oh, how i love summer dinners. the simplicity, colors and deliciousiness (yes, that is a word). last night, i made gnocchi. my sister had to pronounce it for me because i kept calling it gnash, which is quite different, but just as good in its own right.

i followed elise’s recipe and they came out perfectly. topped it with a homemade marinara sauce – perfection!  if i was on a roll i would have made some blueberry sauce for our vanilla ice cream, but one can only cram so much goodness into one day. perhaps, today.

random note – went to go see away we go. one of my new favorites. had to buy this album – it’s on constant rotation.

came to visit this weekend. a surprise visit, of sorts. we talked, ate great food, laughed and shopped. all that a weekend should be.

did I mention that we ate this weekend? not only did we eat, we feast on delicious food. it all started with lunch at this place. lunch was a feta and spinach quiche for me. grilled chicken and red pepper panini for amanda. and tuna salad for mama. we all gobbled down the best homemade tomato-basil soup. i’ve had dreams about it. we finished lunch with a moist red velvet cupcake with yummy butter cream frosting.

dinner was a homemade pizza – half cheese and pepperoni and the other half veggie. i think veggie pizza should be required at least once a week, perhaps twice. amanda, made homemade tomato sauce. we licked the pot clean, it was that good. and to finish just saturday, a blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. i seriously forgot how good cobbler is. yet again, there seemed to be a problem with taking a picture of the cobbler before it was eaten. must work on that.

every sunday should be started with flaky biscuit, homemade honey-butter whipped (yes, butter. yumm. oh so good) and jam strawberry jam. of course, only to be followed by a famous fried chicken at stroud’s. wondering how we ate all this food? well, the better part of sunday we sat and watched mad men. one must recover from such an eventful weekend, agreed?

I made an apple tart this weekend. It was delish and so pretty! Everything an apple tart should be – brown flaky crust, caramelized glaze, apple arranged in a concentric circle, sweet with a little zing…I could go on and on about my little apple tart. I might have gotten a little carried away in how pretty it turned out that I forgot to snap a picture. I understand it that is could be hard to believe that an apple tart was even made. But…ah-ha, my evidence: the start of the pâte brisée.

The recipe was a combination of Martha Stewart’s pâte brisée and the barefoot contessa apple filing.

You are just going to have to trust me that it was that good. No fears friends, I feel another apple tart coming this week, with pictures to come.

There will be more white coming this weekend – heaps of snow is what they are calling for.  Humph… I should not be surprised, this is Kansas after all where we say “if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”  Maybe it’s okay to bundle up one more weekend, it will be my motivation to finish those wool socks since my deadline is quickly approaching.  And it gives me reason to make this and with all this snow talk and my heater going I’ve been craving this with something from here.

Happy Weekend!

Oilcloth Tablecloth

Oilcloth inspiration board & coasters

I’ve fallen in love with oilcloth all over again.  My mom thinks this is crazy since she is grew up with oilcloth, and then it was considered common and trite.  But there is something about the way oilcloth feels – soft, bendable and of course one of it’s best features it wipeable.  My first experience with oilcloth was my Orla Kiely purse…all I can say it is one of my favorites purses and it still looks like the day I bought it.

Apartment Therapy had a great post about oilcloth and now it’s all I’m thinking about.  The only unfortunate there is not a very large oilcloth selection.  Sure there this is the typical checkered, stripes, 50’s and 60’s flower prints and even some crazy polka dots, but my grand plans call for more variety.  Not that I need to add to my “to-do” list, but I started to research how to making my own oilcloth.  Crazy, I know.  But I think the desire for oilcloth aprons, outdoor seat cushions, purses and small makeup bags (the list could go on and on) will eventually win over.  The instructions call for the fabric to dry in the sun for days, so perhaps its a good thing that we just entered our rainy/tornado season.

The home-made ravioli part deux was a little more successful then part one.  The dough was made, it was still hard but a little less yellow; then it took me forever to roll out the dough, and when boiled it tasted a tad rubbery. Let’s just say that I will not be making any home-made pasta until I get my hands on one of these.  Plain and simple, there is a reason why this machine exists.  Backup dinner number two: quasi bruschetta with a kicking marinara sauce.

No, this is not a volcano you made when you were six that erupted and spued white foamy stuff down the side – quite the contrary.  This is the start of home made ravioli, or at least the attempt there of.  I have an obscenely large amount (thank you, Costco) of ricotta cheese in my frig that needs to be used; I can’t even remember why I purchased it, perhaps lasagna.  What else is made with ricotta cheese, ravioli of course!  It is actually fate that I make ravioli because the same day I thought about making the ravioli, there was a recipe for homemade pasta dough in Tastebuds. Fate, I tell you.  I even did additional research since I have never made my own pasta – I glanced at other recipes and watched a couple tutorials on youtube.  I followed the directions to a “t” and instead of soft and creamy dough, I ended up with a hard yellow lump – yellow from me adding too many eggs to soften the hard lump.  Dishearten I pulled out the dinner back up – eggs and rosti.  At about 9pm I was still festering over the fact that I had wasted four eggs and I decided to boil a piece of my hard lump, just to see.  Surprising it tasted like pasta, a little eggy, but let’s pretend I was making egg-noodles.  So tonight I am going back and going to attempt this again, because I am smart and homemade ravioli cannot be my demise.

Happy weekend all!

It’s only 9:37 pm on Sunday night and I am ready for bed. Usually, Sunday evening my head is swarming with last minute to do before the week begins – but not tonight. I am thinking my two best options are 1) to watch a episode of Mad Men or 2) curl up in bed and read continue reading The $64 Dollar Tomato.

This weekend I stole away some time to work on a couple projects. I am still plugging away at knitting Andreas’ wool sock. I think I would be finished a little faster if I was not trying to teach my self how to knit continental style . I might give in and finish using the English method, because let’s be honest time is running against me. If both socks aren’t finished by April 1st, they might as well be a Christmas present this year. Somehow I have myself convinced that if I only were using these, my knitting would speed up 10x. Sigh…we’ll see how desperate I become as April approaches.

I spent the better part of Friday and Saturday working on my newest project – coasters. I have never been a fan of coasters – they always seemed too…too something that I can’t describe, maybe that is their problem. But when I saw these, I had a mini coaster revelation and starting dreaming up coasters made of linen/cotton/broadcloth with hand-printed/screen-printed designs. I carved the designs out of a lino block and used block printing ink to stamp them onto the linen. I am super thrilled with the way they printed! I don’t have a picture of the finished product but I am itching to make more this week, so pictures be will cominh. I could see myself becoming slightly obsessed with making these – a mini coaster sweat-shop, perhaps.

By the way, I just received my second issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food. Why has no one told me about this magazine? It is simply divine – the recipes are easy, simple, not overly time consuming and delicious. Once I realized this was such a treasure, I googled to see how long I had been missing out – since 2004!! This is when some of my OCD tendencies start to come out, because I began searching online to see if there is a way to purchase the back orders…like all of them. I haven’t found anywhere yet, which is good because I am pretty sure Andreas would ship to me to Siberia if I order 60 ( 12 months x 5 years) food magazines all at once. Ahem…but that doesn’t mean I won’t keep searching for them.

The cooking grove that is – this weekend was filled with good recipes and good food.  I was not planning to cook this much, it just kind of happened.  Friday evening we gobbled down deluxe BLT sandwiches and ice tea. I heart BLTs – it reminds me of summer and since we  had great weather it seemed fitting.  No basketball game is complete without pizza, so Saturday afternoon we watched the KU game with the best homemade pizza.  Andreas had been asking for chocolate chip cookies, so Saturday evening I whipped up a batch (I never use to whip up cookies, it feels so domestic).  I am making him take the remaining cookies and three diet cokes to work tomorrow so I am not tempted.  On Sunday, which is soup day at our house, I made a great minestrone and finally tried the no knead bread recipe.  Numerous people had raved about this recipe so I had to tried it.  It’s a keeper – crusty on the outside and soft on the inside.

Oh, there were other important things happening this weekend besides cooking – pantry shelves were built, holes were puttied, shelves painted, some knitting, an ass kicking by KU men’s basketball team, seeds planted and a spring-forward nap.  There were some things that didn’t happen this weekend as well – we still have to pink chair (Andreas promised to have mercy for one more week), one wool sock still in progress, my kitchen…read above and you get the picture, and dirty laundry is still waiting.

The weather man just reported that on Tuesday it is suppose to be 74F and on Wednesday…32F. I have no words.

This weekend I had an idea – a brilliant idea. I worked on my idea all week – gathering supplies, scouring the internet for instructions and techniques, sawing wood, jumping every time I used the nail gun and today was the day it was all suppose to come together.  And it didn’t.  Something went wrong, I think I know what happened, but still…ugh.  I’m not giving up, but for today I’m going to join Gracie on the couch for the rest of the afternoon and finish writing my business plan, maybe with a little knitting on the side.  I’ll have to go out tomorrow gather more supplies, possible cut a little more wood and try again.  This is what I signed up for being crafty and all, right? So I’m going to call this a process, trial and error if you will.  

Since I’ve been a little sidetracked with my idea the past few days, I realized it’s almost been a week since I’ve made dinner. I have this love/hate relationship with cooking. When I’m in the groove of cooking, planning out meals, making grocery list, allocating time in my day –  I’m fine and I really enjoy.  I enjoy to the point of being a little ambitious at times, I’ve thought about making my own tortillas.  But I’m out of the groove and now it just seems like work. Why can’t cereal or toast or yogurt be a substitute for meat? I have a couple peppers that are nearing their end, so I’m going to put on my apron (always makes me feel a little better) and make this tonight.