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Monday, February 27, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Kitchen Garden
It has been an extremely mild winter, here in OK, to the point that people still have patches of green grass BUT (as always) I am ready for spring and longer days and outside projects. I don't think I am made to handle the winter I usually feel tired and a little sad by this point in the year, luckily spring is near. As a way to usher in nicer weather (hopefully) and bring something living and fresh into the house I decided to try out a couple of kitchen gardening ideas I had been hearing about. 1: growing green onions from the bulbs of store bought onions. 2: growing my own sprouts in a mason jar.
Kitchen Garden-Attempt #1: GREEN ONIONS. While looking at random things on line I came across this post, explaining that one could take the green onions they had purchased at the store, use the green part, place the bulbs in water and regrow. I thought this seemed too good to be true but I had some onions in the fridge that needed used ASAP so I gave it a whirl. . . look at how great it turned out! In a little over a week I had beautiful green onions just waiting to be stir-fried or put in who knows what.
Kitchen Garden-Attempt #1: GREEN ONIONS. While looking at random things on line I came across this post, explaining that one could take the green onions they had purchased at the store, use the green part, place the bulbs in water and regrow. I thought this seemed too good to be true but I had some onions in the fridge that needed used ASAP so I gave it a whirl. . . look at how great it turned out! In a little over a week I had beautiful green onions just waiting to be stir-fried or put in who knows what.
Freshly trimmed
A little bit of new growth
Even more growth
Beautiful!!!!!
Kitchen Garden-Attempt #2: SPROUTS! A few weeks ago Jerod and I had brunch with some friends who happened to mention they had recieved a sprouter as a gift and were going to start growing their own sprouts. I had never heard of doing this or that you could buy a contraption to help you so I did a little research and discovered that you can also grow sprouts in a mason jar. I figured I would try this method and see if I was even interested in being a sprout farmer (I based my growing method on the instructions provided here and here). It ended up being super easy. All you do is take a 1/4 cup of whatever you are growing (I used lentils), add atleast 2 inches of water over the seed/bean/whatever, cover the top of the jar with cheese cloth secure it, and let the seed/bean/whatever soak in a dark place for 12 hours. The next day you rinse the seed/bean/whatever, get as much water out as you can and place the container back in the dark spot to drain, you will do this step 2 to 3 times a day. Once your sprouts have begun growing and get to around a 1/4 to 1/2" place the container in the window for a day or two to greens things up and get the sprouts a little bigger, remove from the jar and place in an air tight container in the fridge. I have been eating sprout, cucumber and turkey sandwiches nonstop! This little project took about a week from soaking to eating. The time and care might be slightly different for other sprouts. I am dying to try Mung Bean so we will see what happends with those.
Soaking!
Rinsing
Draining. . . in my jar cabinet
Ready for the window.
All greened up and ready to eat.
The best lunch ever!
I hope all of you are making it through the winter or finding ways of coping.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
The Ottoman Empire
During the first couple of weeks we owned our house (early September 2010) I bought a torn up, green leather ottoman at a garage sale for $5. It was a great size, shape and price and had cute brass feet. . . all in all it had a lot of potential but was in no shape to be out for people to see it! Since its purchase the poor thing has sat, or more truthfully, been shoved under the table in our laundry/craft room until last week. But let's start at the begining. . .
I began by removing all of the leather and setting it aside for pattern pieces. Removing the original leathe was probably the most time consuming part of the whole project.
Once the leather was removed I suplemented the original batting (which was in pretty good shape) with a little more just to even things out and give it a little more cushion.
Oh-I will also say at this point, I decided to eleminate the piping around the top and bottom of the ottoman and only keep some along the center seam. I tried it a couple of ways but decided that the piping was a bit fussy when mixed with the plaid fabric I was using to recover it.
One more note. . . This is the same fabric I used on our dining room chairs. I think this ties everything together nicely PLUS this fabric was donated to me from my lovely friend Amy. Making this a super cheap fix up. All told I think I spent under $10 on the whole project, how is that for frugal?
Okay. . . back to the upholstery. After I added the batting, I sewed the top and side pieces together and slipped it over the top half. Once I made sure everything was in it's place and fitting snug I tacked the edge down with upholstery tacks making sure everything was pulled evenly and securely.
Next I attached the center piping and lower fabric, covering the raw edges of the top half and piping. I attached all of this with my trusty staple gun.
With all of the visible parts being finished and pretty I stapled the remaining raw edge to the underside of the ottomen and called it done. . .well almost. . .
In it's original incarnation the ottoman had cute brass brads finishing the fabric around the legs I went ahead and bought new brads hammered them in and watched them shine!
Here it is in it's original state. . .torn up but waiting to be cute.
I began by removing all of the leather and setting it aside for pattern pieces. Removing the original leathe was probably the most time consuming part of the whole project.
Once the leather was removed I suplemented the original batting (which was in pretty good shape) with a little more just to even things out and give it a little more cushion.
Oh-I will also say at this point, I decided to eleminate the piping around the top and bottom of the ottoman and only keep some along the center seam. I tried it a couple of ways but decided that the piping was a bit fussy when mixed with the plaid fabric I was using to recover it.
One more note. . . This is the same fabric I used on our dining room chairs. I think this ties everything together nicely PLUS this fabric was donated to me from my lovely friend Amy. Making this a super cheap fix up. All told I think I spent under $10 on the whole project, how is that for frugal?
Okay. . . back to the upholstery. After I added the batting, I sewed the top and side pieces together and slipped it over the top half. Once I made sure everything was in it's place and fitting snug I tacked the edge down with upholstery tacks making sure everything was pulled evenly and securely.
Next I attached the center piping and lower fabric, covering the raw edges of the top half and piping. I attached all of this with my trusty staple gun.
With all of the visible parts being finished and pretty I stapled the remaining raw edge to the underside of the ottomen and called it done. . .well almost. . .
In it's original incarnation the ottoman had cute brass brads finishing the fabric around the legs I went ahead and bought new brads hammered them in and watched them shine!
The cats, as always, were a huge help every step of the way.
Here it is in the living room! Don't you want to kick your feet up and cuddle with a cat?
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Falafel Factory
Last Saturday morning Jerod and I got to talking about our plans for the day and came to the conclusion we would have a stay-at-home date that night (i.e. cooking and a movie). It was a cold, gloomy day perfect for being in the the kitchen so I decided to tackle one of my cooking fears and make falafel! Jerod and I both LOVE falafel sandwiches but I have only attempted to make it once, about 6 years ago, with little success. This time was not without problem but better, I think I have figured out the issues and will be able to perfect it in the future.
. . . And if one is having falafel one needs pita too so not only did I have a falafel factory I had a pita factory (thanks to the Hobgood Five for titling these kitchen endeavors) we now have pita in the freezer for at least a month, no more boring sandwiches on regular bread for us. Below are some details about the falafel process:
There really aren't too many ingredients in the falafel-Chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, and a few spices.
Food processing . . .
. . .more food processing.
Shaped into balls and ready for cooking.
The oil heating up. I do not often deep fry things and was quite nervous about this step. As it turns out I had every reason to be, but we'll get to that.
As you can see I am no longer deep frying and have transferred everything to a skillet, at least it's a little healthier for us now. Here is what happened: I put the first 5 falafel in the oil to fry and they completely disintegrated, as in were gone, no longer existed! After a little cussing I figured out that my mixture was too wet, mixed a bit of flour in and cooked them in the skillet. Everything went much more smoothly after that.
Here is our little feast ready to be turned into sandwiches. To complete the sandwiches we have hummus, cucumber, tomato, and yogurt sauce (recipes for hummus and yogurt sauce are from here and here).
The pita looking puffy and happy! (I used the recipe from here, which is where I cook most of my bread from)
Oven baked fries looking crispy and delicious! (this recipe I just kind of make up: potates, oil, salt, pepper...bake at 425 degrees until crispy, flip once)
Dinner in all of it's tasty goodness. We had the perfect night and watched one of the best movies Jerod and I had seen in a long time, Drive. If you haven't watched it you should, unless you are my Mom then DO NOT!!!!!! This movie is not for you. We followed this up with some chocolate and peanut butter chip, oatmeal cookies which I didn't get a picture of but were great all the same. I really love weekends. I hope all of you did something fun too.
Monday, February 13, 2012
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