Just call me Julia...

After seeing Julie and Julia, which I LOVED, I just had to buy myself a copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" - the writing of which is the story told by the Julia portion of the movie. Beef Bourguinion is featured prominently in the movie, so that is the recipe I want to try first. Now, if any of you saw the movie, or have watched old Julia Child cooking shows recently, you'll know that this dish is always prepared in a Le Creuset French (Dutch) oven. In case you're not familiar, Le Creuset is French-made, enameled, cast iron cookware. It can go from stove top to oven, making it very versatile for a number of dishes. Now I have always wanted to buy one of these - for as long as I can recall, I remember looking at them longingly in the Williams-Sonoma catalog, and wondering if I'd ever have one. It's that price that deters - a 5-qt French Oven retails for $270! (although they are always somewhat reduced from that price.)

So, I'd been checking out prices on eBay and Amazon lately, and wondering if I'd be willing to spend that kind of money. Then, on a trip to visit my brother in Cincinnati, I stumbled upon a Le Creuset outlet store! The store carries seconds - they have some minor cosmetic defect, which are hardly noticeable. Outlet prices for these are about 35% off to begin with, and this month they are having a special promotion - depending on how much you spend, you can get an additional 25%, 30% or 35% off!

I thought about this for a day, and then made a trek back - I ended up buying myself two pieces, both in cherry red - a 4.5 qt. French oven, and a 3.5 qt. Buffet casserole. Here's what they look like:

The French oven will be perfect for soups, stews, and of course, beef bourguionion.


The buffet casserole will be great for many of the rice dishes I do - think paella or arroz con pollo, and is a great serving piece as well.
I plan to stick with these two pieces for now - try them out, see how I like them, and then decide if I want any others. I don't plan to do a whole cookware set, but more likely a few specialty pieces.

I also bought myself this adorable stoneware garlic as well! It can actually be used for roasting and serving roasted garlic, but I'll probably just leave on my counter for decoration!The downside of this whole story is that because we flew to Cincinnati, I had to leave my precious purchases there! My mom will pick them up at Thanksgiving and take them back with her to Michigan, but then I can't get them until Christmas time! I'll just have to remember - better late than never - the amount of $$ I saved makes it worth the wait!

While looking for photos for this post, I ran across this quote from Julia Child:

"Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it."

I like that!

Happy Halloween!

And a new recipe layout!

Hope everyone has great plans for Halloween. Pete is still doing the cider mill thing (this is the last weekend), so I'm not really doing anything. Actually, I'm not even giving out candy! If you told me 5 years ago that this would be the case, I would have never believed you. But now, so few kids come around in our neighborhood, it's not really worth the effort. And, some of them even skip the houses of people they don't know! I think that people take their kids to the really big, newer neighborhoods, or to parties at schools or churches instead. So, Trick-or-Treating is sort of dying out in my neighborhood.

I didn't even buy any Halloween candy, so there's nothing to tempt me in the house. I plan to hunker down upstairs, and watch "King Corn", my Netflix pick this week. It's a documentary about the corn industry in the US, and I assume will clue me in to the whole high-fructose corn syrup thing in this country. I'll let you know what I learn.

In the meantime, here's a layout I finished today. I started this one about a month ago, but just hadn't take the time to do the text. I really love this layout - I think it's just so perfect for a breakfast recipe!

Some new LOs

This month's DST recipe swap's theme is breakfasts and brunches. I just wanted to share a couple recipe layouts that I did for it. One is for that Bircher Muesli I wrote about last week:


And this one is a recipe that my Aunt made for my wedding brunch:


I just love the papers I used in this one - from Zoe Pearn's Spring Fever kit. As an aside, the colors really get washed out when you save these under the "save for web" feature.

I've got a few more breakfast recipes I want to finish yet this weekend, so wish me luck!

Cookie Trees

I love this time of year, when all the leaves are changing. The colors peaked here in upstate NY about 2 weeks ago, but most of the trees in my neighborhood change late in the season - and they all turn bright yellow before shedding their leaves.

Seeing this each year always reminds me of a children's book I enjoyed as a child - "The Cookie Tree", by Jay Williams. See how the tree on the cover looks like a big maple who's leaves have turned yellow? So I think about this book as I drive down my street full of big beautiful yellow maple trees.



I wonder where that book is now? Most likely sold for $.25 at a garage sale at some point...

Of course, my trees don't have cookies on them, but I'm pretty sure that's a good thing! ;-)

Coconut M&Ms!

The DSGs had told me about these when I was home in MI for Labor Day weekend - apparently they'd been in the stores in July and August, and I had not heard about them. Amazingly enough, we were able to finally find some still in a gas station here in NY.

Pete stumbled across them this past weekend, near the cider mill where he works in the fall. At $1.18 a pack, they were pricey, but we just had to try them.

They were worth the wait - oh, so good... I'm glad I have only a few small bags ;-)

"Crisis Cleaning"

It was amusing - I took Fly Lady's post about "Crisis Cleaning" to heart yesterday - I actually did use a timer, and for alternating 15 minutes at a time, cleaned/organized my kitchen and did stuff on the computer. I guess if it works, it's ok that it's a strange thing to do! It's just that I want to spend my weekends doing digi-scrapbook stuff, and NOT anything around the house! So, this did end up to be a good compromise for me. The kitchen got cleaned, cupboards got purged and organized, and I still managed to get two recipe LOs done!

During my times on the computer, somehow I came across a link to the A&E show "Hoarders", which I'd never heard of. I watched the clips they had on there for the 4 or 5 shows they've aired already. O.M.G! Seeing that is enough to scare you straight when it comes to clutter! These people's houses were literally drowning in stuff piled everywhere. Piles and piles of papers, magazines, food, clothing - whatever that person's thing was.

I'm pretty sure neither Pete, nor I have that mental disorder - we are just mini pack-rats about some things, and no where near to that extreme. Not even a little bit, thank goodness. But, all the same, it was eye-opening to watch, and it will make me be a bit more agressive when it comes to cleaning out the basement - no more saving stuff just becuase "it's good", or "I might need/use it someday". Off to charity or into the garbage it will go!

If you've not seen the series, you can check out some clips here. The next new episode airs November 2nd - I may just try to catch it.

I learned to make a brush in PhotoShop!

So in my ongoing quest to find toile papers or overlays for my layouts, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I was walking down my stairs Saturday, when a glance at the the transferware platter on the wall made a light bulb go off in my head - if I couldn't find toile papers, I would make them myself - using the patterns from my transferware collection!

I started by taking photos of a platter. I decided to start with fruit, my favorite subject. Here's one of the photos I took:


I had found an online tutorial for how to make a brush, which is basically a digital "stamp".

First I cut out the section I wanted to make a brush out of. Then I converted it to a black and white image, then I adjusted the contrast to remove most of the gray.

I cleaned up the image so it only showed the part that I wanted for my brush. Then I selected the area, and from the Edit menu, choose, Define brush from selection. It was easy as that!

Once I had my brush, I "stamped" my paper with both this brush and the smaller strawberry one I made. Then I added a grunge overlay, some inked edges, and voila, my paper:

The cool think about PS is that I can make infinite papers from this overlay I've now created. I can change the color of the brush, of the paper, change the contrast,...

Now I'll never get any housework done!