18. Universal Beans

I soak beans overnight. There is a quick method in "More With Less" but I don't like the way my kitchen smells when I boil beans on the stove. So I soak them.

In the morning, I turn the crock pot on. They've soaked in the crock pot and then I just turn it on. I don't switch the water. Whatever.

The crock pot never burns them. Sometimes they stick to the one hot spot on the bottom right corner, but nothing stinky. I cook them on low all day. I test them for doneness, and when they are soft but still firm enough to hold their shape, I drain off the water.

I pour in a jar of salsa. Or a freezer container of salsa verde. Or whatever salsa-ish concoction we've received from the CSA. Sometimes I add chopped onion and garlic. Sometimes canned tomatoes. Rarely do I add meat, and then, only leftover chicken or beef bits (sometimes the second night of beans gets stretched with deer meat, but not on the first night).

Cumin. Cumin is not optional in my house.

Salt, pepper, chili powder. Put it all in the crock pot, whichever bits seem right that day. Cover and let it cook another hour or so.

Serve with shredded cheese and/or sour cream. It isn't complete without one of those--it is missing a layer of flavor alone. But with it, it is the best thing, any time of year.

Leftovers go in lunches or Jake eats for breakfast. If there's enough (if I've done more than a pound of beans to begin with), I brown deer meat on the stove (chunks or ground) and throw the leftovers in the pan. I usually add more onion and tomato as well. Chili again, or rolled up in tortillas.

17. Broken Dishes, Broken Dishwasher

In the past three days I've broken a bowl and a glass. Unrelated to washing them--I was picking the glass up to put away, and taking the bowl out of the cabinet. Crash onto the floor. The glass was no big thing, but I like my bowls with cat faces. Ah well.

Less emotional investment in the dishwasher. It is older and it no longer sprays water. It sort of steams the dishes now. Which doesn't work, by the way. I was distressed the morning I found the still-dirty dishes sort of smeared around and grimy. It took a lot of work to clean them, and the dishes in the sink waiting for their turn in the dishwasher.

But since then, things are clean in my kitchen. I wash dishes after breakfast. I wash dishes, tiny bits, throughout the day. I put dishes away while doing other tasks in the kitchen. And then I wash dishes while I cook dinner and after we eat. The kitchen is tidy before bed and the day starts well.

Why do I want a dishwasher, again?

I'm sure I'm using more water this way, but maybe not. It's an older dishwasher and not an Energy Star appliance. I know I'm not using as much electricity, though, even with the hot water I use. The soap is cheaper, too. And my kitchen is clean.

I hate to be the one to say this but I think I might say it. I already always did my good wine glasses by hand, and all of my pots and pans, being anodized aluminum, never ever go in the dishwasher. My Revereware sometimes did (don't tell my aunt Gracemarie) but pyrex dishes rarely came out clean so I did them by hand most times. Same with the crock pot, which I use at least weekly. Bento boxes are done by hand because they're plastic. Same with anything plastic I put in my fridge to store leftovers or pesto, etc.

The dishwasher essentially became a place to store dirty dishes until later. Silverware, every day glasses, plates, and bowls. Which, of course, ARE THE EASIEST THINGS TO HANDWASH.

I think I'll eventually replace the dishwasher. Looks like about $600-$900 for a really good one. And I'll use it for dinner parties and events like that. Right?

Hmm.

16. Hexagons Still Going

A work in progress. It is a quilt top made of hexagonal kaleidoscope blocks. Then they were positioned on the bed, pinned down, and I'm working through them row by row. It's a lot of half-hexagons to piece. And I've been, you know, out of town and busy with other things. But I try to do a bit each day.

The cats have claimed this. They love layers of anything laid on top of layers of anything else. The folded blanket at the end of the couch. The rumpled pajama pants at the foot of Sophia's bed. Doesn't matter. If it's on top, they're going to lie on it.

Bleys, pictured there, will also make it his own. Every day I go in there and straighten up hexagons. Hexagons that are rapidly turning an orangey-white.

15. Spools

These are the spools of thread I went through to make the Christmas quilts. Some of them, of course, were partially used before Christmas quilting began. But some of these belie their original heft--that cardboard tube, for instance, was three times that size in diameter, top to bottom, filled with machine quilting thread.

Some of it was "vintage" thread, picked up mostly at Leftovers back when they had a south city location (oh how I miss Leftovers; the drive to St. Charles is too much for a bag of junk). I picked them up mostly for the wooden spools they were wound on, but that Trusew Polyester was a thin lavender thread I used to put blocks together.

I'm sure this isn't all. I didn't think to start saving spools from this project until October, and at that point I had done some work already. But it's a good indicator, still.

14. Feet

I have three feet for my sewing machine. Here, the sewing machine is footless. Don't pay attention to the fuzz. It's time to clean the sewing machine. But you can see the basics there. The needle, the thread, and the open bobbin case for the lower thread.

This is the machine with its normal foot. When I got this machine, this was the foot that came with it. This foot is fine. You want to piece a bunch of little triangles together? Sure. Sew up a dress for Sophia to wear in a wedding? No problem. But you can't quilt with it. Nope.
For that, you need these. Either of these, but both is better, of course. The first one here is a walking foot. I also use this for very long sewing projects, like banners at church. A walking foot, well, walks. It has "teeth" that match up with the teeth (or sometimes I've heard it called "feed dogs" but I don't know why) on the bottom of the machine. The top piece of fabric gets moved along at the same speed as the bottom. This isn't an issue for small stretches of sewing, nor is it a problem when the things being sewn are thin. But if you combine long lengths of stitches with thick layers of batting and backing, you get a big puckering headache. That's not a pun. The whole thing will pucker and shift and look lousy. The walking foot solves this problem.Why not just use it all the time? I thought that, too. But it is loud and slower than the other basic foot. So I do use it more often than I might if I wasn't a quilter--and it is essential to do things like match up plaids and stripes--but I don't use it for everyday.

The last foot here is an embroidery foot. Like peanut butter goes with jelly, the embroidery foot is useless unless it comes with a plate to cover the feed dogs. More advanced machines have a lever to lower the feed dogs, but I was able to order this little plastic plate to go over them and there you go. Tricked it up just fine. The embroidery foot is for embroidery (duh) and free motion quilting. If you have a machine quilted quilt, all those curlicues and puzzle shapes and stars and waves come from embroidery feet (well, not really--but they could. Most likely they came from a programmable long-arm quilting machine, but I live in a house, not a warehouse, and I just can't go there yet, especially when this works "just fine for government use" (where does THAT idiom come from and why is it in MY head?).
I've had folks ask about quilting on a home machine, and that's how you do it. That's how I do it all, in fact. So much of life is just having the right equipment.

13. Bacon Grease

We occasionally have bacon in our house. It is often an ingredient, but sometimes we make it for dinner (BLTs) or a weekend brunch. I will not feel guilty about bacon. Just sayin.

We pour off the grease into a can, unless I'm truly lazy and let it congeal in the pan and then scrape it into the trash instead. This can sits on the counter by the sink. This can is gross.

I decided over Christmas--it's a convoluted story that involves listening to Pandora radio on my phone plugged into the car on a station I created out of classic and jazzy Christmas music and then there's Bing telling me to save grease to help support the troops in the 1940s--that I wouldn't just throw bacon grease away. As an added bonus, it would also no longer grace my kitchen counter.

Last night was our first bacon since Christmas. We poured the grease off into a can and let it cool in the sink. Stuck it in the fridge, where my parents used to keep a similar jar of grease. I'm sure Jake's parents did too. Or do.

I'm not sure what to do with bacon grease, really. I feel thrifty for saving it in the fridge, but then what?

Lucky for me, there is the internet. Google "uses for bacon grease" and there you go. The best answer I got was "anytime I need to cook something in oil or butter I think, 'will bacon grease do?'"

Probably not the healthiest choice, but a little bit of bacon flavor goes a long way. I'll report back my findings. I'm thinking most of it will wind up on greens this spring, frankly.

12. My Niece's Sunbonnet Sue

The girls on my Christmas list last year received Sunbonnet Sue quilts. Daisy and the cousin her age had the traditional baby-doll turned to the side Sue, but Fiona and the cousins her age received the girls on swings and parasol ladies instead.

They were ironed on and then blind-stitched down. After that, each one of them was embellished. Some very simply, with a lace edge to her bonnet or something like that. Many of them were decorated more elaborately, however, with seasonal objects and settings. After I was done, I divided them into piles based on how elaborate they were--I didn't want one girl to receive all the really interesting ones--and then randomly assigned them to each recipient. I set them all differently, however. This one, for my niece in Texas, has the Sues/Parasol Ladies all in the center together, with sampler blocks all around.

The girls are sewn onto vintage fabric. Sturdy old pillowcases and discarded linens from church (from incidental tables and maybe from altar cloths--but not the altar at my church because these were all too narrow and way way too long). I was trying for a patina of age, since this is a 1930s pattern. Not all the same white, basically. It was mostly successful I think.

I will not be returning to this pattern, or the more traditional Sue, not for a long time. I worked on these ALL YEAR, constantly returning to this handwork when I couldn't do machine work (on trips, for instance, or at school functions, etc). I'm tired of Sue. But happy about the result.