Baking With the Kids

Here in New England, fall is definitely in the air. It's apple season, and I've been taking the kids out to the local orchard every few weeks for apple-picking outings. My favorites are the Gala apples, which are unbelievably good when you get them fresh off the tree, but which also last really well, giving us time to work our way through the entire peck we need to buy at a time.

With all the apples in the house, I always want to back, and if I can, I always like to get the kids involved when I back. When I decided to make an apple pie, my eldest was in school, but my three-year-old daughter was very enthusiastic about baking. I had, perhaps, not thought out enough what she could do to participate in the making of an apple pie.

I made up my own recipe as I went; with apple pies I rarely bother to follow a book recipe any more. Here's the pie we made together.

I started with a store-bought pie crust, because I am far too lazy to make my own. Usually, when I shop, I try to shop generic, but with pie crusts, I always get the Pillsbury refrigerated ones. Pillsbury pie crusts are reasonably priced (around $2-2.50 at my local store), and give you the right flaky texture, which I find many pre-made pie crusts won't. Just make sure to let it sit outside the refrigerator like the instructions say before you try to unroll it.

I had a two-pack of pie crusts, but I intend to make a raspberry pie from all the garden raspberries I've been freezing this year, so I decided to make two single-crust pies, and decided to do a streusel topping for this one.

I set the oven to 375 degrees F and turn to my apples. By this time, my daughter has dragged a chair over the the counter and is kneeling on it, saying, "I'm going to bake, too!" I look at the pile of apples that need to be peeled, cored, and chopped. I look at her little fingers.

"Would you like to help me with the apple peels?" I ask.

"Yeah!" she says.

So I set to work peeling my apples. I have five mammoth-sized Cortlands I picked while getting my last round of Galas, and show my daughter how you can peel the skins off in one long strip, and set her to work munching the peels down while I cut each apple into sixteen wedges and dump them in a bowl.

Here is the recipe I used for the pie filling:

2 tbsp flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

I combined those four and tossed the apples in them, then unrolled my pie crust into a deep pie dish. We moved the apples into the pie crust with a spoon (and little girl fingers), rather than just dumping them in, then sprinkled the remaining sugar mix over the top.

Then it was time for the streusel topping.

I started with
1/3 cup pecans, finely chopped
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour

I combined the dry ingredients, then used a pastry blender to cut 3 tbsp of butter into them until I had a crumbly mess. Yum! My daughter sprinkled most of it on the pie for me, but I let her keep a few spoons of it to eat herself.

Bake it for 45 minutes at 375 degrees, and it comes out bubbly and hot. I let it cool and set for an hour, then served it still warm. Delicious!

Tomato and Mozzarella Salad

For the second year in a row, my tomatoes have disappointed me.

Last year, it was the wet, spreading fungus and giving me some serious bug problems. This year, it was a bout of strep throat that hit when the summer heat was at its worst. My poor tomatoes cooked.

All this means, of course, is that I am spending a lot more money on my lovely heirloom tomatoes, and not that I am going without them. I've been taking advantage of the season to try some extra varieties, to better plan my garden for next year.

This was my lunch yesterday.



Here is how I did it:

1 loaf focaccia
1 large brandywine tomato
1/2 pint sungold cherry tomatoes
8 oz mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
1/4 cup torn fresh basil leaves
olive oil

1. Chop the brandywine tomato into bite-sized pieces and place them with their juices in a large bowl. Quarter the sungold tomatoes and add them to the bowl.

2. Cube the mozzarella. Try to keep the bites consistently sized between the tomatoes and mozzarella pieces. Add them to the bowl.

3. Top with sliced onion and basil. Drizzle 2-3 tbsp olive oil over the top. Toss to combine.

4. Let the salad sit for 15-20 minutes to let the flavors combine. Cut the focaccia into wedges. Arrange wedges in individual serving bowls and add salad. This recipe makes a very filling lunch for two or a side dish for 4-6.

Feel free to substitute your favorite tomatoes, or whatever looks best at your local farmstand. I find the recipe works best with a 2-3 kinds of tomatoes, varying in color, sweetness, and acidity. Experiment with some interesting colors and shapes.

Enjoy!

Woven crystal bracelets have a huge bang for the buck. I don't remember when I first got the idea for them, but I've seen them in a few places since. They're a fairly straightforward way to transform basic bicones into a more substantial statement.

4 mm bicones seem to be the standard-issue cheap bead in the world of Swarovski crystal. Prices go up if you go up in size, and don't drop for the smaller sizes. Different shapes are all more expensive. When I first started working with crystal, I bought hundreds of bicones for just that reason, and then discovered they really don't have much of an impact on a piece. The way they're cut means that if you string them on a necklace or bracelet, most of the facets send light sideways, to hit on other beads. They don't pop out at the eye the way the spheres or cubes do.

So with literally a few thousand bicones and no idea what to do with them, I started playing, and found out that if you arrange them in little 4-bicone circles, they make a very cool square shape, and all that sideways reflection starts bouncing off the other crystals for some very attractive and dramatic effects. And it's really easy to do!

This particular bracelet uses:

1. Around 90 4mm bicones
2. A length of beading thread. If you try to use wire or a nylon thread, the beads will be likely to bunch up instead of lying smooth.
3. A clasp.
4. Two closed jump rings.



To start with, you'll need to cut a length of thread. Around 3 feet is usually enough for this, but I like to leave some room to trim the ends in care the thread gets frayed at the tips. Attach the jump ring to the middle of the thread. I normally just pass the jump ring onto the thread, center it between the two ends, and tie the thread to keep it in place.

Note: with some clasps, it's all right to just tie the thread directly to the clasp, if you prefer. The trick is to be careful that whatever you tie the thread to directly is a closed loop, without any cracks. Beading thread is great at finding those little gaps and sneaking through, as I discovered too many times.

Next, you want to pass both ends of thread through a bicone, to give the bracelet a smooth start. This gives a more polished final product than starting directly in the ladder pattern. At this point, your bracelet should look like this:



To make the ladder, you want to start by threading two bicones onto the two threads, so they will sit parallel to each other.



Then, take a third bicone and thread the two ends through it in opposite directions, so that the bead makes a bar between the two threads.



Pull it tight. It is important to make sure your bracelet sits properly here, because it's very difficult to adjust the tension later on if you leave in slack early on.



Repeat. The length of your bracelet depends entirely on how many repetitions of the pattern you do. Around 30 seems to be the best length, but you can customize your length.




When you have enough length, thread two bicones on separate threads, then pass both threads in the same direction through a bicone, the same way you did the other end. Tie the threads to a jump ring and secure with a drop of glue. Attach the clasp.



In fact, I am going to custom-make this in a very short length, because once I decided to use my orange bicones, my 3-year-old daughter decided she wanted it. So, this is a 3-year-old bracelet, in orange crystal.



Total cost: Around $4.50, buying the bicones in bulk at $0.08 apiece.

You can also extend the pattern to make other projects. You can, with a little ingenuity, turn the 2-thread pattern into a 3-thread pattern for a high-impact choker, or make fun little ladder earrings which are a really popular gift. Once you've mastered the technique, it can become an element of other pieces, as well.

Happy crafting!

Process Versus Product

It took me a long time to really absorb the idea that crafting is all about process, not product. Early on, I was so impressed by what I could make. It was amazing. I was a goddess of creation, sitting in my parents' basement with a box of glass beads, making necklaces and bracelets and earrings. I wore a ridiculous amount of jewelry in those days. I still have a lot of it. It's basically glass beads on string. Sometimes they're vaguely color-coded. Usually not. But they were mine.

I moved past ugly glass beads in the basement, graduating to semi-precious stones, silver beads and wire, and Swarovski crystal. It is very, very easy to make pretty jewelry with sterling silver and Swarovski crystal. I could whip out earrings in five minutes a pair. Pretty earrings! They cost under $2 a pair to make. I'd kill an hour, spending $25 and winding up with twelve pairs of earrings. $25 is a lot to spend for an hour's fun, but hey, I got earrings out of it! I have approximately a hundred pairs of crystal earrings in a bathroom drawer right now. Ask me how often I wear earrings.

So I started looking for ways to stretch the beads. Instead of stringing beads for bracelets, I started weaving, making 2-dimensional webs of glass and crystal. Those were pretty, and took an hour or two to make, costing $2-3. I have those in a dozen colors and designs. Ask me how often I wear them.

In a decade or so of making jewelry, I probably spent five thousand dollars on it, and wound up with a drawer full of things I never wear. My work evolved gradually to make each piece take longer, and longer, a shift towards skill and patience and away from a focus on the best materials. It's been an interesting evolution. I started making French beaded flowers, weaving rings from seed beads, trying to milk as much occupation from a set of beads as possible.

After hitting a place where I told myself I absolutely could not spend more money on beads, I decided to try sewing. The problem is that while I love being able to sew, I kind of hate sewing itself. Cutting, measuring, painstakingly pinning... too much attention to detail, not enough reward. I do a lot of pillow slipcovers, placemats, and very basic pieces along those lines. Also: fabric is seriously expensive. I can buy an outfit in the store for less than I can get fabric and a pattern, even when they're on sale. So while I still sew (occasionally), it was not destined to be a long-term hobby for me.

I think I decided to pick up knitting while I was pregnant with my third child. I decided to knit a blanket for him. The yarn cost $3. Over a period of two months, I burned at least an hour a day on average working on the blanket. SCORE.

Knitting has definitely been the greatest ratio for hours-of-occupation vs. cost-of-materials. I have an enormous store of yarn by now (I need to stop buying more), and a handful of works-in-progress I can work on depending on the time I have available. Five minutes, I pick up my sweater, which I'm doing in the round, and toss off as many stitches as I can before putting it down again. Fifteen minutes, I work through a few rows of a dish towel or wash cloth or scarf -- quick rows in a simple pattern. Half an hour or more, and I can really commit to a blanket or afghan.

How do you factor labor costs into your crafting? Do you like getting a product out quickly, or do you feel more comfortable when you have a few pieces in progress?