Sunday, March 04, 2007

The weekend of a domestic goddess

I felt like being domestic this weekend, so I turned to Nigella. I love Nigella. I've never watched her show, but I love how she writes in her books. For example, "While the icing's still soft, smear messily over the cooled and waiting cupcakes." I think I could like this woman.
I got up first thing Saturday morning to start baking. I like having the kitchen to myself with some good music on. However, I wasn't entirely alone:
My first task was to start the dough for a few loaves of bread. Mmmmm...not much smells better than getting the yeast started before adding all of the other stuff.
All of the other stuff.
(The coffee was for me, not the bread.)

Then I started making cupcakes to take to Paul's house warming party. I tried two that I'd never made before: Burnt Butter Brown Sugar and Dense Chocolate, both from Nigella. So yes, I was using Paul's guests as guinea pigs. They all survived, as best I can tell.
Here they are, all finished, in the Cupcake Courier that Kristen sent to me out of the blue. Isn't it great?! I see alot more cupcakes in my future.
The verdict on the experiment: the chocolate ones were fab, the BBBS were a distant 2nd. Ah well.
The cleanup crew:

I had enough of the kitchen yesterday, so today I decided to start in on the stash that was augmented on Thursday (we were NOT shopping). Here's what I got:
The task was to make a small quilt for the opening in one of our new walls. In the addition we had these two openings put in the walls that look out from the 2nd floor into the new room. These are great--they look neat and they let more light into the upstairs. At some point there will be sandblasted glass in them, but we haven't reached that point yet.

So what's the problem, you may ask? Well, the problem is that the one on the left opens into the upstairs bathroom. No big deal if it's just Rob and I, but things quickly become slightly more awkward when anyone else comes over. Thus the small quilt.
Here's a closeup of the final product.
And a further-away shot.
I think the rest of the day I'll go for a walk and take a nap. All this domesticity makes me tired!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

How very domestic! I think your pictures are worthy of any magazine spread. They make you want to jump right into the kitchen and bake, bake, bake! I love to bake but the only time I do it now is for company. Otherwise I would weight 400 lbs. because after baking, eating goodies is my favorite thing-or is it the other way around?

The quilt is super also. Stash augmentation--is that just a code word for SHOPPING?????

(Tell Rob the apron is to hold your calcium pills.)

Anonymous said...

Thanks about the pictures--I'm rather sure it was luck rather than anything I consciously did. And I pretty much only bake for other people as well, for the same reason as you--DANGEROUS to my waistline.

I laughed out loud about the use for the apron! The good news, though, is that I'm taking less calcium these days. Seems my parathyroid is kicking back in a bit. Woo hoo!

Anonymous said...

man, she's a machine!

I can attest to the quality of the cupcakes -- I actually saw jason eat 6 of them (the last 4 were eaten surreptitiously)

And you should see all these cool quilts she makes in situ -- her house is wicked cool!

so I think I want to make a ripple afghan. Can someone teach me how to crochet? Can I just use any old yarn? I think it would be kinda fun!

Anonymous said...

..so I am suppose to up my calcium. What's the best way to do that. I tried caltrate and the heartburn was wicked.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you should just eat Tums. The Smooth Dissolve ones are the best. No heartburn and you get your calcium.

Also, your body can't absorb more than about 5-600 mg at a time, so space it out across the day.

This is a public service announcement, brought to you by the letter C (for calcium)

Anonymous said...

And thanks for the props, K! Should I mention that I ended up making quickie curtains for the office Sunday afternoon, as well? I think I was in a frenzy this past weekend. I thought we'd bought some from Ikea, but we hadn't and our friends are visiting next weekend so off to G Street again. I'll post pics, but I think they look adorable. I used that black on white fabric that I augmented stash with last Thursday, K.

Anonymous said...

I wanna learn to crochet, too! There's a whole ripple blanket blog, K! You should join!

Anonymous said...

wow, what a productive weekend. thanks for sharing it with us. cool quilt. i love the clean up crew. that is one cute puppy.
i want to learn how to crochet too.