Why Not?

Last week I went shopping for material for a sewing project.

I ended up at a store that specializes in home decorating fabric. One of the things that I like about this place is that they have sample swatches of each material already cut and pinned to the end of the bolt. The samples aren't large; they're usually about six inches long and three inches wide, depending on the repeat design of the fabric. I picked nine potential fabrics and brought them home to decide which one I wanted. Today I returned to make my purchase.

When I got to the store I absent-mindedly carried the entire set of samples in with me, instead of just the one I had decided on, so I decided I might as well give back the ones I didn't want. Today I returned free fabric swatches to a store.

All the fabrics I had chosen were grouped in one corner of the building, so it was easy to match the sample to the bolt. I unpinned the safety pin that held each bolt's swatches, stuck mine on the pile, and re-pinned everything back on the bolt. I felt like I was doing something I shouldn't, and I kept checking to make sure no one saw me, but the store was pretty empty and I was the only customer on that side of the store. It only took a few extra minutes to complete the job, then I found the material I was purchasing and took it up to the cutting table.

I'm sure the store considers giving the samples away part of their cost of doing business, and they don't expect to get them back. However, they were too small to do anything with and I would have just thrown them away, so I hope the next person to take "my" samples home appreciates them.

The Scoop

Ted Drewes is a St. Louis institution, selling frozen custard since the 1930s. Although they serve only one flavor of frozen custard (vanilla), there are infinite combinations of flavorings and toppings that can be added to make sundaes, malts, or floats. However, they're probably best known for their concretes. A concrete is custard (with mix-ins) blended in a cup that's so thick that it doesn't fall out when the cup is turned upside-down.

Somehow it slipped by me that the 50th anniversary of the concrete occurred back in May; this weekend we went to Ted Drewes to celebrate.

Feast: St. Louis Magazine's food, wine, and spirits blog tells the story this way:

Just so happens that in 1959, 50 years ago this May, a guy named Steve Gamber (who's now 64) began bicycling to Ted Drewes' Chippewa location for a daily Landshire sandwich and a chocolate malt. Each day he'd ask 30 year old Ted Drewes Jr. to make the malt thicker. Ted made the successive malts thicker and thicker but the 14 year old wanted them thicker still. One day, "Just to shut me up," reports Gamber, "Ted turned the malt upside down right in front of me and said 'is this thick enough for you? If it falls out, it's free.'" Gamber paid for his malt.

Ted Drewes was a very busy spot on a weekend night. We didn't even try to park in the lot, but found a spot on the street a block away. As always, there was a crush of people in front of the building, but every window was open and it didn't take too long to get up to the front of a line. After we received our order we walked over to the side of the building and found a spot to eat our treats. Since everyone ordered a different concrete, we had fun tasting each others treats. After we were finished, we people-watched for a while, then walked back to the car.

Although there are several frozen custard stands closer to our house, it's always worth the drive to go to Ted Drewes.

Hallmark Moment

A friend used to be married. I just found out today that she isn't anymore. All the legal work has been finalized and signed, and she's moving on with her life.

What do you do when someone you've known each a long time has had a major life change? If she were sick I'd send a Get Well card. If someone she was close to died, I'd put a Sympathy card in the mail. There are cards for just about every occasion; today I sent a divorce card to a friend. I was amazed that there were several cards to choose from. Some of them were funny and irreverent, and some were heartfelt.

I picked out one I thought she'd like, added some words to the bottom of the card, signed my name, and sent it off. I'm sure if the shoe was on the other foot, I'd appreciate knowing that people were thinking about me.

Dehydration

I've been buying a lot of spring fruit while it's in season and using my food dehydrator to dry it. The theory is that later in the year, when strawberries, blueberries, and cherries are expensive I'll have some in my pantry that I can use. The problem is that we keep eating my work! Dried fruits taste wonderful in a bowl of cereal or a batch of muffins. They also make a great snack on their own.

I found strawberries on sale for 99 cents a pound today, and brought four pounds home to dry:

This is the third batch of strawberries this month. There are three trays filled; when the dehydration is complete tomorrow morning they'll fill a large Tupperware container. I may go back to the store before the week is over for another set of berries!

Cushioning

We're getting new wrought iron furniture for the deck to replacing the warping picnic table that's been there for many years. The table and chairs are being delivered Friday, just as the weather's getting hot and muggy. It will be uncomfortable to sit on the heated metal, so I've been pricing chair cushions.

At one upscale store 2-inch thick cushions cost $49 each, and a mid-level place was charging $25 each. I thought I could make them for less, so I stopped in a fabric store. They had a selection of all-weather fabric on sale for $10 a yard, but the cushion inserts cost $12 each. Even at the lesser prices, the project would still cost quite a bit.

My last stop was the Goodwill store closest to my house. I browsed through the store and at first didn't see anything, but as I was heading towards the door I saw these...

These cushions were $3.00 each! All I have to do is cut them to size, cover them in new material, and we'll have great padding for the seats of our new chairs.

Not-So Brown Bag

Tony and I usually eat dinner leftovers for lunch the next day. Since I'm at home for lunch it's easy for me to reheat my entree, but Tony has to carry his food to work. If there's more than one container, he needs something to carry them in. A small lunch box isn't the right size or shape to hold our microwavable containers, and a larger box is too big for the refrigerator in his office.

He usually ends up stacking everything in a plastic grocery bag. Even though they're bad for the environment, we always seem to have a pile in the pantry. They're the right size and they can be reused many times before they fall apart. However, they leave something to be desired in the style department. I decided I'd try to come up with a bag the size of a plastic grocery bag that wasn’t plastic. Today I made a lunch bag patterned on plastic grocery bag.

My inspiration was this post on Supafine, which gave wonderful detailed directions for putting the bag together, along with step-by-step pictures. I modified the directions just a bit when I cut out the bag pieces (she called for tracing around the template; I pinned the bag to the material and cut through both layers at once), but otherwise followed everything to a T.

What I did:

1. The project called for about a half yard of two different fabrics. I dug through my leftover fabrics until I found two remnants I could use.
   
2. I grabbed a plastic bag from the pantry and cut it open at the top and bottom to use as a pattern.
3. After folding the main fabric together wrong side out, I placed the plastic bag on the fold, pinned it, and cut around it 1/2" from the edge of the bag (to allow for a seam allowance). I did the same thing with the lining material, ending up with two very long rectangles.
4. I pinned the rectangles right sides together, then sewed around the entire piece, leaving a 4" opening for turning on one of the long edges.
   
5. Next, I trimmed the corners and notched the curves so they'd lay flat, then turned the rectangle right side out. A small dowel poked into the corners made sure they were crisply turned.
   
6. All the seams were pressed flat with an iron.
7. I folded the bag in half right side in, matching the edges, and stitched down the sides and across the top of the handles. The very last step was to turn the bag right side out.
   

I could have stopped there for a basic flat bag, but I decided to make it more resemble a plastic bag by folding the handles in half and folding the bottom edges in. I stitched across the top of each handle and sewed down the points at the bottom. It's amazing how the modifications took a simple bag and made it look just like something I'd get my groceries packed in.

I was happy with the results, but next time I'd use nylon fabric so the bag would be lighter and a bit easier to wash out. Tony thought it looked like it would work for him, so if I want one of my own I'll have to do this again. At least I can use the same plastic bag template, and keep a second one out of a landfill.

Gluten For Pun-ishment

For health reasons I've been trying to incorporate more whole grains in my diet, eating whole wheat bread instead of white whenever possible. However, I need to watch my budget, too, and quality wheat bread tends to cost more than the white fluffy stuff. I'm solving that problem by making bread in my bread machine. It takes less than ten minutes to assemble all the ingredients for a loaf of bread, and 3 1/2 hours later I have a delightful fresh loaf with no work on my part.

I buy my white bread flour at Sam's Club and store it in the freezer downstairs. Although it has no fiber, it produces a light, fluffy loaf, because bread flour contains more gluten than other flours. Gluten is a protein that provides the structure in bread. The higher the gluten content, the more volume the bread will have. Whole grains on their own don't have enough gluten to make a light loaf of bread. The first loaf of whole-grain bread machine bread I baked was dense and heavy. It would have made a great doorstop!

Over the years I've experimented with different proportions of bread flour and whole grain, but have yet to come up with the perfect recipe. During a recent browsing trip through my local Whole Foods store, I saw something called Vital Wheat Gluten in the grain aisle. The package said using it could be especially helpful for baking breads made with course, whole grain flours. A glance at the nutrition label indicated the only ingredient was wheat gluten. I was intrigued, so I bought a bag and brought it home. Today I used vital wheat gluten to make a loaf of whole-grain bread.

My basic bread recipe calls for 4 cups of flour. For today's experiment I used half oatmeal and half whole wheat flour. The directions on the wheat gluten indicated I should use 1 tablespoon for every cup of low gluten flour, so I added 1/4 cup into the pan, along with the liquid and olive oil, sugar, salt, and yeast. I selected the whole wheat cycle and hit the Start button.

I left to run some errands. The kitchen was filled with the wonderful smell of freshly-baking bread when I returned. The machine beeped when the baking was finished, and I turned the loaf out onto a wire rack to cool. A loaf of white bread usually rises to the top of the pan. My wheat bread was only 2/3 as tall, but it was substantially taller than any of the other whole grain loaves I've made. I could hardly wait to cut into it to see what it tasted like.

The experiment was a success; the bread was wonderful. It was substantial, but not dense, moist but not gooey, and so good I had to have a second piece. I usually keep homemade bread in the freezer because it doesn't have preservatives to keep it fresh. However, this loaf may not last long enough to reach the stale point!

Hello! It's Meez

When I started this blog, I decided to not install a lot of add-ons so it would load quickly. However, I've decided it looks a little plain, so if you're reading at the blog itself (as opposed to a RSS reader), you'll notice my Meez avatar over on the right.

In case you're not familiar with it, Meez is a social entertainment Website that allows users to create animated avatars. Although the image can be as crazy as you'd like it to be, I tried to create a Meez that looked like me, given the parameters of the Website.

To make a Meez you choose a gender and body type, then personalize the skin color, facial features, hairstyle and makeup. After that's done you dress it from an almost overwhelming selection of clothes, shoes, and accessories. There are backgrounds for your figure to stand in front of ranging from plain to wild. If you want, you can also add animations to the Meez.

Once your satisfied with your Meez, you save it. You can add it to just about any social networking site or download it to your computer. Even if you don't want anyone else to see your creation, it's a fun way to spend some time.

Wide-Ranging

Today we shopped for dinner at Global Foods Market in Kirkwood, which is the biggest international grocery store I've ever been in. Each aisle of the store has items from a different country, and the produce, meat, dairy, and frozen sections of the store are also organized by region of the world. There are people of every nationality shopping for ingredients from their native lands.

I've been in the store a few times before. During my previous visits, I spent a long time wandering down every aisle of the store, looking at all the stuff I've never tried before and buying things I was already familiar with. Today Tony and I decided we were going to be adventurous and purchase a complete meal from the store.

Each item came from a different part of the world. We bought:

• A packet of dry mix for minestrone soup from Croatia

• Tofu crackers from Indonesia (which we added to the soup like you would fried wonton strips)
  

• Chicken kabanosy sausage from Poland (similar to kielbasa, but richer)
  

• French Emmenthaler cheese

• Russian-style half sour pickles

• Canned jackfruit in syrup fromThailand

• Gelato (from Gelato Di Riso, which is actually a local company, but according to their Website they make authentic Italian Gelato!)

The evening turned out to be quite international. We listened to Radio Rio, which showcases Brazilian music, on KDHX while we prepared and ate the meal. I served the Eastern European soup in Chinese soup bowls with flat-bottomed soup spoons, and the main course on Wedgewood stoneware from England. To go with dessert I brewed some tea that son Brian brought us from The Butchart Gardens in Canada.

Everything tasted great, and we even have enough left over for lunch tomorrow.

Official?

I read in the newspaper today that the state of Oklahoma now has a State Rock Song--"Do You Realize" by the Flaming Lips. It's one of three states that have made the designation for official rock song; Washington's is "Louie Louie", and Ohio's is "Hang on Sloopy".

Missouri only has one state song, the Missouri Waltz. I know that our nickname is the Show-Me State, and the Eastern Bluebird is the state bird. I though the state flower was the flowering dogwood. I had incorrect information though. Turns out our tree is the dogwood; the white hawthorn blossom is our official flower. Today I researched all the state insignias for the state of Missouri.

I got my information from two Wikipedia articles. The List of Missouri State Symbols had most of the insignias, but I found a couple additional ones in Lists of United States State Insignia, which listed the insignias of every state.

Our official:

• State amphibian: American Bullfrog
• State aquatic animal: Paddlefish
• State bird: Mountain Bluebird
• State dance: Square Dance
• State dinosaur: Hypsibema missouriensis
• State fish: Channel catfish
• State flower: White hawthorn blossom
• State food: Ice cream cone
• State fossil: Crinoid
• State grape: Norton (also known as Cynthiana)
• State grass: Big Bluestem
• State horse: Missouri Fox Trotter
• State insect: European honey bee
• State instrument: Fiddle
• State mammal: mule
• State mineral: Galena
• State motto: Salus populi suprema lex esto (Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law)
• State nickname: Show Me State (an unofficial one is The Cave State)
  
• State nut: Eastern black walnut
• State Poet Laureate: Walter Bargen
• State reptile: Three-toed box turtle
• State rock: Mozarkite
• State slogan: Show Me State
• State soil: Menfro
• State song: Missouri Waltz
• State tree: Flowering dogwood

I was disappointed that Missouri hasn't designated a state beverage, tartan, toy, or sport like some other states have. On the other hand, maybe that means our elected officials have better things to do than make more insignia designations!