Our Seattle Summer & Fall

Apple Harvest

We went apple picking in Skagit valley and had lots of apple leftover to make goodies with. We rented an apple machine from our local tool library and easily peeled, cored and sliced the apples.

 "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." -- Martin Luther

Apple Butter
-6 pounds peeled, cored, quartered apples
-2 cups sweet cider
-3 cups sugar
-1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

-In a heavy, nonreactive pot, cook the apples in the cider simmering slowly until tender. Process the cooked apples through a food mill, or press through a sieve.

-Return the apple pulp to the pot and add the sugar and spices. Simmer slowly, uncovered, stirring frequently as the mixture thickens. When it is very thick and mounds up on the spoon, transfer the hot mixture to sterilized canning jars, leaving a 1/4 inch headspace. Process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes. Careful it is Hot!
Yield: about 3 pints

Canned Apple Pie Filling
-4 1/2 cups white sugar
-1 cup cornstarch
-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
-1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
-2 teaspoons salt
-10 cups water
-3 tablespoons lemon juice
-6 pounds apples

1. In a large pan mix sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg. Add salt, water & mix well. Bring to boil and cook until thick and bubbly. Remove from the heat and add lemon juice.
2. Sterilize canning jars, lids, rings by boiling.
3. Peel, core, slice apples. Pack apples in hot canning jars leaving a 1/2 inch headspace.
2. Fill jars with hot syrup & gently remove the air bubbles with a knife.
3. Put lids on and process in water bath for 20 minutes.

Hard Cider-
2- gallon jugs of Old Fashioned Apple Cider (we got our's locally from Cedardale Orchards in Mt. Vernon)
2 -half gallons jugs spiced cider from Trader Joe's
2- half gallons apple juice from Trader Joe's
5 Camden Tablets
Pectic Enzyme
White Labs Champagne Yeast

1. Sanitize a food grade bucket as the primary fermentor.
2. Pour in all the cider into the bucket.
3. Crush 5 campden tablets in the mixture. (Pitching) to kill off wild yeast and unwanted bacteria that occur naturally.
4. Wait one week
5. Add pectic enzyme & pitched white labs champagne yeast.
6. Ferment until dry. Starting gravity of about 1.1
7. Age for 2 weeks
8. Bottle
9. Age for at least 4 months

Happy Fall!

Fennel Liqueurs

We grew some fennel in our backyard garden this summer and with it brings the fall harvest. We wanted to experiment with creating infused liqueurs so here is our first shot. It turned out great! IT's sweet with a hint of licorice!

Fennel Liqueur-
1. Bottle of Vodka of the Gods from Trader Joe's
2. 10 heads of fennel (when they are yellow and flowering)
3. 1 cup sugar for one quart vodka
4. 3 gallons water
5. Cheese Cloth

-Harvest Fennel and seed. Place fennel seeds in mason jar
-Pour sugar on top of fennel seeds
-Take 3 gallons of water and heat to 160 degrees and place mason jar in the water sealed. Take off heat and place pot and mason jar in the oven (without heat)
-Let sit for 1 hour
- Strain with cheese cloth
-Chill and pour over ice
-Enjoy!

Lesser known facts about fennel:
*Fennel is used for various digestive problems, also used for upper respiratory tract infections and visual problems.
* Fennel powder can be used for a poultice for snakebites.
* Fennel oil is used as a flavoring agent in food and beverages.

Summer's Beer Brewing Bounty

This summer we grew a small herb garden and grew ingredients for small craft scratch brews and other kitchen essentials. We have lavender, chamomile, coriander, fennel, and peppers.

Coriander-
Coriander can be used in cooking for  homemade hummus and falafel, in sautés, and sometimes even on plain pasta.
Harvesting: 
Coriander is cilantro that has gone to seed so if you are a lazy gardener this is the plant for you! Coriander that isn’t fully dried tastes bitter so once you have picked your seeds be sure they dry completely. We live in Seattle so our coriander was ready to be harvested in early September.
Brewing: The seeds are a traditional ingredient in Belgian White beers and holiday ales. They have a sweet, clovelike flavor. The fresh leaves have a strong, distinctive scent and flavor used as a regular ingredient in Mexican and Chinese cooking. Use from one sprig to one ounce of fresh leaves or 1/4 to 2 ounces of seeds at the beginning of the boil for flavoring. (The Homebrewer's Garden pg.73)

Lavender- If you ask my mom what CAN'T lavender do!? And she's not the only one, lavender is known for its relaxing qualities as well as its gentle smell.   
Harvesting: 
Cut the leaves and flowers 6 inches below the flower spikes just as blooms open.
Brewing:
Lavender has a history as a brewing ingredient dating back to at least to the 1600s. It contributes a complex bitterness much like that of heather. Use 1/2 ounce of fresh or dried flowers late in the boil. The flowers can also be used for dry hopping (The Homebrewer's Garden,pg.86)

Chamomile-
Chamomile has been used as a medicine for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks.

Read more: http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/german-chamomile-000232.htm#ixzz26sgtaRl9

 Harvesting: You'll harvest the flower heads at their peak and dry them whole. After they are completely dry, you can crumble them up to store them. No stems and no leaves. OR You can use chamomile fresh by keeping dried herbs as whole as possible. Crushing/crumbling releases the volatile oils and there goes the flavor and medicinal value. You can crush as you use the herb. 
Brewing: Mild when stepped, it begcomes bitter when boiled. Use 1/4 to 2 ounces of fresh flowers at the end of the boil for bitterness. (The Homebrewer's Garden, pg.71)

Hops-

Tommy Harvesting

This is the most obvious beer ingredient in our summer's bounty. Hope growing in the Pacific Northwest is a proud tradition dating back to the late 19th century. We got our start from our landlord and neighbor. He had some old hop variety in his garden that wasn't growing, so he gave us some of our own to try out. In a matter of weeks we had a growing thriving hop plant in our yard. 
 

A great resource for if you are interested in learning more and how we got started is "The Homebrewer's Garden" by Joe Fisher & Dennis Fisher.

Our Seattle Spring

Our Seattle Spring

Doggie Bed

Pisgah needed a place to lay while in the car and such so I whipped out this quick and easy doggie bed. He is a little monster so I found super ultra-comfy felt fabric from Joanne's fabrics on sale. I cut out two even pieces of fabric, varies by size of the dog. and then sewed the fabric and stuffing (can use old shirts, ect.) on three sides inside out and then flipped to the outside. Then I sewed up the last side. For a quick and easy quilt pattern I just sewed five diagonal lines through the middle and sides. Quick, easy and soft for your puppies needs! 

Bamboo Succulent Holder

Near where we picked up the plants

So this project is super fun because it cost us ZERO $! We were hiking out along Deception Pass between Fidalgo Bay and Whidbey Island last weekend and Tommy scouted out some succulents growing all over the place. We scooped a small (environmentally friendly amount :) ) up and brought it home.

When we got home that night we needed a place for our treasures. Tommy had the brilliant idea of creating container out of some of the bamboo that grows in our backyard. We had some pre-cut down dried out stalks already. So he cut off a section he liked and then cut that in half added some wholes in the bottom  filled with dirt and there you go!

 

 

My first baby quilt

I got this quilt design from a wonderful book called "Quilting for Peace" by Katherine Bell. I made the quilt for a dear friend of mine that is due any day now.

I choose a couple of bright, complex prints then added a solid and a calmer print for balance.

Finished size: App. 36"x49"

Fabric:
1/2 yard for each four 44" wide soft cotton fabric
1 1/2 yard backing fabric
Quilt mock binding
Crib-size light weight batting
Matching cotton thread

Quilt Detail

Process:
1. From the 1/2 yard pieces cut one 3 inch x 36", one 4 1/2"x36" strip and one 5 1/2 x 36" strip.
2. Line up their long sides, arrange the 12 striped into desired pattern. Sew longe edge of each successive pair of strips with 1/4 " inseam, and press the seam allowances together.
3. Make a quilt sandwich of the three layers, and pin-baser the layers together.
4. Stitch in the ditch across all the lines and border.
5. Pin and sew the mock binding.
* I choose to embroider their name and year in the center for a personalized touch.

Front View

Backing

Blue Ridge Parkway Quilt

For my Dad's birthday this year I decided to undertake a large quilt project. He has had my first quilt I made on his bed for years and it was made for a twin size bed sitting on his king size bed. So it was time for a change. I haven't ever made a quilt that size before so I knew it was going to be a challenge, and a challenge it was since the quilt was so large towards the end of the project we had to move the furniture out of the living room to baste the quilt. In the end it turned out great, it has it's imperfections of course but that's what I love about quilting you can always go back to it and feel that it can be better. It was a huge learning process for me and took teamwork. I couldn't have done it without Tommy's help, this was definitely a project that took more than two hands.

Here's Tommy in the living room as we baste the quilt. This process involving laying out the quilt backing, batting and the quilt front and pinning or spraying all the pieces together. For this quilt we used pins rather than the spray bast because of its size.

The design is modeled after the Blue Ridge Parkway logo. I added the red plane at the top because my dad fly's a red cub airplane over the BRP all the time.

Once I decided on the logo design for the quilt the logistics of how the quilt piecing was going to work came into play. We took a small image of the BRP logo and scanned it then in photo shop divided up the logo into grid sections and then printed the app. 20 sections onto large printed sections. From that point we used the print sections as templates for the quilt fabric and followed the design from there. This was the most time consuming part of the project but not the most difficult. Often it seemed I was putting a puzzle together and had to get the pieces to fit just right. After that long process the pieces were all formed and then I had to match them all together and made the quilt front into one piece.

All the material for this project minus the batting was recycled bed sheets and fabric from the thrift store. So overall costs for the project were cut way back and the environmental impact was at a minimum. I would suggest this for all quilting projects in the future unless you need a very specific fabric or are making something for a baby then I would rethink it :)

After the quilt front was created which took much longer then I had originally counted on since I was working with a birthday deadline I had to move quickly. Tommy and I removed the furniture from the living room for a few days and got to basting and the start of quilting it together. To baste we used painter's tape and tapped the quilt bottom to the floor. Then we pinned all the pieces together and then began to sew. The first few rows of quilting consisted of putting the sewing machine on the floor in the middle of the empty living room Tommy pressing the presser foot and me pushing the fabric through. Okay so this worked technically but I wouldn't recommend it as an official quilting technique. In fact I think most quilter's would have been confused and shocked at the whole thing.  Technically it worked this way of doing it but it was outright insane.

So I switched it up and moved back to the sewing machine on the table, a classic for a reason :) It was really difficult to move a giant quilt through a small machine but somehow I made it work and got the whole thing quilted. At the end we folded the corners around and sewed the edges and stitched in the ditches and called it a day. We got it done a day before my dad's birthday and fedexed it there for his big day! A successful quilting project in the end but I think I will stick to smaller quilts in the future!