Friday Woes in Computerland

Good evening! Today's post is postponed because I cannot load photos from my phone to my computer, the photo app is non-responsive. How annoying. 

My son will again try to fix ALL over the weekend. But ya never know. EDIT My son fixed everything in less than a half hour! Magic hands! No cable guy needed.

Random file photos here NOT MINE.

PS Some of you have tried or plan to try the fast no knead dutch oven bread! Isn't it fun and delish! Do check in and tell me how your bread came out.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

The World of Mo and Cider Bread

Good evening, friends! I am sort of back online, with my son's help---and no help at all from my service provider, ---- I have been off and on then OFF with internet and especially  wifi for a week or more. Waited yesterday from 10 AM to 6 PM for a repair, the repairman never showed. I mention this so that if I don't post here or answer comments, you will understand why. Also sometimes FB works but Blogger does not, so you can look for me there if you wonder where I have disappeared to. FB here

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Last weekend a friend stopped by and since I was busy baking bread, my friend offered to take Mo for the special treat of a walk on his beach! Oh how Mo loves the beach. The sights the sounds, the smells---so exciting!

Another afternoon the groomer and her spa van arrived to bathe and pamper Mo. I love his scarves, this one is soft warm flannel.

Mo loves the chicken jerky treat he receives only from Sherry on bath days.

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Meanwhile, back in the kitchen I was making Cider Bread.

I used the Dutch oven/ no knead method. Recipe and instructions HERE I followed the four ingredient recipe  but experimented with different ingredients. We recently bought cider bread at the farmers market and really loved it, so when I was left with an half full jug of cider last week, I decided to try to make it myself. Lucky for me the farmers market baker had been interviewed online and she described how she made her version.

I used 2 Cups of bread flour and 1 Cup of rye flour; instead of lukewarm water, I used the leftover cider, heated to lukewarm in the microwave.

Used the dutch oven, high heat, and parchment paper described in the recipe's blogpost.

Second tloaf I added dried cranberries.

Both loaves were delicious! I did note that Red Star yeast makes a higher stronger loaf, whereas the Fleischmann's yeast makes a spreading softer dough. But both loaves were delicious and warmed the frigid house during last week's high winds [again!] and deep freeze.

I hope you'll try this easy bread making method. Only notes to add are

1-the baking time should be shorter, at least for my oven. 35 minutes, no lid removed open baking times, so watch your baking time carefully.

2-This would be a fun baking project to do SUPERVISED, with kids. The dutch oven and lid are massively hot at 450 * and are also heavy. Not safe for kids to lift.

3- The loaf's rise time is very long, you must plan ahead to be ready for the finishing,  resting,  and baking times. The dough can rise for 8 to 18 hours, so either start it early in the AM or do as I do and start it late the night before, then bake early afternoon the next day; or late afternoon for warm bread with dinner. 

4-If you prefer a chewy crust instead of a crusty crust, when you remove the bread from the oven immediately sprinkle 2 T of cold water around the edges of the HOT dutch oven and replace the lid for maybe 20 minutes. Then carefully lift out the loaf by the parchment paper lining and set it on a dish towel to make sure the underside doesn't turn soggy from condensation.

Serve with good butter or marinated warm goat cheese, yum.

Have fun!

love

lizzy

gone to the beach....

Full Moon soon [11-12-19]---November is the Hunters' Moon. Tiny and white in the cold black
sky tonight.

No Knead Bread Recipe

Out and About : Thrift Shop, Other Stops.

Good evening! My goodness, it is a bit chilly, what the heck is going on! Must I wear legwarmers with my shorts now?

A couple weeks ago my friend B came down for a day of thrift shopping and dinner. We had the best time! Beautiful weather, light traffic, and an early start made a big difference in where we could go and what we could do.

We went to the nearer [tho not close] of the two big thrift shops. My mission was to find plaid shirts for next year's big sewalong with Lori/ Humble Quilts.I love it that she has told us the pattern way in advance and I had so much fun looking for potential plaid shirts.

First my total haul: all the shirts, plus the cute never worn turquoise baseball hat---embroidered with a pineapple, how cute. I always need summery hats, so snapped this up for one dollar.

I also found the Susan Branch Christmas book. I had planned to resell this copy, but my copy is not in great condition, so I'll keep this one instead. There were other good books that I passed up---one a picture book of collectible vintage aprons! So fun! Another all about the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, which so brought back memories of watching the big balloons from my office windows, when my kids were very small. However in the interest of No Clutter, I didn't buy those books, though I wish I had.

Then the shirts! This store sorts by size and then by color, which made it easy to focus on the XXXXLs in colors of interest. This store stocks very good brands, Ralph Lauren, LL Bean, J. Crew, Old Navy, T Hilfiger, Nautica.

Neutrals with red or robin's egg blue.

This is the pattern, by Brannock and Patek, though this specific quilt is Jan Patek's 25th anniversary quilt. She just completed her 5oth anniversary quilt , so this design, and the book, are 25 years old. But still wonderful and beautiful

Love the design, especially the folky border. Doesn't it look FUN! But I do not want a brown and orange quilt, so first off is the challenge of recoloring.

My paint chips grabbed in a rush at Ace Hardware another day.

My friend that day, L, was in a huge hurry---No lingering! I will sort colors and make up my color board as I go on with the gathering of fabrics.

This was one of my thrifted finds, a Ralph Lauren women's blouse in linen, size 4, too bad--kinda tiny, but beautiful. Note the general colorway, plus touches of creamy white; red and dull purple juxtaposed.

I used it as the initial recoloring inspiration, thinking greyed robin'd egg blue, deeper Prussian blue/ warm reds,

note these two treasures; the red plaid is enormous, from Sean John. It was quite dirty with a spill down the front, but a good hot wash fixed that. And the stripe is a beautifully faded tomato red, handwoven? India cotton.

_mustardy yellows---one is above with the brown plaids, unusually nice solid, slight twill. Plus soft sage and  pickle greens, [these are stash pieces].

shades of dull purples, from my swap box, from Mary Ann C., not shown

black plaids and stripes for the borders.

Note the folk distinctive stripe used on two of the coxcombs. This shirt is for my version. It is a clearer, slightly turquoise Prussian-y blue in real life.

I'll be shuffling and mulling colors for awhile!

Another note, the backgrounds of the central motifs/ coxcombs: it is medium toned, with the first of the petals contrasting lighter. A clear distinct contrast is very important there, must watch values carefully, I noted to myself.

black polka dots!

Hmmm.

I thought about using either muddy grey or soft aqua grounds, or both, as seen here. From Pinterest.

Pinterest photo

But I don't know if I'll like that. Another choice, here, is this print I love, a remainder from the Fabric Mill. I pulled it out to back A Amish but then, no? Save it. It's coppery mustard with sprigs of lavender and turq, plus dense picotage in black. [Too brown?]

I'm still mulling A Amish's backing and binding, too.

One of the best things, B brought me one of her antiques mall finds, a gorgeous black chintz with tomato red and cream flowers. Lots of yardage---10? to be the backing of Coxcomb. What a great find, lovely 100% cotton, not too heavy.

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After thrift shop we stopped in our fave big Marshall's. This was the only thing that caught my eye. A sewing tin.

Too big, too drab. I left it. And! Someone stole B's shopping cart, filled with her carefully chosen and tried on finds. How mean of some stranger or stock person. I think in the end she found nothing at all to buy, but she's a good sport and great company, so I/we had a fun day.

Then dinner, we were starved! Thriftng is hard work,lol. The Mexican restaurant is a little rundown looking these days, but oh my the food is wonderful. We had the signature fajitas, hot sizzling plates on a chilly night. However, a strangely displeasing thing happened at the end--now I love their food but it is a LOT especially a lot of meat. I always eat just half the food and take the rest home. I  have recently read that it is now considered rude and gauche to ask to take out one's leftovers? Is that true? This is the second time I have asked for my food to take home, and the server simply flung a paper bowl, like a fries basket, on the table by my food., instead of taking it to be wrapped for takeout. There was no lid, no cover, no bag, no utensils for me to messily scoop up the fajitas. I had to dump everything into this dripping brown fries bowl and wrap it in a plastic bag from my coat pocket.

Is this the restaurant's way of saying no to ''doggy bags''? The server was quite rude, too. Next time, bring my own Glad box and spoon? Stuff myself and leave the rest? Is it truly rude now to ask for one's leftovers?

Final insult, our coupon wasn't good! "Cash only", she sniffed as she scooped up our credit cards. Hmmm.

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In other notes, I couldn't upload to Blogger since the Halloween storm but wanted to share the oh so cuteness of my dear dog walker and Mo. She was dressed all day for Halloween in a great sherpa fleece jumpsuit that was an Oscar the Grouch costume [Sesame Street]. "Scram!" And she dressed Mo in his tiny witch's pointy hat.

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Here is the somewhat garish blue green mercury glass pumpkin---lighted up. I had never lit any of them as the little LED lights inside use so many AAA batteries, which I never have. But lighting up this one sure did improve it.

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The storm that night was quite frightening. I had bungeed and tied things down but couldn't get the umbrella out of its very heavy base. I instead tied and bungeed the whole table, thinking it was fine for 30 mph winds. The winds! Hurricane force maybe---locally, I am guessing 65-70 mph winds, off the ocean. So loud! Mo woke up and barked at the ceiling, then would run to the deck and bark there. [Mo never barks inside, at night, in bed]. Then the wind forced the table on the deck all long the the length of the deck, like walking it along. I didn't dare go out to  secure it better, truly didn't know what to do. This lasted from 2 AM to 7 AM, we were up all night, mostly. One of the worst storms I have ever experienced here at the beach, even H Irene was less terrifying.

But in the end, all was well and the storm blew off to Connecticut to visit blog friend Julie, and I think Pat in upstate NY got hit with high winds too.

But at least no snow?

more soon.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach.....

These photos are for B. I have suggested this shop with the beautiful salads and soups as an alternative to eating out.  Maybe some hot garlic bread and nice wine?  The lettuce, spinach, arugula is under the toppings.