Cuddly Knit Buddies

I can't wait to start on my new knitting project.  A friend of mine is having a baby soon and I knit her first child a blanket.  I thought about doing that again this time but when I saw this new pattern at my local yarn shop, All About Yarn, I knew that this was the project I would do for her second child.

It's a Skacel Collection Pattern using Caribou yarn.  I will be making the monkey.

The fuzzy yarn is called Caribou and you use it along with another yarn to give it weight.

The face, feet and hands of the monkey is just a single strand of yarn.

When you are done with the monkey, bear or puppy, the yarn is brushed with a hair brush to give it fluffiness.  The more you brush, the more fluffy it becomes.  One of the employees at All About Yarn made the puppy and it was the softest puppy I have ever felt.  (Here is a link to the All About Yarn shop website allaboutyarn.biz.)  Just what a baby/toddler needs as a companion!

"In a world where everyone seems to be larger and louder than yourself, it is very comforting to have a small, quiet companion."  -Peter Gray

Great Seafood Cookbook

My sister and her family just returned home from a trip to the west coast.  One of their stops was Seattle, WA.  My sister knows I love to cook.  Love fish and love the Pike Place Market.  Her gift to me from their trip was a fabulous cookbook called In the Kitchen with the Pike Place Fish Guys by The Crew of Pike Place Fish.

I have spent the evening reading it from cover to cover.  It is broken into sections:

This section talks about the history of the fish stand - how it got started.  It also talks about farmed vs. wild caught food and why they support sustainable fishing methods.  They explain why they no longer carry some fish and they provide information on fish that are "best choices" and why.

The second section is all about educating the fish consumer.

You can read about "throwing" a salmon,

cleaning a prawn,

and filleting a salmon.

Of course there are also some amazing recipes.  Here are just a couple examples:

There is also a section towards the end of the book I found really interesting.  It's all about cooking with raw seafood.  It gives detailed instructions and some great recipes of putting together tasty and SAFE raw seafood dishes.

I can't wait to visit my local fishmonger and get started on some of these recipes.  Armed with the information in this book, I will no longer have to worry about rubbery shrimp or dried out salmon or tasteless rockfish!

"In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight."  -Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

ASI - Fika

Today I had a fabulous day with three wonderful women.  A number of blogs ago, I wrote about a book club event I was going to attend at the American Swedish Institute.  Today was that day.  We went early so we could eat lunch at the restaurant Fika, located at the ASI.  We all enjoyed our meals both with their presentation and taste.

My friend Keri had the Fresh cheese dumplings, bitter greens, dill, lemon & trout caviar.

My friend Wendy had the Fried Cod (served with turnip slaw, remoulade, horseradish & herring roe on toast).

My friend Betty and I ordered the Cold cucumber soup topped with smoked halibut and slivered radishes.  (I had really wanted the salmon because it was served with a beet puree - they were out of the salmon but the waitress found a few tablespoons of the beets for me!)

This is the link to the ASI website.  Click on the Fika link at the bottom of the page to check out the extensive menu.  Everything sounds delicious!  www.asimn.org I can't wait to go back and try something else!

"Food is for eating, and good food is to be enjoyed...I think food is, actually, very beautiful in itself."  -Delia Smith

Cozy Lodging in Ortonville, MN

We are back in Ortonville, MN tonight after being in Aberdeen, SD for my uncle's 90th Birthday.  On the way up the hill to my parents' house, we passed by Shorewood Castle.  I had to stop and take a picture of their adorable sign!

My husband and I stayed in this castle on the shores of Big Stone Lake in Ortonville, MN for our anniversary a number of years ago.  It's even cuter now than it was back then and I can't wait to stay there again.  Check out their blog at www.shorewoodcastlesuites.blogspot.com for pictures and descriptions of their accommodations.

"It's the best feeling when you wake up and it's warm and cozy, and you don't have to go to work."  -Emmy Rossum

A Visit Home

I'm at my parents' house in Ortonville, MN with my daughter.  Tomorrow morning, we will be leaving for Aberdeen, SD for my uncle's 90th Birthday Party.  (My mom is the youngest of 14 and my uncle is the third oldest.)  One of my mom's sisters and her husband are also at my parents' and will be making the trip tomorrow too.  It has been a long day but I will be going to bed with a smile as I replay in my mind the stories my mom and aunt told about growing up in South Dakota.

They were poor and their mother passed away when my mom was jut a little girl but they both recalled a wonderful childhood.  They made me laugh and I learned more about my mom in the last few hours than I have over the past 40 years!  Maybe I'm just a better listener now or maybe I'm finally old enough to understand that my mom was someone's daughter and someone's little sister - an individual long before she was my mom.

I'm so thankful that I have the family that I do.........and I hope to hear many more stories tomorrow.

"Memory...is the diary we all carry about with us."  -Oscar Wilde

Coffe Cakes - "Almost" Like Mom's

Tonight I tried for the second time to make coffee cakes "just like mom makes".  This time I was successful.  I should have taken pictures of my first disastrous try.  I had asked my mom for her recipe which she happily shared with me.  I labored over the dough which was crumbly and dry and never really felt or looked like a roll dough.  Then there was the cream mixture.  It got too hot too fast and burned a bit on the bottom of the pan so the mixture had burned bits in what was supposed to be a creamy texture.  When I put it all into a pan and baked it, I tried for HOURS to bake it long enough for the center to get "set".  It weighed about 10 pounds and looked like vomit!  It was such a disappointment.  I ended up dumping the whole thing in the garbage.

A few days later, I talked to my mom and told her about my coffee cake failure.  Boy, did both of us get a good laugh.  It seems as though I misread the recipe.  The dough and cream mixture recipe makes eight small coffee cakes (pie pan size) not ONE coffee cake in that same small pie pan.  No wonder my mixture never set up and was running all over the inside of my oven.  So armed with that knowledge, tonight I was on a mission to create the perfect coffee cake.  They may not have turned out perfectly, but they taste and look pretty close to how I remember my mom's looking and tasting!

Here is the RIGHT WAY to make some delicious coffee cakes.  For the dough, you could use any roll dough recipe.  You can make the dough the traditional way or if you're the owner of a bread machine, roll dough made that way works great too.  Tonight, I chose the bread machine way.  Here are the ingredients I used, added in this order:

1/4 cup of water

2 cups of milk

2 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons shortening

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg

3 1/2 cups of flour

1 package of yeast

I set my bread machine for the "dough cycle" and after about an hour and half, I had wonderfully elastic dough!

I cut the dough into eight pieces.

Pressing the dough into the pie pans was the fun part!

Next comes the coffee cake filling.  Start with 4 eggs in a stove top safe pan.  Whisk well to break up the yolks.

To the eggs, add 2 cups of cream.

Whisk in 1 1/2 cups of sugar.

Bring this mixture to a boil.  Whisk vigorously so you don't get burned bits on the bottom of the pan.  No worries if you get a few brown pieces floating around.  I used a fine strainer to get ride of the burned/caramelized bits.  Once this mixture starts to thicken a bit like pudding, remove it from the heat and add 1 teaspoon of vanilla.  Mix well.

Pour the this creamy mixture onto the prepared roll dough and spread to the edges.

I used canned peaches for my fruit but any fruit would work well - just make sure it is a bit softened.

Sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon.

Bake in a 350 degree oven until the dough turns golden brown and the cream mixture "sets".

I froze a few, gave one to my brother in law who came to visit and put a few in the fridge for my family.

Cute Occasional Sale Place in Lindstrom, MN

My son always has to be at his baseball games an hour early and when the game is as far away as it was tonight, in Lindstrom, MN, it's not practical to drop him off, go home and come back.  On nights like this, usually I bring a book or my knitting to occupy myself until the game starts.  Tonight my husband was with me and we decided it was way too hot to spend an hour sitting around in the car waiting for the game to begin.  We compromised......we would go to Holiday so he could get a fountain drink and then we would stop at The Picket Fence Gals.  A cute "junk market" like store that we passed on the way to the ball park.

Lucky us, The Picket Fence Gals is only open for occasional sales and we happened to be there on a day they were open.  They had items inside and out.  The store is in a very old, multi-floored house with many, many rooms.  The yard and porches are also full of so many things to browse through.  Here are a few pictures I took on our visit today.
The front porch......

A green house......

 A few main floor rooms......

 A couple upstairs room......

 Love the glass jars with red lids.

I would have liked to stay longer and browse through each corner in every room and dig for treasures in every inch of their outside porches and yard.  But my son's game was soon starting and my husband does not share my affinity for perusing through junk for that one must have item!  Here's a link to the Picket Fence Gals website.  www.picketfencegals.com  The website lists the dates they are open, their address, a few pictures of some of the kinds of things they sell (they no longer had the metal chairs - I would have claimed them had they been there), an ABOUT US tab and also a F.A.Q tab.  Their prices were reasonable and vendors were friendly and helpful.  This is definitely a place I want to go back to - without a baseball game to rush off to and maybe with a girlfriend instead of my husband!

"I collect antiques.  Why?  Because they're beautiful."  -Broderick Crawford