Category Archives: This and That

It’s sort of like piecing…

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I had the privilege this week to spend some time with my oldest son, Chris, tiling his tub surround. I taught Chris how to tile a year or so ago but I think he is now better at it than I am which makes me proud!

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I helped him tile this bathroom floor a few weeks ago and then we both got busy with other things. Since then he managed to work on the walls, set in the toilet, and the vanity. The vanity required extra attention because the plumbing was in the wrong place. A drawer had to be removed and a shelf added. He installed the sink (twice) and the faucet (also twice) because of plumbing issues. The boy is more patient than I am, or at least he appears to be to me.

Tiling this tub surround was complicated by the fact the the bottom 6″ of the wall was not completely flat. The tiles did not sit flush against the wall. They rocked in places and the gap was big enough that the tile pattern was not going to work the way we originally thought it would. But, thankfully, there was a fix! We cut the bottom 12″ tiles in half, lengthwise. The non-flatness is not noticeable—yay!

I had to draw the tile pattern, and use a calculator. Chris was quicker and did more in his head but it was good that we checked each other before taking the tiles to Lowe’s to be cut.

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The wider, back wall was pretty easy. The harder wall was the one with plumbing…

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We were going to drill holes in the tile but it didn’t take long to figure out that, even with a tile bit, it would take hours. Instead we had the tile cut in such a way that we could set back in a little L-shaped piece. The holes themselves will be covered with plates that come with the plumbing fixtures.

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We ran into ‘level’ issues on this wall. For some reason, even though everything was level, the horizontal grout lines that carried over from the back wall wanted to not line up. The spacers only worked in some places and in others the spacers weren’t big enough. We ended up using nails below the tiles in some places to keep them from drifting down. It’s stuff like this that makes tiling so much easier when you have two people… even if one person (me) was not doing any actual tiling.

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Christopher is, today, cleaning out the mastic that oozed through the gaps. Then he’s going to grout it. I’m so glad I’m not involved in that job… I really do not like to grout. They should be using the shower by Saturday and I know that Lorna is extremely excited. And Chris is way happy too :-).

 

Tiny bitty lady bugs…

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I’m not sure I’ve ever seen baby lady bugs until Sunday. I was planting zinnias and was about to put disturb this area next to the fence. Do you see the tiny red spec on the little green leaf in the center of the photo? TinyLadybugs-1

It was a lady bug! And there were others, lots of them! They scattered but some brave ones stayed put while I fetched the camera…

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Isn’t it amazing what you can see if you just keep your eyes open!

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Well, it’ll taste good…

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I made chocolate cake for our Mother’s Day dinner. (All the mothers did a little cooking, Steve is grilling.) As you know, I bake a lot and I’m not sure why, but this cake fought back.

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I made the cake layers yesterday. The recipe starts with melted, un-sweetened chocolate pieces. After that cools, you add it and the vanilla to the batter in the mixer. I added the vanilla to the lukewarm chocolate thinking that would make adding them to the batter easier. Not so much… the chocolate got stiff (I believe the term is ‘seized up’). I managed to blend it all and the batter looked normal so I put the cake in the overn. The layers didn’t rise as much as usual and the cake was a little crumbly but I figured that that would be OK.

Today I made the frosting. It calls for a box of powdered sugar. I didn’t have a box, I had a bag, so I measured the sugar (4 scant cups). I must has used too much because the frosting got hard not long after I started spreading it. In fact, it didn’t take long before it started tearing the cake apart. I gave up on it when I made one obvious divot in the top edge. Sigh.

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I made another half-batch of frosting and it hardened pretty fast too. Mom says it could be the humidity in the air.

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Honestly, while it isn’t a show-stopper, the finished cake has kind of a nice texture… tree-bark-ish. I know that it will taste good and that’s what really matters.

I did think, though, that if I were a new cook and this happened I might be tempted to give up on making cakes from scratch. If that’s you, please don’t let one cake stop you from baking. These things happen :-).

Window dressing…

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The very last bit of our home remodel happened without me writing much about it. We replaced all of the windows that needed it a couple of months ago. That part was fast. The other part of this job, however, was slower because I wanted the inside window trim changed.

What I have always called a ‘window sill’ is actually called a window stool. My mom’s house in OKC had marble window stools and they were so very nice. I knew that if it was going to happen in our house, it had to be now. I wanted ours to be made from Caesarstone, the same one (Nougat) that we used on our bathroom vanities.

The Caesarstone had to be ordered and it took some time to come in. Before Easter, Rick’s crew took off all of our interior interior window trim…

WindowTrim-1The windows weren’t lovely, but we lived with it until our job could be worked into the Caesarstone crew’s calendar.

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A week or so ago David and his crew put in the new window stools. Then Rick’s crew put in the new trim and generally tidied it all up.

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Steve and I cannot remember a time when we could look around the house and call it done. We don’t have anything on the list that needs to be fixed. It’s unnatural—but nice! That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a project looming… it’s just that it’s not a project for our house. Oh happy, happy day!

 

Make your own yogurt…

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I eat a lot of plain Greek yogurt. I put it on my granola, and sometimes eat it at lunch. When I was in NJ a few weeks ago, one of my hostesses (Barbie) told me how she makes yogurt. It sounded so easy that I decided to try it when I got home. Once home, Lorna reminded me that she used to make yogurt all the time.

Barbie makes her yogurt in a heavy, enamel casserole dish kept warn in an oven set at a low heat and that works. The down-side for me is that my dish is pretty heavy and it’s too hot in Texas for half the year to keep the oven on for hours at a time, even on low. After thinking about it, I knew I would do better with a yogurt maker. I found one that is neither expensive nor fancy. It’s a small crockpot made by VitaClay with a yogurt setting.

I followed the instructions, took photos, and made some amazing yogurt! I’ve made 3 batches so I know that it continues to work. Here’s how you do it:

Choose your milk. I like organic whole milk. The VitaClay booklet tells you what kinds of milk work (1%, 2%, whole).
Have 2-3 tablespoons of a plain yogurt on hand to use as a starter for your batch of yogurt.
One batch takes 7 cups of milk (that is 1 cup shy of a 1/2-gallon). Pour the milk into a saucepan and bring it to 180° over medium heat, stirring every now and then. I measure the temperature with a precise candy thermometer. The milk will froth, but not boil.
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Once the milk reaches 180°, remove it from the heat and let it cool to 110°. This takes about 45 minutes. The booklet says that you can place the pan of milk in a cool bath to make this go faster. I have not done that. I did stir the milk every now and then.
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Once the milk is 110°, spoon 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt into the yogurt maker. (I used 3 tablespoons each time.) Pour 1 cup of the warm milk into the yogurt maker and stir to blend. Then add the remaining 6 cups of milk. The mixture fills the pot.
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Plug the yogurt maker in. Turn it to ‘yogurt’. Place the lid on the pot and don’t touch it again until it’s done. Apparently disturbing the pot is bad for the yogurt.
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The yogurt is done in 6-8 hours. If you like tart yogurt, cook it longer. I have had success at both 6 and 7 hours of cooking time and the yogurt is about as tart as I want it to be.
Remove the lid carefully, so that the condensation doesn’t get into the yogurt. I may have mis-read it, but I think that’s a bad thing.
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Take the crock of yogurt out of the crockpot and let it cool. I cool for a while on the counter top, then in the fridge. You can eat the yogurt at this consistency (after chilling) or strain it to make thicker Greek yogurt.
I think it works a little better to cool/chill the yogurt before straining it but I’m not that patient. I let the yogurt get to room temp and then I set it up to strain.
I line a small colander with fine cheesecloth and spoon the yogurt into it. I place the full strainer on top of the crock (you could use a bowl if it fit your strainer better) and use a twisty-tie on the corners of the cloth. The crock and strainer move to the fridge for a few hours or overnight.
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The next day the whey is in the colander (and there is a lot of it) and the Greek yogurt is ready to be spooned into a container and put back into the fridge. You can add whatever you like to flavor the plain yogurt or eat it as is.
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Buying yogurt is faster and more expensive. Making yogurt is a minor chore, but I think this yogurt tastes better and it is less expensive. I suspect I’ll be making my own yogurt for a long time.
PS – In case you wondered why Lorna quit making yogurt, it was because her oven couldn’t maintain the necessary low heat for the length of time it takes for the yogurt to set up. Plus, it heated up the house too much. She’s looking forward to receiving the new yogurt maker that is coming her way from Amazon :-).

And… he jumps!

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It’s April in north Texas. The weather is heating up but the pool water is still chilly. Kids must be made of sterner stuff…

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Jack-AprilSwim2014-02It’s likely to be June before I jump in :-).

Since then, Elanor, Lorna, Chris, and presumably Bear have been in the pool. I missed some swimming times and that’s OK because the kids would have wanted me to jump and I really don’t love the cold water. Steve, however, has been in the water all winter long. I think I may have married a polar bear :-).

In other news, Linda is here! We’re working on a revision of the Piecing book and it is going to be terrific!