Being an adult is hard

There are some moments in my young adult life that really kick me in the emotional butt. Specifically when a big change happens. Lesley, my partner in sewing-crime and my baking-twin is moving on to an adventure life of travel. I helped her pack up her house on the 31st (in one day too! We're house cleaning/packing ninjas) and then said goodbye at her farewell party. And while I'm happy that she's following her adventurous soul, I'm also super sad that my remaining time in the prairies won't be filled with sewing Sundays or Lesley Muffin Specials: chia seed banana muffins with pecans. 

It was last summer that we made salsa together (wine included, of course). And after I reminisced a bit, I thought this would be the perfect time to write all about it.

The processing is much like the jams and jellies I've done: Boil the jars, pour boiling food-stuffs into jars, and then boil jars again. The difference is in the recipe. The recipe below isn't the one we used - we were so expert at cooking that I forgot to write it down (haha, maybe to much wine). So instead below is an approximation of the salsa we made, if memory serves.

Wine, tomatoes and smiles!

Wine, tomatoes and smiles!

Salsa

6 ripe Roma tomatoes, skinned and chopped
2 jalapenos, chopped (seeded if you want a milder salsa)
2 banana peppers, chopped
2 cups red onions, chopped 
1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/3 cup tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes
5 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
3 cups yellow, green or red peppers, chopped

  1. Blanch the tomatoes to remove the skins. To do this, boil some water in a sauce pan. When boiling, drop in a couple tomatoes. Boil them for 30 secs to 1 min. Remove from the boiling water and place them in a bowl of ice water - this stops the cooking. Once cool enough to touch, the skins should slip right off.
  2. Chop the things!
  3. Mix all ingredients together in a large pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer salsa for minimum an hour till all ingredients are cooked through and liquid is reduced.
  4. **Process jars in boiling water bath. Fill jars with boiling salsa (making sure to get out any air bubbles). Place on lids and screw bands till only finger tight. Placed filled jars in boiling water bath. 
  5. Process filled jars for appropriate time. (Edmonton - 15 minutes)
  6. Remove jars from boiling water bath and let cool. 

** Check out my jam post for all the processing specifics and reasoning.

Delicious salsa. I believe it make between 3 - 4 500mL jars. We got 3 because we ate the remainder. Mmmm.

But yah, I'm going to miss you Lesley! Stay safe. Love you lady. 

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Jelly Flower Power


It was last year in mid December that my friend Lesley showed me a video about making edible flowers in gelatine. A) I was super blown away because I'd never seen anything like it before, and B) obviously we had to try it. We were both too busy during December to endeavour to make them however, and so the idea receded into the ether of 'should do's and 'one day's.

Skip forward to last week. Lesley is sifting though her archived email (brave soul) and stumbles upon the original email thread with video link attached. The game is on. I have almost all the ingredients in my pantry too, so a date is set. Jelly Flower Power!

Anyways! I got the recipe off this blog, belonging to the lady who did the wonderful video tutorial. I've modified it to use cups instead of mL and I've written out some instructions too. (Complete with pictures!)

Jelly Flowers

Gelatine Base

Cups or bowls, preferably clear

1 cup cold water
4 packets (4 TBSP) gelatine 

4 cups water 
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/4 tsp clear flavouring**

  1. Add gelatine to cold water. Stir so all lumps dissolve. Wait 15 mins for gelatine to set. 
  2. In a saucepan, heat water, sugar, and flavouring until sugar dissolves completely. (This happens right before the water boils.) Remove from heat. 
  3. Stir in set jelly to hot sugar liquid. Stir so all jelly lumps dissolve. 
  4. Using a cup with a lip (for easy pouring), fill bowls with hot liquid. Remember to leave 1/2 cm room at the top of each bowl as you'll be filling more jelly in later.  
  5. Refrigerate jelly for 2 - 4 hours, until jelly is set.

** I used almond extract but the original recipe used acetic acid. Mmm Citrus.

Petal Concoction 

1/2 cup cold water
2 packets (2 TBSP) gelatine

1 can (300ml) sweetened condensed milk
Whipping Cream (at least 1 cup)
Food colouring

  1. Add gelatine to cold water. Stir so all lumps dissolve. Wait 15 mins for gelatine to set. 
  2. In a 2 cup liquid measuring cup, pour in sweetened condensed milk. Add whipping cream up to the 2 cup line.
  3. In a saucepan, heat milk mixture until combined. (Liquid will become uniform in colour and thickness when it's done.) Do Not Boil Milk Mixture. Remove from heat.
  4. Stir in set jelly to hot milk mixture. Stir so all jelly lumps dissolve. 
  5. Portion out petal concoction into separate bowls. One for each colour. (Don't forget white!) Add food colouring and stir until desired colour acheived.

Now for the process! I've outlined how I made mine and all the tools I used. I am hoping to get a needle syringe like the lady in the video though. It'll make it easier and less messy..... Hopefully.

Materials needed:

Spoons
Knives
Forks
Scissors
Plastic syringes
Paper towel

Basically how this works is you make a slit in the jelly with a tool and then you squirt coloured jelly into the slit, making petals for your 3D jelly flower. Brilliant and easy, right?

So first, you need some petal making tools. You can use regular metal dinnerware or you can use plastic utensils (which you can cut into shapes as well). If using plastic though make sure you get super cheap stuff. It's way easier to cut if the plastic the utensils are made of is flexible. I cut a pointy tip out of one of my spoons and I used a fork for the blue flower. Kinda looks like a chrysanthemum. And a knife for the big pink one. Kinda like a spiky water lily.

I got the plastic syringes from the pharmacy. You can buy fancier ones or ask the pharmacist for the cheap ones. They're typically used for give cough medicine to kids, etc. but for this, they are used for squirting the colour jelly into the slits for the petals.

From here on out I don't really have too many good pictures of actually making the flowers. The video tutorial does it best.

Start your petals in the centre of your jelly base. Since these are the centre petals, the angle is pretty straight in. Make your first circle of petals by inserting your tool, pulling the base jelly back a bit to allow the coloured jelly though. After the centre circle is done it's on to the second row of petals. (You can also wipe off any excess coloured jelly with a damp paper towel at this point so you can see what you're doing.) Angle your tool out from the centre so the petals seem to be folding out, like a real flower. Then continue like this, around the circle, slitting and squirting in coloured jelly. If you have a clear cup you'll be able to see where your petals are by holding it up. Adjust if you need too! Continue adding layers of petals to your flower, adjusting the petal angle as you go. 

After your satisfied with your flower, cover all the petal slits with a layer of the same coloured jelly. Let that set (about 5 - 10 mins). You can then fill in the rest of the base with another colour. For example, I chose green so it's like the flower is sitting in leaves. Refrigerate your flower creations until the coloured jelly is set (about 20 - 30 mins). 

Now if you're doing multiple flowers you'll notice that while you've been food artisting your coloured jelly is starting to gel. Soon it will be to glorpy to suck up into your syringe. You can put it in a microwave to make it liquid again but microwave for no more than 20 seconds. You don't want to over heat the jelly or else it won't gel anymore. I ended up heating my coloured jelly back up about 3 times and it still gelled. 

Other tips I can give are choose thin utensils to make your slits. Thick spoons make it hard to keep the petals close together because the spoons rips the clear base rather than making a slit. I liked using a thin knife best.

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The next hard part is getting the jelly flowers out. I used a flat unserrated icing spreader to unstick the jelly from the sides of the container. I ran is along the edges like one does when trying to unstick a cake. Then I stuck the tip of the spreader up the side, all the way to the top and pressed down until the jelly unstuck. I also chopped off the tops  the jelly orbs with a very sharp knife (so you could see the flower inside). They're turned out great for a half-assed attempt! (Lesley and I are going to experiment on how to make them stick less though.)

But yah, I want to thank Lesley for being my partner in crime! May many more adventures be had! <3

And just maybe we'll be queens of the next dessert fad. Hmmmm!

Cheers!

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Before Jelly Circumcision&nbsp;

Before Jelly Circumcision 

After

After

Making Friends is Easy

I have always assumed that making friends was difficult. This is not true when regarding stuffed animal friends. Those are rather easy to make, if not a little too easy to make. 

My friend Lesley was getting rid of some fabric last week and, treasure of treasures, she had remnants of some fuzzy purple fabric. The cogs of hilarity turning, Lesley joked about me making a fuzzy purple elephant out of the fabric, which she happened to have a pattern for. Challenge Accepted. 

The pattern, from Carol's Zoo, was the easiest pattern imaginable: Two pattern pieces cut out twice each and then sewed together. It says 1 hour from cutting to hugging and I believe it. It took me more time to drive to Fabricland and back (to buy eyes) than to cut out the pieces and pin them together. 

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I would definitely recommend this as an easy intro to sewing. And afterwards you get a cuddly buddy! Yay!

(I named her Violet. I may be 25 but I still love cute fuzzy things.)

Cheers!

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

The Pink Dress

I haven't done any sewing in a while. Every time I go over to Lesley's place for our sewing dates we end up laying around watching movies, eating cookies, and talking. (Maybe yoga, if we're lucky.)

But last spring I started this project: The Pink Dress. There used to be this amazing fabric store in an old european style house one block away from my apartment. He was an old school fabric seller. Rooms and rooms of wool and patterned silk and every colour of lining you could think of. And entire room of wedding fabric: silk and taffeta and crinolines and lace. He also had a design studio upstairs. It's since gone away now (sad face), since most clothes made in Canada are considered "over priced" compared to the mass produced clothing market. I had a talk with the store owner before he closed his doors, about the death of the old Edmonton clothing industry, it's a sad story. 

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ANYWAYS!

I bought some amazing pink plaid linen there. (Along with many hundreds of dollars of silk and wool and cotton print....) My plan: to make an epic ball gown of epic-ly pink proportions.

I bought a 1957 vogue pattern from fabricland and promptly became to scared to cut the fabric lest I mess it up (since the store was closed and I'd never find more). Eventually Lesley convinced me we should do a sewing weekend out at her family cabin. 

Awesomely teal banquette table.

Awesomely teal banquette table.

The date was set, the food was packed, and the water too. Oh yah. It's an old cabin built in the 1900s. No running water. It does have the electric light though! How modern!

We cut out the biggest of the dress pieces the morning we head out and I cut the rest at the cabin. On the ironing board I brought from home. Mad Skillz. 

It was a lovely weekend. I got the bodice completely finished and Lesley got one side of her tailored bright blue blazer done. (We have wacky ideas about what colour clothing should be.)

I completed the dress over the next couple weeks at my apartment. Vogue patterns are notoriously hard to follow and while I agree they don't give pointers on how to make the seam, this pattern was very straight forward. Bodice = 1) cut out pieces and sew together. 2) Ease in the boob fabric. 3) Sew in the lining; tact. 

Lesley looking out over the lake! The water is so high!

Lesley looking out over the lake! The water is so high!

The most time consuming part was the skirt. The skirt is made up of many many many panels (eight to be exact). The only challenge I had was making sure that the panels were all facing the right way before I sewed them together. Twice I pinned the same wrong sides together before realizing it. But when you have as much fabric as was in that skirt, and only 2 meters of room to work, it's not hard to mess up. Lastly, the hem was at least 5 metres long. It literally took me an hour to do a simple pick up hem. 

The dress was completed that summer though. And looking back, even if there was no running water and we cooked on a camp fire, Lesley's cabin was the perfect place to sew a pink plaid ball gown. 

<3

 

 

-Andrea

The Half Assed Hobbyist

 

Sewing: A Love Story

The #1 hobby that, despite being relatively horrible at, is the hobby I always come back too, is Sewing. Much like most kids in the Alberta curriculum, I learned to sew at school in Home Ec. And by 'learned to sew', I mean was given a square of fabric to sew a square pillow out of. (The teacher was more concerned about salmonella's over reaching power to kill everyone than to really show us how to sew. That women was raw egg crazy.) So I really didn't learn to sew until after I graduated university and wanted something to do with my new found evenings off. 

I bought an old Kenmore off kijiji for $30 (steal of a deal!) and started doing regular sewing party Sundays with my friend Lesley. Spoiler: Lesley is the one who taught me how to sew. 

Since 2011, I have done many projects, some I'm proud of and others I was proud of until the realization of how horrible they really were. For example, the drapery fabric skirt, yes, that I made and wear quite a lot. 

I did eventually get better though. My projects got bigger and fancier and more complicated. I made dresses upon dresses and high waisted skirts. All of which were nice. The most annoying project was the floral dress, which I lined myself, to much chagrin of my fingers who had to do all the hand stitching. My best dress was the linen one. Except I put a crinoline under it. Nobody, and I mean no one, like sewing mesh. Worst. 

Above are all the pictures of the projects I've attempted. Some good, some hilarious. I'll be making more of both variety in the future. Guaranteed.  

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist