ericamulherin.com

The garden from above

Erica — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:01:57 +0000

This year has by far been the best in terms of my garden. I have totally jumped on the Urban Homestead bandwagon (like a lot of people) and I have to say that it’s kind of exciting that this way of living is becoming more popular. I am giving serious thought about chickens and after the epic battle against slugs this year, I am thinking of adding a few ducks to the homestead as well. I hear they are slug eating machines. That’s down the road of course as I have two other portions of yard, aside from this one shown that need serious attention. This summer I was able to get rid of all of the grass in this area and add straw. It’s nice as it sort of acts like a blank canvas where I can imagine wonderful new beds packed with great things. I just pulled out those zucchini plants as I was getting zucchini coming out my ears and I want to plant a garlic-lined path to the well house. (That stick in the upper right corner is leaning against the well house door).

Next steps are to test my soil in spots so I can see what kind of amendments I need to add, order cover crop seeds, pray that my wee tomatoes ripen soon, order or buy garlic and start dreaming about next year!

Pencil Skirt Sew Along

Erica — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:00:54 +0000

I am currently participating in the Pencil Skirt Sew Along hosted by the lovely Cupcake Goddess and I spent a good portion of last weekend clearing out my messy office to make room for the sewing machine. Now the office is even messier than it was before (how did that happen?) as I have magazine clippings and files strung out every which way to Sunday in the effort to get organized. In the midst of this chaos, I found a bunch of pencil skirt inspirations I have been saving for this exact moment. See? It works! Keeping all of this shit actually has a purpose! I LOVE it when things come full circle.

I am going to use Burda’s Jenny Skirt pattern and I am thinking that I will need to adjust the waistband, or remove it entirely as I am extremely short waisted and don’t want to end up looking like a stump. I pretty much have everything I need to get started, except perhaps the time, but that can be rectified by extricating my butt from off of the couch. I hear this is how people get things done.

Who knew? The only thing I have left to finalize is the fabric. As this is going to be my very first pencil skirt, I probably need to start with basic black. Anyone who knows me will be having a heart attack of NOT SURPRISED by this color choice, but hey…gotta start somewhere, right? I picked up a beautiful, thick weave Italian linen at Canvas Works here in Olympia, and I already have the most gorg-e-o-so red lining fabric in my stash ready to be put to use. It’s time to get crackin’ with step one! Here I go! Off to print and piece together the pattern.

I think I just might have to buy myself a congratulatory pair of awesome shoes when the skirt is completed. I think this donkey has found her carrot – I might finally get an actual garment made if I reward myself with a pair of shoes afterwards. Why didn’t I think of this before!?

So, today, I will have the muslin sewn. There is a flickr group for the sew along if anyone want’s to join! I’ll be posting my progress there just as soon as I have anything worthy to post.

Pencil Skirt Inspirations

(clockwise l-r)
I so love the odd color – wierd yellow. So not me!
LOVE the button front
Funky pockets? I quite like those
I really like the dropped waist and the belt
I am drawn to button on waistbands
I SO love the the ruffle – and the color of this skirt.
Mure waistband buttons and an funky orange.

Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream with Creme Cookies

Erica — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:49:38 +0000

I am so happy to introduce my very first guest blogger, Vanessa Rosage, the purveyor of the awesome food blog Pure Hunger. I met Vanessa back in March, as we were both new members of the Wendell Berry Community garden. She shortly announced the happy news that she and her husband Brandon, were expecting a baby!

It’s been marvelous to watch both her belly, and our garden grow over these past few months. She and her husband have made a vow to eat locally and sustainably, and their example has been an inspiration for me. A few months ago Jeffery, after watching Food Inc, announced that he would not buy or eat what

he could not be sure was raised/grown humanely and sustainably. I told him of the Rosage Pledge and we have been doing the same ever since. And as soon as I found out that Vanessa was a food blogger, I knew I had to somehow cojole her into writing a guest post. Courage was finally worked up, and she graciously agreed to contribute!

So check out her blog, she has great recipes and is a wonderful source for Olympia foodies and you can find her on Twitter @purehunger. So, without further ado…may I present Vanessa’s Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream with Creme Cookies. (I am SO making this.)

Guest Blogger Vanessa Rosage of Pure Hunger

I’m in love… with coconuts. I also happen to love my husband, my golden retriever and my future son growing in my belly. It is also true, however, that I have a love affair with coconuts. I have been hearing about the incredible power of this fruit and can’t seem to get enough of it, in all forms. I drink coconut water to boost electrolytes, I rub the oil on my belly to prevent stretch marks and give me a goddess feeling, I sprinkle dried coconut on all baked goods and now, I’m using the milk to make non-dairy ice cream.

I swear this fruit is the secret in the rough. After purchasing a pint of coconut milk ice cream at 6-7$ and become severely depressed when it was finished, I figured I could probably make it on my own for a little cheaper and I was right. I found my recipe at The Nourishing Gourmet and decided to add some chocolate creme cookies from Natures Path. I purchased two cans of Organic Thai Kitchen Coconut milk for a total of 4$ and I had the rest of the ingredients at home.

This recipe easily made a little over two pints of ice cream. I made the recipe as described, then crumbled up the cookies in layers as I put it in the pint to freeze. I usually re-use old pint containers for my homemade ice cream to keep it at just the right temperature. As with most coconut based ice cream, you will need to remove the pint from the freezer about five minutes before serving to soften. I am warning you, however, you might just fall deeply in love.

Shortcrust Pastry: Part One

Erica — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:27:12 +0000

We’ve had a cool patch of weather lately which meant I could turn on the oven again, and I took the opportunity to experiment with shortcrust pastry (my baking nemesis). I am determined to conquer it! I don’t have a food processor, which makes this dough challenging to put together. I have a mini-processor that attaches to my stick blender, which means I have to process the butter and flour in batches. As a consequence, I have made far too many tough crusts that have been overworked somewhere along the way.

I caught an episode of Rachel Allen: Bake!, and she mentioned that

instead of the ice cold water, she used eggs, as she found that the dough did not shrink in the oven. It was also helpful to watch the texture of her dough and how she sort of formed it on top of the plastic wrap. The episode will show again, check the schedule if you are interested. I thought is was really helpful. I used her recipe for this tart and it turned out perfectly! I used this Strawberry Gallette with Basil Cream recipe as a roadmap for the rest of the tart and it seriously was the best thing I have made in a long time.

Next up: I figure out how to “rub in the flour” and test Jamie Oliver’s sweet shortcrust pastry.

Too much to do

Erica — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:00:48 +0000

The look on her face pretty much sums up what I have been feeling lately. Can you say “Bah! Humbug!” In July? Actually it’s not that bad, I am just not getting some of the things done that I want to, which is always frustrating. What kinds of things are on my list?

Finish tiling the bathroom. I’ve got the point where I need a tile saw, but I just need to finish the bathroom period.
Make grilled peach ice cream. I am going to try to make a cobbler topping that I can mix in to give some texture. We’ll see.

Make items for the Craft X Northwest fair in October! Yay! My first craft fair!
Sew! I have SUCH a sewing bug lately it’s verging on obsession. I have been trolling sites for inspiration and to pump myself up: Gertie’s New Blog for Better Sewing, The Cupcake Goddess, Petite Republic, Sew Tessuti, Collette Patterns, Burda Style…am I missing any? The issue is that all of the stuff from the bathroom is in my sewing space.
I want to cast some more concrete leaves. I actually have all of the supplies to do this…maybe this afternoon?

First! Zucchini! Harvest!

Erica — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:41:11 +0000

Look at these beauties! I still can’t believe I actually grew something. As you can see these are the eight ball zucchini, whose shape I am completely in love with. Such cute little balls. I started these from seed and had them under lights until they were ready to put outside. I read somewhere that you could use your compost pile to plant zucchini in since they are such heavy feeders, so I made big piles of compost where I wanted the plants and just put the starts in the center of the pile. It’s worked wonderfully and I will continue to do it this way.

I also learned that each zucchini plant produces both male and female flowers. When your little zucchinis rot and fall off the plant, it means they were never pollinated. I was hand pollinating my flowers and found out that I was doing it wrong, actually*. I was essentially too late to the party. You see that flower in the top right? How it’s all curled up? Once your flower is like that – it’s too late. Either your plant got pollinated or it didn’t. See the flower in the bottom right? How it looks like a tube? This is what you need. That is of course, if you are interested in hand pollinating.

The flower on the left is a male. Peel back the flowers and you can see the pollen covered stamen. The flower on the right is a female, you can tell by the the wee little zucchini at the base (not shown, of course). Peel back her flower and rub the pollen on the center pistil. Smoke a cigarette, perhaps take a shower.

It’s an oddly intimate act, and I felt a little funny when I first started doing it, like I was invading their privacy or something. The guilt is over and now all I can think about is eating their babies! And I’ve been so consumed with the copulating that I forgot about stuffing the flowers with cheese! Yum!
*My info came from Caitlin, an awesome person at the Olympia Seed Exchange.

White Gazpacho

Erica — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:02:01 +0000

I have been wanting to experiment with chilled soups since last summer, when I never seemed to get around to doing it. So, like the hash, I am going to make one cold soup a week. To kick us off, I chose to make White Gazpacho with Pickled Shrimp from Food and Wine magazine. I got gorgeous local spot prawns, and was actually able to find marona almonds at a local store.

This was an amazing soup, I have to tell you. Seriously decadent and rich, I don’t think I could eat too much at one time. I think it would be perfect as a small bite. I served it in these awesome rolly polly shots glasses, which was perfect. I also still a little wary about the “chilled” aspect of these soups …”room temperature” might better.

Do you like chilled soups?

Tiling…it’s not that hard

Erica — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:56:59 +0000

Tile is on the wall! I was so afraid to start this project…the fact that I kept putting it off for, um…MONTHS is evidence enough. I finally got to the point where I couldn’t put if off any longer, staring at the backerboard day after day was making me crazy.

It’s messier than I thought it would be. I didn’t realize that the mastic would get everywhere, This is definitely a goopy finger project. I highly recommend having a bucket with rags and water next to you if you are going to tackle something like this.

Before I began I reread This Young House’s entry on their bathroom project, and it was really helpful. I also had a tiling book on hand to get me started.

There also might have been a panicked call to Dad to reassure me that I was doing everything correctly (which I was). Thanks Dad!

The most time consuming part of this project so far has been measuring and cutting the end pieces. Several times I mis-measured, cut tiles, realized I mis-measured, swore a bit..got glue all over the place…you know, that sort of thing. I kept forgetting to take off the measurement for the grout line. I would measure the space and cut the tile according to that measurement. D’oh!

I won’t be making that mistake again and I think the rest of it will go smoothly. I hope.

Hash: The Bacon Edition

Erica — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:44:43 +0000

This week’s hash is a trifecta of bacon, inspired by the bacon sausage sold at Uli’s Famous Sausage in Pike Place Market. We went a litte sausage crazy there, and my eyes about popped out of my head when I saw the bacon sausage. I knew immediately that it would be going into hash.

Bacon shows up again in the cheese. I think it’s made locally, but unfortunately the label on the cheese disappeared long ago and I can’t remember who makes it.

Last but not least, pure unadulterated bacon was cooked and then pulverized to make a bacon “powder” to use as a garnish. A gloriously greasy garnish.

Mushrooms, potatoes, eggs, and a beautiful yellow oregano complete the dish. I totally overcooked the eggs, AGAIN…I make myself crazy sometimes. You would think that I would not forget that I have something under the broiler. But I walk off to go do something else…la la la…tasty bacon bacon bacon hash anyway. Add your hash to the flick pool!

“Mmm…bacon.”

-Homer Simpson

The Perfect Towel Hook

Erica — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:09:12 +0000

The bathroom makeover has slowed to a painful crawl after the initial frenzy of activity. This is mainly due to the fact that the people who know what they are doing are no longer here (parents) which leaves just Jeffery and me.

Everything is functioning, the tub/sink/toilet work, it’s just the cosmetics. Like tiling. I have a three day weekend ahead and I have already declared it to the universe and anyone within range that I WILL BE TILING THIS WEEKEND. There. Now the internet knows!

We had to take all of the towel racks off the walls to fill in the holes in order to repaint the bathroom, which has left us without a place to hang our towels,

and as a consequence, they are scatter all over the house, draped on chairs, doors, and the elliptical machine. I don’t want a towel rack, I want hooks and it’s been a little difficult to find the perfect hook. I have narrowed it down to two, both from Anthropologie and I think I am going to go with # 1 as the blue and black with fit with the color scheme.

I actually have hook #2, and while I love, love, love, the black and white stripe…the hook is just a little too big for the space. I think it could live on the back of the door perhaps.

So..yeah..tiling..I’m scared! Wish me luck!