Spiders

Let's be frank, most of us don't like spiders, at least not in our house, or in places that suggest they were recently in contact with our skin.  I try diligently to take indoor spiders and reintroduce them to their natural habitats, if they make webs I'll often just leave them where they are.  Hunting spiders, however, are sometimes not so lucky.  Two days ago my dear friend, Erica, was over for dinner when from nowhere a large, black, menacing spider appeared and charged at me.  It then fell into the sink and um...did I mention we have a new garbage disposal?

Out of guilt and sadness, I decided to pay tribute to the spiders to have died at the hands of frightened humans such as myself with a delicious white cake with buttercream icing, flavored with lemon juice and homemade blackberry jam, and kumquat marmalade between the layers.  The cake recipe is from my vintage copy of The Joy of Cooking and the buttercream frosting from Wilton.  I will say that I used only butter, no vegetable shortening, and the consistency was a little soft for my decorating purposes.  I had a great time using my Wilton Basics cake decorating kit!  THANKS MA.

Leave a comment if you'd like the cake recipe!

Compensating for Cupcakes

Adored reading public,

Today, it is Justin's birthday.  With much pissing and moaning (on his part), I offered to make him cupcakes - and so I did.  But, being a the fool that I am, I made a terrible choice: I baked from an untested recipe, on a deadline.

I find cupcakes, and cake in general, to be a challenge not because I can't get it to puff evenly or it's grainy, rather, there's always something just a little off.  Just so much that I feel like I've failed.  Over, and over, and over...

This time was no different.  The batter was more like dough, and seemed to lack sufficient chocolatiness, and the cane sugar made them kind of...crunchy.  I baked half in a conventional muffin tin (and didn't fill the cups enough so there was no muffin-toping) and half in Chris' Muffin-Top tin - a cute baking devide that bakes only muffin tops with no bottom.  I have only tried one of the tops so far and found it too, uh, something.

Then there was the frosting.  Oh, the disappointment of the frosting.  It's supposed to hide the mediocrity of the cupcakes with it's creamy, fluffy goodness but instead, looked like thick orange-flavored melted butter with granules.  The whole thing was a relative disaster.

That said, presentation cannot be ignored when it comes to quantifying the enjoyment a dish can offer.  Even the tastiest cake is hard to sell, lopsided and crumbling.  My last resort with these tiny failures was the decoration, which I think I did rather well.

If you care to see if you have better luck with the recipe, it's from this blog.

Good luck!

Peas and Carrots and Potatoes, oh MY!

Aah, reading public:

The garden is doing it's gardeny thing - and because I haven't buckled down and made a seedling identification key for my planting plan, I can't tell who's who in the silent, tiny green melee.  The only little sprouts I can call by name are the Goliath Peas, carrots, a single rogue potato, and the Pak Choy that escaped from the bottom of the seed packet.

Potato!

Peas!

Carrots!

In the spinning realm, the progress made is much easier to see - I finished the first ball of yarn, started to fill the bobbin up again, and knitted a (somewhat useless) gauge swatch.  So far in the process, the most time consuming step is the carding and rolag-ing (the gentle rolling of the carded fiber into a log that's easy to spin from).  Looking for a way to increase my efficiency, I discovered the my Local Yarn Shop (LYS) has a drum carder they rent for only $10 an hour!  Thing is, in my conversation with one of their many lovely shop people, I was informed that there's something about the process of drum carding that increases the likelihood of pilling in your final garment.  So, I've resigned myself to carding by hand for the time being.

Check back for two recipes, Curry Carrot Soup and Savory French Toast!

xo,
Elizabeth


Love your local shops, check out:
A Verb for Keeping Warm
They offer reasonably priced classes, great advice, drop-in fiber-related circles, wonderful fiber and fiber-related equipment.

The Sowing of Wild Oats and Other Such Things

Dear reading public,

If you doubted the dedication of this young, inexperienced, meek urban farmer, you're probably not wrong to do so.  I am, in fact, all of those things, however I am also dedicated, idealistic, and good at guilting friends and family into helping me!

A couple such people, Mother and Danny, helped last weekend to put up a fence to discourage chickens from taking their dirt baths among the rows, and gobbling up all the seedlings that will soon be sprouting.  Yesterday before everything was planted, Chris and I caught one chicken trying to get in (there was still an easily accessible gap in the "Poultry Netting" aka chicken wire), and it got really flustered and ran zig zags to escape us.  We put up a temporary barrier to close the gap, and set about planting the following delectable seeds:

• Yellow and red beets
• Rainbow carrots
• Radishes
• Broccoli
• Goliath peas (How can they fail? No David's allowed!)
• Quinoa!
• Butterhead and assorted lettuces
• Pak choy
• Sweet red peppers

There are remaining seeds, including white pumpkins, acorn squash, cantaloupe, tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, parsley and cilantro that will be planted in planters (after we build some).  Otherwise, I worry that they'll run the other's out of town...

 FIRST AWFUL PUN FOR THE BLAG! (Counted)

There will soon be updates about knitting and spinning projects, as well as information about a super neat charity organization that offers fantastic products in exchange for your donations to specific causes.

Check back soon!

With love and good food,
Elizabeth

 Genovese, Cinnamon, and Thai basil

Mr. Danny watering le plants-to-be

 Chicken deterrent

 A wee sweet pepper seedling

Pak choy, peppers, lettuces

Thanks to such delightful people as MOM, Chris and Tyler Russell, and my dear Danny.