Monthly Archives: September 2009

The Quilt Revealed

crafts, family, , , ,


(Warning to all skilled quilters: You might want to skip this blog post, as it will probably be too painful to see!)

Darling Daughter Pippin is expecting a baby soon, so a couple of months ago I decided to sew a quilt for this grandchild, using the simple pattern of two tied quilts I had done in the distant past.

But I couldn’t remember quite how those were put together, so it took some scribbling before I could remember the fundamentals of this design.


After I figured out how many colors to use, I went to the quilt store
with farm or outdoorsy theme in mind. We don’t know the sex of the baby.

I thought there would be a plethora of possible fabrics, but after looking for an hour,
these seemed to be the only ones that would work for me.

I washed the cotton cloth in hot water and hung it to dry…

…then cut the pieces out.

You can see how my initial design calculations were off! Also, I made a goof in measuring and cutting one of the fabrics. Methodical, I am not. Woe is me.

But in sewing I tried to fudge everything together. Two of my children said,
“Aren’t quilts supposed to be kind of folksy that way?”

I zigzagged the seam allowances to give me confidence
that things won’t fall apart in the wash.

Here is the top all completed.

It takes a lot of pins, held up by Chinese quints, to put the three layers together. I used polyester batting and Minky backing. Then I tied it with an orangey-brown embroidery thread, using all six strands. Before tying, I thought, “I bet there is something on the Internet about the proper knot to use.” And on my first hit, I found a short and sweet video that showed me how to tie my quilt with a surgeon’s knot.


After begging advice from several crafty friends, I ended up with binding along the lines of what my husband had recommended. I would have preferred something a little darker, but nothing else seemed to be “it.”

Mitered corners were my plan, but of course I didn’t want to take the time to study the online lesson of how to do them properly, so I did as I have done in the past: sewed fake mitered corners by hand, with mostly blind stitches.


Then sewed the sides with the machine.

Voilà!

What I did have left over was some of the binding fabric, so I made a gift bag from it. My intention was to make it a drawstring bag, but I ran out of time. It has a black-and-white checked bottom, with a cardboard insert.

Everything was finished in time for the baby shower this past Sunday, a few weeks before Baby is expected to arrive. All the ladies, and the dad, seemed to like the quilt.


I also like it, now that it is a quilt, and not a series of iffy decisions, a collection of design elements. Thank you all who helped me and gave encouragement!

Back at home, kitty Malcolm is already enjoying the new blanket!

A Hard-Working and Loving Man

agriculture, history, people, science,


Thanks to Sandy at Junkfood Science for introducing me to Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug at his passing from this world. He lived an inspiring and humanitarian life in the field of agriculture, with which I feel a fundamental connection because my father was a farmer, another one who worked hard out of love. These pictures are of the fruits of his labors, and of the road we lived on in California’s Central Valley for most of my childhood.

All of us should feel that link, because we depend so critically on those who grow our food, but in these days when the percentage of the population devoted to agriculture is shrinking, I’m afraid the portion who never think of the farmers is on the rise.

While you are on that website, check out her many other articles on a broad range of topics about which she does the research and lets her readers in on the stories behind the often-misleading headlines.

Power Pancakes

food and cooking, , ,

My dear husband goes to work very early in the morning, and doesn’t like to get up earlier still to fuss over cooking or eating breakfast. Nowadays I like to have some of these pancakes ready for him to easily heat and eat.

I found the original on a Zone Diet e-mail discussion list quite a while ago. A woman named Karen created and collected recipes that followed the principles of balancing protein, carbohydrates and fat at each meal or snack, and published them in a notebook called Karen’s Kitchen. Her original recipe doesn’t seem to be available online anymore.

I have adapted it and increased the quantities; I usually also double the recipe below, and freeze most of the results. I can never seem to make these pancakes come out very neat and uniform. The front of my griddle is too hot, the back is too cool, and the cakes want to get very brown from all the cheese in them. In this picture I had just put a little more butter on the griddle when I decided to take the picture; that is the butter pooling on my warped cast aluminum griddle on my not-level stove. Another thing that is not neat is my stovetop, as I somehow get little brown bits of pancake all over the place. I tried to crop them off so you wouldn’t see what a sloppy cook I am.

After years of making these, it only last night occurred to me to add some baking powder, to lighten them up. Karen’s recipe used only the whites of the eggs, and I’m sure the whole-egg version is heavier. As I made them successfully without baking powder for a long time, I put it down as optional, though I think it did help them to cook a little faster. I’m not sure if they were lighter in the end.

When I am frying these up, I find it really hard not to overindulge in testing and sampling them, I like them myself so much.

Power Pancakes

2 cups oat flour (this can be made by whirling uncooked oats in the blender.)
8 eggs or 16 egg whites
16 oz. low-fat cottage cheese
3 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 tablespoon baking powder (optional)

Blend all ingredients except the oat flour in two or three batches in your blender or food processor; beat in flour until moistened. Cook on a greased griddle at a temperature a little lower than regular pancakes. They will be very brown.

When they are cool, I wrap them in waxed-paper packages of three pancakes, and freeze in a big ziplock bag. At night before bed, I set one package on the kitchen counter to defrost, and my husband heats them in the microwave in the morning and tops them with a little applesauce for a meal with serious staying-power.