Adventurers' Stew

Depending on how well you know me, it may or may not come as a surprise to learn that I am quite a nerd.  Let's just say that right now my main social outlet is playing Dungeons and Dragons.  Yeah, I'm that kind of nerd.  But it's a lot of fun!  In one of our games right now there is a dwarf named Ulf who is a fighter and also a good cook, well-known for making excellent stew.  This recipe is exactly the kind of stew that I picture him making.  For some reason it seems to be just the right sort of meal for adventurers.  I can definitely picture some of the heroes of The Lord of the Rings cooking it in a pan over a fire after a long day of travel.  It's wholesome, filling, and simple to make.  So pull out your biggest pot and get cooking - maybe you'll be inspired to run out your door without your pocket handkerchief the next time a Wizard stops by to tell you he's looking for someone to share in an adventure....

And I apologize in advance for the poor quality pictures.  That's what happens when your camera is in the room where your child is supposed to be napping, but isn't napping, and you don't want to go in and get it because then the chances of your child sleeping would be reduced to zero.  So phone camera pictures it is.


Adventurers' Stew

Ingredients: 1-2 lbs beef (cubed), flour, salt and other seasonings, oil, vegetables (garlic, onions, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, etc.), and water (or stock or red wine).

Start by putting 1 cup flour, 1/2 tablespoon salt, and any other seasonings into a bowl.  I included pepper, thyme, oregano, paprika, and dried chili pepper flakes.  Mix, then add the cubed meat and toss to coat.

Heat some oil in a pot, then add the meat and stir until browned.  Save the flour mixture for later.  

I have basil frozen in oil from last summer that I like to use, which adds even more flavour!

Meanwhile, the veggies that you are planning to add need to be roughly chopped.  Big chunks are good for this stew!  I generally use garlic, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and potatoes.

Add it all to the pot!  Then pour in enough liquid to go halfway up the meat/vegetable mixture.  Simmer, stirring often, until the vegetables are cooked.

As everything cooks, the vegetables soften and settle into the liquid.

Sprinkle the remaining flour mixture into the stew and stir.

Now your stew is ready to be enjoyed by all adventurers!

Whether your adventures are out in the great wide world...

Or in your imagination!

Home

A little place, humble and small,
But still with enough space for all.
It's nothing really grand, you know,
The people in it make it so.
Friends and family, old and new.
We'd love to have you join us too.
So come on in! Fling wide the door.
There's always room for someone more.

You will be so glad you came.
We're always up for another game,
Or watching films on our big screen,
We'll make some popcorn in between.
Sometimes we just sit and talk
And forget all about the clock.
There's always something fun to do,
Or baby cuddles if you're feeling blue.

Let your worries fade away.
It's dinner time, why don't you stay.
There's plenty to eat, so don't be shy.
Maybe we'll cook up an apple pie.
Tell us about what matters to you,
And what you dream one day to do.
We care about both tears and mirth
And living at peace with the earth.

So come from near and come from far.
There's cookies in the cookie jar!
Put on the kettle for some tea.
We're glad you're here, as you can see.
The door is open to our home,
A peaceful place for those who roam.
Come on in! Fling wide the door.
There's always room for someone more.
 

Braided Jean Rug

Sometimes it takes me a long time to finish a project.  In this case, fifteen months!  Don't worry, I didn't work on it throughout that whole time - my excuse for not finishing earlier is that I had a baby...

I love it when I can make something new and useful with materials that would normally just be thrown out.  In this case, I used old worn out jeans to make a rug! 

Back over a year ago we had several pairs of jeans that were getting holes in them and couldn't be worn anymore.  It took approximately 3 pairs of jeans to make my rug, but since then we have accumulated more unwearable jeans, so I may have to make another rug!

If you're interested in making your own braided jean rug, here is how I did it.  And don't worry, it doesn't have to take you as long as it took me to finish it!

Braided Jean Rug - Made with old jeans!

Start by cutting your old jeans into one inch strips.  You won't be using the seams or waistband, just the plain, single layer denim.  It's a lot of cutting, but it is nice to get it all finished first, before you start braiding.

A big pile of denim strips!

Next you start braiding the strips together.  One way to get started is use a safety pin to attach three strands together and pin them to a solid surface.  Then start braiding!

There are several options for attaching the next strip of denim when you come to the end of one of your pieces.  I found the easiest way was to cut a short slit in the middle of the end of each piece and thread them through each other, as you can see in the picture.

Then you pull the link tight, and keep braiding.  It's good to try to stagger the strips of denim so that only one ends at a time, since attaching the new pieces this way can be a little bulky.  I mixed up all my different shades of denim to give a variegated appearance, but you could also braid one shade of denim at a time for a different look.

Four pairs of jeans made approximately 85 feet of braid.  That's a lot!

I think all of that denim braid looks really pretty!

Then it's time to sew your rug together.  As time consuming as the previous stages seemed, this is the one that really bogged me down!  It is exciting to see the rug coming together, it just takes a lot of sewing.

I used a needle and black thread and hand sewed it.  If you have a heavy duty sewing machine that could handle something this thick, that would be much faster.  But I think that would have killed my sewing machine, so I didn't attempt it.

Sometimes the denim can be hard to work with, so I ended up using a thimble for a lot of it.

I resumed working on the rug this year, and just finished it this week!

When the rug reached a size that I liked, I cut the braid, and wove the ends in.  The finished rug is about 20 inches by 27 inches, and took approximately 50 feet of braid to make.

Our new braided jean rug in the kitchen!

What are some of your favourite ways of repurpose something instead of throwing it out?

Bow Ties for Little People and Big People

As you may remember, if you visit my blog fairly often, last Halloween my family dressed up in Doctor Who costumes.  Since then I posted about how I made the 11th Doctor costumes and the TARDIS costume.  But as I was writing the post on the 11th Doctor costumes I skipped explaining how I made the Doctor's iconic bow tie and left it for a future post.  Well, the time for that post has come!

You all know you want to know how to make bow ties.

Because bow ties are cool.


Bow Ties for Little People

To make a small-person bow tie, you need some velcro, a 4 inch by 4 inch piece of fabric, a 2 inch by 3/4 inch piece of fabric, and a piece of fabric that is 1 inch wide by whatever length you need to go around their neck, plus a little.

Starting with the long, 1 inch wide piece of fabric, fold it in half right-side in, pin, and sew a seam lengthwise, turning it into a long tube. 

Turn the tube right-side out (generally the easiest way is by fastening a safety pin to one end and threading it through the tube of fabric).  Press the tube flat and attach velcro to each end so that it will sit comfortably around your little person's neck.

Take the 4x4 piece of fabric and fold it in half, right-side in.  Pin and sew lengthwise, 1/4 inch from the edge, leaving a 1-2 inch gap in the middle.

Unpin, and adjust the tube of fabric so that the seam is sitting in the middle of one side.  Pin the flaps made by the seam flat to the fabric.

Sew 1/4 inch seams along both of the short ends.

Turn it right-side out through the hole you left in the lengthwise seam, and hand stitch the hole closed.

Turn it over - the other side doesn't have any seams at all!  That is the front of your bow tie.

Take the final small piece of fabric, fold it in half right-side in, and sew lengthwise to make it a narrow tube.  Turn it right-side out and stitch each end closed.

Gather the bow tie in the middle, wrap the small strip you just made around the middle and hand stitch it to the back of the bowtie so that it keeps it gathered in the middle.  Attach the bow tie to the middle of the long strip you made first, and it is finished!

Bow Ties for Big People

While "pre-tied" bow ties are simple and easy to use, especially for little people, I decided to make a "real" bow tie for the big Doctor costume.  I found a great tutorial here that came with its own pattern.  I won't go into detail on how it's made, since the tutorial does such a great job, but here is a summary.

Print out the pattern and trace it on your fabric, cutting 4 pieces in total.  If your fabric isn't stiff you will want to use some iron-on interfacing to make it stiff.  In pairs, sew the ends of your fabric pieces together to make 2 long pieces. 

Pin right-sides together and sew all the way around, leaving a hole near the middle.

Before turning it right-side out, clip the corners so that they will lay nice and flat.

Turn it right-side out, hand stitch the hole closed, and iron.

 Then all that is left for you to do is learn how to tie a bow tie, and go be cool!

Questions

          "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to 
          love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books 
          that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek 
          the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not 
          be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the 
          questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing 
          it, live along some distant day into the answer." 
                                                            - Rainer Maria Rilke

I came across this quote a couple of years ago when it was referenced in a book by Parker J Palmer that I was reading.  I found the quote very intriguing.  We humans generally like answers, and we find unanswered questions stressful.  We want to know what job to pursue, where to live, when something will finally happen that we are waiting for, and why things happen the way they do.

But many of the questions we ask don't have answers, or don't have answers yet.

Rilke encourages us to "live the questions" rather than always seeking the answers.  This might seem like a pretty abstract concept, but as I think about my internal dialogue, it makes more sense.  Whether we think of it as internal dialogue, talking to ourselves, or the "voices in our head", we all have a running audiotrack in our minds as we process the world around us, and this "self-talk" is often in questions.  These are the questions that we are living.

The author Parker J Palmer believes that it is important to examine the questions we ask ourselves.  He writes:

          "'How can I get through the day?' is not as promising a question as 
          'What truth can I witness to today?'  If we do not live good questions, 
          and live them in a way that is life giving, our own deformations will 
          permeate the work we do."
                                             -Parker J Palmer

The questions we ask influence our life. I have really been noticing this in my own life lately.  I've been pretty stressed over the last couple of weeks.  Sometimes life just feels overwhelming.  Here are a few of the questions that were going through my mind:

          When will I get a break?

          Why doesn't anyone care about how I'm struggling?

          What's the point of all this?

Those were the questions I was living.  I wonder how different those couple of weeks would have been if instead I had been asking:

          What changes can I make so I feel more rested and energized?

          Who could I ask to come over and hang out with me?

          How can I show my family that they are important to me?

The questions that we ask shape our life.  If one day we are going to "live into the answers" of the questions we ask, let's ask ourselves life-giving questions so that one day we may be living life-giving answers.

Dairy-Free Hot Chocolate

It's that time of the year - time to curl up in front of a fire with a blanket, a good book... and a cup of hot chocolate! 

But for people like my husband who can't have dairy, you have to get a little creative.

So make dairy-free hot chocolate!  I figured out my own recipe, and I actually like it so much that I prefer it over regular hot chocolate.  It's cocoa-y, nutty, and not too sweet.  And all you need is almond milk, cocoa powder, and sugar.

Homemade Dairy-Free Hot Chocolate

The primary challenge with nailing down a recipe for hot chocolate is the fact that mugs come in all sorts of different sizes!  For my recipe I use 4 cups of almond milk, which is enough for 2 generous mugs of hot chocolate.  If your mugs are very large, this might not quite fill them, and if your mugs are small, there will be some extra for a top up!

Measure 4 cups of almond milk into a pot.  (Saucepan?  I feel like recipes always call them saucepans.  But who actually calls them saucepans in real life?  Still, in writing, "pot" seems kind of strange....  This is an interesting situation.  Well, either a pot or a saucepan.  They're technically the same thing, so it doesn't really matter.)  Add 3 tablespoons cocoa.  The amount of sugar depends on whether your almond milk is sweetened or unsweetened.  If it is sweetened, you will only need 2 tablespoons sugar.  If it is unsweetened you will need 5 tablespoons sugar.  I like using fair trade cane sugar.  But you can use any sweetener, and different sweeteners add their own unique flavour.  Try sweetening your hot chocolate with honey, or maple syrup!

Using a whisk or spatula, stir frequently while heating over a medium-high heat.  As it warms, you may want to use a small spoon to taste it and make sure that it is sweet enough for you.  Heat until steaming hot.  It's okay if it boils, just make sure that you are stirring it so it doesn't burn.  Remove from heat, pour into mugs, and enjoy!  You can try adding a quarter teaspoon vanilla extract, mint extract, or other flavouring, or top with mini marshmallows.

One Year Old!

Well world, we have a toddler on our hands, and our little guy has turned one year old!  He can walk on his own, he loves to play chase around the house, and loves tickle/wrestle time on mommy and daddy's bed.  His favourite food is cheese, and he is quite fond of Christmas cookies too!

Helping Daddy "drive" on our road trip to Manitoba

Visiting the Bergs

Opening Christmas presents

Family adventures!

Snowshoeing!

Enjoying a beautiful sunset

First time "skating"

The birthday boy!