Fun Bunny

I never would have been able to make this ornament on my own, in fact, would never even have given the knitting pattern (Snowball Buddies by Susan Claudino)  a second glance. However, with Amy acting the part of a coxswain, calling out stitch sequences, correcting errors and encouraging me on, I did it!

She made three to my one and every single time we were certain we had never seen anything cuter.

Too bad I can't take off his scarf so he could be an Easter Bunny.

CKB

Cheater Korean Beef – adapted from Barefeet In TheKitchen

Yield: 4 servings

1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 pounds ground beef
3-4 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tablespoon grated ginger, I use the kind in a tube

1/4 cup light brown sugar

2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon chili paste, I use Sambal Oelek
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup frozen peas

Garnish:
finely chopped red onion or 3 green onions thinly sliced

finely chopped cucumber

Warm the oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Brown the beef until cooked through, crumbling it as it browns. Drain thoroughly, then add the garlic and ginger and cook another minute or two until fragrant.

Whisk together the brown sugar, cornstarch, soy sauce, and chili paste. Pour the liquids over the beef, stir to combine, and bring to a simmer for 2 minutes to blend the flavors and slightly thicken the sauce. Add the peas, stir and simmer a minute longer. The peas will thaw and warm in the hot skillet. 

- - -

So fast to put together, so delicious!  We had it over rice but you could also make lettuce wraps.  Not as messy to eat it over rice. 

Hooray for Fall!

 

Ha!  It's just another finish from the Quilty Fun book. This is a table mat and I did make it a larger by adding the outer border.  It finishes 18x18".  Most importantly all fabric came from my stash.  I've moved away from this traditional autumn colorway but it all works very nicely here.

The photo was taken with a cloudy sky so it's a fairly accurate color portrayal although the background of the leaves is darker and more green than grey.

 

And here is a very tasty quilting night recipe that was a hit:

Chicken-Potato-Spinach Bake

1 lb. potatoes

1 – 10 oz. package frozen chopped spinach, thawed

1 Tbsp olive oil

½  large onion, finely chopped

1 large garlic clove, minced

4 slices smoked bacon, cut in ¼ inch slices

1 Tbsp plain flour

Butter for greasing

½ Cup heavy cream

½ Cup chicken stock

3 Cups shredded leftover roast chicken

4 oz. shredded cheese

-          Preheat the oven to 375°F. 

-          Slice the potatoes 3/8 inch thick and simmer in salted water for 5 minutes until just tender. Drain.

-          Put spinach in a colander, pour boiling water from a kettle then refresh under cold running water.  Squeeze dry.

-          Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat and soften the onion, stirring, for about 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for 1 minute more, then remove to a bowl.  Add the bacon to the pan and fry until starting to crisp.  Add the onion back to the pan and stir in the flour.

-          Lightly butter an 8x8 baking dish.

-          Mix the cream with the stock and season.

-          Layer half the potato, all the onion and bacon, all the spinach, all the shredded chicken and half of the cheese, pouring the cream sauce over as you go. Finish with a layer of potatoes. Season with salt. Set aside remaining cheese.

-          Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes, then sprinkle with remaining cheese and return to oven, uncovered for 10-15 minutes more until golden and bubbling hot.

Helpers

This is a 14" square piece of foam core that has a scrap of batting hot glued to it and then some left over binding hot glued in place as well.  This is what Lori Holt of Quilty Fun shows you how to make, and use, on a YouTube video.  It is the perfect tool for moving patchwork pieces from cutting mat to ironing board to sewing machine. The texture of the batting keeps the pieces in place, making it harder, but not impossible, to lose a wee piece in the fourteen steps from iron to sewing machine.

And this is a sandpaper board.  The pieces do not move as you are marking your line.  I had it on my lap while I was watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.  Fabulous!  And the Palomino Blackwing pencil also proved perfect for the job.  I think the lead or graphite is just a bit softer than a regular #2 pencil and that adds to the ease in getting a good diagonal sewing line drawn.

(Thirty two 1 1/2" squares and thirty two 1 1/4" squares needed diagonal lines. Small squares.)

Mugs Are Done!

First finish from the Lori Holt book Quilty Fun.  In typical fasion, I am falling behind on this ongoing project.  Strangely though, I am really enjoying the challenge of scrappy fabric selection and the tiny piecing that is involved.  Lori likes cute and most times I find cute just too much.  Plus I am trying to use what I have on hand.

Most of the batiks I used were part of a kit I bought years ago in Delores, CO that I was no longer interested in completing.  Interestingly, it's the batiks that make me think of my sister Nancy.  They give the piece an Asian flavor that would have fit with her decorating.

Because there was a lot of changing of direction in the quilting, the pivot feature on my machine was invaluable.  When the top button of the three is activated and you can tell it is because it is darker, every time you stop stitching the presser foot raises and you can easily pivot.  As soon as you start again, the presser foot drops back to the fabric. It's a fabulous feature.

The quilt finishes at 24" square and is a table mat or a wall hanging. I like how this turned out and with the quilting I chose to do.  I'm thinking I just am not a swirly kind of quilter.

On One Hand...

Oh the love of canning jars!  I am particularly fond of the small ones, the half pint (8 oz) and the half half pint (4 oz) or I just call them the wee jars.

Found a tea light insert for the regular mouth jars that sits on top and then the screw ring keeps it in place.  Disappointing in that no tea light I had in the house would fit.  I really prefer the battery operated tea lights as no tails will accidentally ignite but on occasion I do get the regular burning type.The battery operated does not fit.  The orange one is from Ikea and I even cut off the tin and it didn't fit.  The white one was from Michaels (17 years ago*) in a tin which I removed and then shaved off the sides of the candle.  If I'm going to be shaving tea light candles I will go with the Ikea brand as they are quite soft.  The jar adapter is a fun idea but where are the candles that fit?

On the other hand, the half pint jar contains Barbecue Rub #67 which is part of the best new recipe of the year.  You will not believe how moist these wings are!  I made half of the rub recipe below and it will last me at least all year. (I also only make one chop.)
Bacon-Wrapped Pork Wings – adapted from Ray "Dr. BBQ" Lampe

Makes 12 servings   Who says pigs can't fly? 

•  Four 1-inch-thick boneless pork chops
• 12 slices bacon (do not use thick sliced)
• Barbecue Rub #67
• Barbecue sauce, for dipping  

Cut each pork chop into three strips.  To wrap the “wings”, start by overlapping the bacon on one end of a pork strip then wrapping it up and around in a candy-cane fashion.  Season the bacon-wrapped wings cautiously with the rub, you don’t want to be heavy handed here as there is a lot of salt.

Preheat oven to 250°F. Place the wings on a cookie sheet, I used my stand-by, the small bar pan from Pampered Chef and cook for 1 hour or until the bacon is cooked. I checked for an internal temperature of 140⁰ after an hour and once there,  put the wings under the broiler for a few minutes  to crisp the bacon. Serve hot with barbecue sauce for dipping. I prefer Jack Daniel's Original No.7 recipe.

Barbecue Rub #67 From Slow Fire: The Beginner's Guide to Barbecue by Ray  Lampe

Makes about 1 1/2 cups

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons chili powder
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coffee
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

 Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well. The rub may be stored in an airtight container in a cool place for up to 6 months. 

 *I know this because I bought the cheapest bag of 100 tea lights for my 50th birthday so I had enough for each year and then I packed them onto a cookie sheet and lit them all.  It was quite bright.

PSA for February

This came in the mail last week from Denver with a neon Post-It note adhered to the front claiming it The Anti-February Book.  It is!!!!!

If you do not know Maeve Binchy, you should.  One of the best storytellers ever.  One of the things I like about her books is that characters from one book will appear in another but only passing through the story not intricately involved.. So while there is no order required to reading her books it is fun if you do and it makes you feel you have known these people a long time.  This book is a compilation of articles and columns she wrote for The Irish Times over four decades.

So here you have an antidote for a grey sky'd, bad air, pull the blankets-over-your-head February.

Change

I was concerned when a friend told me that her credit union no longer had a change counting machine.  They suggested she use the ones at WalMart or the grocery stores.  The ones that charge you to count your change.

I scurried over to my credit union to bring in some change.  The pennies were collected in the large coffee cup.  The pennies weighed in at 5 1/2 pounds and totaled more than nine dollars.  There were very few pennies in the two cans and each weighed in at a just under 4 pounds.

I used the Snickers crate to carry it all to the credit union as I had opened the cans.  Didn't want to count on them having a can opener handy. Total deposit was $133.55.  :-)

First February Finish

65 degrees!

A lovely Sunday afternoon.  I retrieved the swing cushions from the garage and enjoyed reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry while gently rocking. We were out in the backyard for more than three hours.  In February, fps.

Half of these fabrics are from a line called Flea Market Fancy by Denise Schmidt.  It was so popular that there was a second run released.  For me though the overall feel of this quilt makes me think BoHo or Gypsy.  I am very, very happy with it.  It's a baby quilt size, 42x42 but I have put corners in the back binding so that I can hang it.  It is quilted in a spiral with the quilting lines 3/8 of an inch  apart.

As this was the first time I tried quilting a spiral, I didn't realize that it made a difference in which direction you start.

I chose the wrong way because I always had the bulk of the quilt under the harp of the machine.  Should have been spiraling clockwise.  Of course you can't see a difference on the quilt so that's fine but I have made a note.

The quilt doesn't hang perfectly flat which I suspect is the spiraling quilting so I also sewed in those little hanging corners at the bottom so I can put a dowel rod there and make it look nice and smooth.

It was such a fun quilt to do and the spiraling, while seeming almost endless, was quite addictive and so did not take nearly as long as I thought.  The first three spirals took about 40 minutes but that was because I was sewing in a very tight circle and had to go very slowly to keep it smooth.  I thought about doing the math to get an estimate of the total quilting time.  I thought about this as I was drifting off to sleep but in the morning it dawned on me (hahaha) that I did not have an algorithm for figuring out the change in the curve relating to the speed of sewing as the distance increased. It did take three bobbins to complete the quilt which is a lot for a small quilt.