bee creative

Chihuahua does "Fire Salutation"

Into our second week of cold weather.  A few nights have got down to 22-24 F range.  We've had snow, hail, rain.  Cold, cold sunshine.  Wind.  And that's pretty much bumped me up to where I think I'll be at about 200 therms of gas for the cold season.  About 80% of the average American.  No problems with the pipes freezing, I've been keeping most of the house at about 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit range.  I'm comfortable with that as long as I have my wool sweater on and slippers.  Lola has a whole other perspective on the matter....  And I don't think the worms in the washroom (which I'm not heating) are so happy either. 

This kind of weather also reminds me of one of the perks of not having a car-no windows to scrape, no worries about locks freezing, no stress about snow.  Snow is always a big event in my corner of the world -even just the tiniest bit.  There is something so magical in how rain can turn to snow.  Especially the big fluffy feather like flakes....

Illustration Friday - Legends and Tales: Down the Drain

Illustration Friday's theme this week was Legends and Tales.  I spent a little time looking at the differences between legends, myths, folk tales, and fairy tales.  In the end I decided on an urban legend, that water goes down a drain one way in the Northern Hemisphere and the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere.   

Recycled material:  Old map. 

On the menu- Week of January 27th

Something that comes up a lot when I'm reading about cooking on other blogs (such as Crunchy Chicken yesterday) is how to cook for one or two people, to be able to eat a variety of foods, and still make healthy choices.  This is something I've been doing for about 17 years (that was scary to figure out)!  And this got me to thinking....  I'm going to start posting my weekly menu (I drift in and out of doing menus), my shopping list, plus a few notes on a weekly basis.  It might be helpful for someone?  It will also help keep me on the straight and narrow for eating what I have in my pantry and not letting it go to waste (excellent suggestions at Crunchy's blog). 

So here it goes!

One of the best techniques for me is to make one or two main dishes and to prepare basic ingredients on Saturday or Sunday,  and then mix them up throughout the week or to freeze portions that I can use later in the month.  Each week becomes a mixture of using up things from the pantry and adding new things .

This week I bought:  oranges, a pummelo, hazelnuts, sugar, flour, milk, cream, peanuts, bacon, pasta and pears (everything bulk or local except for the citrus -one of the cheat items I allow myself and the pasta). 

From my pantry I'm adding:  dried beans, bread cubes from the freezer, cooked chicken, red peppers in olive oil (from freezer), eggs, cheese,  tortillas, chicken broth (frozen), carrots, onions, frozen fruit, and pear/ginger preserves. 

The prep:   cook beans in the crock pot, make yogurt, make butter, make soda bread with buttermilk from making the butter, make bread pudding to use up bread in freezer (ginger bread), make risotto to use up chicken broth, and freeze yogurt left over from last week to make yogurt cake next week.  I make my own yogurt and butter to cut back on plastic and to have it be local.  I'll save two portions of beans and then freeze the rest.  Beans freeze very well.  I'll eat risotto tonight, save one portion and then freeze the rest. 

Menu

Dinner:

Sunday-Risotto
Monday-White beans sauteed in olive oil with sage.  Citrus salad.
Tuesday-Rice cakes (add onions and carrots)
Wednesday- Chicken and bean wraps.
Thursday- Pasta with red peppers and bacon
Friday-Wild card day (an omelet, hash, whatever sounds good/needs to be used up when I look in the fridge)

Breakfast:  Bread pudding or smoothies (frozen fruit and yogurt)

Lunch:  My lunch is provided for me at work but I usually take an assortment of fruits, vegetables, nuts, cheese, or bread for snacks in case I don't like what's on the work menu.

Notes:    The bread pudding turned out supper yummy!  I tweaked a recipe from Pasta & Co. By Request by Marcella Rosene.  I live in a small city that has several really good local bakeries and I've been baking my own too.  Unfortunately, it's hard for one or two people to eat a whole loaf of bread before it dries out.  One of my challenges has been to come up with recipes that use bread that is a little past it's prime.  Mostly I use the last bit of a loaf for bread crumbs or for bread salad.  Lately I've been trying to find the just right  bread pudding recipe.  I think I've got it!  Rosen's recipe calls for half and half.  I substituted whole milk and cut the whole recipe in half.  I also changed the type of bread and the type of preserves...hmm, maybe this qualifies as my own recipe now? 
   

Inspire Me Thursday-Out of the Comfort Zone

First step out of the comfort zone, something other than a flower!  And taking pictures in public places.  For some reason I feel goofy doing this unless it's a "here's a group of people in a special place" kind of picture or "isn't this a beautiful view" picture. I've been trying to do more with other types of images, getting better at it.

Second step out of the  comfort zone, doing something more with what I'm making.  This weekend (need to have some natural light) I'm going to create an image transfer to meet a theme for a magazine prompt and I'm going to mail it in!  Yes, I will!  It will be in the mail next Monday.  Really.

Thanks for the nudge out of the nest, Inspire Me Thursday!  Also, for anyone interested in how I do the transfers, check this out.
 

Illustration Friday-Plain

What a tough prompt!  Very hard for me to keep it "plain."  Of course first I had to think about what that meant to me.  What seemed to be the essential quality of plain for me is something without ornamentation.   So I started with a picture of plain white items.

That led to the thought of the potential of something "plain" to be decorated or added to.  Vanilla ice cream came to mind!  And then I had to start thinking about the need to decorate things as one of the reasons why we consume so much as a society.  The next thought that came along was my goal that all my responses to art prompts include something recycled or reclaimed.  Where to go with this?  Ummm...that would be to embellish something. In this case, a plain old glass jar I've been using for a pencil/pen holder.   Of course, I also had to add a little vintage text, "delights you can make...."

On the bookshelf

Spending a lot of time dreaming, thinking about, and planning what I want to do in the garden this next year. When it’s too cold and wet to do much gardening, the next best thing is reading about it! 

Two of the books I’ve recently read (which were checked out from the library) are The Contrary Farmer’s Invitation to Gardening by Gene Logsdon and The Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey.  I really enjoyed both books and think they are great resources. 

The Bountiful Container would be super for anyone with limited space to grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs and who is new to gardening.  Very nice descriptions of individual vegetables and what they need.  If I were only able to container garden I’d want this book in my permanent library.  What I found helpful was thinking about what would be best to plant in my whiskey barrels.  I’m taking my maple tree out of one and my bamboo out of the other so that I can grow vegetables on my deck in the whiskey barrels.  My goal is to have a few of my vegetables close enough to the kitchen to make watering with rinse water from the dishes easy to do.  First crop in one barrel will be lettuces and a few radishes and in the other peas.  Probably a few calendulas and pansies too.  In May I’ll be replacing these crops with squash and tomatoes.  Just need to decide where the maple tree will go and have a warmer dry day to move it and then prep the barrels. 

I loved reading Gene Logsdon’s book!  I want to see if I can find more of his books and would like to add them to my own library.  I’m going to try his suggestions for growing grains at some point.  I’m also planning on trying a mulch bed for my tomatoes as a result of reading this book.  And it made me want to have my own chickens again!  I keep talking myself out of chickens because I can get eggs from my parents and if I have chickens I’ll have to fight with the raccoons and the skunks in the neighborhood. 

The other book on my pile was Affluenza.  I read it for a book club at Crunchy Chicken.   Interesting book.  Mostly made me think about how I spend my time….  Glad that I spend a lot of it gardening.

Illustration Friday- Stitch

Pushing outside my comfort zone a little by working on an Illustration Friday challenge. 

The theme was "Stitch."  This is a photo of a pillowcase that I made.  I added lace made by my great grandmother to the edge.  The photo was transfered to watercolor paper.  The vintage text in the background is from a cooking magazine that my grandmother had. 

I also added a few stitches of silk thread to the photo.  My great-grandmother worked in a silk factory on the edge of the border between Switzerland and Italy (I'm not sure where the factory was exactly, she was from the Lake Como area of Italy) when she was young. 

I like the idea of stitching generations together....  Now lets see if I can stitch some links together : )

Inspire Me Thursday- Comfort Zone

Inspire Me Thursday's prompt this week didn't take much consideration.... Just had to find a photo of a flower and tweak it a bit.  Working with photos, especially of flowers, is what I am most comfortable with.  The garden is one of my comfort zones too. 

I love exploring ways to alter photos.  For this one I applied a filter in a computer program and then I transfered the photo to watercolor paper. 

Also from the comfort zone-adding a bit of recycled vintage text.

Reuse, recycle and renew!

Some people have moths...I have a chihuahua puppy.  And what do puppies do?  Chew of course.

Here's my sad old quilt:

And what it looks like now (plus new pillow case):

I used a duvet cover I had made for my sad old comforter (now a blanket for the dogs) for the top and a flannel sheet that I had in my stash for the back.  The cover needed a little patching too.  Sigh....

I've tied the layers together and stitched around the outside edges.  If Lola doesn't chew on this, I'll bind the edges. If she does chew on it, she's getting kicked out of the bedroom! 

Originally I had used a wool blanket for batting for the quilt.  Now that there are 5 layers, I'm thinking I'm going to be pretty toasty tonight.

Scrappy Notebook

Thanks so much to Ella at Kampfhorn.  She left a link (to Photojojo) for directions to make notebooks.  I gave it a try and it worked very nicely! 

I did tweak the directions just a bit.  I used fabric to cover the bound edge. For most of the pages I used an old calendar. 

This notebook is going into my bag for when I want to journal when I'm out and about.  If it holds up well, I'm definitely going to be making more.