FidgetyBudgie

Fish themed baby quilt

Here are some pics of the quilt I made for some Madison friends who are expecting a baby soon.  It was my first time making a real quilt, and actually quilting it myself was a challenge.  I had to remove the feed dogs from my machine - it doesn't have a way to drop them!  That's right - kickin it old skool over here on the Left Coast!  I understand now why people send their quilts out to be quilted at the finish.  What a pain.  I can't imaging doing a large one.  Even though I really want to make one for our bed now.

There's a close-up of part of it before I quilted it, so you can see the fishies and the pale mango sashing I chose. 

And then there's a crappy photo of the back with the surprise bit of colour on it. 

The hardest parts of this were the layout, which took me hours to get right, and still there are places where two pieces are too close together for my taste; and the quilting, which saw The Budgie actually making a trip to <shudder> J*An*s </shudder> to score me new thread. And this after I actually had to do the same thing the day before.  Double shudder!  But being the awesome person he is, he helped me out and made it all happen. 

I used a few tutorials I found online to make this, including the Stacked Coins tutorial over at the Moda Bakeshop. 

I hope they like it, and I hope it gets used.  Honestly there's nothing that bums me out more than to make something for someone's kid and never know they used it.  It seems like such a waste of time.  So I made sure this is washable and dryable - by washing and drying it, natch - and hope it gets barfed all over and has food spit on it, and various other baby emissions and essentially gets used up.  What more could I wish for!?

Thanksgiving Photos

Frying the onions for the green bean casserole
which, by the way, was awesome.

And ready for the oven, before I added the rest of the onions on top.

Can I just say again how freakin' good this was?  Every recipe I have tried from Brian's Fire and Salt blog has been spot on.  Do pay him a visit!

Yams, simply baked.  I could live on these.

My gluten free cornbread stuffing, before baking.  I used Bob's Red Mill cornbread mix, (which is so tasty I had to eat a piece for breakfast while I was cooking.  I topped that piece with butter and that chokecherry honey my friend Ann sent me).

Same stuffing after baking:

Darlene The Turkey awaits her sauna:

 

And here is the whole table!

And a plate for The Budgie

Cherry Cobbler for Dessert.  Recipe here

And there you have it!  Gluten free thanksgiving, super tasty, relatively simple, and the leftovers are just as good the next day!

Darlene The Turkey (we always name our turkey) is in the oven, stuffed with gf cornbread herb stuffing. The yams are in. The green bean casserole is waiting its turn in the oven, the Old Cat has had a bit of turkey juice from the neck simmering on the back burner, and now on to prepping the desserts - cherry cobbler and pumpkin cheesecake.

i'm making green bean casserole. Fresh. Gluten free. From scratch. My house smells like a fast food shack right now, what with the french fried onions I just made. :)

Happy thanksgiving to everyone! We're having another quiet one together this year, with turkey, gf cornbread stuffing, yams, gf green bean casserole, spiced cranberry sauce, and The Budgie has requested cherry cobbler for dessert. I'm also making a gf pumpkin cheesecake to take to a party saturday night. I will make turkey gravy, but we're foregoing the potatoes tomorrow and might make some later in the week. Hope yours is all you wish it to be! Photos soon!

Gamera! (or I heart Portland, redux)

 
THIS!  This is what we did tonight!  Oh how i heart the Hollywood Theater as these are the people who brought us the Raiders of the Lost Ark remake a year or so back that the Budgie, Curt, and I attended.  Tonight the Budgie and I went there to see this awesome Japanese monster movie, but instead of the movie soundtrack, there was a live orchestra, live voice actors, and live sound effects creators, on stage, with the movie playing on the screen.  The voiceover was brilliant - even better than the english-over-japanese that we usually see in these films.  And the sound effects were fantastic - how about using a hand-cranked kitchen beater for a bicycle sound? Works great!   Plus, the superbonus was singing the Gamera theme song with the rest of the audience in follow-the-bounding-ball format. 

Sugar...ahhh Honey Honey

How cute is this flight of honey?!  I got this in the mail a week or so ago, from my friend Ann over at Mad Aster.  (she sends awesome foodie presents, lemme tell ya!).  This is three varieties of local-to-her honey that arrived as a nice surprise just as I opened the last bottle of Sage Honey she sent me last year.  Talk about perfect timing!  But, as I was making her awesome granola recipe that weekend, I couldn't wait and had to dip right into the chokecherry honey.  That's the dark one on the end.  You see, she told me all about them on the phone that day, and instead of taking her advice to taste them in order, after hearing her description, I just couldn't wait and went right for the intense stuff.  Lemme tell ya, it's super yummy!  Thanks for the sweet treat Ann!  I really enjoy using honey and agave and maple syrup in place of refined sugars, and in fact always use them to proof my yeast when I'm baking.  It's even better to get something of this quality from someone who's taste and views on food I have such deep respect for.  I think I know the perfect locally made item to send back to her...more on that later!  :)

Where the hell did October go?

Okay I know it shouldn't come as a surprise to me, but how the hell is it November already?  Is it me, or does time go faster the older we get?  I've been sort of busy with school but not insanely so.  Probably why I was spending all last week studying my ass off for midterms Thursday and Friday, and am not at all sure how well I did.  Don't get me wrong, I love school, but somehow this term I just haven't gotten into the rhythm of studying - and a lot of the other students have said the same thing.  I have been doing a lot of domestic things though, at least on the days I'm not at the hospital - those days I usually come home exhausted.  But lately I make sandwich buns most weekends, which I did today, and we've made pizza a few times on Fridays.  This weekend I cut out, sewed, and started quilting, a baby quilt for friends who are due in after January - at this rate they might actually get it before the baby arrives.  I also am almost done with my Bonnie sweater.  I would be done with her, except that I finished and blocked her, and then realized I had made a huge error, and started the shoulders waaaaaaay too soon.  This meant not only did I have to rip out...but I also didn't have enough yarn.  After a day of panic, I decided to turn to the kindness of knitters and the magic of Ravelry - and found a knitter with a bit of yarn in a matching dyelot who was willing to part with it.  So last weekend I unpicked the silly shoulders and got her back on the needles, and I've been knitting up the 5.5" I missed on the first try, and hope to have her ready to sew together next weekend.  I REALLY want to wear this sweater this winter. I think of it as my Portland Sweater, so I need to make it happen soon.  All of these things I was meaning to blog, and I have photos to post, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  I also received an awesome gift from my friend Ann - photos of which I WILL post this week.  Right now I am going to have the discipline to shut off the computer and go to bed.  Tomorrow is another day in the E.R., and I am really hoping it goes better than last Wednesday.

Yet another reason to shop at Knit Picks!

The local company (Vancouver, WA) Knit Picks just showed me that there is another reason to shop there.  As if the great prices on really nice yarns in gorgeous colours wasn't enough.  From The Oregonian:

Knit Picks donates winter wear to folks out in the cold

By Peggy McMullen, The Oregonian

October 22, 2009, 3:57PM

  Knit Picks in Vancouver donated a huge haul of warm wear this week to the homeless population here.

Angela of Knit Picks sent us this note explaining the donation:

 "As the temperatures drop and the rain clouds move in, it's hard not to think of the winter ahead and the homeless population here in Portland facing the cold. Knit Picks decided to make their winter just a little warmer by donating $2,600 worth of hand knit scarves, mittens, hats, socks, and sweaters that have been knit for our catalogs.

"'I'd rather have those hats on someone's head keeping them warm, than sitting in our warehouse all winter!' explained Knit Picks Vice President Tina Birch.

"Knit Picks donated the hand knits to Operation Nightwatch, a local group that has been serving the street population of downtown Portland since 1981. According to Operation Nightwatch's Web site, homelessness in Portland is up 11 percent this year."

Angela estimated the donation included "50 scarves, hats, mittens and socks, and about a dozen men's sweaters." Awesome!

 If you're interested in helping out Nightwatch too, visit their Web site.

How cool is that!?  I am so happy they would do this - we have a large centralized and very visible homeless population here that has been through a lot the last year, between our worst winter in decades, and a city ordinance (now overturned) that allowed local rent-a-cops to harass any homeless person sleeping on a sidewalk - including in the middle of the night.  Just google sleep deprivation to find out how this exacerbates the problems facing those sleeping rough.  I'm really happy that Knit Picks has chosen to support these people and will definitely make more of my yarn purchases from there (when I have money again).

A Pizza Crust I can live with

On our trip, we finally got to go to The Pizza Garden in Nehalem/Manzanita, and I loved the pizza!  I had a gluten free pizza with smoked salmon on it, and it was super tasty.  When we got back, I decided to try the Bob's Red Mill pizza crust mix.  I let it rise a little before baking it, then topping and rebaking it, and I gotta say, I think I found my pizza crust.  I have been trying homemade recipes, but this mix, which we have found on sale for US$2.69, is really yummy.  It has good density and texture, without being gluey and tasteless.  I made a 14x17 pizza with one bag - and given that takeout gluten-free pizza around here is 16+ bucks for a small one, this was a screamin deal.  On one side we went traditional with Hormel GF Turkey Pepperoni, onion, and red pepper, with homemade red sauce, and on the other side I used pesto and olive oil, and some leftover roasted veggies.  It would be hard to say which one was yummier!  I have a feeling pizza is going to be a regular item in our house from now on.  

I found it was easy to spread the pizza on a silpat covered sheet with wet hands.  And letting it rise again really gave it good texture.  I encourage you to try this mix - it's easy and flavourful.  I made a ranch dressing to dip it in using this recipe
 from a fellow gluten free blogger.  it was awesome!