Late August Already?

Summer is zooming by here in Santa Fe.  Summer is a big tourist season and I have been super busy at Starbucks with all the extra people in town.  This week is Indian Market week  and the population of Santa Fe more than doubles.  Mr. SBQ and I will go downtown tomorrow as soon as the market opens and before I have to work in the afternoon.

I've been working on a few quilting projects here and there.  I did finish my second Charm Pack Cherry quilt. I just love the bright colors of Kate Spain's Daydream line with the periwinkle Moda Bella solid.

Purple was my favorite color as a child and this quilt just makes me happy. Stella and I can fully attest to the fact that this quilt is perfect for summer afternoon cat naps under the ceiling fan.

For the back, I chose the purple daisy print from the line.  I quilted it myself with my go-to Bernina wavy stitch.  This is a quick and easy way to quilt a quilt.

 More happy purple things at my house include these flowers blooming away in our back patio area.  The flowers we planted in early summer are doing well with the cooler and rainier summer that we are having in Santa Fe.  This is salvia and calibrachoa.

Late summer also brings an abundance of yummy blackberries to the farmer's market.  I made a blackberry-raspberry pie this week and it was divine!




















On warmer days, Stella likes to sprawl out on the cool wood floors.  

How are you spending the last weeks of August?

Still Life: A Quiet December

Quilt Blocks:  pieced blocks from the pattern "A Long Road Home" by Red Crinoline Quilts
Tea:  Allegro's Organic Breakfast Blend with a smidgen of honey
Cookies: one of my absolute favorites -- Chewy Sugar Cookies #2 from Food 52

Best Thing About Summer

Two words:  Blackberry Cobbler

Blackberries from not-so-local farm stand

Cobbler recipe from Joy of Cooking and free-form dough

Yum.  Wish I had some homemade ice cream to go with it

Baking and happy Festivus!

Finally a day off! I did get some sewing time in and made two kinds of cookies.
These are molasses gingerbread cookies rolled in sugar and orange zest. Wonderfully old fashioned and not too sweet. I'm off to have a couple with some English breakfast tea.
Tomorrow starts 7 days in a row at SBux.
And of course a happy Festivus to all.

Spring Cleaning & a Pre-treat

One of my philosophies is treating yourself BEFORE you start a project you are not looking forward to starting. Seriously...
Life is short, have a treat first.  A pre-treat if you will.

It was a somewhat sunny day today and still warm so I decided I better get started on some spring cleaning along with the usual weekly chores.  Before I started though, I treated myself to a slice of this

Key lime pie.  A rather spring-y pie.  It always makes me happy when meringue turns out and doesn't shrink or weep.  I had an extra homemade pie crust in the freezer so used that instead of the usual graham cracker crust. 







I haven't even unpacked from Thimbles yesterday.

No sewing yet today. 
I haven't even unpacked from Thimbles yesterday.

Holiday Baking or My Kitchen is Covered with a Fine Layer of Flour & Confectioner's Sugar

I meant to post this last night but was too tired by the time I got back from delivering goodies to my Starbucks peeps.  I definitely got my bake on yesterday and by mid-afternoon my little kitchen was covered with flour and confectioner's sugar and the kitchenaid got a work out.  I started the morning making cranberry bread pudding to take to Starbucks along with cookies.  (I had homemade rolls in the freezer and milk I needed to use up so bob's your uncle...bread pudding.)

Next was cranberry-orange tea bread for my vet.  Every year I bring treats and coffee to my veterinarian's office as a thanks for keeping the four fuzzy ones healthy.

I only made a few types of cookies mostly to give away or take to the office next week because we definitely don't need to keep these around the house:  chocolate thumbprint cookies (left), a gazillion sugar cookies (above), and gingerbread cookies with lemon drizzle (below).

Today is one last batch of cookies and ham dinner (ham, mashed potatoes, corn, okra, homemade whole wheat rolls).  Rest of the weekend is sewing time woo hoo! 

The cats are being extra good today so Sandy Claws may visit after all lol!

Fall Baking!

On your mark
Get set
Start your baking engines ovens!
With the cooler weather here in the ATL, I start thinking of all my favorite cool weather foods--stews, roasts, breads, roasted root vegetables, and any sort of baked goodies and anything apple.

If you add oatmeal, you can call anything breakfast.

I found some delish organic Bartlett pears at the market last weekend.  After sitting them out for a few days until they were perfectly ripe, I made a crisp with the pears and some local Gala apples.

To make this dessert even more healthy, I added a couple of handfuls of rolled oats to the brown sugar-butter-flour-cinnamon topping. 


This recipe is super fast and super easy--slice up some pears and apples to fit your dish (I used 5 pears and 2 apples but use whatever you want), add 3/4 cup flour, 3/4 cup brown sugar, couple sprinkles of cinnamon, 1/2 cup cold butter cut into little cubes, couple handfuls of rolled oats.  I pulsed this a couple times in my food processor and poured it on.  You can cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry blenders or fork or mush it around with your hands if you feel like it.
Bake at 350F for about 25-30 min. Eat warm with a big spoon.  Vanilla bean ice cream or fresh whipped cream would make this even better I bet.

Recipe based on apple crisp recipe in The Joy of Cooking. Pears and oats are my additions.

Zooming Through the Week

This week was really busy for me at the day job, which means not much was going on here in the evenings. Here's what I accomplished during the week.
Two pillowcases (with owls so you know I am keeping these)
The blue one is mine and the green one is for S.

The continued 90+++F weather and no rain has just about killed my Recession Garden: Year Two. (Is the Recession over? No. Not here. This garden was supposed to last through the first frost in October) The last of the tomatoes, as pitiful as they are, and some scraggly basil are the only things harvested recently.

I made a huge lasagna from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook for lunches and dinners this week.
It was great! I'll definitely make this again.
I also made a blueberry pie with Michigan blueberries on sale at Whole Foods. (blueberries have so many antioxidants I bet the antioxidant factor outweighs the dessert factor don't you?)

Tomorrow is Silver Thimble Club (yea!). I better figure out what project I'm going to work on and get the stuff together before I crash. Happy weekend everyone!!!!

Requested Recipes

I had a couple of requests for the Sour Cream Coffee Cake recipe from the last post so I thought I would go ahead and post it for everyone. It was a big hit at Melisa's yesterday. I use unsalted butter and real sour cream (none of that non-fat stuff). I figure if you're gonna have cake, have cake but that's just me.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake
1/2 c. butter, softened
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 c. flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 t. vanilla
1 c. sour cream

topping: 1 c. finely shopped pecans
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 t. cinnamon

Mix topping in a small bowl and set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 9" tube or Bundt pan. Beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream and mix well. Beat 3 min. at medium speed. Spread 1/2 of batter in pan then sprinkle with 1/2 of topping mix. Spread rest of batter on top and sprinkle with rest of topping mix. Bake for 55-60 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in pan then invert onto plate and cool completely. You can dust with confectioner's sugar or top with a glaze if you want.

Becky requested the recipe for Andes mint cookies (click the link if you want to see a photo). I love Andes mints and I found Andes mint chips again this year at Target. Every year for Christmas my brother and I would get a little box of mints and try to see who could resist eating them all in the first few days. You probably can buy a box of mints and chop them up if you can't find the chips. Here is the recipe from the back of the bag.

Andes Mint Cookies
1/2 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. sugar
2 t. vanilla
2 egg
2 2/3 c. flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 (10oz) pkg. Andes Crème de Menthe Chips

Blend butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and mix. Stir in flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in chips. Chill for a few minutes. Roll into 1 oz. balls and flatten slightly. Place on cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Makes approx. 4 doz.

Happy Baking!!!!

Potlucks, Cookie Swaps, and Gatherings Oh MY!

It's that most wonderful time of the year when you have to rush home from work and whip up something for a holiday party.

One big piece of advice from me--don't ever let your co-workers know you bake from scratch. You are forevermore destined to bring homemade baked goods to every party no matter how busy you are and no matter how much you would rather sign up for drinks. Trying fitting in baking between working two jobs and it's even more of a (ahem) challenge.

Second piece of advice--get thee a Kitchenaid stand mixer and a Cuisinart food processor. You will love them!

We are having an office potluck/party at my day job tomorrow so I came home and made Russian tea cakes (or Danish wedding cookies or Mexican wedding cookies or whatever other name they go by...)
I also made molasses spice cookies.
This recipe (a new one for me from the new cookbook Gourmet Today) has just about every spice in the cupboard in it--cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and allspice and is not very sweet. Yum!
Here's the finished cookies. Rolled in sugar and perfect with a cup of coffee. While I was baking away, I thought I would whip up a coffee cake for a little gathering on Saturday.
Voila! Sour cream coffee cake
A bunch of friends and I are invading Sweet Home Quilt Co. on Saturday for a day of sewing. I thought I'd bring along a cake as a thank you to Melisa for letting us take over her upstairs and to keep us in a sugar high so we can do some major sewing.

Next weekend is our Silver Thimble Quilt Club cookie swap. I still have to decide what cookies I'm going to bring. But that's next week. For now, hurry up Saturday!!!!

October Treats

I couldn't resist this recipe in the October issue of Everyday Food magazine. What is better than cookies with M&Ms? Cookies with Halloween M&Ms!!! The directions say "sort the chocolate candies by color and arrange them on top of the dough".
Seriously? If I had to sort M&Ms, it would be two for me, one for the sorting bowl, three for me, one for the sorting bowl...

And about this arranging on top of the dough. For one thing, who has time to arrange M&Ms neatly in rows, probably having to use math to determine how many M's per row and how much space to leave between M's. (Does anyone else call single M&Ms "M's" or is it just me????) I would have to dig out my calipers and a laser level (I'm sure Martha has hers neatly labeled in a special drawer for cross-purpose household tools). Probably would need paper and pencil and a logarithm or two also (math is not my strong suit). I don't think so.

For another thing, what's up with the equal-sized, each-cookie-having-the-same-amount-of-M&Ms cookies? Where is the giant piece cut out of the middle (no edges!) with the most M&Ms? (that would be mine....).

Here's my unsorted, helter-skelter, randomly placed, stirred-in-the-dough version of the cookies. Note the left-over M's for taste-testing purposes.

I seem to have forgotten to take a photo of the finished product. The recipe is good, needs a little tweaking though, and the cookies need to be eaten right away so share with friends....or not. I may need to try another batch...I need another bag of M's.

When all else fails...make cookies

That's a great motto to live by, don't you think? Feel free to adopt it too.
A rainy afternoon calls for some sewing and baking. These are black and white blondies from the More from Magnolia Bakery cookbook (dark & white chocolate chunks, I left out the walnuts).

I think a glass of milk has my name all over it.

For bar cookies and brownies, do you like middle pieces or edge pieces? I am a middle piece person. In fact, if you ask my brother, he will tell you a story about a certain pan of brownies that only had about an inch of edges all the way around the outside and no middle pieces.

He's prone to exaggeration though and maybe his memory is fuzzy. I'm just sayin'...

It's Peach Time

Peaches are in season here in the Peach State. South Carolina really produces more than Georgia, but we don't talk about that. Anyway, I love fresh, local, perfectly ripe peaches like these
I don't like eating the skin on peaches though. Bleh too fuzzy! On my never ending quest to find the perfect peach cobbler recipe, I decided to try the recipe in The Joy of Cooking.
Peaches are peeled, sliced, mixed with sugar, flour, and a dash of cinnamon (not in the recipe--my addition).
The topping is similar to biscuit dough. Sometimes I use my Cuisinart but this time I went the old fashioned way (I only use real unsalted butter and King Arthur flour for baking because well I'm a cooking snob I guess).
I finished up the dough, give a couple of kneads, and roughly flattened (let's call this a Rustic Cobbler)
Sliced the dough in rectangley shapes, place on peaches and brush with egg wash and throw some sugar for sprinkly fun.

While baking, sew some half-square triangles.
Here it is. Super yummy by my standards and looks pretty. I don't have any ice cream in the house--vanilla would be perfect. Go check out Marlene's posts for her homemade ice cream to go with this post :) And another one (if you can stand it...)

Gift cards

Did anyone receive gift cards for the holidays? I know a few of my lucky friends received gift certificates to Sweet Home Quilt Co. Since S. thinks I have WAY too much fabric, a gift certificate to a quilt shop was nowhere on his list of things to buy me. I did get a Barnes & Noble gift card though and since I wanted just about every book in the store, it took me awhile to pick something out. I decided to get a book I probably wouldn't buy myself but that I have been eyeing every since Martha mentioned it on her show. I love cookbooks--I read them like regular books and often check them out of the library. I especially love to bake and this book is a delight to read and look at the gorgeous photos. Although a baking book goes directly against one of my goals to lose weight this year. Guess I'll have to bake and take stuff to work and Starbucks.

Happy Holidays-Eve

We beleaguered state employees received a "get-out-of-work-at-2:00PM-today" email. So I skedaddled out of there and have the night off of SBux (you can tell there's a recession when I am not working every night at SBux during the holidays...). I am cooking my holiday dinner tonight since I do work all day tomorrow.

S. and I are having roast chicken, glazed carrots and parsnips, salad, and for dessert apple pie. I wish I was having Christmas dinner with Amanda in England (see her menu here). But this will have to do. I love baking and when I have time--it's one of my favorite things to do.

Whole Foods had these beautiful Empire apples on sale. They are crispy and slightly tart--perfect for baking. I have enough to make 2 pies, one for now and one for the freezer to have later.

Yes, I am a food snob (and Martha wanna-be)and make my own pie crust. Today, I decided to make a French apple pie with a sweet crumb top crust.

Ta da! Can't wait for dessert and coffee and presents!