White Elephants, iEnvy, and Other Holiday Things

I'll admit it. I'm a PC. I don't have an iPhone, and iPad, an iPod. Never have. Not sure I want one. It seems like switching from being right handed to left handed (or vice versa). All my music is on the amazon cloud, not iTunes. Like anyone else, I love the slick, feather weight, intuitive neato features of all of these iGadgets. I just don't have any and can't afford them and don't know if I'd ever want to make the switch. I've looked at the Kindle Fire thingy, and I don't know if I need one. I think I'm just working out iEnvy.

This doesn't stop me from going to a holiday party with a "white elephant" gift exchange where a contingent of the attendees do that thing where they bump their iphones together and whip out their ipads so they can shuffle through photos and play Angry Birds while everyone looks on with envy. Last time we got together, two of them set up their talking tom cat and talking ben the dog face to face and they repeated what the other said in their funny voices.

The gift exchange rules is under $20, and fair trade, homemade, or re-purposed. I decided to whip up an iPad cozy. Even better, I decided to whip up an iPad cozy that looks like an iPad!

I had to extract my felt from under Zipper, who has not moved from this stack (and is nestled in a ball in the same spot as I type this)

And did a lot of google image searching for the physical dimensions of ipads-- (and I'm not sure if they have a 1 or a 2!). And what the app icons look like. I'm also not sure what apps my friends have or would probably have. So I settled for Skype, Angry Birds, Safari, and the camera and photo album apps. I would've done the notepad, but didn't have a light yellow or brown. Same for the YouTube app-- that looks like a brown old-fashioned tv.

Stitching them on helped to add details.

I added a battery, and wanted to add more details to the top row, but decided to stick with simplicity

The cardboard inside is (hopefully) cut to the actual dimensions of the device itself. Secretly I hope the 3 ipad owners fight over who gets to take it home.

We figure this is the closest we'll ever come to owning one, but even holding the cozy makes me really wish I had something to stick inside it. Or maybe this is just iEnvy working on me again!

Starting the Holidays Early & Tarte au Citron

After having such a rough fall semester, Zips is feeling even more festive than usual. We've got our Christmas tree all set up. I've got orders to climb up on the roof to string lights before the week is out. Mixes of contemporary and classic holiday songs are blaring from every room. We even splurged on a light-up flamingo with a festive red scarf for the front yard (it suits the Southern New Mexico climate. Her name is Babs Johnson.) Zips found an amazing pinecone garland from West Elm, but it sold out almost immediately.

So I took it upon myself to put something together that might make her happy and approximate how cool this would've looked. There are a few pine trees on campus, so we drove out there and filled two shopping bags with the nicest ones we could find (and only when I dumped them out on my living room floor did I think about the possibility that critters might live in them!). I tied them in slip knots to some jute twine and ended up with about 14 feet of it! (hey the West Elm one is only 6 feet!) Now that I have this down, I should go looking for acorns too!

I put the leftover younger pine cones into a glass bowl for decor too!

Meanwhile, we've been growing several scrawny citrus plants for more than a year now. We've got a kumquat tree, several lime trees, a satsuma tree, and a dwarf Meyer lemon tree that has finally borne some tiny Meyer lemons! They're lovely, very tart, and floral. We had four ripe ones at once, so Zips suggested we do something special with them. In that same Good Housekeeping, there's a recipe for a simple lemon curd. So we decided to half it and make some mini Meyer lemon tarts with our baby lemons! From scratch!

Tarte au Citron:

1/2 c. sugar

1/3 c. fresh lemon juice

1 Tb. fresh lemon zest

3 Tb. butter

2 eggs

**You should prep and bake your tart crust beforehand and let it cool. I use a 1/3 c. shortening +1/3 c. butter + 2 c. flour recipe. Baked 2 mini-tarts crusts for about 15 minutes at 400.**

In a saucepan, melt the butter with the sugar, lemon juice and zest. In a bowl, whisk the eggs. Once the lemon mixture is melted/dissolved/incorporated, spoon a bit out and whisk it into the egg bowl. Spoon a little more in and whisk (in order to warm the eggs up a little). Pour the eggs into the saucepan and heat over low heat, stirring continuously, until the mixture thickens (about 15 minutes).

Then I poured the lemon curd into the tart crusts. I cannot wait to eat these! I'll wait until tomorrow, but it might be the first thing I eat on Thanksgiving morn!

Happy Holidays!

Back to Getting Crafty

I can't believe it's been more than two solid months since I've posted anything. I'll have to compensate with plenty of fun projects and delicious treats. I've spent most of the today working on holiday decor -- driving past the local garden store to see if Christmas trees are in (they are), if I can have one (not yet), and figuring out how to stave off my desire to put replace orange and autumnal decorations with red and green winter ones. Zips spied a fun project in a Good Housekeeping magazine-- a simple reindeer head made from corrugated cardboard.

I'd seen more complicated ones everywhere from Urban Outfitters to instructables.com.

So I decided to come up with my own-- pairing it with Zips' immense love of classic Rankin Bass holiday videos. We have some cardboard boxes and newspapers in the recycling bin, so I made my own template for Rudolph's head, gave him a cross-piece for his ears and muzzle, and his mature antlers (more distinguished!).

I'm thinking of draping a wreath or some evergreen garland around where his neck meets the wall.

I'm happy with the way it turned out, and that I can post it in a rather central location by the front door. Next up? In addition to making Zipper's famously fortified rum balls for the end of the semester party, we're going to try out some spiced rum balls. And maybe something new for Thanksgiving? Mmmmm... Pie? Homegrown Meyer lemon curd? We'll keep you posted.

Happy Thanksgiving! Make Your Own "Tofurky"

It's that time of year again, and I can't help but gorge myself all day on foods I spent the previous day preparing. Lately for the holidays we've roasted two "turk'y roasts" by Quorn and a Tofurky. But no one ever eats that wild rice stuffing that's stuck in the middle of the Tofurky ball. Last year I made my own vegetarian "tofurky"-- using a recipe and video I can't find now, but the result is absolutely delicious-- technically a "gluten roast"-- we'll have to work on making that sound sexier.

As soon as I re-discover the video and link, I'll attach it here, but for now, I'll just re-copy my gravy-spattered recipe sheet:

Sage-Roasted Gluten Loaf (or Homemade Better n' Tofurky)

Bring 2 gallons of water to a boil while you do the following:

In a bowl, combine:

2 1/2 c. vital wheat gluten flour

1/2 c. nutritional yeast flakes

1 generous tsp. thyme

1 equally generous tsp. sage

1 tsp. salt

In another bowl, mix together

2 c. vegetable broth (1 can)

1/4 c. olive oil

1 Tb. soy sauce

Stir the wet into the dry until well-combined and can be roughly formed into a ball. Roll the gluten-ball out onto some cheesecloth. Wrap it with the cheesecloth (forming it into the shape you want your loaf), twisting the ends and tying them off with twine.

Don't wrap the loaf too loosely, or it'll have air pockets. Don't wrap it too tight either, since the gluten will expand. Put the cheesecloth-wrapped loaf into the boiling water and simmer for about 1 hour. Unwrap cheesecloth and the roast can now either be eaten or basted with olive oil and herbes de provence (mmmmm!) and thrown into a 325 oven for about 3o minutes.

Here's our spread (with fried green tomatoes!). The gluten roast is the larger, darker of the "meats" pictured above.
And here's my favorite parts: my gluten roast and mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberries, and green bean casserole!
And this year, Zipper pretended to be a kumquat.

We also made a pear tart with an almond pastry crust and the best pumpkin pie in the world. But I'll save those for another day! Happy Holidays!