I'm Slow Cookin' Darling!

Pulled Pork Sandwich photo credit goes to the Food Network 

Mrs. G let me mess up the kitchen over at Derfwad Manor- home to a grand group of soul sisters and Gary. Care for a pulled pork sandwich with some savory sides of mancake, moi, and poetry? Of course you do!

Granny's Cookies

It's my birthday! So far so good. Start as you mean to go forward, so I took a long shower. Washed all the worries I am not carrying forward away. Now I am all shiny and new and ready for adventure.

Just before it struck midnight (and became MY BIRTHDAY!!!) I was making three batches of Granny Kelly's cookie dough. My mother's mother-Granny Kelly- must have learned the recipe from her mama. All my life, every Christmas my family gathers and we make Granny's cookies. We roll them out. Pick out our favorite cookie cutters (I am partial to the scotty dog and the bunny). Cut them out. Bake them. Sneak a few while they are warm. And when they have cooled, we whip up some butter cream frosting (never royal icing) and tint it whatever colors we want. Cover the table with waxed paper. Put out every sort of sprinkle, colored icing sugar, silver dragees, cinnamon red hots, bowls of frosting and get down to business. It can take hours. The youngest decorators sometime lose interest and wander off only to be drawn back to the table because it is covered in delicious sweet stuff.

Tomorrow after school my nieces will come and we will start the process. Then their parents, my little brother and sister-in-law, will show up, followed by my daughter and her sweetheart.  My son will be working but he will be home in time to eat many a cookie. And a birthday party of my favorite sort will ensue.

Down in Reno my littlest brother and his family will be making Granny's cookies this weekend too. I suspect my mother, who is spending the winter warming up in her desert home, will make a batch to give to holiday visitors.

We will all be together in spirit,gathered around the kitchen table, feeling lucky, remembering our Granny and Poppa and all the love that flows through us generation after generation.

Granny's Cookies

from the kitchen of Florence Kelly to the kitchen of her daughter and grandchildren, and now her great grandchildren

1 Cup Shortening
4 Cups Flour
1/2 t Salt
2 Eggs beaten
1 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Milk
1 t Vanilla
1 t Baking Soda

Sift flour and salt together. Cut in shortening (I use my cuisinart sometimes, sometimes a fork or pastry cutter). In a separate bowl combine the eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla, and baking soda. Add in flour/shortening mixture until just combined. Don't beat up the dough. Cover and chill overnight in the fridge. When it is time to bake, preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4 inch thickness and cut out with cookie cutters befitting the holiday (I make them sometimes for Valentine's Day and Keenan's Day too!).  Bake until golden, about 8 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

When cookies are cooled (after you've had pizza and salad and sung a round of happy birthday to me) frost and decorate. We make the frosting with varying amounts of butter, powdered sugar, milk or cream, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Use a recipe you love and don't make it too thin because that is just mean.

As I will be making these later today (after I sleep) I don't have a picture to show you. Wait! I think I have an example from my son's birthday party 2 years ago. He decided he would rather have Granny's cookies than a birthday cake. Let me look.........





There they are. His auntie made a portrait of him being grumpy. His cousins have always called him "deeda". He isn't always grumpy. You can see we are very fond of sprinkles.

My Sweet Tooth To The Rescue

So, this week is all about change. Change and English Toffee. I find that toffee assists in the many small discomforts that accompany change.

I've never been a skilled candy maker despite my excellence as a candy consumer. My friend Jessie spent a good amount of time trying to teach me the delicate art of toffee making. This elaborate ritual involved candy thermometers and a marble slab. I never seemed to be able to achieve success. My best effort resulted in something very like a soft praline, but never the crisp, rich snap of toffee.

One day I was cruising through a variety of pages at Instructables when I saw a link to The Infamous Benson Family Sinful Almond Roca recipe.

Intrigued by the idea that an infamous family was sharing such a recipe, I clicked through and discovered that I was a master confectioner.

The recipe is fool-proof. I have added some twists on occasion (malden salt, mixed nuts, chili powder) and each and every batch has turned out beautifully.

I note this here solely because in my rash decision to reduce my consumption of sweet things I had neglected the recipe for months. When I tried to recall it from memory it had vanished. This worries me as it takes just 5 simple ingredients to make a perfect batch. Here's the list:

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1.5 tsp water
almonds about a cup
chocolate pieces

Melt butter, sugar, and water in a heavy pan over medium high heat.
When mixture begins to boil stir constantly with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes or until bubbling gooeyness is a caramel color..
Pour over nuts placed on a parchment lined baking tray.
Cover with chocolate (I use chocolate chips most of the time-about 12 ounces).
As chocolate melts spread evenly over toffee.
Cool in fridge.
Snap into pieces and eat-or like the infamous Benson's give as holiday gifts or party favors

Savage Beauty

I just received my copy. The cover broke my heart. 

 

Inside, breathtaking.

As Susannah Frankel's introduction mentions, much mythologizing has and will forever occur around the late, great Lee Alexander McQueen. 

As someone who loves the romanticism and drama of great design, for me he is unparalleled.  

His creative life produced an inspiring, completely original body of work. 

He made terrifyingly beautiful rags.

 

I wrapped this book in a satin pillowcase to protect it. 

I've never done such a curious thing with a book before.

The retrospective runs through August 7th. 

How I wish I could see it in person. 

I am so grateful to have the book.

Put A Bird On It Portland

New things for the shop in honor of Portlandia

This Weekend=Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Holiday Sale!!!

 

Check out the vendor list here!

And they have a bar people.

I am so there.

Dear Fabric Depot it's not me its you... I HATE YOU!!!I HATE YOU!!!I HATE YOU!!! Or why customer service is 99% of a business's lifeblood (the other 1% is cash)...

 This is not about Johnny Depp or John Waters despite my undying devotion to both

Hello Dear Reader. Let me set the scene for you. Just past 6PM on a Saturday night in PDX. Everyone else is downtown getting ready for the Starlight Parade. Yours truly is obsessed with stitching Natalie Chanin's rosebud stitch and decides, after a long day's work at her own retail job, to head to Fabric Depot -hereafter (and occasionally prior to) known as Fabric Creepo.

My beloved Mill End is already closed for the day and it is a sewing emergency. I need buttonhole thread.

As usual, Fabric Creepo, you do not have what I need, but I find a few things I want. It is me, about 4 other customers and 15 staff members in the gigantic store. I pick out some stretch denim for a skirt I want to make and embroider. I just need a yard or two.

There is one customer at the huge 4 sided cutting station. Normally there is a line at each corner with 2 employees on each side cutting for 8 customers. Tonight, praise the Rose Festival Princesses,  it's just little old me waiting for the sole employee who is assisting the customer ahead of me.

As I wait calmly for a few minutes I am approached  by two different employees. Do these employees want to offer to cut my fabric? Hell no! Each of them has decided I need to be herded like the stupid sheep I am.

The first says, "You need to stand at the corner of the cutting tables." She then walks away. O.K. I move to the corner. Then moments later another employee sees me standing with the bolt of fabric in my arms by myself, still the sole customer waiting at the cutting station. She also decides I need to be moved and  tells me " Please move closer to the sign with the arrow." Oh, the sign a foot to my left? That one? O.K.

A minute or so later the employee who has been helping the other customer wanders my way to tell me, "You need to be standing behind the sign."

O.K. ladies, throughout each of these encounters I have moved exactly where I have been directed. I have not made a single sound or strange facial expression. I have merely complied with your need to assert your dominance over me your obviously highly annoying customer.

However,  I feel at this juncture that its my turn to give some directions. So I say, "I have now been asked to move 3 times by 3 different employees and still no one will cut my fabric." That's all. Said in a friendly, if somewhat ironic way.

The employee looks at me ( in a rather self-satisfied manner imho but I am trying to spare embellishment for the sake of absolute clarity here) and says, "Well, if you won't stand where you are TOLD to, we will think you are being helped and we will ignore you." Then she smiles nastily,  walks away, and does just that.

Bitch please! Have I mentioned that I also work retail? It is a tough gig. I know. There is no glory, only guts and not always your own. I give tremendous latitude to retail workers because we see some pretty atrocious human behavior on a regular basis. I have been at no time during this visit unkind or, up until my first exchange with the 3rd clerk, verbal at all. Now I am rendered speechless.

I stood there for a few moments just stunned and heart sick that someone felt so small they need to wound a stranger. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. I was immobilized by such a sense of grief.

She wandered back, took my bolt, and said "How much?" Still in a state of disbelief I simply said, "Two yards please." She cut it and I moved quickly to the bank of cashiers. No waiting there. No directions for location changes either.

However, as I tried to pay with my credit card, the cashier kept scrutinizing my signature and then looking up at me with a very puzzled expression (which probably matched my own). Then she said, "I'm going to need to see some ID please." " Going to need to" not "please may I."

O.K. no big deal. It is good to be careful about credit cards. And admittedly, a $9 dollar fabric purchase is probably the perfect crime. So, I hand her my license.

She takes a good long look at it and then, apparently horrified, a good long look at me. She does this not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. THREE DOUBLE TAKES AT ME!!!

O.K. yes, my license picture could be better. I look a bit like a serial killer in the photo and at the time it was snapped I had long hair which was today curled up in two buns on either side of the back of my head. But lets take a moment to return to reality. A $9 dollar charge that has been authorized by the credit issuing bank. A woman wearing a blue linen jumper and birkenstocks (for the love of dog!) with a wallet full of id splayed before you, and your thoughts turn to what? Robbery?

Finally, I snapped.

I said, "Now I remember why I always vow never to shop here again." And she looked at me like I'd asked for the cash in her register. I asked if she need more forms of ID, a DNA sample,  or if she and her fellow clerks would like to take a moment to see if they could possibly cook up any other ways to make me feel more uncomfortable. I started to flash on Jack in 5 Easy Pieces (you know the diner scene) and yet I was barely making any noise at all-still in shock.



The cashier just next to us asked if there was any trouble and the clerk said, "No. She doesn't want me to check her ID."

My head exploded.

Then I detailed calmly and concisely (with, I am certain, an embarrassing crimson red face of mortification) my experience of Fabric Creepo's customer service during my 10 minute visit for this newly interested employee.

She apologized multiple times for my "being made to feel uncomfortable" which was nice of her as she was blameless and yet took one for her ridiculously rude team. She gave me a comment form to send in to the company and a card with the address. So, I am grateful for her attempts to be kind when all around her a sea of retail workers seemed hell bent on making me cry.

I love textiles of all sorts. I think I have mentioned that I am a die-hard Mill End girl. They may not offer 35% off sales often, but they are near my hood and have everything I need when I need it. Their staff is made up of fellow artists who are professional, helpful, and kind.

They close shop before I am finished with my work day. This is an O.K. thing. Apparently, assisting fabric store customers is  equivalent to hand to hand combat or bomb disposal. I believe stores should keep human hours and workers should have time to be home for dinner. When forced to work past 6PM on Saturdays, they can not be held accountable for their rage.

I can only visit The Mill End on my days off. I will bear that in mind whenever I am jonesing for buttonhole thread, denim, embroidery floss, or in fact, anything textile related. Mill End and Etsy only from here on out.

I promise you Fabric Creepo I will never darken your door again.

Now I'm gonna go have a good cry and maybe tell Johnny all about it.

Boys and Beauty

A mighty fine mama

Elizabeth Cady Stanton with her daughter Harriot

Shout out to all my mama peeps. You make the world go round. You are the center that holds. I love you.

I also love the William Morris quote, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

I must re-focus on this as my house is filled with dog hair and paper. Things functional, but not so beautiful.

To turn our minds to useful beauty, a brief round-up of my recent blog trippin'.

Sweet Paul has a magazine!

Amaretto-baked French Toast with Pecans! Heavens! I'm making the Papaya and Citrus Salad with Maple Syrup Dressing this weekend.

It is all, every inch of it, glorious. I am old school re: electronic readers and eZines, but Paul's magazine is so visually rich, filled with practical, real-life-possible grace notes- I'm sold. I'll forgo the paper and bliss out laptop-wise.

Thank you Sweet Paul for your inspiring, delightful blog and the reminder that beauty and simplicity are at hand every day (and meant to be shared).

photo from HartsFabric.com click to buy

Dear Kaffe Fassett I love you.

I am working on a prototype and need some voile (I say "Vwall" like Toile- chicks at Fabric Depot say "Voyal" like Toil or Soil-so odd). This Orange Jungle Paisley makes me happy. Your magic ways with form and color are a constant inspiration. Besos Kaffe!

Humane writing from Mig. This post came at an important time for me and I return to it again and again: Careers in Science: Balneology.

I was in my crazy tree and it helped me come down. One of the most resonant, beautiful, and kind things I've read in a long while.

Thank you for so many beautiful metaphors, valentine limerick contests, leads on blogs I can't imagine having missed, 10 years of Metamorphosism. When I despair of huMANity, I think of you like a touchstone.

Stephin Merritt

The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs is beautiful, hysterical, sad, sweet (gifted to me by my sweet brother ptj). I listened to it non-stop during a long family road trip through Mexico several years ago. I sing to it constantly. "Hey lady day can you my save my life again? My only love has gone away. Will you be my only friend?"

Stephin your voice is big and deep and masculine and fragile all at once.

Sweet Paul, Kaffe Fassett, Mig, Stephin Merritt, and all the creative men that inspire me (especially my lovely brothers who are such fabulous adventurers and collectors and makers and daddies), I wonder what you would say about the inspiration and influence your mamas had on you.

In their presence and in their absence, their love and their devotion, their neglect and their distance mothers are absolutely influential in our lives. As my obnoxious father says, and I often quote, "You gotta dance with the one what brung ya." The dance between mothers and their babies is sometimes sweet, sometimes excruciating. They made us, those mamas. I thank yours and mine for the invitations to the dance.

Boy Howdy! Welcome Natalie Chanin to PDX!

I can not believe on of my heroes is winging her way to my green and pleasant town. SQUEEEEEE! Natalie Chanin has a new book out and will be here at Powell's Books on Tuesday the 13th!

She will also be speaking at PNCA on Craft, Identity& Commerce. Her lecture is free and open to the public. You should go! Srsly! Anyone want to work for me so I can go????

If I were able, I would love to attend her retreat at the ACE on the 17th. As it stands, I will have to wait patiently in the hold queue for the book and dream.

I just finished reading yesterday's grey lady piece on Ms. Chanin's partner Butch Anthony. The article is delicious and the accompanying slide show has accomplished an unprecedented feat-inspiring within this Cascadian girl a strong desire to ramble around the South, specifically Alabama, for a visit. You can tuck me in here:

Photo source this & next Robert Rausch for the New York Times

and there's this:
An artful life is what these two inspiring people are forging.

This is a quote of Natalie's from the article:

“Butch can work wood or metal, he can grow anything. He has an incredible way with the things of the world, whether it’s a tree or a piece of junk, and he has his own aesthetic about how it should go together. He knows the name of every leaf and every plant and which ones you can eat. And if the world ever came to an end, I would want to be by his side.”

Damn that's good and strong and sweet.

I Miss My Thumb - A Sucker's Lament

When I was a little girl I was a relentless thumbsucker. I like to blame my beloved Mother who nursed me mere months when compared to nursing babiest brother 'til just prior to grad school. Well Mama, it seemed that way to me!

Then I grew up, had a son, and experienced the knife in the heart that is the self-weaning (at 14 months!) babe. My best beloved, my wee boy had given up all but his last night time feeding and one day, as I coaxed him to latch on, he looked up at me and very patiently said, "No Mama." Like a little, ever so patient god. Crappage. As you can see dear reader Red Tara, I have yet to let it go...much like that now grown baby boy.

We have discussed my hanging on problem before. So, here I will impart my tried and true methods of self-comfort for those times when life pokes you in the eye and says "boogerface" or "gobshite". These simple, good things have replaced my much maligned thumb (my parents insist it was the reason for my expensive orthodontia-I say that was dodgey genes) with their magical powers to infuse my soul with the calm. They are relatively free of vice and whilst somewhat addictive, not controlled substances by any stretch of your highly elastic imagination.

This month has been especially hellacious for me and for many people I love. I hit the wall a week or so ago and have been in a fugue state for many days- hence, I have no memory of how I have passed the time. From the red and puffy eyes, I assume crying was involved.

What finally brought me to my senses was a day of laundry (the disorganized person's quick fix), reading, sugar n' cream cotton yarn in the "Playtime" combo, and Ina's Lemon Cake recipe...throw in a few gallons of Stumptown coffee and I am almost restored to my former glory.

I really enjoyed the book So Late, So Soon by D'Arcy Fallon. I read it all in one quick bash. All my life I have had wicked bad dreams about musty beach houses and fanatical Christians. I think we can attribute this to, in no small part, my 2 years of OMSI sleep away Marine Biology camp in North Bend where every other group passing the rainy summer days was made up of "Christian Youth". We OMSI types were the unwashed, hippie element their parents had warned them about. They were vocal in their superiority, fear, and loathing of us. I heard no less than 3 adult counselors tell groups of roving christian young'uns to "Stay away from those kids. They're from OMSI!"

My parents neglected to read the fine details of the camp (this happened frequently in my youth and when I bring up the inevitable, ensuing traumatic experience-because I have a hard time "letting go" not having been a raging stoner or free love advocate- I am constantly reminded by both of them, "Hey! It was the 70's!Let it go!") and thus I was a very innocent 9 and 10 year old hanging out in the back of the bus with real live, non-innocent early 1970's teenagers! I've never recovered. I couldn't smoke a joint until I had graduated from college-and people, I lived in Eugene Oregon! In the 70! I graduated from the U of O in the 80's! I went to Grateful Dead shows, the Oregon Country fair, and a theater cast party with Ken Kesey-well, not with Ken Kesey, but he was there!!!

As the youngest in the group at Camp Arago, I was in charge of feigning illness or hysterical homesickness anytime one of the counselors started investigating the wild giggling in our cabin a little too closely. I was often laughed right out of the drippy, mildewy cabin for suggesting that we actually go down to the slough and investigate the collison of the fresh/saltwater ecosystems that were, at that very moment, colliding! Or that we hang out at low tide and count sea anemones.


I feel lucky to have survived. It was a trial and a feat I do not completely understand, for I had no easily accessible comfort. My thumb had long since lost its magic. I had finished my 45th reading of my beloved Misty of Chincoteague.


The commissary served fruit for dessert. Every. Freakin'. Night. I had yet to discover the comforts of tea and coffee and drink. And, saddest of all, I had no yarn, no needles! When you are a maker, e-h.s. (empty-hand syndrome) is a dread state.

In retrospect the only thing that actually saved my poor little soul was a scheduled laundry trip to the Pony Village Shopping Mall.I knew it lay just ahead of me, so near. Just two more days. Now just one more.

There, I was able to restore some brief but blissful freshness to my clothes, which smelled just as D'Arcy Fallon describes the just washed cotton sheets fresh from the dryers at her Northern Californian Christian commune - Moldy and Damp. I could buy some pens and a sketch book with which to draw. And it was there, at the majestic Pony Village Mall, that I discovered MASCARA, specifically Brown Tussy mascara. OMG! Make up! The thrill of it took my mind off of the disturbing sight of my fellow splotch-afflicted campers french kissing indiscriminately, every where I looked.

I spent the rest of that summer at camp practicing my mascara technique, drawing pictures of holothurians, and hiding from the uncool boys who were confused and hormonal enough to mistake a prepubescent girl for a potential summer lover. I remained chaste. With MASSIVE lashes...truly endless. Poor boys. It must have been such a painful, unrequited kind of desire what with my groovy, raccoon-like mascaraed eyes and all.

However, now as a truly growed-up woman, mascara, like my beloved thumb, has lost most of it's magical powers to soothe. So, in any existential crise, I now rely on the baking of things (with butter), obsessive, indiscriminate reading (which I refer to as literary prozac), and knitting bias cloths out of cotton yarn. Bliss. And, also, more productive most days than sleeping, which has always been my go-to, get outta your head method of self-care.

First, you must bake something wonderful like Ina's Triple Lemon Drizzle Cake.

Here's the drizzle part that you drench the cake with before it cools: Sugary, lemony, and warm...sometimes I drizzle a little in my tea too. See the little lemon peels?No? Ah well, once I learn to use my new camera all will become clear-er.

Then, while the cake cools you whip out your trusty number 7's

Hey RT I want these for Christmas!!!

and some cotton yarn ( I prefer the natural color for face cloths, but sometimes a girl needs a serious jolt of color), and follow this age-old pattern known by many names such as the Eyelet Wash Cloth, Bias Knit Cloth, and Granny's Favorite Dishcloth:

Cast on 4
Knit 4
Knit 2 Yarn Over Knit to end
Repeat until you have the width of the cloth you desire (between 40 and 48ish)
Decrease - Knit 1 Knit 2 Together Yarn Over Knit 2 Together Knit to end
Keep going until you are down to four stitches on your needle
Bind off

If you want to make a loop for hanging, crochet a short chain with the yarn tail.

There is a lovely recipe for this pattern here.

You wind up with a beautiful square that has an eyelet border.



Which you can then employ to cover your delicious lemon cake whilst it cools.


Then you should make a big, hot pot of tea or a giant mug of coffee and you will have comfort at hand.


Throw in a good read, a warm dog draped across your feet, some sweet music and you have comfort. Almost as good as the memory of that old thumb....

Now that I am back in the saddle, it's on to fall yard clean-up, fixing the slippery stairs, and planting thousands of bulbs! But first, a weekend in Reno (the biggest little city in the world) with family to celebrate my obnoxious father's retirement and move to Ouray. Cheers!

P.S. I feel it is only fitting to close with the obvious comfort-ne joy! of being right (as in correct or just). Evidently Senator Wyden, on Tuesday (obviously after reading my blog), came out in support of a public option. I am now ready to re-evaluate our relationship. I feel the love people. I feel the love.

As those born in the wilds of the high Sierra and/or Cascadians are want to exclaim, "Yreka!"

This post is all about Cherry Clafoutis and me.Well, not so much me as the cherry clafoutis. What could be more delicious dear reader?

Once again, my magic new-old pinny makes an appearance- its super pinny powers intact.

Our adventure begins with your intrepid cook hand-pitting cherries...a couple pounds of cherries...with a pairing knife and her thumbnail. Thumb, new-old pinny, kitchen counter, and face all stained red.

Almost as red as my big red kitchen. It was so worth it.

Behold one of the many kitchen altars and icons:

I have never buttered and sugared a baking pan before. I highly recommend it. The effect is almost psychadelic. I will explain directly. But first, let us continue with the recipe at hand.

Did you know that the 2009 Pantone color of the year is Mimosa?I am loving yellow right now.

First live action KitchenAid shot ever.
You can not make it out at all.
You are welcome.

Perhaps if you click on the picture below to enlarge it, you will feel the whippy thrill that is my beloved KitcheAid's best feature.

No? Oh well. It is meant to depict the whipping of the 3 (I used 4 because my eggs were not XL just L, cage free) eggs and 1/2 cup sugar for 3 minutes. Followed by the gentle blending of the rest of the ingredients, which included a heaping tablespoon of this:

because I did not have any brandy - pear, cherry, or otherwise. I splashed in some vanilla too. Maybe a couple of teaspoons. Six tablespoons flour. A pinch of salt. And a cup and a half of cream. Have Mercy! I think everything from heavy whipping cream to 2% milk would work for those of you with healthy arteries playing at home. Then the grated rind of one lemon. Ah my kingdom for a microplane like Martha's!

Rested briefly.

Then poured joyfully into my buttered and sugared blue pyrex baking dish (that I did not lick, despite a horrible compulsion to do so) which I had filled with cherries (about 2 cups worth) and the mere sight of which had the power to send me back in time to Lisa Trumbo's Mom's kitchen where sandwiches were always either Miracle Whip on White or Butter and Sugar on White. If my health conscious Mother had known the illicit thrill I had with each bite knowing how horrified she would be!

But I digress...often.

Baked in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.

Here it is ta da!

Wait!

I almost forgot the powdered sugar. That's caster sugar and/or icing sugar to my imaginary friends in the UK.

Viola! et Voila!

There's that lovely pinny again. Thanks Mama!

I dished up a plate of hot cherries and eggy, custardy goodness. Ah, so soothing, the creamy texture, the still slightly crisp, juicy cherries, the sweet sugar crustiness of it all.

Yreka!

I have discovered the perfect recipe for a cool fall- sleep in late, make brunch for someone you love, consume, no devour! with hot, creamy coffee- day. And sigh.

"Fall!?", you, dear reader, may say incredulously. "Certainly Bings are not available in the fall?"

To that I say, "Bah Humbug!" or better yet, as an honorary (read imaginary once again-because I picked horse 4-H instead) Girl Guide, "Be prepared."

I froze a passle o'bings for future use. The original recipe was for a Pear Clafoutis, so I will adapt seasonally once the cherries bag out.


As for today...

I ate 2 more plates. Now I have 3 new things:

1. My new/old Pinny from me mum.
2. A bad tummy ache from over-indulgence.
3. This delectable, new recipe thanks to Alicia and Ina.

So, dear reader, would you like the recipe? Yes you would? O.K. here you go: