It’s a beautiful morning with clear blue sky and sunshine. Plenty of coffee. Nothing shouting for my immediate attention. What could be more perfect for a laid-back Sunday morning after catching my breath from a busy week?
I’d been meaning to show you the yarn bowl I picked up at an art market a couple of months ago. I love it when I have an excuse to support local artists. Isn’t it pretty?
Leaves & Nature pottery yarn bowl by Sherry Lutz
I was first introduced to Sherry Lutz’s pottery a couple of months prior at the New Orleans Museum of Art Gift Shop where I saw her “Louisiana Seafood” gumbo bowls and purchased two. While strolling through the art market, I immediately recognized Sherry’s pottery and stopped to look at other pieces on display. I hardly needed any coaxing though, when I spotted some pieces in her “Leaves & Nature” which I had not seen before. And oooooh … looky there … a huge yarn bowl. Perfect. I LOVE it.
I actually took the pictures several weeks ago, but here it is when I was getting ready to knit another Red Hots Anklets sample model for the pattern I completed for publication just a few days ago.
You can see by the size of the bowl compared to the yarn that this bowl is nice and roomy. It will be great for using with some of those huge single balls of yarn that are enough to make a stole or shawl all by themselves. But most of all, I just enjoy looking at this pretty yarn bowl with its subtle coloring and delightful ‘leaves’ theme.
Sometimes it is nice to keep things old-fashioned. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I decided to actually mail holiday cards this year. After having so much fun with creating the Bitty Beaded Christmas Tree pattern, I used some of the photographs of beaded trees I had knitted and designed them into a special HeartStrings greeting card.
Bitty Beady Christmas Tree holiday greeting cards
I thought you also might enjoy using my free downloadable pdf files to print your own to mail or use as gift card enclosures. The greeting card is ready for you to just sign, or there is also space for you to write in your personalized greeting if you want.
front
interior
back
There’s even a pdf file for you to print matching envelopes. Be sure to check out the page at the HeartStrings FiberArts website.
John called and said he’d make oatmeal cookies for me and bring them on Saturday. What a good man. 🙂 I have a favorite recipe and offered to email it to him. Least I could do. lol
Fastest way to get this recipe sent off in an email was to scan the recipe card I had in my old technology recipe box, then save the scan and send as jpg picture.
Dorothy's oatmeal cookies recipe
Dorothy Young was my son Tommy’s (William Young aka Bill) great aunt. It’s nice to pull out the recipes for family classics like this.
I used to make these quite often when I had people around to help me eat them. But since the household dwindled to just me, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any. I’d been thinking recently of making some for the holidays (there’s always places I could take to share them!). John must have been reading my mind.
Did anyone else keep their recipes on the Current, Inc’s recipe cards like this? I actually still have some blank ones. Definitely old technology, including manual typewritten. If you look closely at the enlarged picture, I think you can even see where I had used a bit of white-out to make a correction, lol.
Old manual typewriter
So many advancements since then. But these tried and true favorite recipes stay long time friends.
Despite common perception :), my cooking does not always turn out well. This was one of those times that challenged me to turn things around into something good.
It all started when looking for something to use the remainder of some fresh mushrooms before they began to degrade. The dish I had in mind was “Rice with Mushrooms and Mustard Seeds” (page 104), again from Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbook Quick & Easy Indian Cooking that I have been having fun going through. Up ’til now, I’ve basically been pleased with everything I’ve made from the recipes in this book. Some things more than other things, but overall nothing I would absolutely not make again. Unfortunately, this recipe did not turn out all that well for me.
Follow me as explain what probably happened, and how I then recovered to make some great rice cakes from my cooking flop.
Here are the main ingredients being measured and prepared …
Starting to prepare the ingredients; the spices are whole cumin seed and black mustard seed
The recipe called for long grain white rice and I got it in my mind to use some white Jasmine rice I had on hand. There was no designation as to what kind of rice to use in the recipe, although I now realize that white basmati was probably assumed. I had too late read past the instructions near the beginning of the recipe to rinse the rice several times and drain, which is something that would be generally done for basmati. But since I already had it in my mind to use Jasmine which does not need rinsing, I just overlooked all that — which I think might have been the reason for the failed recipe — see later …
And the assembled pot … I had started in a smaller pot (the recipe did not give indication other than a saucepan), and realized once I got past the spices and onion, upon dumping in the mushrooms to toss with the seasonings, that I was going to be well past the point of that pot’s capacity.
First stages of cooking
So I switched to this larger pot. The recipe called for either chicken broth or water. I used a ratio of about 2 parts broth to water …
The larger pot
The cooked rice … fluffy and I thought it was done. But it had cooked unevenly. Not totally bad, but pretty crunchy/undone in places. Probably not enough liquid? (remember, I had not washed it beforehand to give it the extra moisture the recipe was probably expecting)
Almost-cooked rice (but not quite)
So I put in a bit more liquid and left it on low heat to cook some more.
OK … better now, but still not there.
Better, but not quite
Try again with some more liquid and more cooking time. Now it’s less crunchy in places, but jeesh it’s getting like glue. Oh no … That big pot of rice! It’s edible (sort of), but I think I am going to soon tire of eating a gluey pot of rice.
Oh no! gluey rice
After cooling, I set the pot aside overnight. Figured I’d either have a brainstorm of how to improvise (I hate to throw out food), or it was going to get the best of me and I would just have to admit defeat.
Ah! Ah! — idea. One of the things I love to do with leftover mashed potatoes is to make little pan-seared pancakes. As gluey as this rice stuff is, it certainly seemed like it would hold together for some good rice (pan)cakes. And it did!
Rice (pan)cakes
They came out great — the crispy outside was perfect and moistly flavorful inside. Sort of reminded me of the sweet sticky rice in lotus leaf that I like so much when we go out for Sunday dim sum at the Royal China in Metairie. The question is whether I can replicate this to make it again?!
For many years (i.e. basically my whole life), I hardly ever would eat cereal. For many different reasons, it was my least favorite breakfast food. I guess tastes change. Or eating choices improve. Or maybe it was just a matter of finding the right brand of cereal. Because now I have done a complete turn-around, and my breakfasts include cereal almost everyday.
What has not changed, is that I HATE soggy cereal. So my preferred cold cereal is by Nature’s Path. Their organic, natural grains cereals really hold up to the milk. I especially like the low-sugar, low-fat ones like Heritage Flakes and Heritage Bites. Add some sliced bananas and dried cranberries, and I am all set to crunch down on a great start to the day.
Crunchy cereal
On the other hand, John intentionally leaves his cereal to “sog”. He fixes his bowl of cereal, pours in the milk, then walks away for about an hour while all the milk is sopped up into the cereal. Yuck. But that is how he likes it. Go figure.
Soggy cereal
So, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. What’s yours? Are you a crunchy cereal or soggy cereal person?
Related Images:
Behind the scenes with Jackie E-S and life at the HeartStrings FiberArts studio.
and 
. Add some sliced bananas and dried 
, and I am all set to crunch down on a great start to the day.
