Songs, skirts and scones

Seasonal? As in Christmas and the like? Well. Yes. I had ordered a fat quarter pack of Amy Butler’s Daisy Chain  and it didn’t arrive in time to decide on the right fabrics for the sewing project. My dear sister really wanted napkins, but as the fabrics are printed and in need for a lining (which I would probably get from Hancocks, i.e. another 6 week wait), I gave up on that. I offered to make her a ‘Mama bag’ from a pattern by the wonderful Amanda Soule instead (showing her the curtain trial one), and luckily she was quite happy with that.

For my brother-in-law I will attempt a stationary folder, so he can keep some work related headed paper and envelopes at home, just in case.

My nieces and nephew were lucky to have received their gifts by post today: two small bags (navy felt outer and turquoise Kona Solid, and Waverly Beach Umbrella Stripe Tropical Punch and orange felt) to contain ipod/cd-players and attached wires and headphones, and one pouch for hair accesoires (aqua felt, and Midwest Modern Garden Maze).

I was ready to start on the Mama Bag tonight, until I realised I hadn’t washed the fabrics yet. Okay, new rule: receive fabrics, wash them within the day!

On this last day of a very good and happy 2009, we decided to bake some ginger bread houses! I didn’t have the time  (or patience) to look up how to cut, decorate and stick the various pieces together, so I used the ginger bread men recipe in Cooking with kids by Linda Collister and played it by ear after baking (yes, me, not following a recipe or instructions!) I had cut out some paper templates beforehand and straight out of the oven, slice the biscuit along the edges of the templates. Then I let it cool completely so the left over bits could be snapped of (oh my, so tasty!).

Both girls then got their own house parts and shared a bowl of creme cheese icing and hundreds and thousands, painting on doors, windows and faces (as this is quite a common feature of ginger bread houses . The assembling of the pieces was quite tricky (nonono mummy, not on there!) and after a few collapses they stayed up long enough to be photographed and transferred to the kitchen to await the moment of demolition tomorrow morning. During cooking some icing melted and we were left with ruined farmhouses, but, as Hendrikje said, it will still taste nice. Indeed it will, sweetheart!

All pictures can be viewed here.

A couple of months ago, I was looking online for examples of dens, because I was thinking of turning one of the Stokke Sleepis into a play den. Somehow I ended up on Amanda Soule’s  and couldn’t stop reading. I think I tore myself away hours after my usual bedtime and even then I couldn’t sleep, because of all the ideas floating through my head! Amanda writes about her life as a mum of four, wife to one, about creating wonderful and meaningful things by recycling materials, about homeschooling, etc. etc, etc. Her witty, inspirational and sometimes moving posts are laced with beautiful photographs. After having read through her entire (!) archives, I decided I wanted a little bit of that happy homemaking feeling in our own house and bought her two publications:

So, first things first: just before Tjabering was born I had finished a Plain Spoken quilt, from a pattern out of the Modern Quilt Workshop book, published by Fun Quilts. That book contains a series of modern quilt patterns that range from dead simple to veeeeery complicated. I had bought over 25 different colours for that quilt and had ample material to make one each for the girls as well. As soon as that idea came into my mind, I wanted it. I wanted my three children to have something that I made for them, but also something that would connect them as brother and sisters.

After a while I thought it would be a good idea to get started on Hendrikjes quilt, but I never got further than cutting a couple of circles for an Eclipse quilt, also from Modern Quilt Workshop book. Up to September 2009 I didn’t think it would ever be finished, let alone that my youngest daughter would get one! But after the website visit, I got going and finished the top just before Hendrikje’s sixth birthday (12 October).

Unfortunately she wanted flowers quilted, not just nice straight lines…Quilting flowers on a sewing machine is not something you should enter lightly. So, a day before Christmas *yikes* she was able to unwrap her quilt and, thank goodness, it has been in use daily!

Now it is on to Kathrijn’s quilt. I veered away from my intention to make all three quilts from the Workshop book, and am now contemplating the stacked coin quilt from Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. Slightly more quirky than traditional stacked coin quilts I have seen, because of the different sizes of the coins and the larger borders. Although Kathrijn keeps complaining that she wants a PINK quilt, I will make her this quilt. (And a pink one as well, yes. The Moda ‘Sent with Love’ Layer Cake is on its way!)

It’s the end of the year and unwillingly the urge to make resolutions creeps up. As we are both overweight, not to say obese, we have decided to do something about it. Paul knows that cutting out wheat and dairy does him an awful lot of good, as he found out when we once decided to maintain an Ayurvedic diet. The Ayurvedic diet is based (simple said) on your Ayurvedic dosha, or your constitution. Food can either balance or aggravate your dosha. Sticking to the foods that balance you will balance you out. Initially sceptic, the survey we did from the Ayurvedic Cookbook by Amadea Morningstar took away our doubts. After I had answered all the questions about life style, bodily functions etc, particular foods, my constitution turned out to be Pitta. The foods I should avoid, such as tomatoes and spinach, are indeed foods I like, but can give me trouble. Sticking to the right foods for our respective doshas not only helped us loose weight, but gave us a lot of energy (and libido…).

After a while it turned out we both missed a piece of meat every now and then, and were ready for some veg, potatoes and sausages! Also, we aren’t very keen Indian food lovers and wanted a change in food. We therefor got the Ayurvedic Cookbook for Westerners, which increases the variation. We have kept the cook books and refer to them once in a while to see if there is any reason why a particular food is giving us trouble.

With a dairy and wheat free diet for Paul, it does of course mean that all my nice attempts on cake, muffins etc will be left unsampled (if I even dare bake them) by him. Luckily I have two workplaces where the staff always seem grateful for anything to eat besides their lunch! I will however try and bake more bread in the future. Straight forward breads, fancy breads, sweet breads, savoury, ah the possibilities! As long as it can be baked in the bread machine I am all game !

Last night I thought I would surprise Paul by baking a spelt bread. I bought some wheat free bread flour and  spelt flour (http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/), combined them with salt, sugar, oil, water and dried yeast and left them to the bread maker to work its magic. (B.t.w. dried yeast keeps for a long time when kept in the freezer. If you use yeast often, buy a big pack and transfer the yeast to a freezer safe container. This way you will always have enough yeast, rather than having to fiddle with those 7 gram foil packets.) When it was nearly time for the first rising, some dough was concentrated around the dough hook, while about half of the ingredients looked as if they were trying to escape the tin. Grmbl. A few pokes with a wooden spoon (watch the fingers!) and a little splash of water forced the reluctant flour back in the course of the hook, finishing up with a nice soft dough. Three hours later, a small, heavy but yummy bread was ready for consumption!

I need to make my way back to the bread machine bakers forum and get some ideas….

Paul, my husband, bought had a whole net of lemons for our midwinter celebration. His thinking was: midwinter, snow, cold, surely they all want hot whiskeys. Euhm, no. The lemons started to look a little bit sorry for themselves, so it time for action today: I needed to cook something with them.  Gosh, I wonder what I should make with that .

As I also wanted to repaint our dining room wall, I opted for a fairly fast to make lemon sponge cake, from Leiths Baking Bible. Made like an ordinary sponge cake , with some lemon and orange rind. But then, but then, ah. You take a skewer, drill holes in the still warm cake and drizzle/pour a lemon/orange juice syrup over the top and let the cake cool completely while it is soaking itself full of the syrup.

I can tell you, the eating is good. But do you know the best bit of this cake (and other citrus cakes)? The smell of lemon rind. And the smell only improves when you switch from grating (yes, grating) the lemon to actually rinding the lemon. Bliss, I have just bought a proper citrus rinder. I could just rind something for fun and the smell!

I had thought to add some tips to this post for colleague novice bakers about :

• how always to read the recipe before you start;
• get everything set out before you start;
• always to wait with putting your work in the oven until it has properly preheated AND
• to always check if the work is properly cooked.

Only to take my own cake out of the oven way too early. Read recipe? Yes. Got everything ready? Yes. Waited with baking until oven was preheated? Yes. Checked and double checked that the cake was ready???? Euhm… I only did the finger test (push in the middle and if cake springs back: done), which was fine. I didn’t do the skewer or knife test( stick it in the middle, if it comes out wet, it still needs some more baking. When I was making the holes I wasn’t really paying attention, nor when I poured over the syrup. After half an hour, the middle of the cake had collapsed, properly collapsed. After spooning it out and putting the icing on, I could pretend it was supposed to be that way: a nice ring cake, sure *cough*!

This blog is about what I sing, sew and bake. Although no expert at any of this, I get inmense pleasure from learning another song whilst doing the dishes, sewing together a nice bag or baking a sumptuous cake! As long as I have my recipes, patterns (and sewing machine!) and recordings at hand, I am not at all bad!
For myself, I hope the blog will be a nice record of the things I make and do; for visitors, I hope that it will inspire people to go and try what they want to, even if they think they cannot do it!

If you wish to leave a comment on one of the posts, click on the title to open the post, you’ll find a comment box below it. If you would like any of the recipes of things I have baked, let me know in the comment and I’ll be happy send it to you!