hearth-Craft

I’ve definitely decided that I’m going to combine this craft blog with my main blog.  Starting with the New Year, I’ll kick off that combo by posting my holiday finishes over in my main blog.

Hopefully you’ll check for updates there and next year my blog will be a bit more interesting overall.

Main blog linky: Prajantr, Thoughts and Wanderings

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You know, I used to have a lot more time to take pics of my crafty things and post to my hearthCraft blog. I’m thinking that it’s been rather lonely lately.

So maybe I should combine my blogs and roll them just into my main blog for happy frequent blogging rather than serving up my thoughts and whatnot in two different places. What think you?

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Hubby and I had just returned from our little weekend getaway in celebration of our 5th wedding anniversary.  It was rainy and chilly and there was that rumbling thunder in the distance that promises more rain.  I decided to get creative in the kitchen and make a little something that would chase away some of the autumn chill in the air.

This dish was sorta kinda inspired by a dish we had over the weekend - in that it’s chicken pieces with a sauce involving fresh onions and tomatoes. There it ends, because I decided to leave out the cream and the tomato paste I could taste in the dish.  I decided to add a splash of wine, because I tend to cook with alcohol a lot and like the flavor. I also decided to add some heat to the dish, specifically so that it becomes good for chasing away the chill of a rainy day.

Ok - so how did I do this? I started with bone in chicken pieces. I suppose you could use chicken breast if you have it on hand or if you don’t prefer bone in, but I like the roundness of flavor cooking with bone in pieces gives.  I prepped my chicken the way I usually do, by seasoning it raw with sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. Then I set it aside.

I halved the onion and thinly sliced it (the original source dish had finely chopped the onion - go with your preference). I took a couple of fresh tomatoes and diced them in big chunks till I had about as much tomatoes as I had onions.  I also took a couple of big cloves of fresh garlic and finely diced them. Stuff was going to happen quickly in the pan, so I did all this up front as prep.

I took one of those deep, big pans - you know the ones that have a couple of inches tall lip? And I drizzled some extra virgin olive oil.  I let that heat up nice and hot, then I added the onions. I used a wooden spoon to toss them around so the olive oil coated them nicely and seasoned them with a touch of sea salt and fresh ground black pepper too - cause anyone who watches Food Channel nowadays knows to add flavor in layers.

I sprinkle crushed red peppers at this point to add the heat. Sauteeing them in the oil like that releases the oil from the dried peppers and generates this nifty color. Cooking any pepper like this mellows out the bite of spicy burn too. A little goes a ways, but I season to taste so um, no measurements here. Sorry. ^_^;

This is where I place the chicken in the pan, skin side down and brown the pieces for a few minutes.  I flip them and then brown them on the other side for a few minutes more. They don’t have to cook all the way through because I’m going to do some additional cooking later, they just need to get a beautiful golden brown to all sides (the original dish didn’t do that and I think it adds more flavor this way, plus some people don’t like the texture of the not browned chicken skin).

At this point, I add the diced garlic and toss everything around. You can add the garlic earlier - but all this sauteeing adds to the risk that the garlic will burn, so I add it later and the flavor is just as good and less chance of burning garlic.  Then I toss in the diced tomatoes and any juice that came off them while cutting them. Toss for a minute. Optionally, add anchovy paste or a splash of asian fish sauce at this point…adds a nice roundness of flavor that ’s not fishy at all in the end product. Promise!

Then I take a nice white wine (always use one you like the flavor of and not a cheap wine, cause the flavor will only get concentrated in the dish and why use the flavor of cheap wine you wouldn’t drink?).  I liberally splash the pan with the white wine, cause I like cooking with alcohol for the flavor it adds. Careful not to start a fire at this point…or at least have a small kitchen extinguisher on hand and be ready to start over again with clean ingredients.

A few minutes of simmering allows some of the alcohol to cook off - not all, be warned. Contrary to common belief, not all alcohol always cooks off so if you’re worried simmer it a little longer. Then I add a good couple of cups of chicken broth and let the whole thing simmer for a while until the chicken is falling away from the bones.

Depending on how much liquid I’m left with, I might add chicken broth along the way so I can serve it over rice or we’ll just eat it just like that. ^_^

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The only reason why I’m posting this is because I know my lil sis doesn’t check this blog - plus, it’s been far too long since I’ve given you anything to look at.

So here it is, the chevron scarf I’m making for my lil sis’ Christmas present.

lil sis' chevron scarf

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Well, I’ve finished!

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The Pinwheel blanket is a little over 30″ in diameter plus a 1.5″ ruffle border.

I have to admit, I love the ruffle border.  I did it by kfb and then k1p1 for several rows, knitting the purls and purling the knits. That was Very tedious and took a long, long time to finish a given round. Worth it, I think. But you have to know what you’re getting into before you do it.

Needle: US 10½ / 6.5 mm
Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Encore Colorspun Worsted
3 skeins = 600 yards
Colorway 7065

The needle size was perfect for a nice drape with this yarn weight. I have to admit that I didn’t realize the blanket was going to come out so…girl color schemed - because the balls when I picked themm up showed mostly the yellow and purple colors.

I think to be fair, I’m going to do another in more of a boy color scheme sometime in the near future.

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It was a dull day.  I opened the freezer downstairs in search of inspiration.  As the cool freezer air washed over me, it raised goosebumps across my skin. I had to squint just a little to see past the momentary mist and into the depths of the big freezer and there it was…the awful tragedy in frosted over horrific despair: freezer burned beef.

There’s not much you can do with beef that is so freezer burned that it has turned that light, tough color of dried strips.  There was nothing for it but for me to take it out, defrost it at room temp in cool water and do my best to salvage it rather than let it languish in the frigid eternity of freezer existence.

I made stew. Sort of.

You start with the basics: onions, carrots, potatoes, garlic.  Chop them however you like (I like to mince my garlic fine and chop the rest a little larger than bite sized). Saute them in a hot pan with olive oil, seasoning them with sea salt and pepper.  Add the meat, now cut into pieces the same size as the veggies so they’ll cook uniformly, seasoning that too.  Saute for a few minutes more. Then add water and simmer until the meat gets tender. Depending on how much you’re cooking that could be 10 minutes, could be an hour.

And then I add the magic.

Curry is basically stew…but with curry powder or curry paste. Today - I decided to make Japanese style curry and so to the stew I added my seasonings.  There’s Japanese curry burbling away on the stove right now and it smells so good. And honestly, once the meat is tender and because curry is so distinctive and strong (but Japanese curry is mild and not all that spicy, just warm and comforting) - my guys will never know the meat was freezer burned at all.

Whew.

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I planted a butterfly garden last fall on the side of our house with full sun exposure.  Most of the day lillies, asiatic lillies, the butterfly bush and the tall snapdragons did well.  I lost the echinacea and lavender.

So after a bit more reading this year, I decided that my big mistake was to have planted those particular perennials in the fall instead of the spring due to my Zone 6 conditions. I plan to plant them again next spring in the hopes of an even better butterfly garden.

In the meantime, we’ve had a lot of visitors to my herb garden in the forms of gently buzzing bees as well as nice dragon flies at our pond. Dragon flies are good because they eat mosquitoes and I’m not really a fan of mosquitoes.

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I have a happy dance! And it’s a stitching happy dance! Woohoo!

Flip It Bit of March

 So the M was fully frogged and re-stitched correctly. I finished it up on the plane back from Colorado and I’m pretty happy with this particular month - I like the cute design of course and it looks neat and clean. It’s been such a long while since I had a stitching happy dance that I’m grinning pretty widly even though this is a small project.

As always, click on the small picture to see the full size picture.

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Sophie is coming for dinner tonight.  She’s leaving on Tuesday to tour around Europe with her boyfriend from Austria.  She hasn’t seen him all summer.

Since she asked me to cook for her I decided to make some of her indulgences - rich, luscious and full of vibrant color and flavor.

The menu?

• Apricot Glazed Chicken with dried plums and fresh sage
• Potatoes au gratin with lots of heavy cream and white cheddar cheese
• Young asparagus spears sauteed with sea salt
• Fresh avocado tossed with sea salt and extra virgin olive oil, splash of red wine vinegar
• Tomatoes (fresh from my garden) with buffalo mozzarella and fresh picked basil dressed with evoo

Hopefully she’ll tuck away a nice solid meal before her trip.

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Well, this blog was long overdue for a backend update to WordPress 2.6.  In the process of doing so, I decided to update the theme as well.

Things went fine, I think, with the exception of Categories.  Somehow all of my post categories went to no content - all blank.  So I had to delete them all and recreate my categories and go post by post to reassign categories.  Not fun.  I did the happy dances at least and some of the more recent posts. Maybe if I get caught in a really long telecon sometime I will finish going back to do more.

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