recipe reviews, a little sewing and one book

Last week I teased you with a bunch of new recipes (new to me) in my kitchen and promised some reviews this week, so here we go!

First up, we have the dandelion jelly.  It was a little more work, what with having to separate the petals from the flower heads, but it was worth it.  It tastes a lot like honey, but very sweet and a tiny floral flavor, but nothing offensive or overpowering.

I will 100% make this again when I run out.

Then there's the violet jelly.  (The link goes to a video on facebook with a recipe at the end to screenshot, but you could probably ask the google also.)  This one is also delicious.  Very sweet and a little like a less strongly flavored grape jelly, but also with a little floral flavor, but again, not overpowering.  (The smell as I was making it was definitely more floral than the finished product.)

I will very likely make this one again as well.

They're all labelled and packed away in my canning pantry!

I also mentioned some English muffin bread I was going to try.  I looked at a number of recipes, but settled on this one because it was no-knead.  I had a little mishap in making it - I had only a few drops of milk.  I buy half-gallons of milk and often end up throwing some out because it goes sour before we use it.  So I never thought to check that ingredient.  So, as my yeast was over-proofing, waiting for the hubby to return with more milk, I worried that the loaves might not rise as much as they should.  They did rise and the bread looked good.  It tasted wonderful, just like the muffins, but I will need to make it again to make sure I like the way it rises.  These loaves were a little dense for my liking (I want all those nooks and crannies to hold my delicious jelly!), but I think that may have been my fault.

It made two loaves - smaller loaves - so one is in the freezer for now.  Every recipe says it freezes well, so we'll also find that out in time.  

Even if this isn't THE recipe for me in the long run, I enjoyed it and it's a little easier than trying to split those muffins!  (Also nice that in about an hour, I can have a loaf of this using ingredients I (usually) have on hand.)

With the fresh loaves of bread running around, I thought I'd make up some cloth bread bags.  Some of the people I follow on the social medias are using them and saying they're better for bread than plastic and surely that's better for the environment, too.  So I pulled out some homespun fat quarters that I wasn't using anyways and some of the twill ribbons from fat quarter bundles that I'd squirrelled away for another day and...

I just folded them in half and did French seams (like the pillowcases get) and then made a casing at the top.  I'm sure you could ask the google and find multitudes of fancier methods, but this was a quick and dirty effort to see if I'd like it.

The bread didn't seem any worse for the efforts, though it spent the first three days in a plastic bag because I hadn't made these yet.  And then the last few slices went moldy, which they probably would have no matter what they were in.  (The hubby, despite telling me he'd help eat the bread, did not.)

I may swap out those twill ribbons for something that draws and releases easier.  Those seem to grab onto the fibers of the bag itself (makes sense) and makes the bag more difficult to get open than I'd like.  (It also needs to be easy for the hubby to even consider trying it...)

Not bad for a first try, winging it.

Some folks tell you to wax the bags, but others say no.  I don't have any wax, so unwaxed it is.  (Though that is also something I'm curious about.)

Once this was done, I decided to finally try a tiny landscape applique embroidery thing.  After seeing some beautiful projects from Carinne Meyerink on instagram, I decided to give it a try.  She shows a lot of videos of her process and she has a lot more bits and bobs to flesh out her creations, but why not just give it a try?

You can see the size of my project and some of the disaster I made creating it.  (The goblin cat also helped by pulling a whole stack of blue fabrics out of the closet into a messy heap into the (very furry) cat bad just below it as she tried to spider-climb the shelves when I opened the door...and then had the audacity to yell at me when I got her down...)

Everything is just placed here, but I did use a little glue to baste things before I started sewing.

About an hour of stitching and I had this...

There's still a bit more to do and there are some things I wish I had done differently, but this is a learning curve and I did have fun.  I'll finish it, but I'm not sure what I'll do with it then.  Probably I'll make more.

And lastly, a single book.

As a whole, not great.

(Also, thanks internet for making it blurry.)

The blurb said it was the story of a family living in Berlin at the start of Hitler's rule.  That is true.  An academic, William Dodd is appointed (it seems, after every other option is exhausted) to the position of US Ambassador and sent to live with his family (wife and two 20-something children) to live in Berlin.

Where I expected a fair amount about the changes Hitler implemented and how their lives changed, I got seeming criticisms of his daughter who ran around with the "cool kids" in a seemingly loose fashion for the times and for his reluctance to live the posh lifestyle that was often embraced by the wealthy men who preceded him, despite his lack of wealth.  (He also didn't want to live that way.)

There were some stories of the different policing groups misbehaving, but not as much as any other book I've read that was set during this time.  Perhaps being the ambassador sheltered he and his family from the worst of things, but it almost felt like the bad things that were coming weren't even on their radar most of the time.

It rang familiar, but I knew I hadn't read it before, so I went looking in my previously read books and came across "Resistance Women" by Jennifer Chiaverini, a book more centered around the daughter and a way more interesting, though perhaps more fictionalized, book.

For non-fiction, I guess this is about par for the course - dry and factual (about 100 pages of footnotes and references plus an index), but I still feel like I missed a lot.  The family returned home in 1938 or so, but the book focused almost entirely on 1933 and 1934.

I wanted to like this more.  I wanted to read this one and was excited when I randomly found it in the giant used book sale.  Now I'm sad.

The next book looks good, but due to life, I haven't done much sewing or reading or anything fun for me in the last few days.  I'm hoping that will change soon, but today I think I need a nap before work...an old back injury has reared it's ugly head, making sleep not as easy (though it feels much better today compared to yesterday) and work has been kinda extra crazy with the weather getting nicer.  I'm not complaining about being busy at work - shifts go by in a flash and the better the company does, the bigger my monthly bonus!

Time to go see what the hubby is up to.  He's working second shift this week, so he's home, making all the noises this morning...

Happy quilting and canning and baking and reading!

Katie

mystery quilt finish and kitchen chores

This week saw little sewing again, but due to the mystery quilt, it was more sewing than I would have done otherwise!  (Also, since we were putting borders on, the LOOOONG seams took a while!)

What does it look like?

Well, I had a bit of help...

After the first border, I wanted to lay it on the floor and make sure the borders didn't make it wavy.  Of course I did all the things to ensure they weren't, but there was a little easing to be done, so I wanted to make sure.  Nothing like a wavy border that just gets worse with each addition.

Toby claimed it right away.  And he was ROWDY!

Two more borders down and it's a top!

Again, I put it on the floor and Lily claimed it immediately.  The colors in both photos are a bit off - it was late and my camera doesn't seem to see colors the same way I do.  I adjusted it some, but it still seems wrong.

You can see Finn peeking out from behind the door there in addition to Lily being front and center.  Everyone but Gabby was helping, they just didn't plop for photos.

I don't have a photo of the whole top, but you get the idea.  This is about 2/3 of it.

I'm very happy with it.  I still need to get it quilted before baby comes in September, but I'm really good at procrastinating, so you know it will be September before I do that, right?!

Quite a few shifts at work again this week, mostly closing, so I didn't get much done at home other than chores and some reading in the mornings.  We'll get to the reading soon.

This weekend, however (well, starting Friday), I got busy in the kitchen!

It kinda started at work with a gal asking for pectin.  I took her over to where the canning supplies are, but to be sure I was understanding what she wanted (sometimes you miscommunicate a tiny bit and end up with a thing that is nowhere near what you thought you were getting!) and she said dandelion jelly.  Huh.  I've heard of wine, but jelly?

I let it go, but learned something.  (Happens a lot!)

Then a friend posted a video/recipe of violet jelly on Facebook.

I knew they were edible, but jelly?

Down a rabbit hole and next thing I know, I'm at the store buying sugar (I didn't have quite enough on hand), more pectin (needed the low-sugar kind), and cheesecloth.

And then...

Followed by...

The violet "tea" is fun, as it changes color when you add lemon juice...

Before - it was a lighter blue, more like the color of the old time canning jars that are tinted blue, but again my phone...

And after.  You can still see a bit of blue at the top, as I hadn't stirred it yet, but what a fun chemical reaction for science nerd Katie!

The dandelion stuff just turned yellow and looked gross with all the petals floating in it. (Not that the discolored violets looked much better at the end...)

Then, some boiling and ladeling and waterbathing and...

(And yep, there's cookies in the background...  They're chocolate chip rice krispie cookies and quite good.  You can find the recipe here - use a BIG bowl, and I used two cups (one package) of milk chocolate chips.  They don't quite look like the photo, but that's okay.  I made these Thursday on a whim.)

I'd share the recipes, but I haven't tasted these, so I'll let you know soon.  (But honestly, there are dozens of recipes out there and they're all about the same.)

But what to eat these on?  Plain toast seems boring, but I've had some English muffin bread, bought at a fundraiser bake sale, a while back and my brother has made it and says it's easy, so why not?

After a minor mishap of having two dribbles of milk (we often throw out spoiled milk around here, so having almost none was unheard of!), I got these two loaves started.  (Pardon my old rusty pans.  I have one glass one that is nicer, but this needed two and I wanted them to bake the same, so the old pans came back to visit!)

I let these rise while I paid bills and started my blog post.  They went into the oven shortly and, being a quick bread to make (no kneading even), they were beeping at me just a minute ago, so...

I'll share this recipe too, once I've tried it.  I found quite a few recipes and they're all a little different, but this one seemed easy and it was.  (I'll have lots of recipes to share next week if things go well!)

In the middle of all this, we went out to use my brand new rototiller (the old one died and parts are not to be found) and get my (larger!) garden spot prepped to be planed in a few weeks.

Well that's not good.  It sheared the tine right off.  We bought an extended warranty, so on Monday we'll see what we can do about getting it repaired or replaced.  But sheesh!  There's a lot of rocks in the area that we're adding, but it has a kill switch when it gets to be too much, so I'm not sure what happened here.

(The good news is that the original spot is ready to be used and the new spot almost ready, so we could probably work it by hand if needed.  But this was an expensive investment and shouldn't be worn out so quickly.)

So it's been a busy couple of days at home and it feels good!  I can't wait to plant my garden in a few weeks!

I've also finished two books this week!

Another good book!

Set about the time of WWII again, this one was in the Balkans and mixes some local mythology with reality.  A young woman, a doctor, is working with a volunteer aid group, taking vaccines and Western medicine knowledge to remote villages in the area where she grew up.  The actual country is never mentioned, but the fact that borders of countries shifted regularly in a recently finished war means what used to be one place is now another and it doesn't really matter once you know about where on the globe you are.

Mixed in with this story are her memories of her grandfather, also a doctor.  Two of his stories are the deathless man (not a vampire!) and the tiger's wife.  Both seem like folklore except HE saw them, and being a man of science (a doctor, you know), gives them credibility, particularly in the eyes of his granddaughter, who is telling the story.

Though at times this book threw me for loops in the timeline, I did enjoy it and would definitely read more from this author.

Second:

This was another that somewhere on the interwebs someone had mentioned it and it sounded good.  (I can't figure out where I got the recommendation or I'd tell you...)

It was a good story.  Magical happenings mixed in with reality in a believable kind of way.

There are two timelines with two women, both trying to find their way in the world of men trying to control them, which made it inspiring.  They both get a story and tell part of the story from their perspective and I really enjoyed the one set about 100 years ago.  The current one was good, but I like historical fiction, so I'm biased.

Where it got tricky was the third narrator - a man from the current time story who told half of the story set in today's world.  It was hard to flip from a male perspective to female from one chapter to another and I found myself rereading pages to figure out who was speaking.  And that's why this book wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.

It was a quick read and I enjoyed it.

The next book is going to be a bit of a slog.  I want to read it, though, and I'll get into that after I've finished.  Right now I need to get dressed because the hubby has promised me lunch out at a favorite restaurant!

Happy quilting, reading and baking and canning!

Katie

mystery quilt top and just one book

The weather is getting nicer, so that means a little time must be spent outside each day to get the yard looking nice.  I don't spend much time, but it does cut into my fun time...

(But really, I've just spent too much time reading and being lazy this week!)

Thursday the next clue for the mystery quilt came out.  Since it's no longer a mystery, it's no longer a free quilt along, but it has an official name (Evening Light) and the whole pattern can now be purchased from the designer!

What does it look like?

(Salem wants you to see how good she is being and how beautiful she continues to be!)

I'm SO glad I chose to replace the pink floral with the off-white grunge.  I think it would have been a very muddy quilt if I had stayed with my original choice.

I really like it!

Next week is officially borders and I could probably have done them already, but I decided I'd just wait because it does get me in my sewing room at least once a week.  Without it, who knows?

There are a lot of really pretty quilts coming out of this - they're shared in the Quilting with Canuck Quilter facebook page.  It's a private page, but you can ask to join if you want to see what we're all doing!

Lily plopped herself right next to my sewing machine and allowed me to sew around her for a little while.  Here she is giving the "winky eyes" telling me she loves me.  She was actually pretty good even with me working over her.  (Speaking of Lily, she just arrived to ask for my lap while I type...we'll see how long that lasts!)

On the book side of things:

This was EXCELLENT.  Five stars.

Told from the perspective of Death, the story of a young girl living in Germany during World War 2.  (Apparently I was really on a roll with choosing that time period, or perhaps there are just a lot of books available set during that time?)

She picks up a book that is dropped at the funeral of her little brother and thus begins her collection.  The story focuses around the stolen books, but is by no means the whole story.

Unlike many of my recent WWII reads, this one doesn't focus on the horrible things happening beyond the direct realm of this 11-year-old girl.  There are bad things that happen that she sees, but she also plays soccer with her friends and lives her life as best as she can.

Being told by a third party, we get to know what many characters are thinking, and I enjoyed that.  I could see many characters scared to speak out about the atrocities of Hitler and his minions for fear of being targeted themselves, which was scary.

Two random notes:  At the start I kept thinking of the movie Meet Joe Black as it features Death as a main character as well.  A different story, and though the critics seem to have disliked it (even Brad Pitt, who plays Death, seems to have thought he didn't do a good job), I enjoyed it - clearly if it popped into my head these 27 years after its release!

And the second random note: Someone wrote and highlighted all over the copy I purchased.  Yes, it was used.  Yes, I paid little for it.  But it just bugs the bejeezus out of me when people do this and then turn it in to resell.  I don't care if you want to mark up a book you'll keep.  But please, for the love of God, leave it be if you'll not be keeping it.  Sticky notes have existed for like 30 years.  Use those.  Or get a notebook.  To make matters worse, whoever did this clearly was impatient or trying to look intelligent.  They failed at looking smart because their notes were like "what did she do with the bread" and the literal next sentence told us what she did with the bread.  I mostly ignored the notes and highlighting (which I never bothered to see if there was any connection because I wanted to READ THE BOOK, not try to tear it apart), but if I find another UNMARKED copy of this book at a used sale, I'll be purchasing it to replace this monstrosity and then taking this to be recycled where it can do more good.

So yes, you may have teased out that I'll be keeping this book.  I don't keep many, but this is one.

It was a lot of pages (like 550) and I would read a chapter or two and then just sit with it.  It wasn't that I was trying to sort out details or process the story even.  It was just enough that I wanted to let it simmer a bit.  So it took a bit longer to read.

The next book I started a few days ago and it is also quite good.  Again, set during WWII.  Soon I hope to find a light read that is just whimsical and fun, but the random book chooser keeps coming up with these.  (Of course, I not so randomly chose them in the first place, so...)

Anyways...

Happy quilting and reading!

Katie

more mystery quilt, more books

Another fairly unproductive quilty week for me, aside from the mystery quilt...

This week the block parts started coming together to make whole blocks!

Salem got in on the action to help me sew.  Or rather demanded some love.  Either way, I took a break to give her what she wanted and she was on her way.

I expect the next two clues will tell us how to put the quilt top together, but I wonder if there will be some secondary patterns that emerge?

Friday evening my throat started feeling scratchy.  So far, it's not been much  more than that, so I'm hopeful it's just a new allergy or a reaction to smelling the residual fumes from the floors being repolished at work, but I decided to take it super easy yesterday.  Because I could.

Gabby kept me company and made some good biscuits.  (Well, I guess that video isn't going to upload...instead you get this still shot...)

Since she stays in my bedroom (do not fear, this cat has a pretty good setup with all the necessities and a lot of extras - like four cat beds, two window perches, a cat tree and a LOT of toys!), she was excited to spend most of the day with me yesterday.  I read and napped and hoped I'd feel better today.  I don't feel worse, so I guess that's good enough?

Speaking of reading...another two books finished this week!

First up:

Though I found this in the fiction section at a used book sale, this is, in fact, non-fiction.  The story of a young woman who wanted to contribute to the war effort (WWII) and ends up telling the right person at the right time and she is recruited to be a spy, working in Spain.

Spain is a neutral country, so there are people from both sides of the war doing all sorts of things there, and it's a good place to do her job.  Of course she has a job as a cover, but she manages to work her way into much of society of the time and that is also a good place to learn a lot of things.  It is also a good place to meet a rich man who turns out to be in line to inherit the title of Count.  So I'm not sure when she marries him she becomes a princess, but I'm not entirely sure how the titles and structure of such work over in Spain.  (Or anywhere, if we're being honest!)

She does get into a few dangerous situations, but the author admits from the very start that his book is based on a couple of her autobiographies as well as some research, but her stories vary some from one to another, so maybe she wasn't in as much danger, or maybe she can't share all that she did that WAS that dangerous.

In all, it was an interesting story, but there were a lot of name and place drops that didn't help me any.  Maybe to a history buff, they would, but I was more interested in HER story, not the story of the war.  And particularly not in a name-place-date manner, as I've said many times that is why I nearly failed history class in high school.  I don't care to memorize that kind of stuff.  I want the STORY!

Anyways, not bad, not great.

And on to this one...

The blurb says two older women go on a road trip to visit the grave of a famous singer (not sure if she's real or not - never got around to caring enough to look), but turns out it's a tool to tell the story of the women.  More the story of one than the other, it spans most of their lives, as they met early in school and stayed friends throughout.

They both grew up poor and though I believe American-born, their Slavic parents made them stand out as "other."  They married men that weren't what they thought they'd be, had children that turned out to be trouble or are now estranged, and generally didn't have good lives.  One (the driver and instigator) seems boisterous and outgoing, the other seems more timid and introverted, they seem to balance each other out.

But.

(Spoiler alert)

They never actually make it to the grave.

Perhaps that wasn't the point?

In general, not what I was expecting (not entirely) and not what I'd have chosen if I'd known.

But the publisher (Spinsters Ink) has me intrigued, as they choose to publish from underrepresented authors and books featuring underrepresented groups of people - in this case, elderly women.  I thought that was pretty cool.

So two books that were both kinda "meh" this week.  But the one I started next is good.

And one of my blog readers commented that they don't even try to read a book unless it has been given four stars.  That got me thinking about what I read - I go to used book sales and the cover draws me in (or the title) and I read the blurb and decide if it's a yes or no from that.  Definitely a chance to miss out on some good books if I'm not in the mood for their content at the time of shopping, but I also am not interested in rushing out to read what everyone else tells me I should be reading.

So I thought I'd type my ratings into a database and compare them with GoodReads ratings.

You can see here the trendline is that GoodReads and I tend to agree that good books are good (the upward trend line), but it also shows that I'm all over the place compared to them.

So I teased it out a little more and here are comparisons of what I thought were the worst books of the last 15.5 months and what were the best to GoodReads ratings.

Clearly I have a different opinion of what a "good" book is compared to the rating of whatever GoodReads uses.  (And I also compared some of these ratings to the StoryGraph, which is user defined in its ratings and they were quite similar to the Amazon-based values.  Maybe those are also user-generated?)

And clearly I liked a number of books a lot better than the average as well.  But did I rate any of them the same?  Since the star rating can go more than quarter star jumps in GoodReads, it's not as easy to compare, but I did a little visual search and came up with this:

So obviously I agreed on some, but jeez don't ask me what they are.

And now that you've asked, I have to go figure it out...

A few of these are new enough that I've talked about them on my blog.

Okay, enough nerdiness and talk about a book tracker app that I really don't like (it was more user-friendly for this project, so it got used, but I may not be using it much longer because the StoryGraph is so much  more fun!) and time to go snuggle kitties and rest some more.  Let this scratchy throat decide what it's going to become because I'm SICK OF IT!  (It needs to progress into something else or just go away.)

Happy quilting (and reading),

Katie