Blackberries

This weekend I stopped by my favorite road side fruit stand that sells the most mouth watering strawberries. My excitement went up several notches when I noticed they had blackberries too! Oh how wonderful it is to live in California were I can make blackberry cobble at the end of May, gotta love it.

I got out all my favorite cookbooks, and then some less favorites, and then I used my google bar but I was still not liking any of the recipes I found, most of them taking hours and ingredients I didn't have. I'm also not a big fan of precooking my fruit filling, I like the natural taste of the berries and not anything that has been boiled in cornstarch and sugar you know? Picky picky...


I then gave up on my cook books and called my mother. My mom is not one to spend a lot of time in the kitchen out of enjoyment, it's all about a quick end product with minimal dishes and annoyance. I was thinking that was the way I wanted to go with this recipe. I remember as a child coming in all sticky and covered in purple juices with a bowl of fat blackberries from the backyard and asking her to please make us a cobbler, and she always obliged. Here's how the phone call went:


Me: Mom, do you have that cobbler recipe you always used to make?
Mom: Oh I used the cup-of recipe
Me: huh?
Mom: You know a cup of flour, cup of sugar, cup of milk, cup of berries
Me: Only a cup of fruit?
Mom: Well, you can double that
Me: Oh, well didn't you add any butter
Mom: Oh honey I always add butter to everything, just a bit on top....OH and I like to add cinnamon and sugar on top too
Me: I think I will try it with honey and half the milk, that's the rule right?
Mom: There's a rule? I always just did a straight sub, huh????
Me: Hah, OK thanks mom
Mom: Oh, and a bit of baking soda helps it puff up a bit
Me: Baking soda or baking powder? I think you mean powder. Whatever, I will just double the whole recipe for a 9X13 and add a tsp of baking powder. Temperature? Time?
Mom: Oh 350 and about 45 minutes tell it's brown and bubbly, I think...
Me: I'll check after 30 thanks mom
Mom: Don't forget to butter the pan!
If you can glean a recipe off that too, you might come out with something like this....

The Pantry

Wow, that was one crazy week! I really hate having something to do every night of the week. Being the homebody that I am I'm mostly content to stay at home eat a nice meal and snuggle with my honey, but I don't think I got to do that once the whole week. Oh well, this weekend made up for it a bit and we are starting to reach homeostasis around here.


Anyways, I mentioned on my last post our kitchen organizational woes. Which have really been going on for quite some time. Well, last week we finally did something to fix the problem and it only cost us $14 and few spare hours (which of course was the hardest thing to come by).

We were given an old pantry for free which was a little warped, beat up, and without any hardware. With a trip to the hardware store for hinges and self paper and some paint we had, sandpaper we had and our time we now have a place to store our bulk food that isn't the girls closet! I used my left over chalkboard paint to make the inside door usable for a grocery list. This thing holds a lot of groceries, it's as deep as my fridge. I still have to use our other cupboard and our chest freezer most of the time too.

Buying in bulk is one of the things that really helps keeps our families grocery budget down. We try to eat mostly organic whole foods and still try to stay within budget. This usually means we don't buy "fancy" food like bagels, chips, snacky foods or sodas. Things we do buy are 25lb bags of oats, wheat berries, popcorn, beans and 10lb boxes of organic cheese. We go through a co-op up in Oregon that delivers our bulk food their truck route. With a tiny kitchen we have had to be very inventive with meeting our shopping and cooking needs, but this pantry will definitely help!

Glass

This has been a crazy busy week. So much running around and really not much to show for it. Well, tonight was a lot of the same fun as well. We spent all evening after M got home from work at our local E.R. to get a piece of glass removed from P's foot. She was so awesome though, barely even cried and you could tell the big numbing needle really hurt. I'm so proud of that brave little girl!

I do have one positive crafty thing to show for my week and I will be back with that soon. I've been trying to work on making my living room and kitchen more functional so it's something in that direction. That's the thing with living in small places you have to be ever evolving, finding new ways to organize so that your life and home can be as comfortable as possible

Indulgent Stitches

OK so here we go, a little something to ease the pain of stitches lost. A little something pretty for myself (doesn't a little indulgence always help?).

I've been wanting one for months and finally got around to making one! I got the pattern from here. Well, that's all for now, I will be back later on this week with a new sewing project I started last night. Hope every one's week is starting out well!

Ribbet....

Last week I had to rip back 15 rows of the Orange Cabled Blanket. That's 1800 stitches people! So I have set it aside for awhile to avoid killing it. Now, I could move right on to the next planned knitting project, a Christmas present I have already purchased the yarn for, but no I don't think I will. Instead I will indulge and make a small little something just for me out of my scrap yarn. Come back tomorrow to find out what it is!

Pretty Little Things

Today was a good day. Such a good day in fact that I almost have a hard time believing that tomorrow is in fact Mother's Day. I got to do two of my favorite things sewing and shopping and I even won a gift certificate from a local craft store! Good times. I love those gentle reminders from God that he does love us and want us to have joy in our lives, it truly lifts my spirits.


Upon waking this morning I immediately went to my craft closet (before even going downstairs) and riffeled through it looking for a few fun things to make. I remembered that I had been wanting to make a brooch from an old belt buckle I found in a button bin. Such a simle project so I knew that that was going to be one of my projects for the day. I just broke off the back piece and hot glued a pin backing on and I wore it around all day. I wish I could find enough belt buckles to make a whole bag full of these babies!



While riffled I also came across an old pair of curtains which really fit the bill for the pillow I have be working on. My mom always taught me to save all my linens even if they don't match your current decor and I have found this to be such good advice. Years go by, things change and sometimes they end up being just what you were looking for (even if not for there intended purposes).

The rest of my day was spent on an outing with my mom, 2 of my sisters and my girls. We shopped and went out to ice cream and just had a really good time together. My mom is a self professed shopaholic and is such a fun person to go on these outtings with. We talk, eat, and find that in some cases we do actually have similar tastes.

Happy Mother's day everyone!

4 Month Slippers

I am amazed with just how long it took me finish the clogs I started way back in January! The actual knitting was finished in oh, about 3 weeks (including taking classes for it and learning new techniques). Then I hit a road block, you can't felt them in a front loader...which I have. So, they sat and sat waiting for me to either A. go to a laundry mat with 2 kids and be the weirdo trying on wet slippers every 10 minutes or B. Go to a someones house that has a top loader and ask to use there machine. So you can see why they sat and sat, a combination of forgetfulness and lack of motivation were to blame.

I finally managed to get them felted up when we were visiting my in-laws last month. So, here they are in all their felted glory, just in time for the warmer months, perfect............


As for more recent projects that I don't plan to let languish unfinished for months here is my very first baby blanket. I know that this is a common project amongst most knitter, but MAN it's a lot of work! This is for my nephew that will be born this October, when I knit this I can't help but think of a cute little baby all snuggled inside.