Caramel Corn

Typically during the holiday season we like to make rather than buy something for our friends and family. We do this for several reasons: it is riduculous to send people crappy gifts that they don't want or need, we are relatively crafty people and we have the ability to cobble something together; we don’t have a lot of money to spend on presents and making is usually cheaper than buying; and we are of the mindset that crafting something is a little more personal and perhaps thoughtful. I guess usually we do something edible because it is Renee's favorite combo of crafty AND useful. One year it was a cookie mix that recipients just needed to add wet ingredients to and then bake. In 2009 we made pickle relish and spicy pineapple salsa. This year we decided to try caramel corn, as it seemed appropriately festive and we had never tried making it before so we were interested to see how it came out. Plus we are popcorn making masters The recipe we used was from a website called smitten kitchen, and if I remember correctly we didn’t make any modifications except for half of the batch was non-spicy. It wasn’t particularly difficult to execute but was extreemly dangerous. The molten carmel could easily burn through flesh to the bone. It required a watchful eye – if the caramel mixture got too brown or not brown enough, it didn’t taste right and got too hard too fast. We made a LOT of popcorn so Renee was in charge of popping the batches of corn and I was in charge of making the caramel mixture.

 

In the original recipe, only one batch of corn and one caramel mixture gets made; we had to do I think 4 of each. This made for more experimentation to find that perfect balance but also more chances to burn the caramel and ourselves. Our first batch came out the best. We liked the results and got pretty good feedback from our gift recipients. If you like caramel corn definitely try this recipe out and see what you think, as I said it’s not difficult, the directions are pretty straightforward, but getting it just right will probably take several tries. That’s the fun of making rather than buying!

Brief Garden Update

Hello! It has been a busy busy summer. We are going to try and catch you all up on craft and music stuff in the next few days. This post is about our garden. All in all, we've had a more bountiful year than last year, with lots of tomatoes. If you will remember, we planted 4 tomato plants, 1 in the topsy turvy and 3 in the ground. All the tomato plants seem to be taking their time in the fruit ripening department, but we have lots and lots of tomatoes to look forward to. We've had one banana and jalepeno pepper each, and both of our bell pepper plants have a pepper on them, but the plants themselves are pretty runty and I don't know if we'll get any edible peppers this year. The biggest disappointment has been the cucumbers. Last year we had more cucumbers than we knew what to do with, made lots of cucumber sandwiches and a huge batch of relish. This year we have had no edible cucumbers and the plants all look really bad. One theory is that they thrive in rocky sandy soil, and since we improved the quality of the soil so much this year, they are not taking kindly to it. Who knows.

Some tasty produce (except the cucumber, which was too hard and not edible)

So Mayo!

Today I wanted a turkey sandwich on some of the lovely French bread Dave made. Then I realized we didn’t have any mayo. I complained to Dave: “boo no sandwich for me, we don’t have mayo.” He suggested I make mayo. I immediately sprung into action. The back story is that I have made mayo once before. It was scary, scarier than piecrust, but I followed Julia’s instructions exactly and it turned out perfectly. It was so easy, I used the food processor and felt very proud. The only downside was that it was a huge batch and it doesn’t keep very long and we don’t have much use for 2 cups of mayo. Also, it was kind of shocking for me to see that it is just egg yolks and oil; it is possible the whole experience of making it from scratch just made mayo (which is already kind of gross) way too real for me.


But today I had reason to make it. I had fresh eggs in the fridge and a use for the mayo - some homemade blue cheese dressing (ingredients – blue cheese and mayo) would be great in a couple days. I think I became over-confident. I couldn’t bring myself to make a whole batch. So instead of 1 egg plus 2 yolks I just used one egg, cut the dry ingreds, and figured I would only add oil until it was thick. It never got thick. I re-read the whole 3 pg essay on mayo and realized that the whole egg makes the mayo thinner. Yikes. Julia provides some trouble shooting tips about the use of mustard from the store blah blah that I didn’t follow. Instead I took a yolk, some more dry mustard, and a spoonful of my destroyed mayo, and beat them together. It was pretty thick so I slowly added it to the mayo. It got thicker and tastes fine but is still runny compared to how I want it. How it should be. How it was last time. I took a picture and discovered mayo looks yucky and can’t be made to look appetizing.

After re-reading this story I imagine it probably won’t make a lot of sense to someone who hasn’t made mayonnaise before. If you eat it – make it. Follow Julia’s instructions, not mine.

Spring Sewing

I did a little sewing in the spring and after I was done I was too tired to blog about it. I think I have adequately recovered and am ready to tell you about the bags that I made. I had to make a new purse/bag because the strap of my last one basically rotted away. It was an Amy Butler pattern called the birdie sling and I had used AB quilt weight fabric to construct it. I decided that I wanted the same bag design but that it would be in my best interest to use a home dec weight fabric this time. I labored over fabrics until I fell in love with this crazy beautiful fabric from the drawing room collection by Anna Maria Horner.

I was totally decided...that was until I fell in love with the designs of Joel Dewberry. His fabric is perfect and so cool and beautiful and interesting and I love it. I was very torn between my two loves so I decided to make two bags. The first fabric (the Horner) was very whimsical, as is the design of the birdie sling, so I paired those together. The Dewberry fabrics I chose where more clean and mellow so I paired them with the Amy Butler pattern “frenchy.” Here is what they look like.

Birdie Sling

Frenchy

In the end I am totally attached to the new birdie sling and use it all the time. I have some complaints about the design of the frenchy bag, I don’t like the pockets or the overall slouchiness of the bag. I plan to make another one in the future with some modifications, smaller or divided pockets and sewing the straps to the top part. Also, the frenchy bag pattern is not designed as well and you are left with some stitching showing in the end whereas the birdie sling is magically turned inside out so no stitching is present on the outside of the bag.

Dave's Summer Music Update

Summer 2010 is shaping up to be a great time to come and see me live! I’m playing lots of gigs to share songs from my new album, “Stay a While,” and become better known in the Colorado Springs area. I’ve got 4 shows scheduled for the summer and more dates will be added soon. This Saturday, June 12th, I will be at the “Ass in the Grass Concert Series” (how’s that for a name, eh?) at the Woodland Park Fine Arts and Crafts fair. It’s always great to play outside, and this looks like a great place, so if you’re up around those parts or looking for a way to spend your Saturday morning, come on out! I will be playing Shuga’s on June 14—I’ve had many requests to start playing at places that serve booze, so here’s your chance! I’m also playing Pikes Perk Downtown in June and July, and those have been fun, so please stop by if you can!

If you aren’t yet familiar with my music, check out http://www.myspace.com/daverichardson to hear a bit. I am a folk singer-songwriter performing original songs (and some covers) that touch on a wide range of subjects, including love, death, nature and politics. My latest album features songs about love lost, Narwhals, snowy beards, and more!

Interested in obtaining my music to listen to in the car, add to your Ipod or to put on whilst cleaning the house? Well, you have a few options. My latest cd of folksongs, “Stay a While,” is available at all of my shows. I'm working on making that available digitally as well, for those of you who prefer to go that route. Also, if you’d like to hear another side of Dave, you can check out the rokk album I made under the moniker “The Damp Wrags,” which was released earlier this year. This album is only available online at http://amiestreet.com/music/the-damp-wrags/ and is now going for the slim price of $1.41!

How Our Garden Grows

Summer is here and blogging is back! We have more time and more to talk about. Winter is our favorite season and we long for the days when we can fill it with making maple syrup and knitting but currently it is a very busy time for work making it hard to find time for artisan pursuits and even harder to find time to write about them.


As you may remember from last year we put a garden into our backyard and revived the garden out front. We were pleased this spring to see that the chives came back, at least tripling in size from last year and two lavender plants also came back. Earlier this summer Molly and I worked in the herb garden after visiting a horticultural society sale. I worked in the garden planting two more lavender plants as well as two chive plants while she planted pots of basil and rosemary. Everything looks wonderful!

Last weekend we worked in our veggie garden out back. Last year our garden was practically a disaster. We planted tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The cukes were all that survived the whole season and gave us veggies. This year we decided to rent a tiller from Home Depot to get the soil really nice and fluffy, incorporating some more fertilizer.

We got the same variety of cucumbers and planted 4 plants instead of three. We cheated and bought 3 big healthy tomatoes plants that already have baby tomatoes on them. Hopefully it will increase our success.

We also planted 4 varieties of peppers. In addition to those veggies we added one zucchini and one yellow squash plant. We still had room so Dave got adventurous and turned one corner of the garden into a teeny strawberry patch! It is so cute.

We also planted a watermelon plant where our horseradish failed last year.

Perhaps the watermelon will have more success but our hopes aren’t very high for the strawberries or watermelon – that is more of an experiment. Everything looks great and we can’t wait to see how the herbs, veggies, berries, and melon turn out!

UPDATE: Since this post was written last week, the strawberry plants had an untimely demise: big fat squirrels dug up all the plants and ate every single leaf. RIP strawberry patch. Everything else is looking healthy though!

Sometimes things just work out...

This morning I went to the store and beautiful organic strawberries were on sale. I couldn’t resist. Then this afternoon I went to the spice ship downtown – Savory. I had to buy peppercorns and fancy salt. I went with the organic tellicherry black peppercorns because they are organic and got Himalayan pink sea salt because it is pink and tastes lovely. I bragged to Dave because I only purchased two things that were not on my list. The first was nutmeg, which I had to have. This is our first time buying whole nutmeg if you can believe it. The other thing was lavender vanilla bean sugar. It is so delicious!!! I bought it to put on buttered tortillas but on my way home I remembered the strawberries. I tried one and it tasted better than I could have imagined. I feel like the stars aligned!
-Renee