Coyote Craft pretty useful things from Bean

Sardines

In domestic bliss, gluten-free on 26 April 2012 with 1 comment

I bought these awhile ago, meaning to try them… but they frightened me! Everything everyone says about sardines is gross, yucky, salty, ick!

While looking for something to make myself for lunch yesterday (Annabel was having some wheaty-udon), I saw them and said to myself “Damnit, I’m going to go for it!” I opened them up, deciding to have some on little garlic toasts (the convenience of having some Udi’s GF bread in my freezer is really growing on me!)

omg, they’re huge!! I wasn’t expecting them to be this big. I drained off the olive oil, cut each one in half and put it on a half of toast that had been flavored with butter, garlic & basil.

I closed my eyes, and daringly shoved the first toast into my mouth … it was delicious!! It tasted exactly like canned salmon, or tuna, and the bones weren’t crunchy. Most importantly, there weren’t any eyeballs staring at me (like some scrimps! eeep!)

I will never be afraid of sardines again! Are you afraid of any kind of food? Close your eyes & take the leap!

Pincushions

In etsy, sewing on 16 April 2012 with 6 comments

Whenever I find myself slumping in the sewing-motivation department, I come back to the pincushion. They’re so fun to make, fairly quick, and no two ever turn out the same. Sometimes I’ll even throw a handful of fabric behind me and then turn around to see what falls together.

In my personal collection, I think I must have about forty-seven different pincushions by now (oh, how I love to embellish!) Some have been made by my hand, others gifted to me, and many thrifted little lovelies have found their way into our home over the years. I’m running out of places to put them, so these I’ll have to list in my Etsy shop.

Forget about Instagram

In homeschooling/unschooling on 9 April 2012 with 1 comment

Play with pixlr-o-matic and keep your standard aspect ratios, instead!

For comparison, our original photo from the park today is here 

Dessert Challenge

In baking, books, domestic bliss, family, homeschooling/unschooling, recipes on 3 April 2012 with Comments Off

In the spirit of Julie & Julia, Annabel and I are making all of the desserts from one of our favorite picture cookbooks – the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook (and converting them into gluten-free recipes when we can!) It has a delectable color picture index, and step-by-step illustrations of each recipe, perfect! While we do love Julia Child, her recipes are a little bit daunting for us to commit to doing together. So far, from the Good Housekeeping book, we have made…

Individual Gluten-free Chocolate Soufflés, OMG!! These were so, so good — don’t skip splurging on fresh cream if you make them yourself. They really are NOT as hard as they look. We want to make the full-sized recipe soon, too – but we need to find a soufflé pan at a thrift store first!

Chocolate Chiffon Pie, yum! We used Pamela’s gluten-free chocolate mini cookies as the base for our cookie crumb crust and it came out perfect!

The multiple steps of the chiffon were more work than I usually like to do, but very much worth it – the pie was perfectly fluffy and rich. I love that the Good Housekeeping cookbook has the amount of time required for each recipe right in the color picture index — this one says 4 hours and you really need them! Plan on doing dishes or laundry while you’re waiting for things to cool

This lemon meringue pie has so far been my favorite. It came out perfect (even if I browned the meringue a minute too long) using Robin Ryberg’s gluten-free pie crust recipe, and I had some for breakfast the next day.

The lemon meringue really reminded me of Thursday dinners at midwestern diners — just me and my Grandpa. He always encouraged me to get dessert! I can vividly recall watching pies and cakes spin around in glass cases while laboring in indecision, like they were all sparkling jewels – each one better than the last! My favorites were always the cream pies (banana, bavarian, chocolate, coconut) and lemon meringue. I love how they tasted, and how prettily they were always presented. Grandpa liked blueberry or apple a la mode, but I don’t think his wife lets him eat much pie anymore. I’m certain that those Thursday nights with my Gramps are when my love for desserts (and especially PIE) was firmly cemented. I have been having a lot of fun passing down our love for desserts and especially pies (and making them!) to Annabel, hee-hee.