Fall Vegetable Curry

Yay for meatless Monday!

I am so excited to share my meatless monday meal with you today.  It's a curry that is perfect for fall and completely vegetarian.

My home made vegetable stock

What you will need

2 tablespoons of butter
1 cup of chopped onion
2 large cloves of garlic minced
1 inch of ginger minced
2-3 tablespoons of garam masala
1 table spoon of tomato paste
2 cup of vegetable stock
1 cup of coconut milk
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of black pepper
a pinch of sugar (leave this out if you don't LOVE sweet curries like me)
2 cups of carrot

The fall vegetables

1 cup of Sweet potato
1 cup Butternut Squash
1 small Red Potato
1 can of garbonzo beans rinsed throughly with cold water
1 table spoon of lemon juice
half a cup of chopped parsley with some reserved for garnish

First I melted the butter in a pot and added my chopped onion.  I turned up the heat to high so I could brown the onion.  Browning took about 7 minutes or so.  I stood and watched stirring occasionally to make sure they were all evenly golden.  Next I added the garlic and ginger and stirred to release all the flavors, about 1 minute.  Then I added the garam masala and stirred that for just a few seconds before adding the tomato paste.  I stirred the tomato paste a little to get it all combined before adding the vegetable stock.  Once the vegetable stock is all stirred with the spices I added the coconut milk followed by the salt, pepper and sugar.  Bring it to a boil and lower heat so that it continues a low boil.  I left it to lightly boil for about 15 minutes because I wanted it to reduce a little before I added my veggies.  Once it was slightly reduced I added my vegetables and simmered that for another 10 minutes.  It is finished when you can pierce the vegetables and the fork goes in with little effort.  Finally I added the garbonzo beans, lemon juice, and cilantro and stir to incorporate the flavors of the last ingredients.  Serve it up with a side of rice and enjoy!

I am throughly pleased with this curry, it was lazy, single pot deliciousness!

Up - Cycle shirt to pajamas

Today has been a pretty awesome day.  I got up early, did my laundry, made my meal plan, tidied and some how I still had some time to sew!  I was recently at a friends house and she is moving so she had a lot of clothes she was getting rid of.  I love when people think of me when they are getting rid of clothing, because I LOVE to upcycle items.  I am always on the look out for large shirts that are a nice knit material because it's always so soft.  I picked this shirt out without a project in mind and today I pulled it out with the intention of making a cardigan which quickly changed to a full pajama set for my son.  I started out with the pants and when I was done I looked at the remains and wondered if I could get a top out of it as well.  I'm glad I tried because it worked out wonderfully!  Here is my process.

First I cut the sleeves off, these will become the legs of the pajama pants.

Then I lined it up to create the front and back panels

Now its cut.  In hind shight, I would cut the panels longer and straight across.  Sew those together and then attach the legs to that.

No matter, it worked out the way I did it.  I overlocked it all together and prepared the elastic.  I just sewed the pants to the elastic while stretching the elastic slightly so it was all eased in.

Once that is attached.  I moved on to the shirt.

For the shirt I just placed one of his current t shirts on top of the shirt and only cut the front portion.  This is because I moved the shirt down an inch from the shoulder seam of the original shirt.  Doing this will make the neck hole smaller, which is what I wanted since it is a smaller shirt.

Then once the front is cut out I moved it up to align it back up with the seam of the shirt and cut all along the smaller shirt.

For the sleeves of the small shirt I opened up the shirt and aligned it like so.  The sleeves are made of the sides of the bigger shirt.  I hope that makes sense.  I placed new front and back touching and cut along that curve to create the sleeve.

Once everything was cut out I started constructing the shirt.  First I sewed up the shoulder seams with the front and the back of the shirt right sides together.  Then I added the sleeves all along the curve of the shoulder seam.  Finally I sewed all the way up the sides, continuing on to the arm pit of the sleeve and out to the wrist.

Here is the finished product!

He has already fallen in some dirt, not 10 minutes after putting it on.

The last time I made my little guy pajamas was before his second birthday.  Those are getting a little short on the legs so I'm glad I can make him some new ones.

I didn't bother hemming up the shirt or the sleeves because knits are awesome and don't unravel!
If I was to hem them up I would have used a twin needle to get that nice double line of stitching ready to wear clothing has.

Do you free sew?

So lately, I have been pretty much JUST sewing for work.  I do sewing for the local area so it's all alterations and hemming and I've been kind of burned out.  I have tried to sew a few things for myself but I just can't seem to hold my patience with anything.  I even forced myself to cut out a pattern and fit a shirt for myself.  I started cutting it on some vintage gingham fabric and realized I really should stop because I was cutting pretty recklessly!  So without cleaning up that mess I looked at my fabric scraps and I had a ton of scraps left over from a reupholster job I did a few months ago.  I knew I didn't want to throw them away, but I didn't have any ideas as to what I could do with it.  I mean, I already made some oven mittens out of some of it, so I just started putting it together with out any plan.  I started to free sew.

Free sewing is just like free writing, or doodling, or riffing on a guitar.  It's just letting it flow, you know?  I didn't look at the time, or anything, just joined 2 pieces here and a few more pieces there.  I did lay some out so I could make larger squares kind of crazy quilt style.  I did top stitching with thread from the vintage wooden spools.  I kept going and emptied all the tread on quarter threaded bobbins.  It was wonderful.  Just sewing without any pressure, or plan.  I honestly can't say that I have done that really.  I do a lot of just cut and go and figure it out along the way, but there's still that pressure of wanting a product at the end.  This was much more free.  I didn't have to worry about the size of the pieces or anything.  I did put it all together with what I had so far so here it is.

I already find myself wondering what else I will do with it.  Who knows, maybe nothing.  I guess that's the beauty of it.  Do you free sew? I would love to see what you have done.  :-)

Custom bugaboo cameleon hood tutorial

My most popular post is the Kinda tutorial I did for the Custom Bugaboo Cameleon hood.  I have since made an effort to take better photos of other hoods that I have done.

So anyway here is what I have compiled.

First of all, there are different kinds of hoods you can make.  I have done a single layer canopy, as well is the most common and they way the actual bugaboo hoods are made, double layer canopy.  The single layer canopy is awesome because you can use less fabric!  I will post both ways for you here :-)

What you will need besides sewing machine and thread:

Fabric: 2.5  yards           double wide bias binding
Pins                                1/4" elastic
Scissors

*For a hood with 2 layers with a print and a coordinating solid I would get 1.5 yards of the print and 1 yard of the solid.  I only had a yard of the print though, and I made it work so you can get away with just a yard of each, equaling just 2 yards of fabric total.

Step 1: Create your template.  I did this by placing my fabric over my current hood and pinned it into place.

In this photo I am going to trace the back panel of the canopy.  I draped my fabric, pinned it down, and with a water soluble pen, marked along the seams by feeling along the whole seam and staying in that little groove.  When I cut it out, I cut about a quarter of an inch away from the line that I drew.

After the back panel was cut out I did the same with the front panel.  In the front I did fold the fabric under so I got a nice exact fit and marked all along the seam and the edge of the front of the canopy.  Again, I used a water soluble pen so with a little water it comes right off.  I cut a quarter inch away from line again.

Once those 2 pieces are cut out,  used what was left on my fabric to trace the back piece that wraps around the top of the seat.  I used the same method and marked in the seam lines while the hood was on the seat.  I cut out my piece, making sure to leave a quarter inch seam allowance away from the line i marked.

Now its time to cut the second layer of fabric.  This is going to my underside of the hood.  My print is on the outside and the solid is on the inside.  For this I place my panels on top of my solid lining fabric and just cut the same exact shapes out.  The panel with the point edge is the back and the panel with the rounded edge is the front panel.

Now you need to cut the stripes that the plastic of the canopy will be inserted into to give the hood its shape. For this you will use the solid fabric, or under layer fabric.  It is important that you cut along the curve of the front panel.

 I didn't do that to begin with and cut straight strips.  That was a mistake.  The strips need to be curved along the curve of the canopy.  I just used one side and marked each strip to be 2 inches wide and 5 inches shorted then the end of the hood.   This will insure they lay flat with you sew them on.
Now everything you need is cut out and you can begin your sewing.  First I sewed the ends of my strips by folding over twice.

Once all your strips have nice sewn edges, go ahead and sew them to the inside panel on each side.  First I sewed the the outside edges with non matching thread because it wont be visible and then I sewed the inside edges.  The inside edges will be seen, so the top stitch thread should match well.

After the strips that make the casings are top stitched down you put the right sides together like so and sew along one edge.  I sewed along the side with will be joined to the back panel.

This is where I got sew happy and didn't take any pictures.  So I made sure to take pictures of a different hood I was making to better describe the process :-)  Below is how the one side is sewn rights sides together and one edge is left free.

 Flip it so right side are out and the wrong sides are together.

 Do the same process for the other side along the seam that will join the front and back panel and this is what you get.  A good pressing of those seams so they lay flat will help with the next step.

Once they are pressed and laying flat, go ahead and line those up and sew that together.

Next step is the bias binding.  First you will want to bind the little back piece that holds the canopy to the back of the seat.  Sew the binding all along the bottom.  You can go ahead and line that up with the back of the canopy and sew with the right sides together.

Now you will bind the inside seam of the canopy all along the inside of the hood.  That will incase the edges inside and make it pretty.  From there you are ready to start the bias binding going all the way round the canopy.

When you start the bias binding you will start from the back and encase the raw edge that holds the canopy to the seat.  Start there and work your way around the canopy until you get to where you will sew the elastic in.  Mark the spots on your binding and sew the elastic to the binding and then proceed to attach the binding the rest of the way across the front of the canopy.  Do the same with the other side when you come close to where the elastic needs to be attached.

Now you are done!

So, if you want to make a single layer canopy you just sew the encasing strips to the canopy and thats the only difference.

You can just barely see the line of stitching for the casings.  Personally I prefer the single layer because its quick and easy and using half the fabric!

I hope you enjoyed this post, please feel free to ask any questions is something isn't quite clear. :-)

"OMG" Chicken Tikka Masala

Sorry in advance for there being no pictures.  I honestly just tried these recipes out and did not really know what I was going to get.  Right now this post is mainly for my own purposes, so I know what to do for when I make it again, and take photos :-)
Anyway, I loooove indian food.  It's one of my favorite cuisines, but its also one of the cuisines that we spend the most per meal on when we go out.  That's because when we do break down and head out for indian, we MUST get 3 entrees and an appetizer because everything is sooo good it's just too hard to choose.  Lately though, we are buckling down and saving money.  This means our dine out budget is MAYBE $40 a month, which is dismal haha.  Anyway, I like knowing what exactly went into my meal anyway, and I always have a nagging wonder of what possibly is in my order that I know I wouldn't like.  That goes away once I am eating of course, but I have seen too many episodes of kitchen nightmares to really put it out of my mind.  Anyway, we have been dabbling in indian cuisine for a few years now, but always using the boxed spices that you can just add your wet liquids to.  The process is usually, cook onions, add spice mixture, add meat and simmer for "x" amount of time.  Obviously with the complexity of indian food and the convenience offered buy the box it was never as good as eating out.  How do you get the restaurant quality at home anyway?  Well that's where youtube and google come into play.  I found a couple of recipes that we have tried and tested which resulted in giving us "OH MY GOD" Chicken Tikka Masala.  Yes it requires all the ingredients, but this way rivals and beats the chicken tikka masala dishes we've had.

So our recipe combines 2 recipes.  The first, and most essential, step is to first make tandoori chicken.
We loosely followed this recipe:  Vahchef- Tandoori Chicken
**I followed the method in the video, but left out some things like the food coloring**

My altered recipe for tandoori chicken
Ingredients needed:

4 Bone in Skinless Chicken Legs
1 Tablespoon Chili Powder
pinch of salt
Lemon juice to wet the mixture

Like the video, you slash the chicken a few times on each side and rub the chili powder, salt and lemon juice mixture all over the chicken and set it aside for 15 minutes.

Then make the yogurt marinade.

4-6 table spoons of plain yogurt
3 cloves of garlic minced
1 inch of grated ginger
1 tablespoon of chilli powder
Half teaspoon of salt
quarter teaspoon of pepper
half a teaspoon of mustard seed powder
half a teaspoon of turmeric
1 teaspoon of garam masala
1 tablespoon of cumin powder
1 teaspoon of coriander powder
1 table spoon of lemon juice

First mix the garlic and ginger, to make ginger garlic paste.  I mince together and squish it with the side of my knife to really mix the flavors.  Then I add everything to a bowl and mix all ingredients.  Take the previously marinated chicken and add the yogurt marinate all over it.  You can marinate it for another 10 minutes or so while you preheat your oven to about 425 degrees.  Cut some carrot and Celery to make a bed for the chicken to rest on.  Place the chicken on the bed of veg and place in the oven uncovered until finished, about 25-35 minutes.
When the chicken is completed, removed from the oven and let cool.  When the chicken is cooled, debone the chicken as this now will be used in the chicken tikka masala.  While preparing the Tikka masala gravy, try not to eat all the cooked chicken because it IS delicious!

While the chicken is baking I worked on getting the gravy prepared based on this recipe: Epicurious Chicken Tikka Masala  We made this recipe as it's written, but it was just missing something in our opinion but its definitely a great jumping off point.  It just wasn't that restaurant taste we were craving.

To make the gravy:

4 tablespoons of butter
1 medium white onion diced
2 onions pureed in a blender with a half teaspoon of sugar
6 cardamom pods, crushed
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 tablespoon grated peeled fresh ginger (from 1-inch piece)

1 table spoon of garam masala
1/2 cup heavy cream or half-and-half
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

Quarter teaspoon of vinegar
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro plus additional sprigs for garnish

Preparation taken from website:

"In a small bowl, whisk together the coriander, cumin, cardamom, nutmeg, paprika, cayenne, and grated ginger (and garam masala). In a heavy, wide 4-quart pot or sauté pan over moderately high heat, melt the butter. Add the onion and sauté, stirring occasionally, until light brown and caramelized, about 5 minutes. (Note that because they are sautéed so quickly over moderately high heat, the onions will not caramelize evenly.) Reduce the heat to moderate then stir in the spice and ginger mixture. Add the tomato purée, water, heavy cream, and salt, and bring the sauce to a boil. Reduce the heat to gently simmer the sauce, uncovered, until thickened slightly, about 10 minutes." I add the vinegar at the same time as the tomato puree.

Once it has simmer for 10 minutes and visibly reduced, I add in the tandoori chicken and simmer for another 5 minutes.   After the 5 minutes I removed from the heat and season with salt and pepper to taste as well as add the cilantro.  Transfer to serving bowl and serve with Naan and Bastmati rice.  

Definitely, worth the effort and time once you are eating this delicious dish.  I will update this with the total time it takes to make this dish from start to finish when we make it again :-) 

Homesteading possibilities

Today I write to you from a place of longing and wishful thinking.  I long to be free to live in a way that is simple, yet fulfilling.  To live off the land and solely on what comes from the combined skills and talents of my husband and myself.  Since we were married, almost 6 years ago, it has been a dream of ours to be financially free to create and live stress/debt free and do things that were important to us, without having to compromise our lives working in a job that we didn't enjoy.  Since then, I have tried to live this way on my own as my husband encourages me to to what I feel is necessary for my creative expression and happiness.  However, the financial stress has not really made that possible.  Yes I have the time to do the things I feel are important for me, but living with one income to pay for everything is something that is always in the back of my mind.  Not only that, knowing my husband has to spend 40+ hours working jobs he does not enjoy and do not bring him fulfillment is not what I had in mind.

Now this is where I feel most people just give in, or more common, just don't see or think there is any other way around it.  It's just accepted that you work, and toil your entire youth through middle age to pay for a certain standard of life with massive debts from your education, cars and homes.  It isn't until retirement that you really get to do what you want to do.  To me, this is all backwards and has never been the kind of life that I wanted to live.  I remember talking to my husband on the phone one night, before we were married and telling him that I don't think that I could live in the current time and place that we live in.  I hated all the pressure and expectations put on me by society to "know" what I want to do and spend the next 8 years of my life in school and the next 20 years after that of my life in debt.  I told him that the only way I thought I could live is if I went off into the forest and lived the way humans lived over 10,000 years ago.  I remember feeling desperate and that everything that happened in the last several thousand years had been a mistake.  I laugh to myself right now, remembering this and I'm still thankful that my husband was in my life during that time to help me get some perspective on how I could live outside of that in the here and now.

Fast forward to now, and we arrive at the current tiny house movement.  We don't want to live in a tiny house, because we are young and plan to have more children.  The tiny house movement is great because it goes along with a lot of what we want to accomplish in a short amount of time.  Unfortunately, I feel like that tiny house movement caters to those who have already lived the life that I don't want to live and have great credit and money already put away from their careers.  I say this because, how else do you just drop everything, buy land and built a tiny house that ends up costing ten, twenty, or even thirty thousand dollars.  It's great that people want to get out of living in our current system, but what about those of us who refused it from the start and don't have a hundred thousand dollars to show from it?  Is my journey as liberating because I didn't "leave it all behind" to start a home stead.  When I say "it all" I mean the three thousand square foot home and the career.  What if you refused it from the get go, which meant that you live pay check to pay check because you didn't go into massive school loan debt.  In the current system, no debt also means, no credit.  Which to me is completely backwards.  How does it make sense that the person who buys things they can't afford looks better then the one who lives within their means and saves for the things they need?  So here we are.

It may take us longer, and it may be more radical, but we will get there.  We have began serious talks to leave our $1000 a month apartment by the time a year lease is up.  It might take a year of living in an RV or something of the like, cramped and mostly uncomfortable, but that's what I am willing to do to achieve our goal of having land and living sustainably.  If giving up a year of relative comfort, allows us to be on a road to financial freedom then I am all for it!  So welcome to the cusp of our homesteading journey.

Pasta night!

My husband has been wanting a pasta maker since forever.  I have been searching my local craigslist and even came across one at my local goodwill.  I checked amazon and compared prices everywhere, but was never happy with the common $25 plus price listed.  Sure I could have offered something I was more comfortable with to a craigslist seller, but I honestly don't really like doing that.  I didn't want to offer my $12-15 range to someone and then deal with arranging a time in both our homes schedules that work and have to drive 15 minute to a half hour to get it.  When you add up the stress of finding an arrangement and the gas it takes to get too and from, it just didn't seem like a pay off in my mind.  So you can imagine my glee when I came across one at a local thrift store, and in my price range! My husband happened to be with me, which is not common while I'm thrifting, so I checked if he was interested and put it my basket.  

Here it is set up and ready to roll (hehe) on our table.  So shiny :-)  The flat roller has different numbered settings so you can roll the pasta thinner and thinner by adjusting the number higher and higher.  Then there is the attachment with the fettuccini and spaghetti cutters.  Tonight we made fettuccini.  So we got out our recipe book, which was also a thrift find, and got to work!

Usually the first time we try a new recipe or new food, my husband is always the first one to get on it.  It awesome because if it goes bad the first time, hey! At least it wasn't me :-P  There he goes starting the pasta dough.  It's essentially the same deal as when you make pie dough, the consistency is the same so now I know he can make a pretty damn good pie crust by hand.  I was telling him to through it in the mixer but the book was by hand.  Anyway, he makes the dough and when it's ready we rolled it out because what we really wanted to do was use the pasta maker.

So I took a turn rolling out the pasta, flatter and flatter until it was time to put it in the fettuccini cutter.  That's were the team work came it.  It helps if one person rolls the pasta maker while feeding in the pasta and the other person catches the newly cut fresh pasta.  We didn't have anything to hang the pasta so I has some hooks in my crafts supplies and some heavy duty thread.  Attached them to the underside of the cabinets and viola! We had a place to hang our pasta to dry :-D

Since the pasta is fresh it didn't take as long to cook as regular pasta from the store takes.  It's best to just hang near the stove and keep tasting until al dente.  

We decided that we would also get some fresh mussels to go with our pasta.  Se we did a simple pasta with butter,  garlic, Parmesan, lemon,  and parsley.  We steamed the mussels and it was amazing all together.  We had a fresh Italian, seafood meal for probably an 8th of what it would have cost in a restaurant! I also don't think I've ever had pasta that was 'made fresh in house daily' either :-P  

This dish was was super easy and also has the added advantage of cooking with your love :-). I hope you will try it too.  I know we will definitely make it again.  What's more, we can make different variations with fresh ingredients and really explore with pasta.  Also, ravioli! Don't even get me started on ravioli! 

Until next time, stay thrifty! :-D