Posie Gets Cozy

Blackberry Clafoutis

On Saturday afternoon (I actually thought it was Sunday, hence the dishtowel, until Sunday morning arrived and I realized it was Sunday), I made a blackberry clafoutis with the blackberries and gorgeous organic eggs that Andy and his sister, Jen, who was visiting for the weekend, brought me from the downtown farmer's market.

I used Ina's recipe for Pear Clafoutis and left out the pear brandy, sprinkled some sugar over the blackberries (those guys were sour!) and used half-and-half instead of heavy cream. Clafoutis is one of my favorite things — somewhere between a pancake and a custard, it's creamy and sweet but not too sweet, and with that sort of eggy taste that just makes me happy. Also, it's pretty. If you have a Polish pottery pie plate, definitely use it here (I think mine was from Marshall's).

By the way, if you'd like to make a set of these embroidered dishtowels, here is the post that points you to the free download with the days-of-the-week images. My binding tutorial is here. For the record, we use all seven of these dishtowels constantly in our little pleasant kitchen, and my original plan to keep them permanently in the living room, and not let them anywhere near the kitchen or a dish — I got over that the first time I went to reach for a new dishtowel and found the regular ones all in the laundry. These dishtowels seem very, very relieved to be used, and are, I can safely say, no worse for the wear. Make them, use them, love them.

I told my friend Sarah that she has to go see Julie & Julia with me when it comes out August 7. I read the book several years ago when it first came out and I absolutely loved it, and Sarah has actually met Julia Child. I have to ask her to tell me the story again. I'll report back.

I put the clafoutis on the windowsill to cool, because that's what kitchen windowsills are for. Pies, clafoutis, and cats, sitting watching the garden grow.

Spring Green Risotto

What a week. Complicated stuff. I am looking forward to the weekend more than I can say. I hope it goes better than this week did.

And if you find yourself inclined to make the Barefoot Contessa's Spring Green Risotto, which I highly recommend, and, because you are in a hurry (as usual), you go to your (unnamed) local corporate grocery store which happens to be around the corner from your house but which also drives you insane because every single solitary time you go there for something, say, ricotta cheese, or arugula, or asparagus, or, recently, arborio rice to make risotto, they do not have it, don't stomp around the store irritatedly and say (not even under your breath but right out loud) "Why do I come here!!!" in the rice aisle and act like a big huge baby about it, only to get home and find, when you rush upstairs to change into your comfy clothes before doing anything else, that the fly on your too-tight-to-begin-with cargo pants has been completely down as far as it can be and you've been flashing everyone your underpants (bright white), possibly for hours . . . well . . . just . . . don't do that. Unless you really need to have a good laugh at yourself, which I did. In which case, by all means, do it.

Thank goodness it's the weekend. If anyone needs me, I'll be on the hammock reading mysteries. That's it. IT.

Where I Stop Reading to Bake Pie to Eat While Reading

"Mrs. Mullet, who was short and gray and round as a millstone and who, I'm quite sure, thought of herself as a character in a poem by A.A. Milne, was in the kitchen formulating one of her pus-like custard pies," says Flavia, the sassy eleven-year-old narrator of my current read, in talking about her family's housekeeper.

How could I not stop reading to bake one after that???

Custard pie is my second-favorite pie! (Next to Sour Cream Apple Pie, that is.) I made this one (adding an extra egg yolk and leaving out the recommended yellow food coloring [!] ) yesterday at about four o'clock in the afternoon. At about five, while the pie was cooling, Andy looked at me and said, "What are you thinking for dinner?" and I said, naturally, "Custard pie." Upon which he got up and grabbed a grocery bag and headed out the door to the grocery store to get some dinner.

I am brilliant!

I guess he is a Flavia de Luce sympathizer:

"As I passed the window, I noticed that a slice had been cut from Mrs. Mullet's custard pie. How odd, I thought; it was certainly none of the de Luces who had taken it. If there was one thing upon which we all agreed — one thing that united us as a family — it was our collective loathing of Mrs. Mullet's custard pies. Whenever she strayed from our favorite rhubarb or gooseberry to the dreaded custard, we generally begged off, feigning group illness, and sent her packing off home with the pie, and solicitous instructions to serve it up, with our compliments, to her good husband, Alf."

More for me.

Summertime Supper

Pork tenderloin with rosemary and lemon, corn saute with heirloom tomatoes, roasted Yukon Golds, and bittersweet brownies with marionberry ice cream. That's what my friend Sarah made me for dinner last night and it was delicious. Summertime on a plate. Andy was working, so Sarah packed up a to-go version for me to take home to him later (awesome friend, no? Seriously). When he got home, Andy sat on the porch and ate it within seconds, then just held the empty plate out to me with two hands and said, "More."

Sarah has an entire drawer of aqua-blue thrifted dishes. I busted out laughing when I saw it. It's awesome. When she packs a dinner for you to take home to your husband, everything goes into aqua dishes and then onto a little blue-gingham metal tray. It makes you feel very loved.

Thank you for all the pillow love yesterday! Yay pillows! Several people have asked me about which Persephone book is on my bed in the pillow photo, and it was either Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day or Mariana, both given to me by sweet Jane. Those are the only two I have, and I must confess that although I have read them both in the past I just put the book on the bed in the photo because it looked so pretty. Those books are so gorgeous. And they feel good. Smooth and heavy. Must get another. What I am reading is a library book I got yesterday called You Remind Me of Me by Dan Choan. Again, picked more or less randomly off of the shelf; I know nothing about it. I am having trouble picking books lately. Those other five I mentioned a few weeks ago? I started them all and couldn't get into any of them. I hate when that happens. I think it's me, not them. But I must admit that I want a page turner. I want a plot-driven page-turner. I want something I can't put down. Otherwise I just fall asleep the minute I turn on my reading light. And then wake up at 3 a.m. and can't get back to sleep. Grate.

Sinamon Buns

In the dim light of an early Saturday morning, I unveiled my pale, bulging buns:

Sorry, I couldn't resist. They're rather suggestive.

These are the Overnight Cinnamon Rolls from Williams Sonoma Family Meals: Creating Traditions in the Kitchen by Maria Helm Sinskey. It's a really nice book, and reminds me very much of the River Cottage Family Cookbook.

They're my first-ever cinny buns, and I think they came out rather nicely indeed! I made the dough in the Kitchen Aid mixer, and it was fine (though not as fun as kneading it myself, I have to say). Start these at dinnertime, unless you want to be rolling up cinny buns at 10 p.m. in time for breakfast the next morning, as I was (the dough needs two hours to rise before you turn it into buns, which then rise again overnight in the fridge).

It's insane how much butter there is in these. I almost rolled the ear of corn I was having for dinner right across the dough as I was making it. BUTTERY.

But what in the world would be the point, otherwise.

Grilled Shrimp, Patches, and a Book

Okay, where are we here. Let's start with the grilled shrimp. These are the Grilled Spicy Jalapeno and Lime Shrimp Skewers from the summer 2009 issue of Cook's Illustrated: Summer Grilling issue. This is a great issue. We actually have all three of the current Cook's Illustrateds around here: grilling, the June issue, and the Summer Entertaining issue. Andy got a subscription to the regular magazine for his birthday, and it is a great magazine, especially for scientifically minded people, since it really goes into the hows and whys of cooking in a very user-friendly and approachable — conversational — way. Each recipe details the process of discovery in creating the best version of the recipe, much like the companion television show, America's Test Kitchen, does, if you watch that (I TiVo it). Good stuff. Lots of extra information about buying shrimp, what kind of skewers work best, and  . . . grilling everything. I forgot that all of their on-line recipes are protected, so in order to access the shrimp recipe on-line you'll need to sign up for a 14-day trial if you are not a member; we made the recipe exactly as written so I can't copy it here for you. But this is a great issue and those guys work really hard on this stuff so you won't be disappointed if you get do sign up, or buy the magazine on the newsstand.

Next: Patches! The magical patches. I don't think anyone guessed the special technique, so here it is! To make a square patched pillow cover, what you do is this: Take a square of featherweight fusible interfacing the size of your finished cover plus seam allowances to every patch seam and side seams and lay it, fusible side up, on a cutting mat or a flat cardboard box — something big that you can carry over to the ironing board. Then lay out all of your patches with their cut edges butted right up next to each other in very straight rows and columns. Then take the mat over to the ironing board and carefully transfer it to the ironing board to press. Press all the patches lightly but securely to the interfacing. Then, with right sides of the patches together, fold the outermost column of patches down along the "gutter" created by the tiny space of interfacing between columns, and stitch the seam, using a scant 1/4" seam allowance. Continue across the width of the pillow in this way, and press all of the seams in the same direction (pressing only on the right side of the fabric). Turn the pillow cover 90 degrees, and repeat for all of the rows. Voila! You have a pillow cover front in minutes!

I will be putting together a pattern with step-by-step instructions for the two pillows pictured above in the next week or so. I think you could use this technique for anything that requires a certain amount of body — pillow covers, of course, but also placemats, table runners, seat cushions, potholders, maybe even little girls' dress bodices, or the hem of a skirt, or jean cuffs, certainly bags. It's absolutely perfect for bags. I don't think it's perfect for actual quilts that you are going to wash and sleep under, because of the interfacing, but that's just me; I like floppy cottons in my quilts, and since the interfacing is synthetic it won't allow the quilt to behave as you might like. But it's a really cool technique, and I am making pillows like a crazy woman for all my summer birthday presents, and some to sell in my web shop. I think I'll probably make pillow kits available, too, with cut patches, interfacing, piping, and backing for a 16" pillow, since I have cut hundreds and hundreds of patches in the past couple of weeks. These patches are very similar to the ones that I cut for the Tanglewood Bags and my cats' living-room pillows last summer -- a bit of Liberty lawn, a bit of solid, a bit of really cool contemporary quilters cotton. I am still loving this look so much. I wish I had known about the technique then, because those pillows took forever.

Speaking of the web shop, I have finished seventeen Jane Market Bags for you! I was trying desperately to make twenty, but I just can't make any more. The cool thing about them is that they are true stash bags — all of them are made out of fabrics that I already had on my shelves. I am going to try and get them all photographed and in the web shop early next week, so I'll let you know when they're there. I am trying out some new computer code that I'm hoping will eliminate the possibility of two people buying the same bag at the same time, so we'll see about that. But these are truly one-of-a-kind and can't be replicated, so I am keeping my fingers crossed about that, so no one is disappointed (my least favorite thing about having a web shop).

Lastly today, my first summer reading book is Little, Big by John Crowley. This is my fourth time reading it — I first read it at the perfect time in my life for it, and it's probably my all-time favorite summer book. I had started and stopped a couple of my new books recently, and then just had the urge to go for the sure thing, since I know it will be good. It's not for everyone, but I love it. And isn't that the coolest cover image ever? So perfect for this book. If you've read it, you know.

Birthday Weekend

On Thursday afternoon, I baked a chocolate cake for Andy.

I baked the same one a couple of years ago. But it's a good one. He wouldn't mind.

We picked up his folks at the airport and then headed out to the ballpark for the evening.

Andy, his dad, and his mom's hair. I love this picture.

Burgers, beer, baseball. And the weather was just perfect.

After the game: over the bridge, then home.

On Friday (his actual birthday), we all headed to the piney woods with a picnic lunch.

Nothing like eating a layer cake in the woods.

We put layers of quilts on the soft bed of pine needles and napped and read for hours while Andy and his dad tossed a football down by the water.

This was my view, when I wasn't watching the lazy river.

Or looking up into the trees above.

That night, we had dinner with my mom at Nostrana. You should go here. Get the appetizer with the melty cheese and the mushrooms. I don't know what it's called. But OMG.

Saturday morning, we headed downtown to the farmer's market.

Don't you love that there are farmers' markets downtown, in the middle of the hustling-bustling city?

I haven't done any market posts yet. To be honest, we've been going to the PSU market every weekend since the end of March, but I just keep forgetting to bring my camera. No dogs this year, either. Less fun for us, but I can understand. No one wants to see toddlers getting clotheslined by dog leashes in the chaos, and I've seen a few. I miss Clover Meadowhoney there, though. (She's so low, her leash just trips ya, right at the shins.)

We got shrimp, creme fraiche, olive bread, chive cream-cheese, potato bread, garlic, onions, and gorgeous lettuce. That place is so awesome.We also went to Powell's and Saturday Market.

Andy's mom told me about a dessert she'd had in Italy that was made of limoncello and frozen whipped cream. So we decided to try making limoncello ice cream.

I used this recipe for vanilla custard ice cream, and just added two tablespoons of limoncello. Probably could've added a little more. But I wasn't sure.

Here's an ad for limoncello.

Kidding. It's our backyard table, ready to serve up some of Andy's grilled shrimp, which I will give you a recipe for this week (along with the book list, and pillow-patch info — I just haven't had the time to put it all together yet).

Andy got a fountain for his birthday which I'm he's really excited about. We he just has to set it up.

Roses, lamb's ear, tomato. Dill.

Limoncello ice cream, in evening light. I think it went well with my lemoncello quilt, you know? Later we watched Under the Tuscan Sun, where they drink limoncello in Portofino. [I didn't know "limoncello" was spelled with an "I" until today. Oops :-).]

It was a wonderful weekend. Boy did I pick the right family to marry into.

Friday

On Friday, I made Tyler's Ultimate baked rigtoni with eggplant and Italian sausage. Aimee was coming for dinner and the weather was absolutely exquisite. We could finally sit outside.

The weather was amazing all weekend, actually. The garden finally perked up after the last three weeks of cold and rain and wind. My potatoes have sprouted! This is very exciting. All four pots have big green leaves emerging. I'll take photos this week. I am trying to ween myself off of my tripod because I am so lazy. It's so much easier to take pictures without it in some ways (though harder in others). On top of that, ever since I got my new iMac last fall I have been Photoshopping my photos on it and they look so different when I upload them to the PC or the blog. I can't seem to get the color profiles to match between the two computers to my satisfaction, at least. Getting better, but still not great. Oh well. Maybe someday I'll get there. I shoot everything in RAW now and I'm still getting used to it. So much to learn.

I am going through all of my old Everyday Food magazines and clipping stuff that looks good, and have ordered a little 6" x 9" binder to put everything in. I found a recipe there for Banana Chiffon Cake and made that and it was gorgeous, I have to say.

Things have been a bit hit-or-miss with me and that magazine. I must say, however, that Banana Chiffon Cake was a keeper. Pretty pretty, too.

We made vanilla Italian sodas* with fresh orange-mint. I love vanilla Italian soda. See that big pot in the bottom right corner? That has a potato in it!

Aimee is the display designer at Cargo. She always brings me such beautiful little presents. This is a diminutive pincushion from Japan, about the size of a golf ball. Isn't that darling?

The rigatoni was delish. You should make this. Use fresh mozzarella and really good imported Italian tomatoes, like Tyler says to. Costs a bit more, but so worth it here.

Aimee soundly whomped both Andy and me, but mostly me (who was a vowel magnet — at one time, out of seven letters, I had four Is, two Os and an E to work with, and when I finally did get a consonant it would be a Q, or a K, or an X. It actually got to be funny. I couldn't have picked more poorly, every single time, if I had tried, and this after Andy throughout dinner kept insisting how good I was at Scrabble, much to my eventual chagrin. Aimee, however, couldn't spell a word that didn't rack up at least twenty points, every single time.

Summer nights. So very sweet.

*To make an Italian soda, you just add a big glub-glub (that's, to use a Tyler-ism, a two-count) of some kind of flavored syrup like Torani (or you can make your own flavored simple syrup, but I don't) to a glass of very icy soda water. Then throw in some fresh mint, or a little cream (though sometimes, and I don't know why it's only sometimes, this separates and looks very disgusting) and stir. Yum yum.

Sewing Green

I finally had a chance the other night to really sit down with my friend Betz's new book, Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed and Organic Materials. It's such a wonderful book, filled with so much great information and fresh, bright, beautiful Betz-ish projects. I loved her idea for making reusable fabric produce bags to replace the plastic ones offered by the grocery store (and even the farmer's market) for lettuces, apples, onions, and such — all the fresh vegetables and herbs you purchase, and even nuts and other dry goods.

For my bags I used osnaburg, a loosely woven cotton fabric, and followed Betz's pattern pretty closely (though she had cool printed leaves on her bags, and I just wound up stitching on some of the scraps from all the Jane Market Bags I'm making up for you — I have eleven done so far and am going for twenty, so stay tuned). These are classic, unlined drawstring bags, with very easy-to-follow directions if you've never made one before. I made twelve yesterday.

Please be impressed that I am optimistic enough to think that either Andy Paulson or I might ever come home with twelve bags of produce in one shopping trip.

The check-out person will have to open each bag to see what's inside, and the bag will weigh slightly more than one of the lightweight plastic bags, but I think it will be okay. These can be tossed in the laundry when they get icky, but they're small and shouldn't use up too much energy to wash, I wouldn't think.

 

I've been working on getting my little kitchen really organized. I went through the cabinets and cleaned them out (which always feels good) and I redid all of my spices — some of them were so old I am sure they'd been there for all nine years we've lived here. It's amazing how much room is wasted with things you don't use unless you really stay on top of it, you know? Slowly but surely I am reorganizing things to be more efficient, simpler, and less overwhelming. This almost always translates to a psychological de-cluttering that I find intensely (not to mention immensely) satisfying.

Homemade 'Za, and One Mystery Exchanged for Another

I'm so excited about this new dough habit I am developing, because it's resulting in very good meals. I realize I am one of the last people on earth to make her own yeast doughs, but it's okay, because I am just thinking of all the things I have to look forward to! This weekend, I made the pizza from The River Cottage Family Cookbook and — it actually came out as pizza! I continue to marvel. This one was for Andy, with Italian sausage and blue cheese. Mine came out later and it was just plain cheese. I baked them on Silpats on half-sheet pans at about 450 degrees F for twenty minutes, I think, and the crust was very nice — perfectly golden, not too fat, not too thin. Again, Cookbook: I. Love. You. I have really learned a lot so far, and I'm only at the egg section (reading it from the beginning).

Trying to understand why it has taken me so long to make yeast dough by hand. My mom and grandma occasionally made bread or pizza, and it was a big deal when they did, and I have to confess that I didn't really like it (and I think it was because it was very under-salted). So I just always sort of secretly thought, "Why are they putting themselves through that?"

Also, when you grow up in Chicago, where the best pizza in the world (yes, even better than in Italy, in my opinion, though I've never been to NYC, and I hear it's good there, too :-) is only a phone call (and in our family's case, just a couple of blocks) away, you are just not that highly motivated to wait two hours for your own pizza crust to rise. Now, far from home, Andy frequently makes pizza, and so does my brother-in-law Mike (also an ex-pat Oak Parker-turned-Oregonian), and both of their pizzas are really great. And I have made lots of cheater Boboli pizzas, and English muffin pizzas, and refrigerator-biscuit pizzas, and Jiffy-box crust pizzas but I have to admit that it has never occurred to me to, as directed by the River Cottage recipe, put salt and pepper and olive oil on the top of the pizza, after you put the cheese on. I'm convinced that, as much as it was the yummy dough, it was the salty-peppery-glossy top that made it so good.

So anyway, that's my 'za, and more navel-gazing Alicia-dough soliliquy. Thanks for listening. Moving on.

Great guesses about the terra cotta thing yesterday! I realized at the end of the post that it was a really terrible picture of the terra cotta thing, but I had already given it to my mom for Mother's Day, so I couldn't show you the front, which had a little hole above the basin. Though there were so many very creative guesses (my favorite being "toad house" — and is there really such a thing as a toad house? Beacause I want one of those) I was told by the salesgirl who sold it to me that it was an "Italian bird waterer." She said to just fill up the jug through the little hole above the basin, then turn it right side up, and the water pressure just fills up the basin a bit, and the birds can get their drink.

Unfortunately, within twenty minutes of my mom filling it up and putting it on a little stool in her garden, it was totally leaking through the (I now realize unglazed) bottom. When I called the store to ask them what I was doing wrong, they didn't know, because no one there had actually ever used one, and suggested that "magic" might keep the water in. Otherwise I could return it.

Ummm, okay. Did she actually just say "magic"?

Around here we call that "for decorative use only."