Single serving, oatmeal-free apple crisp

We are foster parents.  The house can go from 2 adults to 2 adults & 2 kids before you can say "boo", and with new children in the house, you don't know if they go bananas when they eat sweets or not, so this fruit-based dessert is perfect, and the recipe can be altered to suit how many people are coming to dinner.  The kids can help make it and they love that... plus they love how easy it is to make a fancy dessert.  And every ingredient is a staple in our house.   We've ALWAYS got apples in the fruit bowl, butter in the freezer, brown sugar & flour in the pantry, and cinnamon in the spice cabinet.  It's a no-brainer... a modification of my Grandma Lindquist's recipe. 


About one apple for 2 people (Granny Smith apples are GREAT for this).  For one apple, get 2 ramekins... About 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter.  About 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of flour.  Cinnamon.  A pinch of salt.

Your choice, pecans, Walnuts, raisins, craisins. 

Peel, core & slice the apple.  Put the apples in individual ramekins.  sprinkle cinnamon on them & toss.  If you're using raising, walnuts, craisins or pecans, put about a tablespoonful in each ramekin.  Mash the rest of the ingredients together with a fork, add more cinnamon (we LOVE spice in this household), divide & crumble over each of the two ramekins.

Cook at 350 degrees for a half hour. 

 

Notice that the one on the right looks different from the one on the left.  I just made these for Wayne & myself.  This recipe allows you to personalize each one.  He likes more pecans and less topping, I like more topping.  YUM!

My first quilt

25+ years ago, I was tired of sewing dresses & skirts, jumpers & other things for myself, and I wanted to do a quilt.  The cluttery look of a home full of homemade calico & ruffles all over everything, table-skirts and cutesy home made pillows with lace & ruffles... it was my grandma's aesthetic, not mine.  I wanted something more sleek & modern for my home, but I couldn't afford to BUY the modern, sleek, contemporary look, or rather, what I could afford of it, would be hopelessly cheap and low quality.  I needed a way to do it for myself.

Surely there as a way to DIY something that would not look calico, ruffled, shabby/country chic and old-fashioned... I thought a bedspread would be a good start. 

Remember, this was before the internet.  FInding a pattern required a trip to the library or bookstore.  And I knew of no quilting groups for younger women (as I was at the time).  I just knew I wanted something different from the old-fashioned, Americana type quilt that would be at home in a country cozy house.  I wanted urban... or beachy... not farmhouse.  So I stumbled upon the tumbling blocks pattern and realized that it could be altered to give a little modern twist.  Use some brighter fabrics.  In this case, a range from cobalt, to teal to purple...

I honestly don't remember how I did the quilt top.  People I've met recently ask if I had trouble with all the Y seams... apparently, that's not something that quilters look forward to... I don't remember it being a big problem for me.  The problem was putting it together into a useful object.  So I put it aside.

And then, about 25 years later, my Mom died.  My Dad spent a few lonely years, and I really, really needed to do something special for him for his next birthday.  So last year in late August, I pulled the old quilt top out.  It did not have a border, just a bunch of diamond shapes sticking out... in some areas, it was so skee-jawed (mom's term, I think the modern quilting term would be "wonky"), that I didn't think it could be made into a square/rectangular quilt shape.  But I powered through it.  I pieced a few yards of dark blue, and spray-based it to a fluffy-lofted filling, and then spray basted the top to it.  It had (and still has) giant folds and wrinkles in it.  But that was the only way to get it semi-straight.  I rolled the diamond sides over to the back side, so if you look at the back, it's got a strange, rolled hem with a pattern to it... well, "pattern" would be a misnomer... variegated colors.  I didn't cut off any diamond tips, just folded them under.  Probably a mistake, but it made for a kind of undulating and VERY home-made-y finish to it.  Then I stitched in the ditch. 

With my home sewing machine, this was a challenge... a fluffy lofted quilt pushing through the normal sized arm... SOOOO... I chose to start in kind of a spiral, stitching all the ditches that were outside and easy to reach, turning as I found a corner...

That did pretty good.  It got me through about 1/3 of the quilt on each side, and a little from the top & bottom... the middle 1/3 of the quilt was the only part that was tough to quilt.  But Dad's October 6th, 85th birthday was looming and I had a deadline.  On October 3, 2012, I finished the quilt! 

more than 25 years in the making.  I started it just after graduate school, between 1983 and 1985... and now it was done.

My Dad, who was has become my idea of the best type of "cool", now has it.  He's slowed down, so he needs the extra warmth.  But the modern style fits his style.  Although he grew up in a very rural community and had not a lot of family money, he worked hard and got himself through medical school.  He went to Korea at about the time period referenced in M*A*S*H, and worked in an Evac unit.  He returned to Ft. Meade and met my mother, who was working as head of the secretarial pool in the Department of the Navy at the Pentagon (the part of the pentagon that was victim of the 9-11 attacks 40+ years after she left it).  They married and moved to live in New York.  Mom worked for the CIA and Dad was a resident in pathology at the hospital across the street.  They lived in a very urban way, living in a building that everyone who was there knew was condemned, and as soon as all the residents could be ousted, it would be demolished.  They were the picture of the first "yuppies"... hosting martini parties and living the best young-adult life available to a dual income professional couple.  When they had me, they chose the most modern way of child-birth, the natural method... Dad, the newly minted pathologist working in a research hospital, was aware of all the newest research, and he decided that all the epidurals and such were probably not a good idea. 

After I arrived, they moved to "the country", a gated community in Rockaway beach.  We lived on the beach across from our church.  I probably made sandcastles with some of the boys who, 40 years later, were victim of the 9-11 attacks on the WTC.  That very Catholic, very Irish neighborhood was hard hit, considering the number of them who had chosen careers in law enforcement and firefighting.  But 50 years ago, before our country lost it's innocence, my Daddy was still a smoker.  Mom, with her black hair and bright blue eyes looked like a young Liz Taylor... and Dad looked like... well, there's one photo of him leaning against his car at the beach.  I'm playing in the sand at his feet, and he has a cigarette pack rolled up in his t-shirt.  He looked like the picture of James Dean, a Rebel without a cause.... the ultimate of "cool".  Given that they maintained their own moral compasses and did not do the heavy drinking, drugging, and cheating that the hipster generation might have done, they really were "cool".  Doing the part of the hip stuff that we look at old movies and long for... the super-cool martini parties, the fondue parties, etc... but missing the part of that generation's behavior that caused many of them to get old before their times.

These days, he feels cold more often than he exudes cool... so the quilt is a good fit. 

I held it in the back of my mind that this quilt was not good enough for him, but better to give it than to hold it back and wait.  We don't have time to wait, these days.  But I still worried.  And then the miracle of modern technology came to my rescue.  I was browsing and found a quilter's guild.  Actually, I found LOTS of quilters' guilds.  So I found one that fit my schedule and went, and then joined.  And I talked to people, heard their stories, saw how perfect their quilts were, and asked some questions... And I explained how intensely IMPERFECT this first quilt was.  And they helped me let go of it.  THe imperfections...

I guess the quilters who finish their projects are the ones who don't get mired in worry about the imperfections.  Maybe I'll tell that to my artistic niece, who seems to have a hard time finishing her projects... that finishing it is more important than perfecting it.  What a great lesson to learn.... 

... lesson learned... 25+ years later

my first art quilt: The secret heart of my niece

OK, it's time to start posting about my projects.  The most recently finished was one for my niece.  She's a recent immigrant from Thailand.  And at age 16, having been taken from her friends and brought to this country where she's not so comfortable with the language, she's not too happy.  She's homesick, and she wants her freedom. 

She is also an artist, which at age 16, means to her that she feels deep, artistic thoughts.  She feels very dark, and feels like she has to keep her feelings inside.  She goes to school and smiles, but there are things she's not too happy about.  Sometimes, she just wants to hide, or have everything go back to the way it was.  But it can't be, so she just feels... sad.

And she's also got everything else about being a mid-year teen going on.  So it's tough. 

I wanted to do something for her to help her understand how to open herself up to this experience, how it could end up being a great thing for her if she lets it be... so I thought of this quilt I once saw... it was an artistic quilt, where flaps had been sliced into the quilt so that it flapped outside of the frame.  It was pretty cool, and it would work for what I wanted.

I asked her for her favorite colors... the answer:  Grey, blue, orange... those colors work REALLY well for what I wanted to do. 

I asked my brother to please spell some words for me in Thai characters:  Niece, Pretty, Smart, Artistic, and Loving.  He sent them to me in a word document, so I was able to enlarge them to see them pretty well.

I essentially made 6 quilts.  Five of them have progressively smaller windows/flaps.  The top quilt, when all the windows are closed, is dark gray.  The bottom quilt, when all the windows are open, is bright orange.  In the middle, are various shades of blue.  darker as they get closer to the orange, so it would pop out. 

The orange window opened to a heart quilted into the fabric.  I followed the line around and allowed it to get progressively less heart-like, until by the time it hit the uppermost quilt, it was just an oval over the top of it. 

Each window... when closed, at the bottom of the window, has a word... the top quilt's word is "niece".  The more important words come as you start opening up the layers.  You can barely read it, because it's my nieces "SECRET" heart, not her OPEN heart, you know?  It's our secret, that we know it's there (shhhh, only those who are in the know, know).  On the inside of the window, only legible when you open it up, is the quilted word, the English translation of the Thai word on the outside of that same window.  These are printed at the bottom of the window so that when all the flaps are open, you can see all of the English words, one on top of the other.  And when you finally open all of the windows for my niece, you see her beautiful, bright heart.

It's made to hang, and it's made to generally keep the windows open all the time...

Two days before I was scheduled to drive to see her and I was going to bring this to her, she was frustrated about something and posted on her facebook page, "I never SAID I was PERFECT!!!"  Perfect, 16 year old frustration, right?  Well, this was perfect for me, because this little quilt was my first on this style, and it's WAY not perfect.  The words were tough to write, my first attempt at that, and the laywers were each made with a single piece of cloth as the topper... with the window made as a buttonhole stitch through that quilt, and then opened up just the way a buttonhole would open.  I didn't want to bind those edges, I wanted them to fall easily rather than stiffly, and I did not want a contrast in the closed window.  I wanted the most minimal line to indicate it opening, and a buttonhole stitch seemed the best way.  But buttonholes have little threads that you don't see when it's on the button.  the edging doesn't necessarily make a clean cut.  And my measurements were WAY from perfect... I made some adjustments to the size of the windows as I went along, so that the lowest window, the heart, would be big enough.  And adjusting the holes as I went meant the slivers of fabric you'd see of each later (other than the window) would be not as uniform as they could have been.  This whole quilt is a little wonky. 

It's not perfect.  But, as I answered to my niece on the night that she posted that frustrated cry... "sometimes the most beautiful things are not perfect.  it's the imperfections that make them beautiful."

Thank God for that, right?

 

lip gloss

A few months ago I saw a Pinterest on lip gloss.  I looked it up and saw that several people have used the same recipe.  Problem is, the recipe as written, results in gritty lip gloss.  More appropriate for a lip scrub.  And while lip scrub of that sort is wonderful to help reduce dry flakes, it is not the type of gloss that you'd love to wear and would feel... well... KISS-able. 

The basic recipe is to take drink mix like crystal lite or Koolaid, and stir it into petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline).  One of the recipes announced that you just have to stir it longer, but I tried it, and it does not work. 

One of my biggest complaints about recipes in some networks (and on some internet sources, and in some books) have not been tested.  I had wondered about this for years, and then I saw "Julie, Julia", where they mentioned that a specific cookbook of Julia Child's era had not been tested.  The recipes were made up by what sounded good, but without regard to the chemistry of the process.  For example, there may have been no explanation that the reason pasta water needs salt is that this is the only opportunity to season the pasta from the inside, where it needs it.  And when you boil the pasta in salt and it gives off its gluten, it makes a liquid that is perfect for the task of giving sauces the proper texture.  Save some of the pasta water and you've got the perfect additive to cheese to form the perfect alfredo, for example. 

Watching that movie made me realize that the problem with many of the ideas out there that people have, for food as well as home improvement projects, as well as smaller craft projects such as I am describing here, is that they were created without regard to whether or not they really work. 

Which is why I found myself wondering whether I could figure out how to mix a watery drink mix with the crystals dissolved, into a hard oil like Vaseline.  I decided to try it out.  I took some drink mix, put just enough water in to dissolve the crystals.  But it was clearly not going to mix up properly.  It didn't work.  So I left it on the counter, overnight, rather than washing out the little dish.  I was thinking on it.

Miraculously, the next day, the water had mostly evaporated, leaving a sticky, nasty mess in the little dish.  A mess that would have been a pain to wash... like syrup, not like a drink.  BUT... WAIT... it's no longer watery.  Maybe...

I tried mixing in a little Vaseline.  Wow.  Magic.  LIP GLOSS.  No crystals, no strange problems with water refusing to mix with oil...

So, here's the formula.  Get a small dish, put drink crystals in it that are colored in the palette you choose (pink lemonade may yield pink... pomegranate may yield darker rose, cherry will be red, etc.)  Put a few drops of water in until it's all dissolved, and then let it wait.  Once the mixture is sticky and no longer watery, mix it with Vaseline.  Then fill a lip gloss pot (available at craft stores, or in kits for air travel liquid containers), and enjoy.  The flavor is more enjoyable than most lip glosses, so be careful, you will be tempted to re-apply more frequently through the day. 

My next experiment will be to use coconut oil instead of Vaseline.  The difference is that coconut oil is an opaque white color when room temperature, more the texture of a lipstick, and may hold the color better.  It will be less like gloss and more like lipstick.  IF this works. 

Stay tuned, I'll let you know the results of that experiment when I do it.  But first, I need to finish using my wonderful new lip gloss! 

Oh, and P.S.  This is a great project to do with your teen girls.  It tastes great, and supplies just a tiny bit of color to the lips, just like the glosses that are made for tweens, but much, MUCH less expensive and much more fun!

homemade lip gloss and lip scrub

In an effort to cut costs, going with cheap make-up is one option.  But sometimes the cheap stuff has odd ingredients, changes color, aggravates allergies, etc.  And of course, for a girly girl who likes to play with make-up, it's not as much FUN.  Flavored lipsticks are less intense if they're the cheap variety, and then there's the whole feeling of "I'm cheapening up on myself", which never feels good.

But what MIGHT feel good is knowing you've got a homemade, (green), healthy, CUSTOM-mixed option. 

In the past, I have made my own custom face masques, hair rinses, hair conditioners, and cheek blushers.  Those, I will offer later.  Today, I present my homemade lip gloss and scrub.  All over the internet, I found recipes for a lip gloss.  The result was ALWAYS gritty.  Some of the recipes even admitted that they were gritty.  One offered a remedy to smooth it out... "stir longer".  I tried.  That does not work.

You see, the recipe generally goes like this.  You take petroleum oil such as Vaseline, add a drink powder such as Crystal Light or KoolAid, and voila... lip gloss. 

When I made it, it was a lip scrub, and no amount of stirring will fix that.  It's as though the people who made up the recipe and passed it around did not bother to test it out, or maybe they were willing to settle for less than the best they could do.   I had to take it a step further. 

Here's the fix for getting rid of the grit in homemade lip gloss:  The night before, put your powder in a small dish.  Drop just enough water into it to dissolve the grit.  The result should be a little too liquid to even envision mixing with Vaseline.  So let it sit overnight.  The next morning, you'll find the stuff in the dish has turned gummy.  PERFECT.  NOW put in a little Vaseline and mix it up.  You'll find no need to stir & stir & stir... the granules are already dissolved, the grit is gone, and as long as it has not crystallized again, it will now mix up perfectly. 

The taste is yummy.  The tint is very faint.  Perfect for younger women who might crave the chance to use make up but who you might be a little worried about them taking that step just yet.  And, if you use more drink mix powder, you get a stronger color.  Less is a fainter color.  AND, of course, if your lips are cracked or chapped, and need a little treatment... skip the step where you dissolve the granules. 

Clean lip gloss pots can be bought in packs with travel-sized containers, or you can take an old one of your own and clean it out REALLY well.  There is nothing more fun than using a lip gloss that you made on your own.

My next experiment will be to use coconut oil.  At room temperature, coconut oil is hard, more like lipstick, and white... so maybe it will leave more color on the lips when used?  Or less?  I know it has nutrients that are good for the skin and lips, so it's worth the try.  I'll write another post when I do that.  Stay tuned.