Fall Comfort Food

The trick-or-treating is over.  The pumpkin seeds have lost their crisp.  The pumpkins' faces are turning black and caving in on your porch.  Time to put away those Halloween decorations and make some comfort food to help move you forward into the fall season.  My family loves homemade chicken and dumplings.  And it is easy to prepare, as all comfort food should be.

Chicken and Dumplings

1 tablespoon olive oil

1tablespoon butter

1 whole chicken breast, chopped

3 large stalks celery, diced

½ onion, diced

3 carrots, peeled and diced

4 c. chicken broth

4 c. water

1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp. black paper

¼ tsp. garlic powder

3 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

 4 ½ tablespoons butter

1 ½ c. buttermilk

extra flour for rolling dumplings

Heat oil in large Dutch oven or other large pot.  Melt butter in oil.  Add chicken and brown.  Add celery, onion and carrots and sauté several minutes to soften.  Add broth, water, salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Bring to a boil. 

Meanwhile prepare dumplings:  combine flour, baking soda, and salt.  Cut in butter with a pastry blender until mixture is the consistency of coarse meal.  Add the buttermilk, and stir just until ingredients are moistened.  Turn dough out onto a floured surface and sprinkle with flour, knead 4 or 5 times, no more or biscuits will be tough.  Roll the dough to ¼ inch thickness.  Cut into strips about 2 inches by 2 inches.

With the pot at a low rolling boil, drop in the biscuits one or two at a time.  Stir in some of the flour from the board, too.  Reduce heat to medium and occasionally gently stir so dumplings do not stick together.  Cook dumplings for 10 minutes.  The flour in the dumplings will thicken the broth.

Serves 4

Another Fall ritual:  don't forget to turn your clocks back one hour when Daylight Saving Time ends this Sunday, Nov 6.

Halloween Tree

We do a lot of Halloween decorating, both inside and out.  One of my favorite inside decorations is our Halloween Tree.  It is one of the newer additions to our collection.   It is on the dining room buffet and is about 3 feet tall.  It's a good size for a diorama with tombstones, Blythe, and the peanuts characters.

Blythe Witch

Trick-or-Treating together

the Whole Scene

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Cool Halloween Find

These are my new Skeleton Hand salad tongs.  They are cast aluminum.  I got them in the Halloween section at Target.  So cool!  And they work great, too.  I may have to keep these out to use year round!

Here is what I'm reading this rainy Halloween month. . .

Kiss of Death is the 8th book in The Morganville Vampire Series by Rachel Caine.  There are 10 books so far with a new installment, Last Breath, coming out on All Saints' Day (11/1/2011).

 

The basic premiss behind this series is that all of the vampires of the world live in a small college town in West Texas called Morganville.  Of course, the human residents in town live in constant menace and seclusion.  Leaving is not an option for either humans or vampires.  Drama ensues in the constant struggle for survival.  Most residents sign up for protection from a vampire by tithing blood and cash.  This is a Young Adult series, which means it focuses more on the plot than (ahem) encounters.  My main criticism is that the books are fairly short, coming in at just under 200 pages, usually.  

I have been enjoying this series on my first edition Nook. 

 

I got it when it was first released, but you can get one now for cheap since they are trying to unload the final stock.  However, I have to say that after less than 2 years of ownership the outer rim of the case has cracked.  The page turning mechanism is a button click under the rim, which means the rim has to flex every time the page is turned.  And the rim is a semi-hard plastic.  I did recognize this as a design flaw initially.  And of course, the rim has cracked right under the "button" area.  I will probably upgrade to the newer version eventually, but for now I remain attached to my first edition.  

And, if you read a lot like I do, getting an e-ink reader is important.  I stare at a computer monitor enough without adding in the time of reading too.  I personally have known tech professionals who have had seizures from long hours of work, as well as people who have had cataracts removed at 42 years of age.  'Nuff said.

On the Television front--

The premiere of new season of The Walking Dead will be on Sunday, October 16!  Can't wait!

Coffee and Cookies: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip with Peet's

It has been a rainy week in Northern California.  And today we are saying, "Goodbye, Steve" to one of our most innovative residents.  For quiet, contemplative moments at home or a special treat on a rainy day to brighten any mood, warm cookies and coffee always hit the spot.  So today I offer one of my favorite recipes to share:  Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

First, the coffee.  I always drink Peet's coffee, a Bay Area longtime, local favorite.  And more than that--  I drink French Roast from a French Press.  A very rich and flavorful brew with nothing but the real deal, half and half.  As you can see, my french press came from Peet's, but this is a standard Bodum, and they are widely available.  The coffee is available online, too.

Now, for the cookies.  These are adapted from the Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker ©1975

½ cup unsalted butter

½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

1 egg

1 heaping cup Extra Crunchy Skippy Super Chunk Peanut Butter

½ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon vanilla

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup Guittard chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375˚F.

 

Beat butter until soft.  Add sugars and beat until creamy.  Beat in the egg, peanut butter, salt, soda, and vanilla.  Add flour and mix just until combined.  Mix in chips.  Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.  Roll the dough into balls and flatten slightly by pressing a cross thatch pattern into them with a fork.  Bake 10 to 12 minutes.  Cool on pans to harden then move to a rack to finish cooling.  

Makes about 3 dozen.  

They store well for several days in a container.  And we have absolutely no problem finishing these before they go stale, even in our small family.

These cookies are for you Steve.  It was your vision that people, and particularly women as an untapped target audience, would use computers in their daily lives: to run not only small businesses but our homes, share our recipes and hobbies with others, etc.  You have changed our lives.  Peace to you.

My New Doll!!!

I'm just gushing.  She is so wonderful.  I saw one at the last ACFDC meeting and immediately went home to search Ebay.  I found her a couple days later and bought her right away.  Then I ordered the wig, wig cap, outfit and shoes (plus red glass eyes) from Denver Doll.  It all arrived the same day.  Here she is. . .

She is a Bloody Moon Lati Yellow Miel White Skin released in 2010.  The dress is Doll Heart Juana.  She is my first Lati, and I am so happy with her.  Her little body is a bit thicker than other tinies which really makes her cute.  And hopefully easier to sew for.  I haven't made anything for her yet.  But I am getting ready to right away.  In the meantime, I have posted some links to free patterns on the right below the Blythe patterns.

  I am completely bespelled by her.  She wants more wigs, outfits, shoes, and a better coffin.  Maybe a sheep. . .  Yes, Master!

How to Make a Headband for Blythe!

It's long past time for a new project page!  I posted a link to making a headband for Blythe from a thread on the This is Blythe Forum, but I decided to do a step by step tutorial.  To do this project you need at least one but maybe a few more plastic headbands, like the kind for girls that you can get at Claire's, Target or Walmart.

In this picture you see quite a pile that I have collected from a variety of places.  The small one on the upper left is one of the first headband's that I made for Blythe.  I will be using it as an example of size for Blythe.  But I made that one without anything to go from, and it was not too difficult to approximate the size.  The bluegreen headband on the lower left was my first attempt for an example project, but it turned out to be too thin to demonstrate with.  I learned that these very thin headbands (while they may look great on Blythe) are very difficult to shrink, so it is best to wait until you have some experience to tackle these types.

As far as tools go, you will need some picture wire or other medium weight wire to bind to size and handle for suspension in boiling water, dikes for cutting down to size after shrinking, a file for finishing the ends after diking, and a pot to boil the headbands.  I do not use my good cooking pots for this just in case some nasty plastic type chemicals are released during the boiling process.  Here are my tools:

So that's the preparation.  Down to task:  get the pot of water boiling.  It needs to be deep enough that you can put the headband in for a few (2) minutes without touching the side or bottom of the pan.

Select your first headband.  You may want to choose one that is not your favorite for your first trial. 

 

Bend it so that the headband ends cross each other quite a bit and the band looks close to the right size for Blythe.  I show that step here with an already shrunken headband for clarity, but you really will be able to estimate that size.  I did for the gold example one.

Bind the headband together to retain that size.  It's a little easier said than done, but mainly, you just need to wrap the wire around enough times to secure it.

So, your water should be boiling by now.  Using the wire for a handle, you need to immerse the headband in boiling water for about 2 minutes.  No cheating on the time.  If the headband is very thin, then use simmering water for less time.  And if the headband is very thick, then extend the time by half a minute or so.  Generally, I always do it for exactly 2 minutes.  Time goes very slowly standing there waiting for the 2 minutes to pass, just like on the Stairmaster.  Make sure not to let the headband touch the sides or bottom of the pan or it will melt and mar in that place.

After two minutes, take the headband out and while it is still warm and pliable, gently press in down on the top to flatten it a little, because Blythe's head is a little flatter on top and not quite round.

Next, dike of the ends of the headband to the desired length.

Finally, I file the end to smooth it out so that it doesn't scratch my girl's head.  Sometimes after filing, I dip the ends back in the boiling water and then touch up the ends again with the file.  That just makes it extra smooth.  All done.

Here is a template to download.  I made this as a suggestion from someone on Blythe Kingdom.  I guess that you could hold up your work in progress to the template to check for size and shape.  I hope this helps you have success in the beginning.  But you should play around a little with the length.  I make some of them 1/4 to 1/2 inch longer depending on how much hair I want it to hold back or even based on the type of original headband. 

 

 This size of headband is a very good fit for American Girl dolls, too.  I suppose that you could rework or repeat the steps to make them smaller for other dolls, like SD size BJDs, though I haven't tried that myself, yet.

And if this all seems like too much work for you, then most of the head bands pictured are for sale in my Etsy shop, along with the outfits pictured.  There are Halloween themed outfits, too!  Boo!