I attend an amazing senior exercise class. I started going long before I qualified for the age requirement because I had arranged for Elegante Mother to take this class. Rather than sitting around and watching her exercise, I joined the class. Recently I asked the ladies in the class if any of them crocheted, and discovered a gold mine. I told them about the Share a Square Project that Shelly Tucker of This Eclectic Life has organized, and they made granny squares for the afghans that are being created for kids going to cancer care camp this summer.
We realized that we could help Shelly by offering to put together two of the afghans, and asked her to send them on. We met a week ago to begin stitching around the squares. Five of us rimmed 48 squares that afternoon, and two of us completed another 24 during the week.
We met again yesterday to finish edging the last 24 squares in black, and started assembling the first of two afghans. We’ll interrupt our work this next week as we prepare for Easter, but we should be able to complete the afghans by early April.
It’s been incredibly satisfying to contribute to this project. To learn more about it, and see some of the completed afghans visit Shelly’s blog and click on the “Share a Square” button on the right side of the page. When we finish our two, I’ll take a picture and post it.
P.S. DON’T send Shelly any more squares! I envison a house overflowing with them, pushing the walls out! She has enough! *G*
Monthly Archives: March 2008
This ‘n That
I have a number of entries I’d like to do, that really should have a picture to go with them. I think I’ll give you the synopsis today, and try for pictures over the coming week.
The exercise ladies who contributed squares to the “Share a Square” project came to the house yesterday afternoon to work on assembling two afghans. We have to edge each block with black crochet, and then sew 48 of the blocks together, and crochet around the entire edge. Yesterday we managed to edge 48 of the blocks. We meet again in a week, and will probably have to meet once more. My table is covered with a rainbow of blocks edged in black!
I found batik fabric for pillowcases when I was in Florida. I saw a case, and fell in love with it. My “souvenir” was the fabric for two of the cases. I found an excellent pattern on-line. I could have winged it, but it was nice to have a pattern for back-up. I’ll post a picture of the finished project soon, I hope.
This coming week is personal tax week for me. My sister-in-law does Elegante Mother’s taxes, but I need to mail the information off to her. Then, I need to answer the planner from my CPA, gather information from Quicken, collect the 1099s and such, and send that package off. My CPA will be ASTONISHED if I get them to her by March 15th. She’s busy completing the company tax packages
Tomorrow, Elegante Mother and I are going to a nursery for an early planting day. They will provide plants and soil and the additives for the containers. We bring containers and choose which plants we want, and spend some time planting them. The nursery will keep them until mid-May, when it’s warm enough to put them out, and we will have mature (well, maturing), arrangements. I’ll take pictures tomorrow, and pictures when we set them out. I figure it’s a way to get our hands in the dirt, and assuage the need for Spring.
Quilting Bee meets tonight. I’ll be crocheting, rather than quilting, but they won’t mind. One of our members will be away, helping to hang quilts for a quilt show. I hope that I’ll get to see that show on Sunday afternoon. (Note: This is another way to ignore that Spring is not yet here. A quilt show is always a good diversion!)
Monday the cat has his annual visit to the vet. Tuesday, EM and I are taking lunch to a friend who broke her ankle in February. Thursday is EM’s salon appointments and a Share a Square afternoon. Saturday is a perm, and so on and so on. I’m going to have to start working in the office at night, to get caught up.
I hope you are all “weathering” the end of winter well. I know Bogie is longing for green, and Joy is looking for a cessation of white. I’m ready to be able to go out doors without having to put on my coat!
Have a great weekend!
Yummmmmmmmmm!!
It was good, I tell you! The Boozey Beef turned out just fine. Cop Car, I was right to use that bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. It made a wonderful sauce.
I skipped one step that would have made a more complex tasting sauce. I was supposed to add half a cup of cognac, and then torch it to burn off the alcohol. I passed on it this time, but I’ll try it another, just to see what happens to that wonderful sauce!
I used the “steak cut” mushrooms, the ones you can get at the store that are thick cut, and they held up well to the heat of the stew. I think visually they balance better with the other ingredients than the thinner sliced mushrooms. Their texture is firmer, where the thin-sliced mushroom become too soft.
I think next time I might add the chunks of carrot later. This time around they were VERY soft. I’d like just a bit more “tooth” to their texture.
I learned one fun technique for thickening the sauce. The instructions called for three tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of soft butter. You mix the two together to make a wet paste, and add it to the liquid in the pot. It almost instantly thickened the sauce without any stray bits of flour floating on the top. It’s the same concept as making a kettle gravy with water and flour, but by coating the flour with butter, it’s absorbed more evenly, and the butter adds a sheen to the sauce.
In all, it was well worth my time to play in the kitchen with this recipe. I added egg noodles, bread, coleslaw and strawberries to round out the meal. As I said…..Yummmmmm!!
Shop Names 1
This is a shot of the Chinese take out kitchen near our hotel in Florida.
Boozy Beef
When I was a kid, my mother occasionally made what she affectionately called “Boozy Beef.” It is basically a beef stew made with red wine, and is more famously known as “Beef Bourguignon.”
The recipe is simple. I had it in mind as I went to the grocery store, but, alas, it’s been easily 20 years since I made it last, and I forgot that I would need pearl onions. It’s not really a problem. My family will adjust to yellow onions, if necessary.
I tried to find a bottle of Burgundy. My grocery store has a pretty amazing wine section, and I browsed through it, looking for a Burgundy. Unfortunately, it seems that Burgundy has lost its cache. Not a bottle was to be found.
I came home to look at Elegante Mother’s recipe, and it actually says “red wine.”
I surfed on-line to see what other kind of wine might be used, and found chianti, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux, zinfandel, or Pinot Noir were all suggested. I have a Cabernet Sauvigon that I hope will work.
So, it’s French peasant food, elevated to French cuisine, for dinner tomorrow.
If you’re interested in a simple, elegant, hearty beef stew, here’s a link to what looks to be a great recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_25938,00.html
A Herd!
A HERD, I tell you! As we were preparing dinner tonight, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a HERD of Robins! Usually I’m the last of our family to see the return of the robins, and usually I only get to see just one at a time. There must have been a dozen birds at the very least, and maybe twice that. They were in the herb garden, beneath the truck, in the black walnut and apple trees, and the shrubs near a bunny. They have a very distinctive run and hop, and were easy to identify, and they were fluffed up in defense of the cold.
Spring just HAS to be around the corner, despite the fact that we are supposed to get several inches of snow over the next 24 hours. Surely the robins wouldn’t be back if it wasn’t time, right??