Saturday, December 26, 2009
And I'm back!!!!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Locateria
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Friday, September 25, 2009
Get "Fresh" With Me
The next morning, it was off to the market once again. Maybe it was the excitement from the PSL and the movie the night before, but everything about that day was awesome. It started with the debut of an absolutely beautiful banner that was hand-quilted by my mom. This banner will follow Em and I in all of our future endeavors. Thanks, Mom!
A couple of hours after the market started, I had a very special visitor. Right when Em and I started selling at the market, a really great family stopped to talk to us. One of their daughters asked me if I could show her how to make the bags I was selling. I love the fact that she is so young and interested in knitting. A few weeks later she stopped by and I gave her a pattern that I wrote down for her. Well, last week at the market, she stopped by with her very own market bag! Meet Bronté (and her bag)!
The next photo shows a close-up of the bag. What a beautiful job! I may have some competition. Thanks for showing me your work, Bronté!
The most surprising part of the day came at the end, when I realized I sold an entire batch of Emily´s amazing caramels. Seriously, people were raving about them. Emily had made them the week before when we were both at our parents house. I was sorry she wasn't there to see it, but I was pumped to let her know she's getting rich off caramels AND she gets to sleep in on Saturdays. We're currently trying to figure out a way for her to ship them here, so the caramels may be back soon; you'll just have to stop by the market to find out!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Back to the Market
Friday, September 4, 2009
Back to School...
This bag is an original design, and it turned out pretty much how I envisioned it. I wanted to give this bag more structure, so it would look more like a classic, rectangular grocery bag. I did this by increasing and decreasing every other round at each of the four corners. The use of left and right leaning increases and decreases created an edge that I reinforced with extra yarn after the knitting was complete. I also needed an open mesh-type pattern that did not twist, as the yarn over mesh I had been doing creates a diagonal pattern. The stitch I ended up using was the "Star Rib Pattern".
I added a pocket inside for keys, cell phone and money. This was done by picking up stitches along the back on the band and then casting on the same number as the stitches that were picked up. Knitting these stitches in the round creates a pocket that is already attached to the back. I finished the pocket using a three needle bind off and tacked the corners to the body of the bag for stability. I searched my tin of buttons from the antique store to find the perfect match, and I think I did: an old, weathered wooden toggle, painted white. I wanted the straps to be sturdy and not stretch as knitted straps would. So... I used woven strapping (in this case blanket binding) and sewed this to the bag. I did, however, want the straps to look knit. I achieved this by knitting a tube that I placed around the binding. The tube had tabs on each side that covered the binding. After using embroidery floss to sew the straps and tabs to the bag, the binding is invisible! Also, note the tag sown into the bag. "An Original by Laura Rose Oman"! Hopefully, I'll be using a lot of those tags in the future. See the photo below for a picture of Vicki (a satisfied customer, I hope!) with the finished product.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Swan Song
Monday, August 10, 2009
Belated Baking
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Flours, Fibers, and Fastballs
Em mentioned in a previous post that we got to check out a couple Iowa Cubs games while we were in Des Moines. What she didn't mention was that we happened to run into some other residents of Marinette. Check out the picture below to see who we found at the game...
Yep, that's right. That is Mrs. Hayes, our beloved kindergarten teacher. I cannot describe the state of complete confusion I was in when she stopped me on the concourse. There I was, on a trip for work, in a city 180 miles from the city I live in, and 500 miles from the town in which I grew up, face to face with my kindergarten teacher. I literally didn't hear the first few things she said to me. Once the fog cleared, Em and I moved to sit by Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, and had a great time watching baseball and catching up on Marinette news.
The game was made even sweeter by the fact that I got to see my high school buddy, Greg Reinhard, pitch that night. We had a great time with some old friends that night. Thanks, Greg!
(The photo below is Greg on the mound for the Iowa Cubs.)
In more baseball news, Em, Steve, and I are hitting up the River Bandits game on Thursday. We'll keep you posted on whether or not we try to sneak the underagers into the Tiki Hut. Changing that ridiculous policy has become one of my goals in life.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Lazy Sunday
I used cornstarch instead of potato starch for this recipe, and I substituted butterscotch chips for the chocolate chips. Oh, and I used plain old canola oil instead of coconut oil. This made a very thick batter, and the craggly tops of the dough globs didn't even out in the oven. To make sure the tops are smooth, I suggest evening them out with a wet finger just before popping the muffins into the oven. Cupcake liners also tend to pull away from these, so you might want to forgo them altogether and just use a muffin tin sprayed with nonstick spray.
This recipe came from my Taste of Home Cupcake of the Week newsletter. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to try these little beauties. I don't turn down a recipe that gives me an excuse to use all my strength to shatter something to bits (this, among other reasons, is also why I will never go to Dairy Queen to buy a Butterfinger or Heath blizzard...much more fun to buy a candy bar and whack it to smithereens yourself.). In this case, the shattering victim is root beer barrel candies, which then get stirred into frosting to top the cupcakes. I didn't use whipped topping, as called for in the original recipe. Instead I made vanilla buttercream and swirled in the crushed candies before frosting the cupcakes.
The original recipe calls for a specific brand of fancy yogurt, but our store doesn't carry it, and even if it did, I don't think I'd be able to afford it, so I used plain old Yoplait Light Pineapple Upside-Down Cake flavor. I imagine any exotic-flavored yogurt in the mango-pineapple-coconut family would work out just fine. The recipe made way too much glaze. Next time I'll probably just mix a couple tablespoons of yogurt with a couple tablespoons of brown sugar and then down the rest of the yogurt myself.White Chocolate and Cherry Scones
This recipe comes from dessert guru David Lebovitz, who adapted it from an Alice Medrich recipe. Buckwheat flour and cornmeal give these an interesting texture and nutty flavor. They don't rise as high as normal scones, but they're delicious nonetheless.
I love any excuse to use a cast iron skillet. There's just something about hearing the sizzle that can only come from food cooking at the high temperature made possible by cast iron's amazing ability to hold heat. After preparing this easy homemade apple pie filling, you'll never use that icky high fructose corn syrup-laden canned stuff again. A short-crust bottom and oatmeal-walnut crumb topping round out the recipe. Truth be told, these would probably be best in early September as an after-school treat, but as I had bushels of apples sitting in my refrigerator begging to be used, I couldn't resist trying the recipe.
And now on to my amazing afternoon. To give you a little background, I'll let you know a little secret about Laura and me. We were born in the wrong century. Right place, just about 150 years late. Both of us feel this indescribable pull toward mid-nineteenth-century Midwest farms. Honestly, we have a running dream of owning adjacent farms...separate acres, but still neighbors. Anyway, today we had the opportunity to visit our dream farm (this is where the aforementionedGoogle Mapscomes into the picture--we used it to make the twenty-minute drive to the farm). See, our friend Cathy was having a birthday bash (a homemade ice cream social, actually) to benefit the CCC food pantry. It was really neat, with donations being used to buy Freight House Farmers Market gift certificates, which will then be given to the food pantry, which will then purchase local foodstuffs to stock their shelves. What an ingenious idea...not surprising, because Cathy is full of ingenious (and generous) ideas. This particular farm also happens to be home to a U-Pick flower garden, and half the proceeds from the day's sales also went to the food pantry.
So we spent the afternoon roaming around Cathy's farm, admiring the gorgeous flowers, eating homemade ice cream in the Corn-zebo (just what it sounds like--a corncrib repurposed into a gazebo...again, ingenious!), and gushing over how perfect the farm was. The afternoon ended in Cathy adopting us (don't worry, Mom and Dad, we still really love you guys too...but there's always room for more positive parental influence, right?).
Cathy also raises chickens. She introduced us to a few, including one named Cruella de Vil and another named Napoleon (I resisted the urge to ask whether he had earned his name by staging a chicken coup). As Cathy explained it, he has a real "Short Man's Complex." Apparently he untied her husband Cliff's shoes today, which I personally think is nothing short of amazing.
Here are a couple pictures of the gorgeous flowers we picked today: