Sewing for friends

So perhaps some of you have been wondering where my proclivity for sewing has gone lately. Truthfully, I've been spending way more time in my kitchen than my studio these past few months. Mostly, it's seasonal. Every year, between the End of Snow and the Height of Summer, my needle-and-thread minded head takes a break. It's only fair: when the weather turns gorgeous, there's many places I'd rather be than in my room, under hot lamps, bending and cutting and pressing seams. So, when my urge for perfect seams flies the coop, I don't push it.

In the end, I'm always called back. Sometimes, it's the perfect fabric or project that calls to me, or the pure and simple necessity of Christmas beckoning. Other times, a friend's birthday, and plans for an early July soiree will draw me back to my fabric piles.

The truth is, I've always sewn mostly for friends. With the exception of the refashioning, plus three bags and a table runner for myself, everything I've sewn was a gift. The chance to come to my studio and spend time pulling out fabrics and sketching project ideas with one of my favorite people in mind is a treat. There's a slowness and eternal calming feeling I savor in every project. As seams and sewn and thread ends are snipped, I often find myself lost in meditation on the person, the giftee who'll soon be holding the finished item in their hands. Lots of people out there like to marvel at the amount of work and drudging effort that goes into a handmade gift, but for me, it's never work. It's an excuse to create, and spend hours in the company of my favorite memories.

And of course, the presentation of the finished gifts ain't bad, either.

Last night, I got together with my two best pals from college, and cooked a birthday feast for Kat. Good things happen when the three of us are together. We've been known to walk to miles in pursuit of ice cream, to create delicious concoctions involving coconut rum and frozen fruit, and to be the ones who start dancing at a show. Last night, there was toasted baguette with fresh mozz and roasted red peppers, cherry-vanilla-angelfood cake parfaits, and in between, this salad.

See? Like I said, good things.

Happy Birthday, Kat.

Summerbrain

Do you ever look back on a weekend and think, Dang, that was a good time.

Do you ever think, Dang, I wish I'd taken more pictures.

And Dang, why did I have my camera in nighttime mode, making everything grainy?

But then, sit back, roll your eyes and sigh. It's summer. Good times happen, and not everything can be recorded. Sometimes, taking a break from photo-snapping is needed. With that in mind, I present to you the following three photos, the only blog-worthy ones I took this weekend.

There's far more to the story than the photos portray, but maybe I can help fill in the details. Friends were here. There were friends to can with and friends to ride carousels with, gardening friends and baseball-watching friends and ice cream eating friends.

On Friday, three wonderful women and a beautiful little girl gathered in my kitchen to stir oozy vats of strawberry jam. Laughter was heard. Salsa was eaten. Aprons were donned and admired. It was so much fun, I decided it should be a regular event in my kitchen. I can hardly wait for the next session.

Saturday, there was farmers-marketing, barbecue-attending, sunny strolling and ballpark-bratwurst-eating. It was probably the most quinessentially American 4th of July I've ever had, and it was great. Isn't there something exciting about experiencing those ordinary and very much cliched holiday things? Baseball and fireworks on the 4th of July is about as iconic as you can get, and it was great. The home team even managed to pull off a win.

To round things out, there was Sunday gardening and hiking and quiet reflecting on the porch.

Perfect.

Peach salsa to die for

There was drama here this week. There was frowning, and much gnashing of teeth and pacing. Each and every evening, I called our local U-pick fruit farm to enquire about cherry picking, and each and every evening I was only further galvanized in my anguish. Too much rain, they said. Try later in the week. I seethed and I fumed, watching the spongy gray clouds hanging in the sky like a pall, and lusting to fill my mop bucket with ripe glossy sweetness.

I seethed and I fumed, and last night I gave up and went to Frog Pond.

Not for cherries. For peaches.

I'm ravenous as a heroin junkie, craving my canning fix. Like those nut cases you see storming the sales at Walmart the day after Thanksgiving, I wasn't satisfied until I'd loaded my cart with five quarts of gorgeous, sunset-colored peaches.

I had this recipe, and I had a plan.

Twenty minutes later, part of me was soothed and centered as I ladled amber-colored salsa into jars. Twenty one minutes later, I almost fell on the floor at my first sultry and piquant taste of peach salsa. Good lord, it's delicious.

Let it rain. I'll get my cherries eventually, but for now, I've got this bag of chips, and this jar of salsa... and we'll see how long they last.

Our little corner of Eden

It's time for a garden update.

Ours is small, about 10 x 25', and fenced. Though the fence is there purely for groundhog discouragement, it also serves its purpose as a Pete Containment Apparatus. Once the plants are past catfoot-squashable stage, when I go to the garden, Pete goes, too.

You will never meet a happier cat than Pete when he's in the garden. It's Pete who stampedes to our back door every morning and campaigns piteously to be let outside, Pete whose favorite food is fresh grass. It's Pete who's fallen off our second-floor porch not once, not twice, but three times (last to the tune of a $350 vet bill, good kitty). Yes, he is an indoor cat with the soul of a wild beasty. His garden time is blissful and fleeting.

There are birds to be watched, and bugs to be eaten. Huge zucchini leaves to hide under, and dirt to roll in. While I weed, he thoughtfully snacks on the grass around the edge, keeping it mowed.

Yesterday, I gave myself over to hedonistic urges and thought like a cat. I laid in the grass. I listened to birds and happy shouting children. For a meditative ten minutes, I watched clouds. I saw a ladybug larva in the parsley, systematically eating one aphid after another as it moved up the stalk. It's summer. Why not laze about in the grass and watch bugs? In good weather, there's no better place to be than in the garden, with Pete.

Despite all the rain, the garden is right on track. We should have zucchini within a week or ten days, and green beans not too far beyond that. Our broccoli is sending off side shoots, our tomatoes are loaded with fat green orbs. Mostly, late June is a time of great anticipation for the bounty of high summer.

Bring it on.

Lilies in the rain

Happy Friday.

Strawberry fields forever...

I was listening to an oldies station as I nosed my car up into the rolling hills above Binghamton, humming and not really paying much attention to the music, until, yup, just as I was careening over the grassy bumps towards a parking spot, those fabulous Beatles started crooning this song. I popped the car into park and laughed. How can you ignore timing as perfect as that?

It was 8:30 in the morning. This was the scene:

Damn son. Berry pickers are some early risin' folks. It seemed like the strawberries took forever to ripen this year. I suppose weeks of dull gray rain will do that. Now that they're finally here, the jammers aren't wasting any time. Myself included.

(And no, I didn't stop here. I didn't stop until I had a full bucket, which came to twelve pounds. Anyone want free berries, swing by my house.)

Once home, I surveyed the scene. I had jars:

(Boy howdy, I had jars.)

I had my canning kitchen-partner-in-crime:

And pretty soon, I had this on the stove:

Which led to this on the windowsill:

And I am one happy woman.

Homemade calzones

I'd never made calzones before last night. It was Patrick's idea. Faced with half a container of leftover ricotta cheese, I turned to him for inspiration. Calzones. Brilliant.

And guess what? They're a piece of cake. Start with some pizza dough, stuff in some cheese and veggies, bake on a cookie sheet. Pour some tomato sauce on top, dinner. Cool.

Broccoli-Cheese Calzones

Dough:

1 cup water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
3 cups flour (I used 1/2 whole wheat)
1 tbsp yeast

Put ingredients into your bread machine, set it to dough, and walk away. Or, mix and knead by hand to make your dough, and let it rise one hour.

Once the dough has risen, punch it down and divide it into four more-or-less-equal pieces. Flatten each piece into a round, and let it rest for ten minutes. After resting, stretch each piece of dough into a roughly pizza-crust shape, about 6-8 inches across. You can use a rolling pin, or toss your dough in the air while singing Dean Martin. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore...

A word of caution: do not let your dough get too thin, or one of your calzones may spontaneously vomit its contents all over the bottom of your oven. I speak from experience. You are forewarned.

Anyway, that's the dough part.

Filling:

4 cups broccoli florets
1 cup pesto of your choice
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup grated mozzarella

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Put your broccoli in a microwave-safe bowl, and pour in about an inch of water. Microwave on high for two minutes, or until broccoli is steamy and bright green. Discard the water. Add the pesto. Mix well, and spoon 1/4 of the broccoli mixture on one side of each of the four dough rounds. Top with ricotta and mozzarella. Fold the dough over the filling, and press it down on the other side. A little bit of water helps it to stick.

Place your calzones on an oiled baking sheet, and slide 'em into the oven for about fifteen minutes. After fifteen minutes, carefully slide them off of the baking sheet and onto the oven racks, as close to the bottom of your oven as you can get. This helps make the bottom crispy. Bake another ten minutes.

Remove from oven, and eat, topped with sauce of your choice.