Cupboard Bypass

I finished up the binding this afternoon and my neighbor picked it up when she got home from work! The quilt is for a first grandbaby, a little boy due in a couple of weeks.  She also took the Dick and Jane quilt to keep at her house.  It's a good thing.

 I have to say this is the third binding I have done totally on the machine and this one is just barely short of perfect because I did have to take a couple of tacking stitches on two of the corners. That might always be the case, still, I am mightily pleased.

Also made two and a half pints of Caramalized Red Onion Relish this morning.  The couple of spoonfuls left over, made it on my turkey sandwich for lunch. Very good!  I wonder if it will be even better if left to age a bit before opening the processed bottles.  The dill pickles I made on Sunday are to sit for 4 to 6 weeks before opening, per the recipe. 

Quilt statistics:
100% cotton fabric
Oink! Oink! by Jennski for Moda Fabrics
80/20 batting
45x44
Modified Layer Cake Lemonade pattern from The Fat Quarter Shop.

QOTD (actually last week)

bakerssquare.com

"You can't please everyone.  

You are not French Silk Pie."

MsDeb

 

Rrrr

Sheila is helping her niece with a family Halloween party and I am helping Sheila with the Pirate Bag production.  This is the basic drawstring gift bag that I have been making for years but, wisely, Sheila decided to skip the drawstring and will attach a piece of jute with a couple of stitches and just gather and tie the bags once they are filled with pirate booty.

26 bags, even without the drawstrings, still take some time.  Last night we could see the end in sight and it will probably just take one more evening of sewing and finishing.  Sheila is without sewing machine so she has been using my big machine here and I have been using the Featherweight.  This is not fancy sewing and the Featherweight does this kind of work just fine.

We sewed until I ran out of bobbin thread.  That shouldn't be an issue but it has been some time since I have used the Featherweight and I was tired and did not want to think through the process.  This morning I thought to look on the computer rather than read the manual which is written in a .5 font.  Ha!  There's a YouTube video showing just how simple it is.

How anyone lives without a computer is beyond me.

I made this Taco French Bread Pizza for supper with the only adjustment being the replacement of the French bread with naan.  French bread is too much bread for me and my dainty mouth has a hard time opening wide enough for it.  Naan works perfectly and the whole meal can be prepped and waiting ahead of time.

Tomato "candy" from Sheila.  I love these!

Individual Taco Pizzas - 6 to 8 servings

1 pkg Costco naan (these are about 4x5”)

1 pound lean ground beef

1 envelope taco seasoning mix

1 (16 ounce) can refried beans

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

grape tomatoes, halved or quartered

1 small can sliced black olives

green onions, thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 375 F°. Brown ground beef in a large skillet, over medium-high heat. Drain grease. Add taco seasoning to the ground beef according to package directions. Simmer 10 minutes, then remove from heat.

Place naan on a cookie sheet.

Heat refried beans in the microwave then spread beans evenly over the top of the naan. Top evenly with the cooked ground beef mixture, sprinkle with cheese and then add the tomatoes, black olives, green onion, and just a little more cheese on top.  Place in oven to heat through and for cheese to melt, less than 10 minutes

Early Walks

We got a little lazy about getting out early for our walks and it was 6 or even after when we would start out.  Now that the students are back, Center Street gets crowded with joggers and while Min knows what "on the grass" means and steps off the sidewalk, I like it a bit more solitary in the pre-dawn.

We were out this morning at 5:30 and oh the sky was so clear and fabulous. Stars abound and we so seldom get away from the light pollution to see that the sky is absolutely filled with them.  On a Sunday morning at 5:30 we were the only ones out on the sidewalk, two cars passed us and one guy on a bicycle.  Very peaceful.

Peach Salsa

Another recipe from Food in Jars.  The yield was 5 jars and when MnCarol came over we opened the short pint for a taste.  I had forgotten to taste it before it went in the jars and was very curious.  It's very good but I think it could be a little spicier, which I would have known if I had tasted before I filled those jars.  

Note to self, the recipe says chopped peaches and these should have been chopped about 75% smaller!  You need some very large and sturdy chips for this salsa.

A keeper recipe.

Not The State Fair But...

Two finishes for the weekend and both projects are winners here at the ranch!

I pieced the table topper in July and quilted it this week. Today the binding went on and we are ready for next July.  ChrisAnne (from The Cotton Shop) says we are always working ahead.:-) The quilt block is from Lori Holt's book, Farm Girl Vintage and I made two red and two blue to end up with a 24-inch square.  It was a block I wanted to try because to get the gingham effect, you use both sides of the fabric and some white.  I wanted to see how that worked and it did!

Pieces from the stash make up the back.

Displayed on the little quilt are three of the four jars of ketchup that I made yesterday, the fourth jar has already been opened as a quality check.  Yum!  The recipe is from Food in Jars by Marisa McClellan.  It was fun to make, not too much work because the tomatoes, onions, and peppers are chopped and cooked, then passed through a food mill.  It does take a lot of time for the pulp to cook down.  It took 9 pounds of Roma tomatoes to fill four 1/2 pint jars.  The first batch I tried I used regular out of the garden round tomatoes.  That's not what the recipe said and I should have paid attention to that.  Not enough pulp.  The second batch was made with Romas, five jars processed and I guess I was hoping it would "set up" in the jars.  Uh, that doesn't happen.  So I dumped out the jars into a large saucepan, added the ninth pound of tomatoes and simmered them down farther.  This time there were only four jars but the consistency is perfect.

The other thing I discovered from the first batch was that my usual spice bag made from a coffee filter does not work with whole cloves.  They are too sharp and poked holes right through it once it was wet.  I ended up sewing a small muslin bag.  Quite a production all in all but I am ready to try some more.  The red lids and rings were on the clearance rack at the grocery store. Too fun!

One of my quilting rulers is now designated a kitchen tool so I can measure reduction rate.

Eggs

All labeled as large eggs, I've never seen such a difference!

A miserable cold all week and Terry said this is what she craves when she has a bad cold.  Very, very good!

Chili-Cheese Dish 

3 Tablespoons butter

5 eggs

1/4 C plus 1 Tablespoon flour

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 (4 oz) can green chilies

1 Cup cottage cheese

8 oz. Monterey Jack cheese, grated

Melt margarine in 9" round GLASS pan (well, in real life I use a square one) Beat eggs lightly, add blended flour with baking powder and salt.  Add melted butter, green chilies and cheese, mix and pour back into the pan.  Bake @ 400 degrees for 15 minutes, turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake for 15 to 20 minutes more.

Freezes well.  Thaw and reheat at 325 for 15 to 20 minutes.

**Adjusted recipe for this size dish:

casserole dish from Janie! 9x7

5 Tbsp. butter
8 eggs
7 Tbsp flour
3/4 t baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 4-oz can green chilis
1 1/2 c cottage cheese
12 oz Monterey Jack/pepper Jack

Check after 25 minutes at 350 as this adjustment makes a deeper recipe.  Casserole should not wiggle in the middle.

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August Stash Update

From the Springville Quilt Show.  Dresden Plates were everywhere!

The end of August found me within 7.5% of my stash reduction goal.  Hooray!

As more and more fabric gets shared either as raw or finished goods, it gets less and less easy to decide what goes.

Must sew faster.

First September Finish

Another baby quilt from the stash.  The pattern is based on the 3-Hour Baby Quilt Top by Alex Anderson, the fabric is Dick and Jane from somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago.

The quilt pattern calls for flying geese as the outside border but I had a bit of a problem getting those to work with a red gingham and the stripe I use as the binding.

You can make 4 of these geese blocks at one time but even though I gave it a lot of thought, I still got it wrong.  And I really did think about how I was laying the fabrics so when it didn't work I swapped out the gingham, eliminating one of the directionals.  I also used a different assembly method.

That didn't work out for me either... the block on the left still has a directional in the center and now I have two sides different.  That's when I switched to the green border.  Why was I making it so hard on myself, fps!?!

The back worked out nicely and I used up most of the leftovers.

quilt stats:
100% cotton fabric
38 1/2 x 42 1/2"
80/20 batting

DWR*

 Pepperoni Rolls – adapted slightly from allrecipes dot com

½ cup warm water

½ teaspoon granulated sugar

1 (.25-oz) package active dry yeast

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten

¼ cup butter, melted

1 (8-oz) package sliced pepperoni

Dissolve ½ teaspoon of sugar in the warm water. Sprinkle yeast over the water and let stand 5 minutes.

Add flour, 6 Tbs. sugar, and salt to the bowl of the Cuisinart.  Pulse a few times.  Add in yeast mixture, beaten egg, and melted butter.  Process until dough forms a ball and is glossy.  Not very long when using the Cuis.

Oil a large bowl, place dough in bowl and turn to coat with oil.  Cover with a clean dish towel, place in a warm place (80-95 degrees) until doubled in volume, about 1 ½ hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Punch down dough and divide into 10 equal pieces about the size of a golf ball.  Using hands, flatten each piece into approx. a 4” square. Place 3 slices of pepperoni down the center of each dough square, overlapping the pieces.  Place another row of 2 slices next to the first.  Roll the dough around the pepperoni slices, pinch the edges closed, and place the rolls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake rolls 14 – 16 minutes or until the bottoms are lightly browned and the tops are barely golden.

 I actually divided the dough and made 5 pepperoni rolls and put the other 5 balls of dough in the freezer as a test and also as a waistline safety precaution.  The next week I let those dough balls defrost and then baked them following the above directions.  Perfect dinner rolls!

*Danger Will Robinson is a fun phrase and one used to describe this recipe but one I never heard first hand. For whatever reason, we never watched that tv show so I looked it up in Wikipedia.  According to Wikipedia, the phrase was only used in one episode!

September is...

WooHoo! We love the Fat Quarter Shop!

This is what has been going on in the backyard this month:

Two 30x60 foldable lightweight tables

I basted this baby quilt yesterday.

Carol came over today and we basted her patriotic quilt

The very fun back, expertly pieced!

We are off to a great start for the month.  Carol started off with a finished baby quilt yesterday!