More Easter baking

A long weekend is the perfect excuse to work on baking and projects!

I am finally thisclose to finishing my work on the bedroom. Walls are painted, shelves are built, pictures are hung. I finally finished the trim on the window box seat, although looking at this photo makes me think it could use another coat of paint. Other than that though, I am pretty pleased with my peaceful little corner - a perfect place to sit with a good book and a pot of coffee to watch the rain.

For Easter dinner, we decided on duck - easy and festive. I like this recipe from Epicurious. Super simple.

Served with spring asparagus, braised red cabbage, a potato gratin, and homemade bread.

For dessert I wanted something light and springlike after a rich main course - and Ontario rhubarb is already in the shops! So I opted for a classic rhubarb custard cake. I found a number of variations on the same recipe online - funny sometimes you see things on blogs with beautiful photos and recipes that don't quite make sense. It is so obvious that the pictures are borrowed because the blogger has no idea what they are talking about! In this case, the miscreant in question suggested you could turn this gooey-bottomed, fluffy-fruity-topped cake out onto a rack, and then flip it right side up again. Sounds like disaster to me! Others made it in a square pan and served directly from the pan; I wanted to be a smidge less casual, so I used a springform. Worked perfectly.

Rhubarb Custard Cake

1 1/2 cups diced rhubarb
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs water
4 eggs, separated, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup butter, melted, room temperature
3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 cups milk, room temperature

Simmer rhurarb, 2 tbs sugar, and water over medium heat until rhubarb starts to soften. Drain and set aside.

Beat egg whites will stiff peaks. I like to use a copper bowl for this.

In another bowl, beat yolks with 3/4 cup sugar till thick and lemon-yellow. Whisk in vanilla and melted butter.

Whisk in flour and milk alternately. It will be very runny.

Fold in egg whites gently.

Pour into a very well-buttered 9" springform pan. Spoon the rhubard over top, gently, so as not to crush the egg whites.

Bake at 325f for 60-70 minutes, or until it doesn't wobble terribly when you jostle the pan.

Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes before removing the sides of the spring form pan, then allow to cool completely befre serving.

Best served with whipped cream!

What I've been up to

Another long break, but it's not because I've been doing nothing.

First off, I spent the winter divided between being deathly ill (pneumonia, pleurisy), taking care of a sick kid, and filming on location in different parts of the province. Oh, the glamour of getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to drive to Belleville! It hit me too late, "Oh yeah, this is why I stopped working in production," it's just too stressful.

Anyway, I did manage to accomplish a few things in the interim.

I built shelves!

Basically done here, although they still need a final coat of paint. As do the walls, obviously.

I have the paint and rollers and all ready to go, just as soon as I find the time...

I got yarn in my xmas stocking - what a clever Santa, bringing cashmere! - and knit a sweater:

Focussing a camera is not my strong suit. Also returned to a project I'd set aside before, a pair of gloves...

... to match a hat. Also did some baking. No photos of Mary Berry's Cherry Cake from Great British Bake-Off, even though I made it twice (once under-baked, once over-baked), or the Honey Cake from the Mile End Cookbook, but I did manage a blurry snap of the gateau St-Honoré I made for Valentine's Day - a small one, just for the kiddo and me.

And today, I knocked two long-half-finished projects off of the to-do list. I finished recovering the cushions on the porch chair...

... so it matches these porch chairs.

And finally, I finished off a pair of pyjamas. The Fenelon Fair has a category for "Ladies' Sleep Pants" which has unfortunately led to me having three half-pairs of pyjamas waiting for the tops to get done. The bottoms for these were done in 2014! Ah well, better late than never.

what i did on my summer vacation day seven: a fond farewell

our final day, in between packing and cleaning, i had to finish up the raft.

there were just a few finishing touches to add - a hitching ring:

and a ladder:

then away we go! we loaded on the anchors, paddled out 50 feet, and dropped anchor. then rested in the sun, while the kid swam back and forth to the dock a few times.

so nice to look out from the cottage and see our raft floating in the sun!

what i did on my summer vacation day six: afloat!

on saturday we were threatened with rain, so decided to try to get as much done as possible on the raft before the deluge, and then go in to the fair in the late afternoon after the skies cleared.

there was a lot of hammering to do...

but fortunately i had help! my strong kid is pretty proficient with a hammer.

one of the things on the list for this day was to buy chain for the anchors. i had looked at chain on previous shopping trips, but wondered - how much to get? prices ranged from 69¢ to $2.29 a foot, so if i bought 100 feet of chain, that could add up to a lot of money. so, i measured out 50 feet of rope, brought a ball of yarn with a sinker tied on one end, and swam out to see how deep it was.

holding on to the length of rope (to measure distance) and ball of yarn (to measure depth) was a bit futzy, and i instinctively reached for the ground with my foot.

guess what? i touched bottom.

lake depth 50 feet from shore: about five feet. i don't know why in the world i thought it might be deep enough to require a hundred feet of chain, but i am very glad i measured before buying! i ended up getting two 10-foot lengths - one to connect the anchors, one to loop through it and connect to opposite sides of the raft. this way, the chains stay well under the raft, so no worries about banging one's feet in the water.

then it was off to the fenelon fair to see how we had done, eat mini doughnuts, and send the kid on some rides.

there were ribbons!

the ghostbusters costume won a $25 fabricland gift certficate! just in time for me to start this year's hallowe'en costume!

and, who'da thunk? my sorry little cukes took first place!

helps that no one else entered pickling cucumbers. whew.

we topped the evening off with a final open-fire dinner (sausage and corn), and a trip to the demolition derby. not my usual fare, but we had loads of fun - and the fair at night feels much more exciting!

what i did on my summer vacation day five: fair entry day

friday morning is always the busiest of our cottage week - getting entries ready for the fair!

i didn't have quite as many as usual, but didn't have time to spend finishing any needlework at the cottage with a raft to build. also i was sad to see that my squirrel pattern did not include any instructions at all for the tail! that's the second time that's happened to me with cottage knitting, grr.

anyway, i did have a fairly hefty bag of stuff to take in: a ghostbusters costume, my scissors shirt (yay len's mill for giving me another snippet of the fabric!) maple leaf forever cardigan, linen middy pullover, double-leaf saroyan scarf, end of year leaf cloth, pyjamas...

and some cookies, and brownies, and (not great) jams, and really awful cucumbers:

(those aren't the world's worst cucumbers; i left the world's worst cucumbers on the vine, because they looked more like avocados.)

then it was back for lunch. having a big roast chicken for dinner on the first night was a very strategic decision; the rest of the week, lunch was salad with various leftover veg (peas and beets, here) and then topped with chicken breast. lots of protein and nutrients for the carpenter.

speaking of, frame all done! all that's left is to flip it upright into the water, nail on the top boards, and then float it out 50 feet where we'll anchor it.

what i did on my summer vacation day four: anchors aweigh

thursday we spent basically the entire day on the water!

first up was making the second anchor. these things weigh 200 lbs each! it may have been for the best that i didn't get enough cement to do both on tuesday, as carrying and mixing the cement was exhausting - really feeling my age and lack of exercise.

so we took a little swim break.

and relaxed in the sun with some knitting! i think i want to re-work the shaping on the mighty oaks baby cardigan, so i switched to knit one squirrel two:

then, back to work. i was a bit bummed to find that handley's is not terribly accurate with their cutting - my 8-foot cedar planks varied from 95 to 97 inches, not great for making a square frame! so i had to cut some down to size.

also bummed to find the screws that came with my L-braces were phillips head. i hate phillips, and didn't have a phillips bit for my drill, so did a lot of driving my hand. wah. between that and the cement, i was pretty sore by the end of the day.

i decided getting the outer frame together would be my goal for the day. and i achieved it!

to celebrate, we had hamburgers and corn cooked over an open fire. i love cooking over a real fire - something you can't really do in the city.

what i did on my summer vacation day two: lumber & cookies

the lumberyard wasn't open on the holiday monday, so it was back to town to pick up supplies for a raft and anchors.

i also had to pick up additional chocolate chips - the ones we got at the country cupboard tasted worse than a brown crayon! the yeast we got there was deader than a doornail, too - so i baked a loaf of bread and hamburger buns that we could have used as paperweights! my plan had been to bake more later in the week for the fair, but that flew out the window.

and unfortunately i made a tactical error with my anchors - i thought i needed 3 bags cement total, but i needed 3 per tire! whoops. i was a bit bummed, as the concrete needs 3 days to cure before you can use the anchors, and by the time i realised it, it was too late to get more. sigh. at least i got one done.

and of course there is always time for knitting on the dock!

summertime

and the living is busy! i have been completely ignoring this blog basically since i took on a new project at work. suddenly there is no time for anything!

but since we have entered the season of wonderful fresh local produce, i have found time for things like making cherry pie and lemonade for lunch:

also, our cottage week is coming up soon, and that means the fenelon fair! and that means, get crafting.

i have a couple of things that i got done over the course of the year that just need tagging. unfortunately, i also need to find sample materials (scraps of yarn or fabric) to attach to the tags. i feel like i am swimming in scraps, but do you think i can find a scrap of scissors fabric? grr.

i do have a back-up "any clothing article (sewn)" to submit - this pencil skirt i am working on:

just needs to be hemmed and pressed. but i feel like a shirt is more impressive (it's certainly more work!)

i'm also working on a hooded baby cardigan, but i needed to order needles for it, and then this happened:

sad! fortunately i ordered from webs, and they said they'd send out a new set right away! just hope they arrive before we leave for the cottage.

i've also used the fair as a good excuse to get the kid's traditional xmas eve pyjamas done:

well, almost done, i need to do button holes and some top-stitching. i also made some pyjama bottoms for me:

i love this fabric! only problem is, the fair category is "ladies sleep pants," which is great because the bottoms are much less work than the tops, but it also means i have the top half of the pyjamas i started last year, still pinned but not sewn. i think the top half of the pyjama bottoms from 2013 haven't even been cut yet. oops.

wondering what i should bring along with me to work on at the cottage. mittens for the kid's teacher? a tea towel to embroider? the big project i'll be working on is this raft, so i may not have time for much else.

window seat: turtle-style

i finally did up the cushion properly for the window seat!

previously, i had cut the foam to size, wrapped it in some batting, and laid an afghan over it to hide the unupholstered truth. that was... probably longer ago than i care to admit.

anyway!

i decided to use my holiday monday to get it done. i had the fabric, piping, zipper, and thread all bundled together, and no excuses! so at last the cushion is done. the millwork to finish the front is still stacked under the bed, but there you are. baby steps, as they say.

the intended effect is something like this, but with less musical ability:

or to be honest, something more like this:

with me in jimmy stewart's role, casting a suspicious eye over the neighbours, and inventing apocryphal fictions about their sordid lives. i've already started with that - i guess it is the one part of the window seat that i actually have finished!

finally, five years later... mask stands!

here's a little project that sat around waiting for me to do it for a long time, although it was not difficult at all!

five (yes, five!) years ago we went to zambia for a month, and among the things we brought back were two wooden masks. but we needed a way to display them! i foolishly thought it would be easy to but some sort of hat stand and adapt it, but i was woefully wrong. le sigh. so i had a little think about how one could make such a thing.

i imagined a version of some of the display racks i'd seen in shops for hats (although i couldn't for the life of me find such things in the right configuration and price for me to purchase): a base, an upright, and a knobby bit on top:

fairly simple, right? the wooden bases were cedar deck-components bought at our local hardware emporium - they're meant to cap 4x4 posts, and there's a good variety of them available most places you would go to buy stuff to build a deck. the upright section is simply a length of 3/4" dowel. the top, because i couldn't find wooden ones, is ugly white styrofoam.

i got a 3/4" spade bit and used my trusty old hand drill to drill down through the centre of the wooden bases - almost but not quite all the way through, leaving just under 1/4" thick at the bottom. then, i inserted the dowel with a load of glue, and anchored with a wood screw which i drove up from the bottom. solid. i also screwed a couple of mending plates on the bottom of the base, for added weight and stability.

the styrofoam balls... drilling in styrofoam is a messy unpleasant job. but it got done. those got glued on the top.

now of course, they looked pretty ugly. here's where the papier mache comes in. i made a simple paste of 1/2 cup flour, 2 cups water, cooked for about 5 minutes and then left to cool. i had a bunch of natural brown tissue paper in my collection of tissue and wrapping paper saved from every gift that has ever entered the house, so i used that, and covered the stands in their entirety, from the top down. the styrofoam balls got extra layers, as did the join between styrofoam and wood - my drill holes were messy, the balls were wobbly, all the stability they have now is due to papier mache. layers of it. these don't need to be exceptionally sturdy; the masks are made out of a fairly lightweight wood so they weigh less than you'd guess to look at them (makes sense, considering they were originally made to be worn by people). and, they're going to be sitting out of harm's way, on top of the piano.

i was originally intending to use a dark stain over all, but the natural light brown was sufficiently innocuous that i just left it.

ta dah! i'm feeling a bit pleased with myself now. although the top of the piano is probably getting too crowded for its own good. i should probably rearrange the living room bookshelves to make room for the basket o' sheet music up there, at least.