Sewing Face Masks for Healthcare Workers

I am making face masks. I used this tutorial. In the last 24 hours many more face mask tutorials have begun to pop up with a simple Google search. Please note: the CDC has issued a statement regarding the homemade masks here.

I feel helpless, I want to help. So do others. Our very own Missouri Star Quilt Company, Jenny Doan, shared a video face mask tutorial here. 

We are all going through the same unimaginable crisis at once. Our healthcare workers are going to be on the front lines of the brunt of what is to come. I have neighbors and family members who work in healthcare and are now bracing for what is to come. It is terrifying. I am so grateful for each and every one of these brave souls. I am sending them love and appreciation. 

During the days, I spend time at my sewing machine, though I've got the concentration of a hummingbird right now. I've stumbled through knitting and crochet projects in fits and starts. I still manage to get dinner on the table. I did a bit of baking and will share a recipe or two here shortly. 

In the evenings we both try to carve out a little time of zen TV watching--no news! I sit with a project in my lap, hands busy with each stitch.  

From Brene Brown:

"Try to be scared without being scarry."

Vegan Buffalo Chik'n Chickpea Salad with Fresh Peaches (from the sewing room. . .with love, Frankie)

This dinner salad is quick, cool, yummy, satisfying and PERFECT for when it's Hot as Hades like it's been here in Missouri. And folks, it's been that way for a looong time now. I am no fan. 

It's a good thing I love salads for dinner and would eat them every night if I could. 

What attracted me to the recipe I riffed on was the inclusion of peaches.

 Peaches and Dinner=Love. 

Vegan Summer Heirloom Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter (. . . feeding my "inner fashionista" hand sewing Alabama Chanin and joining Sew-a-longs)

The tomatoes have been piling up here. I had to do something. So I did Italian of course. Not that I needed a recipe to create a perfect fresh tomato sauce with pasta dinner. I didn't. But I believe anything Italian made well can be made even better with little pearls of wisdom from Marcella Hazan. Made with 2 lbs. of heirloom tomatoes, a half stick of vegan butter, an onion (peeled and cut into quarters), five cloves of garlic and cooked this according to Marcella at "a very slow but steady simmer for 45 minutes . . . until the fat floats from from the tomato". Her basic sauce omits the garlic and I can appreciate that option. But as far as I'm concerned, it's not really edible Italian Sauce without the garlic. I tasted the sauce while it was simmering without the garlic, it was "okay". As the sauce simmered, I thought it needed some umph: so I also added a fresh zucchini, a carrot, some celery and a can of garbanzo beans. This was a scrumptious meal. 

And an even better leftover the next night. 

I also added fresh basil and oregano from the garden, too--but toward the end of cooking. 

Finally, I hit it with some balsamic vinegar. Perfecto!

Soaking Rains. . . Sewing Myself Sane (and Frankie is eleven months old today!)

The last time I saw the sun, or the last time I can recall seeing it, I spent a lovely, albeit, very hot day in the yard: mowing, pruning and . . . picking some delicious black raspberries for my smoothies later in the day.

 It's been horrible ever since. 

The weather forced me into needing some indoor therapy and productive days in My Sewing Lair. 

Days of happy harvesting and romping through the woods for good fruits.

Long . . . ago.

We're veering off the track of food and recipe sharing for a while. I have to be honest, I've been a single lady here at home a lot these past few weeks and finding solace in other areas of creativity--like sewing. Eating, not so much. (Though I did whip up a big batch of chocolate chip cookies and munch on those little guys regularly. I haven't completely lost my cooking/baking mojo.)

Nothing like a trip to the fabric store to cure what ails you, right? I've shopped for fabric lately more than I have for food. I can go hours and hours sewing. It's meditative to me. Time seems to slip by and suddenly. . . it's almost five in the afternoon. 

Vegan Strawberry Crumb Tart (and. . . under my WIDE brimmed hat in the garden)

This is what you get when you bring home a 2 lb. tray of strawberries and are home alone all week. The strawberries were obviously going to find a home in a smoothie here and there, but not 2 lbs., worth of them. What is marvelous about this delicious, nutty, cinnamon-y treat was the time it took to prepare it. Let's just say, by the time you've read this post, you could have made this already, okay?! I go for simple cooking here lately. And when I glanced in the freezer and saw the almonds and pecans, I thought nothing of throwing them in the food processor with a little vegan butter, some sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and whipping up a nice little mini-tart shell (it took seconds, really!). The aroma from this baking was enough to satisfy my craving for something sweet, baked in quaint little ramekin and out of the oven ready to serve: crunchy, tart, sweet and yummy.  

Strawberries are a fruit favorite of mine going way back. I was the kid who'd order an ice cream sundae, "hold the whip cream. . .more strawberries." However, there's a limit to when I'll consume a strawberry. I won't eat them in the middle of winter unless they've been frozen by me during their peak months of May and June. After that, it's as if the strawberry never existed. (It's the same for tomatoes, though I do allow for some "Italian" canned varieties to enter the home in the dead of winter--a girl's gotta have her vegan lasagna.) We've moved so far off the Eat Seasonally path that I find it disturbing shopping in February and March surrounded by the same produce I saw the previous July. . . in the same places! We are a spoiled, rotten food nation. But that's okay 'cause when I want an avocado, I want an avocado.

Here is the beauty of making this Strawberry Crumb Tart: just put the nuts you have on hand in the dish and you will be fine, trust me. After a few pulses, you'll have this sticky, crumbly mixture--perfect for pressing into the ramekins. Then toss your filling with a bit of sugar, lemon zest and nutmeg, top that with a bit more of the crumb mixture and there you have it! It's delish. Go crazy and mix the strawberries with some blueberries or cherries, it's all good, I promise.

Pistachio Cardamom Shortbread Cookies (perfectly "crumbly". . . for this winter slump)

Sometimes a really good cookie can rescue me from a really bad day. We woke to bitterly cold winds, temperatures in the single digits--and only expected to climb to the teens--and a layer of new snow on the ground. (At least we don't have a hundred inches of snow, things could be so much worse)--I shouldn't complain. Then there was a rambunctious puppy under foot whose only desire in this world involves chasing, running, and gnawing. Little can be done to keep her "down" and quiet other than wearing her out with games of indoor hide and seek and little short trips outside. I was desperate for a break and thought she would find her chew-bone more exciting than my leg, arm, kneecap or hip--so I began pulling together the ingredients for this amazing shortbread cookie. I love, LOVE, love these.

I whipped these up in no time, before my second cup of coffee, even! They were almost too easy. 

Crispy Jalapeno Rice Balls Over Spicy Three-Bean Chili (Sew. Bake. Dr. Who. Hike. Repeat.)

These little jewels made our little bowl of chili a great big winner in our hearts. I had very little in the reserve tank for cooking earlier last week. Just recently getting my strength back. (Even canceled guitar again as I did not want to risk exposing myself to "little people germs" just yet--and there are a lot of little people traipsing in and out of my lesson place, trust me). When the inclination for food finally found me--I headed right back in the kitchen (starving) and did what most normal recovering women might do: reach for the frying pan. This chili wasn't going down with the traditional food stuff (corn bread). I was thinking really spicy, crunchy. I had picked a boat load of jalapeno peppers that morning in the garden. (Still picking them. The only tried and true, drought-resistant veggie apparently.) Quite honestly these rice balls demand another meal pairing. They were that good. And simple. I'll forgo the usual recipe at the bottom of the post here and jump to the way these came about. Oh, and for chili--just use your favorite recipe. It matters not, just know that the crunch factor combined with a little bit of heat and the yummy must-have guacamole and viola. Dinner.

Vegan Roasted Butternut Squash And Garlic Soup with Pistachio Crumbles (Now Sewing "The Jacket" and Now Reading "The Help")

I know it's fall "officially" but I really didn't begin to feel fall until last night as the aroma of roasted butternut squash and a whole head of garlic began to fill the house. Now. It's. Fall. I bought a really good looking squash (not too big, not too small. . . just medium-ish) when they started to look like they might withstand a few weeks or longer on my kitchen counter. In this case, "longer" is the operative word--said squash was purchased about a month ago. I don't know why, but I find having a squash on hand during the months of September through March sort of an imperative. This little guy shared a spot in a bowl with some apples. I thought they made a nice arrangement. A "fall bounty" aesthetic. So now after having successfully enjoyed the heck out of this soup, I wonder if I've accidentally discovered a way to increase the shelf life of the butternut by pairing it with apples? Yes, these are the things I contemplate. Food shelf life. 

Vegan Pineapple Upside-Down Cake (Dispatches from The Sewing Room And The Year-long Quilt: Finally!)

I'm dining solo this week so that called for baking a pineapple upside down cake. The quintessential cake. There had to be some major cake brilliance going on when this cake was conceived. Will I eat the entire cake myself? Yes. Probably. But not in one sitting for goodness sakes!

Raspberry Chocolate Chip Buckle (Weekend Full of "Framily", Cookbooks, Sewing, Meeting Sophie, Etc.)

I am a pushover when it comes to anything remotely in the "coffee cake, crumb cake, buckle, tea cake" category. Just say cinnamon crumbles and I fall in love instantly. If you've got a few minutes to bake today, make this "raspberry chocolate chip buckle/cobbler", now! This recipe didn't start out as a raspberry chocolate chip kind--I really wanted a blueberry buckle. With no blueberries in the house, I settled for raspberries--then the chocolate chips make an appearance, too. To me, this version is possibly better than the blueberry version. The jury is out on that and I'll let you know when I make the other. I'd say this cake is in the same camp as the coffee cake--but would be pulling double duty in this house as I wanted something with just a hint of chocolate, some fruit (for sure) and that oh-so-delightful cinnamon crumb topping. (My favorite part, personally.) With the summer winding down, it makes perfect sense to dive into the last vestiges of ripe fruit in the seemingly little time we have left. Hard to believe our summer fling will be over soon--not soon enough for me, thank you very much. This treat will take you through the week, and even steps in nicely as dessert duty if you warm it slightly and top it off with some vegan vanilla ice cream. My buckle adaptation is from one of the best cookbooks ever published: The King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook. I turned their Blueberry Buckle into this winner, making the following changes--vegan unsalted margerine sticks, Ener-G Egg Replacer for eggs, a bit of nutmeg in the crumble--plus I added a bit of almond extract in the batter, too. I used frozen raspberries--two cups, and 1/3 cup of mini chocolate chips--folding in at the end of the mixing of the batter because to "overmix" this sort of cake treat would be bad karma.  

Right after we dug in. This is truly a sublime any-time-of-year treat.

Vegan Coconut Layer Cake (Quilting Bee, Cutting Corners And Oodles of Needles)

I love coconut. My love of coconut in cake form began with the first frozen Sara Lee Coconut Cake my mother brought home and hid in the freezer. My love of coconut in candy bar form began with my first Almond Joy. It was all down hill from there. Then Saturday as I tinkered away on my sewing machine, watching America's Test Kitchen, Christopher Kimball (who can sometimes wear on my nerves) was all agog about their "tested" coconut layer cake recipe and the "perfected" version they'd created--lots of mmmm's and ahhhhh's later, I was in my kitchen whipping this darling up my way: vegan. ATK should be called: Testing And Making The "Best" of Any And All things Bad for You. Seriously, it's not a show I'd recommend to anyone diabetic or on a strict eating regimen.

I had to show the full monty here. This cake screams to either be taken to a wedding or eaten.

We opted for "eating". 

That's what happens when you are almost fifty--hormones rule and guide and you must abide by their calling.