Sunny Sunday

 We've been dealing with freezing rain as winter tries to transition to something resembling not winter.

We had a doozy of an ice storm last week, it wasn't rain that froze on impact, it was little pellets about the size of a seed from a green pepper that came down frozen and stuck and froze together and created a crust that forced some people with level driveways to be prisoners in their homes for a few days.  We, on the other hand, have our steep driveway and, well, water does flow downhill so as it started to melt we were free. For once we had an advantage!

In order to have something to do on a wintry February Sunday yesterday the Showboat committee planned a painting class.  The class was on the showboat and it was, thankfully, a beautiful blue sky sun shiny ice melty day.

The sun just sparkled on the river, the swans were happy, people were out walking the riverwalk, it was a perfect day to get out.

This is the painting we were going to be guided through.  When the instructor asked if anyone had painting experience no one raised their hand!  "Good to know," she said.

We were all given a blank canvas and paints and brushes.

We were guided step by step, measuring distances, mixing colors.

Everyone's was different, as they should be. These were my table mates. The woman on the right in gray just retired from her part time job at the chamber of commerce so I knew her and we had some good laughs about retirement.  

And this is my finished painting.  I added the daffodils in the front of the fence just because. 

Saturday was gray and cloudy and heavy and PH was bored with days like that. He knew I needed to go to Shipshewana for the batik I needed for Charlie's quilt and he likes going down there for the food so early that morning he said, "let's go."  You're not going to believe this, but we were there two hours. He dropped me off at the store I was aiming for, he walked down the street to the meat and cheese store, came back and found a husband chair while I finished up.  I had a problem loading my phone with the photo that I was using as a guide - can you believe they don't have WiFi????  I felt like I was on the moon.  But the clerk could pull up the picture on her phone.

We spent an hour choosing, cutting and then I took PH to lunch.  After we got in the car to come home I noticed the time.  We had been there exactly two hours.  I was on a mission and did not divert from it. Fabric, lunch, home. Two hours down, two hours there, two hours home.  If I did anything wrong with this selection and amount I'm screwed.  But I think it will be ok.  Fingers crossed.  Math has never been my thing.  

Excuses, excuses

 Well, goodness, it's been couple of weeks since we've been staring at that chocolate cake but I had a good excuse.

I've said in other posts that one of the programs our museum offers is a two day immersion experience with every third grader in Lowell schools.  Third grade is when the kids learn local history so this program is intense.  They learn about museums and they learn about the fur trade that put Lowell on the map.  This gentleman and I sign up for all of the days of the program so we are there six days in January, every day the first two weeks of February and six days in March.   I come home tired...of talking for hours straight, for being on my feet for most of it and setting an alarm every morning for two weeks. But now this particular elementary school has finished the program and we have a break till March.

Now that I'm home again for a bit I've tackled grandson Charlie's graduation quilt.  I have a year to make this but I'm a hand quilter, remember, so it takes time.  I'm someone who does what can be done ahead of time because you never know.

I spent some time on Pinterest finding ideas and then showed them to him to pick out what he might like, but with the caveat that I will be changing what he shows me.  I am not copying someone else's quilt absolutely.  

This photo is to show you my primitive working conditions.  It's not unlike time travel.  I searched high and low for this kind of enlarger.  I asked at the elementary school I read at. They tried to get me to use one of the high tech projectors in one of the classrooms.  "No," I said, "I need something that will sit on my dining room table."  All of their old ones had been junked.  I asked around.  I looked online.  Finally, I found a YouTube video showing how to make one with a cardboard box and the flashlight from my phone.  I asked at the museum if I could take one of their boxes and told the education director what I needed it for.  " I need to make an overhead enlarger."  "We have one in the barn," she said.  Bless her heart.  And it works!

Friend Barb came over to do the math.  I don't do math.  She figured out how big to make the interior, the finished size, the size of borders and free hand drew the Blue Angel planes. You can see in the first photo with the enlarger the layout we are going for. 

We thought I would be enlarging the planes to fit but I couldn't get the enlarger to make it SMALL enough.  Ok. Take the paper off the wall, make some copies, cut them out and place them on the paper, which is the size the center will be. Turns out I didn't need that enlarger after all!  

Now to decide if I want the planes to be head on, second photo, or look like they are a bit on angle by changing that cockpit.  I'm going to ask Charlie.  

                                                             This is the quilt I'm going for 

   This is the Blue Angel that Barb based her free hand drawing of. It's more head on and will be "interpreted" with the fabrics.  I just have to check with him if he wants full on navy blue or more like the batik. I know, he's a guy and probably won't remember in a year what he chose but you know how kids can be, they get a notion and lock it in and throw away the key.

We have a group, herd, family...call it what you will, of deer that come everyday, sometimes twice a day to the side of the house just outside the dining room window.  Sometimes there are two, sometimes there are seven. Never more than seven. They are so aware now that when they come nosing around if I go outside to spread some corn for them they will either just step away and wait or run just halfway down the hill. I shake the container so the corn makes a good noise.  They stop, ears up, wait till I've spread some and by the time I turn to come back in the house they are back eating. We are enjoying the dynamics of the group, how they are to each other.

Around Michigan we like to trumpet when we see the first robins.  We say seeing a robin is the first sign of spring.  Well, last week we saw these robins - there were a total of four - drinking the melting water in the eaves. Middle of February?  Not unheard of but not normal, either.  It's unusually warm, we are never surprised to have a blizzard in the middle of February, but this is a very mild winter.  Yes,we've had snow but not for long.  

Two is better than one

What's better than one chocolate cake?  Two.  Now, they may look the same but they are decidedly not.  

This one is my annual  birthday cake.  Even for a bakery cake, it's a moist cake, buttercream filling, chocolate shell.  It's delicious  but a once a year treat. 

This one is an icon in Detroit.  It's officially called a bumpy cake.  It got it's name, I understand, from an accidental running out of frosting at a bakery.  It's made in a sheet  pan and when the baker ran out of frosting for the top he instead just squirted a few rows of the white and then covered it in a flow of chocolate.  That's what I understand.  This layer version is called a "tube" cake because it's in a layer cake form but the rows of cream were on the top - in shape of tubes.  Copyrights, you know.  

Our son and DIL brought this along and wow! Two iconic chocolate cakes!  This had a much darker chocolate cake and that cream is NOT buttercream but so light and melt in your mouth you aren't sure you even ate it, it's more like whipped cream.  Oh, my.  To eat two pieces, one of each, after a dinner!  But it's your birthday just once a year.

Mike and I are a week apart so we have been sharing the day for the past few years.  He is wearing his presents including that tomahawk steak he's holding.  He wants his meat on a bone - whether chicken or beef or whatever.  He wants the bone.  And he loves his steak.  So, we decided you can't get a bigger steak on a bone than a tomahawk steak. 

Me and my chicks.   

And the whole flock.

Quilt Exhibit

I don't know Sue, but I know OF her.  Most of my lakeshore quilty friends know her so when she became part of an exhibit at the art gallery here in town I knew I had to stop and see what she    entered.  

Feast your eyes.  

 Pretty cool, huh? 

Lessons

 Third graders are back at the museum for their immersion into Lowell history. They spend two whole school days at the museum learning about Lowell through various activities.  I help lead one of them. We work them hard and I'm sure when they get home at the end of the day they fall asleep in their mashed potatoes. 

It looks like they are doing nothing but writing but  this is the only time they are still!   And after Day 1 they are grateful that on Day 2 they are sitting more than standing.  This is   a wonderful program for our local kids and wish school was like this when I was their age.  Boy, do I wish!

Lesson2

We are going to friends' house for dinner tomorrow night and I said I'd bring dessert ...of course.  As I always do, if something CAN be done ahead of time, it IS done ahead of time.  You never know what might happen when you make plans and that need to pivot is so much a part of our lives I just prep early.

One month during covid I decided to see what really was the best chocolate cake recipe that can be made.  I like my cakes moist, not dry, so I tested one recipe a week and of course tweaked things as I always do.  There was a clear winner.  Ina Garten's chocolate cake is now my go-to.  It is just exactly as good as everyone says it is.  My change?  I don't like coffee so where she adds a whole cup of hot coffee I add just hot water. I tried once to add coffee to a chocolate cake, like they all say to do but I can taste it so I don't do it. 

 I keep experimenting and one day Elizabeth asked for the chocolate cake of the day that I made with this particular filling for her birthday and I was having a busy week so I thought of making the filling ahead of time.  It's a filling made with butter, sugar and cooked flour and milk.  Kind of like the filling you get in those  Ho Ho cupcakes we can buy in gas stations.

I wondered if I could make the filling ahead of time.  It  had two sticks of butter in it so it would solidify if I put it in the fridge.  So. I made a circle on parchment the size of the cake pan and after whipping the filling I spread it within that circle, covered it with cling and put it in the fridge to harden.

It worked beautifully. When I needed it two days later I had it the exact size I needed and just took it out, and put it on the cake. 

Here's another trick I learned about  45 years ago when I took a cake decorating class.  Cut an old dish towel  it's length but 6 inches wide (basically, cut the towel in half lengthwise,) wet it, wring it out good and pin it around your cake pan.  This keeps the outside of your pan cool so the whole cake rises evenly and you don't get that hump in the middle you see people cut off to level a cake.  If your cake pans are 2 inches high, you will have folded the wet towel into a three fold, wrapped it around the pan and pinned it.

It comes out looking like this every time, level and ready.

Another trick I recently experimented with.  After making a ganache with whipping cream and chocolate chips (I also add a bit of vanilla and sometimes some malt powder to cut the chocolate) let it cool in the fridge so it's firm but not fudge rock hard. 

Then whip it. No sugar.  Just chocolate chips, heavy cream and a bit of vanilla. It's delicious and easy. This was a "hmmm, I wonder....." moment that worked.

Patience

 Patience.  I'm not known for it but I'm working on it and getting better.  It's only with patience that a person can attempt to bake bread.  I love bread.  Good bread. My attempts at bread baking are a family joke but it does turn out, sometimes. I can do the cinnamon rolls and bunduki and small things but getting a loaf of bread to come out well and taste good, well, the success has been elusive. That doesn't mean I don't keep trying.   

For Christmas I received a wonderful book called Breadsong by Al and Kitty Tate.  At just 13 Kitty was suddenly consumed with anxiety and panic and couldn't seem to get out of it.  Her parents tried everything.   One day she watched her dad make a loaf of sourdough bread, one of those overnight in the cast iron pot things and it intrigued her and suddenly she had something to focus on. For the next couple of years her life, and that of her family was transformed by baking.  It's really a wonderful read.  In the back are her recipes. 

As you might remember from my adventures with sour dough and the starter I named Montana which eventually went to live with my next door neighbor, I'm not looking for another pet. So, because you can't read the book and NOT want to bake bread, I started with their loaf called Biga Bread. The process was different for but I soldiered on.

It turned out quite edible (for me, no reflection on them) but I had to make some adjustments. The heat of the oven was much too hot thus the browned top but the crumb is good and, I can't believe I'm saying this about ANY baked good, it's actually better on this, the third day.  I'm kind of a snob about wanting my baked goods fresh the day of. This is a pleasant surprise on day three.

And since it's just after the holidays and we have to balance all of those sweets with more carbs and starch, I was inspired to try pierogis after Friend Barb and I got talking about them.  Her son wants her to make some and I've never made them so why not?  

Now, this was my plan for Thursday while the Biga Bread was spending hours and hours proofing. But I had an unexpected thing to do so planned it for Friday.  PH and I are good at pivoting.  We spent Friday in the car.  So. Today. Pierogi.

I spent some time looking up recipes and decided everyone who makes them thinks theirs is the only and authentic recipe out there.  Wrong. It's like Grandma's spaghetti sauce, everyone has their own recipe and they are all different and theirs is the best.  I printed out two.  One was someone's grandma's and one was from the King Arthur website.

Very differerent. Very different.  The grandma recipe was very soft, easy to roll out and maneuver in my hand as I pinched the ends together

The King Arthur recipe dough was very stiff, it took ALL of my strength to roll it out and I mean that. I  almost didn't go with it.  It was a solid brick of dough.  But I made it so I used it. I rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled and thought of the Pasta Grannies and was inspired to keep going.   Many of them make something like this but call it different.  Potato and cheese (I used Ricotta) and sometimes onion (I did add caramelized onion) was the same.  The dough was very unforgiving, stiff after cut BUT when it came to pinching them shut the King Arthur dough was much easier to control.  Hmmmm

I made a few for taste testing. The deal is to boil them till they float then saute them in butter.  In Italy the pasta grannies pour melted butter over them instead of  sauteeing them in butter.  PH agreed with me, surprisingly, the King Arthur ones were better  if you are going to eat them as pierogi are eaten.  The others, the softer ones, I will place into the piva zupa (Polish Beer Soup) as we heat that up.

So, patience needed and applied and success.  

We were looking forward to promised sunshine today.  We haven't had sun since the beginning of December (yes, that's right ) and they promised today would be glorious but it was just as  gloomy as  the past weeks have been.  It's like walking around with a pillow case over your head. 

Quilting?  I'm plugging away at the butterflies and last night started putting the little squares on the soon to be pillow top.  Once you get the first square centered and sewn down, the rest can be lined up with that one so it goes well. 

Holiday catch up

 Christmas 2022 is in the books.  We had the kids here for the 26th - 27th and had a wonderful visit.  Our son is now initiated into the driveway club. I don't know how he's made it so many years without getting stuck but he's all caught up and a member in good standing now.

Our annual photo of the kids. Three of them are now within an inch or two of being taller than PH and I.  Charlie has topped us.

There was grilling in the cold

and color coordinating going on

The day after they left the tree came down, decore all put away, everything dusted and tucked.

It got quiet really fast.  No baking, cooking, shopping, slicing, dicing, chopping. Just rejuvenating naps.

And then Chooky came to the rescue one afternoon with a quick zoom meet up.   I was on for a couple of hours and it was so nice to see people.  

And, the big news!  I'm working on quilting the butterflies.  Haven't picked up a needle in  many weeks but I'm getting back in the saddle with this one. 

Also sorting and positioning for color little squares for a pillow top. It's so gloomy and dark outside, and thus in the house I had to put this on a table in a window for daylight.  I will hand applique each square so in the end 

they will look like this.  This will be the third project I did with these little squares. One I sent off, this one is the map of zoom friends and the one in the windowsill will be a pillow. They are actually quite fun to do if you like hand applique.

So now it's January and it's quiet and I'm loving it.