Category: creativity

Tabouli, with a twist.

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I find tabouli to be one of those things you can toy with in many ways and still have it come out scrumptious every time.  With the weather leaping over early spring into what feels like early summer, I have been wanting lighter dinners, like salads.  Tabouli is actually sort of perfect this time of year, as my herb garden is springing back to life, offering fresh mint, parsley and chives. 
Tabouli is a salad that is basically a grain, tossed with olive oil, lemon, parsley and mint, rounded out with vegetables. Traditional tabouli is made with primarly tomatoes, bulghur wheat, onions & garlic. I’ve used a variety of grains, ranging from couscous, quinoa, millet to barley in lieu of bulghur.  Even my traditional tabouli has been known to have some cheese (feta or fresh mozzarella is quite nice), and black olives.
Last week, I was in the mood for some tabouli, but seeing how it’s not tomato season, I felt the urge to get creative with it.  And that is how I came up with ‘Other Side of the Mediterranean Tabouli’.  I plumped up some dried tomatoes with white wine, threw in some marinated artichoke hearts, black olives and feta and tossed it with quinoa, mint, chives, parsley, salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil.  I served it on a bed of arugula, fresh picked from the garden.  A perfect spring dinner.

Not Quite Full Bloom, but close enough.

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The magnolia is almost in full bloom.  With this warm weather, it opens more every day.
It’s delightful to look out the windows and door on the front of the house to see those blooms.
We are definitely feeling spring around here.  This past weekend was social and productive, with lots of work getting done in the yard, including the repair and re-installation of the compost spinner bins, weeds being pulled, more spring greens planted, a garden work day at Edie’s school, brunch with friends and of course, with us working in the yard and lots of folks out walking to soak up the sunshine, there were a number of little visits with neighbors.  Brian popped in Saturday to share some seeds and ponder if the tree would make it this year, without a frost.  There was a good bit of speculation about that this weekend, with everyone saying that our magnolia in bloom is the first sign of spring to them.  Us too.  
The peach tree is blooming now too. 
The greens I planted back in February are popping up. 
As Brian said the other day, all is right with the world again now that spring is upon us.
It’s true, nothing revitalizes me like spring.  I’ve been cooking up a storm, working up lots of new inspired recipes that I will share just as soon as I work out the kinks.  I’ve pulled that Amish Friendship Bread starter out of the freezer and am baking with it, only I’m determined to make it without adding pudding mix.  First batch turned out pretty okay, although, it was better with Vikki’s Salted Caramel Pear butter on it.  (Recipe please Vikki.  By the way, I made that granola recipe you told me about last week and it rocked.  Thanks.) I’m also experimenting with cutting back the sugar in that recipe.  I’m comfortable winging it in my kitchen, but not when it comes to baking.  Baking is chemistry and I was excused from participating in Chem Lab in high school because of the small fires and explosions heard from my corner of the lab each week.  Just like math, who knew I actually needed to know that stuff some day?  I thought they were just saying that. Turns out they were right.

Back to reality….

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It’s January 2, the big yellow angel came back this morning restoring some semblance of routine to our lives (which was miraculously NOT as bumpy as I had feared!) and as I procrastinate on taking down holiday decorations, I thought I’d show off some of the new things that have worked their way into our home this season.  While visiting Pat’s folks the week before Christmas, we acquired a few quilts that Pat’s Grandmother had made over the years.
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Among them, this crazy quilt.  I remember when she made this one – at the time I was inspired enough by it to contemplate learning to quilt, something I still haven’t entirely let go of, but haven’t entirely embraced yet either…..
The basis of this quilt are old ties that Pat’s Grandfather wore.   I also recognize some fabrics that had been kicking around in her stash (Over the years, I’ve inherited parts of that stash as she scaled back.)
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There is so much detail and handwork in this quilt.  It’s amazing.  I just can’t do it justice with photos. It’s an inspiring piece to have on our bed and wake up to every morning.
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Another quilt we brought home is this Southern Belle Quilt. It’s much older, with more padding than any other quilt we’ve gotten from Grandma, and has been through the wash a number of times so it’s soft and fluffy on top of being beautiful.
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The fabrics in it are amazing, as is some of the handwork.
There is a small tear though, towards the bottom that I’m not entirely sure how to go about repairing.
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I’m looking for help in how to fix the tear (so if you have a suggestion, please let me know!).  For the time being, it’s sitting on the back of the sofa in the living room, folded neatly so the tear doesn’t get worse.  I simply couldn’t put it in a closet until I got it fixed.
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The third quilt we brought home is a butterfly quilt for Edie’s room. She has a bit of a butterfly theme going on in there and I think the browns will help balance out all the pink.  There are a few small repairs to be made this quilt before it lands permanently on her bed, but they can all be easily done by hand.  And, since it’s a newer quilt and I inherited part of the stash, I know I have the original fabrics on hand to make the proper repairs, should I need more fabric.
Suddenly, having the stash just became a good thing.  Funny how that works….

A new one.

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I am often complimented on the cabinet in my kitchen. 
While this cabinet is in there in the name of storage, it’s not for gadgets.
My kitchen is small.
 People are surprised that someone that cooks as much as I do doesn’t have a wealth of kitchen toys.
I have carefully edited them in the name of space.  And I prefer that space be given to something I love more than gadgets.

 

Cookbooks.
(And my KitchenAid stand mixer.)
I love the cookbooks various groups put together for fundraisers.  I have an especially fondness for old ones from churches. I think some of those came from college roommate’s grandmothers.  Some of them, I’ve had forever, like before I learned to cook.  My watermelon pickle recipe came out of those books.

Mollie Katzen is probably my favorite cookbook writer.  I have a number of her cookbooks.
Oh, and I clearly have a fondness for some Betty Crocker – that’s a late 80’s version right next to my early 1950’s version.  Sadly, somewhere along the line they dropped the helpful housewife hints that recommended being ‘fresh and cheerful’ for your husband when he came home from work.  I also have the 1960’s Betty Crocker Cooky Cookbook. 

Among my treasures is this complete 1970’s set of McCalls cookbooks, in their little box.  I was amazed when they fit into my cabinet, I thought for sure I’d have to get rid of something to make room.  Just a little reorganization was needed. 
I have ethic cookbooks.  I have the classics- Joy of Cooking, Fannie Farmer and so on.  I have dessert cookbooks.  I have several cookbooks just on chocolate.  I have holiday cookbooks.  I have part of a late 70’s, early 80’s Southern Living series that I have picked up piecemeal at yard sales.  The bulk of my collection though are vegetarian cookbooks.  I really cannot stand to touch raw meat and so when I first learned to cook, I avoided it in my cooking.  I am still just learning how to cook meat.  I tend to stick to bacon and sausage, which is easy stuff.  (and yummy.)
I like to read cookbooks.  I will sit down with a stack to get inspiration for dinner.  If I have an idea of something I want to make but not entirely sure how I want to go about it, I’ll consult my cookbooks.  With the exception of the Mollie Katzen books, I never follow a recipe to the T.  I like to stack about 3 or 4 cookbooks on my counter and create my own from similar ones.   A little of this, some of that.  The end result gets written down in a notebook I also keep in that cabinet.  Along with several binders of recipes I have printed out from the glory of the internet.
A few weeks ago, I entered a contest on Facebook hosted by fellow blogger edible cville.  I tend to enter alot of contests, although I rarely win.  Much to my surprise, I won! 
I was excited to discover it was a new cookbook.

Anthony Bourdain.  To be honest, I don’t know much about him.  I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to celebrity chefs.  We live without cable, which means no food channels, outside of the PBS Create cooking shows (which I adore).  Although I learned to cook by watching cooking shows and reading cookbooks, I have found I don’t care for most of the cooking shows on these days when I do happen to get to watch those food channels on cable tv.  Too much flash, not enough substance.  Extreme eating?  No thanks.  Cooking competitions?  They don’t interest me either.   But a book?  That I can do.

At first glace, I really like the look of the book.  Love the font.  (That would be the design background in me, coming out.)  Paging through it, I think I might learn some new tricks. There are just good basic skills in here and not just recipes.  I love those kind of cookbooks.  I’m excited that it’s not another vegetarian cookbook.  Due to requests from a certain self-described ‘meatatarian’ that lives in our house, I have found myself learning to cook more meat. She’s pretty excited about this new cookbook too.
I might find myself sharing it.  She’s already been flipping through it, looking for dinner suggestions.
Thanks edible cville, for adding to our library and our inspiration.
It’s not often we get a cookbook around there that gets everyone excited.


Darn good dinner.

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I have been on quite the Mediterranean kick lately.  We spent all summer eating bruschetta and antipasti and I’m definitely not quite ready to give those flavors up.  I just didn’t feel like cooking last night, but I had an eggplant that needed to go and I wanted to cook it up in a tasty recipe Pat brought home a few weeks ago.  It wasn’t quite a meal, so I needed something to round it out.  And so, I immediately thought of pasta and wanted to incorporate my new current favorite things:  marinated artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, black olives, (sun)dried tomatoes and some roasted garlic I had on hand. 
I threw all that in a pan, slightly chopped, and heated them up. I should add here the tomatoes were ones I dried last week, that I poured some really nice olive oil on and stuck in the fridge for safe keeping. (Thanks Leni for the idea!)

I let it all get warm and starting to bubble from the assorted juices and olive oil, then added some heavy cream and chopped parsley and just heated it through.

When in doubt, add cream.

I then tossed it with some pasta.  So good.
It was the perfect pairing with the eggplant.
Pat brought this recipe home from Nancy Ross Hugo.   We actually tried it out with friends a few weeks ago when he got it and couldn’t wait to try it out, but this was the first time I’d made it.  The original recipe doesn’t call for breadcrumbs, but the friends we shared this with have dairy allergies, so we subbed breadcrumbs for Parmesan.  So good.  I had a hunk of rosemary-black olive bread to use up, so I turned that into breadcrumbs and threw that on top.  Totally kick-ass.


My version of Nancy Ross Hugo’s Eggplant recipe:
Slice eggplant lengthwise and place on greased cookie sheet
Coat in:
Mayonnaise
Salt
Pepper (Lemon)
Parmesan Cheese
(Breadcrumbs)
Bake at 450 for 12 minutes.
Good with steak, antipasti pasta or whatever you can come up with. 

So pleased with myself.

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Instead of throwing things away or donating them to say, Salvation Army, I seem to be rich in friends who instead think, Oh, I’ll give this to Becky and she can do something with it.  Over the years, I’ve been given an assortment of goodies- old aprons, quilts, quilt tops, shower curtains, sheets, duvet covers, and so on.  Some of them I pass along.  Some of them sit in a pile, awaiting inspiration.  And some, like today, actually get used.
I bought these black linen capri pants at Old Navy eons ago.  I loved them.  They were comfortable, fit well and went with everything.  I have worn them out, but can’t quite bring myself to part with them yet.  I have attempted several times to remake these pants with no success.  I can do skirts with no pattern, but anything else, forget it.
A friend gave me an old duvet cover a few weeks ago.  I dumped it on top of a pile in the happy corner and debated what to do with it.  The fabric was light and seemed like it might be really comfy during hot weather.  And there was alot of it.  Today, while trying to figure out what to do with myself (unemployed stay at home motherhood when your kid has been shipped off for 3 weeks is a strange place for me to be in), I decided I was going to attempt to make a pair of pants out of the duvet cover, using my treasured, tattered old navy pants as a pattern.
Voila!  The finished result.  I cheated and cut the pants out on the seam instead of the fold.  Same idea really, yes?  Since the original pants are a bit too big these days, I didn’t add a seam allowance, hoping that would fix the ‘baggy’ problem.  It did for the most part, but I definitely need to make some adjustments. However, for a new pair of lounging pj bottoms, they work.

I love this fabric – a floral paisley?  Yes please.  I had a pair of pants in high school out of a similar fabric that I adored, so I was really sort of excited about a new pair out of this fabric.  The duvet cover is pretty big – I think it’s a queen or a king, so I have alot more fabric to perfect my pattern.  They are as comfortable as I thought they would be.  I started and finished something in an afternoon – not such a rarity for me these days anymore I’m proud to say.  And, I successfully made my own pattern.  Yes, I need to tweak it, but it fit! I’ve not always had such successes with sewing without a pattern.  Hell, I’m not always successful with a pattern.  But that’s another story….

A new pocket for purple moose.

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When Edie was days old, our dear friend Anne presented her with a small stuffed purple moose that went on to become the toy that we couldn’t go anywhere without.  You know the kind.  She still sleeps with purple moose, although after getting lost in the covers of her big girl bed more than a few times, she’s tucked him into the pocket of a large pillow I made her, so she always knows where he is. 
When Edie was ready for a big girl bed, her Uncle Gil so kindly gave her one taking up space in his attic and included this lovely white coverlet.  It had belonged to one of his family members – Great Aunt maybe?  I can’t recall.  After many years of wear though, it started showing it’s age recently.  See?
It’s just given out in great big spots. 
Edie is off to Camp Lachlan on Sunday for the next three weeks.  She’s a bit nervous about this – three weeks away from home and she won’t know anyone.   Knowing she was going to want to bring purple moose along, I cut into the old coverlet yesterday and made a new travel pillow, with a pocket,  just for purple moose to go to camp.  I thought it would be a nice touch of home for her to have with her.
He is now ready for camp.  And she’s getting there.  Knowing she will have her most trusted companion in her beloved old coverlet has helped.  (I think shopping Monday for her toiletries, new trunk and picking up her new personalized stationary helped too.)
And I actually started AND finished a project in one afternoon.  Must have been the fact that the AC upstairs by the happy corner made that the most pleasant place in the house. Any excuse to stay up there…..

Writing Camp.

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When I tell people Edie is going to writing camp, they often misunderstand me and think we’re sending her to horseback riding camp.  And they like to share stories of their camp days with me.  No, WRITING, as in the Charlottesville Writing Center.  As in, she’s writing stories. 
Edie is alot like me – she’d rather spend her summer curled up with a book than doing swim team  or anything that requires a good bit of physical activity.  Our neighbor runs the writing center and when I heard about camp, I thought it might be something Edie would really like.  Last summer was her first summer to go and she loved it.  We noticed a difference in both her reading and writing abilities after her attending, as did her teachers at school.  She requested to go again this summer and so last week she did just that.
There they are on the first day of camp.  It was held in one of the art galleries downtown.  There was a mystery theme this year – it involved a missing painting and the writing center supplied a few prompts for the kids, like a list of suspects complete with mug shots and rap sheets.  Each story had similar elements – like a letter to someone and a mention of an enchilada, but the talking cat and superhero piranha were definitely creations of their own.  The kids were detectives and their stories were solving the crime.

The last day of camp, parents are invited to a reading.  The kids were encouraged to come in detective costume, and after convincing Edie that she really didn’t want to wear my long camel hair coat on a Virginia in July 90+ degree day (not to mention it’s really too long for her), I managed to talk her into her Picasso dress – after all, she’s undercover investigating art theft, yes?  Because no, I was not running out to buy her a trench coat and she would definitely be more undercover as an art fan than she would in a trench coat anyway.

Last year’s reading ended up on one of the local TV stations and included an interview with Edie.  While she didn’t get that kind of glory this year, she still thoroughly enjoyed camp this year.  She definitely is engaged and inspired the entire week.  This past spring, she started making books for us – collections of her ideas, stories, poetry – self published, one of a kind treasures.  And she has her own blog.  That was something we felt we couldn’t say no to, because of the creativeness of it, but we did have our concerns about internet safety.  So, it’s one of those super top secret blogs, one you have to be invited to view, one you have to have a password to view and mama gets full approval of who gets to see it.  (Pretty much anyone she wants to share it with, as long as she has your email address to send you the invite.).  I never cease to be amazed at her creativity.   The next few weeks of her summer are designed to foster and encourage that – she’s doing a week of camp at the Cooking School and then a week of art camp. And then, she’s doing three weeks at Camp Lachlan, because sometimes we all have to leave our comfort zones.  It will make her a better writer, yes?

Day 3, Purge.

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Day 2 of being unemployed found me full of anxiety and self doubt.  I’ve had a few interesting offers and I am fighting the feeling that I need to jump on them right away.  I want to take some time, figure out exactly what I want to do with myself and make sure I’m making the right decision.

This is the 4th time in 7 years I’ve been laid off.  I know the part-timer is always the first to go and I really prefer to work part time, so I guess that’s the downside of it.  When Edie was born, I did have plans to go back to work full-time and then just found I couldn’t.  I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else spending all that time with her while I was at the office.  Couldn’t stand the thought of what was I going to miss out on if I wasn’t around her.  I began to look at things in our life as how much would I have to work to pay that bill.  Things like car payments, cell phones, cable tv, were all measured in, do I truly need that?  No, I was quite happy to drive my car until it needed too much money sunk into it to stay on the road, almost 16 years.  While there might be some great shows I’m missing on cable, we just don’t watch that much tv and quite frankly, I didn’t want my child to regularly watch most of the garbage on the Disney Channel.  The fact that she had gotten comfortable turning on the tv and tuning it to that channel by her own toddler self was one of the deciding factors to let go of cable all those years ago.  And you can stream just about everything online these days anyway, so as long as you have a decent internet connection, you can get by.  Honestly, the only time we’ve come close to caving on hooking cable back up has been during college football season.  Thank you ESPN, for streaming so many games online and fixing that dilemma for us. 

I am sick and tired however, of getting laid off.  There is still a blow to the ego, despite knowing everytime that budget cuts have to be made.  There is still a feeling of I’m just not good enough.  I’m a walking textbook on our state unemployment insurance policies.  I am sick and tired of having to reinvent myself, of having to conduct a job search all over again, again wondering how long is this job going to last. 

It seems everytime I’m unemployed, many people around me tell me I should figure out how to make money at just being me.  I cook, I sew, I’m creative, if Martha Stewart can do it, why can’t I?  I made a small effort at it a few years ago and it went nowhere.  It was during Edie’s toddler years, when after getting laid off twice in a year and becoming extremely unsatisfied with my choices, or lack thereof, of decent, affordable, love-my-baby-as-much-as-I-do-options in childcare, I decided to heed what I thought was a message from the Universe. I went back to waiting tables at night, so I could be home during the day and tried to operate a home based business while being a stay at home mom.  When she started school, I went back to having an office job.  Which lasted for 2 years, until I got laid off.  I spent that summer pondering how to not go back to work and while I came up with some great ideas, I just didn’t go anywhere with them.  Instead, I got myself another part time job that has yet again, ended in a budget cut.  A cut of my salary.

I did however, come up with the idea of starting a blog, because I knew whatever creative, self-employed steps I needed to take, a blog would be an essential part of going about it.   I got sidetracked by that whole stomach tumor thing, but once I got through that and started making things again, I started this little blog,  in hopes of just keeping my creative spark alive.  Over the years, I’ve started many things, but not finished them.  I have a huge pile of unfinished projects upstairs, some of them I promised friends years ago. 
Through a good bit of the work I’ve done in therapy, as well as some of the other work,  reading and research I’ve done outside of therapy, I’ve realized that it’s completely par for the course for people who’ve had mothers like mine  to leave a trail of unfinished work, to not try as hard as you could.  To have a good bit of self doubt. To think that you are always going to fail, even when everyone around you thinks you are the greatest thing since sliced bread.  I don’t see the talent I have and I definitely don’t take credit for a good deal of my accomplishments.  I truly am my own worst enemy.  I am working to overcome this, but some days, like yesterday, it’s a struggle.

A few months back, I discovered a new to me blog, thanks to the posting of it on Facebook by a friend.  I immediately loved it.  The last few days, as I have struggled with myself, wondering, what am I doing to do now?  Can I really pull off something where I figure out how to do things without actually having to go to an office several days a week? What exactly is it that others see in me that is so great, this blog  had a few posts that just spoke so directly to me, that I began to think it was a message from the greater Universe.  So, after reading this and then this and finally this, I realized I needed to start by first of all, cleaning ‘the happy corner’ as Edie calls it.  The corner of our bedroom upstairs that is home to all my creative supplies.  I spent the day cleaning, purging and organizing things.  I used to save every cooking & design magazine I subscribed to and while years ago, I realized I turned to Epicurious when I couldn’t remember what old issue of Bon Appetit a certain recipe was in and finally got rid of all those, I still had a good 5 years of House Beautiful, Southern Living, Southern Accents, the old, dear, departed Mary Englebreit’s Home Companion, Martha Stewart Living (and Baby), taking up valuable space.  I went through them all and put them to the test by which I now allow myself to buy a magazine – are there at least 3 articles or projects in there that capture my attention to warrant giving up space?   Two big shelves of magazines, at least 6 stacks of them, have been reduced to half a shelf and 2 stacks.  I also purged a big stack of old craft books that I’ve received as gifts over the years that just didn’t do it for me.  I sorted through all the little bins I toss bits and pieces of things into, I cleaned out and organized the drawers I keep supplies in, I purged things I’ve been hanging onto thinking, oh I’ll use that.  You know what?  I haven’t and I won’t and if I do feel the need to use electric scissors, I’ll just go buy a new pair.

It felt cathartic as hell to do all that.  I feel rejuvenated and just so I wouldn’t reconsider, I dropped all the books and magazines off at the recycling center this afternoon.  (The place where I was going to drop off the craft supplies wasn’t open, so I left that bag in my car.  Hollar if you want a pair of unused, new in the box, vintage electric scissors.  Or any other crafty stuff….).  I spent the day considering my talents.  My current reading list are “The Martha Rules” by Martha herself, “Inspiration Sandwich” by Sark and a little self help book I picked up a while back entitled “It’s Your Life, What Are You Doing With It?”.  I’m making lists of what I think is feasible, I’m setting up coffee and lunch dates with a variety of friends who know or do some of the things I’m considering.  There’s a few of them.  I have a short attention span, I like multi-tasking, it’s really the only way I can think and work to be honest, is by doing 10 things at once.  I fail miserably if I’m only doing one thing at a time.  I also thrive in chaos, thanks to my childhood, so maybe I can make this work this time.  I have the support of my dear husband and many friends.  What do I have to lose?

The highlights.

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I have been cooking up a storm here lately.  It seems to be my creative bent these days. 

 
 

Roasted butternut squash, black bean, spinach, jack & goat cheese quesadillas with roasted tomatillo salsa and sour cream. (Squash & tomatillos from last summers garden!)
Fried tofu po-boys with homemade lemon tartar sauce.

French toast for breakfast from Irish Soda Bread.  Seriously good salads.  Jambalaya.  This weekend I’m thinking about rolling out a new brunch recipe I picked up recently. 
 
That’s the highlights from around here.   It keeps raining, winter is slowly fading into spring and none of my seeds have popped up in the 4 days they’ve been in dirt.  It seems like the only thing interesting to do around here is cook.