Sewing machine day

Dressmaker at the Window

Fritz Von Uhde

September 10th is Sewing Machine Day.  Cheers to modern sewing machines, truly technological marvels. Most women my age remembering sewing their own clothes and wrestling with horrible machines that shredded sheer fabric, puckered seams and snapped needles. Maybe that's why there's something meditative about sitting down with simple needle and thread.

Hey, I've been invited to a 3-day sewing retreat this month!  More on that later. There will be true quilting artists.  I've pulled a simple old hand project from the bottom of the closet that I've been working on it for the last 40 years or so. Ha! I'm getting too old to be embarrassed about much of anything...

Two Sisters

Susan Eakins

Sewing

Carl Larsson

A Child in the Artist's Garden

Claude Monet

Woman Embroidering on the Terrace

Christiano Banti

The Quilting Party

Edgar Melville

Sunshine

Eilif Peterssen

Luce Lavoro

Giovanni Sottocornola

The Lady of Shalott

John Waterhouse

 Marie and Mother in the Garden

Peder Kroyer

Mary Sewing in Kalela

Akseki Kallela

The Embroiders

Adriano Cecioni

 A Lady in Grey

Daniel MacNee

Woman Sewing

Marcus Stone

 Free-range children are a modern invention!

Jeune Mere Italienne

Charles Jalabert

Mending Nets

Joseph Israels

Spring rolls

Thai and Vietnamese fresh salad rolls are so delicious.  They're healthy and flavorful, filled with herbs, vegetables and usually a taste of high quality protein like shrimp.

Compared to the fried ones, a plate of these is a light and refreshing appetizer.  In restaurants they're always beautifully presented with dipping sauces. That's because person in the kitchen has made thousands of them!  When it comes to assembling these things, the devil is in the details.

I thought I'd give it a try at home, so I bought a spring roll "kit" the last time I was at the Asian supermarket.  It was kind of a rip-off, since the only thing in the bag was a packet of wrappers and a bit of dried rice noodle.  About 20 cents worth of ingredients. Oh yes, there were instructions, but they had definitely lost something in translation.

By the time you buy the ingredients, cook the shrimp and noodles, soak the wrappers, and then try to assemble the slippery things, you have a time consuming and rather expensive project.

But it was fun to try and they tasted good, even though mine wouldn't win any Thai beauty contests.

I also made homemade won ton soup with frozen Chinese dumplings and a bottle of Japanese noodle soup broth. A big clash of food cultures, and it sure made a nice weekend lunch.

Marine news

Near Minor Island, Washington

The Fin Whale is the second largest animal in the world, behind the Blue Whale, and for the first time in years a juvenile was spotted in north Puget Sound. They were once common here but commercial hunting and boat strikes off Vancouver Island decimated the population.  Adults can live 90 years and reach 85 feet.

Marine biology professor Jonathan Stern said, "There always has to be that pioneer, that first one in to literally test the waters, and maybe this little fin whale is that pioneer."
Marine animals, birds and plants are shifting their ranges because of climate change. 

I'm ashamed that I didn't know anything about the beautiful Fin Whale until I read that news story last week. If the ocean was an African savanna, the Fin Whale would be a gazelle.  Their only defense against packs of hunting Orcas is to swim away, and Fins have streamlined bodies that can travel 30 miles per hour to escape the killers.

Well, eating is not a crime. And speaking of the wolves of the sea, there's been a baby boom in the local Orca population this summer that has marine biologists excited. Five calves were born to the Puget Sound resident pods.  This is good news, because the population hit a 40 year low in December.  The number is now up to 81, but still a long way to go to reach 120, enough to take them off the endangered list.

I've never been lucky enough to be down on Alki beach when they swim by, but people spot them all the time there, practically in our backyard. 
 

Duel of the gnocchi makers

John's favorite food is gnocchi, so that's what he usually gets on his birthday. Depending on how ambitious I feel, he also has gnocchi on Valentines Day and Christmas Eve. I'm happy to please, although my favorite food is another subject. Anyway, since they are a hassle to make they shouldn't be squandered on indifferent eaters, so I usually have spaghetti instead and leave the chewy starch balls to him.

When we were in Columbus last April, I was thrilled when John's mom Wilda gave us the family gnocchi maker, Grandma Terrible's vintage machine.  It's on the right in the picture above. It is very clean. The one I've been rassling with for the past 20 years is on the left and covered with a patina of flour, dried dough, tears and sweat, earned the hard way through many cranks of sticky frustration. I have a love-hate relationship with it, but we get along most of the time now.

These machines look similar, but the wood rollers produce very different dumplings.  Grandma Terrible's gnocchi is thinner with small ridges, and mine fatter with deeper grooves. 

The old machine acted up a bit yesterday, but it probably just needs to be "re-seasoned" with new layer of crud, which won't be a problem in this kitchen.  Between the two I managed to crack out a pretty nice batch.

It's been rainy and cool in Seattle, and with a big birthday to celebrate we've had a long weekend of eating.  The other highlight was a "Whisper Cake" from the Macarina Bakery.  A rather perfect combination of whipped cream, dense white cake, lemon curd, cheese frosting and fresh raspberries.  Impossible to make at home, and worth every calorie.

Holiday weekends

Stick Fire

Kate Greenaway

We've gone from record hot temperatures to "unseasonably cool" literally overnight.  While it's pleasant to feel the season changing, this is a bit abrupt. September in Seattle is usually a perfect month- mellow, dry and warm.  We're starting out chilly and damp.  The down comforter is back on the bed and the winter pj's dug out from the bottom of the drawer.  The house is so cool this morning I'm surprised the furnace hasn't come on.

They said on the news that a record number of people will fill up with cheap gas and hit the road this weekend, but we won't be joining them.  Northwest holiday weekends are a good time to stay home, as far as I'm concerned.  John has one of those big "decade" birthdays to celebrate on Sunday.  Since I've already been there, done that one, I know how he feels.  A gnocchi dinner might cheer him up some. 

 

 The Lesson

John Eastman

I had a nice surprise call from Amanda during her work break yesterday, and we talked about the girls. Maya loves her Little Star preschool, and Nova seems to like first grade, but it's hard to get much real information out of a six-year old.  We all remember those parent-child conversations:

"How was school?" 
"Fine."
"What did you do today?"
"Different stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"You know."
(And so on.)

A Bedtime Story

Seymour Joseph Guy

Halloween must be just around the corner judging from the stores. All that candy!  I remember when Halloween had a more sinister thrill.

This painting reminds me of our older sister Marji. She loved to read out loud to Dave and me, especially horrific stories from our collection of Grimm's fairy tales. Stories about bad, vain girls who can't stop dancing in red shoes until their feet are chopped off by woodmen.  Somehow we escaped being scarred for life by those tales.  (I think.)

Happy Birthday, Dad

Talk about doing it right, our folks sure make 91 and 90 look amazing.  My sister took this picture of them enjoying a restaurant lunch while she was visiting Cripple Creek last week.

Dad, I wish we could celebrate with you today, but we send our love across the miles.   Also our gratitude for all you've done for the family, and especially for giving us such a wonderful example of a life well-lived.   I know you read the blog each morning, and I hope you have a great day!