{this little guy is a mole, he was pictured in my gardening catalog and I just had to draw him}

I’ve been trying to stay home on Sundays (or at least out of the office), so no posting drawings on Sundays. That seems reasonable.

Sunday was pretty busy, but really fun. We had a great charity sewing workshop yesterday for ames c.art. We made 25 hats and 18 scarves for the Emergency Residence Program! They were so happy to have them when I dropped them off last night.

I came home and made dinner. A full dinner. Table set with a candle and everything. A great pasta with toast and salad. The homemade dressing was way to vinegary, but the rest was delicious. I’ll post the recipe for the pasta next week for the thrift kitchen thursday on craft leftovers.

I starting making banana bread for dessert, but we were out of eggs! So I tossed the batter in the frig and made up the grocery list for the week. I mapped out the whole week’s worth of meals and Jason and I went grocery shopping. Then I finished the bread and knit for the rest of the evening. It was wonderful!

I came up with a new meal plan mapping plan {expect a new printout soon, haha}. It’s divided into 4 catagories: Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks, Dinner. I make a general list of things to have on hand for breakfast, lunch and snacks, then plan 3 main dinners to cook. Then I schedule the dinners so they make sense with my schedule for the upcoming week.

I’m going to try a few new recipes this week:
Hummus from the Vegetarian Lunchbox
French Dressing from the Vegetarian Lunchbox
Smoky White Chili with Potatoes from 125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes
Escarole salad with apples and pecans from Everyday Food Jan 2009
Salmon with escarole and lemon from Everyday Food Jan 2009

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I went through two shelves this week (very hard work for me) and purged a box of books I know I will never read. And I did something for the first time – I took them to FireHouse books and exchanged them for $12 in store credit, which I then turned around and used on 1 book I really enjoy. You see, I have put together a box of books many times, but they never actually make it out of the house, furthering the clutter issues. 

The book I traded in for is “Voiced of American Homemakers”. It is a collection of interviews conducted by the Oral History Project of the National Extension of Homemakers Council.

Beulah Rawlings, 76, of Indiana said when asked about food preservation, “We raised what we ate, and ate what we raised. You didn’t go into town and buy it, so it really was important to put your garden out and really take care of it, and take care of it when it was ready to harvest.”

It makes me feel a little guilty about putting my garden out late, then only half assing it these past two months. If it was crucial to me vs a hobby, and granted I love that it is not and we won’t starve if the weather sucks, maybe I would have made it more of a priority. I do have a few cucumbers, but not as many as I could have if I would have planted them when I should and watered them like I knew I was supposed to. 

“When I was a girl up North, before pressure canners, we never canned much vegetables because it was all put in the cellar. We canned fruits and tomatoes, but that was about the only thing we canned…. In our cellars we put in our carrots and potatoes and onions and turnips and we even had a big bin fixed up from celery…” – Elsie Gould, 86, Florida

I really like the idea of a root cellar. Mike (who owns the yard where the garden is and is in on it with me) has a nice semi finished basement and we are going to try to store all our potatoes and onions and garlic down there. I sure hope it works okay and we can enjoy our harvest as long as possible. 

We have a load of basil, dill, parsley, and other herbs. Plus many cherry tomatoes and some peppers on the way. I decided to do some small batch preserving this week for the basil that is plentiful. Pesto was totally the answer to how to keep basil fresh for the winter months. Once we get more tomatoes, I’m going to make some marinara sauce and can that too – I’ll post about that when the time comes along with my favorite recipe for sauce. 

You can read about my pesto exploits on Craft Leftovers, I posted about it today for the Thrift Kitchen post.

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I made a little tomato for my future doll house

Which reminds me, I just won a set of three doll parts on ebay! They are 1 1/2″ scale (I think) and are the type where you attach a little stuffed body/legs. Pretty much it is 3 little porcelain heads and 3 sets of hands. I’m excited, it will be fun to make their bodies and a few mini clothes. There are two kiddos and one lady. I’m thinking I’ll just use the kiddos for now. Maybe the lady will be my “test” for the body. 

I then went on to reorganized 2 cupboards – all the food stuff in one cabinet and all the med/supplement/non food stuff in another. Work out (leg lifts, crunches, and ran on the eliptical for 25 minutes and walked home – I love the walk home). Made chicken tacos that then turned into chicken lettuceless tacos and then turned into hard shell-less tacos. We decided to toss in the spanish rice and cheese and tomatoes in with the chicken and called it a burrito! ha! So it goes. The lettuce was mush and the taco shells had moths in them! Even though we hadn’t even opened the package! So frustrating. We have moth issues. Any ideas? Maybe some lavender or cedar chips? Right now I’m sucking all those f-ers up in the vacuum and keeping any grains in the frig. I didn’t think they could get into a sealed plastic package, but I guess I was wrong. 

It has been a really great day. I still can’t believe I was able to write 3 posts and take all the photos for the tutorial on Friday! It feels good to work ahead. I am helping cover at the local yarn shop on Friday, visiting with a friend tomorrow, and helping out at the chocolate shop on Saturday morning and then I’m conducting an interview on Monday in Des Moines and have a class (maybe) Monday night to teach. Having all this taken care of really helps to keep the stress level low. I’m hoping to work 2 full weeks ahead in the featured posts (tutorials, thrift kitchen, and apartment redress posts) by the end of the month. I’ll be a week ahead by Monday and then two weeks ahead by next week. Which will be great for my clm crunch week. 

I want to get that tutorial finished and scheduled tonight so I can work on Craft Leftovers Monthly and some other projects. Oh I have such an amazing project to tell you about, but I want to get a little more info collected and take at least one picture before I share it with you. It involves… paint and a huuuuge wall! Have a great night!

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Being without school or an out of the home job left me floating from snack to snack, not planning my trips to the grocery store, or my meals for that matter. I noticed a downward trend over the last year. Every time I hit a big deadline (at least once a month) I throw health to the wind and eat out too much, eat crap food too much, and eat too late at night too much. Then when I meet the deadline I “treat” myself, furthering the downward trend. It takes a few days to get out of this routine and start eating healthy again. And by healthy I mean relative to what I was eating the week before. With each passing deadline my definition of “healthy” declined severely. Well, no more! I’ve rebooted the whole freaking system.

I started with making working out a priority – I am now at the end of week 6 of working out (3 days strength training, 2 days cardio and abs). I’ve slotted it in my schedule, set up my classes, meetings, and workshops around it, and even when I was in the midst of working on Craft Leftovers Monthly, I still went 3 times that week. Last week I also rebooted the fly lady program.

After Market Day I did a huge cleaning (just putting all the craft stuff away), reset up my “control journal” {link}, and have been doing my daily chores for a week straight now! And wow can you tell the difference around here. It is getting clean. Like really clean. Our coat closet now has coats in it instead of random crap! It’s amazing.

The past 2 weeks I’ve been eating much better too. Focusing on smaller portions, more veggies and fruits, not eating late at night, cutting down on my caffeine, etc etc etc (you know the voice I’m using sis). But now that I’m heading into the time where I will be teaching 4-5 days a week, working on top secret projects# 2 and #3, working on Craft Leftovers Monthly, and etc etc etc, how will I hold it together. Sure I can spend an hour cooking each day now, but what about in 2 weeks when I’ll be running from class to workshop to writing to making to sleep?

Jason and I decided to make some burrito/enchiladas to freeze and eat later. The perfect solution! You can get the recipe on Craft Leftovers, I just posted it for the Thrift Kitchen post {link}. 

It turns out, my friend Sarah has a similar interest, so we are going to start meeting a few times a month to cook in bulk, divide, and conquer.  I really want to have a nice regular stock pile of good food to eat when I get into a time pinch. I’m sick of sacrificing my health for my projects. I think this will be a great way to make them both a priority. Sarah has the book Don’t Panic – Dinner’s in the Freezer and we will be starting out with recipes and methods for mass cooking provided there. 

Another issue Sarah and I both have is that our partners do not like veggies. And so we tend to cook with them less than we should. I found this book at borders today that was just perfect. It’s called the The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on Your Man (In the Kitchen!): Hiding Healthy Foods in Hearty Meals Any Guy Will Love. If I can sneak cauliflower into chili without complaints, well that is huge! So, armed with a 40% off coupon I took the plunge and brought it home. 

The main idea of the cook book is to “cut calories and increase volume with low-cal, nutritious ‘fillers’ “. So for instance, instead of a straight up meat sauce, you “hide” veggies in it by chopping them finely or pureeing them, adding tofu to egg salad, and pureed white beans to mustard. She has quite a few make ahead recipes for fillers to be added to the other recipes in the book. You don’t want your family seeing your pureeing cauliflower and adding it to the mashed potatoes, make it ahead of time and sneak it in there in plain site. The White Puree (make ahead recipe #4) is actually zucchini, lemon juice, and cauliflower. Neat! 

I also, with my swag bucks, bought the book Cook Once a Week, Eat Well Every Day: Make today. You make a meal on say Sunday, then eat variations of it for the next few days. I’m hoping that between sneaking in veggies, freezing meals ahead, and using time saving methods and creative leftovers, I will continue to eat healthy even when things get completely crazy.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On a completely different note I’ve been reading the books I picked up from the library and am really impressed with them. I’ll share my favorites with you soon!

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Basically Jason and I are now both officially giving full time self employment a try… which means no money! Or at least just barely enough to get by. Pretty much anything that can be cut is getting cut, including the grocery bill.

And that leads me to Thrift Kitchen. To sum up: I love good food and I love good cooking. Thrift Kitchen is all about cooking on a tight budget. Really good food, really inexpensively!

After telling two friends about the blog, it’s mission, and the ideas I had for various posts, they became as excited as I am about having a Thrift Kitchen. It has turned into a collaborative project of friends with the goal of sharing ideas, knowledge, and recipes for cooking well on a meager budget. We are all on a tight budget and we all love cooking with good food. Mostly vegetarian with some local meats in the mix is the foundation of our cooking styles.

So go check it out it! I just posted about how to cook dry beans and a recipe for some great 4 bean chili!

See you all soon!
Kristin

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So I’ve been just tacking up all my drawings in my studio. It kind of keeps me thinking about it and ideas flowing.

The yarn is finally dry and I’ll start listing it in the shop tomorrow. The above is a preview of the new colorways.

I was about to start taking pictures of my yarn when I noticed the pile of bananas turning quite black and having little flies starting to buzz around. Well, we have enough crickets and spiders around here so I really don’t want fruit flies too. I whipped up a huge batch of banana bread, it turned out delicious. I wasn’t in the mood for super sweet, and I wanted whole wheat flour in there, then I didn’t have much butter, and no baking soda… haha. By the end of “whipping up” the batter I had completely made up my own recipe for it. After I finish this post I think I’m going to have a couple of slices.

I cooked this up in the slow cooker last week. Curried lentils from 125 of the Best Vegiterian Slow Cooker Recipes. Jason and i both gave it a two thumbs up, 5 star rating. I made some Spicy Lemon Ginger Tofu tonight and that also got the 5 star rating from both of us. I wrote down the recipe right after I made it so hopefully I’ll be able to remake it. I still haven’t been able to reproduce the reduced red wine sauce that I made a few months ago… I know to write it down right away because I will forget! Anyway, anyway.

This was from a week+ ago, but it still makes me happy. It’s the October clm all ready to go out the door. Such a good feeling.

And here’s Molly out on her break. We’ve been letting her outside under close supervision lately and this was the last time she went out without her suspenders. We bought her a harness and leash this past week and we eat breakfast and plan the day’s work out on the patio every morning. She loves it and she sleeps through the night now.

I started these slippers and am happy to report I have one of the argyle toes finished, just one more to go. A lot of people on ravelry say they have a ton of problems with the actual putting together of the slippers. Like they are too floppy on the feet. Well, I have a plan for that, so let’s hope it works or this will all be in vain.

And here is the scarf I’m working on for Jason. I finally figured out the pattern and my knitting mojo has been restored. I actually ripped it out over a dozen times. No joke. I’m not telling a tall one. I can count 12, so I’m assuming it was more. I beat it and my confidence is all in tack again, haha.

And this will soon be a little pull over. Just seaming and buttons to go.

Oh would you like the recipe for the banana bread? I can post it for you as I made a point to write it down how I made it this time, go me! Same for the Spicy Lemon Ginger Tofu… I think I’ll post them both this week, but I’ll break them up.

Well, it’s 10:26, so I’m going to end this here and work on those slippers a bit more.

Have a good night, see you all tomorrow!
Kristin

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She sent me seeds in many of her letters. Seeds from her garden. The first I remember planting and really caring for were holly hocks. I did so many water colors and pen and ink drawings of that one plant. Later when I had the chance to have my own garden in my grand parents back yard, I carefully collected seeds from my mom’s garden and planted those. My aunt sent more seeds, some of which I still have tucked away, to start this new plot.

I have been without a garden for so long. Since my grandparents died. I miss it so much. I still subscribe to Organic Gardening and read You Grow Girl everyday. Jason, love that guy, bought me You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening for no particular reason, which is the best reason, and gave it to me over break.

I love this project, so great. I have so many gardening books, but I really feel like this one captures how I feel about the whole process. It’s so resourceful, smart, well written. I enjoy Gayla’s writing style and I am just so inspired after reading it.

There are two main things her coming together. My love of gardening and of letter writing. These two things hitting me upside the head at the same time.

I’m going to bring them together with my print gocco. I want to make stationary for myself and to send to my Great Aunt, who really is great.

I always kind of need a side dish project (because i’m a side dish a-hole, you know what i mean jill) that isn’t tied up in a larger project. It gives me some room to feel like I’m playing even though I’m still making stuff.

You all most likely won’t see the end results of this idea until April, but that’s okay. I’m going to work on sketches…. then in april, after all the deadlines. I’m going to burn a couple of screens and go nuts. I might just take the opportunity to learn to really how to silk screen with photo emulsion and such.

oh oh oh, here is something from the other day:

crustless quiche I whipped up to use up the last of my veggies and eggs before vacation.

Now the funny story behind this is that I totally love this quiche, it was really good. I ate about half and was like “i think jason would like this, I think I’ll take it with me to ames” then I left it in the car on accident. It froze. Then we had a heat wave of 40+ degrees and it literally melted… gross! I kind of am hungry now. Dang it. I know it’s late (Jason), but I’m dyeing (spelled it like dye… haha, dying, no e) here. I’ll see you cats later, I’m going to go rangle up some grub…

What is up with all these oldie phrases, whatever, as if, I like them. hehe.

I’m going to take some photos of the pots I made, but that will have to wait until better light. My plan is to eventually, someday, have an outdoor kiln as part of a compost pile (burning down stuff to smolder around the pots for low fire, um, firing). Ah eventually someday. I really like making pots like these. I’ll show you tomorrow… I’ll talk more about it then.

See you all later folk!

Kristin

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Aloo Market Bag, I finallllly finished it after so many months. I am going to finish writing the pattern soon (hopefully) and it will be $1 in the gpf shop and free with purchase of aloo yarn (i’m adding it back into the shop soon).

The start of Jason’s mom’s wrap around shawl. I’m going to start working on it again soon.

This is the everything veggie chili I made yesterday, so delicious! I’m eating some right now.

I’ve added most of my projects to my project page on Ravelry. You can see my organizing work here.

I also did a whole lot of organizing on flickr too, and added a ton of new pictures. You can see all the collections here.

Oh I also added more yarn to the shop today. I’m having a really hard time not keeping it for myself. I love the bulky and the new sock yarn so much, oh and the worsted… can I just hoard it all? No! You need to buy it so I can buy more craft stuff, oh and pay bills and buy groceries.

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And another thing, I finally finished adding all my yarn to Ravelry for Green Prairie Fibers and I’m offically now a yarnie!

Check that out here. I’m so proud of this. Basically, for those of you on Ravelry, it will make it a lot easier to add gpf yarn to your stash! All for you folks! It also made me finally decide on some names for some of the yarns.

I decided on:
Ancient Trees = bulky merino
Prairie Trees = Worsted merino
Super Prairie Trees = worsted superwash merino
Easy Feet = sock yarn, superwash/nylon, 480 yards
Prairie Grasses = fingering weight, superwash, 280 yards
Cotton Twist = cotton/merino 2 ply, bulky
Prairie Naturals Tweed = tweed naturally dyed yarn, fingering
Prairie Naturals Semi-solid = naturally dyed yarn, semi solid, fingering

I still have two more types of yarn that I haven’t dyed yet. A merino fingering weight (not superwash, nice for lace I would think), and a bulky domestic wool that would be good for felted projects.

I also did get some of my yarn in the shop and I’m starting to offer yarn for dyeing, so if you want to give it a try, you can. I’m starting off with some of my favorite sock yarn. It’s soft and plush and wonderful.

I haven’t made it into the studio yet, but I’m going to wait until 7pm when I can park in front of the building, it is so cold!

I did make some really good dinner, a nice vegitarian chili. It was so delicious! And, because I was being a thinker this time, I wrote down what I put in it, how much, how and when I put it in, and took a picture. Amazing!

Here are the pictures I wanted to show earlier that have now been buried under 3 flickr pages worth of yarn:

And here is my disaster of a fibers studio before cleaning it:

And this is the still life I set up to practice different painting techniques on:

I’ll post updated pictures from the studio tomorrow!

See you all on the flip side!

++ Kristin Roach ++

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Yesterday I did a whole lot of recipe testing for this month’s clm, which is in the shop, btw. And the one (which i’m not talking about because it’s going into the zine was awesome) turned out so perfect and the other, yogurt, was a flop. I think I added the yogurt before the milk was cool enough, so nothing happened. Now I just have some yogurty smelling thick milk, yuck. I feel like it’s making fun of me, so, just to teach that yogurt from scratch who is boss, I’m going to try again today. I’m also going to try to make some egg nog. I really want some and of course you just can’t get the stuff anywhere anymore.

I did get yarn dyed up last week and it turned out really well. I’ll be getting that up into the shop today or tomorrow (depending on reskiening and etc). I have already sold 2 skeins in person and one skein was a birthday present to my friend Jess.

In the mood of getting things done, Craft Leftovers Monthly is in the shop. I really like this month’s cover:

This month is all about the sun coming back home. Even though it is totally snowy outside, I am so happy the sun is shining again. Ahhhh, so nice. I have a bunch of really great stuff set aside for this issue. I was on the ball this past month.

Back to studio practice, I had an interesting revelation about the painting I was working on. It was not something I would have liked to have hanging on my wall. It was too smooth. Too clean. Too proper. So I went about muddying it up a bit.

Here is the starting point:

Flickr is doing something kind of weird, it’s uploading my photos, they are showing up in my photo page, but then when you click on them, they aren’t there. So go here to see all the stages of the painting so far. It was better at this point (from a wip standpoint, not a finished piece), but I wasn’t sure where to take it next. So I set it down for a week. Then, of all days, Thursday I attacked it with furver and it turned out just perfect. I still have more to do (adding in the foreground for one thing), but I got it over that “this doesn’t really look like much” to the “wow, that’s a nice painting (pats self on back)”.

I’ll show you a new progress photo later tonight. I’m going into my studio today. First time since last Thursday. I have two stretcher bars finished, one has canvas stretched and the first coat of gesso on it. I’m all sorts of happy that I get to go in there today and get it finished up and start the next. I think i’ll be able to get the first of the series just about finished today, so I’ll start the second while I’m gessoing the third. I really need to step up the pace. I just got my Senior Show date finalized and it’s in three weeks! Yikes! Two of my friends in the painting program will be in it too, so, thankfully, not all me. But still. I want to get about 9 paintings done. And I want to have quite a few photos too. Plus a found object instillation. I’m going to electroplating found objects, casting them in luminecent beeswax, and making them into objects of art instead of ordinary “stuff”.

The other pictures that you saw on flickr? Well the honey bear is a still life I set up. I’m going to paint it several times using different techniques. The big mess picture? That is my at home fibers studio before I tackled cleaning it up.

I also just finished up this pattern on Monday:

Thanks Jill for the great name idea! Naming and titling my work is always my hardest task. Crazy how that works when it is such a small thing.

Well, I’m going to get back to work.

See you you all later tonight with new wip photos!

++Kristin Roach++

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