josie's dresses

I realize the posts this month have been more peripherally food themed than usual. Never one to break a trend, here's another.

My new favorite cousin, Josie Rose is going to turn one next month. I made her a pair of pinafores from a pattern I bought on etsy. Each is reversible and fairly easy even for a novice seamstress, such as I am. I wouldn't do it if it were too hard. The most pleasurable parts of sewing for me involve handling textiles and combining patterns, the moment they begin to resemble something. This teapot fabric is one of the sweetest I've found. Meant for quilting I assume, but the print is just large enough for a child's garment.

sookie, i'm too timid to order food from that Chinese restaurant--last time I only tipped them ten percent.

Recently renewed friends of mine made this video, True Blood - Confessions From Bill Compton. The title of this post is one of said confessions.

I came up with a few, more food-centric, of my own:

• Sookie! If you already know that one litre equals 4.2 cups, then why is this demi-glace so runny?

• Sookie! Where's the 12th page of my Skinny Bitch Cookbook?! Ahm trying to maintain mah figure, without sacrificing taste.
  
• Sookie! You know ah get farty and bloated with a foamy latte!!
  

That last one's from Zoolander :)

the butter to my bread

As promised, here is the fruit of my Valentine's Day crafting. Paul Child is quoted as saying this to his wife Julia. "You are the butter to my bread and the breath to my life." But my Valentine is more of the visual sort. Literal too. And "breath to my life" has an almost macabre undertone, so this suits us best.

I have a deep love for the folk aesthetics of paper cutout, or scherenschnitte, to the Germans, and to other people who can pronounce scherenschnitte. I've been playing around with paper cutting for about half a year, mostly holiday cards and monogrammed gift tags from black card stock. Clearly, I need a new Xacto knife. It's too dull for precision lettering but I'm still pleased with the general look of this one. It's my zero dollar Valentine.

tea, love

This morning, Design Sponge posted a tutorial for DIY tea bags, heart-shaped for Valentine's Day. I've been working on my own Valentine's crafts, which I'll post in a few days. But I'm going to keep this one tucked under my hat. I imagine I'll one day be the woman in the office who gives everyone small homemade gifts on holidays. Though I can't imagine myself actually working in an office. Weird.

the problem with whoopie pies, a plea for help

Something amazing happened.

For my darling Joe's birthday I gave him a beautiful French film poster. An enormous red one sheet, 63 " x 47", from a film by his favorite director. But that's not the amazing thing. I discovered that framing would cost at least twice what the poster did (and it wasn't cheap either), so I would have to save up for the framing; hanging the poster would be a gift for another occasion. That was last April.

Along comes our two year anniversary and I decide the occasion has arrived, but I still can't afford the price quoted me by the framers. I bring the poster to work and my boss suggests we ask the installers for advice. (I should mention that I work for an organization that houses one of the largest archives of film print materials in the world, if not THE largest--I assume the Library of Congress has a sizable stock--and the task of framing and hanging of said collection falls to this group of guys.) I show them my poster and ask for their advice. They confirm that the job costs about $600, and that I'll want it mounted on an archival-quality board. And then the amazing thing: they said they'd frame it for me, FOR FREE! They don't normally do this, it just so happened that they had a frame, a board, and plexiglass the size of my poster, all of which they planned to throw away because of a few scuffs.

I am so incredibly grateful, and so inexcusably clueless as to how to thank them that I baked them whoopie pies, which seemed like a good start, but proved problematic for storage and transportation. See, the top of a cake is the smoothest and most delicate. Most people have experienced what happens when icing a cake that hasn't adequately cooled: the fragile crust peels a bit, getting crumbs mixed in with the icing. Well imagine that the fragile upper crust, the delicate cake top serves as both the top and bottom of the dessert. Even when cooled to past the point of most normal cakes, the bottom of the pie (the lower upper crust) would stick to the plate, creating a big old hole, ruining the aesthetic.

I'll consider that perhaps this is a sign that whoopie pies are not the best way to thank my framer friends, nevertheless, this is a problem with whoopie pies that needs solving. Does anyone know how to prevent it? Do I need to wait longer? Freeze the cakes? Use a cooling rack? A little help would be greatly appreciated.

Sweetish, like from Sweeten.

Salta Katten, The salty cat, and other edible Swedish novelties, via Poppytalk.

Deserves further investigation, methinks.

whoopie pies!

My friend Ryan gave me a whoopie pie pan for Christmas. Essentially, it's a normal nonstick cookie sheet with shallow circular grooves in which to spoon batter--very exciting. I bet they make perfect muffin tops, my #3 fave baked good.

This is my first draft. They were made from a mix and I don't think they're technically whoopie pies, more like chocolate sandwich cookies. Still, mega tasty.