Thursday, April 7, 2011

Grandmother's Bread (with yeast and fairly sweet)

From the 1960's, this recipe was my favorite food item my grandmother made on a regular basis. I copied it down at the kitchen table while she spoke it. I knew I would want it later.  Boy, am I glad I did because I have used this recipe for these many years after she has been gone.  It is a real comfort food for me.

Favorite parts of the recipe include the words "beat with rolling pin" and the stains on the paper showing the age of the recipe.  And I do remember Mom beating the dough with a rolling pin!

Yesterday was cool and cloudy, and I made three loaves of this bread, although the original recipe said "Makes 4 loaves".
Loaves "under-cover"
All said and done, it was overcooked at 55 minutes (I confess to falling asleep while waiting for the stove buzzer), but still mighty tasty.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Aprons: Some Free Vintage Patterns

From The Sew Weekly, this week's theme is aprons.
As hard as it is to believe, there was once a time when women cooked in clothes that they didn't want to get dirty! Yes! It's true! And then the 1960s happened, clothing got a whole lot cheaper to make and buy and the idea of *not* wearing your party dress while you made some sort of gelatinous dish was born. While wearing an apron today has become more of a kitchy nod to the past, there has certainly been a resurgance of aprons as textile art.

Although I am not in that perfect age group to wear aprons, I still do it.

And IMHO, the perfect age group is either young (ages 4 to 29) or old (just a bit older than I!). 

Last week, I wore this apron to painting group, and got a funny look from a guy in an even older age group.  It probably is not attractive from the back view, if ya know what I mean, but it is very cute from the front:


A big lot of vintage FREE patterns for aprons can be accessed here.  Now go make one!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A Knitted Gift: Top Down V-Neck Sweater

Finished after several attempts, Heidi's Simple Summer Sweater:


The yarn is 75% cotton and 25% acrylic, so it should be a comfortable summer sweater for cool evenings.

The steep learning curve is detailed on this post.

Details are here if you are an interested knitter.

Hope you like it, Charlotte!