ice cream sandwich

this year i think strawberry ice cream is my favorite. last year's choice was vanilla; which is definitely what i still enjoy with a slice of pie or brownies. i've been using some of the recipes from my new cookbook veganomicon, and decided to make oatmeal cookies with coconut. they turned out okay, a little drier than i'm used to. so after they cooled for a bit i thought of making a strawberry ice cream sandwich, which i say improves the flavor tenfold.

rain, rain, go away

not that i don't love you, or see the great need of mother earth to have you, but it's been over a week and every day you've visited us. i miss waking up to the suns brightness, it's like my morning cup of caffeine; the day just doesn't go right without it. you've turned the road outside my door to mud, and that's just not fun to drive down. but you have been kind to my hair, giving waves where none usually reside. but still, enough is enough for now. please go away and come back next week, or the week after; my schedule's open then.

the above is my ode to strawberries, i'm calling it "strawberries from space pincushion". the printed fabric is just so quirky, it's like another planet, or a space capsule an herbivore civilization would make, all the circles and whirly gigs. i wanted fun bright colors that remind me of the sun setting on a hot arid day, and strawberries are definitely a sign of summer.

behind the lines

i'm at midstride on another pincushion, and being ever so slightly influenced by the strawberries i've been eating for the last two weeks. they are ever so yummy and red! i don't think i'll ever get tired of their taste, the glossy shine when you cut one open, the delicate linework and contrast of red into pink into white.
i would have been posting the newest pincushion at this moment, but i didn't have a particular shade of green in my thread collection. or much green thread at all for that matter. so, off to the quilting store i shall go tomorrow. before work. hopefully i will have enough daylight to see when i get home. and then i can photograph saturday morning. before work.

breakfast foods x 3

most people have comfort foods they favor. i realized the other day that my favorite foods are breakfast ones. it's the one meal i don't have to agonize over. it's a bowl of hearty whole grain cereal with unsweetened almond milk, two slices of manna bread with nutella and sliced strawberries or blueberries or blackberries.

the day before, i was home, it was lunchtime, i was low on groceries and hungry. so i took some strawberries out of the 5 lb bag of ones i picked last thursday, sliced them and put them in a pan along with raw sugar and gelatin. boiled, reduced and poured into a jar. i toasted myself an english muffin, slathered it in irish butter, with a scoop of fresh strawberry preserves and they were so yummy! for dinner i made lovely oatmeal on the stove and poured it over frozen wild blueberries, red raspberries, fresh strawberries, irish butter, crushed pecans, and a dollop of local savannah bee company acacia honey. breakfast foods are definitely delicious times three! the main combo is grain + butter + sugar + fruit = yum!

some others i enjoy at times are:
~whole grain toast with butter and a sprinkle of vietnamese cinammon and raw sugar
~farina with irish butter and local honey
~whole grain pancakes with mango, blueberries, and crushed pecans or walnuts

what are your favorite breakfast foods?

hatching an eggling

yesterday i picked up an eggling plant. i've always thought they were cute, but never really payed any attention to getting one. well, while i was browsing in a store i happened to cross paths with one that grew wild strawberries. tiny strawberries growing from an egg? what could be cuter!
setting it up was interesting. at first the shell wouldn't crack, then when it did I didn't think it would be big enough so i kept tapping away at the edge. I added the extra seed pack and poured water slowly into the opening. hopefully it will grow!