Planning

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Before I go into the planning details for my family cooking, which is the topic of todays posting, I would like to introduce "Odillon", Huxley's friend I made for him for last X-Mas. Odillon also has a full set of clothes, but Huxley did not take to him until I made Odillon the same doggy-costume that Huxley has. Boys and dolls? Huxley is more interested in his stuffed friends, currently a large dog from Ikea., but his friends, as he calls them are very important to him and play a very significant part in his imaginary play. 

But here, without further ado, Odillon:

Odillon

So, planning and cooking. For the past ten months or so, I have made it my mission to try and learn more about cooking. I have years of experience cooking for my family, for myself, I even had a very short stint many years ago in baking cakes for a catering company. 

Last year, I listened to My Live in France by Julia Child. It was inspiring to hear that she didn't cook like a whirlwind until she was in her 40's and ended up with the rest of her life engulfed in cookery. The best way to learn more about cooking, I thought, was to just get a whole bunch of cookery books and start trying out recipes. I accumulated about 12 new books and love looking through them as I'm going to sleep (strangely enough, I don't wake up hungry and go raid the fridge). 

So, almost all of the books are now sitting beside my bed, with the intention of flagging all the recipes that I would like to try out. Sadly, when I go to bed, I am so sleepy, that within minutes I fall asleep. Hence my plan, as follows is still in its beginning stages. 

Plan to learn more recipes and make discoveries along the way:

1. Go through the books and flag pages of recipes that make my mouth water, are do-able, vegetarian, healthy (more or less), are meant to become family favourites.

2. Photocopy all the flagged recipes

3. Sort them into folders (order still to be determined)

4. Pick 2 copies per week (ensure that I read through the whole recipe to gage time needed in preparation) and incorporate ingredients into weekly shopping trip.

5. Decide on day to try recipe

6. Go back into cookbook and annotate recipe with notes

7. Share my findings with friends, family, blog readers

I will post a list of the books that I'm getting inspired by, but not tonight (grin), tonight, I've got pictures of my latest 3 books added to the stack. If I die before I cooked from these, at least they where amazing eye-candy, something important to me at this point of my cookery-adventures. 

Aleppo
DH and I love middle-eastern cookery and this book is an amazing book. Full of stories, gorgeous pictures and do-able recipes. I saw it in the bookstore, got it from the library and had to possess it. Not Vegetarian, but with all the meat substitutes out there, much can be accomplished. Also, the vegetable recipes are what sounds delectable.

Soups
A recommendation from Ellen, Lilly's mother and a great cook. She is a cookery soul-buddy. This has all the right ingredients to teach me new ways of soup-prep. Also nice pictures, and lots of information about how ingredients work together. 

Tassajara
This had to come and live with us, as it is a fully vegetarian book about lunches, picnics and appetizers. With Huxley needing lunch for school, DH working from home and appreciating ready made good food in the fridge, and our love for hiking, it fits the bill. Haven't spent much time with it, but there is a detailed list of spreads and bread combination ideas. 

I will do a separate post about my darling Tessa Kiros and her books and how they have changed my cooking over the past year.

To me, cooking is just one other way to be creative. Recipes are a guideline that can teach you the framework for nourishing your loved ones, without limiting you to follow exactly. In the end, I'm reminded of my mothers comments when I first learned to cook "If they don't complain about the food, you know it's good, otherwise, they will ALWAYS let you know".

Bouncing around in the middle of nature

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Sunday:

Rise when it is still dark; clean up living room; eat breakfast; fit into special pants I've had since 16(!) — yes, they are very stretchy; say goodbye to daddy; drive for 150 km; be welcomed by Lucy, Tonka and Hope, and their humans; go to the paddock with a bowl of apples; feed the lovely beasties, Abby, Yikes, Primo, Nina, Cavenaut, Gravko, Bobby and Donkey; check out the pot-bellied piggy; put Huxley on Donkey's back; seeing my little 3 foot 2 inch tall one being gently nuzzled from all sides by soft horse noses and followed around the paddock; drawing in breath deeply and smelling the horsey scent; going to the pond; across the rickety bridge; onto the island; into the small house with the old wood stove; back to the paddock; tacking up Bobby; finding a helmet for Huxley; having him mount Bobby; going for a half hour walk through the enchanted woods; running with Bobby on the lead and Huxley trotting for the first time; unsaddling Bobby and feeding him treats; driving Huxley up the street to his Grandparents; driving back to the paddock, alone; meeting Horse human; brushing and tacking up Abby; all the while falling and falling for Primo; getting on Abby's back; and then….
Riding….
high above; in the arena; alone on the path in the forest; feeling like I have come home; letting the wind stroke my face; admiring the beauty of this cloudy day and all the leaves on the ground; back to the barn; legs sore; mind soaring; untacking Abby; rubbing her down; cafe and cake with her humans; back to the in-laws to pick up Huxley; Huxley sound asleep before we hit the highway; driving back home 150 km; arriving home safe; a quick dinner; a bath; sleep.

Pictures? In my heart; camera stayed home; not by choice; forgotten in the excitement. 
Repeat? Hopefully next weekend.

A Warm Afternoon Outing

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The forecast predicted 20 degrees celsius for this afternoon. It didn't quite get that warm, but Huxley and I put our bikes into the back of the car and drove down to the Commissioner's Street and went for a ride along the bike path. 

At 4 1/2 he is already riding without training wheels and having fun. It is interesting to see though, how at this age, the human brain is really not yet wired to do more than one thing at the time. It is so easy for him to get distracted and swerve to the side. I have to be on hyper-alert to not run him over. 

We went to Cherry beach and discovered a brand-spanking-new playground that is bound to become a city favourite once word gets out. 

Cherry-pirate

Here is also a view of Toronto, taken from the playground, that includes mountains (grin-for those of you who know our city)

Toronto-mountain2

Isn't it scary to know that this is salt, waiting to be dumped onto our streets? 

I know that this blog has been a bit Huxley-heavy lately, but with his new haircut, I can't resist, so please bear with me, while I show off two more:

Huxley-nov3-2
Huxley-nov3

On the studio front, I worked on 8 pieces 6 x 6 inches and 8 x 8 inches. They are all re-works from that awful Triart Topcoat disaster that damaged over $20,000 of work a couple of years back. Luckily I was able to rework them and most pieces are sold now. These little ones are almost the last batch. 

I'm also contemplating making another bunch of smaller pieces, even though a couple of years ago I decided to not work smaller then 16 x 16. It's a money question, because the galleries take 50%, and at less than a hundred dollars, and calculating all the time that I spend on them, it's not worth it for me. Now I'm thinking that it might be a good way to test new colours and experiments. Then again, it does provide some instant gratification. I'm gonna try and take some pictures in the next few days to show you what I've been doing. 

Acorn Hats

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Whenever I get ready for a show, I do some panic knitting. I sit in the studio and all I do is knit, while starring at the work that needs to get done. I rough myself together enough to work in short bursts of energy and somehow manage to accomplish all tasks, with the nice side effect of a piece of finished knitting as well. For last years solo show at the Towne Square Gallery in Oakville, I knitted a triangular shawl for the opening knight out of Habu Yarns A-60 in slate gray to coordinate with my outfit for the night. 

For this years show at the Magic Door Gallery, I knit these hats:

Hats-1

Hats-2

Hux-me-hat
I love this one, okay, my bra strap should not show, for a fact, I should be wearing more than a tank top while modeling a winter hat, however, I was in the middle of making quince jelly when inspiration struck me to do this entry. I think DH can really be seen in Huxleys face in this picture, also, he has such a grown-up expression that it's hard not to see him as the teenager he'll be in about 10 years. 

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, doubled, colourway 203 A. Left over from a cardigan that needs finishing touches, such as blocking and closures (stay tuned, I'm getting ready for a big finishing party). I can't say how much yarn I used for Huxley's hat, as I used little extra balls, for mine I used two balls. Cast on 80 stitches (mine, 60 stitches for Huxley's), did 10 rows of 2/2 rib, then Knit straight until when I put the knitting on my head I could feel that it had gone over the curve of the top of my hat) then knit 8, knit the next two together, put 2 full rounds in between, knit 7, knit the next two together, put 2 full rounds in between, knit 6, etc…. until I was at the tip. I wanted the hats to look like upside-down acorns. If you are interested to have the exact pattern, leave me a comment and I'll do some row counting.

Talking about looking older… how about with this haircut…. As he stated, we go very short in spring and in the fall, then we let it grow again. I didn't want to cut it off, but he insisted. For those of you who have known him since baby-hood, the darkening of his hair is very apparent in this shot. 
Haricut

Sir Lancelot meets the Devil-Witch

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Pump-ki-action 

Pump-kin action shoot

Phin-characters

Lancelot wondering where his Lady Guinevere of Camelot might be, so he can get away into prettier lands.

Lancelot-fierce
Slaying the dragon
Lancelot-guard 
On Guard

Lancelot-looking
Looking over the lands

Lancelot-smiling
Spotting his lady in the crowd,
and showing how his protection spell keeps him save from the evil devil witch trying to capture his fighting spirit

Scarry-lena
but it being a US company, and there being more limited time in getting it ready, I decided to give it a shot working with the picture as inspiration. The helmet was crochet from hemp yarn. 

Pattern writing is not something I've ever done, but here is a very amateurish way of describing what I did. 

I am not a crocheter and so I don't know the terms in english. But I made a few chain stitches, closed into a circle and then put "feste Maschen" (single crochet) and increased enough stitches to create a bowl of sorts. I measured it against Huxley's head and made a straight wall down (no increases) until it reached mid-forehead on him. I then went to work in a chain stitch pattern where I made 3 chains, one single crochet into the loop from the previous row, round and round a couple of times until eye-brow level. Then I made a row of single crochet across the eyebrows and worked in rows turning it (so that the face stayed clear). The biggest challenge was the reconnecting it underneath the chin, in that I first thought I needed to add as many chain stitches as I put to rest above the eyebrows, but that proved to be too much and I only used about a third of the stitches again. Then I went back to the chain-loop pattern until I felt that the length was enough. I ended it with four rows of single crochet.

The tunic is sewed out of leather that has been collecting dust at the studio. Huxley laid onto the floor, where I traced his torso, then increased it and simply cut a triangle out for his head. I made a half-body pattern, cut that in half and cut four tops and four lower edge pieces. Sewed them together and connected the front and back only at the shoulders.

The sword holster is simply a double folded piece of leather, with a cut in it to put the sword in. 

DH constructed the shield out of canvas board, electrical wire and duct tape.

The chain-mail sweater is a chain-texture black sweater from value village, cut apart and re-sewn into a shirt that fits Huxley. Then I spray painted it silver.

How was your all hallows eve? Any ghoulish visits?