Cake lies

I knew you were coming, so I made a cake!

Oh, okay, I didn’t make it–my cakemaster, Buffy, did. I just decorated it. Tonight was the last of a three-part cake decorating class that taught me how to ice a cake, to smooth the icing, to make roses and pipe letters, how to make buttercream and royal icing and meringue–in short, everything I really wanted to know. The fondant and gum paste courses coming up will just be… if you pardon me, icing on the cake.

Do you see that icing rose? I made that. For reals. No kidding.

I made all of these, too.

I adore this little rosy border piping. It’s sort of hard to control, but worth the effort.

I like the shell border at the bottom, too. The violets are on the cake because they were there and I could.

Let’s have another look at those shells. Classy.

Coming up tomorrow: a look at Buffy’s extremely cute studio space. Hmmm… how do I get to a point in life when I can have a cute studio to teach cake decorating classes?

Zakuski

A month ago, Sparks had the idea to throw a vodka tasting party and serve zakuski. Zakuski are just the Russian version of “little” nibbles, like tapas or hors d’oeuvres or ciccetti or dim sum or mezze or antipasto… every culture has a version.

He pulled together a lineup of six vodkas, which between them represented grain and potato vodkas, top shelf and bargain basement, Russian, American, Scandinavian, and French vodkas, and one flavored vodka–Stoli Blackberry. Everyone was given a vodka glass and, as we nibbled and talked, we opened one bottle after another. Grey Goose is my standard martini vodka, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my favorite of the whole lineup was Tito’s Texas Vodka, which had minimal burn and almost no taste of nail varnish remover. Everyone’s least favorite was the Stoli Blackberry.

Zakuski are supposed to cover the whole table, so we understood, so yesterday morning before the party we launched a tour of all the European specialty groceries in the area. We collected pickles, smoked fish, cured meat, cheese, black bread, and fatty condiments.

As an anthropological aside, I find it curious that this kind of service, at which all of the dishes are laid out on the table at once for people to help themselves, is called service a la francaise, whereas course-by-course waitered service is called service a la russe. Isn’t that backwards?

Lox, Danish butter, and red caviar on ice

Rye bread, basturma, salami, and homemade blinis (made from the same batter as the blintz wrappers–I pat myself on the back about that later in this post)

Sour cherry jam, sour cream, and homemade cheese blintzes. The wrappers are crepes, the very first I have ever successfully made. It turns out that letting the batter rest really is the key stop. Mix it up, then let it sit for at least half an hour before you begin to cook. If you do this, the rest of the process becomes pretty self-apparent and doable. I’m so excited about this; I want to hold a blintz breakfast instead of a pancake breakfast, now.

Pickled green tomatoes, red grape tomatoes, eggplant caviar (a spread very similar to ratatouille), vinegret (Russian potato salad, very tasty), pickled salad, and pickled cucumbers

Fun!

Daffodilage

Aaaaaand the “pink” daffodils are up! Once again, most of them anything but pink, and once again, at this time of the year I just don’t care, I’m so happy to see things blooming.

Celluloid love

I’ve spent the past month skimming the celluloid and enamel jewelry listings on eBay. I love the cheerful vintage colors and happy characters and flowers that the jewelry comes in… and the idea of my earrings spontaneously bursting into flame is productive of a certain joie de vivre that modern jewelry just can’t match.

Some of what I collected is not actually vintage, just reminiscent of. Some of it, I’m fairly sure, isn’t actually celluloid but lucite or another plastic.

All of the pieces I got, though, I’m crazy in love with. How great are the colors? How darling are the pieces? And the most important question…

How do I pull off wearing this stuff so that it looks all hip and vintage, and not like I raided my great-aunt Madge’s jewelry box? Hmmmm.

Hmmm. That is a poser. I’ll think on it, though I’m sure that casual summer clothes will make it easy–especially the Marilyn-style sundresses I also found on eBay (available from seller InspiredByAngels, and easily gettable for $20-$25).

Two pieces vie as my favorites, in this collection. First, this pink, starry little owl, which has had pride of place on the lapel of my white coat for the last two weeks. Isn’t he just too precious? This is one of the new-manufacture pieces, I’m sure.

And second, this darling buggy chatelaine. Back when I really was raiding my great-aunt Madge’s jewelry box, I found two items that my mother called “shawl pins”. They had small lobster-claw clasps connected by stout chains and were used, she told me, to hold a sweater over your shoulders. These buggies are attached to tiny brooch pins and connected by a very slight chain, so they shouldn’t be depended upon to carry any weight.

They have a delightful secret, though. Do you see that their wings are parted? And do you see a bit of cotton-wool sticking out? They’re hollow, and stuffed with it. You are supposed to soak them with perfume, so you smell nice all day.

Hooray!

Spring

Happy Spring! Wow… I had gotten so used to the idea that winter would never end, it hadn’t occurred to me that it really would end.

Right now, my garden is gobsmacking me. All of those perennial plants I put in last year are… get this… coming back. Whodathunkit? Truth in advertising!

This is going to be the creamy-dreamy foxglove

If memory serves, these are going to be majestic shasta daisies

Lupines

Hollyhocks… they got nibbled on dreadfully last summer, but this summer they’re scheduled to bloom, oh my!

My “pink” daffodils, which all bloomed yellow and white last year, might be different this year…

The very best of the frostbitten hyacinths

Pernicious achillea

And the sweetest surprise of all–my lungwort is not only alive, but blooming. I bought these lovely plants last March and, once I put them in the ground, they stayed squat and leafy and nary a flower did they show. It looks like they might be feeling more generous, this year.

Other spring things are happening. Yesterday as I was driving home from lunch, this patch of prairie preserve was on fire. By the time I drove back and took this picture, though, it had gone out.

Spring! What a joy, what a relief. What a time to look forward to another year of all the bounty and friendship and good things that the warm months bring.

What a good time to address and send out my wedding invitations.

Allspice Tapestry quilt top

Oops, I did it again!

This time, I was organizing my work room and discovered most of an Allspice Tapestry jelly roll. I had bought it and made some patchwork tops for quilted cushion covers with it, then forgotten about it. What better to go with cushion covers than a lap quilt?

This is based on the simplified clamshell quilt from Kaffe Fassett’s V & A Quilts. Like that quilt, it is composed of simple patchwork squares set at 45-degree angles. Unlike that quilt, the blocks are only 5×5, the sashing between blocks is quite wide, each patch is 2.5″ square (being made from a jelly roll, of course), and the quilt has a checked border.

I used my new favorite trick of mixing up a Fig Tree Quilts collection with white-on-white fabrics, to make it go farther. Gosh, have I said how much I adore everything that Fig Tree Quilts does? I was looking at the fabric collections on their website and realized that their Buttercream and Fig was the first collection I ever coveted, and I have bought and made something with every collection they’ve released since. Their patterns make my skirt fly up, too.

I’m a little torn about how to finish this top. Usually I hand these things off to my mother, who turns them into works of art. Perhaps, though, at nearly 29, I need to learn to finish my own tops? And perhaps this would be a good starting place? Hmmmmmm, perhaps perhaps…

Tiffins return to the mothership

We went away from Sparks’ parents house, when we last visited, with this curious object.

It is a pie carrier that belonged to his grandmother, and so could date from the 1930s. It looks and is put together just like my tiffin cases, but on a larger scale. We wonder if perhaps the tiffin case design wasn’t based on these pie carriers… or if they aren’t both descended from a common ancestor. It would seem so.

A Potter-ish weekend

Two weeks after visiting my father’s mother, we bundled ourselves off to Sparks’ parents as a starting point for visiting my mother’s parents, who are another two hours of driving beyond.

It was the third time I have been down there, but always before the house was stuffed to bursting with visiting family, and Sparks and I were assigned to sleep either at his grandparents’ house or in the back study. As a result, I hadn’t seen the upper storey of his parents’ house.

The front section of the house is the original part of it, and was built in the mid-19th century. An extensive renovation in the early 1970s doubled the size of both levels. It looks like a very little house from the outside, but when you go into it and mount the narrow stairs, you discover that there are no less than four bedrooms and a bathroom up there. Each bedroom contains a double bed. When you count those, the bed in the downstairs study, and the master bedroom, you find that this “little” place actually contains six bedrooms. Sparks suggested that the house was very much like The Burrow from the Harry Potter books, and I had to agree.

Between his parents and my grandparents lies the small town of St. Meinrad, home of the St. Meinrad Archabbey, one of (so the website says) only nine archabbeys in the United States.

Besides the impressive twin-towered cathedral, there are a number of huge stone buildings to house the 100 monks who live at the abbey, and to accomodate the classes, conventions, pilgrims, and businesses that the abbey hosts. I don’t have to tell you that the place looks like Hogwarts, do I?

Look for a little magic in everyday life. Don’t depend on other people to narrate it for you.

Katrina hits New Orleans

Sparks and I got back yesterday from a quick jaunt to New Orleans. We arrived on Wednesday, the day after Mardi Gras, which to us was a great deal–it was cheap, and the French quarter was empty so we never had to wait for a restaurant.

We were even able to get a courtyard-facing room at the Bourbon Orleans, right in the heart of the French Quarter. It was awesome.

It felt like the day after Christmas, there. The French quarter had done a good job of cleaning up–by Wednesday evening when we arrived everything had been hosed down, and only some decorations and a few stray strands of beads indicated what had been going on 24 hours previously.

The French quarter is so beautiful, and so unexpected. Unlike the old areas of so many cities, it is nestled right in the middle of everything. You can walk just a few blocks from Bourbon Street and be in the middle of sky-scrapers. Aside from taking the trolley into the Garden District and back, though, we stayed in the quarter. There was plenty to do there.

Beignets and chicory coffee at the Cafe du Monde was a must, of course. We found that the beignets were plenty breakfast and more, for us.

The French quarter is beautiful…

Did I say that it is beautiful? Aside from the lovely architecture, as you walk around you occasionally catch a glimpse into someone’s private courtyard. Last year’s dreams of a shady tropical estate on Key West have been displaced, now, by dreams of a lush green courtyard of my own, full of trimmed box hedges and trees heavy with fruit.

We ate all, or at least many, of the things you are supposed to eat. Besides beignets at Cafe du Monde, we had croissants at the Croissant d’Or. We had a crayfish boil at Yo Mama’s (see above. They were fresh.) We had Hurricanes at Pat O’Briens (and got very, very, very drunk on them. Three in one afternoon will do the trick thank you.) We had all kinds of appetizers and the heavenly bread pudding at Muriel’s. We had po boys at Stanley’s. We had the most transcendently delicious meal of my life at Irene’s… do get the mueniere amandine, if you go there, it is magical. We had delicious shrimp barbecue at Mr. B’s.

We also rode the streetcar through the garden district, wandered the quarter, saw the aquarium, drank daquiris at the IMAX theater (yep, they had rum in them), and generally had a lovely little getaway.

New Orleans–what a nice place. Do go. And get the meuniere amandine… and tell them I sent you.