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My dad and mom gave me a sewing machine for Christmas, and I am sad that I haven't mentioned it until now, but here it is. The Brother. See the below photo and read the label, it's the Project Runway edition! Speaking of Project Runway, I have a confession to make. When the show first came on and it seemed like everyone was crazed with PR adrenaline, I totally brushed it off and thought something like, These people are such weirdos, all they do is sit around and watch stupid reality shows. Well, friends, family, countrymen...I'm here to tell you that on a Saturday about a year ago, I was glued to 6 hours of a PR marathon on Lifetime (yep, you read that correctly). I watched the first episode, and I don't know if it was the burst of color in Mood Fabrics or the inflection of Tim's voice when he said, "My rules, your style," but I was hooked for the rest of the afternoon. And then I wanted to buy one of those $250.00 dress forms that would allow me to design and assemble an outfit from the creations in my head with a big smorgasbord of fabric and pins...I just knew a sweet outfit would appear like magic. Little did I know how difficult it would be for me to even sew a straight line on The Brother.

R. in the Real World presents The Brother.

My mom has sewn for years. I think she popped out of the womb and sewing was inherent in her. For years, I watched her sew dresses, curtains, professionally hem pants/skirts with her over-lock machine, etc. She can sew anything. And everything she makes is as close to perfect as it can get; seams are matched, textile designs are matched, no strings are hanging off of the edges. You can imagine my childhood shopping days spent at Gap comparing all the size small white crewneck tee shirts that they had in the store. Which one was longer? Were the seams matched up under the arms? Did the grain of the fabric match on the shirt's side seams? Anyways, I never really thought the sewing bug would hit me, but alas, after making jewelry for over 10 years of my life, I felt a little burned out with the beading and thought I would like to be able to make useful things besides luxury items. It must have been the bad economy that reminded me of the diminishing jewelry sales I was experiencing. At my favorite store on the Downtown Mall, O'Suzannah's, I bought an amazing book called Simple Sewing: Patterns and How-To for 24 Fresh and Easy Projects by Lotta Jansdotter. I have yet to find a sewing class in this town that doesn't conflict with my immediate schedule, but I do want to take a beginner sewing class, just to help me grasp some foundational concepts about sewing. I learn by doing, so when I look at a diagram, it's extremely difficult for me to magically see the whole concept that the instructions are trying to explain in a 2"x2" picture. Instead of taking a sewing class, I have been reading all the projects and their instructions in Simple Sewing and another book by Amy Butler called In Stitches. Most likely, I will continue in this method forevermore, even after attending a sewing class or two. The first thing I ever made on The Brother, besides the obvious trial of all 50 stitch designs it will do on scrap pieces of fabric, was a set of 4 napkins for my friend J.'s birthday , using instructions from Simple Sewing.

My first sewing project! This picture makes me laugh because every time I take a picture of something, this table cloth is in the photo, along with my red salt & pepper shakers...

I made these in February, and honestly, I thought they took forever to complete from start to finish. The seam lines were totally crooked. In a hilarious way. Personally, I thought they resembled a sewing project that a toddler may have done, but I guess this project just goes down in the books as the set of napkins with "character." Then again, it was my very first project...and my super awesome mom wasn't sitting across the kitchen table from me giving me pointers from all her bank of sewing experience.

When I learn new things, I am very ambitious. For instance, as my second sewing project ever, I wanted to make the below "all day tote" from Simple Sewing. Who wouldn't want to make that? It holds a newspaper and a water bottle! It wasn't difficult to make, but the only project I'd ever done with a sewing machine prior to this was hemming the edges of a piece of square-shaped fabric aka the set of 4 napkins.

I have no clue how long it took me to make this bag. I wanted black & white polka dots on the outside, but I loved that pink and green floral print for the liner. In an attempt to bring the warm pinks and greens together in a collaboration with the black & white polka dots and downplay the stark contrast, I satin-stitch-embroidered (by hand, people, no Brother involved on that endeavor) with embroidery floss on some random dots on the front panel pocket and on the back panel of the bag in 3 colors: a light spring green, light pink and a padparadscha/coral shade. Like I said, "character." When assembling the bag with pins prior to stitching it up, I found myself reading through each numerical instruction over and over and over again. Literally. I had already read the whole project about 2 or 3 times prior to even cutting the fabric for the bag, and I would read each step twice, get the pins positioned just right, and then before I surrendered the subject to the powers of The Brother, I would read the instruction one more time and then second guess myself. It was quite the time consuming venture, but now it's all done. All I know is that I can't keep track of how many times I read and reread instructions.

R. in the Real World presents: Jill, the black & white polka dot all-day tote. Even though it's an inanimate object, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't give her a name.

As you can see, my sewing life has overtaken the kitchen table and the ironing board. A lack of workspace causes one to become very creative in how to execute projects...I've noticed myself using the ironing board as counter space when preparing food, maybe if I threw a table cloth or tapestry over it, it'd be a cool buffet for when I have people over for dinner. By the way, I killed a humongo centipede this morning in my apartment. When I saw him, it made me gasp, and then I got really mad that he was even hanging out in my apartment in the first place. I smashed him with an Old Navy flip flop, a very handy and useful implement in my apartment.

Dreams of Our Fathers

Hey everybody! I feel like I haven't posted forever; it's because I've been having too much fun enjoying the warm weather, having awesome company, traveling some and trying my hand at a brand new medium of craftasticity for me, but I'll get to that for my next post. My cousin J. visited me a couple weekends ago, and I want to document that a little bit because the weekend marked something significant for me. Not only did I have an awesome time with J., but I went to Monticello, la casa de Thomas Jefferson, for the first time ever. I know, I've been in Charlottesvegas for almost 5 years, and I even went to UVa, but I had never been to the home of "The Father of the University" until 2 weeks ago!

First, we went to the Downtown Mall for some Saturday farmers market action, to show J. where I nine-to-five it and to eat the always delicious Christian's Pizza. When we got down there, the Dogwood Festival Parade was also going on! I didn't even know there was such a thing. Did you know that the dogwood is Virginia's state flower and state tree? Two birds with one stone; I like that kind of resourcefulness.

This is Miss Dogwood Queen.

J., H. and I went up to Monticello in the afternoon! I was standing in TJ's backyard when I took this one. J. and I in the Southeast Piazza, which was pretty much TJ's personal quarters' very own miniature greenhouse. This little peephole through the trees is how TJ looked down on his beloved University being built and watched his dream unfold into a reality. The Rotunda is the white blob in the bottom right of the tree cutout. I wonder how often they trim the branches on the trees to keep UVA in view... We also made the peposo I wrote about some time ago from the pork tenderloins from my brother's hog (seared with freshly ground black peppercorns), some Yukon gold potatoes, onion rings and about 6 garlic cloves, drenched in Cabernet Sauvignon and baked for 1.5 hours in the Dutch oven. Beautiful. And delicious!

Salt and Pepper

This past weekend was just lovely. JavaLady, H., H.'s mother and I went wine tasting on Saturday and then H. and I made dinner for the girls. I recently bought a book called Salt & Pepper that talks about all the different types of salts and peppers and how best to cook with them. I am in the process of cleaning out my old and expired spices, and what better way to replenish seasonings than with different varieties of the basics? So that's just what I'm doing. I have bought four new things. I bought some bulk organic black peppercorns and organic white peppercorns from Whole Foods. I also bought some Himalayan pink salt-I thought the label was funny because it said as a subtitle: Primordial Salt; that's some old salt, folks. Apparently, Himalayan pink salt is harvested from 200-million-year-old-dried-up-inland seas and its pink color comes from trapped iron deposits. It's so pretty, and it's a good all-purpose salt.

The fourth item was a little difficult for me to track down. In short, I searched Charlottesvegas dry for it: pickled green peppercorns. I'd never heard of them, but several of the recipes in the book had it in them, so I hunted and called and got recommendations until the last place I went surprisingly had them. Harris Teeter. I'm an idiot. I searched every specialty store in town and no one had it except HT. Another little digression here. About a month ago, I had a dream about a mortar and pestle (That's pathetic isn't it?) and was telling H. about it because I thought it was really weird. A few days later, yours truly was the proud owner of a brand spanking new marble mortar and pestle, compliments of H., and this weekend was the first time I used it. I really shouldn't say I, because H. ended up man handling black peppercorns in it (those things are tough!). I read that if you crush them in the mortar with a pestle, they release some good oils that add great flavor, versus just grinding them; apparently it doesn't have the same effect.

Here is H. crushing black peppercorns:

We prepared sharp white cheddar, crushed black peppercorn and garlic stuffed chicken breasts...

...with roasted asparagus and cherry tomatoes with fresh, garlic-infused olive oil (that H. made last weekend) drizzled over top.

And pickled green peppercorn and Parmesan shortbread (some homemade crackers with dindin): And the finished product: Here's JavaLady enjoying a glass of vino and a shortbread while we prepared dinner.

Not pictured: Chocolate chip yogurt cake with chopped pears on top....this one's becoming a regular in my kitchen. This was the first of hopefully many salt and pepper inspired dinners that will go under the belt.

Birthday

H. recently had a birthday, so we had a party on Saturday, and what birthday party is complete without birthday cake? He wanted a yellow cake, and c'mon, I just couldn't use a box mix. I'm qualifying this cake as worthy of going on the chocolate cakery shenanigans because it had chocolate icing. I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and I think it's the best cake I've ever made. So good. I did, however, alter the frosting recipe. I wasn't really in the mood for buttercream, but I didn't know how chocolate sour cream frosting was going to turn out. Using Smitten Kitchen's recipe as my base, I altered it accordingly:

1 bag Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 heaping cup sour cream
1 heaping cup low-fat vanilla yogurt
3/4 t. vanilla extract
1/4 c. light corn syrup plus some drizzle over the top

Melt chocolate chips. Combine all other ingredients. You want to have the yogurt and the sour cream mixture at room temperature (and let the chocolate cool off before adding it to when you add the melted chocolate chips) or it will kind of curdle, apparently. Anyways, mix all together and refrigerate until it's a good consistency to spread: 30 minutes to an hour. The frosting has a ganache-like consistency and it's a great alternative to buttercream if you're trying not to become a lardhead with all five sticks of butter in that frosting. It was a little tangy, but nothing a little corn syrup can't fix!

Here I am, frosting the cake, with cold spinach dip sitting in front of me, smelling the hot reuben dip and stuffed mushrooms in the oven. Sounds tempting, but when I make something or stand in a kitchen for a long time smelling the food I'm making, it makes me not want to eat it. When it's finally prepared, I don't want it anymore. I'm finding that cooking is all about the experience of creating rather than eating, for me at least. We made 14 pounds of pulled pork barbecue in some Crock Pots for the party; I couldn't eat it until the next day.

Here's the cake mid-party:


Prior to all the cooking we did for the party on Saturday night, though, H, Javalady and I went to the farmer's market, and H. bought me these lovely tulips to go in a Mason jar for the party. Aren't they beautiful! And since H. loves garlic more than life, he made 3 big bottles of garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil....while we were cooking for the party. It was an incredibly productive day!

Octopus's Garden

I've been wanting to plant some herbs. For a long time. Every time I moved into a new apartment in college, my mom would encourage me to get a plant for it, that it would look homier, etc. I was always hesitant about that because well, I've always associated the buying of plants with something only adults do, maybe that's dumb. Every time I chatted with my mom about wanting a plant one day, she always told me that I could buy one anytime, but I usually responded with something like, You'll know I've become an adult when I get a plant. Well, I'm happy to say that I have planted 4 of my own plants, and in March, I helped H. plant some as well. So we've got more than 8 herbs going between the two of us! And there's also a humongo rosemary plant on the side of the house that I live in, so fresh rosemary anytime! H. hearts pesto, so he planted 3 varieties of basil, some spearmint and yesterday, he added thyme and sage to his collection. I love fresh mint in tea, so yesterday I planted some spearmint for myself, Mediterranean oregano, cilantro and allegedly, Italian parsley. I say allegedly because I'm a dim-wit that didn't read the seed packet instructions prior to sowing; apparently you have to soak parsley seeds in warm water overnight. I will be sowing the parsley post-work today.

Here's the pink dogwood bloom's view of the operation:

I painted the pots to increase their cuteness value outside my door, but more importantly, I'm really bad at the look-at-a-plant-and-know-exactly-what-type-of-plant-it-is phenomenon. I would like to be better at that. I think the labels will help, although, I think a few plants are pretty obvious.

Sorry, parsley, you'll be a day behind the others. It's ironic because you take the longest amount of time to germinate. Dangit.

I have a little tip to impart as far as potting plants goes; I read it in a magazine once. When you're planting in a pot with a drain hole, put a piece of sponge over the hole before adding the potting soil, as the pot won't drain water as quickly, thus making less of a mess and eliminating the need to add tons of additional water to a dried-out plant. Also according to the seed packets, spearmint and oregano should be kept moist. When I read that little facto, I remembered finding wild spearmint growing next to a creek as a kid and bringing it to the house, so that makes sense to me. I shall have to be wary of keeping these babies moist, as I used terra cotta pots, which dry out very quickly. There's something so wonderful about planting something and watching it grow, so I think these herbs will bring me much joy (as well as much flavor to my table)!

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

I know it's been so long since I posted, but can you blame me? The weather in Charlottesvegas has been outstanding. I went home for Easter to visit the famdamily and to celebrate The Resurrection at LCF; I had an awesome weekend and I hope that everyone else did as well. I will have more goodies to share later in the week, but until then, just so you know, I ate 2 boxes of Peeps in a 24-hour period. Absolute bliss. Fluffy white marshmallowy goodness coated in all-natural sunshine yellow sugar granules. Soooo good.

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

A few weeks ago, I bought a 4.5 quart enameled cast iron Dutch oven, and it has stolen my heart as far as kitchen beauties go. It looks so cute sitting on my Barbie stove, and kind of makes me feel like Barbie herself (Why that makes me feel happy inside, I don't know.) because of all the bursts of color on the stove as well as the awesome Anthro apron that Niknak gave me for my birthday.

I've been wanting one of these things for a long time now; it's like every time I turned around someone I knew was concocting a wonderful meal in their Dutch oven and I didn't have one. All my friends rave about how evenly they cook, how they don't require high heat, how you can use it on the stove top and in the oven, and yada yada yada. It's like a crock pot before Crock-Pots were ever invented....another reason for me to love the French.

As soon as I got mine home, though, I was at a complete loss for what to cook in it. Typical. First of all, I've never even cooked with cast iron (pathetic, I know), and second of all, well, I didn't want to mess up the fire orange enamel the first time I used it. Such a scaredy cat. You can imagine my hesitation when the echo of the salesman's words, "You'll have this forever...," were ringing in my ears. So I decided to play it safe and whip up my new and improved winter 2010 broccoli cheddar soup for the last time of the season (unless we have another cold spell in May). I kept repeating to myself, don't touch the pot with bare hands and don't use a metal spoon.

It was so yumyum; a great exit for the broccoli cheddar soup, although, I think it could've used a bigger batch of roux than I prepared to thicken it. Something to strive for in the next pot. I also think it would've been a little smoother had I not used extra sharp white cheddar cheese....gotta love the flavor of the stuff, though.

Next on my list of Dutch oven concoctions will be Peposo (peppery stew), slow cooked in the oven. I'm making this Peposo with a pork loin (rather than its traditional ingredient beef), compliments of one of the hogs my brother recently had slaughtered, garlic, a sprig of rosemary, red wine, and of course, black peppercorns. It's going to be outrageous.

Walking On Air

Contrary to many folks out there, math was my favorite subject in school. I initially went to UVa to major in "Mathematics" and be an Algebra II teacher.......aaaand I majored in English and Religious Studies after my first calculus class. Maybe it was my Ukrainian professor who used to close his emails with, "Your Evil Professor, Daniel T.," who knows; and now she's working in a law office, you're thinking. Hm. When I was in high school I had a teacher named Mrs. Henley who made math kind of fun; she was really sweet and everybody loved her, which totally gives you the upper hand if you're a math teacher. I had her for Geometry and Trigonometry (I really don't remember anything about Trig except for three things: sin, cos, tan. That's kind of sad to me.) and both years, our class celebrated on March 14 by eating various pizzas and pies in honor of the constant Pi (3.14159265...). Clever idea, Mrs. Hen.

I've always wanted to make chocolate souffles, I can't really say why, maybe I just like the word "souffle." I studied about them in Mrs. Fletcher's Foods & Nutrition class at LHS, and I'm thinking of a movie where the main character makes chocolate souffles at least twice (Any guessers?) that always makes me want to bake some. When I read Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard, she has recipes at the end of every chapter and one of the recipes is her French hubby's recipe: "Gwendal's Quick & Dirty Chocolate Souffle Cake." On Saturday, in honor of Pi Day (even though it was technically yesterday), I made this cake in my new aqua pie dish. So it is going on the chocolate cakery shenanigans list because it was an absolutely divine, like a perfect chocolate angel food cake. No butter, either; that's definitely the first cake I've ever made without butter or shortening. And I like the idea of making it in one dish because I didn't have anyone besides H. to eat it. Making 8 miniature souffles wouldn't have been the most practical thing to do, even though it would've been prettier. As souffles are made with lots of eggs and they puff up because of the egg whites, which facilitate wonderful airy-fluffiness, and my cake did eventually fall in the pie dish, but it still tasted wonderful. I tried to document the rise and fall (but caught mostly the fall). Also, I really really wanted to use this pie dish because I think it's adorable. And I don't really make pies. Ever. Unless it's a fudgy tart or, my personal favorite, Mom's chocolate bourbon pecan pie.

Here's the chocolate souffle prior to oven-time.

I have a major problem of wanting to peep in on my baking creations while they're in the oven. The problem is, I read somewhere that every time you open up the oven door while it's on, you lose 25 degrees, which demotes even baking and is also a waste of power. But because my Barbie oven has neither a light, window nor more than one oven rack, I feel like I'm in a dream kitchen that has an oven made post-1945 with all the amenities mentioned above. I could sit in front of the oven window the whole time.

Here it is directly out of the oven!


This thing started falling just a couple of minutes after I took it out of the oven.


But I obviously didn't care; I kept cutting the infamous Chambers Family Slivers out of this chocolate souffle cake. I'm admitting that this gene has been passed on to me. For those who don't know, the Chambers Family Sliver phenomenon is one characterized by all the women on my mother's side of the family, Granny, daughters and granddaughters all included, who cut teensy weensy little slices of desserts, over and over again. We like to believe that the sliver is a manifestation of eating in moderation; however, two slivers often turns into eating a whole row of brownies or a whole pie without even realizing it. This cake did not last 24 hours. It was phenomenal and I will definitely be making it again! I would guess that this cake was comparable to eating a chocolate cloud if such a thing exists; it was light, fluffy and very air.

The Best of What's Around

As I've probably mentioned before, Niknak is one of my closest friends in the whole wide world. We randomly met our second year of college (Spring 2007) in la clase de espanol, found out that we were both English majors and had about two other classes together that semester. We also randomly lived in the same apartment complex a few doors down from each other, and I had met her beau Al through mutual friends prior to even knowing about Niknak's existence in the world. We worked together for a summer at McGrady's Irish Pub while taking a Shakespeare course and well, we became such great friends that we lived together our last year of college. Now, we're both still in Charlottesvegas, working and actually getting to enjoy this wonderful little town without papers and reading assignments hanging over our heads. What's even cooler is that there's only about a 3-4 minute walk between our offices, so not only do we get to eat lunch together on a semi-regular basis, it's much easier to provide moral support for each another in moments of dire straits. For example, Niknak emailed me yesterday and told me that she had a hankering for some Cappellino's Crazy Cakes, to which I responded, I'll meet you there in 15 minutes. We have each other's backs like that. They make the best double chocolate chip cookies in town, in my opinion. They also have tons and tons of lovely cupcakes (with edible glitter too!), and the best part about their location is that they're right smack dab in between our workplaces, providing a perfect meeting point for us.

Normally, we each buy one double chocolate chip cookie , but yesterday Niknak was feeling like a cupcake also, and because I would like to support her endeavors, I too bought a cupcake. The first time I ever had Cappellino's cupcakes were on my 22nd birthday during my fourth year at UVa, and my office bought a big box of assorted cupcakes for a middle-of-the-business-day birthday party; my office rocks! Since that day, I have been hooked. I love Cappellino's Crazy Cakes.

Niknak got vanilla poundcake with chocolate buttercream frosting. Just look at the glitter!

Here's the cupcake that I bought yesterday: Chocolate cake with sweet cream cheese frosting, dusted with Oreo cookie crumbs.

While I was gobbling up this delectable cupcake, I was reminded of something somebody told me a long time ago (now that I think of it, I was probably in middle school) about Oreos, and for a moment, I was a little concerned. Google put my mind at ease when it reassured me that the Oreos-are-made-from-whale-blubber rumor is, in fact, not true. That made my cupcake taste even more delicious, and I was also relieved to find that others had been wondering the same thing because when I was in the middle of typing, "oreo wha," "oreo whale blubber" automatically popped up under the search box. And for goodness' sake, who started saying that whale blubber was an ingredient in Oreos anyways?

Just A Ride

I just finished reading The Scenic Route: A Novel by Binnie Kirschenbaum. I came across the title in a spring 2009 issue of Real Simple magazine. The only reason I remember that is because I used to subscribe to it, but then I wasn't looking at the magazine because I was too busy, one thing lead to another, and before I knew it I wanted salads in November (instead of the hearty stews made from turkey day leftovers) because I was still trying to catch up with the June issue. The rest is history...they stopped coming in September. What's funny about the subscription ending is that I was really sad when October's issue didn't come, even though I wasn't faithfully thumbing through the magazines during their designated months.

Anyways, I am always looking for new authors and books to read because I'd like to read something published after 1817 (even though I do love me some Jane Austen) whose authors do not include Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Sylvia Plath. Because of my reading habits in college (avg. 2 novels per week), every spring around the end of May, I avidly search for a couple of new books to read over the summer that don't necessarily have to bear the literary masterpiece stamp. So I was attracted to the article in RS that recommended a variety of summer reads; it showed different book covers and had a little blurb written about each one of them. First of all, I loved the cover of The Scenic Route: A Novel; I love the countryside and I heart heart heart road trips (please see picture above and try not to judge my frivolity). I think the article was something about budget traveling, and I recall the blurb saying something like, "Can't quite make it to Europe yet? Read about a captivating road trip through Italy and Eastern Europe with Binnie Kirschenbaum's..." Envision me raising my hand and screaming ding ding ding; how soon am I going to be road tripping it through Europe? So I chose to read it for obvious reasons, and although I didn't really like the book that much, I will have to say that the writing is absolutely splendid and I was impressed with it. I did think that she went a little overboard with regard to the Herman Melville-esque digressions scattered throughout; it didn't really work for her in my opinion, but then again, she's the one who has written and published 6 books, so I'm not complaining. The book just wasn't my cup of tea, even though there were some really cute sounding bed-and-breakfast joints in between the beautiful fields and forests through which they drove. My favorite thing that Binnie wrote in the book was about a moment, and it said this: "...And I was happy, a kind of happy that, if manifested into tangibility, would've taken the shape of a daisy."