Valentine books

 It's Valentine's Day Friday so I took in one book that was obvious and one not so to read to the kids. 

This one has been a favorite of mine for a long time and I didn't realize how long till I looked at the publication date - almost 30 years!

The author is great at shining a light on normal everyday everykid reactions to things.  But his one is one of my favorite of hers.  

  Gilbert's teacher told the class to write a nice poem for everyone's valentine.  Gilbert doesn't have any trouble with that till he gets to Lewis and Margaret.  Lewis once tweaked Gilbert's nose and it hurt and Margaret once made fun of Gilbert's glasses.  So he doesn't write nice poems for them and he thinks it's funny...but maybe they wouldn't.  What he does next always, ALWAYS brings a gasp or an "oh no!" from one of the kids listening. 

This one isn't a Valentine but it's about someone with a sunny disposition being nice to someone with a prickly personality. Sometimes all you need is a hug.  PH and I always told our kids "Never turn down a hug. You never know when the next one is coming."  Appropriate for Valentine's Day, I think. 

On the stitching front I am down to the last 4 squares of the BA quilt then have the border.  I'm well well ahead of my self imposed schedule so feel pretty good about that. 

We are trying to stay away from the flu that is galloping through town so are hunkering down when we can and not being frivolous out in the world. (As I say this I'm immersed with third graders at the museum this whole week and went to a first grade class to read and there isn't anything germier than kids.) But so far so good.  I spent the weekend making three pillows from scraps. After they were completely finished and ironed, on two of them there is one very glaring mistake that will stick out to anyone with eyes.  Yes, I did it twice-so I'm not showing them to you. But when I thought about what it would take to take them apart down to the studs I told myself I personally can live with it and ordered the inserts. 

Imagination

 How is it we raise chauvinists?  I mean really.  Yesterday when I brought these two books out of my tote and told the kids they were about dolls I heard groans from 6 year old boys.  Well, I hopped on that!

"Do you guys have action figures? Well, those are dolls." And one little guy said, "If that's true I'm never playing with THEM again!"  And then he said something totally inappropriate for this day and age and teacher said she would have a bit of a talk with him later. 

I then asked them if they have an imagination.  Yes, they said.  Do you use it? YES, they said.  Ok, good. Even though these books are about dolls they are also about people who have an imagination. And use it.

Elizabeti lives in a village in Africa.  She has a new baby brother and wants a doll to love like her mother loves her brother.  She doesn't have a doll.  She looks around and finds a stick but it's too pokey. She finds just the right rock and the rock becomes her baby doll and names her Eva. 

That got the kids' attention.  A rock? I looked at them and said, "Imagination, kids." 

Fanny wants a 'Connie' (read: Barbie) doll but mom says no. "They are too TOO" says mom. And I can remember feeling that way as I watched the age girls were given Barbie dolls fall from 8 or 9 to 5 and 6 and thinking the same thing.  She is too TOO.  But I wasn't as strong as Fanny's mom and caved when my daughter wanted one.  Thank goodness once owned the lustre wore off quickly for her.  

Anyway, Fanny decided to make her own Connie doll and proceeds to spend an afternoon sewing from scraps and yarn and clearly this isn't a true Connie doll.   Her friends laugh at her (and the doll.) Fanny is embarrassed but then comes to realize something she made herself has more heart value than something out of a box. 

One of the joys of Holly Hobbie's books are her illustrations.  Just studying her illustrations can take all day.

Speaking of things you make yourself, I thought I might poke my lost mojo with a stick by bringing the dreaded sewing machine out of the closet and onto the dining room table where it will be in the way, thus forcing the issue of doing something.  My intention is to make some pillows out of orphan blocks and the pink floral in front is going to be a pillow case for Elizabeth from the fabric she bought in Williamsburg.  I used a piece of it in her quilt so this might be an interesting pillow case. 

We have a chaise lounge that I had overflowing with pillows I've made over the years.  When the kids came for Christmas I told the girls to take them, "take them all.  I made all of these and they are now ready for new homes. Take as many as you want.  I'll just make more as I go along."  So they did.  There must have been 12-15 pillows. They took all but one so I was very happy.  I wish I had taken a photo of the chaise lounge before and after.  And here I am, my mojo project is more pillows.  But I find them to be much more useful than table toppers or wall hangings. I'm running out of wall space, too.

Yesterday I made a yummy buttermilk lemon cake. It was/is very yummy.  The glaze over the top is not one that sinks in but sits on top in a really intense lemony accent.  I buy bags of lemons and oranges and zest and juice them and freeze.  I discovered I have quite a few little bottles of both so will use them in this plus the buttermilk I want to use up.  The recipe is for lemon but orange will be good, too. It's a loaf pan thing but I used 3 smaller pans rather than one big one.  Better for sharing. 

Something New - Again

 Last week when Friend Laurie and I went book shopping we stopped at a Bosnian restaurant for lunch. It was a new experience for me and delicious.  But the most fun was the grocery store next door.  

As soon as I saw the package of Oblande wafers I had to have them.  They look like the wafer part of the Dutch Cream cookies (do you have these in other parts of the world?)  They are a tasteless wafer with a filling.   

I had no idea what to do with them but when daughter called to invite us to supper tonight I knew I'd have a captive audience and said I'd bring dessert.

I started by google translating the directions on the package from Bosnian to English but didn't like what it said.  I couldn't understand what they meant by 'ground wafers' - did they mean ground up shortbread cookies? Graham crackers?  And it called for ground walnuts, which is a non starter with the grands and my daughter.

So I went to Pinterest and spent a considerable time looking at all the variations of Oblanda.  It was like Grandma's spaghetti sauce, everyone's is the best and the only authentic.  Sheesh.  But I read lots of them looking for an option I understood the ingredients and directions for.  

I found some variations: wafer crumbs-but no mention of what the wafers actually ARE.  Ground walnuts. PH and I would love that but we also won't eat this whole thing so it has to be passed to daughter's house. One had no mention of semolina in the ingredients but did in the directions.  I know semolina would be flour but since it wasn't mentioned, did they really mean the wafers? 

One recipe, I cross my heart swear to you, said to spread boys on the layers.  Hello??  

The wafers are quite large, the size of a full cookie sheet.  

I settled on a filling recipe that was explained in English with pictures for a chocolate caramel.  As I kept reading other versions I found there are two traditional fillings. One with a chocolate caramel and one with the ground wafers, chocolate and nuts and the wafers ARE graham crackers. OK, good.  

The chocolate caramel was actually a process to make your own dulce de leche and it would take 2.5 hours.  I balked at that but thought ok, cancel my other plans and do it this way once then see what happens.  After two, TWO boil overs of the sugar milk mixture, many words said, taking the stove apart to clean up the sweet milk spillage immediately, adjusting the temperature, checking MORE recipes on Pinterest, finally, finally I got what resembled a thickened sweet milk, added the chocolate and the butter and proceeded.  But boy, did I need a nap. 

You spread the caramel on the layers while it's hot and it will ooze.  You then put heavy books on top of the whole thing so it will press the caramel into the grooves. I put a piece of parchment paper under the books.  You let it set on the counter for a few hours then in the refrigerator, wrapped, overnight and the butter and caramel will solidify. 

Next day ( this morning ) you trim.  Use a large sharp NON-serrated knife.  It will, surprisingly, cut nicely without crumbling the wafers.  I wiped the knife after each slice because you are working with caramel.

Because of my spillage at the stove I worried I wouldn't have enough filling for the whole sheet pan sized wafers so I cut some off before spreading.  I ended up with a piece about 9 x 10. On cutting day I measured them and cut about 2 inch wide pieces. About.

Cut into serving size pieces and plated for dessert for tonight at daughter's house. 

Observations:  

1. They are sweet. Very sweet. I cut them too big for a serving but hey. 

2. Looking back, they are not difficult, just time consuming.

3. Making dulce de leche was the challenge but I learned how long it would take, the temperature that would cook the juice in the 2.5 hours

4. DO NOT put a spoon or wisk quickly in the mixture when you give it an occasional stir because it WILL boil over and words will be spoken. The directions did explicitly say this but ....

5. I looked at the idea of possibly buying dulce de leche, heating it up, putting the chocolate and butter in and trying that way.  But I don't know. That's a big experiment process that might not work and if it DID work they would say, "buy a can of dulce de leche" wouldn't they?

Yes, I would do it again. But not today. 

Shop Hop

 I am a quilter.  I don't need an intervention for that because I've kicked the habit and no longer go to fabric stores just to fondle and pay for piles of fabric that will only sit in my stash for years. I am relying on that stash to see me through to my shroud.

But some would say I might need an intervention for this:

Yesterday Friend Laurie and I did a bookstore shop hop. What fun that was!  We chose three independent bookstores, two before lunch and one after.  It's a rule if you are a book person that if you go into an independent bookstore you must buy a book.  It's so very important to keep them in business.  Yesterday I bought six.  The one on the top was a birthday gift and the second one was a loan from Laurie but it sounded so familiar when I got home I searched around and saw that I had listened to the audio. The rest are new purchases.  There is nothing like the smell of a new book. Nothing like opening the first page and settling in.  Not even coming home with a pile of new fat quarters.  Yes, I enjoy used book sales, that's another avenue of ownership.

I buy books.  I also use the library and listen to audio books a LOT.  The buying started long ago when I worked in a bookstore and the employee discount was 30% off.  Well. So it began.   I'm not quite a hoarder but as any hoarder would say, I "collect."  Laurie and I discussed our criteria for keeping a book.  I have favorite authors so will buy anything they write and they are shelved together. She also has favorite authors but her criteria is more "would I read this again or would I press it on to a friend to read?"  Those she keeps.  The others she sells back to the bookstore so they can sell it as used and she gets store credit to buy more!   I must add that my Christmas gifts are gift cards to bookstores so I can shop all year at no cost to me.  Well, almost no cost.

I am getting fussy.  I am really done with WWII.  If a cover shows an airplane in the sky in the background and a woman standing in the foreground with her back to us, I don't even pick it up. You'd be surprised how many of those there are right now if your eyes are trained to look for them. I'm tired of the books about bookstores.  I won't read a romance nor fantasy nor science fiction nor dystopian. I want something different.  I love cookbooks that are more about reading about someplace new in the world, thus I ordered Cold Kitchen yesterday.  

Lunch was at a new place for me, too.  It was a Bosnian restaurant and wow, was it good!  There was a small grocery next to the restaurant and one of the things Laurie and I like to do is hit unique grocery shops so this one was really fun.  We left with our arms loaded with goodies and we had to rely on the picture of the product because we couldn't read the labels. 

Today being Tuesday I went to school to read. 

I bought this book yesterday.  I tell the kids all of the time that you are never too old to read or buy picture books.  Never.  Loren Long hardly ever gets it wrong.  The Yellow Bus is happiest when being used by children, then senior citizens then surprisingly, by goats.  We all want to be appreciated for who we are and Yellow Bus is no different.  I told the kids I read this in the bookstore to see if I wanted to purchase it, then read it again at home and then again in the car before going in to school.  Everytime you read a picture book you will see something you didn't before. And always, always, read the author notes at the end.  Always.  This one is a treasure.

Staying with the school theme I read this one.  Rick sits on the nature shelf in the classroom with moss, acorn and bark.  But he overhears a lesson on rocks and longs for adventure, like being shot out of a volcano or being a part of a rock slide.  He gets his chance but is the grass greener on the other side of the fence? 

Celebrate

 We celebrated Mike's and my birthdays yesterday with lunch halfway between our son's home and ours.  It works well for all of us, the weather was sunny so we could all drive safely.  That's an issue around Michigan, being able to get where you want to go. 

This is the continuing saga of Aunt Marcella's cake.  I've posted about it every year and it never gets easier.  Even DIL commented that the frosting was different this year than last.  Famous last words.  It's near on impossible and takes ten times longer to do the frosting than it does to bake the cake from scratch and cool it.  I will only make this cake once a year, for Mike. The things we do for our grands.

I handed Mike the knife and told him it was his cut.

Charlie is missing from this picture, he's away at college.  Next year we lose another one. The chicks are growing up and flying away.

I never thought I'd be this age.  Not that I thought I wouldn't be alive, but thinking of this number seemed so far into the netherland that I couldn't even see it.  But here we are.

OK, this is a perfect explanation photo of what I've talked about.  We call it lake effect snow.  When the cold air comes down from Canada and the winds blow they cross Lake Michigan and Lake Superior (and the other lakes, too, actually) and the condensation of the cold, arctic air crossing the yet unfrozen lakes creates snow.  If the winds are really strong the snow travels further inland.  But look at the immediate lakeshore, the western end of that mitten, directly across the lake from snow free Wisconsin.  The lakeshore get the worst of the lake effect snow.  Absolutely a lot. The wind has to be really strong to blow that snow the hour inland where we are but it does happen.  When it gets here, though, it's lost some of its bluster.  Michigan is a state of all four seasons.  People love us in the summer when they come to play at the lakes and some love the snow but you kind of have to be able to GET here.

This year the cold has frozen the smaller lakes so the ice fishermen are happy.  They've had some warm winters recently but not this one!

    The Upper Peninsula, the area between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan historically gets the worst.  As of now they have 117 inches on the ground with more coming.  No, thank you.

 No, we did not watch the felon being sworn into office.  No, we didn't watch the news recapping the day. No.  There is only so much a person with a brain (read: anyone who did NOT vote for a felon ) can take.  I sincerely thank Brian in England and Donna in Australia and Dianne here in the U.S. for checking on me yesterday. We are now the laughing stock of the entire world.  If you voted for the felon, shame on you.

PH and I spent the afternoon watching our Doc Martin DVDs.  We love Doc Martin and really love watching the DVDs over again because we took a trip to Port Isaac before covid and when we watch we reminisce about being there, recognizing buildings, streets, scenes, where I fell one night because the curb wasn't really a curb but I expected there to be a curb. We wanted to feel good yesterday.

AND I finished the tree!!!  It took ALL afternoon and into the evening and my eyes were exhausted but it's finished!  These are the cold colors for the first leaves and I'll do those today because the current temperature is 2degrees F and nothing is stirring out there.  The wind chill temperature is -15F.

Wind chill means how it FEELS when the temperature and wind combine.  We get those readings a lot in winter because while the temperature might be a balmy 2 degrees F, on your your exposed skin it feels -15. So we stay in and hunker down today.

Mid-month

 Well, progress report for mid-month Chookshed Challenge has me completing seven squares on Elizabeth's Baltimore Album quilt, which surprised even me.  I'm doing a cross hatch quilting on it so it's easy, uniform, and goes relatively well with the open blocks.  I can do close to a whole square in an evening before my hands tell me to stop.  Can't show a picture yet.

The Temperature Tree cross stitch is more difficult than I thought.  I haven't done cross stitch for probably 45 years and my eyes are 45 years older and the technique cross stitchers must use is long gone from memory or supplies. With this craft I am just out of practice.  So I have been spending these very cold and somewhat snowy afternoons watching A Town Like Alice and old movies while I struggle along.  It's coming but just not fast enough.  I want the tree done completely because I see that as the hardest and I don't want to have to come back to it.  I want to just add leaves as the rest of the year goes by.  Probably all of January's calendar squares will be noted with a number on them signifying the temperature that day.  I'll get caught up.  I will.

Yesterday was reading day at school and I didn't decide to go till the very last minute.  It was snowy and I wasn't sure of the driveway.  We have a very steep, long and curvy driveway and it doesn't behave well in the snow. We've already had two driveway adventures this winter and I'm not eager for another.  At the very last minute (the school is about 15 minutes into the countryside with open fields and blowing snow)  I was comfortable it was ok to go.

I always ask the kids what the word "terrible" might mean here.  Is he very good at being scary terrible or is he so bad at it he is a terrible monster?  Well, for Leonardo, he just isn't good at it.  He can't scare anyone.  He decides to remedy this by finding the most scaredy cat kid and scaring him.  

The first thing this book says is "I had the idea to staple my brother's hair to his pillow" and then goes on to list 16 other things that she tries and is told she can never do again.  There was one little girl listening who couldn't see how the child in the book was so wrong.  Oh, Dear. That child's mom might need a bottle of wine with a ribbon on it. Maybe a spa day.

It's below normal cold and we've been getting snow just about every day so when I passed a display of hyacinths at the store I had to bring a pot home.  These are my all time favorite flower because the aroma fills the house.  In the middle of January it's good to smell something.   When our daughter was a toddler she came running in the house one day and said, 'the hycynthias are blooming!"  so for us they have ever more been hycyinthias.

Learning Something New

 Last night PH and I took advantage of his Christmas gift - a sausage making class .  I have never been a big fan of sausage but he loves it so I thought this might be a fun time for him. And I've discovered I didn't like sausage because I didn't like the standard breakfast sausage.  But this! Wow.  There is a sign on the wall of this shop:  If you want to cook good food you have to eat good food.  Right.  And if you are a good enough cook you can read a recipe and know whether it's going to taste good.

This class was completely hands on.  While the shop instructors had all the ingredients on hand we did all of the slicing, dicing, chopping, mixing.  There were twelve people and we were all involved.  Each doing a different task.

We learned two recipes.  Ours was scallion pancake flavor sausage and it had chopped garlic, shallot,  green onions (scallions) lemon grass, ginger, pork stock and hoisin sauce, salt, some green leaf thing I didn't know what it was but it was kaffir leaves, and the scallion pancake which we decided was really a pita bread with scallion baked in so easily substituted at home with pita and some extra scallion chopped in. 

The Mexican Street Corn sausage had salt, cayenne, cilantro, cojita cheese, lime, jalapeno, red onion, and corn stock.  Now I had never heard of corn stock but they said to cook down your corn cobs AND husks like you would any stock you make.  I can't wait for summer to try this!

We put the meat through the grinder, two sizes.  This was the first and larger grind then it was put through a smaller grind.

Next the seasoning is added and it's done either by hand at home or a mixer because you obviously don't want the seasonings to get caught in the grinder.

Then we stuff 'em.  This is trickier than you'd think.  The casings are slippery, we really couldn't use gloves because you really have to feel it.  

The casings are delicate and easily break if the pressure we exert on turning the crank is too much.  We all had breakage. 

We came home with three of each recipe, PH was till working on his scallion pancake sausage.

We all got to taste what we were making because the instructors cooked up some of each. They were both delicious!!!  The Mexican Street Corn had a kick to it as you would expect from the ingredients and the scallion pancake was amazing.  I just might actually like sausage AND found a new fun thing to make on our own.  The possibilities are endless.

New project and books

 Yikes, it's been a bit since I've posted and even I get bored looking at the same post when I open the blog to read yours.  Things have been blessedly slow since Christmas and I'll say it again, I love January.  I love the abrupt stop.  I love the quiet.  I love the empty calendar squares. I love the Christmas ads and movies being gone.  I love clearing out the fancy food from the freezer.  I love when at night PH asks, "we have anything going tomorrow?" I can say, "nope."  

Some would use this time to purge closets and such and sometimes I do but I've been catering to a bad back attack since the kids were here the weekend before Christmas so not much has been done in that respect. 

I have managed to quilt five blocks of Elizabeth's BA quilt and feel good about how it's going. It's not slow, no slower than I am, and it's not big stitching fast. I am doing the cross hatch and using masking tape to guide the stitching so it's ok.  

It's ok enough that I took on another project.   I can't believe I'm saying that.  But Susan was doing this temperature tree cross stitch thing and while I think the temperature quilts are interesting I know I'd NEVER complete it nor want to be nagged by it.  But this tree looked relatively easy and each little leaf is only five stitches and once the tree is done it's easy peasy.  Remind me later that I said that.

I found the instant download pattern on Etsy.

Let me tell you again how old my eyes are!  I haven't done cross stitch in DECADES.  But it's working out, if not a little slow. I'll just keep writing the day's temp on the calendar.

It's not moving much, that thermometer.  The temperatures are stuck in the low to mid 20's.  We've been spared the big storm that moved just south of Michigan, thank the snow gods for that. Outdoors it just looks like powdered sugar on brownies. You can see the ground but it is COLD.  I have said for years that I don't care how cold it gets, just so it doesn't snow.  Snow tells you whether you are going to get where you want to go.

This is the weather when I watch  A Town Like Alice.  In that movie everyone is dealing with the heat so it warms my toes to watch it when we are either confronting the cold or a storm. 

School started back this week from the Christmas holidays and it's Tuesday so I was back at school reading to the kids.  

This week I chose two compatible books about feeling or being left out. 

Brian isn't noticed.  His teacher doesn't even notice him because her hands are full dealing with the loud child and the drama queen and Brian just isn't one of those.  He is the last one chosen, eats his lunch alone and spends recess drawing on the pavement with chalk.   But he is also the only one who makes the new kid feel welcome.  Teacher notices his drawing talent and through an assignment and imagination, Brian is no longer invisible.  When I held it up to show the kids the cover one little girl said, "OH! I love this book!" So.  Good.

Same basic principle.  Nerdy birdy's glasses are too big, his wings too small and he isn't one of the cool birds like Eagle or Cardinal or Robin.  There is a flock of nerdy birds who welcome Nerdy Birdy and he notices that there are far more nerds than cool birds and they stick together.  Till vulture shows up, alone and ignored by the cool birds, too.  Nerdy Birdy shows the way to accepting all types of nerdiness. 

Not everyone can be a jock, right?