mamasewingcircus.com

I work for a mom community website where moms come to ask each other for advice from other moms. We’re recently working on a project that has me spending lots of time reading, classifying and sorting these questions and answers. It is fascinating. Our community skews ultra right wing Christian, and so it is not uncommon to see “trust in God” nestled right in there with “swaddle ’em til their eyes pop” as the solution to a sleeping problem. But in general, we all ask the same questions and give the same advice.

Going through the process of sorting, I’ve learned a few things:
– Everything is linked to potty training. No matter how I search through the questions, potty training always weasels it’s way into my results. I’ve found it under “x-rays and 4 year olds”, “in-laws & step families”, “losing baby weight”, “summertime treats”, “toys”, “traveling”, …
– “If my son cosleeps with just his dad, will he become gay?” Thankfully moms around the nation resoundingly say “No. Are you for real?”
– A lot of people eat casserole. I mean a lot of people, like 90% of the US.
– Watch out for the world war between the breast-feeders and the formula feeders. The topic is like religion. Frankly, I’m not surprised by the sidedness of the conversation because in mothering we are always looking for an indicator of our success as a parent, and few things can make you feel as successful or as insecure as your ability to sooth and nourish a baby at your breast. So, those who do breast-feed feel righteous, and those who can’t or won’t line the spectrum from “whatever” to racked with insane, fire spitting hormonal guilt. Pit righteous against fire-spitting and bam!

Years ago the piping on one of my sofa cushions blew out. I’d long ago forgotten until the kid’s spilled something on that cushion at a time when I couldn’t just toss it into the wash, and so I turned it over, rediscovering the blow out. This is a sofa I’ve had since college, so I would not feel terrible donating it in exchange for a new one, except it is tax time. At a certain point in my life – marked by the change in flow of money at this time of year from into my pockets to into the govt’s pockets – I began finding it especially hard to part with the cash for major investments at this time of year. Not because it wasn’t dutifully saved for these occasions, but because, come on, I’ve barely graduated from thinking $100 is all the money in the world. Taxes + a new sofa would keep me awake with spender’s remorse for months. So, feeling especially victorian in my thriftiness, and encouraged by the upcycling in volume 9 of Craftzine, I decided to suck it up and darn that darned sofa.

Here we go –
Using a seam ripper, I ripped the remaining seam through the blow out, beginning from about 1cm beyond on either side.

I measured the new hole. Cut matching fabric about 1/2 inch longer than the hole. Most piping requires a 1 inch wide piece of fabric cut to 1/2 inch beyond the length of the hole.
So, no, purple velvet doesn’t match the faded cushion cover, but it was as close as I could get, had it on hand, and in natural light it blends.

Overlapping the 1cm old edge, I folded the raw ends of my patch fabric back to make clean edges, then pinned in place. The piping rope seats in the apex of this swatch – when folded across the width – so once secured, I tested that when folded over the rope, the raw edges across the length matched. I sewed one side of the patch to the old fabric, following the original sewing line.

With my fingers, I pressed the piping rope into the swatch, folded the swatch over, and pinned the rope as tightly into the apex of the fold as possible. Sewed closed. I made two passes to get the piping tight – the first was basically tacking so that I could remove the pins and focus on sewing against the rope. It would have been smart to use my zipper foot – duh.

Finally, I sewed the hole closed (right side of sofa cushion fabric to seam of piping).

Voila! Tres victorian!

It is amusing to me how children change your life. Before we had kids, a romantic weekend involved a few long runs, home cooked meals or fancy restaurants, and a day walking on the beach or hiking in the woods. Our kids have been at the grandparents’ since yesterday afternoon and our romantic weekend has included having a cheese/salad/crab dinner, falling asleep by 9PM to a movie on the laptop, washing then patching sofa cushion covers, building wine racks, cleaning the storage closet, recording donations to goodwill in the tax application, putting donations out for pick-up, a long run, and perhaps we’ll top the day off by doing taxes, sterilizing the bathroom/kitchen/kids’ room and finishing the 4 pair of pants I started for the kids a few weeks ago. Boy aren’t we romantic?

Sorry if the last post made you lose your appetite. To make amends, I’m sharing my “I can’t believe it is fake” Caesar Salad Dressing that we attempted last night. I normally make the real stuff – egg yolk and anchovies, et al – but didn’t have anchovies on hand, so I faked it with the recipe, below. I swear it is a passable and delicious alternative.

2 Tbsp champagne vinegar
4 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1/4 tsp worchestshire sauce (ours has been aged for ~20 years, no joke!)
1 tsp (at least) Chululah
5 kalamata olives
1 clove garlic

Pour this mixture into a cuisinart, mini food prep, or mince all the solids yourself then shake or pulse until you’ve got an emulsion – the oil and vinegar have become a creamy liquid. Drizzle over salad. Shave parmesean on top. Consume.

Doug ate this on straight lettuce. Our garden is enjoying the rain and the cold weather, so we have an abundance of parsley and arugula. If you have either, I’d suggest throwing those into your salad mix. Both arugula and parsley pair nicely with the nutty parmesan and the casear dressing.

Now that you’ve enjoyed your Valentines dinner, I’ll share why I’ll be wasting away – our food is full of yuck. The New York Times included an article last week entitled The Maggots in Your Mushrooms about what our Food and Drug inspectors are looking for when they check out our food, and the guidelines aren’t much better than the Jungle.

Clickers beware.

When your husband makes this for dinner:

You can’t just show up with frozen pound cake. So I attempted parisian macaroons using Martha Stewart’s recipe (and incidentally, not the one I posted previously). Oh brother, those French are neurotic in a way that I can appreciate. What follows is what I learned, not necessarily what is pictured. You’ll understand when you start reading.

The making of macaroons can be broken into 3 phases –
1. Preparing the almond meal (1.25 cups whole almonds yields 1 cup almond meal)
I’ve seen almond meal and almond flour for sale, but I couldn’t find it today, and my husband encouraged me to use the less expensive whole, raw almonds we had at the house, so I made it the old fashioned way. Bring a pot of water to boil then drop in the almonds. Let them cook until their skins peel away from the nut. Remove from water and drain. Skin the almonds – watch out, they are slippery suckers! Throw the blanched almonds in a cuisinart or grinder and pulse until the meal is very fine. I ground mine to cornmeal consistency.

2. Making the macaroons
Use the recipe provided on Martha’s website. Absolutely use parchment paper, not a silpat or just a greased pan. I can’t speak for the nightmare in store for you if you use a greased pan, but I had to creatively cut my cookies off the silpat and ended up eating most of them whereas those I cooked on parchment came out perfectly. In any case, my cookies took about 20 minutes (not 15 as described in Martha’s recipe), and I left the door closed. At 15, the chewy center stuck completely to the silpat or parchment; at 18-20, they were still chewy, but they were perfectly crisp on the outside.

Piping the cookies is relatively easy. If you are using parchment, you might draw a handful of guide circles by tracing the lip of a cup so you make your cookies uniform in size. Also, smooth the peaks with the backside of a spoon as they won’t smooth themselves.

(Parchment cookies are pictured. Notice mine aren’t uniform in size. They will be in my stomach, though.)

4. Filling
These suckers are sweet, so I liked the less sweet fillings – green tea, fresh raspberries, and espresso. Though, it being Valentines day, I made a batch with almond paste filling for my sweetie. With all the fillings, I simply mixed the filling mixture described by Martha into a bowl of the flavor. I used ~1 teaspoon of powdered green tea, 1 pint of raspberries, and 1 tbs gourmet instant espresso, respectively.

Martha suggests letting the cookies cool for 2 hours before filling. It was a chilly, rainy day so I waited long enough to prepare the filling. Because of the humidity, my cookies began to get sticky as soon as I’d finished filling them, so I threw a batch in the fridge and one in the freezer. The frozen cookies maintained the crunch and chew, and were remarkably easier to handle when it came time to indulge. The refrigerated cookies were a tad stickier and ultimately drier, I imagine, but mine didn’t stick around long enough to test this.

The child in our house that doesn’t suck down raw salmon like candy ate this:

Will: Mom, what is the largest number?
Mom: infinity
Will: Nope. There is no largest number.
Mom: You are correct.
Will: What is the largest number?
Mom: There is none.
Will: Why?

From Will, to all his ladies. (That would be ALL of you reading this):

For the school card exchange, we made stamps the old fashioned way – with potatoes we bought at the farmer’s market. [eye roll] Will helped me stamp the construction paper, and then hot glue hearts in place. Delusional, I thought he might actually enjoy writing his name on each of the 60 cards. I came to my senses by the third card when he began drawing smiley faces and other designs “because they might like it, mom.” It was only midway through the kiss gluing that it occurred to me we’d created a visual pun. Duh.

I thought my mom friends would appreciate these step by step instructions for folding a tshirt in 2 seconds or fewer.

I know this is going to make it’s way around the internets, but because it reminds me so much of my brother’s super power, had to post it.