Toad

When I was a kid, my favorite meal, especially on a cold night, was Dutch Babies. Actually, my favorite meal was probably figs with cream cheese and nothing else. Or even Watermelon and nothing else. But for a meal, what my parents would define as a meal, it was dutch babies. My mom would whiz the batter up in our blender while my dad melted hunks of butter, not a teaspoon or even a tablespoon, real hunks of butter, in the heavy cast iron pans that lived in the drawer under our oven. When the butter was almost spitting hot, in would go the batter, bubbling and hissing and pooling with melted butter as it hit the hot sides of the pan. As soon as the pan was in the oven, the next round was begun. We kept a rotation going until we were all stuffed. Beyond stuffed. In fact, I don't ever remember having leftover dutch babies. There may have been leftovers, but I was certainly never privy to them. Probably because I would have eaten myself sick if I had known there was more.

When we lived in Ireland I bought a Jamie Oliver cookbook after seeing him on a program about school food. Will thought he was a little weird but I loved it so the next day I went down to the bookstore in the little village center closest to us and bought what they had. I'd planned on buying his first book but was too impatient for them to get a different one in or take the bus into the center of town to hunt it down. But I'm glad I ended up with the one I did because it had a recipe for Toad in the Hole.

It's one of those British recipes that Americans giggle over, mostly because of the name. Who names something Toad in the Hole. Or Spotted Dick. Or Bubble and Squeak (I've had that one too, it turned me off of brussel sprouts for life I fear). But when I read the recipe for Toad in the Hole, actually when I saw the photo of Toad in the Hole, I realized that it's really just Dutch Babies with sausages tossed in during the pan heating stage. And, if you cook by Jamie's recipe, in a bread pan. In fact, when it comes down to it Yorkshire Pudding is basically little Dutch Babies cooked in beef drippings instead of butter. I'm sure there are more recipes out there that are basically the same thing as well but under different names. And really, eggs, milk, flour, butter, who doesn't like that? It's no wonder it shows up in many different guises.

So all of that is a long way of saying that I, and Briton (Will is not really a dutch baby fan because there is something very wrong with him. I love him, but I'm just saying..) fell in love with Toad in the Hole and ate it often for lunch or tea. And four years on, he still loves it. Evelyn prefers plain Dutch Babies but will pull the sausages out and eat them separately. I'm a little worried that she may be taking my "food must not touch on the plate" obsession to a new level, hopefully she'll grow out of that.

Tonight I had great plans for a rolled pork loin and fresh bread but Will and I got tangled up in another toilet replacement project and by the time I was ready to make the kids their meal (which is a long story but basically, my kids eat "tea" at 4:30 or 5 and then sit down with us for dinner when Will gets home at 6:30 to try some of our dinner and have dessert) it was closing in on 6 and we were all hungry. Briton had requested "Toad" as he calls it and once it was safely in the oven I decided to expand on the meal and make a Dutch Baby as well. I've been reading Molly Wizenberg's book and was intrigued by her recipe which is very different form the one I grew up with.

I think if you had not grown up eating Dutch Babies like my parents, these would be outstanding, they were a little heavy for me though so I think I'll go back to the light and fluffy ones of my youth. The Toad, however, was as good as ever. I've used it as a plain old Dutch Baby recipe, it's closer to The Bentley Family version than what I tried tonight, but the proportions work best, I think, in the thin metal of a bread pan where my parents was best in a heavy cast iron pan (although I often use my Calphalon pan which works great too).

It's got a weird name, I totally get that. But you should give it a try. Especially if it's snowing. Again. And cold. Again. And you have been wrestling with a toilet for which you have only bought one wax ring and therefore have only one chance to install correctly even though you TOLD your husband he should buy a backup. Again.

Toad in the Hole
adapted from Jamie Oliver's Happy Days with the Naked Chef

285 ml milk (that's a little more than a cup, but if you have a scale, this recipe works better with weighed amounts)
4 oz flour
3 eggs
pinch of salt
2 T butter or oil
5-8 sausages (I like good breakfast sausages, the long skinny kind)
sprig of Rosemary (optional, my kids dont like it so I only use this if it's just for me :))

Set your oven at 470. When it's preheated, put the butter (or oil) in a bread pan along with the sausages and pop it in the oven. Keep an eye on this. You want the sausages to get just barely brown and the butter to melt but not get too dark. While it's heating up, beat the eggs and flour together with a whisk. Add half the milk and whisk till smooth before adding the rest of the milk. You can also do this in the blender, I used to before my lovely KitchenAid Blender died after only a few years and I was too pissed off about it to buy another. With the blender you can just dump it all in at once and give it a few seconds on high. The key is to get the batter smooth.

When the pan, butter and sausages are ready, pour the batter over them and put them back into the oven. DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR AGAIN until the batter is crispy and poofy golden. This should take about 20 minutes but again, keep the oven light on so you can see what's happening without opening the door.

Jamie calls for an onion gravy but we eat ours straight or with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar on it. It's also great with Lemon curd smeared on top. If you've got some, which thankfully tonight, I did.

Busy Fingers

I've started knitting again.

You may think this is no big deal but I have a long and tangled history with the hobby of knitting, so in it's way, this is big news.

My poor grandmother tried to teach me to knit who knows how many times. Sewing I could handle, baking I got, knitting and worse, crocheting? Well, my fingers just would not obey. When I was in college I got a wild hair to teach myself to knit. In part this was probably because Will, who had at that point just moved to wet and cold Oregon from the warmer climates of Texas, was wearing wool socks all year round. ALL YEAR ROUND. And because he has very long feet he was forever breaking through the toes of his way too expensive on a student budget wool socks. And somehow I thought I could just MAKE socks instead of watching him go through them my the dozen.

Needless to say I did not jump into knitting wool socks. I learned to darn wool socks, but I have still never knit a sock. Instead I knit a scarf. It took forever and had lots of errors in it but I got it done. And then I figured out how to knit hats. Baby hats were my favorite, they were fast and everyone I knew was having babies so it was a great thing to be able to crank out. I got better at knitting. Not great, never fast, but better. I figured out booties (again with the friends having babies) and made more scarves and then about the time I found out I was pregnant with Briton I decided it was time to knit a sweater. This is where things took a turn for the worse.

I picked a not easy but not horrible pattern and the most terrible, horrible, no good, very bad but oh so cute yarn that was covered in tiny lumps which always pulled themselves to the knit side and looked very cute but made knitting very difficult. Plus the pattern called for very skinny needles which made everything worse. But I was determined. I knit, I ripped out bad rows, I reknit. I was DETERMINED to make something for my son. And I finished it. Just in time.

For the hottest August in years.

And the largest baby in creation. (ok not in creation, but the kid was 10 pounds people)

And the "huge" 6-9 month sized sweater, yeah, he wore it once. Because it was too hot and then he was too big. Yeah. That. Kinda. Sucked.

However, I kept knitting. I wasn't in love with it anymore, but it filled the I'm-nursing-and-cannot-move-from-this-spot hours. And when it got cold (finally) I made him hats. I pretty much stuck to hats from then on actually.

When Briton was three the second thing happened that helped put an end to my knitting. He started loosing EVERYTHING! At the time we were living carless in a big city and so were constantly in trains and buses and taxi's and I kid you not, hats lasted about three days with the kid. And because it was very cold and wet almost all of the time, he always needed a hat. So I was always, ALWAYS knitting them or buying them, but usually knitting because hats were not cheap or easy to come by for a little head.

And right about the time my head was going to explode from knitting hats that would just get lost, I had a second baby and we moved to a different (still wet and cold but not as) city. So I just stopped. I never knit anything for Evelyn. I have not made any more hats for Briton, although he is much better at not loosing them these days (knock on wood!) I just...stopped.

But the other day Evie declared her doll needed a hat so I thought, what the heck. I borrowed some needles and used cheap yarn leftover from my Christmas wreath and knit a hat. And when it was done I saw a doll a friend was knitting that was just too cute to not make and so went down to the knitting shop and bought a pattern. And you know what? I love to knit. I'm even surprisingly fast at it for someone who swore off yarn and needles three years ago. The doll is, in fact, in the washing machine felting as I type. As in, almost done. And I started knitting it Wednesday.

I cant decide if it's the fact that I can finish a row (some of the time at least) without someone begging or whining for something. (actually, I'm just better at ignoring it now) or if I'm just older or if it's just having someone to knit for that will wear homemade things that are not hats, or if it's the fact that our house is surrounded by snow and it's nice to have a cozy task in the evenings. But I'm finding myself utterly enjoying knitting again. I look forward to sitting down and knitting. I have planned my next project (or three). It's...crazy. I know, not really. but for me. it's crazy. I thought I would NEVER knit again. But I guess never turned out to be three years. Which is good to know because it feels like I will never be able to finish this mudroom, so, you know, if never is actually three years then I'm closing in on a third of the way there. Not that that makes me feel better about finishing the mudroom because I'm feeling very Veruca Salt about it, but at least it gives me a timeline. :)


*Update* So the doll took longer to finish than I had expected but only because Evelyn stole it from me once I got the head on and half the hair sewn in. It took me another week to work on it by bits while she was preoccupied but at last it's done.


I'm a little bummed because the yard colors really bled and faded in the washing machine but as she loves it to death I guess it doesn't really matter. On to fingerless gloves, felted slippers for me and maybe socks for Will. This is going to be an expensive hobby, I can already tell....

Before and After: the Mudroom Dresser

Storage is going to be the key component in the mudroom/office I'm quickly realizing. In addition to the mitten boxes, the coat hooks and now the dresser, I can already see that we will need a couple of under desk shelves for things like printers and sewing machines that need a more permanent storage solution than under my bed. So there is much more to do. Not to mention the floor which, well, I have a plan, it's just instituting the plan that is going to take a while. But I did get the dresser painted and altered and I got some art hung which just makes me a happy person because I hate blank walls. Tomorrow I'll show off my, um interesting, art display. Let's just say the current, snowed-in, probably-will-not-be-moved-until-July state of our car coupled with my impatience led me to come up with some solutions that I probably otherwise would not have. Which is a good thing. I think . Will hasn't seen them yet so we'll see what he thinks :).

But back to the dresser. I got this thing at Habitat which is pretty much my favorite place these days, for something like $20. I'm not really sure. It might have been $35 or else it was $10. The six snow days in the past two week situation has fried my brain. So let's just say, around $20. It's still in need of some love with the inner workings of the drawers. They don't pull out very smoothly and go too far back in some places, but the outside is looking much cheerier and because of it the room is starting to become that happy space that I'm so hoping for.







Just to remind you, here is the before.











and here is the after.







I ended up just painting the existing knobs because I haven't found exactly what I want yet. Partly because I don't know what I want and partly because my car is snowed in so even if I did know, I couldn't go get it anyway. So stay tuned. There may be more. And please ignore the floor, seriously. It's gross. I hate it. Breath, breath. It will get done.....

Love Notes and Desserts I Shouldn't be Eating!

Well, we are on day four of covered-in-snow and the weather predicts another 3-5 inches starting tomorrow at ten which means that Briton will not be going back to school, my house will continue to be a disaster zone of hats, mittens, glue and half built wooden models and if it wasn't for the grocery delivery service, we'd starve since I can't see our car getting free of the giant pile of snow it is under any time soon.

But on the up side, there has been a lot of making and doing in our house. And only a minimum of "mommy is going to go stark raving mad if you two don't stop that!" moments. Most of the projects have been of the silly, picked the kit up at the craft store variety. Beading, plastic lacing, some giant paper dolls that Evelyn and I have been making clothes for. I knit a hat for Baby Four (don't laugh!) because Evelyn informed me that her doll (who is naked 99% of the time, including right now) was cold and NEEDED a hat and I may or may not be knitting her a sweater to match (I said don't laugh!) We made sandwich bread from this book which I got from the library again just in time to get it home before the snow hit and I'm embarrassed to say, baked and ate an entire batch of tollhouse cookies. But what else are snowstorms for, right?

I was, despite the constant presence of children saying "I'm bored! What's next!", able to be mildly productive and figured out some ideas for Valentines day. (not that we will be able to get out of the house by Valentines Day at this rate, but hey, it never hurts to hope!) made a start at refinishing the mudroom chest of drawers and made two devilishly good desserts. Well, one could be considered breakfast, maybe, probably not though. The other was just dessert.

The kinda sorta not too horribly bad for you could almost be a breakfast dessert was inspired by a recipe in this book. She has a beautiful dessert that calls for blending Greek yogurt, mandarin oranges and sweetened condensed milk which I have tried and liked but found a little too sweet. So instead this time around I just drizzled a teaspoon of sweetened condensed milk over plain Swiss yogurt )smoother and not as thick as Greek, but it's what I had in the house) and then crumbled one ameretti cookie on top. Yum. Seriously, who would have thought of sweetened condensed milk as a topping. Not me. But it is ridiculously good.

The other dessert is this which I highly recommend for a snowy and cold afternoon of cards with your friends. The only changes I made here were using 5 slices of raisin bread and 5 of regular and adding a heaping teaspoon to the sugar mixture. Divine. Really, truly divine.

On the valentine front, my mother sent me a little paper heart the other day which she found in a local shop in her town. I couldn't help dissecting it and playing around with some different variations.



You start with a pointy ended petal shape cut out of cardstock







Stitch a piece of colorful fabric to one side. I have a slow setting on my sewing machine that allows me to downshift and keeps the machine stitching very, very slowly. If you have that, this is really helpful here when you are trying to keep a very even, thin edge. Otherwise, just keep your foot light on the pedal.





Trim the fabric (if the fabric you use is apt to fray easily, you can add some Fraycheck here) around the edge of the petal.




Fold the top 1/3 in half, making sure the point is a nice, sharp one.









Then fold this up at a 90 degree angle, creasing it both ways.








Open it up and bend the petal in half, pinching the folded point together as you go.




Dab some glue between the fold and pinch to dry (a paper clip would work well too!)

Add a little more glue to hold the point down.


These are cute with or without a message. I'm hoping to make a whole jar full of these with little messages so I've always got a little love note handy. They can be all paper, all fabric (but you need a stiffener) or a combination.


In the end my favorite was a fabric/paper combination which was relatively easy and very cute. I slipped on into Will's pocket at lunch today and if Briton ever goes back to school (doubtful) I think I'll pop one in his lunch box now and again as well. I also came up with these for this week's craft article which Briton and I are supposed to be putting together this week, just in case they have school sometime this millennium and need Valentines for their class. Here's hoping.

Up and Down, and Mittens for Miss Skinny Wrists

Yesterday was one of those days. You know the kind, where EVERYTHING seems to happen in a very short period of time. Great things, sad things, busy things, funny things, all piled up on each other. Two thirds of the way through today I still feel like I'm catching up.

Obviously the great thing (among others) was the Design*Sponge article. We are so overwhelmed at the response to out little kitchen makeover. I cant describe how wonderful all the comments are. We love our kitchen, it's been a lot of work, and there's still more to do, but it's been so fun to watch it change from what is was to what it is.

The sad thing is that we lost one of the chickens yesterday. I let them out while Evie and I walked to the library. They've been escaping lately so we haven't let them wander much. But with the "snowpocolypse" coming I thought they needed a little run around time. An hour later we were walking home and I spotted a giant hawk perched on one of the bushes in the chicken yard. We ran up yelling and scared it away, but it had already killed the alpha hen. The rest were cowering under bushes around the yard. I took me more than a half an hour to find the last two and I thought the worst, but ended up spotting them under the snow covered arborvitae. I usually curse that plant as it's often the means of their escapes, but yesterday I never loved a green growing thing so much. Although we've talked to the kids at length about the chickens being working animals, not really pets. It was still sad. I do like to think of her as defending her flock, I imagine she went down with a fight. She was always the feisty one. Ironically, the really clueless hen who often forgets how to get out or in to the coop was safe inside the nesting boxes. I'm not sure she even knew what had happened.

So I cleaned up the feathers and our little red hen and the day went on. Well, sort of. The school called asking me to pick up Briton, who was sick. The kind of sick that moms dread. The sick-but-not-sick-enough-to-want-to-stay-in-bed-why-can't-I-play kind of sick. Which kept me busy and away from several articles that needed writing. And then they called a snow day for Friday, which wasn't really a surprise, but with all the things I needed to do, I was kind of hoping that they would at least TRY to have school. But oh well. I'm always saying I love being busy, and yesterday certainly kept me on my toes.

I did, however, manage to accomplish one thing on my list of to-do's which made me smile. Because it's nearing the end (technically) of winter and the stores, despite the impending snowpocolypse are out of gloves, we were desperate for some kind of hand warming vehicle for Evelyn. As I've mentioned, she's not a glove kind of kid. And while her muffs are a-plenty and suited to a variety of outfits (per her orders!) they aren't that great for sledding and snowball fighting. I dashed out Wednesday evening to a few stores but found nothing that was small enough for her, not that it would have mattered since every mitten I've ever put on her has promptly fallen off. Long hands and skinny wrists are not conducive to normal winter handware it seems. So, standing in line with a bag of "just in case" kitty litter I was contemplating what to do about the lack of mitten situation when I spotted some fleece blankets for $4. Humm, didn't I read something somewhere about easy fleece mittens? I was pretty sure I had, and even if not, how hard could a pair of mitten possibly be?

Super easy it turns out. I read up on a few patterns online and did a few test pieces before settling on a ribbon tied version to help keep them on those super skinny wrists my girl has.

First, trace their hands onto a piece of paper - although I was just working on a pair for Evie, they both wanted to trace both hands. What can I say... Make sure you trace down their arm a bit. I find most mittens are too short and snow gets in between the cuff and the coat.







Adding one inch all around, cut the mitten shape out of the fleece - 4 identical pieces.







Fleece does not need to be hemmed but just for kicks I zigzagged along the bottom of each piece.




Stack two pieces together and line up the edges. Fold a twelve inch (more for bigger kids) length of ribbon in half and tuck the fold between the layers on the thumb side where the wrist is the narrowest. Let about 1/2 inch of the ribbon loop hang out past the seam. Stitch around using a 1/4 inch seam margin and follow this with a narrow zig -zag stitch to reinforce the seam.







Trim the edges and turn right side out. The inner loop of ribbon can be used to hook the mittens together or to run a ling string from mitten to mitten to thread through their sleeves. The outer sections of ribbon wrap around the wrist and tie (in a bow of course!) to keep the mittens tight.







We tried them out today and they were a big hit. It was the first time ever that Evelyn did not come in crying after five minutes because her fingers were freezing. Hallelujah! Bring on the snow storm!

Design*Sponge

If you've never been over to design*sponge (and let's face it, you probably have because it's just awesome!) make sure you hop on over there today where our kitchen got a little love.


I have to say the funniest part is that the other person in the article is named Cecile, I've only met one other Cecile in my life.. my darling mother..must be fate :)

And the mudroom grinds on....

So like I said the other day, I'm making progress. Slow progress, but still progress. Actually at this point it's looking a little bare since the walls are nice and clean and white, but pretty much empty. But thanks to the flood I found some art I'd forgotten we even owned and have some ideas about framing fabric if I can find the right fabric so hopefully the plain walls wont be plain for much longer.

The mantel, however, is in and even in use. Remember it way back here? Well, since the back side of the fireplace takes up almost the whole of one wall in the mudroom/office/studio/whatever that room is, I hung it there where it..drum roll please...











is our new coat hook.


Everyone has their own, different and I hope self explanatory hook. Evelyn especially loves hers since it has a crown and a mirror on it and is low enough for her to reach. Briton's is red, mine is pretty and Will's is the closest I could come to a "man" hook. Really, not the exactly the easiest thing to find a man hook. But oh well. Oh, and Nigella has a funky animal that could be a dragon or maybe a lion hook because I liked it.

The hope is that instead of leaving coats all over the house and never being able to find mittens and gloves because there is no real "place" for them, the coats will go on the hooks and the gloves will go into the box and mommy wont spend her days picking up the trail of outerware that always seems to be dotted around our house. That's the hope at least. We'll see if anyone but me actually uses it. I'm sure once we move the door so you can get in from the yard (if we move the door so that you can get in from the outside) the members of my family will be more inclined to hang up their coats on the designated hooks. But again, we'll see.

I also found this cool chest of drawers at Habitat the other day and hauled it home to house my art and sewing supplies. My next order of business (in addition to the art) is to paint it the school bus yellow of the doors. I'm hoping to get to that later this week. Or maybe this weekend when we will be YET AGAIN, inundated with snow (up to 18 inches! ACK! Hello! This is VIRGINIA people!!)

So what do we think? Do we like the mantle coat hook or no. I'm not sure Will is convinced but I think I like it. And although I know he is against the white walls, once the art is hung I think (hope) it will make a bright but warm looking room. Fingers crossed.