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December 15, 2008

What I Did All Weekend (and Today)

OK, so let's just admit that this blog has become less a regular thing and more a periodic thing. That's fine: I spend a lot of time and energy on the work on Casa Decrepit these days, which pretty much uses up my blogging energy. But I did some non-house things this weekend! Look!

For example, on Saturday we went to a big Open House and Holiday Gift Sale at The Crucible. The Crucible is awesome because a) it is right next door in Oakland, so it is convenient, as opposed to Techshop, which requires what can be a two hour commute and b) it has a ceramics studio. I got into a good conversation about slipcasting with one of their ceramics people; I'd like to be able to find a nice studio to work in since plaster mold making is pretty messy. We shall see what will come of it.

Also, despite the fact that it poured rain on us while we were hauling the tree and decorations out of the basement, we got the tree up and decorated. Yay, us. And on the pink Sunday of Advent, too, which is pretty good for not having really planned it.

The only fly in the ointment is that we needed some replacement bulbs, and when we went to a few stores to try to find them, the places were practically cleared of Christmas stuff. That's right: I bet you didn't realize Christmas is over, and the clearance sales can begin. So now if you don't plan to have all your Christmas decorations up and running by Thanksgiving, give up; you will not be able to find replacement bulbs or even a few strands of tinsel garland. This is the same logic by which it is impossible to find a bathing suit in August, or a sweater in February. If you don't plan ahead, you don't get anything.

Anyway, the tree looks a little lopsided, and we are missing lots of bulbs from one strand of lights, but it's up. And look at my fun new ornament, purchased last weekend at a women's crafts fair:

I love how it's kind of creepy and weird and also awesome. It's a partridge in a pear tree, obviously, inside of a goose egg. If I'd had infinite money, I would have bought the set of twelve. But no infinite money, and just one goose egg ornament. I guess a partridge egg would have been impossible to come by.

So that was my weekend. To make up for a relatively unproductive weekend, this morning I did some cooking:

First on my list was fixing some failed quince jelly. Not quince jelly from this year. No, quince jelly from LAST year. It just didn't set, and as depressing as that is, there is a fix for it. So here we are: I reboiled the jelly to fix it.

I was kind of slapdash in testing the jelly the first time, which would be why it failed to set, so this time I was more careful. Here we have the jelly blobbing up to show me it is done. All that jelly all over the plate is previous tests.

My secret trick to making canning go faster is to wash and heat the jars and lids in the dishwasher rather than in the pot on the stove. If I keep the door shut, they stay warm, and I know they're very clean.

From seven jars of not-set jelly, I got five jars of set jelly. Here are four of them processing away in the water bath.

And here's the fifth, which didn't fill up all the way. I used to try to can these, too, but I find that they don't seal right and you have to keep them in the fridge right away anyhow, so I don't bother any more. This will just be the first jar we eat.

So, quince jelly sorted out, I'm waiting for the pots and so forth to wash up in the dishwasher so I can work on the tomato jelly. In the meantime, I made cinnamon rolls using the Amish Friendship Bread starter I've had kicking around. This recipe looked kind of messed up to me, so I won't put it up here, but it started out looking pretty edible:

It just had a hard time baking up to anything decent:

I generally expect a little more browning from my cinnamon rolls. They're cooked all the way through, but look like dough. When they cool down, I'll see how they taste.

Posted by ayse on 12/15/08 at 2:33 PM