Better in theory: Blueberry Lemon Breakfast Loaf

After the success of my last loaf of bread, I decided to mix it up a bit. You know what I love? Blueberries. You know what else I love? Lemons. So I decided to follow Simply So Good's lead and change her Orange zest/Cranberry bread to Lemon zest/Blueberry. It came out perfectly edible, but there are a few things I would do differently if I make it again.

Do differently:

1- Use dried blueberries. Y'all, my baking dish is a MESS. Usually this bread recipe pops out of the baking dish and you can barely tell anything was made in it. I may have, on occasion, not washed it between loafs.

2- Omit the lemon zest. You can't even taste it, and I got a little overzealous in my zesting and cut my thumb on the grater. Not worth it.

3- Add some sugar to the dough. It wasn't bad, but it could have used a little extra sweetness.

4- Less flour on the counter. I ended up with too much flour stuck to the outside of the dough and that raw flour taste doesn't help the finished product.

Do again:

1- Activate the yeast. I've been using active dry yeast, because it's what my local market had, but in the past I've been too lazy to activate it. This time I added the yeast to some warm water and then mixed it in with the rest of the wet ingredients, and I definitely think the dough rose better this time around.

2- Mix in the morning. In the past I've mixed it up in the evening and then baked it in the morning, but I actually think that might be too long. The recipe says to let it rest for 12-18 hours, but I baked this loaf at 10 hours and the texture was great. I mixed it up before I left for work, checked on it at lunch time, and then baked it that evening. Worked great.

So, while I didn't love the finished product as much as I thought I would, it was still a valuable learning experience.

My weekend of baking

What did you do this weekend? I baked. And everything was edible and I didn't burn the house down! Success!

It all started a few days ago when Smitten Kitchen posted the recipe for blue and red berry ricotta galette. As soon as I saw the pictures I fell in love and knew I had to try my hand at this recipe. Sure, I'd never made anything like it before. I hadn't used a  rolling pin since I was a kid and would "help" my  mom. But I wasn't going to let that stop me. I dreamt about these galettes, you guys. I had to make them.

So Friday I took my ingredients over to my parents' house (because I don't have my own pastry cutter, zester, or rolling pin). The galettes were supposed to be desert for our family 4th of July cookout, so it actually worked out better to make them at their place instead of mine. I got the dough mixed up without any problems (except for the fact that my mom doesn't have a zester either, so I had to get creative with a vegetable peeler and paring knife). Then, just as I popped my dough in the fridge to chill for an hour, my mom got a call from my grandmother. My uncle had fallen and broken his good arm and had to go to the ER. So our 4th of July cookout was pushed to the 5th. Thankfully the dough would keep in the fridge for up to 48 hours and we hadn't started cooking anything else yet.

Saturday was when making the galettes really turned into a learning experience. If your dough warms up too much you'll have a really hard time rolling it out properly. So you know what is the worst spot in the kitchen to roll out your dough? On the counter-top directly above the running dishwasher. Whoops. So, that dough got rolled back up into a ball, wrapped in its plastic wrap and popped in the freezer. Then I moved to a different counter-top because DUH.

The other half of the dough rolled out much easier. But when I transferred my pentagon-shaped dough to the baking sheet, the pentagon got all wonky. It became more of a vaguely 5-sided blob. I got smarter for my other galette: it works much easier if you transfer the dough to the parchment paper and THEN cut the dough into a pentagon. My blueberry galette was so pretty I took a picture just in case it lost the star shape during baking.

I did not take a picture of the raspberry galette pre-baking, because it didn't really look like a star at all going in to the oven. It actually came out of the oven looking more star-like than it did going in.

Blueberry still turned out prettier, though.

These were a huge hit at our cookout. The raspberry filling could have used a little more sugar, but my dad actually likes tart flavors more than sweet ones, so he thought the raspberry was perfect. Both galettes are completely gone today, so I'd say they were a winner. I think they'd be cute for Christmas, too, so I might be breaking this recipe out again.

I wanted to brag, so I texted a pic of my galettes to my bestie. She introduced me to Smitten Kitchen so I knew she'd appreciate. Turns out she had also made the galettes. Great minds think alike.

But the baking doesn't end there! When I got home Saturday night, I was in the mood to make something. I broke out an old no-knead bread recipe that I've used in the past. I haven't made it in a while, but it's still as tasty as I remember.

So delicious.

So what's next on my culinary agenda? Not really sure, but my uncle just brought over a ton of zucchini, so maybe I'll keep up the galette trend and make SK's zucchini and ricotta galette. Or perhaps some ratatouille? Oh man, zucchini parmesan crisps might be the winner. Stay tuned.

Steotchalong Progress

The 2nd annual Steotch Mystery Stitchalong is underway! I'm having a lot of fun with this project, I'm glad I decided to postpone some other projects in order to participate in the stitchalong. Patterns 1 and 2 have been posted. I've finished both, although I did have a problem stitching pattern 2. A specific, cat-shaped problem.

Once I was able to get Arya to stop "helping," I was able to finish pattern 2. Here's what the project looks like so far:

Still not sure what it is, but the best guess from the forums is that it's going to be a Snoopy/Snoop Dogg project. I'm assuming there will be backstitching around the white part in a future pattern to make it stand out more from the "antique white" aida.

Weekend Stitchery: Cat Alphabet

This weekend I decided to actually watch some of the half-dozen or so DVDs I've checked out from the library. Because it's impossible for me to sit still and watch a movie without having something to do with my hands, I decided to stitch something. The Steotchalong is coming up soon so I decided to pick a simple project that I could have done in under a week. The pattern I picked ended up being a lot quicker to stitch than I had anticipated, I had it done in two sittings spread over two days (maybe about 4-6 hours?). So now it's framed in my living room and I still have six days until the Steotchalong begins. I guess I'll have to find some other way to keep myself busy. Maybe I'll clean my apartment.

I found this project on Pinterest and adjusted the pattern a little to align it more to my liking and add the date (similar to #2, but my own version).
Pin #1: pattern
Pin #2: finished piece

And here's my finished project:

Hott Pads

I'm making quilted potholders (and, depending on my ambition level, larger matching hot pads) for my mom and grandma for Christmas this year*. I decided to whip up one out of random fabrics I had lying around before I tackled the real ones. And, actually, I kind of dig it. The binding is a little wonky, and the quilting-lines aren't straight because I just eye-balled it instead of measuring/marking, but overall I think it turned out alright. I used it to get my pizza out of the oven today and my hands are burn-free. What more could you ask for?

(Apologies for the blurry cellphone pics)

Here's the back. The binding actually looks wonkier from the back, and you can better see how the lines aren't straight. But still, not bad for being whipped up in just a couple hours after work.

Once I get the hang of these potholders, I may try to clear out my fabric closet by selling some on etsy.

*I tried to make potholders for mom & gma for christmas two years ago.... It may have been a little ambitious for my skill level at the time, because I bent my needle and screwed up my machine for a while. That's why I felt I had to try a test-potholder before I went right into making the ones I'm actually going to give out. I managed to complete this one without ruining anything, so I'd say all's good.

What I'm up to

I'm working on making my first quilt. Well, I mean, my first human sized quilt. It'll be a queen size when it's finished (at least, that's the current plan), and it's made from my grandfather's shirts. It's based off the charm quilt "My Charming Neighborhood," but since my grandpa didn't have 600+ different shirts, it's not an actual charm quilt. I'm calling it "My Grandfather's Neighborhood." It's going to look freaking sweet when it's done.

The idea behind the quilt is that you have alternating dark and light rows, the light rows representing the sky and the dark rows representing houses in the neighborhood. Here is my first block of 4 patches sewn together.

I actually re-did this block twice after this picture was taken. They were actually necessary fixes, I wasn't just being super anal about seams. Here is the first row of the quilt laid out. It's not sewn together yet.

I know it looks like it's going to be crazy huge, but keep in mind that you lose 1/4 inch from each block in the seams, so it'll shrink up quite a bit. My strategy is pretty much just to sew one light patch to one dark patch, and then move them around to see where they look best. I have enough blocks cut out for over two rows now. Ten or so more rows to go. This guy is my favorite block so far:

I took the pockets from a lot of Grandpa's shirts, because I could be guaranteed to get at least one patch from each pocket. And since I'm the only one doing a charm-style quilt, everybody else needed more than one block from each shirt. I love the pockets that have designs on them, but the duck is by far my favorite.

I really like quilting, because it's something creative that really compliments my meticulous and detail oriented nature. I've always liked putting together puzzles, and that's kind of what quilting is. It's a puzzle you put together, after you design and cut out all the pieces. And I know not everyone feels this way, but there is something very zen about sitting in front of your sewing machine.

I've actually already designed my next two projects. The first is a table runner I'm going to make to compliment my black, white, and red dining room:

The pattern is a disappearing nine patch, which is actually the same pattern I used in the doll blanket I made for my grandmother. It's fascinating how the same pattern looks so different depending on the fabrics you use.

The other project is a quilt sampler I'm going to make for my mother. I bought this gorgeous fabric on clearance a while ago, it's this tan background with orange and red flowers on brown branches (it'll go where the ugly floral pattern is in the design below, I just picked something with a large-scale floral to see how the layout would look). I only have a yard of it, so I don't really have enough for a full quilt, so I'm planning on making my mom a nice wall hanging. Something like this:

Obviously it's still a work in progress, but I'm really happy with it so far. I'm still getting used to using the Electric Quilt software. I really like that EQ calculates how much fabric you need of each style. It's so nice to not worry that I effed up the math. Alternately, it's nice to have something else to blame when the math is wrong. Also, depending on how sick I get of cutting out houses, I may make one of these projects before I finish My Grandfather's Neighborhood.

Productivity!

Every once in a while, I will actually use my spare time doing something productive.



Recently, I used a bunch of old magazines to make myself a coffee table. I found the idea for this over on Apartment Therapy's Re-Nest site (although, they used thicker magazines. Where they used two magazines to complete each circle, I used between 8 and 10). I've been lacking any sort of coffee table for months and I have years worth of Entertainment Weeklies lying about, so I was really glad to kill two birds with one stone here. The magazines that make up the table top are ones that I just couldn't fold, either because they had cool covers (Like Elton John with the caption "I'm Not Cranky!"), or hotties (Helloooo Matt Damon!). Also, anything with Heath Ledger on the cover didn't get folded, although only one made it onto the table top. It's actually a little uneven, but it's perfect to hold my fan or to set my drink down while I'm watching TV.

Also, I spent some time rearranging the furniture. I put my bed back against the wall, but that's not really interesting enough to warrant a picture. However, I finally found a place for my awesome silk scarf, which is now draped across my green chair. My mother hates this chair with the fire of a thousand suns. She'll be so happy when I move out and take that chair out of her house. It'll be like an exorcism.

I'm most proud of the pajama pants I made for myself. I bought this awesome "Nerds Rock!" fabric on clearance last week. I also bought the original Star Wars trilogy for 75 cents at a garage sale. Obviously I had to watch the movies while I made my pants. When was the last time you watched Star Wars? The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite, and I'm in love with Han Solo.

Here are my finished pants. The material is actually pretty thin, but they're still awesome. On my TV Luke and Leia are zipping around the forest moon of Endor.

I know you're jealous.

Pretties

Check out other pictures I've taken with the new cam over at flickr.

The New Camera

After much debate, I bought the Canon Powershot S5 IS.

So far it has taken great pictures. I've only owned it about four hours at this point so I haven't had a lot of time to play with it. The only complaint I have is that, as you can see, it's not a small camera. In fact, it's fairly massive. Not quite a dslr, but it still has some heft to it. I'm worried that it's too big, that I won't be able to use it like I want to because I'll be too lazy. My Florida family is in town and we're having a 4th of July celebration tonight, so I'll take some pictures then and try and get used to the camera. If I can't, I guess I can take it back, even though there will be a 15% restocking fee, which kinda blows.

I Finished Something I Started!