New Beginnings

We got married! I had so much fun - more than I had expected. Turns out, there is nothing like having everyone you love together in one place and wishing you well.
It was October 23rd, 2010, but hey - I just got around to uploading all those photos.

Drunken Mushroom Mashed Potatoes

It's the kind of fall day that makes you want to eat warm and cozy things. We went to the park this afternoon with Gilda and then made drunken mushroom mashed potatoes:

- boiled potatoes
- beech, oyster, shitake fresh mushrooms (handful of each) and 1gm of dried morel mushroom (cooked down with enough butter, black pepper, nutmeg, a dash of soy sauce, New Holland Cabin Fever brown ale, and Buffalo Trace bourbon. More beer and more bourbon added and cooked down again - three total times).
- potatoes mashed with butter, cream, nutmeg & black pepper
- mushroom mixture whirred up with 2 cloves of roasted elephant garlic (brushed with oil and roasted at 300F)
- mushroom mixture mixed into the potatoes.

Delicious :)

Baked Apple Pie Toddy

Eric and I just made this up today, after fiddling with the Hot Toddy recipe that's in the Dec-Jan 2011 Mary Jane's Farm magazine.

- 1 baked apple (peeled & cored, filled with 1 pat of butter and some cinnamon, then baked at 400F for 1hr - we made 4 at once, baking them in pyrex)
- black tea (we used Tulsi tea b/c we had it and it was caffeine free)
- 1 T brown sugar
- 1 pat of butter
- shake of sea salt
- small splash of vanilla extract
- nutmeg
- 1 oz of bourbon (or however much)

We whirred everything up with a hand blender, adding the butter after first blending everything else a little.
It was so delicious - like a hot apple pie drink. There's a Szarlotka in Poland (apple juice and Zubrowka) that taste like a cold apple pie, but this is amazing for cold nights by the fire!

I think next time we'll use mead instead of the bourbon. On our honeymoon last month, Eric and I stopped at the Shady Grove Meadery in Tennessee. How could we not stop at a place called Shady Grove that made mead?? Their mead is so delicious - I generally prefer dry wines/meads/ciders/etc but their sparkling apricot mead blew me away. We also got some amazing honey and honey-rosemary jam. Later we were kicking ourselves for not buying a whole case of the sparkling mead. I made really simple but delicious drink when we got back to Indiana with their non-sparkling dry mead: mead with San Pellegrino Limonata soda (my absolute favorite soda - along with the aranciata).

baby projects!

Eric and I are having a baby! I'm due February 15th. We don't know yet whether it's a boy or girl ( we find out in two weeks!!), but I'm already getting excited for all the baby projects that I can do. Somehow I never really feel like crafting in the summer - too much gardening, I guess. But now that the weather has turned crisp, I'm itching to get out my sewing machine and knitting needles. And a baby gives me such a good excuse! So here's a list of projects ...

1. Newborn nightie like the one from Natural Nursery Knits
2. Matching blanket
3. Matching cap

I haven't decided on the color scheme or yarn for those yet. I'm not really into the whole pink/blue thing. I'm planning to decorate the nursery with a 'woodland' theme - trees, owls, mushrooms, squirrels, etc. I'll post more on that later. I'd love to get a self-striping yarn in some more saturated colors.

4. Woodland themed quilt. Either with appliques or with woodland print fabrics. I'd like one side to be patchy and the other side to be soft - maybe flannel. I've never made a quilt or really done any applique before though, so this will be a challenge!
5. Booties!
6. Wool soakers. We're definitely doing cloth diapers, so these are going to be essential. I'm actually thinking that we might do the elimination communication thing, but we're still going to need diapers and soakers.

I'll probably start working on most of these after the wedding (October 23rd!), because right now I'm overwhelmed with wedding planning stuff. But I might get the yarn for the blanket, at least, so that I can start going to the Tuesday knit group at the Chocolate Cafe.

NC style bbq sauce

3/4c. apple cider vinegar
ketchup
juice from the rotisserie chicken
black peppercorns, ground in the grinder - approx. enough to cover the bottom of the grinder
red pepper flakes
smoked salt - 1 tsp.
sugar
molasses - two dollops
1c. water

Oh man, was this delicious. I just shredded a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store and poured this sauce over it. I didn't use all the sauce for the chicken - I have about 1/2c. left over. I might pour it on some corn on the cob that we have to make for later. Eric made parsley smashed potatoes to go with the chicken - red potatoes, olive oil, a whole bunch of parsley, salt and pepper. It was the best combination - the bbq sauce mixing in with the parsley potatoes, yum!

Tote with blanket/sweater straps

I always like to have a cardigan with me - even when it's really hot in the summer, the airconditioning in most places (like the grocery store) is so intense that I'm freezing when I go inside. But the problem with always carrying a sweater is that it's bulky to keep in a bag and ugly to wrap around your waist if you're wearing a cute dress. I was browsing on Etsy today and saw maytreeark's Rita May bag:


The little bows on the bottom can tie around a blanket, newspaper or other bulky item. This is such a great idea! It's super cute. But, I think I'd prefer to have a bag without ties - not only are they somewhat inconvenient to tie, but it looks like you could trip over them - or at least dirty them up on the sidewalk. So I was thinking that instead of ties, I could make a version of this with snaps instead. The straps would adjust with two sets of snaps - one so that the extra length would be snug against the bag and one that would leave room for a sweater, blanket or whatever. There could actually be multiple snaps - to allow for a smaller sweater and a bigger blanket. I love this idea!

String Quilt Pillows

string block quilted pillows
Originally uploaded by filminthefridge

The string quilt is still far from being on its way ... I haven't even finished buying all the fabric yet. I'm a little low on $$ right now, so I'm going to wait until I can afford to get the fabrics that I really want. Luckily, I have a *fantastic* fabric store right nearby - Erica's has a huge selection of absolutely gorgeous fabrics. I'm planning to take snips of the current fabrics with me and pick out all the rest there. But since I also have a trip to New Orleans coming up, I don't know when exactly I'll be able to go.
I do, however, have two feather-filled pillows that need covers. I think I'll practice making the quilt squares by doing a couple of covers for those pillows - also rainbow/string style. Of course, I do need to get the fabric for that!
I was just thinking of doing one square per pillow - in other words, just one set of diagonal stripes. But then I saw the pillows in the picture above and now I think it might be better to do four squares per pillow - that would be great practice for the actual quilt. I'd like for them to each be different - I guess the easier way to do that would just be to use different fabrics for the stripes in each one. But I could also do a different layout: either do rainbow stripes in each block, unlike the quilt, or do two colors in each block like the quilt, but mix up the colors for the pillows.
I think I actually like the idea of a full rainbow of stripes in each block - that way the pillows will actually be quite different from the quilt, but they'll still fit perfectly because the fabrics will be all the same.

Also, I'm going to make my pillows without the border that the ones in the picture have - not only will that be easier to sew, but I like the look better - it seems cleaner and will fit better with the actual quilt, which also will not have a border.

I was planning to use the blue comforter as a backing for the quilt, so I might have to cut into it early in order to make the backing for the pillows. It's almost time to switch to a summer comforter anyway, so that should be fine.