Strawberry Arugula Salad

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Sewfrench

You know how memories of flavors seem to grow better as time marches on?

We’ve been thinking about this salad since we had it at Beach Bistro. This place is the most acclaimed restaurant on Anna Maria, with one of the highest Zagat rankings in the state and enough Florida Golden Spoon awards to join a jug band, the place could be expected to have good food. And the prices to go along with those ratings. This salad was amazing. Please, don’t judge the salad from its photo. Just envision it as one of those romantic, candlelit places that you hope to get invited to on a very special occasion.

Anna Maria Island beach Bistro salad

And it seems the time has come to recreate it. One of my girls gifted me these Arugula heirloom seeds and contemporary art, All in One Seed Packs, among others, from Hudson Valley Seed Library for Mother’s Day. The artwork on the packaging alone is worth the price.
hudson valley seed library
We promptly planted them and they are now fully grown and ready for their first trim. Too bad I didn’t get a picture of the overflowing planter, full of the spicy, tender goodness we have come to crave. The local strawberries came in this week, too. We are set to create our version of a memory.

Here we go.

Strawberry Arugula Salad

Fresh arugula
Fresh strawberries
Sweet onion, such as a Vidalia
toasted pine nuts or your choice of nut

Raspberry Balsamic Vinaigrette 

1/2 c raspberries, fresh or frozen
1/4 c apple cider vinegar
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1 TBS dijon mustard
1/4 c olive oil

Add all the dressing ingredients, except the oil, in to a blender or food processor and purée until smooth. Slowly add oil until well combined.

In a large salad bowl, per person, toss 3 or 4 quartered strawberries, a handful of nuts, a half a slice of onion, broken up and 1 large handful of arugula,  plus a handful of greens for the bowl. So, for three people, that would be four handfuls of greens. Drizzle with some of the dressing and toss well, don’t overdress it, we’ll add more. Plate it up and add more quartered berries, nuts, fresh ground pepper and a light drizzle of additional dressing.

Raspberry Salad Dressing recipe

I never even remembered the original was full of goat cheese until I drug out that picture!

Turns out ours was nothing like Beach Bistros, after all.

It might even have been better!

Posted in Cooking, Eating, Gluten Free, Recreating foodie memories, Salad, Travel, Wellness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Name This Quilt

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Sewfrench

Last week I asked for help with a vision that I couldn’t clearly see.

I was given lots of great ideas, made some fabulous, new, blogger friends and this is where you all took me.

♪ ♫ I can see clearly now, the rain has gone… ♩ ♬

I picked up the green fabric at my local fabric store, it is really a nice lime green, not quite the fluorescent that it appears on my screen. It is Pinfeathers by Carina Gardner for Northcott. It has a little pattern to it that plays off the yellow. I’ll take better pictures later I was in a hurry, this morning. I also get miles and miles of continuous bias binding made, so when the time comes, I’ll be ready for this quilt and at least one more.

I think the green was the pop it needed.

Pinfeathers by Carina Gardiner for Northcott

So, a couple of days ago, I was reading a Modern QuiltUnlimited blog post about What’s in a Quilt Name.

Daughter and I went as far as to try what one of the commenters suggested. Choose a magazine and randomly open up a page and pick 2 or 3 words and that should be the name of the quilt.

We came up with:

Smidge of Orange, maybe smidge of green?

Mediterranean, I could possibly see cheese and olives…

Last Spring. We may be on to something here..

Did you happen to read it? If not, you should. Then come back and tell me what you think I should name this quilt. LOL!

Posted in Pinterest, Quilting, Sewing, WIP | Tagged , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Eat more Kale

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Sewfrench

Do you know who is the largest consumer of kale is in this country?? Pizza Hut. Seriously. Now don’t start thinking Pizza Hut has become a place to go for healthy eating. They use if for decorating their salad bar….

Kale, one of the oldest cultivated vegetables, it has been a favorite since ancient Rome and ranks vastly superior to most vegetables. The United States has yet to embrace the potential of kale.

Kale has the highest protein content of all cultivated vegetables and is rich in vitamins A and C.

Kale can provide you with some special cholesterol-lowering benefits if you will cook it by steaming. The fiber-related components in kale do a better job of binding together with bile acids in your digestive tract when they’ve been steamed. When this binding process takes place, it’s easier for bile acids to be excreted, and the result is a lowering of your cholesterol levels. Raw kale still has cholesterol-lowering ability–just not as much.

Kale’s risk-lowering benefits for cancer have recently been extended to at least five different types of cancer. These types include cancer of the bladder, breast, colon, ovary, and prostate. Isothiocyanates (ITCs) made from glucosinolates in kale play a primary role in achieving these risk-lowering benefits.

Kale is now recognized as providing comprehensive support for the body’s detoxification system. New research has shown that the ITCs made from kale’s glucosinolates can help regulate detox at a genetic level.

Researchers can now identify over 45 different flavonoids in kale. With kaempferol and quercetin heading the list, kale’s flavonoids combine both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits in way that gives kale a leading dietary role with respect to avoidance of chronic inflammation and oxidative stress.

While kale chips are healthy, they are just as addictive as regular chips! Be prepared. Seriously. They really, really are good!

This is how we do them. We actually used 2 bunches with three different seasonings. One was a curry style flavor using Penzey’s Tandoori seasoning, one was the nutritional yeast (who can’t use more B vitamins?!) and the third was a southwest flavor using chili powder, cumin and cayenne.

Kale Chips

1 large bunch kale

1 tbsp olive oil

1/4 c nutritional yeast or seasoning of your choice

sea salt

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

Grab your kale. We used the flat variety Lacinato on this day.

Tear or cut it into about 2″ square pieces, not too small or it’s a pain, later on.

Wash and spin in a salad spinner. We then let ours sit out on a flour sack towel to continue to air dry.

In a large salad bowl, drizzle the kale with your olive oil until the pieces are evenly coated. Place kale, in a single layer, on your baking sheets and sprinkle with nutritional yeast and lightly dust with sea salt.

As for the salt, a little goes a long way. Because you are dehydrating the kale your salt sprinkling  can easily become overwhelming. Same with the cayenne!

It’s best if you put similar sized pieces on each cookie sheet. The smaller ones will be done quicker than the larger ones.

Place in oven and bake 25-30 minutes or until crispy. Be careful, it can burn quickly if you don’t keep an eye on it in the last minutes.

Remove when crisped.

I can’t decide which one I like best, I just keep munching, munching, munching…

Enjoy!

Posted in Dairy free, Eating, Gluten Free, Health, Recipes, Wellness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

How did you…

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Sewfrench

…continuous quilt Color Blocked, she asked.

Well, to explain, I first had to learn how to draw on a picture. Obviously, most bloggers know how to do this, but I wasn’t one of them. And although, graphic designer, daughter could have done it in about 2 seconds, she and her fancy programs aren’t here and I don’t have any programs! What I did learn was that on my Mac, in the preview pane, you can annotate, which is how I did this. There are probably better ways, but that’s all I had, or could figure out, anyway…

how do you draw on a photo mac

Starting in the center, I stitched in the ditch across the lime, to the right, down an inch then back and forth until I finished the cube. I marked off one inch lines to follow and used my walking foot. I then traced up, in the ditch the right hand side of that same lime/purple block and continued by filling that block, then when I got to the bottom right hand corner of it (block 2), I stitched over an inch and down an inch, then across the width of the turquoise and worked my way down…….. So there are places were I’ve stitched over a previous line, but only once and not more than an inch at a time.

When I got back to the center I moved on to a second quadrant, and on and on….

Does that help? Does that make sense, at all?

I sure hope so because I don’t think I could draw it again!

Posted in 2012 completes, machine quilting, Quilting, Sewing, Tutorial | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Strawberry jelly toast for dessert tonight!

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Sewfrench

My favorite.
On biscuits.
On ice cream.
On pancakes.
But best of all, on a spoon.

According to my Facebook friends freezer jam wins both the taste test and the ease factor. One thing I love about freezer jam is that since you don’t cook the mixture,  it tastes really fresh. I don’t have a shortage of freezer space so that is the way I went, again, this year. Definitely less to clean up when you are not water bath canning it. I use the recipe in the box of SureJell and can’t imagine there is a better one out there, but if there is let me know!

And just so you/I know, 3 quarts of berries makes 16 cups of jam, with berries to spare. Meaning you will need 3 boxes of SureJell, not 2. And when you are making jam alone, you have no one to run to the store for one more box. But it also means you get to lick ALL the spoons!

While I was at the store, again…. I picked up coupons for SureJell/Certo/Pectins buy 2, get free sugar, up to $2, which is a free 2# bag. I now have enough SureJell, and sugar, for the next 3 years of jelly making. Next year, I will NOT have to stop in the middle of mashing berries to go get more… And free makes everything better.

Just another wonderful thing about spring in Michigan. Strawberries.

Posted in Cooking, Cottage, Eating | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Day 18

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Sewfrench

How Does Your Garden Grow 2012 Day 18

Watch out chipmunks, there is a new cat in town! Picked this up at the garden center, last week. My favorite kind of pet, LOL!

Click on the pictures for a larger one.

Hot pepper, pepper, tomato, two eggplants, basil ~ Radishes, onions, tomato (yellow?)

Old Elmer ~ Dill, Strawberries, Thyme and Black Simpson lettuce ~ Tomatillo flower

Cauliflower ~ Broccoli

Mint ~ Cherokee Cherry Tomato ~ Radishes

Zucchini and cucumbers ~ Gourmet Lettuce, Spinach, Arugula

Arugula ~ Radishes

Shallots, re-growth Shallots, Eggplants ~ Beets

Basils, some kind of small tomato ~ Globe Basil, Thyme, Sage

Celery re-grown, new Sage, last years Sage, re-grown Leeks ~ Chives, Parsley and Thyme

We’ve had painters hanging around , well, not really hanging around, they are actually painting the exterior of the cottage. Anyway, one of them told us he was so inspired by our deck garden, that he went home last weekend and planted one for himself. He asked all kinds of questions about what we planted. He also wanted to know what the celery was, LOL! Pretty cool feeling to think we inspired someone!

As for the cut end of the celery, I planted as an experiment, it has sprouted leaves! Beautiful colored, tightly growing, full of new energy leaves! I also planted a couple of leeks the same way, they have taken off, too. Actually, I couldn’t remember what they were until I remembered having made asparagus soup the week before! Good thing I blog what we eat, LOL! We’ll see if there is enough to harvest or not, the verdict is still out, on that.

And check out the volunteer strawberries that are still making their way up through the rocks at the edge of the deck.  Determined little boogers!

Not too shabby of a start!

Posted in Cottage, Gardening | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Color Blocked

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Sewfrench

Ta Da!

Color blocked by Sewfrench

A finish for Friday!

I cut 5″ x 10″ rectangles from leftover Kona solids for a  38″ square quilt.

I quilted it, by machine, at one inch intervals treating each cube as an individual unit, though I was able to continuous quilt it. I used a tan-colored thread because…. I could? My leftover Bubbles binding worked beautifully.

Color blocked by Sewfrench

I could not be happier with the fabric I happened upon for the backing. I always struggle with what to use. And since I knew I would be attempting straight line, machine quilting, I knew I wanted a print. And since the quilt was only one width wide, this made for a super quick and easy backing, no piecing needed. This fabric is The Bee’s Knees by Terrie Manget for Free Spirit, in teal. It coordinates beautifully with all the different Kona solids I chose. I probably should have grabbed a bolt of this one!

Have a great weekend!


P.S.
And for all those who have asked, I did a color match with the 2012 color card to show you the colors I used. I would have to assume these were from the Classic” Palette”, as far as I know, this was the only palette there was at the time!

Posted in 2012 completes, fabric, machine quilting, Quilting, Sewing | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

What to do, what to do….

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Sewfrench

Using what I had on hand, I wanted to try my hand at designing a simple idea that I have been thinking about for a while now. A test pattern of sorts.

Actually what I was thinking was….

My prize, for the Bloggers’ Quilt Festival, was a Beginner’s Combo Kit. Everything you need to know to learn free motion machine quilting. If you aren’t familiar what that is, it’s the all over quilting that is done by your home sewing machine; sometimes straight lines, sometimes, spirals, sometimes just random quilting. It’s not easy to manipulate your stitching in all directions. We aren’t talking just the usual forward and backwards, but side to side, too.

I don’t want to feel ungrateful. Really, I don’t. It’s just that I feel as if the universe is conspiring against me. I have held firm and hand quilted a hundred quilts while it seems the world around me is putting out 100 machine quilted quilts per year! I’ve been tempted. What with so many ideas for new quilts, quilt tops that are waiting to be quilted, and always more fabrics to use up….  I’ve machine quilting one, two, three quilts in recent years… there may be another random one, but that’s about it…

Now I’m questioning and wondering and a tad bit curious and thinking maybe I should give this free motion quilting thing a fair shake? I don’t know…. Obviously, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Long before this prize fell into my lap.

I do know if I want to give this a fair shake, I’m going to need some practice material and what better way than baby sized quilts using what I have on hand??? That’s my story, anyway.

Hmm, this is not exactly what I was thinking.

What if I used white to make it pop?

Still not what I envisioned. Too busy, too flag like….

Thinking, thinking…. thinking what a mess these bookshelves have become… I am so easily distracted…. I donated about 10% of the books, dusted and reorganized… Now that looks better….

The seam ripper wants to play along…. something is still not right. Closer to my *vision*, but still not enough pop, maybe?

What do you think???

For now, I think I’ll go do some yard work….

Posted in Cottage, fabric, Quilting, Sewing, WIP | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

Nothing says springtime like….

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Sewfrench

Dairy Free Gluten Free Asparagus Soup Recipe

Asparagus Soup
printer friendly version

1 1/2 pounds fresh asparagus, well rinsed
4 cups chicken stock, homemade or check to be sure it is gluten-free
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 c minced shallots, usually 2
1/2 c minced leeks, whites only, well rinsed, usually just one
1/2 TBS minced garlic, maybe 2 cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
salt to taste

Trim the tips from the asparagus, about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in length.

Bend to break off the tough stem end from each spear and reserve.

Cut the remaining tender stalks into 1/2-inch pieces.

In a medium pot, bring the stock to a boil. Add the tough woody stems, lower the heat and simmer to infuse with asparagus flavor, 20 to 30 minutes.

Remove with a slotted spoon and discard, reserving the stock.

Add the decorative tips to the stock and blanch until tender, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Remove with your slotted spoon and shock in an ice water bath. Drain and reserve for the garnish. Reserve the stock.

In a medium stockpot, melt the butter over medium-high heat. When foamy, add the shallots and leeks and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the chopped asparagus stalks and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the reserved broth and simmer until the asparagus is very tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat.

With an immersion blender or in batches in a food processor, purée the soup until smooth. Adjust the seasoning, to taste. Soup thickness is such a personal preference, feel free to add a cup, or two, of additional stock if you prefer a thinner soup. If serving right away, return to medium heat and add the reserved asparagus tips. Cook, stirring, until the soup is warmed through.

Enjoy!!

P.S. Since we eat a lot of fresh asparagus, here in the Michigan springtime, each time I roast it, steam it, or sauté it, I break off the woody stems and toss them into a baggie in the freezer. Before you know it I have enough to make soup with only having to supplement with a small, fresh bundle. Otherwise the stems will get used in vegetable stock. Eventually.

Posted in Cooking, Dairy free, Eating, Gluten Free, Recipes, Soup | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

I don’t know what to say.

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Sewfrench

Yesterday, was a travel day for us. We’d been away from home for the week and I was looking forward to my own bed. While in and out of airports, I was catching emails, here and there, and lo and behold the unofficial congratulations started rolling in. I kept waiting for an official announcement but couldn’t get the web page I needed, to load, on my phone…. Eventually I was able to get to it and boy was I blown away!

Bubbles was voted in the top three of the Bloggers’ Quilt Festival‘s Viewer’s Choice Awards! Oh man! The competition was so tough. I still can’t believe it. From what I hear, I think my quilt seemed like something people thought they could conquer. Which, of course, they can. I am so glad to have shared this project and the makings of it because it seems to be what many people were looking for.

Bubble Quilt by Sewfrench

I’ve met so many interesting people, come up with many, new and challenging ideas and have discovered so many more wonderful blogs over these past couple of weeks. I just hope I don’t get tangled up in reading and miss out on the creating and doing!

I love hearing from all who stop by and enjoy all your questions and comments. So keep them coming! I hope to, eventually, reply to everyone.

I just can’t say thank you enough for all the love I’m feeling. I send it right back to you, and I hope you spread it around. ♥

Posted in Bloggers' Quilt Festival | Tagged , , | 10 Comments