updates and such

If this is not your first time visiting my rodeo you may have noticed that I spend my time in equal parts half assed copying things I find on the internet and trying to reinvent the wheel.  I never feel the need to precisely follow directions and most of the time I'm pretty sure (though most often wrong) that I already know how to do things just by being near them.  Sometimes the things I make come out really cool in a weird new way.  Sometimes they are a total failure.  Most of the time the things I make are good enough...good enough for family gifts or, in the case of food, good enough to put on the table but I won't be getting a tip.

Sometimes I day dream that I will become good enough at making some thing or things that someone might want to pay for them.  But very often the day dreams end with me reminding myself that five years in school and 10 years as a professional photographer took all the fun out of taking pictures.

So the hell with that.

The last week and a half I have been having a little vacation from one of the little ones.  He and his mom went off to Asia.  I miss him terribly but there has been time for me to catch up on some things I've been thinking about doing.

Remember the post There will be cock ups? I pulled that baby out of the closet of crafty delight and unsewed the mess I made while trying to make the machine do the work.  The thing is just too lumpy bumpy.

So I lined it up the way I thought it should go with the lining starting about two inches below the top edge and I spent an entire evening sewing that sucker in by hand.  Which was surprisingly relaxing.  I think I get how women in the past could sit and sew by hand without going insane it gets mesmirizing after a while. Plus I found that doing it by hand I was able to bully the parts into doing what I wanted them to do much more easily.  

Not the prettiest whipstitch (searched for whipstitch video found these gals instead) ever but unless you are looking this close you really can't see it.  

Then I made a pretty pin.  I decided to use a pin instead of a button so it can be taken off and used for decoration other places.  Fun huh?

I found two hat patterns that worked pretty good. This one which I think needs some adjusting.  I made two and sent one to my friend Sheri cause who doesn't love to get a random hat in the mail?

And This one which I copied out of a how to make hats book I got from the library

 

An old angry birds tshirt got sacrificed.  It's reversible with stripes on the inside.  I drew the shape for the pieces on to newspaper and used that for the pattern.  It's a bit too pointy and it was supposed to fit the big boy but I forgot to calculate in the seam allowance so the little boy gets it.  

I also revisited the Kale chips.  This time I just sprinkled a little salt on them from the salt shaker right before I put them in the oven.  I had to dare my son and his friends to try them but once they did they all said they were good.  Truth be told my kid ate a few, another kid only ate the one I dared him to eat but the third kid chowed the rest of the plate.  I wonder if his mom knows.  

I've been trying out some frugal and/or green cleaning (not necesarily both).  I did take pictures and thought about writing about it but I just couldn't make it interesting even to myself.  If you are interested in how I cleaned my drip pans here are some things I tried.  And just so you know...not one of these methods worked without scrubbing and not one of them got rid of all the gunk even after all the scrubbing.

How to clean drip pans naturally

How to clean a burned pot

How to clean your drip pans

My little vacation is almost over. My plan for the weekend is to try making my own laundry detergent.  

This is what I hope to try wish me luck!

Snack hunt.

I am a snacky-snack-snackerson-snaaaaaaaackaholic. Potato chips and candy bars oh you are my lovelies. Of course, like everyone else, I want to be healthy but come on! I want some sweet and salty joy in my life!

I'm a big girl now and I have learned to control myself....a bit.  I allow myself a weekly candy bar.  I still have an occasional ugly week where control is just not possible. But for the most part every single evening I chow down on a few handfuls of sesame sticks and dried cranberries.  Yep.  Hippy snacks. I am guilty.  I am constantly on the hunt for something new and interesting (and at least sort of healthy) to fill the little hole in my life that was once filled by cool ranch doritos. (If you say Sun Chips, I'll have to kill you)

The first time my nutty health food friends suggested kale chips I think I snorted.  Loud.  I'm a pretty recent convert to kale.  It took way too many choked down bitter kale salads before I tried cooking it, but cooking it changed everything.   Now I cook it in just about anything, but making it into chips? Uh, really? I've tried a good number of types of vegetable chips and they never quite do it unless they are mostly potato (white potato. sweet potato isn't the same and doesn't count).  I love these but they're just potato chips with some other veggies mixed in for color.  Yes, potatoes are vegetables but lets face it they are the candy of vegetables.

So I decided I was going to hunt down some kale chips and give them a try.  My short term memory is on again off again so the first time I went looking for them I came home with two kinds of kelp chips instead of kale. 

 Kelp chips smell and taste like fish. 

and

No amount of sugar or spice is going to cover it up.  

Second try.  I brought home these.

Superfoods? Hmmm.  It's weird, when you first bite into them, they are surprisingly good. But, just as you are about to reach for the second bite of your new favorite snack, you are hit with the most unbelievable chemical after taste.  I did not eat a second one.  My son spit his out.  

I had pretty much written off kale chips as just one more hippy food lunacy.  Then my son's friend told me that he really likes them.  Turns out he's never had the horror in a green bag that I thought was a kale chip.  He said his dad makes them and they are awesome.  Now, I know I can trust chip advice from a 9 year old, but I was still skeptical.  

Next stop: The Google Thing.  

Turns out kale chip recipes are all over the internet like top ten funniest cat videos.  Of course none of them agree on how to do it...but they do all agree on one thing: It's really freakin' easy.  

And it is!   I read about 10 different recipes, all slightly different, then I just sort of went to it.  

My kale was a bit limp but I didn't think that would matter since I was planning on dehydrating it anyway.  

Ain't it purty

One of the recipes suggested using a salad spinner after washing the kale to get rid of as much water as possible.  People really own salad spinners? 

Yes, they do! Turns out you can spin your salad to the tune of 160 bucks if you really feel the need.  That's some serious cabbage! (I crack myself up)

I used a couple paper towels, worked just fine.  I could probably have used some cloth napkins....ok next time.

I figured first time around I better keep it simple.  Olive oil and salt.  A tablespoon of oil for all that kale didn't really seem like enough but when I started mixing it around it went pretty far.  A teaspoon of salt seemed like way too much so I only used half.  

Some recipes suggested using PAM.  There is something freaky wrong about about foodish stuff in a spray can (that doesn't mean I haven't been known to down a whole can of whipped cream straight in to my mouth).  This web site suggests a DIY solution  which sounds a whole lot better than serving up my veggies slathered in propellant.  I'm all for quick and easy and if it's healthy too, bonus! But cooking oil in a can just seems....icky.  

Have you heard about the Olive Oil Conspiracy?  Ugh.  I found this wordy thing that tells you pretty much everything you need to know if you want to only get good olive oil.  Here is my truth about olive oil: That shit is expensive! Yes it tastes better.  Yes it's healthier.  But the cheap shit isn't killing me and mostly it tastes fine.  So I bought this:

Which looks an unnatural color of green in the spoon 

But Tom over at the truth in olive oil blog says don't pay attention to the color. So I won't.

I stirred in the oil sprinkled on my 1/2 teaspoon of salt (still seems like alot) and laid it out on some parchment paper.  I love parchment paper! Thank you mouthy Martha for bringing this wonderful stuff to my life.  Most stuff won't stick to it.  And the stuff that does stick you just peel the paper away from the food like edible stickers.  

Popped it in the oven at 300F The temperature is a major point of disagreement in the recipes as is the length of time required to make them the right texture.  So I picked a lowish temp and started checking on them after about 5 minutes.  At 15 minutes they looked like this

It cooled off really quickly and was nicely crispy.  So I pulled them all out, peeled them off the parchment and started eating.....I inhaled 5 or six before the salt really hit me.  Too much too much too much I knew it was too much.  I'm definitely going to try this again! Before being overwhelmed with the salt they were light and crispy and wonderfully chip like.  Don't get me wrong they are not potato chips and you won't be dunking them into a bowl of onion dip, they just won't hold up.  But, they are tasty enough and easy enough to make that this might just get to be a staple around our house.  

Yay for Kale chips!