Something different involving meatballs

I made up this dinner last week and it was so yummy, thumbs up from all the children, and very different which is what I was really going for. I don’t know about you guys, but the mere decision of what to make for dinner is the most awful part. So, I created this dish by basically having Asian food on my mind and going with the flow. I promise, this is the best way to cook. (Please forgive my terrible photos…I took these with my phone, unfortunately).

First, select meat for meatballs. I used chicken breasts…you could use thighs, some sort of beef cut (flank steak?) or maybe even boneless pork chops. I don’t know much about meat, so just pulverize what you have and you should be fine. Beat meat with a cleaver until it is all a consistent thickness. [This is my favorite part, admittedly]. Then, chop into very small bite-size-ish chunks. Place in freezer- sized ziplock bag and set in a 9 x 13 baking dish.
Make marinade:
-1/2 cup Rice vinegar
-1/2 cup sesame oil
-1 TBSP hoison sauce
-1 TBSP soy sauce
-3 in piece fresh ginger, chopped
-juice 1 lime
Mix together and add to zip lock bag. Close bag and press down flat in the baking dish so the marinade is infiltrating all meat equally. Nice. Refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Next, cut up these veggies:
-1/2 shallot, minced
-2 med/large cloves garlic, minced
-bunch green onions, chopped
-1 lime, quartered
-2 carrots, julienned
-2 handfuls cilantro, chopped
-approx 2 in piece of ginger, peeled and minced
-handful basil, chopped
-1 cup or so, shitake mushrooms (whole, not chopping necessary)

Make meatballs:
-2 sausage links (I used turkey, italian style). Squeeze meat from casing into large mixing bowl. Ewww. Weird but satisfying.
-Marinated meat (from bag; discard marinade). Add this to same bowl.
-Add shallots
-Add 1/2 of the chopped ginger
-1/2 cup (or so) panko breakcrumbs
-Add 1 egg

The whole point of these meatballs is to use different meats. That is the cool part, and the part that sets these meatballs apart. Apart from that, your meatball may be boring, at least in part.
Roll into a little bigger than bite-sized balls and place on parchment paper on baking sheet. Bake at ~400 for ~40 mins

Make rice noodles according to package directions. Drain and toss with cilantro.
Add remaining veggies (except cilantro,basil, and lime) to hot cast iron skillet with a TBSP of veg oil and saute until heated through but still a little crunchy. Add a splash of rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Then, add meatballs when finished, cover, and simmer until meatballs are soft and steamy, but still firm. Serve as pictured below.

Remake: BFF Boston Shirt

My best friend whom I’ve known since 7th grade, trusted me with her awesome vintage Boston concert shirt for a remake and Tahdah! This is what I came up with. I do believe this is my favorite shirt reconstruction thus far, probably because I was imagining her and what she might like.

So about the shirt…I cut a really large boat neck (scary!) but it worked out OK. I wanted the back to be kinda sorta hot-ish, so I cut it deeper on the backside. I had another shirt I found at a thrift shop (blue/black 80s shirt), that I added to the bottom and used as bias tape around the armholes and for strips on the back. I also added two cute ties on the sides before I sewed the seams.

The neckline was tricky. I was going to make more bias tape from scraps after cutting the shirt…but then I thought it would look neat to add texture so I pressed long strips of equal length and basically sewed the press line to the edge of the neckline. It rolls up naturally which looks cool. I didn’t even bother sewing the long strips together, but instead, overlapped them and went with it (going ROGUE, y’all). I added two rosettes at the shoulder seams from scraps. That’s about it! I dig it. I hope she does too, because I get to deliver it in person next week when I’m visiting her in sunny Florida. ahhhh….

Rigatoni florentine w/sausage

Alls I can say is this was a happy accident. I was feeling all inspired to cook so I made this dish and it was really outstanding. I’ll try and remember the ingredients so I can share (and remember how to make it next time)!

Ingredients:
-3/4 lb bulk mild italian chicken sausage (new seasons market has this)
-1/4 package frozen chopped leaf spinach
-1/2 box low sodium organic chicken broth
-1/8th to 1/4 cup half-n-half
-flour
-unsalted butter
-mushrooms, sliced
-onion, sliced
-3 garlic cloves, minced
-salt and pepper
-freshly grated parm/reg cheese
-rigatoni, cooked (I used the whole bag)

Directions:
Boil water and cook pasta until done, but on the fimer side. Drain, and place in rectangle shaped baking dish w/a little olive oil and sea salt to coat pasta. Set aside. Pre-heat oven to 300deg. Saute sausage in a little olive oil over low/medium heat, breaking up w/a wooden spoon as you go. When cooked, place in bowl for temp storage. Next, melt about 1/4 stick of butter in same pan and add onions, garlic and mushrooms. Saute until translucent and fragrant. Place in bowl and cover/hold warm.

Place pasta in oven, and stir occasionally.

Meanwhile, make sauce (roux). Melt more butter (1/4 stick), then add enough flour to soak up (a couple tablespoons). Ideally, this is going to resemble a paste…like frosting consistency (I use a whip or the back of a spoon). Now, slowly add chicken broth (1/2 cup to start, then you can continue to add in larger quantities as sauce thickens). Keep on eye on this and simmer/low heat, add half-n-half. Stir regularly, it will begin to thicken up. Add spinach when you are satisfied with the amount of sauce you have (spinach has water so sauce will thin out a little after you add). Season w/salt and pepper.

Broil pasta in oven so that it becomes a little crunchy. Be careful! Don’t burn. This only takes like 5 mins max in my oven. Remove from heat when a little brown on top. Stir.

Now, you can assemble the pasta. Most of my kids hate sauce, so I like to keep things separate and they can add in what they want. The above photo is obviously my plate, cause I like all that stuff. Serve w/fresh grated parm/reg cheese shavings on top. Hooray!

Proust Questionnaire

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? being allowed to not be happy

2. What is your greatest fear? Loss

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? playing dumb

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? selfishness

5. Which living person do you most admire? Desmond Tutu, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett

6. What is your greatest extravagance? alcohol

7. What is your current state of mind? just fine

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? aggressiveness/competition

9. On what occasion do you lie? when apathetic of the consequence

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance? height

11. Which living person do you most despise? N/A

12. What is the quality you most like in a man? confidence

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman? rebellion

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? of the moment: “nice” (used sarcastically)

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life? JGM

16. When and where were you happiest? When I was 9.

17. Which talent would you most like to have? the ability to jam on the bass guitar

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
but then, I would be someone other than myself, therefore I choose nothing.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement? being extraordinarily adaptable

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? energy

21. Where would you most like to live? where extravagance is not typical

22. What is your most treasured possession? My great-grandmother’s star of david ring

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Loss

24. What is your favorite occupation? bohemian

25. What is your most marked characteristic? I am open, empathetic, and a bit fearless

26. What do you most value in your friends? honesty, realism, obscurity

27. Who are your favorite writers? David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, Barbara Kingsolver

28. Who is your hero of fiction? wonder woman?

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Joan of Arc and/or Virginia Woolf (at the moment)

30. Who are your heroes in real life? Ordinary folks doing extraordinary things, walking amongst us w/o any formal recognition. because they are cool like that.

31. What are your favorite names? Jude, Vada, Jane

32. What is it that you most dislike? the term “dislike”

33. What is your greatest regret? N/A

34. How would you like to die? while wearing a cape?

35. What is your motto? she’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back (Dylan)

Ball and Chain

I had this shirt in my head for a long, long time. I found the original shirt on eBay for $10, it was giant-sized, but otherwise in fairly good shape. A year or so ago, I checked out the book, Tease, from our library and made a mental note of the cool button down t-shirt project. I didn’t pay as much attention to the instructions, unfortunately.

I thought this shirt would look neat with the button down collar concept so I went for it…but admittedly, I was cringing as I cut through the middle of this shirt. I persevered though, and finally got it right…kind of.

The sleeves were supposed to be more puffy, almost like, you know, Victorian-ish, but eh, that didn’t work out so much. It’s a sweet concept though, and I stole it from a post on Craftster (dot org). Basically, cut off the sleeves at the seams, then trace a shirt that you already have that fits you nicely around the boobage area onto your project shirt, so you have a nice, new armhole shape. Cut this out. Try on the project shirt and figure out how tight it should be, pin, and cut.

Now, take the sleeves you just cut off and cut the underarm seam. Now you will have a curve-ish line and a straight line on the sleeve. Gather from end to end on the curve-y line. Double the sleeve over and press in the center, so you will have a “marker” line when you re-attach the sleeve to the shirt. Nice. Now, open up the shirt on one side of the armhole, and pin the sleeve by matching up the pressed center line to the shoulder seam of the shirt. Then, pin at each end to the shirt and gather to fit the armhole. Now you can sew the sleeve back to the shirt. Repeat on other side.

Open up the hemline of the sleeve (I used my handy dandy chopstick) and insert 1/4″ elastic into this by attaching a safety pin and running it through. It’s OK to have leftover elastic hanging out each end of the sleeve. No biggie.

Now, pin the entire side seam of shirt, all the way to the hemline of the sleeve. Sew the entire length together. Now you can cut off those pesky elastic ends. This is a “raglan” style shirt now, since there is one seam for the side that joins up to the sleeve seam. Sweet.

I winged the next part, and it wasn’t pretty. I cut off the front panel of one of John’s hideous button-up oxford type shirts, that for whatever reason we’ve held onto for dear life for 10+ years and was currently being stored in the basement. I folded my t-shirt in the center and ironed, then cut a line down the middle of the shirt and basically sewed the front button panel/collar around the shirt. I would recommend leaving the neckband on the t-shirt when doing this. I cut mine off, and then had to sew extra fabric to the silly button band/collar thing to make up for the wider neckline, which quite frankly, sucked.

That’s pretty much it. And you know what I really like? I like that the ends of the button panel thing hang lower than the shirt. That’s actually my favorite aspect of this shirt. It would be even cooler if one side was longer than the other. Maybe next time.

Grape Ape

I’ve wanted to paint the hallway purple for a really long time and alas, it happened! It is difficult to photog the hallway because not much light gets back there…but the best way to describe this purple is: Grape Ape. And I love it. I let Abe choose the trim color and he chose the brightest lime green he could find. At the time, I didn’t think this was a big deal; however there are 9 door frames in my hallway. gasp. It looks very Halloween-ee, which kind of works out since this is our favorite holiday.

I bought the die-cut letters @ Scrap for $0.10. I just happened to find the letters to make the word “Fun.” This is why SCRAP is such a rad place.

This next project was a lot more involved than I imagined. Ahem.
So, we had been saving cardboard pizza rounds for a random circle project, because we are dorks and that’s how we roll. I covered these with a square of fabric slighter larger than the diameter of each circle. Next, I used page inserts from photo albums (for the 4×6 photos) and also plastic sheet protectors, cut to the size I needed, for larger photos. I sewed these onto each fabric square, leaving one side open to change out photos as I please. Then, I sewed trim around each, to outline the photo. Lastly, I hot glued each square to the back of the cardboard. (NOTE: originally I intended to use 1/4″ elastic around the fabric to secure to the cardboard, but nah…too much work). John’s part was to attach fishing line along the backside of each series of frames, and add metal washers to each, so that they lay flat against the wall (the washers add weight). The cool thing about all this is that we were able to patch all the giant nail holes, previously used for traditional photo frames, and suspend the lightweight circle frames from tiny screws at the top of the wall. Sweet!

I have two more projects for this hallway. Our house is small and I’m trying to utilize every nook and cranny…so I’m going to make a file hanger out of fabric, for each kids’ school/important paper stuff, and also I want to make 3 giant circles similar to the above to display/change out the kids’ artwork or whatever. Yay!

Jennifer’s Crazy Good Vegged Out Chicken Soup

(it is difficult to photo soup, y’all)

On Saturday, I realized we were going out of town for a couple of days and I had a ton of vegetables in the refrigerator that were not getting any fresher AND we had just gone to the store and bought chicken w/an unfortunate “USE BY” date. I’ve really been trying to use what I have in my kitchen, as opposed to going out and buying more stuff to make dinner X, so in the spirit of all that, I decided that soup was in our future (even though I always slightly dread making soup, because if it’s not so great, you are stuck with it for day on end until some brave soul pours the last bowl, i.e, John).

So, here’s the skinny on this soup. It will rock your world.

Ingredients:: (you can totally switch this up, based on what veggies you have on hand)::
(NOTE: I choppped most of these in my handy chopper to hide the evidence from my kids…and it worked, they liked it, hey Mikey!)
-1 Medium Onion, chopped
-4 stalks Celery (sliced thin)
-4 Small-ish Carrots (chopped tiny in chopper)
-1 head Brocolli (ditto)
-1 head Cauliflower (ditto)
-3 handfuls Mushrooms (broken up into pieces by hand)
-3 cloves Garlic, sliced thin
-1 bunch Asparagus (break off stalks)
-Butter, sweet cream, unsalted
-Curry powder, to taste
-Cumin, to taste
-Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste

Melt approx 2-3 TB butter @ LOW/MED heat in a large stock pot (you’re gonna need a large one for the quantities listed above…if you have less veggies, etc, you can use a smaller pot and less butter). Add ingredients in order as listed above and cook each down in the butter. Add butter as necessary when veggies are looking dry. [I used ~ 1/2 stick of butter for the veggies listed above.] After each few additions, season veggies w/curry, cumin, S & P. Be sure not too add too much curry unless you don’t mind yellow soup.

Meanwhile,

-Chicken
-Olive Oil
-Kosher Salt
-Black Pepper
-Granulated Garlic

Cook chicken in saute pan with olive oil and seasonings above. I recommend using a lot of pepper. Cook chicken until done.

Add to VEGGIE MIXTURE:
-Flour (approx 1/2 to 1 cup)
-Chicken Broth (good brand: Pacific Natural Food Organic Low-Sodium)…or your own homeade is great too

After veggies are cooked down and smelling nice, add flour to make a roux. I used 1 cup of flour for the above amount of veggies. The veggie mixture will thicken up. Next, begin adding chicken broth a little at a time and stir through. I used 2 boxes of chicken broth. Just keep adding slowly until you get the consistency you prefer. CUT chicken up into bite sized pieces and add into soup. Adjust seasonings (curry, cumin, salt and pepper) until you are happy.

That’s It! This is a crazy yummy soup and really healthy w/all the fresh veggies, etc. The key is to season the chicken well and to adjust the curry just right. Enjoy!

Upcycled Depeche Mode Tee

Skirt for Andrea

This used to be a men’s XL shirt that my friend, Andrea, scored at a Naked Lady Party. I made it into a skirt, using Generation T’s example as inspiration, and scraps from other recycled shirts for the bottom inserts (fancy fashion term: godet). I decided to make a sweet waist-band from a doubled-over portion of another recycled t-shirt (cut-off hem, double over, and cut to match waist measurement + a bit for seam allowance) instead of the drawstring waistband (using the already there t-shirt hem), because otherwise, yo, the image would’ve been back-erds (fancy southern term). Pardon the run-on sentence. There was a hole in the shirt, which is conveniently covered up with a tie made from scraps. Happy, Happy, Happiness, and Andrea looks so hawt in it. Your Own Personal Jesus…can you hear it?

If you happen to be in to fish and cake…

I’ve had this recipe forever but it always seemed fairly intimidating because it has a lot of schmancy ingredients I typically don’t have around…BUT! I finally made one to test out for a potential holiday fare situation, since we are going to have a houseful of kin-folk this year and ya’ll, what can I say; it is super yum.

The only thing is, you really have to love salmon to get past the whole “this is weird tasting fish when I’m expecting cake” deal.

(I ripped this recipe from a magazine that seems like it would be Martha Stewart Living)

Smoked Salmon Cake
Serves 8-10

-(3) 8 oz packages cream cheese, softened
-1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
-2 TB capers, drained and chopped
-2TB fresh dill, finely chopped, plus more for garnish
-1tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
-Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
-2 loaves pumpernickel bread, cut into 16 half-inch slices, with crusts
-1 lb smoked salmon, thinly sliced
-1 1/2 seedless cucumbers (English), thinly sliced into 1/8 slices, plus more for deco’ing
-1/2 cup creme fraiche (I used sour cream)
-2 1/2 oz salmon roe (I skipped this step..too $$$)
-1 oz black caviar (ditto this step)
-Lemon wedges for deco

1-In a small bowl, combine 8 oz cream cheese, onion, capers, dill and lemon; season w/Salt and Pepper and stir until smooth.
2- Lay 4 bread slices on work surface and trim 1/4 inch from all sides of slices. (Try and make even slices, this may not be easy, in the end, you will work with the ones that match up)
3-Procure fancy plate
4-Spread approx 1TB cream-cheese mixture on top of one slice, layer with smoked salmon and cucumber (don’t allow cucumbers overlap one another). Repeat w/two more bread slices (situate slices so that the long sides are touching one antoher) and lay these next to one another forming the bottom layer of the “cake” (I used the larger pieces for this)
5- Spread a thin layer of cream-cheese mixture on one side of the next 3 slices of bread, and assemble these on top of the bottom layer.
6-Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have a decent-height cake (don’t want it to be too high!) I used maybe 4 layers…(top layer is bread)
7-Square up the layers and prepare to ice the cake
8-Combine remaining cream cheese and creme fraiche (sour cream) in a small bowl and stir until smooth.
9-Use a spatula and ice the cake w/the mixture in step 8
10-Refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight
11-Before serving, arrange cucumbers around base of cake and a few on top…place dill springs on top and salmon roe/caviar if you are fancy

Note: This can be tricky to slice, so use a serrated knife and make sure to refrigerate up until you decide to cut into it

I cannot like this shirt.

I made this shirt and thought it would turn out way more attractive but alas, not so much. But, that’s the thing about making reconstructions, you never know what you’re gonna get. I feel good that I continue to try though; I’m learning, it’s all swell. So what would I have done differently with this shirt…let’s see. I think I would’ve expanded the navy section down through the torso, and added the floral piece at the very bottom as an accent @ hemline. The floral piece is quite heavy, as it is quilted polyester, so it doesn’t like being merged with jersey knit so much. I also would’ve cut the armholes higher and tighter at the side seam. So yeah, more like a tunic and less like a top. That’s the ticket.

And last but not least, here are the ingredients for the shirt (minus the navy jersey, which was a remnant from another reconstruction t-shirt). I normally have a rule that I won’t cut into something unless it is messed up. But in a way, both of these items were pretty messed up if you catch my drift. I will do something with the remainder of the skirt…I’m feeling pillows:

And, that’s my new teeny tiny sewing corner, which used to be in a giant room. But hey! It’s organized.

Hasta Manana