April « 2006 « Stoneview

A busy week

One of the things that happened this week is that I finished my flower scrapbook. Heidi had a great idea for my title page and showed me how to make these cute little flowers. They are just squares of two different sizes with 1 pair of opposite corners rounded and then a little contrast color center.

We’ve had two new birds visiting this week. I saw this white-throated sparrow (without my glasses on) and assumed it was the female rose-breasted grossbeak returning but on taking a closer look at my photo it’s definitely the sparrow. These guys are new to the feeder and I see in my birdbook that fruit is included in their diet so perhaps it’s the new oriole feeder that brought him into the yard. We’ve also seen these orchard orioles a couple of times this week though I haven’t yet seen them on the new feeder.

Yesterday Grace and I drove down to Kathy’s where we all carpooled to the Connecticut Sheep and Wool festival. We had a great time and I took a slew of pictures. You can see the album on the sidebar. There was even a blogger picnic but unfortunately I didn’t get blog addresses because someone said they might do an e-mail and then that didn’t happen. If I saw you and you’re reading the blog please leave a comment with your blog address-I’ve seen those of Carole, Mamacate and Kathy but I don’t know any of the others. Thanks!

Get Involved

This is my second year to participate in Relay for Life fundraiser for cancer. I have had many friends and relatives affected by it including this young fellow who was diagnosed at 30, two months after getting married and a month after learning his wife was pregnant. He underwent aggressive treatment all through her pregnancy and continued to do so after his daughter was born. He took breaks to have vacations with them, particularly when it became clear the treatment wasn’t as effective as they’d like. He died shortly after his daughter’s first birthday.

It seems we are inundated by requests for charitable donations so it’s been my choice to limit those to one or two charities that are meaningful to me and focus on those. Last year I was a member of a Relay team, raised money, and walked in the event. This year I’ve stepped it up a bit and am working as the online chair updating webpages and things like that. I’m hoping to get a team together myself and raise money and walk again. If you’re local please consider joining the team. Donations will be greatly appreciated as well from you non-local folks or local folks who can’t make the commitment to be on the team.

Thank you in advance for your generosity. Last year "online" friends and family helped me reach my goal in record speed. I’ve set the bar a little higher this year and hope to do a better job contributing to the Relay. I know that most of my readers are knitters. I’d like to offer up a knitting needle roll or bag of your choice, designed based on your preferences of colors, size etc. When you contribute drop me a line in the comments and the Sunday June 11th after the relay I’ll have someone from my knitting group draw a name from among you. If you’re not a knitter, perhaps you would enjoy some home-baked cookies- feel free to join the drawing and we’ll work something out!

Revealing secrets

Here’s one of the things I’ve been busy with lately that couldn’t be blogged until it was gifted. A member of our local knitting group is getting married and of course we had to knit her something. Many of us got together on a big group order from knitpicks in colors chosen to match her living room. We each knit (or crocheted) a square or two, they were all edged in the same color and then seamed together. It was really a lot of fun. There’s also a scrapbook being made to go along with it with a photo of each person with her square.

I had planned to do a roast chicken for dinner last night and then creamed chicken or pot pie tonight with the leftovers but alas there were none of the ones I like when I went to the store so I shifted to the Thursday/Friday menu instead and picked up salmon for last night and pork for tonight. I peeled and cubed some sweet potatoes and simmered about 20 minutes until tender, tossed them with a bit of butter, honey and cinnamon as my side dish.

Salmon with lemon salsa

1 pound salmon fillets
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons flour
canola oil
1/4 cup chopped parsley
zest and juice of 1 medium lemon
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/4 cup dried cranberries, reconstituted in hot water and drained
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
6 cups baby spinach

Season the salmon with salt and pepper. Lightly coat fillets with flour and tap off excess. Sear in a skillet with canola oil just below the smoking point 3-4 minutes per side or until just cooked through. Sear the side without the skin first to get the nicest presentation. Meanwhile, combine remaining ingredients (except spinach) in a small bowl. To serve, place salmon over the spinach and top with lemon mixture.

Oh no!

Look what I found when I was putting on my socks this morning! Argh! I guess this means it’s time for a lesson in how to do repairs. I’ll take my leftover sock yarn and head to the Woolpack on Tuesday for a visit and some help. I have no idea how it could have happened. These are socks I always handwash. It looks almost cut. If one of the cats had chewed it I think it would look more ragged. Ah well, it’s an opportunity to learn something new, right?

Emergency Knitting

A friend called me this week with news of a terrible tragedy in her life. She’s too far away for me to dash over and help so I sent a card immediately and of course since I can be there to give her a hug I’m making her one. This is Trellis from the current Interweave Knits in her favorite color- Frog Tree fingering on size 4 needles.

Daniel loves to watch Ham on the Street on the Food Network. Recently there was an episode where George Duran cooks all sorts of food on a stick. Daniel decided I needed to make him shrimp on a stick. Cornshrimps to be more specific. We’ve often done our own corn dogs so I simply used the same batter recipe and dunked the shrimp in, frying them up minus the sticks.

Cornshrimps

1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 large egg, beaten
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons canola oil
canola oil, for frying

Pat shrimp dry with a paper towel. Set aside. Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and dry mustard, mixing well. Combine egg, milk, and oil and mix with a fork. Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Mix in shrimp.

Heat a couple inches of canola oil in a deep saucepan until a bit of batter dropped in cooks quickly. Using a spoon, scoop out a shrimp with a bit of batter, enough to cover, and drop into the hot oil. Fry a few at a time in a large skillet turning a few times. Check the first one to be sure it’s cooked all the way through- the bit right in the center where the shrimp is curled is hard to get done all the way. Use the first one to gauge cooking time.

I’ve also been baking today. This is a coconut cake for a party I’m going to tomorrow.

Coconut Cake

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened grated coconut
2 1/2 cups cake flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
1 cup coconut water (substitute or bring up to 1 cup with milk)
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoons cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter and flour two 9-inch round cake pans and set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar for 3 or 4 minutes until light and fluffy. Mix in the coconut. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add liquid and dry ingredients alternately until they are all incorporated. Whip the egg whites in a separate bowl with cream of tartar to stiff but not dry peaks. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter and then fold in the remainder very gently but thoroughly. Divide batter evenly between the two pans. Bake at 350 F. 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool ten minutes in pans and then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

For the frosting:

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup boiling water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups unsweetened grated coconut

Whisk together sugar, water, cream of tartar and corn syrup in the bowl of a mixer over a small saucepan with an inch or two of boiling water. Whisk until the sugar is completely dissolved, transfer the bowl to the mixer. With the mixer running at high speed, add the two egg whites and beat for 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla. Use this to frost and fill cake and then coat with the grated coconut.

Places I have knit

Kat Knits is having a little contetst and wants to see 5 places we knit other than our homes or knitting shops. Here’s my list:

1.
in a rental car- I knit quite a lot on our trip
West last summer as we did an enormous amount of driving. I also knit on these socks on the 2. Friday Harbor Ferry on the same trip and at a 3. wedding reception earlier in the week several hundred miles away. I think of these socks as the wedding socks and they definitely remind me of our wonderful vacation and all the fantastic National Parks we visited as well as friends and family.
These two pairs of socks visited the 4. doctor’s office 5. dentist’s office 6. orthodontist’s office among various other offices and waiting rooms. Socks are certainly my favorite portable projects!

yet more garden beauties

Things are really blooming in the backyard as well. I planted some bulbs around the edge of the new patio last year and those are doing very nicely. Jason’s worried about mowing around them but they’ll soon be done and he can mow with abandon. The sweet peas I planted are starting to peep up in the pot. The ones in the garden were planted a bit later and are not yet awake but with the rain and warm weather it won’t be long before they are on their way. We had a nice rain last night so the garden is well watered.

Orioles and dinner

Maureen asked if I had an oriole feeder recently and that got me thinking about them again. It’s something I’ve been meaning to buy and Dad sent me some money for my birthday which would more than cover the cost. So since he’s visiting this week and is big into birds himself we went out this morning to Wild Birds Unlimited and I picked one up while he grabbed some fruit dough to try out at home and see if his visitors enjoy it. Thanks Maureen for the very timely reminder!

We enjoyed a terrific Easter dinner yesterday. We bought a small honey baked ham, Jason grilled some asparagus and potatoes with a delicious homemade spicy bbq sauce for the potatoes and I made a green salad with a lemony dressing and some sweet potato rolls. I forgot the salt in the rolls but they were pretty decent anyway. The cake turned out to be really wonderful- I highly recommend that cake recipe.

Garden explosion

For Maureen, here’s a photo of the birdbath we have. We set it out yesterday after I saw the birds trying to drink water from the ant trap on top of the hummingbird feeder. It’s a blue ceramic birdbath that I think we bought at the local garden center. The lilly pad dripper is from Wild Birds Unlimited. We do have a heater for winter that I used with the old metal birdbath but that was blown over one too many times and eventually broke. This one can’t stay out over the winter as the ceramic will crack.
Last fall I planted some tulips for Jason. He doesn’t remember but he was asking for tulips. I love them but they usually only bloom the first year and after that they don’t seem to like me and each year fewer and fewer of them will bloom. We have two batches of pink ones and yellow in between. As you can see the first bunch of daffodils are about finished and I need to get outside and deadhead them. It will be a nice afternoon to work out in the yard except for all the pollen. If I can stand the sneezing I’ll get out and do the deadheading and perhaps even a little weeding. The front herb garden is already overrun with nasty weeds.

Yesterday I baked the cake for today. These sorts of cakes always seem much better after a night in the fridge so I also made the lemon curd and the lemony frosting and put it all together. I think if you click the photo to make it bigger you can probably see the lemon zest in the frosting. This is one of those butter and confectioner’s sugar frostings but it was fairly tame on the butter compared to the last cake I tried.

Lemon Cake

For the curd:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
zest of a lemon
1 pinch salt
6 large egg yolks

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat and all the sugar, juice, zest and salt. Whisk to combine and then whisk in the egg yolks. Cook over medium heat while constantly whisking about 5 minutes or until mixture thickens and coats the back of a wooden spoon. Cool to room temperature and then chill completely.

For the cake:
2 1/3 cups cake flour, sifted
2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar, divided
zest of a lemon
3/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup milk, at room temperature
6 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter and flour two 8-inch round pans. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Combine 1/4 cup sugar and the lemon zest. In the bowl of a mixer, blend together the butter and lemon sugar until light and fluffy. Add remaining sugar and beat another minute or two until smooth. Add the milk alternately with the flour mixture a little at a time until it is all incorporated. Whip the egg whites with the cream of tartar in a separate mixing bowl with the whisk until stiff peaks just form. Whisk 1/4 of the egg white mixture into the cake batter to lighten it. Gently fold in the remainder of the egg white mixture. Divide the batter evenly between the two pans and smooth with a spatula. Bake 35-40 minutes at 350 F. Loosen the edge with a butter knife and cool in the pans ten minutes then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

For the frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
zest of a lemon
3 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the lemon juice and zest and beat until smooth, about 1 minute. This can sit at room temperature up to two hours.

Assembly:
With a long serrated knife, divide each layer in two horizontally. Place the first layer on your cake stand and if you’d like to keep the stand clean then tuck bits of waxed paper under the edges and remove these just before serving. Smooth 1/3 of the lemon curd across the first layer. Repeat twice more and top with remaining layer. Spread a thin crumb coat of frosting on the cake and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Spread remaining frosting on the cake and chill overnight.