Lavender Daze

To be honest, most of the gardening I have done is by trial and error. My husband, who grew up on a farm in Ohio, knows more about gardening than I could ever forget. He indulges my trips to the antique heirloom plant place aka Fiske Gardens and my purchases from the local Agway, so I can decorate the yard as I see fit.

More than five years ago, I bought a lavender plant. I had no real plan for it, but I had a sunny spot at the top of the driveway and with out much thought, I dug a hole and plopped it in. I maybe *maybe* watered is a handful of times before something else caught my attention and I had to focus on other things. So 2 years ago, I noticed that the little forgotten shrub had now grown huge and the amount of blooms on it were just amazing. The amount that I had, needed to be dried and preserved for the future. I had no idea what I was doing at that point to dry anything I grew. Preserving flowers in silica I was an expert at, but air drying something that was edible was something that was a new challenge.
I had dried stuff before, don't get me wrong. But the problem is, I will take cuttings and turn them upside down on the odd nail hodgepodge on the kitchen beams and the nails in barn and almost forget about them, routinely. There is no destination for drying, just a little here and there. They become part of the chaos of my house, and it settles into the charm of living in a old antique home.

One trip to Pickity Place changed that. That same year that the lavender over produced, the Wachusett Garden Club had an outing to Pickity Place in New Hampshire. You may have heard of their gardens or their restaurant; but what they are really known for is that they are the setting for "Little Red Riding Hood's" house. The illustrator for Golden Books found this charming antique home and made it the fabled residence of "Little Red Riding Hood".  One could simply label it a tourist attraction with their three gift shops (yes there are 3 of them on the property) and be done, but I think that is a discredit to what the current owners have achieved. The restaurant is not only wonderful, but they have gardens and greenhouses. They teach in the greenhouses, and they also GROW a good deal of the fresh produce and herbs that they serve in the dining room. To make the most of each harvest, they dry their herbs in drying sheds. These are then used for not only cooking, but also as dried herb goods to offer in their gift shops. And wonderful gift shops they are!

Before our meal, the members of the club wandered around taking a tour of the gardens and I happened to look in the window of one of the charming little buildings. It was a drying shack. 

You know those moments when a light bulb goes off in your head? Yep, mine went off at 500 watts!
Nails were stuck into the rafters of the little garden shed, and from each nail one line of wire was strung, over and over, like a guitar strings on the arm of a guitar. The bottoms of the drying herb bundles were bound with elastics and then hung from those wires using... get this: unfolded paperclips in the shape of an "S".

This was possibility! This was organization! This was ****DRYING**** to preserve!

So as it is very hard to understand what I am talking about here, I will post some photos for you to understand HOW to bind and HOW to hang and show you the wire trellis I made in my attic.

Binding:

This is the hardest part of it all... hold about a comfortable bunch in your hand, take a rubber band and catch 4 stem bottoms then wrap around and around with the elastic, finishing by sliding the remaining band over the bottom. I will post a video when I find the file I recorded. It is easier to see it go together in real time.
 I don't bind a huge amount of lavender together as too much together is a moisture nightmare. Moisture is the enemy here. Moisture leads to mold. Smaller bunches are better than big hunky ones.

Hooks:

Paper clips are your friend. Take medium or large clips and twist them until they resemble an "S". Sliding one end under the elastic, this leaves the top of the S to be the hook to hang on the drying trellis. 


Trellis:

So what I did was I took what they call "paddle wire", you can get this in AC Moore or Micheals. It is wire that is wrapped around a paddle...there may be 10 yards or so per paddle. The wire is easily manipulated so you can wrap it around nails or wood crossbeams, like I did here:

Once this is all dried, I unhook it from the wire with an oversized clear trash bag under it, capturing all lavender seeds that decide to drop off.

Guerrilla Markeing: Making Your Own Signs on a Shoestring

Wow! It has taken me a while to get back to writing another blog entry! Life just gets in the way! The garden is finally put to bed (almost!) so I can now sit here and work on this entry for you all!

Signage for any small business or small non-profit is a VERY hard financial hurdle to cross when the operating budget is a shoe string. Today you can use a variety of different "on demand" printers that will give you really nice signs at an "affordable" price; but not always is that "affordable" price one you can afford. Often, groups, businesses, or even yard sales need MULTIPLE signs (set of course in strategic locations around town) in order to draw in the crowds.

We need to clarify some things about signs so you can get the biggest bang for your buck!


Rules of Signage:

Signs MUST BE:

-Easy to read
-Eye catching
-Clip art should be limited to ONLY what is the bare bones simplest concept. Limited shading,  little or no gradation, just flat color.
-SUBJECT DRIVEN (such as Bubba's BBQ, the "BBQ" should stand out more than the word Bubba)
-Contain simple, yet ACTIONABLE information

There are 3 ways to make signs on the cheap:
1: Publishing Software, printed out and put together to make a bigger sign than your 8x10 piece of paper
2: Using a Silhouette Cameo or Cricut Die cutter to cut out individual letters
3: The Swiss Block Method, which you only need a word processing program and color printer paper.



That being said...
You must know what makes good signage before you make one.
MS Publisher has some premade layouts for you to use...but take a look around you. See what signs make you take action each day.
MS Publisher's templates are most likely not specific to your needs,
but they do make use of one thing: White space

The appearance of less is often MORE. Too much information on the sign, and it becomes visual noise. No one pays attention. Almost too much information on a sign, and no one can remember what they NEEDED to remember.

This is a concept people don't really get, especially when pride gets in the way. People LOVE their business names... and are obsessed with branding and logos far too early. With signs, you must think what is going to make you take action. Think of it this way... if you were driving all night and needed coffee, would you stop for a sign that said "Rosalind's" or a sign that said "Coffee"? If you answered coffee, you are correct. This sign is a good example of what not to do with roadside designs. When I see this sign, I think of a paving company. Why? Well somewhere around here someone had the same font and style PLUS they did it with a red back ground. Do I remember the name of the company? No... I just remember they did paving. These folks have a food trailer and make a great breakfast right down the street from where I live. The subject of the sign should be iconic to the product they are selling, not the name of the business in a wordart curve no one can read at 30mph.

(insert road food truck sign HERE )


Method 1: Software

Some suggestions for designing with software:

*Use BIG and small fonts... and when I say "big" I mean "heavy" or large. The small is for contrast... and for details. The large font is for your "point" Such as BBQ for Bubba's BBQ.... Or if you you want to put a sign out to advertise a sale. The word "SALE" would be in capitol letters with the heavy font, the time and date would be in the smaller font underneath it. Add more information than that, and you risk loosing your audience. If you have more than 2 lines of text, try to limit the number of fonts to less than 3 and no more. More fonts makes your brain work harder to read it. If people are driving, they only have a split second to get the point of what you are trying to say. Use big BlOCK type lettering. Stay away from the Curlyz MT and the rest of cutsie stuff. You are looking for HEAVY lines, and also for letters that are not bunched up too close together.

*Use color. Not all of us can afford a color printer, but if you can use poster board that has color, use it. Don't be afraid of using a red posterboard and maybe white lettering. How do you do the lettering...well, that is for a subsequent blog post. This one is just to give you overviews

*Print it out!

MS Publisher has a great "tiling" feature that will tile your sign. From there it is just like putting a puzzle together. Cut excess paper out of the way and then place the printed paper on foam board or a corrugated realestate sign. As I live on a busy intersection, real estate agents are forever putting signs on my lawn. When they don't come back for them, or have rudely placed them in one of my garden beds, I claim them for my use and paint over the wording and then place my printed items on top of it.

2. Silhouette or Cricut Die Cutters
Well, these little gems are a great toys for the home graphic artist or scrapbooker. However they do cost beyond $100 for the die cutter itself, plus around $14 for their specialty vinyl that can be used in all weather. Here you do need to learn their software and choose an appropriate font that not only can be seen, but can be cut as well. This takes a bit of trial and error... but if you are going to have a sign to be used year after year this method may save you lots of money. I find if you are frugal with your blank plastic corrugated lawn signs (you can find them at big box hardware stores) and reusing them (scraping the vinyl off to change the date of the plant sale for the next year) this really works well. But again... this takes investment in equipment and time to learn


3. The Swiss Block Method

This is the most economical method you can use... All you need is a word processing program and color printer paper, with poster board and you are ready to go!!!
The Swiss Block 721 Outline font is an OPEN block font, because it is just an outline! The neat thing about this, is that when your printer prints on color paper (lets say RED paper) you will have a red letter that is shaped by black ink that your printer printed already! This allows you to SAVE ink! Yes, you may be using more black ink than expected, but it works! Set your font to upwards of 70 points (yes you can go to 100, 200 and so on.... You must experiment with your printer to see what the largest letter size is that you can print on an 8x10 sheet of paper is for maximum impact!







 Once printed *carefully* trim around the letter, slightly in to the ink of the shape. Draw some lines with a yard stick so that you can line up each letter for your word SALE or BBQ so it doesn't look like alphabet soup! Stick some tape on the back of each letter to affix in your imagined layout. Play with it until the sign looks good to you. Take this moment to step BACK from the sign. Notice what impact the sign has. Think about what word you see first. Is your message getting across? If not, change the layout or the letters.

 And then here is the big reveal... you can faux laminate all methods it with clear contact paper! This can be a two person job, and no it is not quick... but with two people it is easy. Once you have your sign laid out the way you want it (do be sure to stick Then peel back the contact paper for about 4" longer than what your sign's length is. Lay the sign down on top of the peeled back paper, and repeat for the other side. Cut excess paper to 1" around placement, then fold over to opposite side to help to prevent water from coming in.  Use a popsicle stick to smooth out any bubbles.

A few tricks... I have used in the past a  hanger with bull clips attached to a nail in a beam to hold the paper so it does not stick to itself as I peel it back. Don't have a beam in your house? A pot rack works well here too! I do this especially if I am doing this all by myself. I don't typically have help to make signs.  I get one end of the sheet started about an inch on each corner, clip it, and hang it from the hanger. Then I pull it evenly to expose the sticky adhesive cleanly, with out having the paper turn on itself. I then take it by the side and deftly place it down on the sign. Do not hesitate here, you will leave bubbles and wrinkles if you don't... oh and there is no "pulling it back up" to re-situate it. Lay it down and place it.

Please stay away from handwriting signs... often people do not write evenly and end up by scrunching up lettering, making it illegible. If you must hand write them, sketch them out in pencil first. Then go back with marker and ink it in if you are happy with the lay out. 

Creative Knit Cutting With my Cameo...

This last summer, I attended a Peggy Sagers (Silhouette Patterns) ETA Expo in NYC I took a class with Anne St. Claire (Needlenook Fabrics) who was teaching a bra making class. This has been something that I have wanted to do for a while as the off the rack offerings are just plain uncomfortable or make me at the age of 44 look like a hoochie mama. Not really the look I want as I am happily married and not looking to be "girlfriend bait" anymore.

It was a wonderful class, however in my typical MO (Modus Operandi), I took the class, spent a week at the expo taking more classes, during which I PROMISED myself that I would immediately make one upon getting home. I even coerced a sewing peep that happened to be in the class with me to do the same.  Great intentions... then once I left the Expo all my good intentions got clobbered with real life.

At the time of writing this, it is New Years Eve. And just like my birthday, I finally put aside all the things that jump into my path, and work on what I want to do. So after making boxer shorts for my husband for Christmas, I am now getting back to me... and trying to simplify or exactify the process of bra making... to make it easier and less of something I have to set aside oodles of time for, and make it something I can just "do" with a few hours and little thought. I wanted to write this blog so I can help others do the same and also not forget this myself...

One of the first things I did, was to digitize my pattern into Silhouette's  (No relation to Peggy Sager's company) software (Silhouette America), making a digital pattern that my Silhouette die cutter can just crack out. Why you ask? Well, the lining of the lingerie is made with tricot (a light weight silky knit). Which is a *&^%#@ to try to cut even with the RIGHT scissors. The hobgoblin of making your own lingerie is precision. When fabric slides like liquid, it is almost impossible to get an accurate cut. So what do do? I thought about using my BERNINA CutWorks for this, and it might work...but the limiting factor with this is that any piece I cut, it HAS to fit in a 255x140mm hoop... and that is NOT going to work. The Silhouette Cameo is at 304x304mm (12x12 inches). If I had a machine that could use the Jumbo hoop from BERNINA that would be one thing, but an 8 series machine is a bit out of my reach for 2015.

The next problem I had was HOW to keep the fabric stabilized while it is being cut. Silhouette sells 2 fabric stabilizers. One you CAN sew through and the other one you CANNOT. It did not matter as  neither would work as this was a knit that had to stretch after being cut and sewn. They were a permanent addition to the fabric.

Reaching into my embroidery stabilizers, I looked for something that would not only adhere to the fabric but also wash out. I came up with the best of both worlds... Floriani's Wet and Gone Tacky. The adhesive is great enough to hold the fabric, but also release it, with out damage, if peeled away. If I need to leave the stabilizer on, it will WASH away when the bra is laundered.

The other problem I had was how to not have the tricot bubble on the stabilizer fabric. I found that if I laid the fabric down first on my table, then placed a pre-cut piece of stabilizer on top of it, and hand pressed it on to secure, I had little or no bubbles. If I had it the other way 'round, it was very bubbly, and I spent a good deal of time trying to hand press the bubbles out.

I found only one other mention of cutting knits with using the cameo, and that was on silhouette's blog making a floral T-shirt. They suggested a depth of 7. That DID NOT work for this, and I damaged the mat I had. After sacrificing the damaged mat, I tested it a few times and found that the 4 setting on the cutter is a better option. I also noticed that when I tried to cut, it did nothing during one of the tests. The bottom of the cutting tool, was loose...it is the part that has the hole in it at the bottom of the tool. After tightening it, to the point it wasn't spinning it worked just fine.

So in short, this is what you need to know when cutting light knits with your die cutter:

-Floriani Wet and Gone Tacky
-Place fabric down first, then place stabilizer sticky side down, and hand press.
-Use a fabric cutting tool, not the standard tool. 
-TEST your cutting setting... The happy number I came to was the #4. Yours may be different. At 4 it did still score the mat, but it did not cut through it as the higher numbers did.

Oh and also keep in mind, not that I mentioned it here... but the Silhouette software is needed... If you come from the BERNINA world as I do with embroidery, it behaves NOTHING like any other vector digitizing program. There is a GREAT tutorial series on youtube that I recommend for learning how to use Silhouette's software as it is so different.  The channel is "Clever Someday" and she has a "Tracing Without Tears" video collection where she illustrates very well how to digitize your cutting files. Do check out her channel here:
Tracing Without Tears


Happy Sewing!

Multi-Grain Bread for the Bread Maker

So, I have been meaning to post my "how to dry lavender" post, and it is half written, but someone asked for my Multi-Grain Bread recipe.

Here we go...

Typically with bread, it is yeast, flour, salt, oil, water...maybe some eggs... but this is a Multi-Grain bread recipe. So we are adding some grains here! Also, a liquid grain: Beer! This takes a little prep. Add about 45 minutes to your average time before bread is ready...


This recipe makes a great sandwich bread, however the loaves do get kind of tall. I would suggest 1 slice makes 2 regular slices of bread for a sandwich when cut in half.

Ingredients:

12 oz beer, (1 bottle or 1.5 C)
1/2 Cup of dry 7 or 10 multi-grain cereal (like Bobs Red mill)
3 TBS of olive oil
1 TSP salt
1/3 Cup sugar
600g of Bread Flour (about 4 Cups)
2 1/2 TSP Instant Yeast

Prep:
Microwave beer in a large bowl to a simmer (about 3.5 minutes)
Add multi-grain cereal (CAREFUL, this will boil furiously )
Cover with plastic wrap  and let cool until is is just warm, around 120 degrees F (45 minutes, give or take)


Assemble in Pan:
Pour beer/multi-grain mix into bottom of bread pan.
Add the rest of ingredients in the order listed above
Set your bread maker for French Bread Cycle, Medium Crus, 2 lb loaf

Irish Soda Bread

Ok. Soooo.. I look Irish. My old high school principal used to say I had "the map of Ireland" in my looks. It got me out of many a detention back in high school I can tell you...

As you might of guessed, he was of Irish decent as well. :)
It causes some confusion on the Aer Lingus as often I am not given customs forms. My husband will get one, but they skip over me entirely! 

For a few years back in my twenties, as I have the "Celtic Look," I figured I would make the most of it  and I got a job at a Irish pub called "Olde Irish Alehouse." I spent an hour before each shift, curling my hair and tucking it into a bouncing pony tail and then served Irish Soda bread and Shepard's Pie to all that came. Strange side note, that bar, locally referred to as "The Alehouse", looked more like the "Cheers" pub than the original "Bull and Finch" pub (the inspiration for the TV show) did on the inside. Dark paneling, brass accents, a bar that stood in the center of the floor with glasses above. Today, it has been remodeled and rebranded as "Waterford's." But I do digress, you came here for a recipe.

I found this recipe as I wanted to make the bread that I served back in the day. Around St. Patrick's Day here in the extended Boston metro area, most local grocery stores and bakeries just sell you stale bread that has little or no taste.  Past that day, you have a very hard time trying to find it. So as ever, I figured... it couldn't be THAT hard to make, and it certainly has to be cheaper than paying $4+ per loaf.

And it is... 

So this is the next "recipe" for my friend (and embroidery student) Kitty Brady. She asked me to list a bunch of my recipes for bread making and you can find those recipes up on the "bread" board (ha!) on my Pinterest page (http://www.pinterest.com/rourri/) as she is looking to take back the bread making and save money too!

Here you go:

Irish Soda Bread

Yield: 2 loaves
Adapted from Margaret M. Johnson's "Irish Heritage Cookbook"
(yes, adjustments have been made...read on below)


Set your oven to 350 degrees

Mix the following dry ingredients in a bowl: 
4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons (+/-  to taste) caraway seeds
2 cups raisins (light or dark is fine)

Mix the liquids together, first making "quick buttermilk"
1 1/4 cup quick buttermilk* (1 1/4 cup whole milk with 1 teaspoon of vinegar)
1/4 cup olive oil (evoo if you wish, I just use whatever is in the pantry)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Combine both together, until a soft dough has formed.  Split the dough into two balls. Dust with extra flour to stop the dough from sticking to your hands.

Place on opposite ends of a cookie sheet and make a "Cut" with a knife across the top of each ball of dough. Classically, people make a X cut at the top, but a single cut will do. This just helps with releasing the steam as it cooks. Set your timer for 30-35 minutes at the 350 degree oven temp.

* What is "Quick Buttermilk"? Well, I rarely have regular buttermilk or buttermilk powder in my fridge. Often after using just a cup or 2 TBS of it in whatever recipe, the rest just expires as I don't have the time to do more than the recipe that I had intended to do. This saves me money and cuts down on waste. If you *do* happen to have buttermilk in your fridge, by all means use it. But the vinegar and the milk trick works wonders. Just let it sit for a few minutes after you add the vinegar, then add to the rest of the liquids bowl.


Ok, just to clarify a few points about what I did in the recipe and why...

Most recipes for bread have a flour, water, oil and levining plus leaving control component.
In this case: Flour, Milk, Olive Oil, Bicarbonate of Sodas, Salt

The flour has some protein, and the milk has some sugar...and it all just works. Well, the original recipe called for Canola Oil or Veg oil. Not that I am a "clean" eating nut, as that word "clean foods" means lots of different things to many people, but I just don't like the health rating of Canola Oil as there is no such plant called a Canola plant. In my book that oil is no where close to any kind of "base component" source of food. It is highly processed. One could argue the point of the all purpose flour being a high processed food, but I find that is a livable choice as I use King Arthur flour, and the processing does not include bleaching or other higher processes that other white flours have. You could swap whole wheat flour in there, but then you would have to monkey with the ratios of liquid as whole wheat flour does not behave the same as all purpose... it was beyond the scope of this recipe.
Oil for oil works. Unless you substitute butter (oh yum) for the oil. Do understand though, the butter has MORE than oil in there... it has milk solids, proteins...and unless you buy "unsalted" butter on a regular basis and have it to use here, it has salt as well. The olive oil swaps out fairly reliably here. Again, make your own "Clean Eating" choices... This is what works for me.

The flavor needed to be amped up from the original recipe as I wanted to match the taste from what I remembered at the "Alehouse". I ended up by doubling the amount of raisins and adding more caraway. This is as close to what I could come to for what they used to serve back in the day. A copycat recipe from the Olde Irish Alehouse days.

From what I understand in Ireland, everyone has their own
take on soda bread. This is just my take on it or "recipe" if you will. There are other variations out there, and I encourage you to look for one that will be yours if this isn't your kind of "authentic".

So try it, tinker with it...and enjoy!

Bio-Degradable Egg Seed Starters!

Well, it has been a LONG time since my last posting since the waffle bowl101 blog. I just got back from talking to the Girl Scout "Daisy" troop here in Wachusett about 

Bio-Degradable Seed Starting in Egg Shells!

So I am writing this blog for them and the attending parents so that they can see how easy it is to do this, and do this as a "usable" option for seed starting. Bio-degradable options for seed starting are great, as not only are they good for the environment but they are also easy on the tender plants roots.  You can plant these directly in the ground, and the roots just grow thru the shell. Less disturbed roots on a new plant means that the plant can focus on growing rather than having to recover from a teased out rootball. You can also put it into a larger bio-degradable container (more about that at the end of the blog post tho)


When I first saw this notion of seed starting, it was on Pinterest. Pintrest is great for inspiring you, but not great on giving you the down and dirty of making things "feasible". This method was shown online in a perfectly charming cracked egg, using both sides of the shell. Some people in food service can crack eggs perfectly...I am NOT one of them! I tried to do this the way it was illustrated in Pinterest, and once I tried to wash the eggshells the item crumbled in my hands and there was not much left to plant in.

Fast forward to a year later and I am watching one of my favorite shows "America's Test Kitchen" (sense a theme here? Yeah, this is my ONLY kind of reality show...well that and anything Mike Rowe is in, but that is a blog for a different day), and they start doing their gadget segment on how to take a shell off of a hard boiled egg. I have to admit, I was anticipating a useless gadget and a waste of 5 minutes of my life. What I got was EGG SHATTERING! (get it? LOL...Ok you can stop rolling your eyes now). The showed how to take the top off a soft boiled egg using a Rosle Egg Topper. This is what I was looking for to grow seeds out of eggshells! It make a perfect rim around the top of the egg. The shell was structurally sound enough to not only wash, but also poke a drain hole in the bottom too!

 I was so excited I ran out there that day to Kitchen Outfitters (in Acton MA) and got one of the last ones they had. As I explained what I was doing to one of the ladies that works there, I got a strange look, a pleasant smile, and the feeling that yet again I just blew another bell curve in someones mind.
Bless their hearts, they humored me, ran the transaction, and I went home to play! They are wonderful folks there, even if I seem like a raving lunatic.

So after some experimenting, this is what I came up with. I rarely eat soft boiled eggs of the shell, and this tool is expressly made for that. I use more raw eggs for baking and for cooking, so to use it on raw eggs it was!

The trick here is to cradle the egg (pointy side up, large bottom side down) in the egg carton. Place a oven mitt under the carton to cushion the "topping" of the egg. Place the egg topper on the egg like a hat, pull back the spring and let the lever "whack" the top, full force.

No that is NOT my cat under the plastic egg carton... it is a pot holder. But you get the idea. :)

Pull the top off the egg and pour the liquid into a container (I use a small coffee mug) for use in whatever recipe and put the egg into a washing container for when I do my clean up.

It is really that simple. Then when dry, take a sharp knife tip and place it in the bottom of the eggshell with a touch of pressure. This will create the drain at the bottom to let the excess water out of the eggshell when you water your seedling.  Spin the eggshell around to create the hole. Too much pressure here will crack the shell and make it unusable.

If you don't have a knife that will work, use a thumbtack, but be careful with using too much pressure all at once!

I save my shells next to the dishrack as they are cleaned and need to dry out. Once I collect enough of them, I then put them back on into the egg carton for storage until I am ready to plant! When I am ready to start the seedlings, I use the clear egg carton as a tray. Place in a warm spot and soon you will have seedlings!

Once the seedling gets to be around 1-2 inches high, you want to start thinking about putting it in the garden or using a larger container (some plants require more root development before you place them outside in a garden bed where they have to compete for water).

I found this video on Pinterest too

http://youtu.be/7dlGQP81yfo

It is a Youtube video that is an excellent larger container.  Made out of newspaper, the roots grow right out of this and into the garden when planted directly into your garden bed, giving you blooms earlier and no plastic pot to recycle!

Now the downside here( ...and yes, there is a downside) is that the Rosle Egg Topper has caught the attention of some media outlets, and now it is hard to find in most kitchen stores. Some may still have one or two on the shelf, but do be prepared to wait for a month or so until they catch up to demand. 

How to Make Waffle Bowls

My husband's family is steeped in a tradition of good food, but one of the primary values that we have brought back to "Beck Farm East" is the obsession with homemade ice cream. Out in the midwest, his family has a 5 GALLON icecream maker (known to those who make ice cream as an ice cream *freezer*... rarely is it called a maker). This freezer is a HAND CRANK model. No power, no tractor hit and miss engine hook up, it is pure corn fed elbow grease power. Everyone goes outside and we all take turns churning. It is a family event and lots of fun, with aching arms to show for it the next day!  Eventually, one of them has to either stand or sit on the freezer so someone can crank and the torque required doesn't tip it over. The Becks are serious about ice cream! When we got married, one of the first things we put on our registry was a one gallon "White Mountain" ice cream freezer, that had both a hand crank and also a electric motor. Starting our married life with out an ice cream freezer would have been possible grounds for annulment! :)
I have to be honest, out east here, the electric motor gets more use out here more than the hand crank. For that I am exceedingly thankful!

Friends and family now know that our "thing" in the summer is to come to BBQ's or family cookouts and bring the ice cream makings and show everyone how it is made. It is a part of summer I have come to treasure seeing kids licking the dripping dasher (the part of the ice cream maker that goes round and round on the inside), covering their faces, when we take theice cream out. We serve it up in waffle bowls, which is the "fad" thing now in the millennium "tween" years here in the north east.

Flash back to 1988....Way, way before I was married,  I was part of my high school's foreign exchange program with our sister school in Bonn, Germany. We walked through the streets of Bonn with our German friends, trolling around the downtown area. One of the frequent things to do was stopping at the multiple ice cream shops that made their own waffle cones. They had the broken pieces out in a basket on the counter as free samples and the American kids hadn't had anything like it, EVER. The 'sugar cones' we have in the states didn't begin to resemble those fresh, crisp, addicting bites.

 Back then, waffle cones were just starting to take off in the states. They were a novelty to behold. D'Angelo sandwich shop chain "Steves' Ice Cream" had them in the Fanueil Hall food court, but they were NOTHING like what we had on the streets of Bonn. I was highly dissapointed in what I got from any ice cream retailer peddling waffle cone treats.

So fast forward to the new millennium, and I marry into a premier Dayton Ohio food catering family with an obsession for fresh ice cream. It was only a matter of time before I figured out how to make waffle cones or the newly trendy "waffle bowls". So with my Christmas gift money this year, I went to Kitchen Outfitters in Acton (kitchen-outfitters.com) and bought myself a waffle cone maker, figuring I could mold the waffle into a bowl shape with little effort. I had a little bit of a learning curve, but I figured it out. And they are every bit as tasty and crazy addicting as what I had in Bonn.

So with out further adieu, here is how I sorted out how to make waffle bowls!

Gear:

Waffle Iron, Mold/Form, Mixer, Hand Whisk, 2-3 TBS Disher, Rubber Spatula

Waffle Iron
You are going to need a waffle maker...or a pizelle maker that makes large pizelles, regardless of what the other folks on the internet tell you. I would highly advocate getting the waffle maker, you will be able to make a realistic size bowl vs a small cup size bowl.

Mold/Form
This is where my learning curve started. Many postings on the internet have you believe that you stick the hot off the iron waffle into a over sized muffin tin (to form via cavity mold). Clearly these people have never touched the waffle when it comes out of the iron, or they have fingers that are heat proof. Also, they need to be stackable and usable. I didn't have a over sized muffin tin, but I had bowls that were approximately the right size. I pushed the hot waffle in to the cavity of the bowl and pulled out my first bowl. It was able to hold ice cream, but the sides were far to ruffly to be stackable. It really looked more like a taco salad tortilla shape. Not really what I was looking for. I realized the difference between what I had in my hand and what the "Joy" cone company did, was they put theirs in a "press" so that each bowl was just like the last. The task was then to "press" mine, rather than just put it into a mold and try to make a form. So, how does one do that? The easiest way I cam up with was to not put it "IN" to a mold, but to drape it outside of the cavity or form. As these things are gawd awfully hot to the touch when they come out of the iron, I needed to protect my hands somehow. I have two "Ove Gloves" which are great for protecting my hands when I  pop bread out of pans, but it would not create a consistent product. These waffles cool fast, and if you don't press it evenly all around fast enough, the bowl will not work. I needed a positive and negative mold. What I realized is, just like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ, I had the power all along! My Pyrex 2 cup liquid measuring cup was the perfect size for this. But what to fit over it? What would provide even pressure all around? I looked upon the shelf behind my oven, and there was a recently washed Chinese soup bowl my mother had sent home with me, previously used as a butter compote filled with lobster and butter from her birthday party weeks before. I placed the bowl upside down on top of my measuring cup, and voila! I had my positive and negative molds! This was my solution... not all Chinese soup bowls are the same size. My recommendation is to rummage through your cupboards to find a bowl or soup mug that might work. It is a little trial and error. My solution came to me fairly quickly. I hope yours does too.

The recipe that I am listing here came from my waffle maker's book. It makes 6-8 cones. Now, I AM my Mothers' daughter, and when cooking is involved, I do NOTHING small. This weekend I am feeding 60+ people ice cream and waffle bowls. So I scaled it. Scaling a recipe generally involves a painful recollection of 3d grade fraction lessons from elementary school. I don't really like to do it by hand, as when I am cooking for a large number of people, any mistake will cost LOTS of money in food. Instead, I use a cooking programs to scale for large numbers of people. Now, I can tell you that not all recipes "scale". Sometimes you need to make things in small batches. But this recipe scales just fine. Oh and the software you might want to look into is either "MacGourmet" or "Cooking Light". I have used both in the past and I like them equally well.

The one thing I will say about the recipe here, is that you have to follow the ORDER in which the ingredients are added. There is a certain chemistry to baking with sugar and eggs... it is best not to mess with it.

Gourmet Waffle Cone recipe from Chefs Choice

(Mind you the image above is from a scaled recipe for 60 cones)

Bowl 1:
1 whole egg
1 egg white

Bowl 2:
1/2 cup granulated sugar

Bowl 3:
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/3 cup of sifted all-purpose flour

Bowl 4: (well I used a tea cup and the microwave, but you get the point)
2 tablespoons of melted butter, cooled slightly

Step 1:
Put the eggs into your mixing bowl, mix together as you would for scrambled eggs. Gradually add the granulated sugar, while you have the mixer on medium. Watch for the batter to turn a "light yellow" color.

Step 2: Mix the salt and the flour together using a hand wisk, then slowly start to add this to the egg mixture in your mixer.

Step 3: Once the flour has been blended in, slowly add the butter into the mixture. Mix until it is absorbed.



Heat up your waffle iron to the #2.5 or #3 setting, (mine worked well on 3), and follow the directions for prepping the iron for its first use. Spray the iron with vegetable oil.

I put two dishers of batter in for each waffle. Depending on the size of your disher, you might have to put more or less.

I set my timer for 2 minutes.
Remove warm waffle cookie with caution as it is hot. Place on mold form and press.

How to Form:

I placed my two cup pyrex upside down on a plate, and then centered the cookie wafer evenly over the bottom of the glass. Taking the bowl, I then quickly slid the interior of the bowl over the bottom of the measuring cup. As I slid this down, I aided the mold by lightly touching the edges of the waffle and pressing in to the measuring cup glass. Use caution as this is hot. You might want to consider using food service gloves or something if you are sensitive to heat, or cannot feel heat.

Hold for about 30 seconds or so, and then remove bowl. Pop new waffle bowl off of glass and then place on a cooling rack. I put mine in the oven as I had to keep them away from the humidity of a rainy day. I set the oven to 150 just to encourage the humidity to go out of the oven.

One word of caution here....the bowls will not fully set until they are completely cool. So don't crank your oven. I had to reform an oven full as I did not realize this.  Yeah, that was a neat trick I tell you what. Four hours of work and I was almost sick when I realized what I did. I was able to recover most of it. If it was a beautiful day like today, I would probably just use the oven to stage them and not turn the heat on at all.
Anywho... That is waffle bowl making in a nutshell! Happy waffle making!

Saving Money, Part 5

The topic for today is education...

I Myth'ed, or Open Sourced "TiVo'd" a 60 Minutes one sunday not long ago...   A segment that I saw really got to me....it was a bit from Peter Thiel on education, and the need for it vs. the expense of it.

How does this fit in with saving money? Well, one could argue that you save money by NOT going to college. No parent wants their kid to have to go through paying dues like they did. The dues students pay now, their college loans, are choking the financial stability right from underneath their feet. These dues are far steeper than the previous generation, and are unsustainable.

The reason for the instability is our fascination with a modern faerie tale... fabled place of milk and honey called "College."

For decades now we have demanded our kids go to "college." Over and over we have told them by telling them to study for the SATs, get a good score, get into college.  As a society we have repeatedly stressed that skills are not important,  only the fabled land of college is important.

The skills vs. education pendulum as swung so hard to the "get an education" side that many parents see no value in education of skill sets. We have drained all of the high schools of any and all skills. Industrial arts, home economics, and art teachers have had their budgets or departments gutted and cleaned out. The side effect is that when things need to be "Made in America" (like the olympic outfits), the skill sets just are not there. Forget the funding, the job creators and the other BS. But the skilled labor that knows how to sew and set a sleeve, or do a welding job is sadly lacking.

Peter Thiel swings the pendulum to the polar opposite position. He advocates being trained in a craft or skill, and to skip out on the big pricey college path.

Some might find financial value in this advice. Choosing an educational career path requires thought. His thoughts of skipping traditional college altogether is tempting. In the short term it will save you money...or will it?
This concept needs more flushing out for it to be workable.

Fact: It is damn near impossible to get a white collar above the poverty line job with out SOME college.

Vocational schools have taken up the slack when it has come to filling this educational area. To make things really interesting, regional trade schools have experienced a overflow of applications that rivals the college application process.

These schools are where the biggest bang for your local tax dollars lie. These schools have a rich academic program mixed in with life and trade skill that is demanded today in the work force.
Sending a student here not only gives them the trade skills, but it also gives them a firm foundation for college. That's right. COLLEGE.

The cost savings here is to graduate with a skill set to earn a real paycheck, while attending college. Not only does this take the sting out of college loans, it gives the student a leg up when it comes to post-grad employment. It also provides a "skilled job" safety net for the student to leverage when the pink slips fly in the white collar job world in the years to come. 

Dynamic education is where the money is. Education is not limited to AP classes and the classics. Education is the foundation of knowledge tools that we grow and prosper from in the years after graduation.

Educating students just so that they can graduate from college is educating our students into financial ruin. Subsequently, this "college or bust" educational track is stripping our manufacturing sector of qualified job applicants, leaving many jobs unfilled in what is a high unemployment era for white collar work.

Imagine being able to get a job because of a dynamic skill set that was part of the educational curricula in your teens. Imagine being able to pay back your school loans if college didn't work out for you, with a real paycheck from a real job due to your vocational skills. This is not to say that some college tracks are highly profitable directly out of college. But "Plan A" doesn't always work out for people. I am now on "Plan C." Reinventing myself has proven to be a tough process and very risky when a mortgage has to be paid when looking at adult vocational education fees.

In order to not only save money but make money in the future,  the way we define education needs to be changed.