New craft technique!

I'll be honest, I didn't think this up myself... I saw it on Pinterest.  But now I'm making it mine!  I tried it out on a baby blanket for a friend this past week, and it turned out great!  So much quicker than crocheting an entire baby blanket, but still turned out nice enough that I wanted to keep it!

Crochet an edge on a piece of fleece for a quick homemade blanket!  I used a piece of white and grey chevron fleece, roughly 30x36ish (I didn't really measure, just tried to square it up).  

Chevron fleece baby blanket with green and grey crochet border

I worked around the edge poking an exacta knife through the fleece roughly every 1/2 inch, leaving about 1/2 inch border so that the holes didn't turn into edge fringe.  I then worked all the way around doing single crochet, chain, single crochet, chain, etc as the base border (doubling up in the corners) and built upon that for decoration.  I was impressed with the way the back edge rolled nicely under the stitch, so that it didn't matter much if my exactly knife wholes were a consistent distance from the fleece edge.

I chose to do a round of * 2 double crochets, one half double*  in grey, then switched to bobbles for a backward round, singles to finish the bobble look, and then back to grey with a round of double half crochets for the border.  I think I used less than half a skein of either color yarn - mine were standard acrylic craft size yarn skeins, fancy yarns would certainly require more than one of those tiny skeins.

Bobble Stitches are easy and provide nice texture for babies!  For a typical double crochet stitch, you do yarn over, through, yarn over, pull through 2, pull through 2.  For a bobble stitch, you skip that last bit of a double crochet, just pulling through 2 loops ONCE.  Do this 5 times, and you'll end up with 6 loops on your hook - the last step of 5 different double crochets.  Then pull through all 6 loops at once, pull gently to tighten, and secure with a single crochet in the next space over.  Voila! Bobble complete!  Here's a link to another example of a baby blanket using the bobble stitch.

Closeup of the bobble stitch (my camera didn't want to focus)

After completion I washed on cold, and dried on a normal cycle, to make sure the new mom-to-be would be able to was up any baby stains without messing up her new soft baby blanket!

My mom also suggested the great idea of doing this on a bunch of smaller pieces of fleece and then putting them all together like a granny square afghan or quilt - I love the idea!!

Hot Chocolate with Whipped Cream

I love whipped cream.

Back at Thanksgiving, I bought some heavy whipping cream, intending to make whipped cream to go with my pumpkin pie - but since someone else brought a can of whipped cream, it never got used.

It's just been sitting in my fridge, calling to me.

Yesterday, I finally gave in - and about time too!  Technically (according to the date on the package) the whipping cream expired last week... but it smelled fine to me, so into the mixer it went!  5 minutes and a little sugar later, and ta-DA!  Finger-licking delicious.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately?) all I had to eat it with were my fingers.  So I made microwave "real" hot chocolate for all of us, so we had somewhere to put our whipped cream :)  Mmm, mmm!

Whipped Cream

• roughly 1 cup of heavy cream
• roughly 1/4 cup of sugar (i used raw) *i mistakenly wrote 3/4 cup in the original post
• 1/2 tsp vanilla (i didn't measure)

Hot Chocolate

• handful of chocolate chips (i literally put my hand in the bag, grabbed at the chocolate chips, and put that many in a mug)
• tiny bit of butter - less than a "pat"
• 8 to 12 oz of milk, depending on the strength you like and the size of your mug

Instructions

1. Pour cream into bowl of mixer, the colder the better.  Whip for 3-5 minutes, slowly increasing to the max intensity. When it starts to puff up and form "soft peaks", add sugar and vanilla, continuing to whip to combine.  Be careful not to over whip, or you'll make butter!
2. Meanwhile, put chocolate chips and butter into a mug, microwave 30 seconds.  Stir, microwave another 30 seconds.  Add a tiny bit of milk, stir, and microwave another 30 seconds.  Stir - if not yet melting and mixing, microwave for 30 seconds more.  If still not mixing or you're getting a weird tootsie-rollish thing, add more butter - the fat will help the chocolate mix with the water in the milk.  When combined well, go ahead and add the rest of the milk, stirring while adding.  Microwave for another 60 seconds or until hot chocolate is the temperature you like. 
3. Add whipped cream and drink up!

I'm not really sure how much whipped cream this made, since I ate so much of it off the spoon.  I'd guess probably 2.5 to 3 cups?  We consumed it all on 4 hot chocolates with AMPLE whipped cream.  (No, the baby didn't get one - I had 2!)

A week of small firsts

I made two new (and SUPER easy!) things to taste this week. 

1. Kale Salad (I hear so much about this lately!)
2. Cranberry Sauce (It's almost Thanksgiving!)

I love cranberry sauce in a can (it's pretty much cranberry-juice jello), but I don't have many fond memories of real cranberry sauce.  And the few times I've tried to use Kale haven't exactly been successful either... but for some reason I put both of these things in my grocery basket this week.  A little bit of internet research later, and voila - 2 unbelievably easy creations that taste great!

Cranberry Orange Sauce
This sauce came out sweet and tangy, with a strong orange flavor.

Ingredients:

• Pint of fresh cranberries
• cup or 2 of orange juice
• cup or so of water

Rinse cranberries, and check for stems.  Place cranberries in a saucepan, and add enough orange juice to cover the berries.  Cover, and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  The cranberries will start "popping", and turn into a mushy fruit.  Continue cooking, adding water to get the consistency to your liking.  Stir occasionally, to avoid burning bottom.  Mash with a potato masher or puree with a blender or immersion blender, and voila!   I served as a sauce for turkey meatballs and mashed turnips, and then mixed into the baby's yogurt at breakfast - it was a hit both ways.  This could definitely work as a dessert component... maybe over ice cream or some apple pie... Mmm... pie...

PS- I tried eating a raw cranberry for fun - they taste exactly like great cranberry juice, with the texture of an apple.  Really strange, and sooooo sour!


Kale & Chicken Pasta Salad
You can play with the ratios of the ingredients, these are just suggestions

Ingredients:

• Bunch of Kale, rinsed and torn into smallish pieces - kale is very difficult to measure... I'd wager I used about 10 big leaves of curly kale - filled half of a large mixing bowl while still fluffed up.
• Zest and juice of 1/2 a lemon
• Ample Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/2 Tsp salt
• Roughly chopped chicken - I used about 2 cups of leftover chicken breast
• cooked pasta - I used a bag and a half of gluten free shells (I was trying to feed a crowd)
• diced granny smith apple
• Carrots or Celery - I parboiled some carrots so the baby could eat the salad too
• 1/2 to 1 cup of mayonaise
• Salt and Pepper
• (grapes would have been good to add - but I didn't have any)

Clean the kale, and place in giant mixing bowl with the salt, lemon, zest, and some olive oil.  Use your hands to "massage" the kale, working the salt, lemon and oil into the leaves. I did this for probably about 60 seconds, until the kale was slightly relaxed and shiny green (and then I let it sit while I finished preparing the other ingredients).  Mix in all of the remaining ingredients, add more oil, salt & pepper to taste, and eat! You're done!

Baby Sandwiches... Bocaditos?

I give my 1 year old sandwiches. 

Am I a bad mom?

It's not that I'm lazy... it's just that she want's whatever we're having, and she wants to be the boss of her own food.  We were at the point where she wouldn't eat her own food, but then 30 minutes later she'd be standing on her tippy toes, eating my ham and cheese sandwich right out of my hand!

Enter the mini sandwich.
I slice a piece of bread in half the hard way - making 2 really thin slices. Then I cut it into a few smaller pieces.  So far she's had peanut butter and jelly and turkey and cheese.  Peanut butter and jelly sticks together, but also sticks all over her... whereas turkey and cheese is an open invitation to play with her food, she dismantles it and eats the pieces she wants, then throws the rest on the floor or tries to feed it to us!  Today we added in thinly sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, just to add to the variety of food thrown on the floor.

The hardest part about the whole thing... is not eating her mini sandwich myself.  Those little bite size pieces are so tempting!

Fall Tomatoes

I didn't plant any tomatoes this year, since the past few years I've tried but had little success.  Amazingly, I had two volunteer tomato plants come up in random parts of my garden, and they made more tomatoes than any of my past attempts!  The tomatoes took their time to ripen, and are now finally ready to eat... now that it's October.

So now that I have a bunch of tomatoes, I tried making gazpacho!  I've had a craving for it lately, and the store bought stuff just doesn't do it for me.  So here's the (delicious) version I made up last night :)

Liz's Awesome Gazpacho

• 1 English cucumber
• 1/2 yellow pepper
• 1/4 onion
• 4 or 5 medium tomatoes
• 1 medium clove garlic
• Juice of 1 lime
• ~1/4 cup parsley
• ~2 cups mint leaves
• ~ 1/4 cup olive oil
• Salt & pepper
• 1 cup of warm (softened) cooked white rice

Roughly chop everything and add to a food processor or blender.  I used a giant food processor, you could work in batches in a smaller blender or food processor and combine pured veggies in a big mixing bowl.  Add salt and pepper to taste, I probably used around 1 tsp of salt, but if you want flavor with less salt I bet you could substitute some lime zest.

Serve cold, and enjoy!