The old fort town

If you can’t already tell, my blog is lagging behind my real life by a couple of weeks at this point – between spending a good bit of my free time sewing, several days of traveling and also having to take my computer in for repair, things are very two weeks ago. Which is not to say the last two weeks have been particularly exciting, but still … I’m behind.  But I didn’t feel like like moving on just yet.

[Old home in downtown Ft. Madison, Iowa]

The trip I took was to see my cousin graduate from high school – the whole family descended upon my aunt for a day or two, just long enough to make her small, fluffy white dog Bear go absolutely nuts with trepidation and excitement. I also realized while there that I’ve been to their home of Columbia, MO enough times to have a certain place I go for coffee in the morning. Columbia is quite a pretty place, home of the University of Missouri and also a lot of hills.

[Drawbridge across the Mississippi, Ft. Madison, Iowa]

My aunt Miriam and I share the cooking gene in our family, and also an interest in being healthy, so I tend to like her food a lot. A year and a half ago, after talking with her about it, I started paying attention to how much sodium is in the food I buy, which led to my horrified realization about just how salty canned and boxed food can be, and led to me cutting a lot of the salt out of my diet. My aunt is still one of the few people I know who pays attention to and cooks food like I do. We went to the Columbia farmer’s market when I was there, which was an interesting experience for me. When I go to markets I walk around planning meals in my head, and to be around food that I was not going to be able to cook was a little unnerving. I know, I’m weird.

[A now-unused shed on my grandparents' farm.]

My brother and I drove somewhere around 700 miles when we were visiting because we visited my grandparents in Iowa in addition to going to my aunt’s house, and our planes flew into St. Louis, which is only sorta near either one. I was kinda knackered when I got home after all that travel. But it was worth it, I think. I don’t often see my family in person, so I try to do what I can to make the most of the time I have with them, and when it’s possible I do plan much longer trips than five days!

[Downtown Ft. Madison]

When I was visiting my grandparents I got up really early one morning and took a nice three-mile walk around the downtown area. The pictures this post are from that walk. Ft. Madison is a Mississippi river town and a farming town, obviously one that has seen a considerable amount of river and train trade through it in the past couple hundred years. If you’ve ever heard of Sheaffer Pen, the company is from Ft. Madison though the factory is now closed. Ft. Madison is a piece of classic Americana, with a little main street and a park with a bandstand where people do really go hear summer concerts.

[Just down the road from my family's farm.]

My grandparents say that Ft. Madison has a lot of riffraff now because of the constant flow of people due to the river traffic, but if that’s riffraff, I’m a monkey’s uncle. I mean, it is and it isn’t. I’m used to places like Oakland and New York, people, so let’s be honest here: Ft. Madison’s riffraff feels pretty benign to me. Besides, in this town it’s hard to think about things like “riffraff” because the pace is so slow, the buildings are old and the traffic is light. Granted, the state’s only maximum security penitentiary is here and there’s a munitions plant down the road, but it certainly FEELS like it’s a place out of time. And really, I think it has many points that support that idea.

[There really are places with bandstands and summer concerts in the park.]

In any event, Iowa is not like where I live, or where I grew up, so it is always fun and interesting for me to visit, especially given that I have some very deep family roots there. Most people I’ve met in my life don’t know much about farming country and the Midwest and haven’t ever lived or visited there (Chicago does not count), so often when I talk about it people often react as if I am discussing a slightly foreign country. I feel as if the awesomeness of small towns in Iowa is one of my favorite open secrets. Actually, the awesomeness of Iowa in general is one of them, and it’s been my singular pleasure all my life to be able to return there every year and remember.

Hopefully this week I will finally complete the quilting of my project (it’s about 65% done) and get it bound, and whee! Who knows what I will do after that. Probably more sewing and quilting. I was considering making several small amigurumi, just for something different to do. I’m still totally feeling uninspired by crochet, so we will see. Probably I should clean off my crafting table though. Constant projects have left it looking a bit like a textile war zone.

Until next time.

Knives and Earthquakes (not together, one hopes)

Whew. What a week. I know I said that on Friday, but I thought I’d elaborate a bit. First up: KNIVES.

A week ago Friday I finally did something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time – I took a knife skills class!  I was super excited. After some persuasion I managed to get Jeff to come as well, because I knew he would be willing to be my sous chef if he knew how to be a pro about. I think we’re both getting new knives.  He wants the Shun you see on the left, and I want the middle knife. I have a chef’s knife already that I’m quite fond of, but I liked the flat edge of that one. I took the class (3+ hours jam packed with info) at Berkeley’s Kitchen on Fire with chef MikeC. I wish I could pass on every last bit of information to you guys, but um … well, he DOES have a DVD, I suppose. Seriously, it was a great class, the guy’s a great teacher, funny and yet very seriously knowledgeable about his subject.

I will say, after learning the techniques, that I don’t think I know anyone who wields a knife properly. Which is sad, because it’s so much faster and safer!

I spent today helping my brother move out of his apartment. He’s experiencing a few major life changes, both positive and negative, and I’m very happy to be able to be nearby so that I can help. I’m super pleased to report that he is going to graduate school next fall at the University of Nevada Reno to earn his master’s degree in environmental planning and policy, specializing in GIS use.  The cherry blossoms in the picture above are from outside his window in Placerville – it’s spring!  I will miss going up there to visit him, but I am really happy he’s going in a positive direction in his life, and I’m sure I’ll make it back up there on my own anyway.

I continue to spend time finishing items for the kitchen/dining area. As you can see above, the benches are nearly done, and I have a lot of commentary on building furniture in my head for another post. We have one coat of paint to apply and they’ll be ready for use. I’m sewing with piping for the first time for the bench cushions, which is giving me palpitations. I’m terrified I’m going to do this terribly wrong, but I’m forging ahead anyway. I have a seam ripper, after all. I don’t know how to build furniture either, and that seems to be going well despite all the many things that could go poorly. I’m definitely ready for these projects to be over, though. I’d like to move onto something else.

I, along with many others, have been watching the news from Japan about the earthquakes and tsunamis with horror and sadness. The news just isn’t getting any better. Like many others, I’ve donated to the Red Cross, and it’s really all that I can think to do. I went to bed Thursday night extremely grateful to be living in an earthquake-safe apartment building and working in a retrofitted earthquake-standard office. It’s not everything, but … when you live less than a mile from the not-insignificant Hayward fault, it’s hard to hear about massive earthquakes and not personalize those thoughts just a wee tiny bit.

Flickr user Dr_Speed (via Berkleyside) caught the photo above of the tsunami rolling through San Francisco Bay on Friday. That’s SF in the background and the Bay Bridge crossing the water. The Alameda docks are on the left and Emeryville (just south of Berkeley) is in the foreground. There’s also a video from the same vantage point. Not so big, right? Kinda slow. Now realize that wave has traveled more than 5,000 miles. Unbelievable.

With the exception of the tsunami photo these pictures are from Instagram – three weeks ago I decided to start a 365 project, and those photos are from that series. For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, I watched several people on Flickr do one of these in various ways. Basically you take a picture every day for a year, often of yourself, and post it. Some people do a 52-week version. I’d wanted to do one, but never thought I’d keep up with it until I started using with Instagram on my iPhone. You take a picture and it applies an effect to it (or not), imitating a lomography camera or a 60s or 70s picture, or various other vintage and color filters. Since I usually have my phone with me, it’s simple to remember to find something worth looking at from my daily life and photograph it.

I’m hoping that this project reminds me to keep a sharp eye on what’s amazing and noteworthy around me in my daily life, instead of just letting the increasingly familiar landscape fade into sameness. Moving to a new place opens your eyes in so many ways, and I’d like to keep the magic of that viewpoint with me as long as I can.

Off to bed! I’m sure with the time change the morning is going to see unbearably early for this night owl.

Daily bread

In our house this week there’s been a lot of truth to the idea of daily bread. I have more bread in my house than I know what to do with. Actually, I know what to do with it. Eat it. All of it.

I am a terrible baker, but my brother is really good at it. He has a magic touch with kneading and all his yeast breads bake up to this amazingly perfect dense-but-not-too-dense consistency. I am terribly jealous of his skill. I’m hoping for some help in that department from him and from my new most excellent tool (my mom’s Christmas present to me), one that is apparently perfect for kneading: a badass mixer, a KitchenAid Classic Plus. (I have plans for getting additional attachments.)

This past weekend he made four Loaves: cranberry-sunflower wheat, cinnamon-raisin wheat, cinnamon-graham-cracker (the braided one above) and honey-walnut wheat. I would tell you which one was my favorite, but they all are. OK, maybe I have a slight bias since childhood toward cinnamon-raisin bread, but that’s only because I love it so much. I would ask Jeremy which was his favorite, but I know for a fact he just loves bread too much in general to pick any particular one.

Jeremy showed me a few things about how to properly bake bread in the course of the four loaves. Above he’s showing me what the dough looks like after it’s been kneaded properly and is no longer tearing. Of course, at one point I asked him why he was adding more flour to the dough while kneading, and he responded, “Because it needs it.” I said, “How do you know?” and he said, “I just do.” He says he just follows directions, but I suspect he knows more than he says.

It’s going to be a hard job to remember to eat something besides tasty slices of bread this week.