Monthly Archives: March 2010

Red Courthouse Steps

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Of all my unfinished quilts and quilt tops, this one has probably been in progress the longest.  I started it when I was still in Austin before Ely was born, so around 2001.  I worked on it for a while, then had to pack it up since the whole house had to be packed up.  After he was born, I pulled it out and worked on for a few weeks during naptime before putting it away again, probably because he stopped napping.  I think I’ve worked on it for one other longish period of time, but mostly it has been folded up on a shelf next to the plastic bin that houses all of my red and reddish colored fabrics.

This quilt is one of Kaffe Fassett’s from his book  Passionate Patchwork. I have a lot of his quilting books, but this one is my favorite.  As soon as I saw the red courthouse steps, I knew I had to make one for the four poster bed in our guest bedroom.  Kaffe also has a yellow and blue version, and it is amazing how changing the color scheme completely changes the whole look of the quilt even when the middle green squares stay the same.

Making this quilt is hard.  With the courthouse steps pattern, you can’t really cut out all the pieces and lay out the whole quilt before piecing it together. Since each row build upon the fabrics used in the previous row, I lay out a row from my fat quarters, cut the strips, sew them together, then move various new fat quarters under the just sewn row to help me decide which ones to use in the next row, and then I start the whole process over again.  If it sounds tedious, that is because it is, and probably the main reason why I can only work on it in spurts.

But I still love this quilt and have lots of fabric set aside for it, so I’d like to finish it this year.  Mine seems to have a lot more purple and pinkish fabrics than Kaffe’s version, but I’m just going to embrace it and use what I have, though I’m sure I’ve added some more red fabrics to my stash since I last worked on the top.  I’ve also used quite a few fabrics that I don’t really like, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much with this quilt since the overall look is mostly what it so intriguing about it. 

I have no idea how many more rows I still need to make.  I guess I should locate my notes and drawings and figure that out, though maybe it would be best just to sew for a while and not depress myself with that info.  With this quilt, living in denial might be just the thing to help me get it finished.

The Saga of Granny Margaret’s Angel Food Cake

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This post was supposed to go out at the beginning of the month, but with all the sickness and nursing duties, I didn’t have time to finish nor edit it. In fact, the birthday cake didn’t even happen on the birthday, so it shouldn’t be too hard to pretend it is three weeks ago.

My husband’s birthday is at the beginning of March. It’s easy to remember because it is the same day as my brother’s birthday. Will never wants anything for his birthday. It’s close enough to Christmas, so that anything he did want he got 2 months ago. It’s actually better this way, because I enjoy giving experiences or handmade gifts much more than something I can purchase in a store. In the past, Will had received gifts like a day full of activities he loves (riding his bike, eating German food for lunch, and lime paletas for dessert) and a homemade birthday cake. I know I’ve said this before, but homemade birthday cake is a gift I love to make and give. And for Will, the homemade cake must be an angel food cake.

My first experience with angel food cake was as a child in Phoenix, AZ while visiting my grandparents over Spring Break. My grandfather had heart problems, so he was on a low salt and low fat diet. His newest favorite dessert was angel food cake, and I remember helping my grandmother make one from a box. I believe we whipped egg whites then folded in the box contents. It was good, but as a kid I never skipped dessert no matter what. The best part was watching the cake cool upside down on a bottle. I may have made one or two more angel food cakes once I returned home, but they never became one of my standbys until Will came into the picture.

Will’s paternal grandmother, Granny Margaret, was a wonderful cook. He ate lunch (or dinner as true Southerners call it if they are sitting down and eating a meal with their family) at her house at least once a week. If it was a Saturday lunch, Granny Margaret made hamburgers. If it was after church Sunday dinner, Granny Margaret made roast beef, broccoli with cheese sauce, and rice. Dessert for Thanksgiving and Christmas was always boiled custard, “Granny Margaret” cookie press sugar cookies with sprinkles, and angel food cake. Granny Margaret knew her two grandsons loved her angel food cake – she always made one for Will and his cousin Clay to share while the rest of the family ate the other one. I once asked Will what made a Granny Margaret angel food cake, and he told me it had to have a slight almond taste (from almond extract), cracks or fissures on the top surface with a slight amount of “juice” leaking out, and it must return to its original shape after being poked with your finger.

The only problem with Granny Margaret’s angel food cake was that only Granny Margaret could make it. That was fine while she was active enough to cook feasts out of her kitchen, but once she began to age she didn’t remember things as well as she used to which was always a little precarious to begin with. Granny Margaret was one of the very first neurosurgery patients in Middle Tennessee in the 1950s and while the surgery fixed her brain, her memory never completely recovered. No one knows why, but when Granny Margaret came to after surgery, she had no memory of her son – my father-in-law – John. John had been sent away to overnight camp for 1-2 weeks so Granny Margaret could recover from her surgery in peace, and her sisters (Will’s Great Aunts) Ruth and Lois used that time to tell Margaret everything they could about her 10 year old son John. John returned from camp and had no idea any of this happened until his aunts confided this tale to him when he was an adult.

In her early 80s, a few months after I met her, Granny Margaret was diagnosed with dementia and moved into assisted living. There was no kitchen in her assisted living apartment, so I only got the chance to eat one Granny Margaret cooked meal. Will wanted me to come to Saturday lunch, and asked Granny Margaret to make me a grilled cheese so I, a vegetarian at the time, could eat with them. After the first bite, I began to believe some of the Granny Margaret food lore. I don’t know what she did to the grilled cheese, but it was the best one I have ever eaten. Thinking about it now, she probably cooked it next to the hamburgers in her electric griddle!

For many years, Will and his sister Meg tried to learn how to bake angel food cake as good as Granny Margaret. Will videotaped Granny Margaret one weekend, so he could replicate her baking process exactly, but the cakes never turned out the same. Meg got Granny Margaret’s angel food cake pan and her Betty Crocker cookbook, complete with Granny Margaret’s notes in the margins, but the cakes never turned out quite right either. Clearly it wasn’t the recipe or the pan, but some magic Granny Margaret had.

So here I was, with the need to recreate Granny Margaret’s cake, yet told by everyone it was an impossible task. It was November 2001, and I opened my most recent copy of Gourmet magazine to find a recipe for an angel food cake that was compiled from the testing of many recipes (sort of like what America’s test kitchen does). I made the cake, carefully dividing the vanilla extract in half and replacing one half with almond extract, and scoring the cake halfway through the baking process to archieve the groove Will liked to see. When Will came home that evening, he saw my angel food cake sitting in the middle of the dining room table and looked as if he’d seen a ghost – the cake was just like one of Granny Margaret’s cakes. Of course recreating a look is one thing, and recreating a taste is quite another. Once dinner was over, I cut both of us big slices of cake and Will took a bite. He said, “This is it. You have done it. I’m not sure how, but this is Granny Margaret’s cake. Good thing I already asked you to marry me.” I believe the cake was gone by the end of the next night, and for the first time ever I thought of angel food cake as something very special.

Will was convinced of my abilities, but the next step was to bring the cake to Thanksgiving and let the rest of the family taste it. When cousin Clay saw the cake, he said, “Okay, now who tried to make Granny Margaret’s cake again?”, as he knew of and had tried the many failures. He looked a little sheepish when Will’s mother told him I made it, and begrudgingly took a bite of the slice offered to him. I knew I was the family’s new angel food cake baker when Clay took a second bite, then a third, finished off the rest of his piece and asked for seconds. If Clay is coming to Thanksgiving dinner, I make sure to bake two cakes.

The recipe published in Gourmet is pretty different than the one Granny Margaret used, but the results are the same. I follow the directions exactly, even the annoying sifting before measuring, and make sure never to overbeat the egg whites. The result is always perfect and delicious, and we get to think about Granny Margaret every time this cake is on her aluminum cake stand in our house.

Spring Garden

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I didn’t plan on being so quiet here for this long, especially since this is the year I’m supposed to be writing a lot.  We had almost 6 weeks of constant sickness in the house, and it finally ended right before last week’s Spring Break.  I know kids get sick (though luckily mine don’t too often),but we had either one reeeeaaalllllyyyyy long stomach virus or 2-3 different ones go through the house one after another.I had never felt this crazy nor this exhausted from constantly staying home, being afraid to drive anywhere in the car without a “yak” bucket along, and nonstop laundry.  I’m so happy it’s over, and didn’t even mind too much the cold I had over Spring Break because at least it wasn’t a stomach virus.

So Spring is here, sort of.  We’ve had a couple of warm days and the daffodils are blooming along with the other flowering bushes and trees, but it is still chilly and rainy. Since I grew up here, I know that March is fickle but the last few Springs have sprung so early that it is hard to tolerate this continued cold weather.

 The one good thing about all the time I recently spent at home, was that I got to read through my gardening books and plan out my Spring garden.  Last year’s garden was a total experiment, one we had quite a bit of success with and that the whole family enjoyed.  We knew we would expand our garden this year, so I decided to turn last year’s small plot into my Spring garden.  It will also most likely become my Fall garden, as it will be done by mid-Summer and ready for new seeds and plants.  After I went starter plant and seed shopping, I realized I probably needed a few more feet on one side if I was to have enough room for everything I bought.  So I dug out some more space and now the little plot is a little too big, as reaching the middle without stepping in the dirt is hard. I think it will be okay though.  I can always put a board in the middle of the plot for standing on if it is too difficult. 

The layout of the garden is based on companion gardening*. We planted sugar snap peas, tying bamboo stakes together into teepees for the peas to climb.  Pushing the shriveled peas into the ground was a lot of fun. Under the peas are 3 different varieties of lettuce, each with different germination time, which will hopefully give us a good range of lettuce before it gets too hot and the lettuce bolts.  One thing I always loved from my CSA was the freshly picked, crisp lettuce that is impossible to get in the store, even when it is local.  The middle of the garden is dedicated to beets and onions planted together next to a patch of swiss chard.  The other side will be for broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts (the veggie I have the least hope for), and red cabbage.  These are all starts, and I haven’t planted them yet because I’m afraid it isn’t quite warm enough. I’m trying to avoid small heads from too long exposure to cool temps, but I’ll probably go ahead and plant them this week and see how they do, as this is my experimental garden this year. I still need to add a few flowers and herbs to help keep the bugs away, but then this plot will be done.  I’m so excited to spot green shoots coming out of the ground.

Along with the Spring garden, I’m also adding a couple of long term beds – one for strawberries and one for asparagus.  The strawberry bed is halfway dug because I have four plants waiting to go into the ground.  I haven’t ordered asparagus crowns yet (I hope I can still get them), so we haven’t started on that bed yet.  It’s going to be hard to wait 3 years before being able to cut all the asparagus, but it will still be fun to see the asparagus stalks and dream about delicious home grown asparagus.

The last freeze date here isn’t until mid-April, so we won’t plant our tomatoes, herbs, okra, corn, pumpkins, winter squash, and melons until then. We’re going to till several plots for those veggies and fruit, though Will is lobbying hard to till the entire back yard. I kind of want to plant potatoes in a garbage can too.  It’s hard to wait when we are all looking forward to the garden so much, but I’m glad I still have some time to plan out the Summer garden and make sure everything has good companions. Last year, a little neem oil fixed our bug problem and I’m hopeful we’ll do even better this year with good companion planting.

*I know I mention this book last year, but I use Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham as one of my main sources for garden layout and plant families, all of which makes organic gardening a lot easier as plants are happy and bugs stay away.

Liberty Report

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With the children at the grandparents’ house and Will leaving early for a Sunday morning meeting, I was able to hit Target at 8am to see the new Liberty of London line despite the time change.  I checked out one store earlier in the week and found nothing.  I checked out another store yesterday, and found only a handful of items out.  Today though - on the official opening day - was the jackpot.

I was pleased to see almost all the items on the website – women’s and girl’s clothing, bags, scarves, shoes, bedding, housewares, stationary, etc – out in the store in clearly marked pink Liberty of London sections.  I didn’t see any men’s items (boo – I wanted a tie for Will) and the infant and toddler girls section only had bathing suits (boo again – I wanted a dress for Agnes).  I forgot to check the gardening section, and I know there should have been some gardening items.

I tried on a few items, and put a few other things in my basket which I eventually put back on the shelves.  It’s hard for me to buy stuff.  The prints were great, but some of the fabrics were not so great.  I liked these waterproof bags, but I realized I could make myself the same thing with the Anna Maria coated cotton I already have.  I liked the rain boots, but the 9s were too big (which never happens to me) and there were no 8s nor half sizes. I liked a little melamine bowl I thought I could use in my sewing nook, but I try hard not to buy plastic so that went back on the shelf.  The file folders were cute, but I didn’t need them.  I finally walked out with some small notecards, which I did need as I’ve run out.  It seemed a shame not to get anything from this reasonably priced Liberty line.  I’ll probably swing by another Target this afternoon to look for ties and toddler dresses, but I’m not sure anything will be left by then.  Women were filling their carts either for themselves, or to sell on ebay once the stores run out of items, which I’m sure will happen quickly unless they’ve held back a lot of stock to replenish the shelves.

Oh well.  I’m glad I had the chance to check everything out bright and early, and I guess I’m happy I didn’t buy much.  Maybe I’ll finally splurge on some tania lawn at my local fabric store’s Summer sale in July.

Followup

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It’s March.  Gosh February went by fast at the end.  I guess once the snow and the snow days stopped and everyone was well and back at school, the days flew by.

The school auction was this weekend, and I will admit that I bid on my own pillows.  Just for a little while, and it didn’t seem weird to bid on something I made because I’m not sure I can make them again.  They were really labor intensive, but I got a lot of complements. My friend ended up with them, and I hope she enjoys them.  She has a great house that she and her husband have been renovating little by little for years and years, and I’m sure she has the perfect spot for them.

With the pillows out of the way and no imminent gift or birthday sewing, I was able to return to my Alabama Chanin beaded swing skirt this weekend.  I finished the first panel and am hard at work on the second.  The beaded applique is slower than the reverse applique, but I’m really enjoying it. I’m afraid I’m going to run out of beads though.  The other bonus is that I am finally catching up on a year’s worth of Splendid Table podcasts.  I just love that show. Yesterday, I listed to one about Mexico and Mexican cuisine that made me miss Austin so much and all the great interior Mexican food we could get there.

Speaking of Alabama Chanin, there is a great contest at BurdaStyle that ends tomorrow, March 2.  The staff chose 50 entries of Alabama Chanin inspired projects, and Natalie will pick the winner from the 5 entries that get the most votes.  I entered Agnes’s birthday shirt, and would love any votes. Mine is not even close to the best, but I’m really proud of the upcycled creation I made out of a shirt that was now useless.  You can only vote for each entry once, but you can vote for as many entries as you want, so check out all the projects and help three lucky people get to an Alabama Chanin weekend workshop, win a kit, and the book.