Knitting for a Car Trip

I'm going away this weekend, and my first thought was what handwork I could do in the car.  So I'm picking up the socks again.  I did not progress well on them last winter, but this time, I got them off to a good start with minimal fuss and only one youtube tutorial, so I'm hopeful.

I'm sitting at this very desk in my room, typing to you (and eating the last piece of sour cherry pie from the last Christmas gathering).

Actually, I'm feeling a knitting period coming on.  I saw Jodi's scarf.  I saw Leila's shawl.  I want to make both those things.  I foresee lots of weekly knitting as I watch Downton Abbey on the PBS website (no TV here, and generally no desire to go out into the cold and dark on Sunday nights to someone else's TV).

 

That's my happy little coaster that I made for my room a while back.  I noticed it as I was snapping a photo of the future sock this morning.

 

I'm feeling apathetic about sewing right now and I haven't explored why.  Occasionally I rouse myself to quilt a bit on Ben's quilt.  I'm sure all creative people have these waves, so I'm just going to ride it up and down.  Happy weekend to you!

Cranberry Experiments

I adore cranberries, but I usually do two things with them: cranberry applesauce and fresh cranberry relish which my mother-in-law always requests for Thanksgiving. I've also made cranberry orange bread, which was good.

So, I branched out. I saw an idea from Martha Stewart for cranberry cobbler, but I didn't put enough sugar in and it was terribly sour, even with ice cream. But so pretty! But sour.

 

Then I made pickled cranberries, partly because they called for juniper berries and I was curious. I was so disappointed that the juniper berries did not announce their presence in the pickled cranberries that I thought I didn't like the pickled cranberries. They do really taste like a sweet pickle to me, except that there's cranberry influence. But the flavor is not exotic.

We were not crazy about adding the marinade to seltzer. Apparently, a vinegar drink is a shrub, a drinking vinegar. I like vinegar, but I was suddenly reminded of a time when I was plagued with UTIs (no more details needed!) and one of the remedies was drinking vinegar if cranberry juice was not around. I do not want to remember those days. I guess I'm biased against shrubs.

I do like these pickled cranberries, although they are a bit too tart and puckery to eat on their own; they are marvelous with bread and cheese, next to chicken and turkey, or any bland winter meal that needs a kick.

 

Any other cranberry experiments I should do?  I still have some bags in my freezer.

Easy-Peasy Lasagna

I think this is my favorite lasagna, even over the homemade noodle version I raved about.  The texture is perfect, there's no pre-cooking, and it's a flexible recipe.  I made this in the December scramble and even bought spaghetti sauce to use in it instead of making my own!  Up until now, I haven't kept lasagna noodles in my pantry as a matter of course, but this recipe has changed that.  Now they are a staple.  The store-bought spaghetti sauce is not.

 

 

The flavor of the sauce is key.  Keep it loud enough because it's paired with bland noodles and cheese.  Also, the ratio of sauce to uncooked noodles in this crockpot recipe is important so that the noodles have enough moisture to cook, but not too much to be soupy at the end. 

I subbed in spinach and mushrooms for the ground beef, but you could always add a few slices of sausage or pepperoni, or put in some bell peppers or olives. 

Here the lasagna is served with homemade Italian bread and roasted, marinated Brussels sprouts.

 

Easy-Peasy Vegetarian Lasagna (I got the basic plan from Convenient Slow Cooker Lasagna in the Fix-it and Forget-it Big Cookbook)

1/2 lb. sliced mushrooms
1/2 lb. chopped fresh spinach
5 cups spaghetti sauce, the more herbs the better
12 oz. package uncooked lasagna noodles
3 cups grated mild white cheese, mozzarella is expected
1 1/2 cups ricotta cheese or cottage cheese
1/4 cup water (if your sauce is on the thin side, skip the water)
grated Parmesan

1.  Grease the insert of a 6-quart crockpot.
2.  Mix together the ricotta and grated white cheese.  Set aside.
3.  Put a little spaghetti sauce on the bottom of the insert.  Put half the mushrooms on top.  I put a few grinds of pepper in here.
4.  Add a layer of noodles on top, breaking as necessary to fit them in, and covering the mushrooms as completely as possible.
5.  Spread 1/3 of the cheese mixture over the noodles.  Add some spinach, some sauce, more noodles, more cheese, etc. etc. Sprinkle in some dried herbs if you think your sauce is not assertive enough.  I always use fennel with Italian tomato sauces.  You'll use up all the stuff except for maybe a few noodles (I suppose you could work to fit them all in - what on earth do you do with a few random lasagna noodles hanging around? Maybe add another tablespoon of water if you use the whole box.).  End the layers with sauce on top. Pour the water in at the edge so as not to disturb the layers.    Sprinkle with Parmesan.
6.  Clap the lid on the slow cooker, turn to high for 30 minutes, then low for 4 hours.  Keep in mind that slow cookers do vary in temperature, so just keep an eye on it the first time you make it.

A New Stack of Library Books

There is a librarian who watches out for me because she knows I like to make things.  I am so warmed by her kindness and interest.  She will catch a book going through the system and put it aside for me.  When I went to the library to pick up some other books I had reserved (The Homemade Pantry, Vintage Cakes), there was a surprise from her rubber-banded to the others:  a mending book.  My heart jumped.  Mending!  Codified!  Explained! Photographed!

 

I didn't get to have a Sunday afternoon on the couch with the books because I was at the last Christmas gathering with my dad's side of the family.  I truly didn't mind.  They are lovely, polite people who know how to make conversation, so it's truly enjoyable to spend the day with them catching up.

 

So these books will be my bus reading this week and next. Have you read any of them?

Grandma's Christmas Bread, Russian Kulich

Maybe it's because strokes have reduced my grandma's vocabulary to "yes" that I have lots of questions for her. One of my burning questions: Grandma, how did you make your Christmas bread? I asked my mom and several aunts to see if they knew where the recipe came from. Luckily for me, Aunt Elena had copied it down and she generously went out of her way to get it to me. She warned me that the bread never rose very well for her.

 

Grandma made this bread every Christmas. It has a mixed reception in the family. I wasn't sure I remembered the exact taste, but I have a very clear memory of Tampa, Florida, in the 1980s at Aunt Elena's house on a quiet street in a development, on a shiny, sunny Christmas morning. I was standing next to the counter close to the screened-in porch, there was a toaster, and it was scenting up the kitchen toasting Christmas bread. Cousins were running and screaming everywhere and I was wearing shorts in the middle of winter. Lovely.

So I hunted around for the weird fruit-ish things in this bread and started a batch.  Then, I googled the name, "Russian Kulich," which was also written on the recipe.  Turns out, it's Russian Easter bread.  Now I have another burning question for Grandma:  Grandma, how did this Russian Easter recipe get into our Swiss-German family and why do you make it at Christmas, not Easter?

In 1994, I was in Russia over Easter time and I do recall eating a tall, eggy white bread.  I do not recall fruit in the bread, but it was a gorgeously elaborate Orthodox Easter, so I'm sure I've forgotten some details.

 

I am so pleased with this bread; it's delicately fruity and not overly sweet.  We had our bread toasted with butter, alongside grapefruit halves and homemade eggnog.  Ben worked very hard with the grapefruit knife for the first time, a pleasant little kitchen chum. It was the perfect winter white morning outside, and then the sun broke over the breakfast table.

Russian Kulich - Grandma's Christmas Bread

1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 eggs
2 cups white-whole-wheat flour
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
grated rind of 1 large lemon
grated rind of 1 orange
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1/4 cup dark raisins
1/2 cup citron (fruit cake mix)
1/4 cup chopped candied cherries
oil

1.  In a saucepan, heat milk until almost boiling.  Turn off heat.  Add sugar, butter, and salt.  Stir.  Set aside to cool to lukewarm.
2.  Combine yeast with warm water in large bowl.  Add lukewarm milk mixture and eggs. 
3.  Add 1 1/2 cups flour, either kind, and beat well with a sturdy whisk for 2 minutes.
4.  Add the zest, nuts, and fruits.  Stir.
5.  Add enough flour to make a soft dough.  Knead 5-8 minutes, until satiny.  Form into a tight ball.
6.  Lift up the ball of dough and pour a tablespoon of oil in the bowl.  Rub the dough in the oil and oil the dough and the bowl.  Put a damp kitchen towel over the dough in the bowl and allow to rise until nearly doubled - 1-2 hours or a little more.
7.  Punch down and allow to rest for 10 minutes.  Form 3 loaves, oil them, and place in greased 8x5 bread pans.  Cover again with damp towel and allow to rise until almost double, maybe 1 hour.
8.  Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.  Turn out of pans to cool completely.  Slice when cool.  Excellent toasted with butter.  Mom recalls that Grandma used to ice the tops of her loaves with confectioners sugar icing and then decorate them with cherries and green frosting leaves.

Notes on the recipe: 
a. You can replace the white whole wheat flour with white flour, but I would not use regular whole wheat flour in this recipe; this is a delicate, eggy bread and the white whole wheat flour is unobtrusive.

b. Grandma's recipe called for candied orange peel, but I couldn't get my hands on any and didn't feel like making it; plus, I figured the fresh orange zest would give the bread a nice lift.

c.  It's because this is a family recipe that I'm willing to use this crazy candied crap fruit.  It's loaded with preservatives, coloring, and other stuff I can't pronounce and am pretending not to see.  La la la la la, not listening!

d.  Unlike Aunt Elena's, I think my bread rose just fine and baked up beautifully.  I made sure to give it plenty of time to rise, however.

 

e.  If you're going to lose all your words and be left with just one, isn't it beautiful that the word is "yes?"  I love you, Grandma.  I love making your bread and tasting memories.

Up in the Air So Blue

Our Christmas gift to the children this year was an airplane ride, the four of us together, with our friend a pilot. 
It was perfect. 
It was breathtaking. 
I thought we might die, but fortunately I kept the drama in the closet and see! we came back fine. 

 

The plane was so tiny - like riding in a Chevette that sounded like a lawn mower - and we skimmed under the clouds, looking at all the little Matchbox cars and dinky buildings beneath us.

 

I did fill up stockings with little treats for Christmas morning, but the real gift was the airplane ride. Ben had never been in an airplane before and had begged for a ride, and then one of our friends wanted to keep his license in practice, and thus, the gift materialized! Our friend could not accept payment for the ride because of the kind of license he has, so we are planning to thank him and his wife with a meal. 

I would really like to move in this direction for gifts, instead of accumulating more things.  The children were so excited, and being the only grandchildren on both sides of the family, they received plenty of loot, too, which is still laying around waiting for me to figure out where to put it.

 

 



preventing the birds from nesting in the engines

I took the post title from this charming poem which my children love by Robert Louis Stevenson. Genevieve especially loves to swing.  I find the words apt for our Christmas plane ride, too!

 

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

 

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside - -

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown - -

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!

A New Journal on the First Day of the New Year

I read this yesterday:

"'Unless a person has a lot of psychological tools at her disposal, the mind is not a pleasant place to inhabit,' says Germer.  'We have evolved for survival, not happiness, and thus we have a natural tendency to focus on the negative.'  When the brain is at rest, he adds, it tends to get busy revealing problems from the past and anticipating problems to come.  Once we scanned for predators and poisons, now we fret over the unemployment stats and what our mother-in-law had the nerve to say at dinner."  (quoted from Real Simple, January 2013, page 92; Christopher Germer is a clinical psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School and the author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion)

To counteract our negative fretting, the article goes on to recommend paying attention to what's around us with our senses.  Touch the flower.  Sniff the baby's hair.  Taste the bread.  Look at the sky.  Listen to the violin.  It's also called mindfulness, or living in the moment. 

For the first time in my life, I get it. 

And for the first time in my life, I am starting a new journal on the first day of the new year.  My old journal is actually filled up; it's got ranting, crying, poetry, prayers, and touchstones.  But my intent for this new journal is to fill it with gratitude, to make lists of where I notice God's mercy in my life.  I noticed Christian and Beth doing this - I finally caught on! 

The old journal on the left; I made the collage on the cover.

These last few years have been difficult years for me - this blog was born out of some of that difficulty as a way to take note of the good things in my life, to gently discipline myself to focus on the good.  The flip side of that discipline is that, unless you know me in real life, you may not know of my difficulties and bad days.  Please know that my life is not perfect because nothing damages our sisterhood more than pretend perfection; however, the public forum is not the place for me to tell every negative thing that passes through my heart and mind.  Face-to-face, oh yes, I'll tell you!

So, my gratitude journal is what amounts to a New Year's resolution for me.  I'm pondering some more resolutions, too, but although I am a goal-oriented person, I do not take them on lightly.  I'll report back if I add some more goals. 

The new journal had no spiral to put a pen, so I made a little sleeve to hold one.

Happy New Year, my friends!  I'm so grateful you're on this strange, joyful journey with me.