Mama's Got a Brand New Bag. . .and Wallet

All my favorite colors - and of course they
coordinate with my carrot bag charms!

About a year ago, just after I opened my shop, I designed a tote bag that I wanted to offer for sale. Before selling most items I make, I give them a trial run to make sure I like the design and that they hold up well and function as expected. So, I dutifully made myself one of my Perfect Big Sis totes and have been carrying it day in and day out for a year (I've never been the type to switch bags often or coordinate my bag with anything, like my clothes. I just use one bag until I'm forced to retire it.) My bag has held up so well and its use has provided me hoards of information so that I can continuously work to perfect the design. And now I've decided that it's time for me to make a new bag for myself. And so I did - I made my dream bag (I have indeed actually been dreaming and thinking about it for months!)

I simply love just taking this out of my
bag and opening it - simple pleasures!

Making a new bag also provided me with the opportunity to make a matching wallet in a new design I have been working on for a few weeks. It is a billfold-type wallet with space for six credit cards, business cards, or IDs and space for money. I'm very pleased with the design, but I want to use it for a few weeks before I introduce any to my shop. It's such a fun process to design and make and test and redesign and make and . . . ahhhh!

The card slots in this wallets are SO fun to make!

Fire and Ice

While I was sick, I looked through the pictures I've taken this summer - I missed my garden so much, but "flipping" through the pictures made me no so sad that I couldn't go out and play. Well, while looking through them, I found two images that I took while Michele and I were in Georgia. It was hot, hot, hot. It had been 107 the day before we got there. The day after we arrived, we drove to Atlanta and I took this picture that morning:

100 degrees at around 10 am! WOW!!

And then later that day, I noticed this car and thought 1. what a great juxtaposition against the heat and 2. the person whose car this is must feel even hotter than Michele and I are feeling!

An Alaskan in Georgia in the summer heat

A Simple, Garden-Grown Meal

A delicious, simple, garden-grown meal!

I don't always take pictures of my meals, though it seems that I do throughout the summer when that meal is made up of garden fare. This meal was very fun. I made mini grilled cheese sandwiches with tomatoes from our garden and asiago cheese. I paired it with a pickle slice I made from a recipe a friend sent me - oh yum! - and some tomato slices that didn't fit in the sandwiches. It was a simple, fun, and fresh meal for a lovely Sunday afternoon.

The pickles we so fun to make and they came out so crisp and delicious. The recipe is from a very popular local restaurant to which Michele and I have never been, but we always mean to go. It's a barbecue place, but I think they have something vegetarian. Regardless, their pickles recipe creates a divine pickle!

Dinosaur BBQ Garlic Dill Pickles

Getting Up to Date: Squash Patties, Blueberries, and Broccoli

I have been sick in bed with the flu for the last week and a half (and then on Thursday I ventured outside for the first time in a week to get a little fresh air and after five minutes got stung by a bee! After which event I discovered that I have a "vigorous localized reaction" to bee stings, which means it caused a very itchy, painful rash radiating away from the sting halfway down my arm and side! Not a good time!)

So, I thought I would quickly update you on what's been going on with me, aside from my lovely summer flu and bee sting.

1. While Michele was home last, we made yummy, yummy squash patties. I found the recipe on a very wonderful blog, Turkey Cookies, which is written by a Rochester woman, though we've never met. We used yellow squash for our patties and they turned out so yummy. We made two varieties - one with pepper jack cheese and one with smoked gouda - oh they we so good and got even better as leftovers! 

Yellow Summer Squash Patties with Michele

2. My friend Deb and I went blueberry picking a couple weekends ago. So fun! We picked loads of berries - and tasted loads of them as well.

My picking bucket of blueberries, very nearly full

And then I made Very Very Blueberry Jam - it is so incredibly intensely blueberry. It tastes like heaven!

Jelly jars of jam all in a row

3. Last week's Featured Square would have to hands down be broccoli. I have never seen broccoli growing, so it amazes me to see it in our garden. Beautiful heads of broccoli. Michele should be home this weekend and then we will feast - a great broccoli feast!

A beautiful head of broccoli

Fun in the Sun

It's funny how something so simple
can be SO fun!

My local Etsy team, RNEST, has a ball monthly participating in team challenges. This month we are having fun in the sun with summertime or picnic themed crafts. I had a great time over the weekend making a summertime version of my tic tac toe sets and then Michele and I had a ball "testing" it out! I swear we played tic tac toe for about two hours! Check out all the talent and vote for your favorite here.

Bumblebee "Os" and Blossom "Xs"

I am the Pickle Master

All the yummy ingredients for
pickles and relish

Oh boy did I have fun making pickles this weekend! Wow! And I canned for the first time in my adult life - we canned when I was a child, but I don't remember helping. I was VERY fun. I made bread and butter pickles and zucchini relish - except that I had such a wealth of yellow squash in the garden that I used that instead of zucchini, so I guess I should say I made yellow squash relish. I cannot wait for more things to ripen so that I can 1. eat them and then 2. can them!

Pickling cukes and onions taking
a COLD salt bath

The finished product: bread and butter pickles on the left
and yellow squash relish on the right. YUM!!

A Squash You Very Much Dinner

I wanted to have Deb over for dinner to thank her for caring for my garden during my Georgian vacation. I thought it would be lovely to feed her the very items she'd been caring for (which is a concept unique to garden-sitting and would be not at all appropriate for baby-, house-, dog-, or cat-sitting.) Unfortunately (or fortunately since everything was DELICIOUS) the only thing ripe, ready, and meal worthy was summer squash - zucchini and yellow squash. Well, that and pickling cucumbers, lettuce, and basil, but that doesn't really make a meal, does it? I had my doubts about making a meal out of squash, but it was really fun!

This was as delicious as it is pretty!

We enjoyed a Marinated Squash Salad - which I did serve on a bed of lettuce from the garden. This salad was SO good and refreshing, not to mention colorful!

Blossoms patiently waiting
in my messy fridge

Our entree was as fancy as can be with a Squash Blossom Frittata. Squash blossoms are best picked at dawn, so I arose from my bed this morning and dashed outside to pick these lovelies, then stored them in a glass of cold water in the fridge to keep until dinnertime. The frittata itself came together in a jiffy and was simply delicious!

Here it is while it's still cooking and before it is

topped with the cheese. I used both female

and male blossoms (the females are attached

to the tops of the two baby squash in the center.)

And here it is topped with asiago
cheese after a few minutes
under the broiler. YUM!!

This was so good! Oh, so good!

Now, I was at a bit of a loss about dessert. Since I'd hit on a theme, I didn't want to stray from it, so I googled "squash desserts" and got about a million hits! Whodathunkit?? I decided to try Zucchini Cake. I thought the green of the zucchini would look pretty against the white(ish) cake. For the same reason I used craisins instead of the golden raisins the recipe called for (color, color, color). The cake is like a light, fluffy cake version of its denser cousin, zucchini bread. The cream cheese icing lets the enjoyer know that it is closely tied to sister dessert, carrot cake. Zucchini cake is the less sweet, less dense sibling.

Deb, I and the garden thank you VERY much!

Featured Square, Week Six: Pickling Cucumbers

I get so much joy everytime I walk past this week's featured square and see fat pickles hanging off the vine. It's a very cool sight! I cannot wait to try my hand at making pickles - oh how I love pickles! Bread and butter pickles are my favorite.

I have two pickle-related goals: 1. to eat a carrot dog topped with my homemade bread and butter pickles and 2. to send my mother a jar of homemade pickles - I got my love of pickles and olives from that dear lady (oh how we had fun eating copious amounts of pickles, olives, and cheesecake when we shared an apartment!) So, to get started toward my goal, I need to find one of those fancy crinkle-cut slicers so that mine come out all ripply and cool like those that are commercially made and I need to settle on a recipe. Oh what fun!

Fruit Tastings, Year Two

On our visit to Georgia, I decided to reprise my exotic fruit tasting adventure from last summer. What fun. We went back to the same two farmer's markets, but I picked totally different fruits this time (except for guava, but this guava was totally different.) Here are the results:

I found three that I did not like at all: Dragon fruit, Horn Melon, and Papaya. I don't think it was the fruits' fault though. Dragon fruit was so beautiful it really raised my expectations. The taste wasn't awful, it just wasn't as fabulous as the outside made me think it would be. Horn Melon must have some use other that eating it straight because it has absolutely no flavor. And then there is papaya - again, my expectations were too high. I fully expected to love papaya, but didn't like it at all!

And then there were three that were OK - not great, but definitely likeable: Korean melon, Pepino melon, and guava. The Pepino melon tasted like a combination of every melon you've ever had, which was fun. The Korean melon was a richer tasting honeydew melon, and the guava, well it tasted like guava, though I didn't like it as much as last year's pink guava. 

And now for my absolute favorites - the fruit I would eat again and again if I could: Mangosteen, Guinep, sour and sweet Tamarind, and Jackfruit, glorious jackfruit! Now, I'd had mangosteen juice, but a conversation with a Thai woman in the stored informed me that mangosteen juice is made from the skin of the fruit, while you eat the white flesh inside - oh how yummy it was!! Guinep reminded me of lychee in looks - eyeballs - but its taste is very unique, wonderfully so! Tamarind, sweet or sour, is just divine! There is nothing I didn't like about it. And now for my absolute favorite: Jackfruit! WOW!! It looks extraterrestrial, which in and of itself is cool; it tastes like everything good about tropical summer: bananas, mangos, peaches, mystery, heat, love, joy, everything heavenly and sweet! I adore jackfruit! I even tried a few boiled jackfruit seeds, which I think taste like mashed potatoes without butter and milk (which would normally be bad, but works in jackfruit seeds.)

I had a ball tasting all these lovely fruits, Gloria, my stepmom, had fun eating them with me and telling me stories about growing up eating many of these in her native Phillipines, and my dad and Michele had fun refusing to taste anything and watching me eat too much jackfruit and get an upset stomach! A grand time was had by all!

Missing You

I'm actually in Georgia for the weekend having a wonderful time with my dad, stepmom, and Michele. . .but of course I am missing my garden. I found this picture of the daisies in my front yard and can't think of anything more cheerful!

My great and wonderful friend, Deb, is watching over the garden for me (and my wonderful neighbor, Rita, is likely watching over Deb!) so I know it is in good hands, I just am so afraid that I will miss something new and wonderful while I'm away. It's so worth it, though, to get to spend time with my family!

Secret Garden

My yellow squash truly amaze me. At first glance it just looks like a wild bunch of huge leaves:

But there's a secret garden of beautiful golden goodies underneath! It's just amazing!

Featured Square, Week Five: Peas

A special request from Michele was that we have peas in the garden this year, so I planted a box of peas and found my first pod today! They really seem to sneak up on you and are even pretty hard to see in this photo:

Can you find the pea pods?

I really couldn't bring myself to pick just one box this week, so here are a few of my favorite things:

Potato Flowers - I had no idea they would be so elegant and beautiful

Pickling Cucumbers - aren't they adorable!

Literally a "busy bee"

Boy am I proud of our garden! It amazes me every day!

My Fourth of July Weekend, Part 2

I also spent part of the weekend working on another mini quilt. This one is for a very dear friend who loves dolphins. I named it "Dolphin Frolic" and I used the same technique that I badly described in my last post about quilting. The water and the dolphins are individual "quilts" that are partially attached to the main quilt. To give the sky a bit more dimension, I did the same with some of the clouds.

I'm off this week - my company closes for a week for 4th of July every year - and it is very hot outside, so I think I will be spending a lot of time quilting. I'm excited to get started on the next idea that's in my head!

My Fourth of July Weekend, Part 1.5

While I was sleeping and then later while Deb and I were mooning over the lilies, Michele was navigating her big truck through the streets of New York City! She sent me some pictures that I thought I would share with you:

This image is just quintessentially NYC!

Central Park

Central Park, too

Taken through the windshield! I love this picture because you can see the hood of the truck - it's exactly from the driver's point of view! It's also just a little scary because that underpass doesn't look quite big enough for a big rig!

My Fourth of July Weekend, Part 1

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Fourth of July weekend! Mine was great. Michele is on the road, but will be meeting me in Georgia this coming weekend to go visit my Dad, so I didn't mind that she was away for the fourth!

I got to spend some wonderful time with my very good friend, Deb. We went to a day lily garden and an arboretum on Saturday. Oh, how lovely!

Here are my favorites from the lily garden:

I see another Lily Garden quilt coming in the near future!

And here are my favorites from the arboretum:

Now this birdhouse is gorgeous! I'm thinking about building a replica of our house as a birdhouse (but I'll display it in the sun porch, not outside! I'd hate to actually ATTRACT birds!)