Rachel Turns Recipe Cards into Towels (and I make her write a blog post)

Awhile ago Heather mentioned that now that she has a fancy kitchen, she should get nice towels and other accessories.  When I came across this idea:
http://blog.spoonflower.com/2012/07/turn-recipes-into-tea-towels.html

I knew that I wanted to make some for her (and me, and our cousins...)

Nik and I scanned in a recipe card (banana bread on the front, no-stick pan grease on the back) Grandma Jo had written for me. Also, there is a note on the side I made for making the banana bread into banana chocolate chip muffins, which I often bring to class once in awhile if it's my birthday or for a treat. Students have told me that if this grad school thing does work out I should bake muffins.

Nik edited the scanned images in GIMP, which I think wasn't too complicated even though we don't really know all the cool features it has. We put a blue border around the outside to make it extra cute when I turned over the edges to sew it. If I did this again, I would make sure we had at least 2-3in of blue between the "cards". In some places it was a bit small (my fault) and made rolling the edges over to sew them together a bit tricky.

We ordered 2 yards of the fabric (in the cotton-linen canvas as recommended by the link) from spoonflower. It was super exciting when it came!

Then I stitched the towels up quickly and added a little strip of ribbon in one corner so they could be hung on hooks. Heather liked them enough she thought this would make a good blog post!

Pickles

Perhaps I have too many cucumber plants. But I planted them to make homemade pickles like Amanda.  I met her once, she is a sailor, and a canner and then we participated in the Tough Mudder, so all in all, Amanda is pretty awesome, too bad she doesn't live in South East Wisconsin.

So I grew some cucumbers, this is a picture of one of the smaller ones.  Lisa and Patrick helped me, we sliced up 7 cucumbers, each was about 2 cups of sliced cucumbers. They are large and not 'pickling' cucumbers.  I did not see any pickling cucumber plants, maybe next year I will look harder.  If for some reason these don't work...

Amanda's recipe is for sweet pickles and I also wanted to make some dill, and some hot.... nothing like pickle variety.  Both recipes use white vinegar and pickling salt.  That mixture gets boiled together, and then poured over the sliced cucumbers.

Then we sealed them in a hot water bath.  This was less successful than the jam sealing.  We had a few theories, the cucumbers trap air beneath them, I tipped the jars to get the water off the top, we put the bands on too tight the first time.  They got boiled a second time and most of the jars sealed.

Amanda's Sweet Pickle Recipe

2 c. sugar (she uses a little bit less)

1 c. vinegar

1 tbsp pickling salt

1 tsp celery seed

7 c. cucumbers

1 c onion

Boil together, in a large jar put 7 cups on cucumbers 1 cup onion.  Pour boiled mixture over; let stand 24 hours.  

Or you can seal it in a hot water bath.  

Garlic Dill Recipe

2 c. water

2 c. white vinegar

2 Tbsp picking salt

garlic

dill heads

cucumbers

Same as before, boil water, vinegar and salt, then pour over the garlic, dill heads and cucumbers, I added jalapenos to two of the jars. 

Each recipe has to sit for a few weeks.

And as Rachel said, the most important part is labeling.

Returning Home

After being gone for 10 days I was happy to return home, mow the lawn and check out the garden.  The cabbage are getting pretty big.  John and Bryna had picked two jumbo cucumbers, and I picked another to send home with dad.

Dad had gotten me quite the birthday surprise too! I can't wait to try it out....

and Hugo now lives in the back yard.

Bedroom 1 Get a Refinished Door

So we found these doors in the basement, one came off between the stairwell to the dining room and the other on the kitchen.  

The narrower of the 2 was decided to go on bedroom one and the wider on bedroom 2 to replace the brightly painted doors...

When Rachel as visiting it rained on Saturday so she spent a few hours sanding.

I used the same stain on the door that went on the winter room crown molding.

And one coat at a time the finish went on. Until (three weeks later) it is finally ready!

Yesterday, Dad and I hung the door up.  It took a few modification to how it attaches to the door frame. But it went on and and shut on just the second try!

We chiseled out a new hole on the frame for where the latch ends up.

I also got new hardware for it, the old one didn't fit, and didn't match two of the doors on the landing. So some consistency will be nice.

So now I have a bedroom door that actually closes.  And doesn't have red paint on it, which means that I only have one area of red paint left in my room.  Little by little.

What have I been up to?

Well, sailing, mostly.  Last weekend we raced to Ludington in the Queen's Cup.    http://www.ssyc.org/queens-cup/qcraceresults

On the way back I got to thinking that I had a block of cheese in the fridge that if I didn't do something with it would get moldy.  So I shredded and put it in the freezer in small single serving baggies:

So this might make me sound crazy, but it is like I buy cheese, and it is pricey but the worst thing is when it goes bad, and with all of this sailing I have to be very careful to not leave food in the fridge.

The Garden is doing great. I am so impressed by this head of cabbage, tomorrow it will become Asian Slaw!

 I have been picking lots of kale and making garden salads for Bryna and I.  Then I wanted to get more creative.

So I found a recipe for kale and quinoa salad. 

http://www.yummyhealthyeasy.com/2013/04/kale-quinoa-salad.html

it made about 4 serving and is still good 2 days later.

I was worried that I had planted the wrong type of beans, the bush beans instead of the climbing ones.  After a weekend away it was clear that they are totally the climbers.

This coming weekend we have no sailing so Dad and I are going to attempt some window repair.  Happy Forth of July everyone!