Holiday Walk of Shame

Okay, I was so distracted by the arrival of my beautiful and perfect niece that I did very little crafting this holiday season... and even less photographing of the crafting that did occur... and even less blogging of the few photographs of the tiny amount of crafting. I suck.

My shame is only compounded by the fact that, even with a newborn, all of my sister's Christmas cards were still homemade. Sigh, I made one stinkin' card:

Outside based on supplies from one of Emily's card swaps. She sent me all of the ingredients. I'm still exploring the wonderful world of pop-ups, so I put a tree on the inside:

The color was a bit nicer on the original, but you get the idea.

I did virtually no holiday baking this year. I caught a bad cold (excuses excuses) the week before Christmas, so I'm not sure anyone would have wanted anything I cooked anyway, but before that all I managed was a single batch of porn star cookies:

I try to keep this a PG-13 website, so I'll spare you the cookies with ball gags in their mouths. (can't wait to see what sort of google traffic we get now that I have typed that - ick) Sadly, my limited cookie decorating skills preclude them from getting too racy. Chaps are about all I can make.

The last of my conscience clearing pre-holiday crafting documentation was a teeny baby sweater. Alas, I only have in-progress pictures. Hopefully Miss Eleanor will be kind enough to model it one of these days. This is the almost finished knitting shot:

and the Sarah's first attempt at intarsia shot:

Can you tell I started this back when we thought she was going to be a boy? I found a little yellow dress, so hopefully she'll just look preppy in the completed ensemble.

It is a Debbie Bliss pattern from Special Knits. I used Bernat Baby Softee, because frankly, I have a boatload of it.

And this concludes our guilty conscience belated holiday retrospective. May 2008 be a year of crafty goodness and more timely updates.

Happy New Year y'all!

This tastes...purple

Generally speaking, Emily is way better at creating a themed event than I am.

But I think I gave her a run for her money last night: I give you the first annual purple dinner!

Wait, The First Annual Purple Dinner! (yes, I think it's much better in purple font)

The absurdity began over the weekend at the Farmer's Market. One of the stalls was selling purple beans. They are like green beans, only purple. And then they turn green when you cook them. (I'm sorry - color changing vegetables? where were these when I was a kid?) So much fun.

Later, I was shopping for potatoes, I decided to get (purply red skin potatoes instead of regular ones because I thought they looked nicer with my beans. (don't question the logic). Finally, I came to a stall that had purple bell peppers, at which point I was officially out of control and invited my friends over for purple dinner.

And what kind of theme would it be without appropriate decor?

Earlier in the week, my friend Lizzie sent me this adorable pad of paper. It's actually made from recycled elephant poop (no, seriously check it out). My favorite part is that it is apparently acid-free and suitable for scrapbooking. They even sell poop paper in 12x12 sheets and cardstocks just for crafters. I think it is my favorite new craft supply. But for our immediate need, see how some of the papers are purple? Can you say placecards? So great.

In the category of slightly less funny, but still pretty I picked up a purple flower at the Farmer's Market. Conveniently I already had a purple bud vase.

And you can't talk about a dinner party without talking about dinner. Voila, the purple dinner menu:

(Purple) red skin potatoes roasted with butter and herbs and a bit of purple basil.

Roasted eggplant with yellow squash and purple peppers.

Purple green beans.

Purple chicken (more or less coq au vin without the tomatoes, the red wine turns it a lovely lavender).

(Purple) red leaf lettuce and mixed greens salad, with (purple) blueberries.

And for dessert, pound cake topped with (purple) blackberries.

Once my friends came over, I forgot to take pictures of the finished products so you'll have to forgive me for the photos of the leftovers I packed for lunch today.

I must say that for such a ridiculous exercise, it all came out quite tasty. I'll have to see what kind of beating a dead horse dinner party I can host next.

Wait, those aren't socks... baking experiments

Dear sock yarn,

I owe you an apology. My socks should have been finished a long time ago. But a crazy couple of weeks at work and a great big pile of indulgent summer reading have eaten up much of my free time. (and don't get me started on the little dog who steals knitting and drops stitches)

I have managed to get a bit of baking in - though with varying degrees of success.

Last week, I improvised a recipe based on one I found in The Garden of Vegan. What started as a fairly simple no-bake cookie became no-bake Chocolate-Cranberry-Mudslide cookies. I think I made about 11 substitutions too many (particularly since there were only about 4 ingredients). Should you get it in your head to make some no-bake cookies, only you are out of brown sugar, so you decide to use maple syrup and a bit more oatmeal, and you don't have chocolate chips but they say you can susbtitute raisins, but those are practically the same as cranberries, and then you think you might miss the chocolate, so you add some cocoa, and since it will be chocolatey, maybe you could use a bit of mudslide mix as a liquid sweetener, and you're measurements are totally out the window now so just add some peanut butter to make sure it holds together... seriously - step away from the kitchen. This is what happens:

They were not good. Sometimes when you are craving junk food and you really want a Blizzard, it is probably better to just get in the car and drive to Dairy Queen. Lesson learned.

This weekend offered a slightly more successful baking endeavor: a lemon raspberry cake. Although I'm thinking it needs a better name than that. Cake seems fancier if you call it a gateau or a torte or something pretentious like that.

My friend Kim had a baby last week (little Erin, who has adorable dimples, but alas, no blue cardigan, because like the socks, I haven't finished it either). So, she and her husband decided to have a cookout this weekend. I'm sorry, what?!? You gave birth 4 days ago, so now you think you should clean your house and cook dinner for people? nuts I say. nuts!

So, I offered to bring dessert. And since I didn't give birth 4 days ago, I thought the least I could do was actually make said dessert.

Pictorial recipe! fun stuff.

Step one: gather your ingredients. If you don't have the ingredients, you should go buy them or make something else. You cannot ask anyone else to eat no-bake Chocolate-Cranberry-Mudslide cookies.

I'm a big cheater, so I started with white cake from a mix. You just need to make sure it is an "add water, eggs and oil" type of cake mix and not a "just add eggs" or something mix.

Step two: Substitute lemon juice for about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of the water. If you were willing to squeeze and zest a fresh lemon, you could use a bit less. If you're using the bottle of concentrate like me, use a bit more.

Add water until you get the amount called for on the package. If you use a big measuring cup, there's less math.

Step three: Bake the cake according to the package directions. If you wanted to be really fancy, you could divide each layer in half and alternate between jam and frosting, so you have a 4 layer cake. If you are already running late for the cookout, 2 layers is fine.

Step four: Spread raspberry jam on one cake. I like to use the spoonable fruit-type product with little or no sugar added, because this is pretty sweet already. Spread a bit of whipped frosting (yeah, it's from a tub) on the other half.

Step five: Make a sammich.

Step six: Cover the outside with more whipped frosting. Then add a bunch of fresh raspberries. I think fresh berries are the secret to the dessert on the cover of every summer issue of Good Housekeeping ever published. But they're on to something - if you camouflage the frosting with fruit you don't ever have to learn how Martha Stewart makes her cakes so smooth and perfect.

Voila! Cake...or gateau...or whatever. This one honestly tastes good. I promise.

If you happened to get the inaugural issue of the craftfetish mini-idea books, you've seen this recipe. If you missed it, leave a comment with a pretentious cake name suggestion and I'll send you a copy (at least, until I run out of them).

Low Fat Banana Hockey Pucks

sounds tempting, right? Actually they weren't that bad.

Since I can never seem to match the number of bananas I buy at the store to the number of bananas I actually want to eat, I frequently end up baking with them.

(I can't help it - even when I buy them in different levels of green, they all seem to ripen at the same time)

Anyway, over the weekend I made low fat banana muffins using a hybrid of the "Banana Nut Muffin" and "Low Fat Banana Muffin" recipes in The Joy of Cooking.

I understood why they left the nuts out of the low fat version, but the cinnamon and nutmeg? C'mon now. Just because they are low fat, they can still be tasty. Hence, the hybrid.

I also left in the wheat & white flour combination from the full fat recipe, which may have contributed some to the hockey puck phenomenon.

For the record, when they first came out of the oven, they were delicious. Very soft and moist. Alas, the next day they were a little tough. Like if someone hits the last ball off of the roof of the Quick Stop, you could sub in one of these and keep the game going tough.

Twenty seconds in the microwave and a bit of butter softened them up and made a nice breakfast the next day, but the butter pretty much kills the whole low fat thing. Oh well. Sad brown bananas are no longer sitting on my counter.

I would make these again if I have enough of a crowd to actually consume 12 muffins in one day. Or, if I find a recipe that performs better on Day 2, I'll post that recipe.

Can you handle the deliciousness?

mmmm....mini key lime goodness.

I'm a big fan of key lime pie - particularly this time of year when it reminds me of warmer places. Beyond that, any recipe that involves 3 ingredients is all right in my book.

Basically, if key limes are in the stores, I'm putting key lime pie on the dessert menu.


In the past, I've use mini phyllo shells that you can get from the freezer section at the grocery. They only hold about a tsp each, so you can have dessert for a large party using only about one pie's worth of filling. You'll have to buy about 6 boxes of mini phyllo shells, so it isn't necessarily more economical, just bite sized and little and cute. And bite sized is a good way to go when you only have 4 chairs so every party is a buffet.

This weekend I went with individual graham cracker crusts. The graham crust tastes better than the mini phyllo - although it isn't quite as cute.

A bit of decoratively-piped whipped cream and a teeny slice of key lime could up the cute factor immensely. I'd show you a picture of that, but I prefer a touch more whipped cream.

I'd have used more, but the can was empty.