Elsie Marley

Congrats to Meg who had her adorable Madison WI home featured on Etsy's Storque! It's a great showcase of a family living efficiently (and beautifully) in a small space. PS, also check out her great little shop, Elsie Marley.

Pizza night

Sunday has unofficially evolved into pizza night. Do you have any little meal traditions like that?

Pizza night used to be delivery but lately I've started making pizzas at home. I'm definitely still tweaking things, but the pizzas are getting better the more I practice. So I have to keep making them every weekend, right? In the name of perfection? Let's go with that.

At the moment, my favorite recipes are this dough and this sauce. I usually make a couple of small, thin and crispy pizzas with different toppings because I like options. And once I've got the dough going, I figure I might as well make the full batch.

Tonight's pizzas
1. red sauce topped with shredded mozzarella and fresh tomatoes
2. white pizza with olive oil, fresh garlic, parmesan, prosciutto and arugula





Recently I went to a pizza party where the cook was a chef from one of my favorite restaurants. He was nice enough to share some tips: set your oven to the highest heat possible (in my case 550 degrees) and always use a pizza stone (which are a lot more affordable than I thought). Combine the high heat with a thin crust and these pizzas cook within 5-7 minutes. You may have to experiment to find which rack in your oven gets you the perfectly crisp but not burnt pizza. Maybe you should try making a couple of pizzas every weekend. You know, for practice ;)

Quinoa Cucumber Salad

Okay, if I eat another leftover easter ham sandwich or one more Reese's peanut butter egg...there's going to be trouble. And by trouble I mean elastic waist pants. It doesn't help any that I have visited both here and here in the past two nights. So let's try something light and healthy for a change, no?

This salad is really fresh tasting and keeps fairly well overnight. It would likely make a good side dish to some fish but I usually just end up calling it a meal all on it's own.

Quinoa Cucumber Salad
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
1.5 TB red wine vinegar
1 TB olive oil
1 cucumber, de-seeded and thinly sliced
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup parsley leaves, finely chopped

Bring quinoa and 1 cup salted water to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook, covered, until all of the water is absorbed and quinoa is tender, usually around 12 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool to room temperature.

Add vinegar, oil, scallions, parsley and cucumber to the quinoa. I usually use a regular cucumber that I remove the seeds from with a little spoon, but an english cucumber could be an easier way to go. Season with salt and pepper and enjoy! It's delicious room temp or chilled, making it a great potluck dish.

The New Pfaff on the Block

Pravina Studio finally has an industrial sewing machine! I've been scouring Craigslist for months now trying to find just the right machine. My dream machine is this Juki, but unfortunately it is pretty far out of my price range.

I kept finding used machines on Craigslist and would inquire within hours of the posting being added, but barely anybody would get back to me. I think the machines were selling THAT fast. Or the ones worth buying were anyway. I finally managed to snag one a couple of weeks ago; I was even able to keep it in my Pfaff family sewing of machines, so I'm extra excited. Soon, new Pravina bags will abound.

I've barely even threaded it, but I love this machine already. It's SO industrial.

The whole purchasing experience was just so pleasant too. The machine was in a town about 45 minutes northwest of Madison, so I took a lovely drive through the country at dusk to see it. The seller is a small business owner herself who'd upgraded her machine a year ago, and she sat with me teaching me how to use it. When my plans for picking it up (it doesn't fit in a car) fell through, she actually drove it out to me. I love good people.

The Best Room in the House

Photo by Leslie Schwartz
Courtesy of chicagoreader.com

I love getting a peek inside people's homes. Seeing how it's decorated, how the space is laid out, wondering what it would be like to live there. Is that weird?

I just came across this article with photos from the homes of six Chicagoans, including the Busy Beaver Button lady and her beautiful kitchen. Go take a look around, cause I can't be the only one who enjoys this stuff, right? Right?

Trail mix

Last week a friend of mine was in town for a few days and much fun was had. A lot of the itinerary involved eating delicious food and drinking wine, perhaps sometimes to excess. So after many days of indulgence, this week I really had to try to reign things back in.

I don't just pack a lunch for my days at work, I really fill a sack full of food. I need my mid morning snack, my lunch, my sweet thing for after lunch, my afternoon snack, etc. So, yeah, lots of snacks. I do at least try to make them healthy ones whenever possible. I made this trail mix to bring along this week and it's really done the trick.

1 cup multi grain Cheerios
1 cup All Bran cereal
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup roasted, salted edamame beans
1/2 cup roasted, salted peanuts

Mix it all together! Pretty easy, eh?

Chalkboard Drawers

Are you all organized but can never quite remember what is in which drawer? Keep changing the contents of drawers and can't keep up with the labelmaking? My friends, chalkboard drawers are the answer. I finished this project a few months ago and am excited to finally be sharing it with you! Better late than never, right?

I can't take all the credit for this, I did get the idea from the master.

Start out with plain, smooth wood drawers, mine are from Ikea.



Bring in a can of chalkboard paint. I prefer the spraycan chalkboard paint, partly because it's easier and also because it is a lot cheaper! Since it is spray paint though, you'll want to do this project outside if possible.



Mask off the rest of the drawer to keep it clean and give you a nice clean edge all the way around. Be sure to mask the edges of the open notch with tape and also to seal it off so you don't end up getting spray paint inside the drawer. Stuffing a bit of tissue or something in there works pretty well.

Alternately, you could just go all out, painting every surface of the drawer, inside and out. It won't look any different when the drawers are closed but could be a neat effect with the drawers open.





Add as many coats as you'd like, letting them dry in between. I found I needed at least five coats to give it the nice deep black that I wanted.



Let dry completely, pick up some chalk and label away! It is a little easier to write on the drawers when they're vertical so you might want to label first, fill later.

Wild Rice and Wheatberry Salad

I promised my friend Tara the recipe for this salad and thought it would be nice to share it with all of you also. It is great for fall and winter.

Wild Rice and Wheatberry Salad with Cranberries and Walnuts
Adapted from here

Salad
3/4 cup wheat berries, rinsed
1 cup wild rice, rinsed
1.5 tsp salt
2/3 cup dried cranberries, chopped
1/2 cup celery, thinly sliced
1 crisp apple, peeled and diced
1/2 cup parsley, minced
1/4 cup toasted walnuts, chopped.

Citrus vinaigrette
Grated zest of one lemon
Grated zest of one orange
1 TB fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
2 TB rice vinegar (champagne, raspberry or balsamic could work also)
1 TB finely minced shallot
2 tsp honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 to 1 tsp salt

In a large pot bring water and wheatberries to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 35 minutes. Add the wild rice and salt to the pot. Bring to a boil again, then lower the heat. Simmer, partially covered, for an additional 50-55 minutes or until both grains are cooked. Alternately, you can cook these two in separate pots, saving yourself a bit of wait time. After the grains are cooked, drain well, stir in the dried cranberries and leave to cool.

While the grains are cooking combine all of the salad ingredients and whisk together, blending well.

In a large serving bowl combine the cooled grains and cranberries with the celery, apple and parsley. Add the dressing to the salad and mix well. Top with walnuts. Serve at room temperature.

Happy Holidays!

Hope you are all enjoying a wonderful holiday season!

Salted Toffee

This weekend was all about butter, I've gone through three pounds of it so far! Yes, the holiday baking has kicked off. First on the list was salted toffee. Tasty tasty toffee. And who knew it was so easy to make? Original recipe here.

Salted Toffee

Cooking spray
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter
2 2/3 cups sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
Coarse sea salt, for sprinkling. The original recipe recommended Fleur de Sel, if you can get it, go for it!

Coat a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray. Bring butter, sugar, water, and corn syrup to a boil in a large saucepan, whisking frequently until sugar dissolves and butter melts. Cook, undisturbed, until mixture registers 300 degrees on a candy thermometer, about 12 minutes.

Whisk toffee mixture, then immediately pour onto prepared sheet, tilting pan to spread over entire surface. Let stand for about 30 seconds, then sprinkle with the salt. Let cool. Be sure not move the pan! Once it has hardend, break toffee into pieces and enjoy.

Toffee will keep, covered, for up to 1 week. If by some chance it actually doesn't get eaten before then.

Oh Sunday

It's Sunday again? How does that keep happening? Luckily, this weekend was a nice relaxing one (which I totally needed) that involved lots of food (which maybe I didn't need as much). It started with a great dinner here, which you may remember is one of my favorite places. The rest of the weekend's meals included this beef roast with roasted sweet potatoes, which was awesome. Though I might recommend using a cut of meat a touch leaner than the beef chuck roast. Wow, that was a lot of fat.

There was also a bunch of apples on the counter about to go bad. I had every intention of slicing them up and roasting them with some cinnamon and brown sugar. Then somehow, all good intentions went out the window and I ended up throwing on a ton of crumble topping. It was kind of like a really easy apple pie. I love apple pie so much that making it "easy" is really not in my best interest!



And right now? I am listening to Imogen Heap waiting for this roasted veggie pizza to finish baking. In my defense, I did manage to squeeze a couple of runs in. Phew. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend also!

Strawberry Bread

Remember all of those strawberries I picked this summer? Well some of them were frozen to be turned into something delicious at a later date, like say, strawberry bread. I had never even heard of strawberry bread until I came across this recipe. It makes sense though, why should the banana be the only fruit that gets a bread? Strawberry bread is fantastic, as you may have guessed. Especially for breakfast with a bowl of mangoes and a turkish coffee! Find the recipe here, and just substitute frozen berries for the fresh ones. Enjoy!

Summer grilling days

We are very much fairweather grilling people. If it's a nice summer day outside, we're grilling. If it's below 70 degrees, it's likely not happening. Sadly, this means that any day now it will be time to say goodbye to barbeque season. Tonight, we are grilling Turkey burgers and topping them with an awesome creamy cucumber relish. And I got some fresh corn over the weekend. Yum. It's almost time to get that chimney started...

Friday!

I hope you all have a fun and relaxing weekend!

PS
This bowl will soon be for sale in the Habit shop!
Strawberries not included :)

Tomato Saffron Bread

Another weekend means more soup and bread. Hot soup and fresh bread are pretty much the only things keeping me from staying in bed until spring. I tried this tomato saffron bread for the first time and it is a keeper! It doesn't really taste overwhelmingly tomato-y or saffron-y, but it has just a really good flavor. Sorry for the sort of vague description, I'm not enough of a breadmaker yet to be able to talk about things like density and "crumb." But it did look and taste great paired with my standby split pea soup, an added bonus.

P.S. How did I not know for this many years about honey butter??? I feel cheated.

Tomato Saffron Bread
Recipe courtesy of Pamela Lanier

Ingredients:
1 Tbsp or 1 pkg active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (about 105-115)
1/8 tsp saffron threads, or powdered saffron
1 1/2 cups tomato juice
2 Tbsp tomato paste
3 Tbsp honey
3 Tbsp olive oil
5 1/2 to 6 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp salt
Egg glaze
2 Tbsp poppy seeds (I substituted sesame seeds)

Instructions:
1. Sprinkle yeast over 1/4 cup warm water, stir to dissolve, let stand until foamy. Steep saffron in remaining 1/4 cup warm water at the same time.

2. Warm tomato juice, tomato paste, honey and oil. Allow to cool to 105-115.

3. In large bowl, combine 2 cups flour and salt, add yeast mixture, saffron mixture and tomato juice mixture and beat with dough hooks, or by hand about 3-5 minutes. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time until mixture forms a thick shaggy mass.

4. Knead on a lightly floured surface adding flour 1 tablespoon at a time as necessary until a smooth springy dough is formed. Place in a greased bowl, turn once to grease top, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled. (For guests I make this at night and refrigerate it to rise overnight).

5. In the morning, or when doubled, gently deflate dough, turn out onto a lightly floured surface, divide into 2 equal portions, shape into loaves, and place in 2 greased bread pans. Brush with egg glaze (1 egg white beat with 1 Tbsp water, dash of salt), sprinkle with poppy seeds. Cover and let rise until it reaches tops of pans.

6. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven, 35-40 minutes. Remove from pans to cool on racks. This bread is a light reddish color, very appealing and I usually serve honey butter with it.

One potato sweet potato

Delicious sweet potato rolls. I just might end up loving baking yet.

1 package active dry yeast
4 tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 cups sweet potato puree
1/2 cup warm water
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, slightly beaten
4-5 cups all-purpose flour

Dissolve yeast, warm water, and 1 tablespoon sugar in your mixing bowl and let stand at least 5 minutes. Add remaining sugar, sweet potato puree, butter, salt, and slightly beaten eggs and mix well. Gradually mix in 4 cups of flour. Turn out on a lightly floured surface. Knead 2 to 3 minutes, adding just enough of remaining flour to prevent the dough from being too sticky. Shape into a ball, place in an oiled bowl, turning it to coat the surface. Cover and let rise about 1 hour or longer. Punch down, and allow dough to rest for 2 minutes. Divide into 16 to 20 balls (or less if you'd like sandwich sized rolls) and place on a greased cookie sheet or in a 9x13 inch pan. Allow to rise until doubled, around an hour. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 12 to 20 minutes.

Serve warm, preferably with more butter. And welcome to heaven.

Sunday Sunday

One last weekend muffin before my holiday vacation is completely and officially over. Sigh...