Dilly Bread

(Mama here) We baked bread this afternoon. I had some meatloaf left over from dinner last night, and there really is nothing better than meatloaf sandwiches with this bread.


Dilly Bread

2 ½ c flour
2 T sugar
1 T instant minced onion
2 t dill seed
1¼ t salt
¼ t soda
1 package yeast (2 1/4 t)
1 cup cottage cheese
¼ c water
1 T butter
1 large egg

In a large mixing bowl, combine one cup of the flour and all the sugar, onion, dill seed, salt, soda and yeast.


My yeast was a little past its prime, so I "proofed" it. That's just another way of saying I checked to make sure the yeast was still alive and would help the dough rise. To proof yeast, you add a teaspoon to about a quarter of a cup of warm water (about 110 to 115°). Add a teaspoon or so of sugar and mix. Wait five or ten minutes. If the yeast is good, it will foam up and get puffy looking, like this:



In a saucepan, combine the cottage cheese, water and butter. Heat until the mixture is warm. (I use a thermometer to test it and try to get it around 115°.)


Add the egg and the warm liquid to the flour mixture.




Blend at your mixer's lowest speed until the ingredients are moistened. Scrape down the bowl, then beat 3 more minutes at medium speed.


Stir in remaining flour to form a stiff dough. (The recipe says to do this by hand, but I use the dough hook on my mixer. It works fine.) Cover the dough and let it rise in a warm place until light and doubled in size. This will take about one hour.

(I like to put the dough in a container like an ice cream bucket or even this cream puff bucket, whatever I've got handy. The key is to use something with a nice lid.)


Stir down the dough and turn it into a well-greased 2-quart casserole. Cover the dish and let rise in warm place until light, 30 to 45 minutes. This shows you how the dough looked at the beginning. I wanted you to see how much the dough has to rise. See that little black line on the side of the dish? That's where the dough has to get before you bake it.


This is what the dough will look like when it's ready to bake. You can barely see my black line, but if you look closely you can tell how much higher the dough is in the pan.


Bake at 350° for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden brown. When you take it out of the oven, brush the top with butter and sprinkle with kosher salt on it.


Let the bread cool on a wire rack. Slice and enjoy!

Phun with Photoshop

We didn't get a lot of sewing done at Quilt Night last night. We all wanted to watch the debate, and one of the few things we don't have in the sewing room is a television.

Anyway, today I thought I'd show you a little of the cookbook I'm making for Katie's birthday. At Christmas, she asked me to put together recipes for some of her favorite foods. Surely by now you know better than to think I made a bunch of xeroxes and let it go at that. You do, don't you?



Over the last few weeks, whenever I've had a few minutes, I've typed recipes into Word documents. I've also scanned a bunch of photos and saved the files.

On Saturday evening, I bought Photoshop Elements. Now that I've owned Photoshop for almost three whole days, I'm on a roll. I blame Ree at The Pioneer Woman. She got me all hyped up about Photoshop and made me believe I could figure it out. She also introduced me to the idea of photoshop patterns and brushes. As soon as I got Elements loaded, I searched some out. Yeah, Baby. I loves me some patterns. And the brushes? Crazy. It's absolutely crazy how many gorgeous brushes you can get free on the internet.

Forgive me. My mind wandered for a moment. Back to the project in progress.

For each page, I open a document and create a layer for the pattern. (So far, I've used a different pattern on each page.)


Then I create another layer and draw a box. I fill the box with white and set the opacity at a level that lets me see some of the pattern in the layer below. I mess with different percentages until I find a setting I like. Even though I want to see the pattern, I also want to be able to read the text easily. This box is at 50% opacity. I use a brush to fill a selection around the box to make the darker border around the box.


Next, I create another layer and make a text box. From there, it's a simple matter to copy and paste the text from the Word documents into the photoshop file.


After adding another layer, I cut out a figure from one of the scanned photos and add it to the page.



Can we talk about that photo for a moment? Halloween, 1992. The thing she's wearing on her head is a skirt from her dress-up box. She called it "my beautiful long black hair," and she wore it on her head like that nearly every day. She made it into pony tails and pig tails. Buns, even. Her own hair was fine and thin and curly. And short. It took forever to grow. But not long after I made that skirt, she figured out that the stretchy sequins waistband functioned as a headband, too. From that moment on, she almost never wore it as a skirt, only as hair. She wore it so much that it seemed normal. One day when we were shopping, I noticed people smiling and laughing and pointing. It took half an hour to realize it was because she had that skirt on her head.

(Sigh)

About the project: There are probably many, many better ways to go about making these pages, but from the vantage point of 72 hours whole hours of experience, this is what I can manage. If you've got suggestions, I'd sure love to hear them. If anyone is interested, I'll show post more pages as I get them done.

Too Much Fun

(Jerri, here)

We had too much fun this weekend. I spent most of my waking hours over at Mom's house, in the sewing room. Only stopped long enough to sleep and try to teach myself Photoshop. Yeah. Like I need another project. I'll try to explain that later.

Here's Mom getting her sewing machine ready for action:



The original pattern was for a small wall hanging, so we adapted it, adding some of our own designs to make it bigger. Here's what we've got so far:



And a close up.


We had a little miscalculation and ended up having to take off several rows. Mom's going to post her oh-so-much easier way to unsew (rip out) later. You really don't want to miss that. Mom's been sewing for almost 60 years and I've been at it for 30 years or more. We just learned this trick a couple weeks ago. Boy, does it make unsewing less painful!

Oh, and before we go—a big thank you to Dad, who manned the kitchen this weekend so we could work on Katie's quilt. Her birthday is less than 30 days away. We'd never get done in time without his help.

Cleaning Day!

(Mama here)

Today is cleaning day at my house.  This is so we can have a work-free weekend.  

Dad will do some cooking and the dishes for us so that we can play in the sewing room.   What a guy.  He wasn't always like that but now that he is we sure do enjoy and appreciate it.

I have some cleaning tips for all of the young people who may be reading this and also for some of you who would like to go more green.

Mrs Stewart's bluing is the best thing I know for cleaning windows and mirrors.  Just a few drops in some hot water , no streaks and you don't have to be afraid to use it.  Some days I just use plain water. My Aunt Betty taught me this many years ago.

I like to use cast iron to cook in.  I do have some LeCreuset  but I also use Lodge.  If you happen to get a little rust in that you can take it out easily with a little vinegar and water.  Use 1/4 cup vinegar  in water and boil for 30 minutes to an hour.

Vinegar is good for lots of things.

Use equal parts olive oil and vinegar to remove water rings from wood.

To clean a shower curtain , put in washer with 1 cup vinegar and a bath towel.  All you have to do then is run it through the washer cycle.

A good wash for your produce is 1 tablespoon vinegar in 1 gallon water.

Thats all for today.  I really do have to clean.  Jerri and I will be back on Monday with pictures of the progress over the week-end.

Quilt Night

Tuesday night is Quilt Night at Mom's house. My sister, one of her daughters and I gather for food and fun. Dad does the dishes. 

This week Mom made an incredible beef and wild rice stew for supper and I made a simple salad with Green Goddess dressing.

About that dressing: a week or so ago, thoughts of Green Goddess dressing climbed out of a tiny drawer somewhere in the back of my mind. I hadn't eaten any for ages...hadn't even seen it offered anywhere.

 

Last Saturday, Mom, my sister-in-law, Nancy, and I went to Penzey's Spices in Overland Park, Kansas. The first thing I noticed on the shelves was an herb mixture for making Green Goddess dressing. You know I bought some.

Oh, yeah. It's every bit as good as I remembered. And couldn't be simpler. You combine one tablespoon of the mixture with two tablespoons of water and let it sit for 5 minutes. When the herbs have absorbed the water, you combine them with plain yogurt or mayonnaise, and you've got fresh, preservative-free, low sodium, yummy salad dressing.

Speaking of yummy—Mom baked cherry cobbler for dessert. Like the Little Red Hen, she did it all: picked, cleaned and froze the cherries last summer, made the crust and filling, and created a gorgeous lattice top. 

We didn't get a lot done in the sewing room. Meg discovered she'd made a pretty big mistake in her project and spent most of the evening "unsewing."

Deb was looking for the materials for her new project, which led to a major clean-out-the-bags-and-boxes blowout.

Mom helped me make flower squares for Katie's quilt. I've got to get a move on. Her birthday is only 34 days away.

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome. Come on in and sit down a while.

This is Mama with her husband of 56 years (and my father), Chuck.


This is me.


Mom and I always have projects going. Truth be told, we always have one too many projects going. Between playing with computers, quilting, embroidery, knitting and cooking, it's a wonder we get anything else done at all. But we do.

We decided to start this blog to have a place to share some of what we've learned over the years and to learn from other foodies and fabric freaks. We'll try to have pictures of our projects and recipes for what we're cooking. Maybe even a few instructions from time to time. We plan to post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. More often if something exciting is going on.

Here are a few things Mama and I believe:

Pretty food tastes better.

Presentation matters.

You can never have too many dishes.

When you're covered by a handmade quilt, you're wrapped in love.

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