French Market Bag

Okay. So it’s taken me nearly four years to finish this bag. I base that loosely on the date on the bottom of the pattern I printed up from Knitty.com – November 19, 2004.

But don’t go calling me a procrastinator just yet – I was hung up on the Kitchener stitch I needed to graft the handles together. After a few missed attempts, I turned to YouTube and watched a video from the TheKnitWitch who explained things in terms that finally made sense, and voilà, the French Market Bag was finally complete!

I made a few modifications, like centering the handles over the front and the back of the bag and knitting up the sides of the bag until they were 10” high.

Bag pre-felting:

Bag post-felting:

I put it in the washing machine on a hot cycle with a bath towel, and it took about 40 minutes on the regular wash cycle until it was felted to my liking.

If I’d make another, I’d make it even taller, probably about 14”, and felt the dickens out of it again. As it was, this bag took the better part of 6 skeins of Kureyon in colour 149. Also, I’d make sure both handles were the same colour, one of mine is grey and the other sort of oatmeal. I swear it didn’t dawn on me until I saw the finished product.

All told, I am happy with the end result.

Yummm, Pretzels!

I don't know many people who are immune to the charms of a freshly baked pretzel, or should I say pretzels, because you can't just have one. These pretzels are pre-cooked in boiling water to which baking soda has been added, so you're dealing with a reactive solution that should not come in contact with aluminum. Be safe and use stainless utensils.

Pretzels

2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1½ cup warm water, about 120ºF
1 tablespoon oil
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten (for egg wash, do not add to dough!)

Coarse sea salt, for sprinkling

To make yeast dough:

Dissolve sugar in ½ cup warm water, sprinkle the yeast on top, and let this rise for 10 minutes.

Put three cups flour in mixer, add salt and mix. When yeast mixture is ready, stir it with a fork and add this along with remaining 1 cup warm water and oil to mixer. (I always use the paddle attachment for this step.) Slowly add remaining flour to mix, keeping in mind you might or might not need all of the flour, so add it slowly. Changing over to the kneading attachment, I let the machine knead the dough to the proper consistency. Occasionally, I take the dough out of the bowl, and give it a few good kneads on the counter; this tells me if I need more flour or not, rather than rely on the appearance of the dough in the bowl.

When the dough has reached the desired consistency, place it in a greased, covered bowl until doubled in size. Let the rising take place in a warm area of your kitchen. This rising usually takes an hour.

Punch down dough and separate into 8 pieces. (I cut my ball of dough like I would a pie - I find this the easiest way to divide the dough into even pieces.)

Pretzels are formed like this:

Roll out each piece of dough to about 20” long

Cross over ends, twisting them as above.

Fold up twisted ends as shown.

Let the pretzels rise again on parchment-lined baking sheets for about 15 minutes before boiling.

You will now prepare your boiling mixture: fill a large non-reactive pot with water and bring to a boil. Add 2 tablespoons baking soda and let the soda dissolve.

Add the pretzels to boiling water in small batches, say 2 or 3 at a time, turning each pretzel over once, for a total time of about 1 to 2 minutes. The water doesn't have to be at a rolling boil:

Remove from water with a slotted spoon and return to parchment-lined baking sheets.

Wash each pretzel with an egg wash. I always add a bit of water to the beaten egg.

Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and bake in a 400 ºF oven in top and bottom thirds of oven for 25 minutes, checking on pretzels after about 10 minutes and switching the baking sheets’ position in the oven. (Get that? Put the bottom one on top, and the top one on the bottom. I knew you’d understand!)

You’re in for a treat!

The Attic Face Lift

Where others have bats in the belfry, we had sawdust as insulation. We kept the fire department on speed dial, if you know what I mean! Both Eric and I watched as our child-hood homes went up in flames, so we err on the side of caution, edging so far as neurotic where fire prevention is concerned.

Our ancestors might have been frugal in their approach to creative uses for sawdust so we have to commend them on this, but it’s also a prime reason there are so few old houses standing today. Even our house caught fire at the turn of the century, and you can still see the scars on some of the trusses, but luckily the house wasn’t a total loss.

This is what we were faced with:

Eric drew the short straw and ended up doing the first phase of the dirty work: removing the pink fibreglass insulation and tar paper that was on top of the sawdust.

At this point, my job was clear: I was the lucky dog who simply stood below the hatch to the attic and carried the full garbage bags outside. We picked the right season, it wasn’t too hot in the attic, and it wasn’t too cold either. The winds weren’t howling, so that kept the dust to a minimum, but either way, there was enough of it, and it ended up ALL over the house by the time we were done. This kind of job requires steel-toed boots, a mask (preferably full-face), and safety glasses.

After the removal of the pink insulation and tar paper, we got out our weapon: our industrial shop vac. Thank you Sears, for making a product we can wholly recommend. We bought a longer hose from a pool supply company that we duct-taped to the original hose, and keeping the shop vac on the floor below, I became the official shop vac emptier. This involved emptying the canister into the garbage bags, a concept that sounded great in theory but crashed and burned in practice.

We were also overly optimistic with regards to how long this whole process would take. We figured a day and a bit. It ended up taking about 100 man-hours. Thanks to one of our friends who was voluntold, the job actually became memorable. Sometimes, there’s a thankless task to do, and someone steps up to the plate to help, and we remember those people fondly. They also get food and beer, lots of food and beer. This is the kind of job you have to experience, because words and pictures just don’t do it justice.

Since we only had one vacuum to remove the sawdust, and 2 people in the attic, my wheels got turning. I remembered we had a garbage bag holder-open thingie, for lack of a better technical term. I even managed to find it in one of the out-buildings. I gave this to the guys, along with a plastic dust pan, and this effectively doubled our sawdust output. In fact, it was even faster than the vacuuming method, since it saved me from having to turn off and empty the vacuum every couple of minutes. Less downtime. It was also cleaner, since the bags could be closed upstairs in the attic, and all I needed to do was hump them down the ladder. I could even wait until several bags had to be removed from the attic, giving me ample time in between to act as a gofer. Really, the only downside is that it was less entertaining, since I missed watching the mummified mice whizzing through the clear plastic hose.

Each bag was schlepped down stairs and onto the front lawn, and it soon became clear that the garbage truck was NOT going to be taking this load. I don’t even think we could have bribed them with a flat of beer. Even if we put out 2 bags a week, the removal would have taken well over a year! When all was tallied, we used 140 industrial garbage bags that weighed 50 pounds on average (yes, I got the scale out and randomly weighed). That’s nearly 7,000 pounds weighing our old lady down.

At the end of the first day, people were slowing down, wondering what kind of a hovel we lived in to merit so many garbage bags on our lawn. What could we possibly be doing in there?

Since the attic wiring was now totally visible, it was time to re-wire the entire upstairs and put BX cable in the attic. We saw a few mice too many to cheap out on wiring for this space. Once that task was completed, the attic was reinsulated with R40 pink fibreglass. Our conscience is clear, our heat loss little.

This is also one of those discouraging, back-breaking chores that remains completely unseen. After coughing up dust-balls and itching all over for days, people ask, “So, what were you up to this weekend?”, and nothing you can say can adequately describe the task. So much of the work with an old house is hidden, and so many details remain unnoticed to outsiders. And emptying the attic of sawdust was one of those thankless tasks.

Homemade Pasta, Anyone?

I have to admit, I had coveted the KitchenAid pasta roller for a long time, and when I found it on sale at Canadian Tire, I knew I had to strike. I haven’t regretted the purchase, so if you’ve been dreaming, do yourself a favour and make this acquisition a reality. I’d been asking Santa for quite some time, but my requests fell on deaf ears. (Santa, if you’re listening…well…you know the ice cream maker? It’s next on my list…)

Making pasta is simple: flour, salt, eggs and a bit of water.

I’ll walk you through the painfully easy process.

We’re 2 people, so I use the rule of thumb of one egg per person. That’s to say, if you’re four people, simply double the recipe below.

Here we go:

Homemade Pasta

1¾ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 tablespoon water

Use the KitchenAid paddle attachment for this step:

Place flour in bowl with salt, mix well. Beat egg in a measuring cup, add water, and add this egg mixture to the flour. Mix well.

You will have a shaggy mixture. Stand back and let the mixer do it’s work. Slowly, the mixture will become more homogenous. Depending on the weather, you might need to add some more water or flour; I invariably end up adding more water.

Change from paddle to kneading attachment, and your dough will start to look like this:

When the mixture is smooth to the touch, and doesn’t stick to your fingers, you’re ready for hand kneading. Simply knead the dough until it’s elastic and smooth. You’re hands will tell you when you're done, but a minute or two should suffice.

Wrap your dough in some plastic wrap, and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or so. I tend to flatten my dough into a round flat shape.

I cut the dough into slices as such, since I find this facilitates the rolling process:

Flour the board and the cut pieces a bit so nothing sticks, and cover these resting pieces with your plastic wrap while you’re rolling your first piece:

The KitchenAid pasta roller makes quick work of the dough. You always start with the largest opening, so set your machine to setting 1 on the dial. I always pass the dough through about 5 or 6 times at setting number one. Some advocates stress the dough should be folded in half along the width, however I find this step tedious and useless. I just keep feeding it through again and again. You will find the pasta becoming smoother and sturdier. Adjust your machine to setting 2 and pass the dough through again, 2 or 3 times should do it. For fettuccini, I always go to setting 4, for spaghetti, I use setting 5.

While I am rolling, my pasta sheets need somewhere to do. I forgo the broom-handle-over-a-pair-of-chairs à la nonna, and simply let mine rest over the handle of my wall oven. It works for me, and the cat seems to enjoy it as well.

The KitchenAid pasta roller comes with 2 cutters, one for fettuccini, the other for spaghetti. Tonight we’re having Fettuccini Carbonara, so I’m using the larger cutter:

(It's always helpful to have a cat attentively watching you; Howard is actually waiting for some catnip to magically appear...)

Et voilà, a meal fit for a king! Your pasta is now ready for a pot of boiling salted water, and doesn’t need to cook for longer than a minute or two. Watch like a hawk, and drain when al dente. Serve immediately with your favourite sauce.

The Stairway from Hell

Our old staircase was a blight in an otherwise wonderful living room. Let’s face it, we were ashamed. People would invariably come into our house, and their crest-fallen face would hone in on our staircase, and they’d exclaim, “Ugh, what are you going to do with THAT?”

They were right of course, the old staircase was an eyesore:



Everyone’s first question: why don’t you just repaint it? Then the next question was equally impractical: why don’t you re-build it?

Nearly every baluster was broken, the steps had been sanded into oblivion, the stringers had separated where the stair turned 90º, and initially, in our optimistic view to restore things to order and out of sheer respect for “the old way”, we thought we’d rebuild it exactly as it was.

And then we thought things over. We couldn’t fit a king-sized bed upstairs, (which we needed, of course, to accommodate the DOG sleeping with us), a sofa barely fits upstairs, and basically, the over-all dimensions were kind of Lilliputian in scale. People were smaller 150 years ago. We’re no giants, but really…the stair need super-sizing to bring it up to par.

In the general scheme of our renovation, the staircase was the absolute LAST thing we wanted to do. We still need to renovate the upstairs, (we’re living in uninsulated knotty pine purgatory), and this would mean lots of trips up and down with what we’ve torn out, plus all the building material we need to bring up. Doing this with a pristine staircase is just too impractical. But when we happened on a hand-worker who was able to make a staircase to our exacting specifications, we deviated from our schedule and gave the green light. Big Mistake. Actually, we wanted him to repair our barn, but since it was November and winter was nipping at our heels, we thought it best to put the plans for the barn off until spring. Being suckers, when he told us stairs were his specialty and the fact he was desperate for work, we gave the go-ahead.

It was the end of November, and we were assured the whole fiasco would last about 2 to 3 weeks. Perfect, just in time for Christmas, I thought. I already had visions of pine garlands decking our fine new stair, our new pride and joy being shown off to Christmas revelers.

Alas, nothing ever goes to plan, and from experience, we know that every best time estimate can be doubled, if not tripled in length of time until completion. But, this time we reckoned, we were dealing with a pro, a master craftsman, an enthusiastic worker who came to us like manna from heaven.

We ordered oak for the steps, used our reclaimed Eastern fir for the stringers, and ordered 30 custom-turned balusters made of ash. Our worker became more and more sporadic, and weeks turned into months…

But alas, when we went into the workshop, we were mollified. The steps were wonderful, the design of the stringers was curvaceous and elegant, the balusters veritable works of art. We could hardly wait for the installation.

At the beginning of March, the day to tear down the old stair and re-build the wall was finally here. Eric and the stair-builder demolished the old stairs, tore out the bead-board that was our inside finishing, and proceeded to remove the pine boards that form the guts of our very uninsulated outside wall. Essentially (and this is where I laugh when people suggest “it just needs some paint”), the inside walls of our house are comprised of pine boards, about 1” thick, nailed vertically onto the main structure of the house with hand-forged nails.



After 150 years or so, the wood has shrunken so much you can literally pull the square nails out without effort. I didn’t mention insulation, did I? That’s because there is no insulation! Eric painstakingly removed all the old pine boards, replaced those that were rotten, placing one layer of heavy-duty tar-paper behind them.



He then re-installed the boards with screws and washers, and build a 2”x3” stud wall that was insulated with Roxul Flexibatt and covered with a vapour barrier called Ayr-Foil:



On top of this came the fire-code Gyproc, and we now have us a finished wall.

The only thing missing is the stair.

In the meanwhile, our two tough boy cats, Bobby (below) and Howard, high-tailed it outside, and spent their time looking longingly into the house through a variety of windows, in the hopes the stairs have magically rebuilt themselves.



Our ancient cat Schatzie is pushing 20, and she spent the entire time sleeping within 20 feet of power tools and wrecking bars, completely oblivious to the commotions around her. We spend a total of 3 nights climbing the ladder to sleep upstairs, and the old hag was the only cat who climbed the ladder. Mind you, the moment she discovered the stair was missing, it was as though a little light bulb went off above her head. It was as though she was saying, “damn, where’d the stair go? How am I gonna get my treats?” When I showed her the ladder, up she went. The old girl is fearless. (Her mother’s not, so I promptly slung her over my shoulder and carried her back down, where she spent the next 2 days sleeping on the sofa, opening an eye from time to time to watch the show.)

When the bottom stringer was placed against the wall, we could envision the stair as almost complete:



But we have a problem, and it’s starting to dawn on Mr. Stair-builder: he messed up a measurement. His calculations were bang-on; he should have had 19.85 cm between each step:



It seems when he started to build the stringers, he measured 18.85 cm between each step (remember Norm Abram’s advice: measure twice, cut once?). Now, you’re saying, 1 cm, that’s like…a fraction of an inch, right? And you’re right of course, but when you multiply 1 centimetre over 14 steps, you’re off by 14 centimetres.

So, our new stair is on blocks, and we’re not, um…very pleased. In fact, we’re near tears:



We’re scratching our heads, trying valiantly to find a solution, but alas, there’s no salvaging the hard work. There’s not enough room to properly add a step or build a landing. The run of the stair is totally wrong. Not only that, the 4th stair up is 10 cm higher than it should be because of the measuring error, meaning anyone over 6' needs to duck under the beam. One of our friends put it best: you’ll break a hip when you’re older. And, of course, she’s totally right.

Naturally, being the lyrical deviant I am, Pat Benatar's song "Heartbreaker" came to mind, sung with the following lyrics:

You're a hip-breaker, time-waster,
money-taker, don't you mess around with me,
OH NO NO NO...

Despite the best of intentions, not everything turns out like you’ve planned. Some things you have to live with and other things just need to be re-done.

But we’re not finished yet! We’ve been VERY patient over the past few months, dealing with a moody yet methodical worker. Eric was willing to absorb the cost of the wood: we’d need new stringers and new oak posts, as well as the banister. The actual steps could be re-used and so could the balusters, however, everything else needed to be re-built. We were willing to house our worker (hell, I was already feeding him 3 squares a day and doing his laundry), until the staircase was re-built, alas, his head-space "wasn’t there" and he was "too disappointed" to tackle the project again.

So. We have a beautiful staircase. It’s just built for the wrong house.

Let's Bake a Cake!

The recipe for this cake comes from a dear friend in Germany. I love this cake because it's easy, keeps well (make it a day ahead for best flavour), and is infinitely versatile. I've used almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts, as for liqueurs, I've tried Amaretto (great with almonds), rum (amazing with walnuts), kirsch (nice with walnuts) or Grand Marnier. The last time I made it with Grand Marnier, I even used 70% dark chocolate with orange flavour. It was amazing!

Lots of people ask me for the recipe, so here it is!

Krümeltorte (Crumb Torte or Cake)

200 g butter
250 g granulated sugar
5 eggs, separated
1 package vanilla sugar
(I use Dr. Oetker, each pouch contains 1 to 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, according to the Dr. Oetker website)
25 g cornstarch
100 g flour
2½ teaspoons baking powder
100 g ground nuts (natural almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, etc.)
100 g dark chocolate, ground

For the filling, you will need:

500 mL 35% whipping cream
2 packages Dr. Oetker vanilla sugar
3 - 4 cL liqueur, such as Kirsch, rum, Amaretto or Grand Marnier
1 tsp. cocoa (I usually use more like 1 tablespoon)

For the cake:

Preheat oven to 325ºF

Prepare a 10" spring-form pan by greasing and lining bottom and sides with parchment paper.

Beat butter until creamy, add sugar, vanilla sugar (or extract) and egg yolks. Mix dry ingredients together (flour, cornstarch, baking powder, ground nuts and ground chocolate) and add to butter mixture. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold under mixture. Turn into prepared pan and smooth top with a spatula. Bake for 50 minutes in a 325ºF or until tester comes out clean. (With my new wall oven, it took only 45 minutes, despite the original recipe saying 60 minutes, so there's a moral in there somewhere).

Let cake cool on a rack, and remove parchment from sides and bottom. I recommend you put your cake on the plate you plan to serve it from, unless you have a cake lifter.

Here's where things get interesting: you will now remove the inside of the cake! Using a sharp knife, make a cut around the top of the cake, about a ¼" from the edge, and remove the inside using a spoon BEING SURE to keep a base of about a ¼". Your result will look like this:


Put your crumbs in a large bowl, and using your hands, make sure no large crumbs remain. To this you will add the 3 - 4 cL liqueur of your choice, and the cocoa. The goal here is not to SOAK, but to MOISTEN the crumb mixture. Taste it, and you will know if you should add more liqueur or cocoa powder. Remember, when the cake rests, your liqueur flavour will become more pronounced, so you might want to err on the side of caution. I don't even measure anymore, I just pour!

Now, THIS NEXT STEP IS VERY IMPORTANT:

Reserve 1¼ cups of the crumbs in a separate bowl for the topping, and put this aside. These crumbs will decorate the top of the cake AFTER the reconstruction.

Beat your whipping cream, adding vanilla sugar or essence, and FOLD the mixture under your crumbs (repeat: NOT the ones for the topping). Your mixture will look like this:



You will now RETURN this mixture into your base, as such:



Flatten out the mixture, being sure to fill in the edges of the base. Using a spatula or knife, smooth the top, and using the 1¼ cups of crumbs you have set aside, sprinkle these on top of the whipped cream/crumb mixture.

Your finished cake will look like this:



The inside of the cake morphs into a creamy, mousse-like filling. Like a good wine, this cake ages well; it also travels well, and all told, is my definition of cake perfection. I'm at the point where I don't even want to try another recipe, at the risk of being disappointed. This one's a "keeper", as the saying goes!

Try it, I think you'll like it!

Bébé Pepés - Our Little Skunk Babies

So, we're pretty forgiving people when it comes to animals. We don't turn away strays, which is how we came to own Howard, and Schatzie and Baby Grey and BobCat and Cooper. That's our menagerie.

We also had a skunk, which some of you might be grossed out by. But I am going to ask you to put your aversions aside, if only for a moment, and listen to my story.

Skunks have every right to claim where they want to live, in my optimistic "tread lightly" philosophy, which is why we put up with one living under one of our barns. This was all good and fine, until Cooper came along. Cooper is the quintessential Border Collie / Labrador mix, and loves kitties! Unfortunately, Cooper's first encounter with the skunk didn't go over very well, nor did his second since he's not a quick learner. I am now a pro at de-skunking dogs, so if you're interested, listen up: there is but ONE product that works, and it's called Thiotrol made by a company called Vet Solutions. Ask your vet to order some. You'll be glad to have this product on hand late one Sunday night, because we all know dogs get skunked when the pharmacy's closed. Skunks know. (For those of you who can't get this product, buy 1 litre (roughly a quart for you imperialists) of Hydrogen Peroxide 3%, mix with 1/4 cup baking soda, and add 1 tablespoon liquid dishwashing soap. Ivory works well to mask the odor. Mix this only when ready to use, and remember to avoid your pet's eye area.)

I used to keep cat food in the barn, in a Rubbermaid container I used to tie up high over a beam with a bungee cord. Even I had trouble getting the damn thing down, but not Mama Skunky. In her last week, something like 10 pounds of cat food went missing. The old girl was stock-piling it. Then one unfortunate morning, I found Mama Skunk dead by the side of the road. I walked over to her body, noticed her teats and bulging stomach, and wondered if she'd had her babies already.

I sent Eric on a recon mission - check under the shed using the digital camera, to see if her babies were underneath. Now, the clearance under the barn is minimal, to say the least. Just enough room to fit your arm in, or for a cat or skunk to crawl into. Eric shot a few photos, downloaded them, enlarged them, and confidently gave me the all-clear. Ha.

About a week later, I was innocently sitting outside when a strange noise caught my attention. From under the barn appeared not one, not two, but FIVE baby skunks!

Now, you haven't lived until you've seen a baby skunk. If you think kittens are cute, well, I have news for you. Baby skunks take the cake:


I rest my case:


Well, if that's not the cutest thing you've ever seen, there's no hope for you.

So, you're asking, what do you feed them, what do they drink, where do they go, and do you still have them?

First things first: I gave them Friskies salmon tinned cat food, which the cats didn't like. I figured I'd give it a try and they loved it. I supplemented this with regular milk, and tried to give them fruits, but they weren't interested. We never touched them, because we didn't want them to get too used to humans. What's really amazing is they have terrible eyesight, but a wicked sense of smell. Sometimes, I'd hide their food and watch them find it. It was really amazing to see. They would also run to Schatzie, our grey mama cat, when they got nervous. Maybe with their poor eyesight, they thought she was their Mom? It only makes sense to me.

Observing these skunks was a great experience. We'd literally sit around and wait for them to emerge, mind you, it never took long once you put food out for them. Even Cooper got used to skunks, and would watch diligently during feeding times.

What's really neat is they're all different. There was one whose white was more yellow, 2 were bigger, 3 were smaller, and all had different stripes. Some were more intrepid, others more shy. We watched them grow bigger and enlarge their territory. You never knew where they'd turn up, but one thing was for sure: they never sprayed unless provoked. Eric did end up getting skunked once, but that was it. He recovered. And I'm sure it was his fault.

We spent the summer watching the skunks grow up, and one by one, they disappeared from the nest. We were hoping that one would return to the fold, but we remain skunk-less for now. Maybe one day, we'll get lucky and some skunk will choose our barn as its home again. Until then, we remember our baby skunks with lots of fond memories, feeling really privileged for having had the pleasure of observing them.