Sew Half Crazy

9/29/2012

Cooking Shows

Heather 9/29/2012 0 Comments

Sorry folks, I haven't been doing a ton of new cooking this week. I was thinking, though, it'd be fun to talk about where I get my inspiration. I'm an unapologetic copycat, standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. I mean, yes, I usually end up tweaking recipes to my own tastes, but very few come completely from my own noggin. Firstly, there's Pinterest. Of course there's Pinterest. I currently have 277 recipes to try pinned on Pinterest. That kind of goes without saying. :) Then there are cooking shows...

Cooking shows are kind of a mixed bag for people. Personally, I love them, though I do think some are far better than others. Then again, I recently found out a favorite activity of a friend of mine is watching his fiancee watch cooking shows. She really dislikes the hosts most of the time. So, like I said, mixed bag. Nevertheless, for your reading pleasure, I now give you my top five favorite cooking shows.

#5 - 30 Minute Meals (Rachael Ray)

To be honest, I no longer DVR this series, as it filled up my DVR in a matter of days. Rachael Ray also tends to grate my nerves, but I can't knock her know-how. She has some really great quick meal ideas, and always has at least one clever shortcut in every show. 30MM is where I learned how to roast red peppers. Sadly, a lot of her meals are pasta-based, and that's difficult in a GF household.

#4 - French Food at Home (Laura Calder)

This is an example of a really good but understated show. There are a lot of things on the show that I will never make, but watching and learning the techniques is really cool. Plus, the hostess is fun and charming and makes cooking really casual and fun. Of course, being a show about French cooking, there is a lot of cream...and butter...and cheese...and duck fat...

#3 - Cooking For Real (Sunny Anderson)

Possibly the most charming, personable cooking show hostess out there, Sunny Anderson is adorable, and I want to be friends with her. She's also a bigger girl and is totally okay with that, as should she (and everyone else) be. Her food is fairly down to earth, and she makes the whole process really fun. I have also seen her knock a guest down a peg when they got ugly on her show, and I really respect that. Love her and her cooking.

#2 - Five Ingredient Fix (Claire Robinson)

Five ingredients per dish. Salt, pepper, and water are freebies. Great recipes. What more could you ask for? And the hostess is really fun and cute. Love it. Too bad she hasn't made any new episodes in a good long while. Come on, Robinson, get on it.

#1 - Nadia G's Bitchin' Kitchen - Hah! I didn't have to include the chef name, as it's already in the show title. This is a show unlike any other. It's funny and kooky and ridiculous and honest and hilarious. And Nadia has fabulous shoes! See?

Source

Mike hates this show. You see, Nadia is kind of the Italian version of Paula Deen as far as personality. It's exaggerated (a lot), but that's part of what makes it funny. Some of her recipes are a little too fancy for me, but I always have a great time watching the show. And, in case you're interested, the new season just started this week on Cooking Channel. :)

What's your favorite cooking show and why?

9/25/2012

Going insane....

Heather 9/25/2012 0 Comments

You know how it's sometimes really hard to motivate yourself back into a workout routine after a hiatus? Yea. I do too.

It's been 6 weeks since my last run. Not counting the quick dash/race I did with the big guy at the beach. It lasted maybe 40 seconds.

So today I went for a run. No reasoning with myself or talking myself into or out of it. I just went.

It felt amazing until I got a 1/2 mile into it and my knees started tightening up and my hips, my right one especially, started taking up the knees' chorus. It sucked, but I was determined to make it to the stop sign at about the halfway point of my run. So to keep myself motivated I insulted and railed at myself. Out loud. Breathing hard and spitting occasionally at myself.

I must have sounded and probably looked like an insane person. It worked though. I didn't just run to the stop sign; I ran the whole damn course. Despite my lower joints complaining and whining the whole time.

I've never done that. I've never been able to run the whole 2 miles nonstop. Despite the pain and the berating myself it felt amazing. I averaged 1:44 faster than my last 7 runs. Can you believe that?

Even though I'm sore now, it was totally with it.

Perks....

Heather 9/25/2012 0 Comments

So I know I've mentioned that I've gone back to work, but what I haven't advertised is that I now work at Lowe's.

I'm a cabinet specialist (aka - kitchen designer), and I love my job. I didn't think I would because it was such a change from staying home with the kiddos, but I really do love being out of the house and contributing to the household. I miss the guys, of course, and the retail hours take some getting used to, but all in all I think everyone is adapting well.

One of the perks of working at Lowe's is seeing what goes on clearance pretty early on.

Like this pendant -

I got this beaut for less than $40 from originally being $160. LOVE!!!

She's the new jewelry over the kitchen sink. She doesn't produce much light, but lord she's gorgeous.

What do ya'll think?

Heather

9/24/2012

Simplicity 2058

Heather 9/24/2012 0 Comments

So I know that I've been saying that I'm going to write up a post about this skirt for a while now, but the WAIT IS OVER!

I'm writing the post! Its this post in fact!

I'll wait while you guys pick yourselves up off the floor. I know I'm floored too (har har har).

Ok so back to the topic at hand. Simplicity 2058 is a great pattern. Simple.As.That.

Here's me modeling it -

I'm very intense while trying to take an in focus picture. Obv I still need to work on this, but this is better than usual! :)

Some of the nice features of this pattern are: Three different sized pieces for curvy, slim and straight, 1" seam allowances on the sides for more tailored alteration, simple to follow instructions. Seriously, this pattern took like 2 hours to sew up with fittings between various steps.

One of these years I'll get pictures of the blouses I've made. :)

Heather

9/23/2012

What I've been up to...

Heather 9/23/2012 0 Comments

So I haven't had time to write a post but I figured I'd share some pics of what I've been up to. I have tomorrow and Tuesday off so hopefully I can get an actual blog post written. :-)

9/22/2012

Checking in ...

Heather 9/22/2012 0 Comments

So it's been a while. I'm down to 230. Yay. Almost to the 220's!!!

Exercise has been infrequent at best but I've been super good about staying on my diet.

Let me tell you about my guilty pleasure from last night. You see the fam and I had some errands to run and while running said errands we ran into some people that we used to be friends with. The friendship did not end well.

Anyways the last time I saw these friends was last year and about 63 pounds ago.

I'm not going to lie and tell you guys that I wasn't more than a little pleased to have run into them again looking the way I do now. Especially since they have changed since the last time I saw them. I'm going to revel in my shallowness and be content in the fact that even tho I'm tickled pink that they saw me and saw how good everyone on the fam is looking and doing; I'm more happy that I embarked on this journey for the right reasons. Me.

So there's my thought snippet for the day.

9/21/2012

The Great Lasagna Race!

Heather 9/21/2012 0 Comments

"The Great Meat Race" may be a better title for today's post, but that might sound weird.

Moving on, I may have mentioned (hundreds of times) that my husband Mike is a carnivore. Hardcore carnivore...harcardivore? Anyway, it's safe to say that every time I've made a vegetarian dish, he has said of it, "This could use meat". That being the case, I do my best to accommodate his carnivoracious taste, which meant that I intended on adding some ground beef to this week's recipe, courtesy of Pinterest. Here's how that went:

Text to Mike (he was out playing basketball) letting him know that dinner would be meatless unless he could tell me where the ground beef he assured me we had was.

Fun fact: This is the first time I have ever worked with or eaten spaghetti squash. I had heard so many great things about it, so I picked some up at the farm. Plus, winter squash lasts so long in the pantry!

WARNING:

I AM NOT A RESPONSIBLE HUMAN BEING. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT DO AS I HAVE DONE IN THESE PICTURES. I'm sure there's a much ~~safer~~ better way to do this, but I don't know it. Any suggestions?

Okay, something no one ever mentioned to me how ridiculously hard it is to break into one of these suckers. It's literally like trying to crack a huge nut. I'm not going to tell you about all the very irresponsible things I did to split my squash in half. Remember, Mike was out at basketball. I was unsupervised. Never a good thing...

Voicemail to Mike: "Your dinner is in danger of being vegetarian. Call me back. Love you."

Success! Now I just had to scrape out the guts. When doing this, don't feel like you have to be gentle. You really have to work at it, so show that squash who's boss! I prefer to do this over a bowl, as some of the fibers tend to fly.

I used the roasted spaghetti squash recipe link on the lasagna recipe page, in case you're wondering/need that. The recipe says to bake the squash for about an hour; mine went for an hour and a half.

A few more unsuccessful attempts at getting Mike on the phone and a dance party in the kitchen to The Wanted.

More scraping! Again, gentleness is not the key here.

Meet the rest of the cast. Did you notice how many are cheese? Yeah, anything with this much cheese is destined for greatness.

Mike finally called.

Me: "Hello, my love. You're too late."

Mike: "I am so sorry I missed your call."

I only did two layers for simplicity's sake--I don't like doing division while cooking. On half of the squash went in for one layer and the other half for the second. Easy-peasy!

At this point, Mike was home, and I had to be sneaky. He has a tendency to psych himself out ahead of time, so, when he asked what the "noodles" were, I told him it was a surprise. After he tasted it, I asked him for a score of 1 to 10. It scored an 8! Then I told him about the "noodles" being squash. :-)

An 8 for a vegetarian dish, much less a dish full of squash by the man that "doesn't like squash", is phenomenal! I don't know how much better it gets than that. Admittedly, roasting the squash takes a pretty long time, but you can totally roast and scrape it out one day and refrigerate for a few days until you're ready to use it. Enjoy!

9/07/2012

Attempt Number Two

Heather 9/07/2012 0 Comments

Okay, so remember last week where I had a plan to try a new dish, but it didn't work out because my girlfriends and I all stuffed ourselves before I could make it? Great! We're all up to speed. This particular little gem came from Pinterest, but the original source is here.

Like the blog entry's author, I tweaked the recipe to my own taste. Firstly, I used real eggs because I don't mess around with stuff like liquid egg whites.

Okay, yes, I'm sure you're all thinking the same thing: Why aren't the sweet potatoes orange? I don't know the answer to that. Some of the things I get from the farm are the same as what I buy in the grocery store. Apparently this is a legitimate variety, though.

If you look closely, though, you can see some orange-ish streaks.

Wait. You want me to grate all that by hand? Haha. Oh, silly. I'm far too clever for that. Shredder blade = my friend.

This dish towel is really big, so don't be fooled. That's a ton of potatoey goodness right there.

This is, in my opinion, the only way to get rid of the excess water in potatoes, spinach, etc. Make science work for you!

Okay, here's where I really started to deviate from the recipe. Like I said, I don't fool with liquid egg whites, so I added five eggs. It was an educated guess, and it turned out to be correct. I also added three cloves of minced garlic. Warning: Because of the lack of sautéing, this will make your potato cakes very garlicky, which I love, but not everyone will. If you want the garlic taste without the bite, either saute it first or use garlic powder.

I just used a tablespoon to mix and then dole out my cakes, and I used my hands to sort of shape them , but I didn't pack them very tightly. Just enough to make them hold their shape. Also, I greased the cooling rack as suggested, but it didn't make a difference. They still stuck on for dear life. Next time, parchment paper.

Aw snap! Look at those babies. and they're baked, not fried, which is great! I ended up cooking mine for about 35 minutes.

What can I say? It's a hash brown, which is awesome! I bet you could do this same thing with any type of hard, grate-able vegetable: Parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets. Mmmmm, sounds like a new fall favorite. Easy, delicious, and not fried. What more could you want?

9/05/2012

More Decor Balls!

Heather 9/05/2012 0 Comments

So a while back I pinned some cute decor balls that had been done from styrofoam balls and push pins, and some faux capiz shell decor balls.

I made these a few months ago and just never shared them, but I'm rectifying that now!

Aren't they pretty?

The pushpin ones were super easy. I bought some pushpins from the $1 store and just put them around the styrofoam. I did end up gluing some of them down, but I just used some white glue for that.

I love the texture of them!

So for the faux capiz shell ones, I got some bubble wrap from the $1 store and then ironed a bunch of sheets together and then cut them into strips and then cut those strips into squares and then cut circles out of those squares. Then the glue gun was busted out!

I'm thinking I may have to go get some more bubble wrap because I have a lot of ideas for the faux capiz shell look!

So that's my share for today!

Have a great day guys!

Heather

9/04/2012

From Granny to Genius

Heather 9/04/2012 0 Comments

Ok so I hope I do t offend anyone with my commentary here but I SERIOUSLY hate bows on my clothes and shoes. Bows for the hair are fine.

So a couple of weeks ago the hubs bought me some super comfortable easy spirit black patent leather pumps for work. The problem here was that said shoes were trimmed in a 3/8" grosgrain ribbon and topped off with a bow. Ewwww.

So me, being the genius I am, cut off that bow and then glued some 6mm onyx rhinestones around the trim and now my shoes are fabulous!!

Aren't the awesome? I love them. So there's my craft that's not related to sewing. All the rest of them jar been sewing projects and I haven't taken one darn picture. Blog fail.

I'll get better. I promise.

9/03/2012

Blogging on Break

Heather 9/03/2012 0 Comments

I feel like such a bad blogger. Both of my blogs have been neglected because of the changes going on. Not that I am complaining because I'm blessed with the opportunities that have been made available to me.

But in other news - I'm finally down to 233!

Yes I know that it's labor day and I wanted to be 225 but I'm 8 pounds away and I'm in better shape than I've been in in years and I couldn't be more pleased.

I should really take pictures of my outfits so I can show of the new svelte me. While I'm not losing the pounds I'm losing inches which is better!

Unfortunately I have not worked out since Wednesday and I haven't done power 90 in over a week. I'm so bad. Oh well school starts tomorrow and along with that comes a new schedule.

Have a great labor day everyone!!!

9/02/2012

The Best Laid Plans...

Heather 9/02/2012 0 Comments

I had a plan, a good plan. I had some great girlfriends over, and we each had something to teach one friend who doesn't cook. It was great! But, after the first four or so dishes, we decided we were all too full for anything more, so my dish went unmade. Sorry, folks, that was going to be my recipe this week.

We'll try again next week.