Sailing and Chowder - Wordless Wednesday

Soul

We've just returned from an almost garish weekend trip to the East Coast. Yes, I jauntily flew 5 hours (one way) for a weekend. What an indulgence. And oh so necessary. Now, if only the lottery folks would understand that I need to do this more than once every 3 years.

My soul is well, better now. I was reminded of my love for my husband, my love for friends (old and new), my love for Halifax and all its rotten charms and tourist traps, my love for the ocean and falling leaves and leaves falling in the ocean, my love for foghorns and even cruise ship bellows, my love for beer, my love for simply strolling, my love for me and my soul.

Just a sailboat, as seen from our sailboat.

Coming home with Kate and her family after we sailed and ate. A day spent with friends old and new. Capped with beers cuddled under Kate's mom's quilt and quiet conversations about love, grief, picky eaters, firefighting, vegetarianism, health care reform, friends, creativity, writing, boats, and love again.

PS Barb, I'm sorry we missed each other. Next time!

Celebrating the marriage of one of my oldest friends to the woman who clearly makes his heart dance and leap.
Boys being boys at the Seaport.

Colourful inspiration at the farmers' market.

Waterfront details that warm the cockles.

Halifax details that blow your mind with stories.

Late night shenanigans with the best man on Earth. We got ourselves sorted out in Halifax over 14 years ago and did so again this weekend.

It's a good thing I have my soul, because I'm pretty sure my heart was wrenched from me, tied to a heavy rock, and thrown in the Atlantic. At least I'll have a good excuse to go back.

Grey/Gray

So, I spent a day organizing my fabric. I'm still not done. But I did get through the main stacks and all my bins. What remains are the scraps, selvages, and ongoing projects.

I organize everything by colour. And I had to get a new bin for one colour. It seems I've been on a bit of a grey kick lately. These fabrics range from almost beige to nearly black. Some have more blue than brown. I love the way they vary. The entire stash reminds me of a pile of rocks.

The vast majority of these fabrics have been purchased in the last 6 months. Yikes! I'm in love and almost ready to start cutting into these. Almost. There are a few projects in my head.

And I'm going to share that cutting with you next Friday when I'm part of Pat Sloan's Double Blog Tour for the Sullivan's Edge Rulers.

But first, I want to know, how do you spell grey/gray?

Straight

It's been a long time since I did straight lines. While I adore symmetry and order in my life, my quilting tends to be a bit more random, chaotic, and improvised. And frankly, a bit lazy. I will always try to choose the easy way out of a situation, including quilting.

This is changing though. On the Bookcase quilt I chose a more time-consuming pattern to great effect. And when it came time to start quilting my Low-Volume Circles (I still need a better name than that) I had only one vision for the quilting. It involves a lot, a lot of straight lines. Oh, and some hand quilting. Definitely not the easy way out.

This is the start of the straight lines, as seen from the back. I'm hoping to have this one ready for the Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival, if not sooner. Watch for it!

Fiffer Feffer Feff

Dessert first.

It's just been one of those days - full of 2 year olds being 2, 35 year olds being pissy, and everyone trying their best to just get along. And stay together.

I indeed started and ended my day with a slice of apple pie. The first of the season. Talk about comfort eating. Just the way the apple peel releases from the flesh under the cut of my paring knife is enough to inspire relief in the heart. Apple pie is comfort cooking. Hmm, maybe I should be making another pie right now?

Why so much stress in my retirement and new career? Well, I've been sick (sniff) and Hubby has been pretty much gone for a week. The first few days actually felt pretty good. I thought I was handling things so well. It certainly makes a huge difference to not be gone for 10 hours a day at a job that crushed me. By now, however, I'm cranky and fuelling myself with tea all day, and a chocolate and scotch once the girls go to bed.

This weekend I thought I better buckle down and be a good mom. I tried. Hey, I only lost Death Wish once at the market today. And I did my best to take responsibility for that one, although we all know that she took off while I dealt with her spazzing sister. But today is Sunday and so rather than heat up leftovers I thought we all deserved a proper dinner.

Enter the roast chicken. Take one chicken, a giant clove of garlic, and a lemon. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Pat the chicken dry, smash the garlic clove, and stuff the lemon and garlic in the cavity of the chicken. Salt, pepper, and a little bit of olive oil. Place in oven. Cook for an hour or hour and a half (depending on the size of chicken). Eat.

The Monster asked for potatoes and tomatoes to eat with the chicken, so I roasted some potato coins and made a salad. At least I roasted a chicken. And we sat down together, us girls, and ate our Sunday dinner while singing songs about a Fiffer Feffer Feff. And then we ate pie.

Watch This!

Go, watch this now.

Okay, it's an hour or so later and you're back. Wasn't that great? Rossie did an amazing job. The term wabi-sabi is now a permanent fixture in my vocabulary. To see the history behind Fresh Modern Quilts, as well as her own inspirations and evolution, was interesting too. Modern quilt fan or not, this is worth the cup of tea and time to watch.

Peel Me a Grape

There are times in the kitchen where experimentation fails in a colossal way (note to self: stay away from the curry) and other times where a little 'why not?' turns into 'why have I never?' With a pile of Coronation grapes being snubbed by The Monster I needed that why not.

Why not put grapes in muffins? We put raspberries, peaches, apples, and even pineapple in muffins, so why not grapes? You really don't see it much though. And I'm not sure why.

Hopefully, after you see these muffins you will change your mind. There was some Twitter chatter about this a day after I made the muffins, with Jennie going all out to seed her Concord grapes.  I am far too lazy for that, so thank goodness the Coronation grapes are seedless. 

The base for this recipe is my basic muffin recipe (find it here) with some grapes and roasted, skinned, and chopped hazelnuts added in. With the the girls I have much better luck with muffins when I bake the mini kind. Mama doesn't like that because I eat a lot more that way! This recipe will make 12 regular sized muffins or 24 mini muffins.

Grape and Hazelnut Muffins

1 cup hazelnuts

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup small grapes (I used Coronation)

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray or grease with butter.

2. Roast the hazelnuts (unless already roasted) in the oven on a cookie sheet.  Roast for 10-15 minutes, giving the pan a shake every now and then. Be careful not to burn them. Pour them into a clean kitchen towel. Wrap it up loosely and rub the nuts with the towel. The skins should come off easily. Don't worry if not every bit of skin comes off. Aim for most of it. Le the hazelnuts cool while you assemble the rest of the ingredients.

3. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar in a medium mixing bowl. Combine the egg, milk, oil, and vanilla in another bowl.

4. Chop the hazelnuts coarsely, on the smaller side, but don't worry about any larger chunks.

5. Toss the chopped hazelnuts and grapes with the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients and stir until just combined.

6. Scoop into prepared muffin tin and bake for 15-20 minutes, until tops are rounded and golden.