hot shots

Back in the cold months of January I could think of nothing more than warming up. This coupled with my new found love of a local spice shop led me to make a bottle of chili-infused vodka. My ultimate goal was to let it infuse for one year and give small bottles of it away for x-mas, paired with a kick-ass bloody mary recipe. Last night we just couldn’t wait any longer and broke into it early. I poured a round of shots for a few friends. As soon as the alcohol passed our lips there was a quick moment of anticipation as we all experienced nothing but the taste of vodka. Then the heat happened. It became more and more intense until the whole group had tears in their eyes. It was a nice lingering heat that wasn’t over the top (I’m kind of a wuss about spicy things). It was pretty fun, but I couldn’t convince any one to have another, haha.

(adding the red pepper flakes and shaking the bottle)

To make the infused vodka, I took a 750ml bottle of 80 proof (though 100 proof would definitely be better for this purpose) medium quality vodka (because I’m cheap and this was kind of an experiment). I’m pretty sure you can use any other higher proof booze in place of vodka for this such as bourbon, etc. I poured out about a 1/3 to ½ cup and filled the bottle with that much crushed red chili flakes. I replaced the cap and shook it up a bit, then let it settle for a couple hours. By then the trapped air bubbles will have worked their way out and you can fill the rest of the bottle with vodka to the top. I kept it in a dark place (my pantry) and shook it up a couple times a week.

(the chili flakes settle in the bottle)

The end product is a beautiful orangie-red color and smells faintly of chilis, but gives no hint of the heat til you drink it. I want to try this again wih a different type of hot pepper, something that might lend more flavor in place of ass-kicking heat.

the first harvests of the year

Things are starting to turn green! Yaay! After two weeks the seeds I planted in the backyard have sprouted to reveal (somewhat unstraight) rows of organic mesclun lettuce, English breakfast radish and peas. The organic carrot seeds haven’t shown a sign of growing and I’m beginning to get concerned. I’ve never attempted to grow carrots before, so maybe they are picky about where they want to grow? I’ve tried yelling at them AND asking nicely but so far no dice.

My tiny garden is about 5ft x 7 ft. So far we’ve worked on roto-tilling it, removing the ridiculous number of rocks, putting a brick border around the edge, and planting seeds. By far, thinning out the seedlings has to be one of the hardest things for me to do. I can’t kill my babies!! But in order for the majority of the plants to prosper, I have to thin them out so they don't become over-crowded. Fortunately radish seedlings are edible and yummy.

"Micro greens" is the fancy term for tiny seedlings of radish greens (and lots of other vegetables). They are a dainty but tasty addition to salads. I enjoyed the thinned out radish micro greens in a vegan bbq pulled pork style sammich.


Harvest number two: Portobellos! The mushrooms in my kit grew surprisingly fast. I picked 3 big ones the other day. The biggest one had a cap 4.75 inches across! A second group of several more mushrooms are on their way, though I think they will be smaller in size. The kits are about $30-40 and totally worth it, both from the amount and quality of organic mushrooms, and because its really fun for dorks like myself to watch them grow.

cool!

it's so beautiful outside

...that I think I'll stay inside and blog about it.

Actually just got back from a beautiful walk around the river feeling much like a caged animal being released form the first time in months. It smells like spring outside. I love it.

the anticipation might kill me.

We have experienced a beautiful couple of days this weekend and now I am so anxious for the arrival of spring I can hardly stand it. What can I do to pass the hours and make the long wait more bearable? Garden planning! (this is what excites me, oh well). I have already acquired some organic seed for my tiny garden and have started a few of them indoors.

Even more exciting than that is my mushroom project. I read an article on growing your own mushrooms in a copy of Mother Earth News' Organic Gardening Guide (which is a great resource on gardening info for beginners by the way). It really interested me, so I checked out a bunch of companies that sold kits. I ended up ordering a portobello kit. The first ones just started popping up! So cute!

baby mushrooms!!!

bottlecap magnets

Bottlecaps. They are just so perfectly magnet-sized. I had been thinking about doing this for a while but had hesitated because, well, it's just so damn simple. I almost felt like it was a craft more suited to first graders. Screw it, the finished product is cute and I am not too good for any craft! Pipecleaners still have a million uses and googlie eyes on anything still make me chuckle.

I filled the bottlecaps about halfway full with hot glue, let that set and then stuck the magnets on. I wanted to make sure the magnet was sticking out enough to make contact with the fridge for maximum holding power. I bought the thickest magnets I could find but they still don't stick that great. Ideally I would like to find some industrial bottlecap sized magnets that could stick an entire novel to the fridge, but the ones at the craft store will do for now. You can use classy obscure microbrew caps to impress your friends with your fine taste!! No one will be bringing PBRs to your house any time soon!

it is January

Sooo cold outside. I wish to remain curled up in the fetal position under many layers of blankets until the sun shines and the earth is warm again. No such luck though. At least I can keep the house toasty by baking things in the oven all day.


Baked a couple big braided honey wheat loaves for the house and a few baby loaves for my neighbor, mother-in-law, and a friend. Share the wealth..... and if you have no wealth, bake something and give that away instead.

Yum yum yum.

fused plastic

I am in love!! It's a very simple technique in which you melt layers of plastic bags together to form a thick kind of plastic cloth that is sewable. I first heard of it on x-mas eve, when I recieved a hand-made wallet from a friend made from fused plastic. Every wallet was unique in that it was crafted from only one type of plastic shopping bag. Mine was from Market Basket.

It was such a cool gift. I was so excited to find an article about it in GreenCraft magazine the next day (I love when that happens). I decided to try it out for myself and made a change purse. Fusing the plastic together is really easy. I heated up my clothes iron to the wool setting while cutting the plastic grocery bags into roughly the same flat square-ish shape. I layered three of these in between two sheets of parchment paper (not waxed paper... the wax melts) on my kitchen table. I slowly ironed over the layers. The resulting product feels like a weird plastic paper. I felt like it wasn't thick enough and added on a couple more layers. Being x-mas time still, I have candy wrappers of all sorts laying around. I tried to incorporate the plastic mesh (that chocolate gold coins come in) by laying it flat between plastic layers before ironing. It looked pretty cool, almost like snake skin. I cut out some zebra stripes from light red plastic and sandwiched those in there too (though with the tiny-ness of my project it was hard to see the pattern really). I feel like the possibilities for this kind of project are endless.

Sewing the change purse was easy. I did it by hand since I am a cave man and can't work a sewing machine. Since the "cloth" is plastic, I didn't reinforce the button hole because it won't fray. I used a sweet skull button I had kickin' around originally from a children's stretchy bracelet. I have no idea how durable this will be, but my friend, the crafter of the plastic bag wallets assured me they would last for around 7-8 months or so. We shall see if my cute lil' change purse can survive the harsh wilderness of my purses, tote bags and jacket pockets.

I love that there is a crafty thing I can do with plastic shopping bags. I always hated seeing them get thrown away. Plus, crafting materials don't get any cheaper than free.