Craft Project: New Year's Table Setting

This table runner is so simple, but so festive, I may use it year round!

Find yourself some nice heavy cotton zig zag fabric. 

Making a Holiday Tree: Part 2

Yay! I finally completed my handmade Seussical Holiday tree!  I started out by trying to make an all cardboard tree which I quickly realized was going to look bulky and maybe a bit amateurish so I took it apart and started over with more of a mixed-media approach.

Delicious Bread Crumb Topping Makes a Simple Meal Special

 I have recently become addicted to bread crumbs.  Not boring bread crumbs added into things to thicken them, but reveling in the deliciousness of the crumb itself.  You can start with any base: ready made bread crumbs (Panko style is good), rye bread, white, day old pita or whole wheat bread.  I really like to use dark rye bread or Dave's Killer 21 Grain Bread.  If you want a gluten free option, you can use crumbled up potato chips instead for a decadent topping.  (Be sure to use a thicker chip, like Tim's Cascade.)

Play Date with Metal

I had a zillion things I was supposed to do last weekend but I was reckless and blew them all off to go play with metal all day Saturday at the Tacoma Metal Arts Center.

It's my friend Kimberly's fault.  She had a gift certificate for a class and asked if I was interested. I studied making jewelry at North Seattle Community College way back in my early twenties and after getting my degree in sculpture, I haven't played around much with jewelry except tinkering around with reclaimed tin and wire work.

Hosting a Blind Wine Tasting

 Hosting a regular old wine tasting is fun and all but once a year, we like to hold a blind wine tasting party.  This is when nobody knows what they are drinking and they try to guess.

It's best if you pick a theme.  You could try different varietals, say Merlot, Cabernet, Malbec, and Grenache and try to have everyone pick out which one is which.  This is harder than you think.  When we went to a tasting like this with 6 reds, only one person of 12 of us had even 3 correct!  You could pick regions to compare: a French Merlot versus a Washington Merlot, for example.

I decided on a Malbecs around the world tasting.  Now all I needed was the wine and the supplies.

True Diary of a Part Time Vegan

What's that?  How can you be a part time vegan?  Let me tell you a little story about my journey to being a part-time, nearly full-time vegan.

I started getting more interested in healthy eating about 2 years ago.  I tried off and on over the years to go to the gym, which I thought was the number one thing about being healthy.  I was in my late thirties, had just run a half marathon and realized that I actually wasn't in that good of shape and I was overweight.  Like, oh, so many other people, I joined Weight Watchers.

Making a Holiday Tree Part 1

 

UPDATE:   Check out my Making a Holiday Tree Part 2 to see the results!

Can you believe I just turned 40 and I have never, ever put up a holiday tree in my adult life?  I think I had a roommate or two over the years that put one up but I never had to deal with watering one or worrying about needles falling all over the place or the cat climbing into the branches.  I don't really celebrate Christmas except to eat a big meal with family and friends but this year I am going all out.  

We are hosting my husband's company party for starters.  And then having a big dinner party a week after that and then hosting lots of family members the actual week of Christmas.  So I decided it was time to get it together, and decorate.  

Homemade Dog Biscuits

 Dog biscuits and treats are ridiculously expensive.  And full of weird additives.  Now, I am not an advocate of cooking my dog his food or anything, but I have pondered the idea of making him his own treats for over a year.  Luckily, we taught him to like carrots right off the bat and that is always a cheap, healthy treat to give him.  (OK, maybe he doesn't even absorb anything because his poo is orange the next day but we figure it gives him fiber.)

40 X 40: Make Green Gazpacho

 I somehow always manage to choose the food items off my yearly lists and this year's 40 x 40 is no exception.  Straight to the food items!  I have felt a master of the universe as far as red gazpacho goes, but had never tried a green gazpacho.  No green tomatoes here.  This is a solid base of spinach and cucumbers and green peppers and hearty bread.


 It comes from one of my most favorite cookbooks---Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi.  This London based Jerusalem transplant owns several restaurants and they all sound delicious.  On a whim, I tried to make a reservation at Ottolenghi a couple months out.  I thought, hey, if I can get a reservation, we will find a way to get to London this summer.  No go.  This guy is as popular as Momofuku or Per Se. 

What is so interesting about this vegetarian cookbook is that it is not arranged in the typical salad- soup-entree manner.  Instead, the various chapters are made up of different vegetables and vegetable families.  Almost all of the ingredients are readily available with maybe only a few items coming from your local southeast Asian or Middle Eastern market.   I also made the eggplant dish that is on the cover and it came out as beautiful as his picture!  His other book Jerusalem (co-authored with Sami Tamimi) has meat in it and is a fabulous book as well.  Another one that is already out in Europe is coming out in the states in September and I am already on the waiting list!

 

I took a nutrition class this year (post on this coming soon) and it made me really stop and think about what I am eating.  I know I cook a lot from scratch already and use a lot of whole foods and eat a lot of vegetables.  But the class really gave me an understanding of a plant based diet which led me further down the rabbit hole in terms of vegetarianism, even veganism.  (Is that a word?  I don't think so.)  Anyways, more posts coming on that as well but for now I just want to show you how delicious this green gazpacho was.  

 I was totally stressed because one of my husband's employees--vegetarian!---employee was coming over for dinner and usually I try to impress at my dinner parties with some big fancy meat thing so this was a little test for me to rearrange my thinking.

And it went off without a hitch!