Christmas Eve buffet
Natural dyeing experiments
A natural dye sampler using materials foraged around Austin and leftover from cooking.
It’s really hard to get colors that aren’t shades of yellow, orange, or off-white! Sibling C wore these socks for a few years. She reported that after enough washes, it’s hard to tell which socks go together.
Weekend trip to Philadelphia: Urban design highlight
We took a trip to Philadelphia (via Amtrak — woo!) over the summer. There were a lot of cool things in Philadelphia, like Amish pretzels, but I wanted to highlight the charming alleys. They’re residential streets with historic row houses.
The highlight is how narrow the alleys are. Technically, they’re wide enough to drive a car down but they’re so narrow that drivers have to go just about walking speed and there is nowhere to park. They are through streets, but the width keeps drivers from wanting to use them so they remain useful (and safe) for pedestrians and cyclists.
These old streets are really nice to use and the old houses give them extra charm.
Sadly, streets like these can’t be built under modern road design requirements. (Perhaps private streets with this design would be allowed.)
Cleaning out highlights
In the process of decluttering childhood items (toys, art, clothes, etc), I saw these two unique pieces by my little sister A:
And one by me (I think).
A trip to the Cloisters
My parents visited us in New York around Christmas last year. For one of our outings, we went to the Cloisters in Washington Heights.
The museum is an assortment of old European art and architecture that some guy imported. At that time (late 1800s through the 19-aughts), there were a bunch of old abandoned and half fallen-down monasteries and churches that no one was using. I assume people would be more interested in them now, but maybe there are just soooo many old religious buildings in Europe that these would still be considered dregs.
The collector assembled all of the partial monasteries into one eclectic building.
It’s a good place to take your parents 🙂
Last year’s birthday dinner!
For my (N’s) birthday last year, we ate at Claro, a Oaxacan restaurant in Brooklyn. I was originally interested in them because they make their own masa (and downstream products, like tortillas) from specially-sourced heirloom corn and use some amount of local produce and meat. They aren’t fully vegetarian (unlike For All Things Good) but do have a good selection and a fair amount of seafood.
J liked the idea of going to Claro because they have a Michelin star.
I don’t really remember what we got. One salad offered that we didn’t get had ground grasshoppers in the dressing.
Everything was really good! We also got to sit in the restaurant’s nice backyard garden.
Inherited quilt projects
I have a couple quilt tops (the decorative bit that you see which made up of a bunch of different fabric scraps sewn together) from my mom’s mom. The less fancy one has what I’m calling a “dogbone” pattern (I don’t know what the official name is). We don’t know where the quilt top came from originally; my grandma didn’t quilt, so it must’ve been a gift of some sort.
The fancier top was a wedding present to my mom’s parents in 1952. This one is more finished, with a border and everything.
I put these through the laundry to pre-shrink them, make sure the colors don’t bleed, and find any weak seams, but I was too rough on them… so I’m currently repairing frayed seams. I was hoping to go straight to assembly and quilting.
While resewing seams, I’m thinking ahead to what border and back to add to the dogbone top.
Blue fabric is scarce 
A little more yellow in person 
A little more purple in person 
There are some hand-me-down white squares, too
I could also combine borders or do two rows of border. What do you think looks best?
I was thinking a lime green patterned fabric would look really good, but there’s nothing like that in the stash.
Sources of fancy masa
This is a partner post to the bean search. I discovered recently that fancy masa is available. It can be heirloom, direct-trade, single origin, organic, etc, all those normal fancy food options.
I was inspired to search for fancy masa after J and I went to a (vegetarian!) Oaxacan restaurant in Brooklyn that makes their own masa using fancy corn. They use the masa in their food products but they also sell it fresh (I got some). Going to Brooklyn all the time for fresh masa isn’t super convenient, though. Fortunately, the company, Masienda, that supplies the fancy restaurants also sells direct to consumers!
While researching them, I came across a couple other fancy masa stores too. These are the options I found!
- Masienda – dry masa in several colors, as well as several heirloom bean varieties and lots of varieties of heirloom/single origin whole corn. They have supplies for doing your own nixtamalization.
- Alma Semillera – very similar to Masienda, but with smaller selection. Many if not all products are also organic, so overall a bit more expensive.
- I Love Mole – even smaller selection of beans, masa harina, and whole corn. This company mostly sells mole mixes and other seasonings.
None of these companies is particularly local to me (in New York). I believe they’re all based in California, although most of the beans and corn are grown in Mexico.
Ladyfingers
These are the cookies used for making tiramisu. Sibling C is going to make it as a birthday cake!
This recipe is from Joy of Cooking (1976).
Recipe
- 1/3 cup cake flour (sift before measuring)
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar (sift before measuring)
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1 whole egg, 2 eggs separated
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- (Optional) Let ingredients warm to room temperature.
- Whip 2 egg whites until stiff. Sift sugar and salt together, and fold into egg whites. Beat mixture until it thickens again.
- Beat whole egg, 2 egg yolks, and vanilla until thick. Fold into egg white mixture.
- Resift flour a few times and fold into egg white mixture.
- With a pastry tube (or spoon), shape dough into strips 3.5-4 inches long by 1.25 inches wide on a cookie sheet. Or pour into greased molds.
- Bake at 375°F for 12 min.
Mooncakes for the fall equinox
Friend A who I went to grad school with (also likes cheap/free food, has been climbing with us recently) gave us some mooncakes she made! :’) They were presumably for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which happens around the autumn equinox and is coming up! The days are definitely getting shorter.
The mookcakes are actually the “snow skin” version (recipe that Friend A used), which uses a mochi-esque wrapper. Apparently snow skin mooncakes are easier to make than the traditional baked kind, so a better choice for at-home creation.
