DIY by someone else?

as much of a DIYer that i am, i just can't do everything myself. it is not realistic for me to make all (or even most) of my own clothing/accessories. but, i can support handmade/small-run businesses (other DIYers), especially if they have eco-friendly practices; and find beautiful unique items to add to my closet.

fiveseed is having a lovely giveaway. it's for a very pretty scarf from foulard threads. i am embracing the world of bloggy-giveaways and posting this entry earns me an extra entry into pretty prize potential.

see here:
http://fiveseed.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/giveaway-foulard-threads/#comment-210

funemployment over, already?!

i've been neglecting the blog this past week, mostly because reupholstering a couch is a lot of work, and has been taking up all my project time. i've finally got all the old fabric off the couch, and am going to sit down to cut out new pieces from the upholstery fabric i bought.

i imagine it will take a while. especially since i go back to work today. i've got a contract to take me until june 25 (and potentially until august 13). so, my time for blogging will be less. but i'm gonna try to keep up one crafty project per week. there's still lots of things i'd like to do that didn't get done during my 5 weeks off.

stay tuned.

DIY pain au chocolat

 last week, chris and i watched an episode of good eats, and i became convinced that making my own puff pastry was a bad idea - too much effort and poor results likely. according to alton brown, the store bought frozen puff pastry is made with big machines that can control the laminated pastry dough layers much more easily than the average amateur pastry chef can in their home kitchen.

but, the next day, i started reading a blog called dinner with julie, and she made it seem so easy! her recipe and blog entry really convinced me that i (an average person with no pastry-chef training) could do it. i threw caution (and all of alton brown's warnings) to the wind and got started on the dough.

things i learned:
- rolling out refrigerated dough is hard work. and requires significant upper body strength. i do not have much of this strength. chris was recruited to help at times.
- my oven is very temperamental, and cannot keep a consistent temperature (it wavers back and forth by 50 degrees). this results in dark-bottomed croissants if you don't watch carefully.
- alton brown was right, puff pastry is hard work. but, i'll probably try it again sometime when i have a few days to spare.

  overall, my first attempt at puff pastry was not too bad. there's definitely things i'll change when/if i attempt it again (mostly relating to technique rather than ingredients).

but, they were certainly edible - and disappeared quickly in the grad student office (although, that may not be the best way to judge their quality). they were even flaky, and i could see a few of the laminated layers.

the chocolate ganache centres were delicious (a modification i made to the original recipe). much better than using regular chocolate which hardens when the croissant returns to room temperature. the chocolate ganache centres stayed soft and creamy until the last croissant was gone.

yum.

urban gardening

in spring of 2008, we built one large planter (to hang on our balcony railing) out of some found/salvaged soft wood. that year we grew mint, chives, and basil in our balcony planter, and we officially caught the urban-gardening bug.

last year (2009) the planter started to give a bit from the weight of the soil and a year's worth of slow decomposition (soil + water + time = decomposing wood), so we reinforced it with some plywood pieces along the bottom. at the same time, chris built us another planter out of salvaged/found plywood and we expanded our urban gardening adventures. we grew chives, mint, and basil in one planter; and attempted nasturtiums and morning glories in the other planter. we spent hours building an elaborate fishing-line trellis for the nasturtiums and morning glories to climb. we attached it to the planter and to the top of our balcony; planted our pre-started seeds into the planter; and waited for the beautiful climbing vines to begin. they didn't. instead, over a matter of days, starling came and clipped off all the nasturtium and morning glory sprouts. we tried some visual and auditory starling scare tactics, with no luck. we gave up on the trellis and vines. we did still have success with the basil, chives, and mint. we also had some success with thyme and cilantro in pots on the balcony. although, our basil got aphids and we made the mistake of bringing it into the apartment, and aphids transferred to a few of our indoor plants. the removal process has been long, and tedious. but we think we finally got them all.

this year, our original planter (circa 2008) was looking pretty rough. i was not very confident that it would make it through the season without the sides falling off, leaking its contents onto the driveway/balconies below. we spent last sunday on the balcony, inspecting, repairing and rehanging the planters. the original planter required some serious repair/reinforcing, but it's much more structurally sound now :)

 we emptied out the old soil (for fear of aphids) and filled the planters with a mixture of pro-mix and organic compost to get our balcony garden started for the year. we bought all our seeds and soil from halifax seed this year, and we've been very impressed with their wealth of information and the time that they spent helping us in store. they've also got great tips on their website, including seed starting/sowing dates.

we planted the spinach seeds which will get one whole planter. the chives wintered over well and have started to come up again already. we'll start our basil indoors this week. and next month we'll sow the parsley, thyme, and coriander outside. our balcony doesn't get great sun exposure, so we're limited in what we can grow there. but, we're going to try some hot peppers indoors this year, on the shelf/ledge of a south-facing window.

 if all goes well this year, we'll have:
- chives for using fresh
- basil for using fresh and for making pesto
- parsley for using fresh and drying
- cilantro for guacamole and salsa making
- thyme for using fresh and drying
- spinach for eating/freezing

next year we might even try to secure a plot in a local community garden that's just a few blocks away from our apartment.

DIY dinner

chris and i have been watching a lot of jamie oliver's food revolution lately. it continues to astound us just how many people there are in north america who rely on fast food, pre-packaged foods, and processed/frozen foods for a majority of their meals.

i've seen supersize me and i've read excerpts from fast food nation; but i'd never realized that people really DO live that fast-food/convenience food lifestyle.

moreover, i can't believe that people regularly feed their children that crap. the brown-bag lunches featured on the most recent episode of jamie's food revolution were full of convenience foods, and therefore full of: sugar, sodium, preservatives and additives. see the lengthy list of ingredients on this pre-packaged/frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich. and i thought a simple PB and J sandwich was already a convenience food (ie. it's easy to make?!)

chris and i both grew up with daily home-cooked meals, and brown-bag lunches filled with sandwiches, apples, carrot sticks and the occasional cookie/treat. for my family, fast food was a treat, happening only every second thursday of the month. the other 28 meals per month were home-made.

so, until watching jamie's food revolution, i probably wouldn't have considered making a healthy dinner as a worthy adventure in DIYing. but now, i guess i do!

 so, here's what we had for dinner on friday night. i made my first ever french onion soup. using alton brown's recipe. there's a few things i'd change about the recipe. overall, it was a bit too thick for us (a few too many onions, and not enough broth); and maybe a touch too sweet too. i'll go for more beef broth, less apple cider and less onions overall next time.

we didn't own french-onion soup crocks until friday morning, when i found some handmade ones at value village for a mere 99 cents each! they've got great character - little imperfections and signs that they are obviously hand made.

i also made some fresh garlic bread to go with the soup, and topped it with mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. i tossed a few local salad greens in our home-made salad dressing and sprinkled with a few roasted pumpkin seeds. overall not a difficult meal. just a bit time consuming - but that's what funemployment is about.

 

project updates

washable cosmetic squares - and the lucky winner (chosen via random number generator) is a green spell.

thanks for sharing all your eco-friendly cosmetic ideas and products. and much thanks for reading my blog - yay new readers! one thing i have noticed, is that the felted wool can get a bit "hairy" with aggressive use - but it can be trimmed back with some scissors. some thick flannel might be another good fabric option for the pads. i say go with what you have, or can find second hand - re-purpose something!

yogurt - i implemented the modifications i mentioned in my DIY yogurt post, with GREAT success. this time, i held the milk at 185°F for 30 minutes prior to adding the starter. once it was cooled to 115°F, the starter was added and i put the whole thing in a thermos that we bought at MEC for a mere $15. we'd been considering one for our camping trips anyhow - so now it will double as a yogurt-making "machine"! when i screwed the cap on the temperature of the liquid was 114°F. after 12 hours of letting the bacteria do it's thing the temperature inside was 106°F. in 12 hours, the thermos only lost 8°F. so, the yogurt stayed within the sweet spot (100-115°F) for yogurt magic to happen. after a few hours of refrigeration in glass jars, the yogurt was the perfect consistency - probably twice as thick as the last stuff we made. it actually stays on the spoon, rather than dripping off! yogurt success!

cinnamon buns

i'm taking advantage of this funemployment to try new baking adventures that i probably wouldn't try otherwise. i've always wanted to make home-made cinnamon rolls, but the time required and possibility of failure has kept it off my baking radar until now.

then, last week one of my favourite baking blogs, bakerella posted about her attempts at making pioneer woman's cinnamon rolls. they looked delicious. but, like bakerella, me and bread-doughs don't go so well together, and i resort to my trusty bread machine to do the "dough" portion of the recipe.

i found a recipe on allrecipes.com that was highly rated and allowed for use of a bread machine. i added a bit of cinnamon and ginger to the dough ingredients, and used a bit less flour (as per some reviews of the recipe). i set my bread machine to dough setting on tuesday night, and awoke at 6:30am to the grinding sound of the bread machine spinning. i dragged myself out of bed to shut the bedroom door and then went back to sleep. by 8:00am, the dough was ready, and so was i.

since my plan was to make some half-sized cinnamon rolls, chris and i spent a bit of time the night before trying to calculate the appropriate length and width to roll the dough out in order to achieve the correct size (when rolled) cinnamon bun. we settled on 16"x32". we also calculated the size i should cut each cinnamon roll to achieve maximum uniformity. i am nothing if not a chronic-over-planner.

 when i began rolling the dough out on the counter, i realized - we don't actually have a portion of counter that is 32" in length or depth. oops. the largest portion of counter is the top of our portable dishwasher at 24"x26".

so, with some quick math and a knife, i revised my dough into two 16"x16" squares. and began spreading on the buttery-cinnamon-sugar goodness and rolling into 16" long cylinders. after that, i threw my plans for cinnamon roll size to the wind, and cut them to try to get at least two dozen similarly sized rolls.

i baked in muffin pans rather than in a 9x13" pan, so that they would be easier to get out of the pan, and more "single-serving" friendly.

 i packaged (most of) them and poured on some maple & cream-cheese icing. being a keen supporter of science research (and a thoughtful girlfriend), i walked them over to the SMU astronomy & physics grad students office so they could enjoy some tasty free food.

they've been getting a new home-baked item weekly in their office. which is nice of me, but also an excellent way to practice self-control. baked goods are definitely for sharing.

and here's one with icing, that i'm going to take to share with a friend today.
 

TOMORROW: cloth napkins; and a winner for the DIY cosmetic pads.

happy earth day everyone!