Doggie love

Hello, everyone.

This morning, at our doggies' cookie time, the bag was almost empty. Oops. Forgot to put dog cookies onto the grocery list.

So--rather than going back to the grocery store for the second time in two days--it was dog cookie baking time.

My Bo Friberg pastry book has a secret recipe buried in the introduction; it's the dog cookie recipe he makes for his own dogs. I adapted it a little. Our dogs love the homemade cookies.

 The cookbook--actually the link is to the 4th edition, mine is the 3rd. I'll bet the dog cookie recipe is still there.

His recipe is basically milk-flavored. I substitute beef bouillon from the cube, and use the saved grease from frying various yummy foods on the stove instead of just pouring plain vegetable oil.

Flour, gluten flour, whole wheat flour, a wee bit of salt

The oil has been poured in.

The finished dog cookies. My buddies will love me tomorrow morning!

I used the dough hook instead of the mixing blade. I'm not sure why--just did. It worked fine. You can see below that I skipped using the spiffy dog-bone shaped cookie cutters. Strips are fine. The dogs aren't particular about the shape.
I used 5 small eggs instead of 3 large ones--drilled them with the Dremel so the shells can be used in the future. (Possibly for an Easter decoration, we'll see.) And the bouillon cubes instead of the milk powder. Because my doggies like beef-broth dipped cookies!

Post-Thanksgiving food pictures

Hello, everyone.

I did take a few pictures while cooking for Thanksgiving this year...I think it's all pies. (Yum.)

Ripe Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced, with cranberries, sugar, flour, and a wee bit of cinnamon

 I gave the apple peels to my birdies. They weren't quite sure what to make of them.

THE pie book. Which should be brought back into print! 

 Last year I scoured the internet to find a copy of this for my sweet DIL. It has great dough recipes, fruit pie recipes, and a wonderful after-turkey-meal pie recipe. (Calls for cooked chicken, works great with turkey.)

The Cranberry-Apple pie recipe. I followed their crust instructions this time, but in future I'll stick with a solid crust, so the fruity juicy stuff won't dry out in the top half of the pie.

Completed Cranberry Apple pie. Crust for Lemon Meringue pie in background.

The 6 separated eggs for the lemon pie.

The foolproof lemon pie recipe. When the card looks like this, you know it's been loved.

The lemon pie is from the Blue Ribbon recipes book, hand copied years and years ago. And unlike most of the lemon meringue pie recipes I've tried, this one always thickens. It has a bit of flour to go with the cornstarch.
My sweetie made a pie, too: Bourbon Pecan pie from the Encyclopedia of Cajun Cooking. The flavor was superb, but in my opinion the filling recipe needs another egg yolk so it will thicken properly.
(I see while hunting up the link for this book that the price has risen. It's still worth it! There is a corn salad recipe, too!)

Remembering Margaret Leonard

Hello, everyone.

I wrote yesterday about Mrs. Beckley. Her beautiful eggs certainly led me to want to make elaborately decorated eggs like hers. (My sweetie finally gave up trying to get all the egg white out of his Dremel and gave me one of my own for Christmas. Thank you, Sweetie!)

Another influence on my crafting was my mother in law, Margaret Leonard. She was always very particular about her work, and because she was meticulous, it was beautiful.

I thought I had some good pictures of her bead-woven ornaments, but this is the best one I found. And the camera apparently decided that it liked the tree branches better than the ornament! But even in this picture, you can see that her tension was very even and the colors harmonious.

She was not only a meticulous artisan, she was also very generous with her knowledge. She gave me the instruction sheets for this and many other lovely Christmas ornaments--and one of these days I'll figure out which of my beads are the right size to make more like them.

I miss her dearly, especially at this time of the year when I am cooking the recipes she gave me and hanging the ornaments she made on our tree.

Remembering Mrs. Beckley

Hello, everyone.

When I was young, and my grandmother was still alive, she had a dear friend, Mrs. Beckley. I'm sure we all met her a couple of times at my grandparents' apartment. One year, when I was about nine years old, a package arrived in December. It was from Grandmother, and it contained gifts from Mrs. Beckley: three eggshells, each decorated differently, for the three grandchildren. I still have my egg from Mrs. Beckley.

Mrs. Beckley's art

You can't really see it from the front, but the egg has not one, not two, but three edge decorations around the opening in the front. There is the golden fringe, there is the strand of graduated pearly beads, and there is a rope of velvet cording. Which is accented by the bejeweled flower on top. There is another bejeweled flower on the back of the egg, too. As well as the glitter surface behind the angel. All in all, a beautifully decorated egg. (And you should have seen it when it was newer!)

Mrs. Beckley's art took root in me, and in later years I made my own scenic eggs.

A pearl in the midst of the sea?

This egg is simpler--there is only one edge decoration. It's a woven strand of pearl beads. I don't think I put any decoration onto the back of the egg, either. (It's been quite a while since it was made.)

This year, we have a pair of guineas. We have a collection of guinea eggs in the refrigerator, all of them in their hard little shells. Who knows? Maybe it's time to get out the Dremel and blow out eggs again. (Or cut a section off with baby nail scissors, to get the pretty oval hole on one side.)

It would use up some more bead stash. That's it! A reason to decorate eggs again.

Christmas season is rushing up at us

Hello, everyone.

Since we came back from the Camino, we've been trying to simplify. There's just too much stuff! You have, no doubt, noticed that I'm trying to use up stash. And we've got a pile of things that need to go to charity, or a garage sale, whichever comes first. (It's a lot easier to drive over to the Salvation Army place!)

We realized Christmas, and Christmas decorating, was come upon us and looked at one another and said, hey, those natural Christmas trees are doggoned expensive. How is that simplifying things if we have to drive all over every year looking for one, and then drive all over getting rid of the dried out tree after the holiday? Especially since on "black Friday" this year we encountered a fake tree that costs less than we typically spend over two years of natural trees. If this thing looks good for three years, we win.

You see that there is a bow instead of a more normal star or angel on the top. We have a lovely Moravian star, but it's too heavy for the tree. We also have a smaller, flatter shell star and it's too heavy too. The top of the tree just folds over! So I looked on the web and watched some Youtube videos and got out some of my stash of ribbons and tied a bow. A delicate, small bow, not one of those monstrosities that is almost as wide as the base of the tree and with gewgaws stuck into it besides. (Really?)
And, instead of putting it into the dining room on the buffet, which is full of centerpieces for the Altar Society potluck pretty soon, I put the Nativity on the floor under the tree. We won't need room to water it, after all.

We even have a trumpeting angel on top of the shed! As long as he perches, that is. Often no matter what I do with him, he tips over.
Speaking of those centerpieces:

The underpinnings: a slice of foam that has been spray-painted silver so it won't show too badly through the tinsel.

One of the finished centerpieces. 

Dollar store supplies for the win! 3-packs of candles for $3, silver colored trays for $1 apiece, box ornaments 8/$1 and round ornaments from our stash. Also bought silver tinsel, and used up a package of gold tinsel we had on hand. Bows were in the stash, too, and bits of floral goodies. I don't reckon in the batteries that we need to put into the candles, but the centerpieces are coming in at around $3 each. Add batteries and it's still way under $5. Because the point of Christmas decorating is not to see how much money we can spend, but to give a visual "Merry Christmas!" to all who see it.

Beading developments

Hello, everyone.

We made it through the Thanksgiving crush! And we managed to keep our pie collection down to five this year. (I like putting pies together--some years we have a lot of pies. But we're trying to embrace more simplicity these days, so I really tried to keep the pie making down to a reasonable level.) My sweetie made Bourbon Pecan from the Encyclopedia of Cajun Cooking. I made Apple-Cranberry and Lemon Meringue. DS brought Mrs. Sheets's Buttermilk Pie and Pumpkin. Which was a pile of pies, and most folks tried a couple of kinds for dessert.

I did promise to catch up on the beading stuff. So, freshly uploaded from my phone, bead projects:

Three projects--one abandoned--of making the Cross of Santiago in beads.

The cross on the left is the newest: Miyuki seed beads, in a new, less embellished design. By less embellished, I mean that the basic floral stems and spike base of the cross remain, but there are no added-in color spots. It's the Cross of Santiago straight-up, you might say.

The cross on the right was the first attempt in the Miyuki seed beads. I was working off of the same plan as the Delica cross (That was the charcoal on ivory one with the pink and gold accents.) The beads are a little bit of a different shape than the Delicas, and I was having some trouble with the outside shaping. I really should have skipped the green blob in the middle of the cross, I think. It does nothing for it really.

The partial cross at the top right is the one I wrote off as a lesson learned: the Preciosa seed beads just aren't meant for this stitch. Maybe they're meant for right-angle weave instead? I'll have to try that out some time.

I'm still going to try the two-drop peyote with the cross, and I think I'll try that in 15 count rocailles. It might finish off about 3/4 inch across. That seems a good size for a necklace pendant, less, um, imposing (not to say flamboyant) than the Delica cross worked out to be.

Weather update: moisture!

Hello, everyone.

We got an inch of rain (2.5 cm.) over the weekend. Yesterday morning I got up early and saw morning mist outside my windows.

6:30 a.m., about, and foggy mist beginning to fade as the sun rises. Temp about 70F.

It was quite warm in the afternoon, got to the mid 80's, and then cool air blew in overnight. This evening, after a day that barely reached 70, we had a "cold night" sky, and it was time to bring in my sweetie's orchids again. We will probably keep them inside all week.

On another subject, I'm working on the UFO (Un Finished Objects) collection. The Red Quilt is about 2/3 of the way channel-quilted, and I've even figured out who I can maybe give it to.

And I'm trying out the third set of beads with the Cross of Santiago, this time a simpler version that isn't so huge it can't be included in something.

Newest versions of Cruz de Santiago, at bottom left of top sheet (nestled in below the arrow) and on top of bottom sheet (two-drop, and I want to try it in 15 count rocailles)

I'd like to also graph out a smaller scallop shell, something that would work as a pendant. But we'll see...this week is Thanksgiving and the whole in-town bunch is coming over to turkey and trimmings on Thursday. And since I'm likely to be too busy to post much this week and may not get to it again until Friday, I'd like to take the opportunity to wish a happy and blessed holiday to my US readers.