2007 September « life with monkey

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still no oven, but the stove works

September 27, 2007 at 7:00 pm | In food | Leave a Comment

that was dinner a couple nights ago: glazed tofu, roasted ‘taters and a stir-fry of zucchini, chard and shiitake mushrooms.

dessert lately has consisted of soymoo and ibarra.

i do love a cuppa mexican cocoa.

the landlady scheduled a repairman for saturday morning. he’s supposed to diagnose the problem and depending on how much it costs to fix the darn thing, the landlady’s either going to have it fixed, or buy us a new oven. either way, i am ITCHING to do some baking, and it can’t happen soon enough.

home again, home again

September 21, 2007 at 6:42 pm | In crafts, sewing | 1 Comment

you know you’re getting older when you need to pull out your reading glasses in order to use a seam ripper.

so sad. i use to be able to do that stuff without any special help. *sniff* cry me a river, would ya? heh.

since i had another day off work today, i spent the afternoon in my craft room. i pulled out some fabric i bought at joann’s sometime last year(?), and i pattern i’ve had in my collection since… oh, sometime in the early 1990s. yikes!

i made the pants way back when, but i’d never made the skirt. it’s a very simple pattern – one piece for the front, once for the back, another for the drawstrings. i sewed french seams for the sides, added a couple of buttonholes, a length of elastic, and voila!

it’s a very simple, lightweight cotton skirt. the fabric feels just like a cotton sari i bought a million years ago. very summery. i guess i forgot that fall just started and the weather’s finally cooled down a bit around here. oops.

i love the colors of this fabric – orange and purple, and the gold accents in the flowered band. my husband says that orange is very popular right now (someone told him that when he wore a bright orange t-shirt to work a couple weeks ago). he also said “orange is the new red”, but neither of us could think of what red replaced. black? brown? plaid? yoga? i can’t keep up with all this fashion stuff. which kind of explains why i have 1990s patterns in my stash, no?

gone fishin’

September 13, 2007 at 6:37 am | In non-craft | Leave a Comment

we’ll be closed until next weekend! see you then!

something i ate

September 8, 2007 at 10:06 am | In food | Leave a Comment

thursday night i made that Veg Times Glazed Seitan Stir Fry. i have no photos to post – it’s difficult to shoot photos while trying to stir-fry! the end result was DELICIOUS, and made enough for two meals for me. the only ingredient i didn’t include when i made it was the red bell pepper. it’s not that i don’t like red bells (i can’t eat the green ones, yick), but i prefer them roasted, on a sammich or some such.

i found a bunch of granola bar recipes over at RecipeZaar, and gave them to my husband, since he wanted to make up a batch. he ended up choosing this no-bake recipe, and omitted the raisins. they, too, were delicious. and easy. and they didn’t heat up the kitchen, which adds extra bonus points since we had such a bad heat wave last week.

frozen cherries in the freezer = cherries with cinnamon dumplings for dessert this weekend.

fingerling potatoes picked up this morning = lemon fingerling potatoes recipe from a card pulled from a recent issue of Marty Stew Living. oh, except i don’t have a shallot on hand…

this guy:

will be part of acorn squash with curried apple compote.

this guy:

will be part of a watermelon mojito recipe a coworker passed to me:

5 cups cubed watermelon
1/4 cup chopped mint
3/4 cup light rum
1 cup sparkling water
6 oz frozen limeade concentrate

place watermelon cubes on a cookie sheet and freeze
put everything in a blender – blend until smooth
garnish with a lime slice

yeah, i think i can handle that.

hair curler sewing tutorial

September 3, 2007 at 9:42 am | In crafts, howto, sewing, tutorial | 21 Comments

one of my friends asked for directions for the hair curlers i made this weekend, so here goes…

ingredients for one curler:
a scrap of cotton fabric, at least 4″ X 9″ in size
a small amount of stuffing the curler (i use polyester)
a button
some thread

tools:
a sewing machine, preferably with a zipper foot attachment
a hand-sewing needle
scissors

baking time:
around 10 minutes at intermediate skill level

directions:
first, cut a 4″ X 9″ rectangle from a piece of scrap fabric.

fold it in half lengthwise, right sides together. sew 4″ along long edge using 1/4″ seam.

fold the small end together (the end where you started your stitching).

sew across the end. [alternately, you could hand-sew this end instead, using a running stitch and gathering it by pulling up on the thread]

turn right side out and stuff up to the top of that initial 4″ seam.

once it’s stuffed, sew opening closed as close to the 4″ mark as possible.

using the tail-end of the thread, sew a running stitch over the previous stitches and gather. [alternately, this opening could be sewn shut and gathered by hand]

fold the other short edge over 1/4″, then fold a long side over about an inch.

fold the remaining long edge over, turning its edge under 1/4″ as well.

sew over the last edge you turned over, then along the short edge, then back down the other side.

sew a buttonhole on the end. i like a buttonhole going the length of the curler. YMMV.

cut open the buttonhole.

sew a button to the end of the stuffed portion.

voila! a curler!

special bonus – a messy curler-head:

heh.

too hot for much of anything

September 1, 2007 at 12:31 pm | In crafts, crochet, food, knitting, sewing | 1 Comment

it’s been a hot week, so i’ve been keeping my activities low-key. i want to do some baking, but the thought of turning on the oven is too much to bear. i can’t wait until the temps dip for fall.

to wrap up the past week’s cooking/craftiness, i made:

tempeh bourgignon

salsa (to go with polenta bean pies) from scratch, no recipe used. it consists of:
a couple of tomatoes
about 1/2 white onion
fresh cilantro
chili powder
a couple of garlic cloves
a dash of lime juice
a dash of coriander
a dash of cumin

my (formerly) sooper-semi-seekrit craft project – socks! the most complex knitting project i’ve attempted to date. the yarn is moda dea sassy stripes acrylic. after i finished the socks, i wondered why they looked slightly different, and it turns out each skein was a different lot number. whoops. the one time i forgot to look! i made a few mistakes on the socks, but overall, i think i did OK. and i’m looking forward to making a pair for myself.

a new pillow cover using fabrics from my existing stash: navy blue wide-wale corduroy, one of my hubby’s old aloha shirts and some purple fabric leftover from a dress i made six years ago

hair curlers – inspired by this post, i experimented with crochet and with sewing, and i think the sewn curlers win. i’m planning to make more today.

also on the “to do” list this weekend: