The Spice Satchel

Monday, October 31, 2011

It's a Thing-ful Halloween!

Bridget and I are both 5 feet tall. Dan is 6'9" or something really tall. So for Halloween this year, we decided to dress up as The Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2. HAHA! Love it :)
I crocheted wigs for Bridget and I, made iron-on decals in photoshop, printed them out, ironed them on red t-shirts, and we got red sweatpants. One of the best homemade costumes ever!

It had been a while since I had crocheted anything, so I was excited to work on a new project! I was looking for similar styles to Thing 1&2, when I saw this mermaid in my Crochet today magazine. Check out that mermaid's hair! Perfect! So first I made the wigs.

Next it was time to find a font similar to Thing 1&2's shirts in the book. I looked at free fonts for at least 1-2 hours before settling on one for the word, and using a different font for the 1 and another different font for the 2. After sizing things how I wanted them in photoshop, and test printing, I was ready to iron!

I was a little sad at first at how much the red showed through the iron-on paper, but then I embraced it as more vintage looking. :)

After finishing all that, all I had to do was buy red pants. This proved very difficult actually. I looked all over town for 2 days, and then finally decided just to buy some for more money than I was hoping to spend online and have them shipped to me, instead of trying again at the .....mall. eek. Thank you Amazon!
All this made an excellently fun day at work, and a new pair of super comfortable sweatpants I want to wear everyday, everyday. Awesome!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

make your own Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest comes to us from Munich, and is all about beer (and food). As German as we could make it, we had a make your own Oktoberfest at home this year. With Weisse beer, Weisswurst, sauerkraut, potatoes and Riesling. Weisswurst is traditionally served without a bun if it is at a sit down restaurant, or in a bun if you will be eating it with your hands (such as from a cart, or at a festival) hence our buns. :)

I am looking forward to celebrating other cultural festivities this way as well. Next- St. Patrick's Day the Irish way? ;)

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

pepper party

A trip to Wegman's, 2 pounds of red, yellow and orange sweet peppers, and so many possibilities. What would you make with 2 pound of sweet peppers? I made a colorful pepper pico. Diced peppers, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, garlic, and sriracha.Very good salsa- fresh and delicious.

Stir fry- chicken, carrots, water chestnuts, celery, garlic, ginger, and peppers. Paul marinated the chicken in some super secret sauce (not really, I just don't know what's in it because I was at work :P). The same night he also marinated chicken for fajitas- coming up next! Serve over rice (we always use jasmine rice- love the smell and flavor).

Fajitas! I love fajitas. Marinated meat with sauteed onions and peppers. On a tortilla, with salsa and lettuce. Fajita Marinate: For about a pound of meat:
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup lime juice (or mixture lime juice and red or white wine vinegar- red for red meat, white for white meat)
2 jalapenos or other chilies, seeded (if desired) and chopped
3 tablespoons green onions, sliced
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced.
Also great with guacamole! Recipe here in this old post.

And finally, you can put colorful sweet peppers in good old fashioned salad, of course. :) We are trying to eat more salad around here. Paul never used to want to eat salad, so it's a nice refreshing change. Plus, healthy. We usually just dress our salad with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and ground black pepper.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

pumpkin practice

What do you do when you have a huge can of pumpkin, and your husband asks you to make pumpkin bread for his math club? It's never too early to start practicing for Thanksgiving! That huge can of pumpkin made 2 loaves of pumpkin bread and a practice pumpkin pie. Since I was practicing, I also wanted to try using the Coconut Dream I recently bought to try. Usually we use Rice Dream for our milk needs, but I love coconut, so when I saw the new product, I had to try it. It has more fat in it than rice milk, so it is thicker. This makes my morning coffee more creamy, and lightens it more like cream than rice milk does. It also gives the coffee a slight cool coconut flavor. Yum.

We also recently bought a pie crust edge protector, so I no longer have to fight with the foil to keep my crusts from getting too brown. The one we got is silicone, and works great!

My Practice Pumpkin Pie has a nutmeg crust, coconut dream, real maple syrup, and double the amount of ground ginger. It's good. I'm not positive that the coconut dream did anything particularly beneficial for the texture or the thickness/creaminess of the custard. Which means I can use either coconut or rice milk, whichever is handy. Pretty nice. For my real Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie this year I want to use a real pumpkin, and possibly fresh ginger.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Who am I?

I am short, and often cold. I love to cook, crochet and take pictures. I have a degree in photography. One day I hope to be running a photography company with my friend, Angela. I love coffee. When I met Paul in 2002, I didn't like coffee at all, but he loved it. I also didn't know what I wanted to do with my life- I was an advertising major. Basically, there was a lot I didn't know about myself then. Now, I love coffee, the taste, the smell, the beans covered in chocolate. I love it so much that I work at Starbucks until I can achieve that other goal I mentioned. My boss loves my photography, and hangs it in the store! When I was in college, I had to do a self portrait, and this was mine. I'm creative and clever, and I didn't want to have to show myself in my portrait at all. This is actually still one of my favorite pictures. I smile every time I see it, and I guess that says something about myself too.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

camping

Yes, I love camping. Always have. When I was little, I would go camping with my dad and family every summer. Fishing, swimming, tubing down the river, running through the woods, hunting for fire wood, cooking over the flames. So many memories. I also loved camping with my mom, friends, and now I still love going camping. This summer I was lucky enough to go twice. Once with Amy on our 5 year Anniversary (our campiversary) and once with Jami and Sam shortly after their wedding. Jami has been one of my best friends since 3rd grade, and I love that we still have fun. I'm actually very lucky with a lot of very long very great friendships. (Maybe that will be a blog post one day...). Also, we are hoping to go camping again one time this fall.

Friday, August 5, 2011

spiced plum apple pie

I'm a pie NUT lately! I was eating a plum yesterday, and it was very tart. I thought, I bet this would make a good pie :) I looked up plum pie recipes and found this one for Spiced Plum Pie. The recipe calls for 2 1/2 pounds of plums, which we didn't have, but we did have a few (4) black plums and a few (4) granny smith apples. The spices used in this pie really made me want to try it! Cinnamon, orange peel, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves and vanilla- wow, yum! It smelled just as good as I imagined it would when I mixed it together.

This was my first attempt at a lattice crust. This time the crust rolled out better than last time, but still not the greatest. I still need a lot of crust rolling practice. My lattice strips are very thick because the crust was beginning to stick to the rolling pin, as well as to the counter. I make quite a mess of the counter when I bake a pie, hopefully the taste will be worth all of that!
According to a review of the recipe, the pie is even better the second and third day, after the flavors have really mixed together.

Paul and Cori