Cabana Stripes

Hi guys! You've heard about "Meatless Mondays" probably.  more info HERE

"Meatless Monday is global movement with a simple message: once a week, cut the meat. Launched in 2003".
This is supposed to enhance our health by us eating ''healthy'' once a week. I'm not a purist [you know we had the endless meatloaf on Monday! And Tuesday, and.....

This week I made Cabana Striped ravioli. You can find all kinds of fun and unusual pastas in the fresh food/ cold case at the market. 

Although truth is, plain cheese ravs are probably the best? I was peering in and saw these adorable pastas! Big yellow and white striped pasta squares. Cute.

Usually striped pasta is lobster or squid, not something I want to eat. Ever.  So I was very pleased to see this box of goat cheese dried tomato ravs.

They cook in only 3 minutes.

I made a fresh eggplant sauce for the ravioli. I found an organic eggplant--not thrilled with the massive packaging! And it wasn't ripe. But, ok.

Peel, dice, salt, wait 15 minutes. Rise and drain.

Get the pasta water started, but don't boil the ravs yet.

Put some olive oil in a heavy pan and saute the eggplant. Towards the end add minced garlic and half moon chop / diced onions.

Eggplant isn't so pretty but it smells great and tastes delicious!

When the eggplant is translucent and soft, add fresh tomatoes and black olives or capers. 

I just used the prepared Italian salad from the deli case. 

Separate the little mozzarella balls. De-pit the olives!!! Toss everything, add some wine or broth or water--just a smidge. 1/4 C?. Salt , pepper, basil. Sugar or sweetener, 1 T will remove the acidity of the vegs. Simmer gently.

Now cook the ravioli. After three minutes, scoop the ravioli into the sauce pot. Use a slotted spoon or tongs. [the ravioli can be fragile]. 

Gently toss everything, adding the reserved mozzarella balls

Serve with freshly grated parm.

The entire meal took less than 3o minutes to prepare. The dozen ravs were dinner for three people.

I made a big tricolor salad on the side: radicchio, endive, and romaine; bleu cheese, walnuts. Lemon juice and olive oil, very simple dressing. The ravioli is also really good with raised broccolini, in season right now and sooo delicious.
.......
As you know we're having lots of snow here at the beach.

Snow days mean sewing days. Today I made an audition section of a sawtooth border for Pokeberry. I figured I should make a tryout before I made 150 or so half square triangles, aka sawteeth. Sawtooths?

Oh. Oh yes. 

yes yes yes. I love it, it's perfect.

Don't mind Mo, he likes things snugglier and fuzzier,lol.

Very cold weather is coming. Zero on Saturday. Even I might curtail my beach walks if it's freakn' 0* How about you?

love

lizzy

gone to the beach....

PS Mo loved The Puppy Bowl.

just a little change

Hi everyone! I just put a meatloaf in the oven, and oh does it ever smell delicious! There's a reason we call this comfort food.  I made a giant double recipe. This coming week we are expecting snow snow and more snow---so leftover meatloaf is a good thing to have on hand. Tonight we'll have it with baked sweet potatoes and tiny green peas.
Thursday when I went to bed the weather forecast was ''sleet, no accumulation"; I woke up Friday to 12-14" of wet heavy snow, school closings and  snow shovelling. What a shock!

Mo got out before the drifts got too deep.

Overnight we went from this:

to this...

And it seems it didn't snow much in the city so the weather guys kinda pretended it never snowed. So weird, one time a huge fuss, the next, so blase'. Huh. This time I  did not have precooked meals on hand and worried all day as power flickered on and off.
Of course snow days are lovely sewing sewing days.

I got this doll quilt layered up and ready for hand quilting. Its been waiting for me to quilt it for almost a year. I was tired of seeing the backing on my sewing desk. Now it's all set, just in case.

For Pokeberry, I did a bit of the embroidery, whiskers on Kitty, legs on the poor robin.

Because I made the design without contrasting backgrounds on the blocks, I am ending up with some big black bald spots. Oh no! I added a bird here, a few berries there, and in this giant empty area I added a traditional Heart in Hand. Why? I guess because it;'s February and Valentine's Day is soon, I love hearts, and it just appealed to me.

I'm making great progress on PB but at times it gets a little tedious,

...so I treated myself to an hour or so of sorting my Civil War repro fabrics and sewing the first block of BB new quiltalong.

I think this will be interesting and doable with one block a month, I could not begin to make two or three or more Stars in a Time Warp every week, nor do I have a huge stash to make them. [loved the series and learned so much, however]. The new series will be about the pioneers who traveled in their covered wagons, looking for land and fortune in the West.You can read Barbara Brackman's first blog post: here

I find social history, the history of lives and people, especially of women, fascinating. I'm not one to study politics and battlefields but the lives and diaries of real Americans--that touches a chord in me.
Brackman says women did not sew on their quilts as they traveled. I believe many of the pioneers walked all that way! And if they rode in their wagons it was a very rough ride. By the time they walked all day,  pitched camp , cooked and fed everyone, most women probably fell asleep in exhaustion. No sewing! The idea of a lovely summer wagon ride, a prairie dress-ed and sunbonnet-ed young woman on the buckboard, stitching her heirloom quilt is, I suppose, a fantasy worthy of a Disney film.
We'll find out, as Brackman educates us during the coming year.
I decided my blocks will be very scrappy. My pioneer woman has brought her scrap bag and will use every tiny bit, once she settles in her [damp, musty, frigid, buggy]  one room sod house in the middle of nowhere, USA.

Block 1: Independence Square. [Missouri]. The wagon trains began their journeys there.

And I've been studying this Jan Patek booklet I got on eBay a few weeks ago. [yes, I know it's very old, c.1993, but it's new to me]---I love this design, originally named When the Wild Geese Fly. I love this quilt, though I was a bit upset that it is in fact a memorial quilt for a boy who died, so shocking and so sad. I plan to fill the empty square with a pumpkin and give it back its original Wild Geese name.

                                     . 

I plan to use blue shirtings and homespuns, not brown plaids. Autumn here is very bright blue! With orange wool pumpkins. It will be a low key, low pressure project to pick up when I need a little change of pace. If I get bored with it or can't bear to make 150 Wild Geese blocks, I can always turn the pumpkins into candle mats or a runner. The pumpkins will be machine  stitched, with the wools leftover from It's a Crock; and the blues will mostly be my friend's shirts he shares with me.

What a great sunflower! The shirts are from my friend who grows the gorgeous giant Russian sunflowers, you may recall from last summer.

Fun funny pumpkins.

Love the houses.

                                            

And I didn't take its picture but the turkey is just so cute, see him on the cover, lower left.

You know how I am about finishing! And not having a bunch of random projects floating around. Just the idea makes me anxious. But this is supposed to be a little side project, very casual. It will never become a UFO because it has no finish by date. We'll see how I do with that notion, can I mellow out and relax as I am sometimes urged , annoyingly, to do?

Must go put in the sweeties, I forgot! I wish you could smell the fragrance of my famous Mary Giordano's Special Italian meatloaf, taught to me by a samplemaker/ friend when I first moved to NYC. My mom, bless her heart, was famous for making awful meatloaf---Mary's recipe was a revelation. LOL
What are you cooking tonight?
Have a good weekend!

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

So pretty. Like whipped cream!