah, if you haven’t gotten your box yet, don’t read any further until you have!***
So this year, Nik and I decided to try to do a local, homemade Christmas, as much as we could. This mostly translated into me sewing a lot and Nik doing the dishes, etc. to make it possible for me to spend hours upstairs in my sewing room. (Yes, I know, I’m very blessed to have a sewing room!) Nik was also instrumental in some design work as well as being the master of the drill. More on that later.
I made three of these bags – here’s the two that went to Addie and Alex:
The blue one is lined with purple. Addie chose the pink and green one. Katie tells me that the girls are having fun carrying their stuff in them around the house, which makes me happy because that’s exactly how I pictured them using them! The other bag was for Nikki and I liked her fabric the best but of course I forgot to take a picture of it.
Then I made six coffee cup sleeves. I couldn’t find any good instructions on the internet for how to make these so Nik made me the template, putting his geometry/calculus skills to good use and we came up with these.
For Jon and Leah:
For Chris and Katie (Nik designed Chris’s cool geometric pattern – which sometimes reminds me of Texas, randomly):
And for Eric and Meggan:
(After I took Jon and Leah’s picture, I realized that to get the pattern on them I’d have to take the pictures before I sewed the edges together to turn it into a coffee cup sleeve.)
For Dad, Drew, Rachel, and Tina, I made corn sacks. I forgot to take a picture of Tina’s. I had fun finding flannel to fit each person and to look good together too!
For Alex (East Coast Alex) and Ezra, I made a really cute fishing game and then of course forgot to take pictures of them. They were fun and so easy to make! One caveat, if you want to make yourself a set – don’t use the wimpy magnets from JoAnns. They won’t work. You need the super strong ones from Home Depot. And because they’re super strong, they can’t be drilled through (Nik proved that). So then you’ll have to tie/glue the string to the magnet. But in the end, you’ll have very strong fishing success!
Finally, this is the project that prompted the homemade Christmas idea. And yes, my original plan was to make one of these for all of my nieces and nephews and then give them out at the same time. But considering that it took me 4 years to make three of them, and that in those four years, we gained three (almost 4!) more nieces and nephews, I decided I’d better just give these three. So for all the other kids, please don’t hold your breath. I’ll try!
Finally, we had the fun of delivering cookies (peppermint molasses snaps, of course!) and homemade carmel popcorn to our neighbors on Christmas Eve Eve.
We ended up spending about a half hour with a neighbor whose husband had died in July. She was, of course, terribly lonely and sad for him and we were so glad that we “happened” to decide to knock on her door that night. I’m glad Nik listened to the Lord’s prompting. If you think of it, please pray for C. She’s hurting.
And that was our homemade Christmas! There were a few other gifts but these are what I made. I’ve never sewed so much in my life! And now, I have tons of other sewing projects to get too!
(Or if you’re Zona, New Year’s Eve/Birthday/Anniversary Party Appetizer Recipes)
Here are a few of my favorite party appetizers, in case you’re looking for something to serve at your New Year’s Eve party, or take with you to whatever party you’re going to. I won’t be making any of them because I’ll be on a plane back from Orlando until 8:00 pm New Year’s Eve. But I hope someone is able to enjoy them!
1. Garbanzos Fritos
1 can of garbanzo beans (which I think would be about 1 1/2 – 2 C of cooked beans)
1 T flour
1/2 tsp Spanish smoked paprika (I just used whatever paprika that I had around)
1 tsp salt
1-2 T olive oil
3. Spicy Walnut Pesto Dip
cream cheese (I used about 1 1/2 boxes)
pesto (about 4-8 T? Start with the smaller amount and keep adding pesto until it tastes like there’s enough)
chopped walnuts (maybe 1/2 C?)
red pepper flakes (to taste)
kosher salt (to taste)
Combine until it tastes delicious! This is a recipe that I made up, based on an ingredient list from a very expensive dip from Whole Foods. So I don’t have any specific amounts. It is really good! Serve with crackers.
4. Garlic Feta Dip
cream cheese (1 block?)
feta, crumbled
raw garlic, maybe 2-3 cloves or more, through a garlic press
a little bit of milk to help with consistency
Mix until appropriately garlic-y and tangy. This is best served with water crackers. Again, I learned this recipe from Kristen and there really aren’t any amounts involved in her recipe. It’s oh so good, but watch out for your breath afterwards!
And now, go forth and make some stomachs happy!
We’re leaving this afternoon to drive to DC. We’ll stay with Andreas and Nikki overnight and then fly to Orlando from Dulles in the morning! I think this may be the first time in my life (adult life, that is) where I’ve gone on a vacation with no purpose (at least a flying vacation). No visiting family involved, no honeymoon, or anything. Just traveling purely for the sake of having fun!
Let me change that. I did go to England, Scotland, and Ireland for 7 weeks in 1999. I guess that counts, huh? 
Anyway, I haven’t gone on a trip like this in 9 1/2 years!
I’m going to try to get a couple posts done before I leave and then tell them to post each day while I’m gone. Then I’ll be like those cool bloggers whose blogs go on even when they’re taking vacation!
The evidence:
1. For Nikki’s baby shower, before Alex was born, Tina and I hosted a tea for her. For this, we baked scones, in Tina’s oven. And I burned them – badly. I felt horrible – I was watching carefully, didn’t bake them for too long, and they burned anyway.
2. For Thanksgiving, we splurged and bought a locally-raised heirloom turkey. It was a big spluge – they aren’t cheap, and turkeys are heavy. So I did tons of reading on how to cook these kinds of turkeys. Almost all recipes said to cook them only to an internal temperature of 160, some said even lower. The USDA’s regulations basically overcook the turkey but do kill all bacteria – better safe than sorry. Well, that’s for turkeys raised in feedlots where there’s lots of bacteria and bad stuff. Our turkey was raised in a field just a few miles from us. We weren’t scared. So on Thanksgiving morning, I went over to Tina’s, we prepared the turkey together, put it in the oven at 325, and then went home again. We went back to Tina’s about three hours later, expecting to find a turkey that had some time left but was maybe getting close. Instead, we found this:
We’d overcooked our beautiful, expensive turkey. We were a little devastated. It actually turned out to taste really good and wasn’t all that dry, although the breast was not the succulent juiciness that we’d been anticipating. And let me tell you, that skin was the best skin I’ve ever had – I could have just eaten turkey skin for dinner!
Tools of the Trade:
An oven thermometer
The impetus:
On Christmas morning, we were planning on baking my cinnamon rolls at Tina’s house. And I was determined not to burn them. So we brought our oven thermometer over with us to check Tina’s oven.
The verdict:
Her oven is 75 degrees too hot! So we roasted our turkey at 400 instead of 325! And we would have cooked the cinnamon rolls at 475 if we hadn’t checked.
The moral of the story:
Buy an oven thermometer. It’s a good investment for everyone!
Mom asked me to post of a picture of Alex, Nik’s nephew. I like to call him “East Coast Alex” to distinguish him from Chris and Katie’s daughter Alex, who was born only a few hours before this Alex. So here’s a picture of us from a few weeks ago. I still haven’t gotten used to my new glasses. I look at them and think, :”Who’s that crazy-looking girl?” Anyway, here you go Mom (and everyone else, you’re free to look too!)
I’ve finished my first project of the break! This turned to be a really easy project even though it of course took me longer than I expected it too.
First, let me show you what I’ve been wanting to replace for 18 months.
It shielded our modesty. That’s about all I can say for it.
But after a long search for fabric (including in the Philadelphia garment district) which finally found success on-line and a couple hours of work, now we have this lovely thing.
The fabric is from the Feathered Friends line by Wendy Slotboom. I bought it from Sew, Mama, Sew which has a wonderful blog, probably my current favorite craft blog because they provide links to so many other wonderful crafting blogs. And, they’re located in Oregon, which makes me happy. I can’t do everything locally, right?
I claimed that I would be posting a tutorial for how to make a curtain like this but of course, I didn’t take any pictures of the process. So here’s the short and sweet version of what I did. I actually couldn’t find instructions on the Internet for the exact kind of curtain that I wanted to make. So I sort of made it up, although you’ll see that really, it’s very simple.
1. Measure your window. Figure out how much of the window you want/need to cover. In our case, I wanted as much of the window as possible to be open, to let in light. So we made the curtain as short as we could. Basically, unless our neighbors hang out on their roof, we’re safe.
2. To those measurements, add one inch to the width (for 1/2 seams on either side) and 3 1/2 inches to the height – to allow for the hem at the top and a 1/2″ seam allowance at the bottom. This design does not have a hem at the bottom.
In my case, my finished curtain needed to be 23″ high and 27 1/8″ wide, so I cut my fabric to be 26 1/2″ by 28 1/8″.
This pattern makes a curtain that will hang totally flat in your window – there won’t be any extra fabric. If you want it to have curves in it, you’ll need to find a different pattern!
3. Cut out three pieces of fabric that are all the same size.
a. your curtain fabric – when cutting your curtain fabric, make sure that you have your pattern facing the right way. In my case – I knew that I wanted my birds to be right-side up!
b. your lining fabric – I just bought a white lining fabric from the lining section at JoAnns.
c. batting – I used Warm and White. It’s an all-cotton batting that feels wonderful and is also not fluffy at all. You don’t have to use batting but it gives some heft to the curtain and helps it hang straight. My old roommate Kristen taught me this trick! I guess it will be a better insulator this way as well although that wasn’t my goal!
4. After you’ve cut out your three pieces, put them together this way: batting (on the bottom), curtain fabric right side up (so that you can see the pattern), lining fabric (on the top). Pin on all four sides.
5. Sew down one side. Then sew across the bottom. Use 1/2″ seam allowances. Then, you may want to stop, smooth out your layers, and repin. In my case, I found that my batting had shifted a little bit so I had to smooth it out again, trim off a bit, and repin it. Then sew the third side.
6. Turn the curtain inside out so that the curtain fabric is now facing out. Your fabric order should now be curtain fabric, batting, lining fabric. Push out the corners at the bottom, to make them as close to square as you can. Then iron all sides of the curtain to get it smooth and lying flat.
7. Now, all that’s left is to sew the pocket that the curtain rod will go through. At the top, turn over the top of the curtain and press a 1″ section down all the way across. Now, you should be able to see the curtain fabric at the back of the curtain. Then fold over a 2″ section of the curtain again so that you have a 2″ pocket formed. (You turned in 1/2″ so that the hem of the pocket would be neat.) Sew down the hem, using a 3/8″ seam allowance. Iron the curtain to get out any wrinkles from sewing.
One caution – your machine will potentially have a hard time sewing through the multiple fabric at the beginning and end of the pocket – it’s a lot of fabric. I had to move the needle by hand through the thick hem until I was past the worst of thickness. At the end, I just kept going and plowed through the thick part. Rather than try to reverse and finish the seams like normal, I just pulled the thread through and tied it off by hand.
8. You’re done! Congratulations on making a cafe curtain!
And I am so happy to have finallly finished the curtain in our bathroom!
We also have two (well almost two, one’s on its way) cast iron 8″ skillets. We are very much enjoying using our new pans, especially the cast iron. We even took them over to Tina’s house for Christmas morning. We were in charge of breakfast. The menu included homemade cinnamon rolls (my first attempt and a mighty successful one at that!) and gourmet scrambled eggs – the toppings were one-half Tillamook sharp cheddar with sauteed shiitake mushrooms and one-half smoked salmon with cream cheese and sauteed shallots. It was certainly a scrumptious breakfast and our new pans were put to good use!
Last Saturday, I blogged about the Delicata squash seeds that I had just roasted. They were SO good and tiny and cute too. So here’s a picture to prove how small they are. They’re in a miniature bread pan plus you can see a bit of my finger for reference.
My theory about squash seeds is that as the squash gets smaller, the seeds get tastier. And I think it’s true too – the next time you get a butternut squash, try roasting those seeds. Roasted pumpkins seeds are good but butternut squash are much better. And these Delicatas were probably the best seeds I’ve roasted so far. I want more!
Salmon and Souvlaki 