Anyone who has access to the America's Test Kitchen website needs to look up their recipe for Enchiladas Verde. I had never eaten a tomatillo or a poblano chile before dinner today. My husband wasn't sold on the taste of the tomatillos, but I loved this dish. If you're a Mexican food fan, make this soon. I don't know about other recipes for this dish that you can find online, because it's the first time I have eaten it. I trusted America's Test Kitchen and they never steer me wrong (well, maybe not that scalloped potato recipe with the garlic - but almost never). I would recommend seeing if you can find canned tomatillos and poblanos because roasting them and peeling the peppers is a pain!
I am wrestling with the ethics of including the recipe here. It's on the PBS TV show for free, but you have to be a member to get it online at their website. It's in the cookbook, but I bought that. ARRRGH! I hate copyright issues!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Cups and saucers
Slowly but surely, I am finishing the binding work that has stacked up. This is the one I did today. Longer ago than I am comfortable in admitting, I got my teacup quilt back from Deb Levy, who did the most amazing quilting job on it. It was much more than a collaborative design - I gave a few ideas, but she selected all the special motifs that make it so spectacular. I would never have been able to design the quilting that she did. Here it is, in my den: 
The picture is so washed out from the flash; someday I will try to get a better one in natural light. I want to show off the wonderful quilting. Each teacup has a motif quilted on it that relates to the fabrics in that block. For example, this one has a sailboat because of the lighthouses on the saucer rim. 
There are leaves and flowers and swirls and dots and feathers, each different. All the cups have a swirl of steam rising from the rim, and the blocks have the background checked off in tiny diamonds. The sashing also has a figurative steam swirl. And the background print is divided off and quilted to point up each part:
I just can't express how happy this quilt makes me. Deb, you're a genius.
The picture is so washed out from the flash; someday I will try to get a better one in natural light. I want to show off the wonderful quilting. Each teacup has a motif quilted on it that relates to the fabrics in that block. For example, this one has a sailboat because of the lighthouses on the saucer rim. 
There are leaves and flowers and swirls and dots and feathers, each different. All the cups have a swirl of steam rising from the rim, and the blocks have the background checked off in tiny diamonds. The sashing also has a figurative steam swirl. And the background print is divided off and quilted to point up each part:
I just can't express how happy this quilt makes me. Deb, you're a genius. Tuesday, October 20, 2009
It's not easy being green
What's this?
It's my recycling station, nestled in the laundry between the pantry and the washing machine. It's a nifty container with three plastic bins each under a lid with a step-on pedal for hands-free operations. With it, you can easily and cleanly sort and store recyclable materials.
It's also one of the more superfluous things in my house. Let me explain.
Back before I bought this, I had a wicker hamper lined with a plastic bag. It wasn't very big, and since it was weeks between the curbside recycling pickups, it would overflow. In order to keep down the mess, I would sort the contents by type (aluminum, steel, paper, plastic 1, plastic 2) into paper bags and haul them to the recycling station down near the park. This was what my husband referred to as "driving the garbage around town". I had been doing this for years ever since we lived in an apartment complex without recycling pickup. Things got easier when the city put a satellite recycling dropoff in my end of town, but I still had too much recycling to let it lie around the place until the curbside pickup.
So, if I was going to sort it and dump it, I thought it would be easier to add pre-sorting into the mix and got my neat stainless triple sorter. So, cans went in one bin, plastic into another and steel/glass in the third. Paper went into a basket near it in the laundry. On recycling day, I picked up the bins out of the recycling station, put them in the station wagon and used the nifty handles to carry them from the car to the humongous labeled skips where I deposited each kind of material. Then the bins went back into the car and away I went. Easy-peasy, with the sorting done ahead of time.
Then the city got all eco-conscious and decided that we would have biweekly recycling pickup. They also cancelled our scheduled monthly brush and grass clippings pickup, but that's another gripe. So, now every other Friday the big green truck comes around to pick up our bagged recyclables. All they ask is that we put the stuff in blue plastic bags or bins so they can discern it from just plain trash. You can even mix all the types of materials in a single bag. It gets sorted and screened at the dumping point. This is good, except the bins in my recycling station are black, and would not be recognized for what they were, so I have to put the contents in a blue plastic bag (Isn't that inherently wasteful? And do you know how hard it is to find blue plastic garbage bags? But I digress.)
Now, I take each bin, dump it in one of the small blue plastic bags I found and set it on the curb. The bags are so small I usually have three - aluminum, plastic and paper. I don't collect up much steel so I save it for months to make a load, and the glass can't be left at the curb - I still have to take it into the satellite dropoff. If I could buy really large blue bags I could put all the contents into one of them and comingle the contents - the city doesn't care.
So all my pre-sorting work is out the window. I could use my wicker hamper again if it hadn't fallen apart. The only thing positive about all this sorting and separate bagging is that I can imagine the city workers pointing at my house and saying "The people who live here have the tidiest recycling in town!"
It's my recycling station, nestled in the laundry between the pantry and the washing machine. It's a nifty container with three plastic bins each under a lid with a step-on pedal for hands-free operations. With it, you can easily and cleanly sort and store recyclable materials.It's also one of the more superfluous things in my house. Let me explain.
Back before I bought this, I had a wicker hamper lined with a plastic bag. It wasn't very big, and since it was weeks between the curbside recycling pickups, it would overflow. In order to keep down the mess, I would sort the contents by type (aluminum, steel, paper, plastic 1, plastic 2) into paper bags and haul them to the recycling station down near the park. This was what my husband referred to as "driving the garbage around town". I had been doing this for years ever since we lived in an apartment complex without recycling pickup. Things got easier when the city put a satellite recycling dropoff in my end of town, but I still had too much recycling to let it lie around the place until the curbside pickup.
So, if I was going to sort it and dump it, I thought it would be easier to add pre-sorting into the mix and got my neat stainless triple sorter. So, cans went in one bin, plastic into another and steel/glass in the third. Paper went into a basket near it in the laundry. On recycling day, I picked up the bins out of the recycling station, put them in the station wagon and used the nifty handles to carry them from the car to the humongous labeled skips where I deposited each kind of material. Then the bins went back into the car and away I went. Easy-peasy, with the sorting done ahead of time.
Then the city got all eco-conscious and decided that we would have biweekly recycling pickup. They also cancelled our scheduled monthly brush and grass clippings pickup, but that's another gripe. So, now every other Friday the big green truck comes around to pick up our bagged recyclables. All they ask is that we put the stuff in blue plastic bags or bins so they can discern it from just plain trash. You can even mix all the types of materials in a single bag. It gets sorted and screened at the dumping point. This is good, except the bins in my recycling station are black, and would not be recognized for what they were, so I have to put the contents in a blue plastic bag (Isn't that inherently wasteful? And do you know how hard it is to find blue plastic garbage bags? But I digress.)
Now, I take each bin, dump it in one of the small blue plastic bags I found and set it on the curb. The bags are so small I usually have three - aluminum, plastic and paper. I don't collect up much steel so I save it for months to make a load, and the glass can't be left at the curb - I still have to take it into the satellite dropoff. If I could buy really large blue bags I could put all the contents into one of them and comingle the contents - the city doesn't care.
So all my pre-sorting work is out the window. I could use my wicker hamper again if it hadn't fallen apart. The only thing positive about all this sorting and separate bagging is that I can imagine the city workers pointing at my house and saying "The people who live here have the tidiest recycling in town!"
Lights up...lights down
It's always something when you own a home. I just didn't expect a light show in my living room.
For several months now, the living room lamps have been flickering. For no reason, the brightness will go dooooown, and then uuuuuup, taking several seconds to do each excursion. The pendant light in the kitchen was doing it too. Then, the overhead light in the den tried the maneuver. That isn't good. That's all I knew about it.
Electricity scares the whiz out of me. I once installed a mercury vapor light outside of my house on a pole, and the whole time I was up on the ladder I was begging my husband - "Just tell me the power is shut off again. Are you SURE?" That's kind of embarrassing for a retired engineer to admit, but hey, I was a mechanical engineer. I took electrical circuits classes in college, but having knowledge about something doesn't preclude having irrational fears about it!
So when the lights started doing that, I wanted to go to the professionals. I knew that my neighbor had just had some electrical problems right after the power company had gone through the neighborhood cutting vines off power poles and clearing vegetation near the wires. Her lights had been going on and off, too, and other strange things happening (a circuit breaker and a wall oven computer control damaged). There had been some sort of damage done to the connections on the pole where her service was taken off, and the power company had to do repairs - she didn't understand exactly what. Meanwhile, of course, they wouldn't accept responsibility for any of the electrical stuff and she had to buy a new oven and ask her son to replace the bad breaker.
The first thing I did was call the power company to check the line coming into the house. My husband (the electrical engineer) had said that a weak neutral on the transformer would cause voltage fluctuations that would make the lights dim. So, remarkably quickly, the power company people showed up. They tested the voltage and current coming into my house on their side and on my side of the meter. Not a problem was found. So, gulp, it was in my hands.
This was an excuse to do something that had never been done in the forty years my house has existed - map the circuits in the breaker box. Of course, I approached it like a retired engineer - I drew up a schematic of the house, locating every outlet and wired fixture and identifying them by a numbering scheme. Then, I made sure a lamp or something I could monitor was plugged into every single outlet in the house, turned them on, and then turned on every hardwired light fixture. My house looked like Las Vegas.
I warned my husband that his computer should probably be shut off, and then out to the garage I went. Then, for almost two hours, I did the following:
1. Turn off a breaker.
2. Wander the house, noting which outlets/lights/appliances were now shut off.
3. Annotate my schematic to show which of the above were attached to that breaker.
4. Turn on the breaker.
Repeat - 16 times. Blessedly, someone had the forethought to label the 220 volt circuits to the heat pump, the water heater, dryer, oven etc. So I only had to worry about the 110 volt lighting section. That was enough.
When I reached the third from last breaker (which controlled the living room lights) and turned it back on, I heard a sizzling sound coming from it, like someone was frying a pan of bacon. Oops. Think I found the problem. So I finished the last two quickly and told my husband about it. His response was to turn it off immediately. The contacts in the breaker were arcing - definitely not a good thing. We'd have to replace it. It's a simple job; there was only one problem. The service into my house does not have a main disconnect.
I kind of stood there with my mouth hanging open when I realized that. Heck, the electrical panel in my older former house that had fuses instead of breakers, for heaven's sake, had a main disconnect. What crazy electrical code was this place built to? So anyone who worked on the box would have to do it with the power live, or call the utility company to turn off the service and then reinstate it. My husband said he could replace the breaker anyway. Heck no, I said. So I ran an extension cord from the den to power the TV and a table lamp that night while I considered options. A quick canvass of my neighbor and friends revealed that no one had hired an electrician and had any recommendations.
The next day, husband said he was going to fix the breaker. It was ridiculous, he said, to pay $200 for such a simple job. But, I retorted, I wasn't emotionally attached to the electrician - he was expendable. Husband convinced me it would be OK. So, I gathered up my courage (and rubber gloves and a rubber door mat for him to stand on!) and thus outfitted, and hopefully insulated, he went into the garage and swapped out the breaker, me standing there the whole time holding my breath with one hand near the wooden handle of the broom, which I was going to use to pull him away from the panel when the sparks started flying. Of course, he did it without any problems at all (he's a professional!).
So now the issue is fixed and my lights don't look like the marquee of the Tivoli Theater. What a relief.
For several months now, the living room lamps have been flickering. For no reason, the brightness will go dooooown, and then uuuuuup, taking several seconds to do each excursion. The pendant light in the kitchen was doing it too. Then, the overhead light in the den tried the maneuver. That isn't good. That's all I knew about it.
Electricity scares the whiz out of me. I once installed a mercury vapor light outside of my house on a pole, and the whole time I was up on the ladder I was begging my husband - "Just tell me the power is shut off again. Are you SURE?" That's kind of embarrassing for a retired engineer to admit, but hey, I was a mechanical engineer. I took electrical circuits classes in college, but having knowledge about something doesn't preclude having irrational fears about it!
So when the lights started doing that, I wanted to go to the professionals. I knew that my neighbor had just had some electrical problems right after the power company had gone through the neighborhood cutting vines off power poles and clearing vegetation near the wires. Her lights had been going on and off, too, and other strange things happening (a circuit breaker and a wall oven computer control damaged). There had been some sort of damage done to the connections on the pole where her service was taken off, and the power company had to do repairs - she didn't understand exactly what. Meanwhile, of course, they wouldn't accept responsibility for any of the electrical stuff and she had to buy a new oven and ask her son to replace the bad breaker.
The first thing I did was call the power company to check the line coming into the house. My husband (the electrical engineer) had said that a weak neutral on the transformer would cause voltage fluctuations that would make the lights dim. So, remarkably quickly, the power company people showed up. They tested the voltage and current coming into my house on their side and on my side of the meter. Not a problem was found. So, gulp, it was in my hands.
This was an excuse to do something that had never been done in the forty years my house has existed - map the circuits in the breaker box. Of course, I approached it like a retired engineer - I drew up a schematic of the house, locating every outlet and wired fixture and identifying them by a numbering scheme. Then, I made sure a lamp or something I could monitor was plugged into every single outlet in the house, turned them on, and then turned on every hardwired light fixture. My house looked like Las Vegas.
I warned my husband that his computer should probably be shut off, and then out to the garage I went. Then, for almost two hours, I did the following:
1. Turn off a breaker.
2. Wander the house, noting which outlets/lights/appliances were now shut off.
3. Annotate my schematic to show which of the above were attached to that breaker.
4. Turn on the breaker.
Repeat - 16 times. Blessedly, someone had the forethought to label the 220 volt circuits to the heat pump, the water heater, dryer, oven etc. So I only had to worry about the 110 volt lighting section. That was enough.
When I reached the third from last breaker (which controlled the living room lights) and turned it back on, I heard a sizzling sound coming from it, like someone was frying a pan of bacon. Oops. Think I found the problem. So I finished the last two quickly and told my husband about it. His response was to turn it off immediately. The contacts in the breaker were arcing - definitely not a good thing. We'd have to replace it. It's a simple job; there was only one problem. The service into my house does not have a main disconnect.
I kind of stood there with my mouth hanging open when I realized that. Heck, the electrical panel in my older former house that had fuses instead of breakers, for heaven's sake, had a main disconnect. What crazy electrical code was this place built to? So anyone who worked on the box would have to do it with the power live, or call the utility company to turn off the service and then reinstate it. My husband said he could replace the breaker anyway. Heck no, I said. So I ran an extension cord from the den to power the TV and a table lamp that night while I considered options. A quick canvass of my neighbor and friends revealed that no one had hired an electrician and had any recommendations.
The next day, husband said he was going to fix the breaker. It was ridiculous, he said, to pay $200 for such a simple job. But, I retorted, I wasn't emotionally attached to the electrician - he was expendable. Husband convinced me it would be OK. So, I gathered up my courage (and rubber gloves and a rubber door mat for him to stand on!) and thus outfitted, and hopefully insulated, he went into the garage and swapped out the breaker, me standing there the whole time holding my breath with one hand near the wooden handle of the broom, which I was going to use to pull him away from the panel when the sparks started flying. Of course, he did it without any problems at all (he's a professional!).
So now the issue is fixed and my lights don't look like the marquee of the Tivoli Theater. What a relief.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Cat quilting motif and cat tales
I'm putting the binding on my husband's half a quilt, and I wanted to show the panto motif the longarmer used:
Isn't that just the most adorable kitty pattern? I haven't started his applique cat quilt, so I put cats in the quilting on this one.
Speaking of kitties, Molly and I had a run-in yesterday. Since she won't wear a collar, I wanted to get a harness or something I could put on her if there was an emergency, since she's pretty hard to hold on to if she's upset. I keep her carrier in my closet in the bedroom in case there's an emergency and we have to grab her and vacate the premises, but I worried that without a way to hold her securely, she could get away from me and escape outside the carrier. Plus she wouldn't have her tags. So, I went to Petco and bought a cat harness and short leash yesterday. I needed to see if the harness would fit her ('cause she's a big girl!), so I put her on the table and slipped the harness on her.
Boy, was she upset! Let the biting commence! Of course, not full-out biting, just nips to show me that she was not amused. I adjusted the harness (let it out all the way, actually) and then tried to take it off. It has one of those little plastic quick-connects that have tiny ears on either side to depress to unlatch it. It's ridiculously hard to unfasten. While I'm wrestling with it, she's wrestling with me, and by the time I got the harness off her, she was beside herself.
You see, she hates to feel that she's being pushed around. I think that's why she hates the vet so much, because she doesn't have any control over what is happening to her. When I put the harness on her she felt like I was manhandling her and she got very angry. I have never had a cat that did that. My last darling kitty, Sasha, would just give you a look like "Well, okay," if you had to brush her or bathe her or clip her claws. She would look so dejected, as if to say "Why are you doing this to me?" When she had to have IVs after she got sick, she went along with whatever happened, because her people said it had to be done.
Boy, not Molly. If she feels bullied, she just goes nuts. I gave her a little kiss-and-make-up turkey afterward, but I think she's still mad at me. I reached down to pet her head as I walked past her and she had a tantrum at me today, nipping my feet. I wanted to calm her down, so I sat down on the floor beside her thinking I could give her a belly rub and get her over her bad mood. She didn't want a belly rub even though that's her favorite thing, but she wasn't running away from me. She was just sitting there next to me, looking very irritated, so I had a little talk with her about how I didn't like being bullied either. Molly looked at me very solemnly, and then raised her little face for a kitty kiss, as if to apologize. She cracks me up, sometimes.
Isn't that just the most adorable kitty pattern? I haven't started his applique cat quilt, so I put cats in the quilting on this one.Speaking of kitties, Molly and I had a run-in yesterday. Since she won't wear a collar, I wanted to get a harness or something I could put on her if there was an emergency, since she's pretty hard to hold on to if she's upset. I keep her carrier in my closet in the bedroom in case there's an emergency and we have to grab her and vacate the premises, but I worried that without a way to hold her securely, she could get away from me and escape outside the carrier. Plus she wouldn't have her tags. So, I went to Petco and bought a cat harness and short leash yesterday. I needed to see if the harness would fit her ('cause she's a big girl!), so I put her on the table and slipped the harness on her.
Boy, was she upset! Let the biting commence! Of course, not full-out biting, just nips to show me that she was not amused. I adjusted the harness (let it out all the way, actually) and then tried to take it off. It has one of those little plastic quick-connects that have tiny ears on either side to depress to unlatch it. It's ridiculously hard to unfasten. While I'm wrestling with it, she's wrestling with me, and by the time I got the harness off her, she was beside herself.
You see, she hates to feel that she's being pushed around. I think that's why she hates the vet so much, because she doesn't have any control over what is happening to her. When I put the harness on her she felt like I was manhandling her and she got very angry. I have never had a cat that did that. My last darling kitty, Sasha, would just give you a look like "Well, okay," if you had to brush her or bathe her or clip her claws. She would look so dejected, as if to say "Why are you doing this to me?" When she had to have IVs after she got sick, she went along with whatever happened, because her people said it had to be done.
Boy, not Molly. If she feels bullied, she just goes nuts. I gave her a little kiss-and-make-up turkey afterward, but I think she's still mad at me. I reached down to pet her head as I walked past her and she had a tantrum at me today, nipping my feet. I wanted to calm her down, so I sat down on the floor beside her thinking I could give her a belly rub and get her over her bad mood. She didn't want a belly rub even though that's her favorite thing, but she wasn't running away from me. She was just sitting there next to me, looking very irritated, so I had a little talk with her about how I didn't like being bullied either. Molly looked at me very solemnly, and then raised her little face for a kitty kiss, as if to apologize. She cracks me up, sometimes.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Oh, give me a home...
...where my glasses won't roam!
I breezed through HomeGoods looking for Coimbra pottery today and found this pretty little tray, which will join my the Coimbra vase/pencil caddy and trinket box/stamp holder on my desk as a home for my glasses when I'm not wearing them. At least, I won't be hunting for them constantly.
I breezed through HomeGoods looking for Coimbra pottery today and found this pretty little tray, which will join my the Coimbra vase/pencil caddy and trinket box/stamp holder on my desk as a home for my glasses when I'm not wearing them. At least, I won't be hunting for them constantly.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Quilt backings, and a new scrap quilt
Here are some quickly made and pretty terrible snapshots of the backings I made yesterday. This one is for the first quilt I made from the Christmas lights blocks shown here. I used a large Debbie Mumm snowman print and leftover green and red to stretch 3 1/2 yards of fabric large enough to back a 66" x 72" quilt. It kinda looks better in person! It's off-center for a reason, because you never know exactly how the longarm quilter is going to load it on the machine and it's hard to get a motif perfectly centered. This way, it doesn't matter.
And this one is for the second quilt made from Christmas lights, second quilt shown here. Seventy-two 10" squares taken from leftovers from the front and coordinating green, red, black and cream from the stash. As my husband said, that's not a backing, that's another quilt. Amen.
This backing is for the new one that finally got borders added yesterday. I had 5 1/2 yards of fabric and it was going to take every bit for the backing. The stripe is to replace 8" of fabric I borrowed from one length for the border. (The stripe's off-center a little bit, too.)
And here's the quilt:
I think it's very pretty and it's going on my guest bed. The pattern really appealed to me, which was a surprise because the blocks were rather large. Each star shape is made of four 8" blocks. The fabric's a Moda collection called "Morris Workshop" and the colors are exactly my style - muted "foggy" tones.
And this one is for the second quilt made from Christmas lights, second quilt shown here. Seventy-two 10" squares taken from leftovers from the front and coordinating green, red, black and cream from the stash. As my husband said, that's not a backing, that's another quilt. Amen.
This backing is for the new one that finally got borders added yesterday. I had 5 1/2 yards of fabric and it was going to take every bit for the backing. The stripe is to replace 8" of fabric I borrowed from one length for the border. (The stripe's off-center a little bit, too.)
And here's the quilt:
I think it's very pretty and it's going on my guest bed. The pattern really appealed to me, which was a surprise because the blocks were rather large. Each star shape is made of four 8" blocks. The fabric's a Moda collection called "Morris Workshop" and the colors are exactly my style - muted "foggy" tones.I promise, better photographs after they're quilted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
