The colour mystery

O.K. let's start with where the canning intersected with the sewing.

I have been making various things, with a one week pause because my sister-in-law and mother-in-law are here. They are wonderful and it has been a great week.

But back to canning for a minute.

I have been making mango and ginger chutney and processing it in my new super duper giant canner, which is thrilling to use:

Just imagine what I can unleash on the family with this baby.

One of my great pleasures has been stirring the mango mixture because it is so colourful and so beautiful:

I mean how can anything that looks this upbeat not make you cheerful? Impossible not to smile when you look at this.  And below is my mango jam (all eaten up already by the relatives, at least I now know what to make them for Christmas), equally zippy looking:

And I have also made, among other things, a Jamaican banana and ginger jerk type chutney with a lot of pep and great flavour. 

However it looks like this in the jar:

I mean how non tasty does this look? It's is the kind of stuff you serve and have to say "Look I know it looks like gruel but it's really, really good." I should have added turmeric or something for colour. So this stuff, which is one of my best, is still sitting there looking like glug, jar after unopened jar.

The problem is the colour.

Which brings me to a huge contribution I am about to make to Western Thought and Civilization is general.

Maybe no one should wear clothes in colours that they would not eat.

Hang in there with me, think this through.

One thing that really strikes you in Florida is all the colour in the clothes. Walk into a Belk (southern department store) and the colour in the ladies' dresses is sort of an explosion. Look at Lilly Pulitzer clothes:

As  my sister-in-law observed these aren't the colours they wear at home in Nova Scotia. 

Gee that is too bad, and about to change.

OK I get it. 

I mean the colours reflect the environment, and in Nova Scotia for 3/4 of the year, in rain, sleet, snow, frozen ground seasons, this is what those colour are:

OK, now how about this.

If it is grey and dark outside why not resist? Why not counter-attack?

Why not dress uplift not downshift?

I mean who wrote the rule that people in February shouldn't wear sorbet rainbow colours? 

What's with the dead colours when you need life most?

What's with wearing what you wouldn't eat?

So I am staking out a place of resistance here, and with SIL enabling, here are my new sunglasses:

One step at a time folks, one step at a time.

Happy Mother's Day to my three children

This mother's day I am holding the line on my position that it is me who should be thanking my children and not the other way around.

Think of all the laughs I would have missed, the extra sleep I would have had, and most of all, all the growing up I myself would have not done.

It has also occurred to me that sewing is a big part of my memories of raising my children.

To my oldest, my daughter who was once toasted by her matron of honour at her wedding "as a girl who really loved her mother - look at all the weird home-made outfits she wore  to school."

This is also the same daughter who made me a scissors case, hand-stitched, to take to sewing classes so I wouldn't miss her.

And the same daughter who now sews too and told me that last week, when happily shopping for fabric, realized she had one child exhausted and asleep in the stroller, and the other laying on the floor in the middle of an aisle, eating snacks to keep herself busy.

"I suddenly realized I had become my mother."

I think too of my youngest son who used to help me by cleaning out my serger lint with Q-tips - no one did a slicker job, before every project, and who used to sit cross-legged behind my machine on the table sewing on buttons on clothes for his bear. He was also the one who got 100% in family studies for a perfectly sewn pair of shorts.

And of course I am thinking today too of my middle son. He always has some mending, alterations, or button sewing himself for me to do, every visit home and every time I visit him. Whenever he tells me, "Mom when you come down to New York can you bring some needles and thread I have stuff I need you to do for me" I know both that he is partially humouring me, and equally that it works.

He is also the kid, my real busy kid, who wouldn't leave some major project in the backyard when I wanted him to come in to shop for back-to-school clothes, but just shouted back to me at the kitchen window, "I am too busy, just take my measurements."

Thanks guys.

Happy mother's day.

What's going on today

Listen in.

Sandwiches made in minutes out of interfacing

 Right.

Now I am liberated to add a sort of cooking sub-department to this blog I have my latest to share.

Every year when we drive down here we go to this really wonderful Thai restaurant in Freeport that has these amazing fresh rolls - made out of rice paper wrappers and salad stuff inside with a few shrimp.

These are A1 units but that's a long way to go to get them, say on a Tuesday night in Halifax.

So I made it my mission to replicate what they serve and I think the head chef and I have come up with a very reasonable facsimile.

These are excellent summer sandwich substitutes and a total snap to make. If your salad gear is already chopped (the short cut sous chef is thinking right now of her food processor at home, or those little bags of shredded salad stuff you can buy at the store) the actual assembly is less time than it takes to cut the crusts off a sandwich and into diagonal slices.

They keep for a few days in the fridge too if you have some left over and are for some reason quite filling, which is unusual for something that is actually good for you.

I can see knocking a few of these back standing at the fridge door with my purse still over my arm and my coat on for example just to tide me over when I come in from work.

O.K.

This is what you end up with (my apologies to all South East Asian readers who will fall on the floor in hysterics over what we have done with this concept - note these are not hors d'oeuvre size, more like standing in front of the fridge door with your purse on your arm size.) And our version does not have rice noodles or other common and proper ingredients in them because cooking those noodles takes time ...

These units are ideally eaten dunked in a sauce. What you like is up to you. Some places serve a peanut sauce but the mecca in Freeport uses a thin chilli fish sauce - my own rendition will be at the bottom of this post.

What you will need:

Rice paper disks. These are sitting around on the shelves at Asian stores or maybe in larger supermarkets than our local Winn Dixie. 

This is what they look like:

When you take these little numbers out of the package they are sort of delicate looking and look just like non-woven interfacing so be encouraged by that.

Don't be fooled. These are sturdier than they look and all you do is dunk them in water for 5 seconds fill and roll.

They won't fall apart or rip and once rolled up they sort of gum up together (doesn't that description just make your mouth water?) and never unwrap. 

So no unrolling like a tortilla wrap, or shattering like phyllo.

This is easy.

If it wasn't I wouldn't be writing about it.

Once you have dipped the circles in water you plunk them down and put in whatever your little heart desires, or whatever you have in the fridge you want to get rid of inside and see what you can do to roll them up. Ours have been made of  shredded lettuce, carrot, cucumber, green onion, a few shrimp and some cilantro.

When you are done this is what they look like on the plate:

Practically zero calories and gluten-free if that is important to you.

The dipping sauce I made has this in it. No measurements because I didn't measure, just taste it:

• some water
• a bit of brown sugar
• some rice vinegar
• some garlic powder
• a slug of fish sauce (this is really the key - and the reason there is some water in this - fish sauce tastes really authentic but will knock your socks off undiluted, mainly because it sort of smells like old socks)
• some asian type chilli sauce from the back of the fridge

Now this is the best part. A video of the head chef making these up. The sound is awful as I was the videographer. We will do better next time.

Enjoy:

O.K. I am back

Well that didn't last long did it?

I needed to refresh my mental screen but it turns out that there isn't really as much on the screen as I thought, so I am back, with a few new things to say.

First of all I missed you.

I have lots of opinions and profound observations circulating around in my head and to tell you the truth the local audience is not as interested in some topics as they could be.

Things like what a stupendous new TNT dress pattern means to me for example. (More on that later I am working on version three).

You know those thoughts you have by yourself and you think, gee I should tell someone about this.

Well you are the folks I tell.

I also had to figure out what I was actually doing with this blog and I decided that the time has come for me to branch out of strictly sewing stuff to include other random activities.

Like anyone who writes a sewing blog there are definite moments when you think, "I should be blogging but I haven't made anything decent this week", and then you think "well I am falling behind in blog sewing production, way behind everyone else so I had better make something this weekend so I can have something to write about."

I mean how stupid is that as a reason to sew, and certainly not what you want me to be doing either. 

There are tons more organized, creative and productive sewing bloggers out there, making amazing things continually, but I have to tell you I realize that I have just one body and it goes to the same places- home, my daughter's to babysit, the store for groceries, work, sewing guild meetings and other social activities, and a few times a year to NYC to see my son and once a year down here in Florida.

I can rotate my current wardrobe pretty effectively through this cycle and only need so much. 

In fact what I really need is to sew things that are interesting to me or catch my eye and that's it. 

I sew without a plan, sometimes like a crazy person and some times not.

That's it and it doesn't always produce a wowser to blog about every weekend.

I also do other stuff and would like to blog more regularly about all of that without thinking my sewing readers are bored.

So I figure if I announce what this blog is going to be about, going forward as they say at work, it would be this:

• Sewing. Obviously, that's core business and the title of this blog.
• Cooking. I am a quick and easy aficionado, and any time I find a short cut way to get something on a plate I want to share that.
• Family. Look this is the centre of my life and I think a lot about relationships in families and how they change. If it isn't diplomatic to tell them, well I will tell you. Deal?
• Babies. We have two more due around Christmas and I am all involved in that.
• Women. The lives of women, I find that pretty fascinating.
• Random additional opinions, probably uncensored.

So that's where things stand right now.

I hope, if you are a sewing reading only blogger this is not a disappointment to hear I am adding some branches here. And I hope too that none of you have your hopes up too high.

This blog will continue to provide the same poor level of design and production with the same level of amateur photography (although we are working on that getting the whole head in the shot part) you have come to expect.

It appears we are back in business.

Gone fishing: a blogging pause

I have been thinking a lot these days. As I walk on the beach with Mr. Rascal, stir my mango jam, learn to knit top down sweaters.

I have been thinking if I had one thing I would say if anyone ever decides to ask me advice, is this.

Make the most of what the moment you are in is offering you.

That pretty much says all I have to say about life.

Strut those suits when you are working, sit with those toddlers and listen when you are not, enjoy your hobbies and people outside the family when yours leaves home.

Do. Not. Multi-task.

Multi-tasking is code for not making the most of where you are now.

Unplug.

Social media, if you don't watch it, can be a way of connecting with people you don't know very well, rather than with the people you do. Sorry Twitter.

I needed to think about this.

I have been busy my whole life and work wise there seem to be more and more people who want me to do things these days.

Last summer I had major surgery and, since I can work/teach online, you know how much time I took off?

Three hours. And that is counting from when I woke up after 5 1/2 hours of surgery.

Didn't want to let anyone down.

Well that was pretty stupid wasn't it?

One of the lessons of the workplace is that it closes over after you have left in about 5 minutes as if you had never been there.

Last summer I came down here with a mobile sewing room and attempted a Chanel jacket because I would have the time. It was on my list.

Enough said about that, and I am hoping they are appreciating it down there on the rack at Value Village.

I love my blog. I love your comments and I get to know my regular commentators and I just wish I could have you all over to my house.

But I have been noticing lately that some of my favourite bloggers have retired or simply stopped posting. One has told me the well just dried up, and reading between the lines, the blog had become just one more thing on her to do list.

I don't want to get to that place, ever. 

So I have decided to take myself off the grid for the duration of my time here, which is until the beginning of June.

I am going to draft some posts when I feel like it and do a lot of clean up of this site and figure out where it is going. I have some ideas.

I am sewing a very little and thinking about sewing a lot. I want to write about that.

What I am doing is really, really enjoying myself here doing exactly what I can't do at home.

I am walking the beach a lot with Mr. R and trying to get him to understand the concept of turning around. He seems stuck on wanting to walk miles in one direction without any consideration that we have to walk the equal distance back.

I am playing 18 holes of golf with my husband everyday in absolutely beautiful surroundings.

I am canning my brains out, but only things that are hard to get in any quality at home. Mango jam, as noted, mango, lime and cilantro salsa, Papaya and mango chutney.

I am also taking Craftsy classes and using the time to upgrade my knitting. I can do this outside and have the quiet to do it.

So I will be back, but you needed to know the timetable. 

We are closed for renovations, hang in there with me.

My pillowcase dress

As you probably know I spend a fair amount of time with my granddaughters.

The thing is the more time you spend with little kids the more their world makes more sense than maybe the one you had yourself wrapped up in. It's one of the fringe benefits.

Along the way I began to be quite taken with some toddler clothes and decided they might look good on me.

I am serious about this.

Next thing you know it's going to be stick-on tattoos on the arms and rainbow striped tights.

In the meantime I decided that here in Florida I needed a really not-sticking-to-my-body-dress and decided a pillowcase dress would be great. 

Feeling self-indulgent I even used a pattern, which was unnecessary, but don't tell anyone.

Here I am in a fast iPad shot in the yard here.

The fabric came from Chic Fabrics in NYC and was $4.95 a yard. It is purple with green fish on it:

The nice man at Chic really couldn't believe his luck when he realized someone was going to take this off his hands:

"This fabric here?"

"Yes that's what I want"

"It is purple"

"Yes I noticed that"

"With fishes on it"

"I like fish"

"You want this material?"

"Yes"

"The purple material with green fishes on it?"

"Yes that's right"

"This fabric?"

"Can you cut it?"

Anyway I eventually got this cut and bagged and now recently I have sewed it into a bag with a drawstring neck and think this dress is just great.

It has reminded me of something I want to do.

Make more pillowcase dresses.

Some of the members of our sewing guild have been involved  in sewing little dresses for school girls in Africa and I think I need to take some time over the summer to go through my fabric and turn it into something useful. The pattern and US address of where to send them in the link, but Canadians can send any dresses they make here.

It seems to me that when you give it ought to be of some of yourself and for me that would be a sewer.

Our sewing guild does some interesting things. 

One of the women has also been involved in collecting fabric and making up patterns and kits for sanitary napkins (I am old enough to make references like that) for girls in Kenya who - get this - because of lack of supplies have to miss school when they have their period. 

One more reason eh? 

If you are interested in that project the link is here.

At any rate as I sit here being lucky it seems to me that it is time the smart old girls did what they could to help the young girls get smart. 

And there is more than one way to bust a stash.