Spring Things

It's all happening, and I want to pay attention, truly I do.  Something new and pretty happens outside every day!
My oregano plant came back, which astounds me because I thought it was an annual.  I hope that I am gaining gardening skills every year, but man: I don't seem to make much progress overall.  The profusion of spring, green everywhere! all the pink flowers! weeds sneaking everywhere! It's just a little overwhelming. I signed up to get a red oak tree for our backyard, but I don't exactly know where and how I will plant it.
We are finally getting our soil tested after eating food from it for years - city soil can be laced with heavy metals, oh dear. But I have a serious vision of a grape arbor, so I'm checking the mail every day for our test results. My raspberries, both black and red, are growing by leaps and bounds; I pruned off old canes (I think) and got some nasty old thorns stuck in my skin.  I have started wearing my gardening gloves more faithfully.
Some days, I can only manage to grab at a weed as I take a break from writing and editing projects, or hang up and take down the endless laundry that my people require. We bought a badminton set, which the children love, and which caused my neighbor to look wistfully at their leaping and shrieking and tell me about her spring badminton matches with her four older siblings.
All of this eases my heart a little: my dear uncle died on Palm Sunday morning. He was full of juice and fun and nothing about spring or any season, actually, was wasted on him.  He paid attention, and he made everything into an adventure.  I cannot really believe that I will never see that adventurous gleam in his eyes on this earth again.  So my heart is a little broken, but I have vowed to Uncle Ron, wherever he is with God, that I will take inspiration from his approach to life.  See? Spring is so lush and vigorous, and I am looking.

My Children Match!

I can explain how this happened, but not the why.  Really do not understand the deep desire to dress my three children alike.  What is this? An orphanage with uniforms? A type of branding? What?  I cannot tell you, but my delight in these outfits (and these children) is real and true.

I asked Genevieve if she wanted me to make her a spring dress - she is definitely working on figuring out her style, so I deferred to her in pattern and fabric choice when she said yes.  Well, there was so much of the splashy daisies fabric hat I wondered if she'd like me to make Phoebe a dress and be twinsies.  Why yes, she thought that would be fun! Giddy, I then told Ben I should make him a splashy daisy bow tie but he said what about a shirt.  Well. Holy cow!  You see? I was in deep.

Genevieve resisted all the cutesy features on her dress pattern and kept it simple.  We had to have a number of fittings because the pattern was too big.  The plan was for her to wear her cute turquoise flats with the dress, but as I was hunched over the sewing machine, she outgrew the darn shoes.  Such is the way with kids at this age!

I played around with trims on Phoebe's dress, and I love how it turned out.  The white bias tape on the ruffles really punches them up.  I was thrilled with the lace placement I came up with on the bodice, a kind of Lilly Pulitzer look that I am itching to do again.  It didn't require a ton of lace and is much more effective than just a neck trim. 

As you can see, I ran out of splashy daisies for Ben's shirt.  He's so big! So I mixed in some navy gingham like it was on purpose. I thought he would wear this shirt with dark jeans, but he chose the shorts and Converse. His style veers towards flamboyant (hello, bow ties), so this shirt suits him well. 

I'm a little surprised I managed to churn out these clothes this spring! I can easily justify zoning out to Netflix and knitting every night, but I've been redirecting my waning energy to the sewing machine recently. Sometimes I do just go to bed when I'm too tired for anything but staring.  My daytime brain is for my freelance gigs. It was fun to pull off this splashy daisy project!

New Cookbook Review: The Food in Jars Kitchen

The Food in Jars Kitchen is a cookbook after my own heart: it uses little bits of food in clever, flexible ways and gives the home-canned pantry lots of work to do.  I've been keeping track over the years of what my family eats, so I've cut back on making jam because we don't go through much toast and jam.  Marisa is evangelical about people like me in her Introduction - there's so much more to do with jam than toast! She is giving me an "empty-jar-to-empty jar education."

When my copy came in the mail, I put my nose in it and my pencil to paper as I jotted down all the recipes I could make right away.  There are so many! I did make three before I wrote this post, and I will make all of them again.

Also, please note: I received this book free as a review copy, but my opinions and my decision to write a review are my own.

First, I made Popunders.  Isn't that the most adorable name? I made them one morning at breakfast time and while we did, indeed, spoon a little jam in their little hollows, I could also see a dab of cheese or pesto or a bit of anything that I would put on bread.  Popunders are super-fast to whip up, sugar-free, made with pantry staples and standard muffin pans, and just need 20 minutes in the oven, no-preheating needed.

 Even though Marisa recommends them hot from the oven, we found they made a perfectly fine snack at room temperature a few hours later.

For a family gathering, I made the Concord Grape Butter Pizza with Camembert.  Oh! that was delicious! When I make and can grape juice in the fall, I use the spent skins to make grape butter, so I've got plenty of grape butter on hand.

I followed Marisa's pizza crust recipe instead of using my standard favorite, and it was the perfect thickness and texture for its toppings as well as easy to make and handle.  Marisa also explains the ratio of sweet spread to cheese to green topping which is helpful to cooks who want to go off-recipe.  I used Brie instead of Camembert and chopped arugula instead of baby arugula.  So, so, so delicious. I will definitely be making this for future neighborhood potlucks.

Yesterday, I made Marisa's Jam-Lacquered Chicken Wings for supper (excellent name!). I buy whole chickens and when I cut them up to cook, I've been collecting the wings separately in the freezer.  I've never made wings before, just threw them into stock, but I was determined to try since Ben has requested wings several times. 

Marisa's recipe was very clear and produced excellent results.  I didn't know meat can literally cook under the broiler - I typically just use the broiler to brown something.  But the wings cooked under the broiler exactly as Marisa indicated.  To paint the wings, I finished up jars of fig jam and grape butter and added some tomato jam as well as enough runny pepper jam (from 2013! it was waiting for its destiny) to give them a nice kick.

Next time, I will salt the wings on both sides and also broil them on both sides to increase the caramelization.  I find it annoying to get my fingers so messy for such a little bit of  (ok, delicious) meat, but my family was loving these wings, so ok, I do love seeing my people enjoy their food. Too bad my fingers were too sticky to operate my camera!

There is really a lot more to love in this cookbook.  I'm going to use my onion jam in a Goat Cheese Savory Jam Tart, and I'm going to consider all the options for a jar of apple butter that I don't think we will spread on toast.  I appreciate Marisa's inclusion of some basic canning recipes in the final section because I have a deep yearning for Orange Marmalade Ice Cream and no marmalade in my pantry.

 I have two small quibbles with the book, both of which are typical of me and typical of most cookbooks being published (and probably not Marisa's decisions, either).  I prefer spiral bound cookbooks for kitchen use because it's tricky to get a stiff hardcover book to stay open while I cook. But good job keeping the recipes mostly on the same spread! It's also very tricky to turn pages between ingredient list and instructions while cooking.   I also prefer a very detailed index that includes major ingredients as entries so that I can look up recipes based on the ingredients they use, not just the recipe name or type.

I highly recommend the Food in Jars Kitchen cookbook.  It's beautiful to look at and full of recipes for daily cooking - from quick-the-kids-need-a-snack to the fancy-food potluck happening on the weekend. 

A Shirt Dress with Swiss Buttons and a Favorite Color

Many years ago, in our first year of marriage, my husband and I went on vacation in Switzerland, where everything really does look like the postcards.  At the time, I did not have a sewing machine or knitting needles or anything like that (I also did not have children or a teaching job or a house, just to orient you to how much of a baby I was).

Nevertheless, in Neuchǎtel, Switzerland, we went shopping in the market square, and I was drawn into a Bernina store. I bought bright buttons like someone buying candy.  All these years, they have been in their little paper Bernina bag in my button collection, where I take them out occasionally and finger them happily. In the meantime, I became the proud owner of a Bernina sewing machine and started to sew and make things in earnest.

As I do, I began to hunt through my fabric this fall in search of a dress. I settled on this plaid from a thrift store as a classic shirt dress.  And then, the Swiss buttons made perfect sense: a whimsical olive color, but not Too Much Drama with the plaid.  Oh, it made me so happy to use them after all these years!  I had just enough buttons for the front placket, so I used two pretty brown tulip buttons on the cuffs.

I made two additions to the dress that were not included with the pattern. I added side pockets to the dress - one of the perks of making clothes for myself!

Photos of me in this post courtesy of my husband

Also, I lined the skirt of the dress to make it even easier to pop on instead of hunting for a slip to keep the dress from sticking to my tights. My husband says these tights do not match the dress, but piffle: they go with the dress. Actually, lots of colors go with this dress, and I have the cardigans to prove it.

Gradually, it dawned on me that perhaps gold is also a favorite color of mine?  Look at the golden yellow trim on my house - I chose it.  Look at the turmeric benches at my church - I chose their color, too. I have mustard-colored pants, a yellow wallet, yellow sandals, on and on: obviously I have been choosing gold for years while saying blue is my favorite color.  Oh, I crack myself up.

Are you having a color crush currently? I might be having a tiny crush on purple, but no acquisitions to prove it.