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Mar. 1st, 2010 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
algOn average, I spend a pretty good portion of my week cooking and thinking about cooking. Part of that is because I love cooking and have always loved cooking, and part of that is because I cook supper every night, and sometimes do lunches and snacks during the day as well. Meals range from the complicated to the very simple; sometimes I feel like cooking a four course extravaganza, and sometimes I make soup and sandwiches.
I also really like to bake -- breads, mostly, although I've been known to make brownies, cookies, and cakes, too. Today I made banana bread this morning for breakfast (I swapped out the cocoa for an extra heaping tablespoon of flour, and left out the chocolate chips), and pretzels with cheddar cheese baked on top for lunch (note that the recipe calls for two inches of water for boiling the pretzels -- when I tried that, it gave my pretzels an awful, metallic, baking soda taste; I find that four cups of water + 1/2 c baking soda + 1/4 c sugar is best, and they need to be poached for two minutes per side, not one).
Supper is going to be a Sicilian version of panzanella, but it's a soup instead of a salad (it's a recipe I've made before, from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein
, which is an amazing cookbook). I'm using leftover bread from this recipe for the croutons in the soup; I baked the bread on Friday for supper (we were having baked ziti, which is incomplete without crusty bread dipped in olive oil or spread with butter), and it's still soft and delicious today, so I cut it into croutons and left it out to dry all day.
Yum yum yum!
And while I am on the subject of crafting, I can't show pictures of my latest knitting projects, because they are all gifts that have not been given yet, but. My sewing machine arrived! It is so beautiful! And it works amazingly well. I tested it out by making the ugliest skirt ever. If anyone has doubted that I suck at garment construction, there is proof!
However, my friend Yvette (she of the costume designer and college professor fame) took pity on me and sent me a list of books that should help. I know a lot of you are also interested in sewing and garment construction, so I am going to link you to her recommended books.
Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing
Yvette says: "The BEST sewing book ever. ... It will teach you everything and has lots of good illustrations. You want the old out-of-print one, not the new edition."
The edition I bought is from 1981. I'll let you know how I like it.
Sew What! Skirts
: for the sewer who visualizes instead of using premade patterns. The skirt I linked to above I made without a pattern, but without knowledge of how garments should be put together... well, you saw how it came out!
Yvette says: "This is the book I use when I want to draft a basic skirt pattern to my measurements. It has style ideas in it too. You need big paper (I tape together newspaper), scissors, pens/pencils, and a tape measure to measure yourself. It explains the basics of drafting a pattern and how to put stuff together."
This is the book I am looking forward to the most, because even though I can use patterns and have nothing in particular against them, I do find visualizing a garment and then creating it to be really cool and fun. (Well, it was cool and fun when I was nine years old and hand-sewing doll clothes. We'll see how it is now that I'm a lot older and making clothes for myself!)
And, finally: The Costume Technician's Handbook: A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Technicians
Yvette says this is a more advanced book than the other two, but that it is very easy to understand. I think it's very important to have a range of books available, so I ordered this one too. After all, eventually I will be a more advanced garment-maker! Might as well be prepared, right?
My next step is to find a good fabric store in my area (obviously there's Mood and a few other places in Manhattan, but I'd rather not pay Manhattan prices -- Project Runway is not financing this!) so that I can make stuff that has the potential to be wearable, instead of stuff constructed out of my mom's old bedsheets.
Of course, the first garment I ever made for myself was a pencil skirt made out of a purple plaid pillowcase, so don't think I'm disparaging wearing linens as clothes!
I also really like to bake -- breads, mostly, although I've been known to make brownies, cookies, and cakes, too. Today I made banana bread this morning for breakfast (I swapped out the cocoa for an extra heaping tablespoon of flour, and left out the chocolate chips), and pretzels with cheddar cheese baked on top for lunch (note that the recipe calls for two inches of water for boiling the pretzels -- when I tried that, it gave my pretzels an awful, metallic, baking soda taste; I find that four cups of water + 1/2 c baking soda + 1/4 c sugar is best, and they need to be poached for two minutes per side, not one).
Supper is going to be a Sicilian version of panzanella, but it's a soup instead of a salad (it's a recipe I've made before, from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein
, which is an amazing cookbook). I'm using leftover bread from this recipe for the croutons in the soup; I baked the bread on Friday for supper (we were having baked ziti, which is incomplete without crusty bread dipped in olive oil or spread with butter), and it's still soft and delicious today, so I cut it into croutons and left it out to dry all day.Yum yum yum!
And while I am on the subject of crafting, I can't show pictures of my latest knitting projects, because they are all gifts that have not been given yet, but. My sewing machine arrived! It is so beautiful! And it works amazingly well. I tested it out by making the ugliest skirt ever. If anyone has doubted that I suck at garment construction, there is proof!
However, my friend Yvette (she of the costume designer and college professor fame) took pity on me and sent me a list of books that should help. I know a lot of you are also interested in sewing and garment construction, so I am going to link you to her recommended books.
Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing
Yvette says: "The BEST sewing book ever. ... It will teach you everything and has lots of good illustrations. You want the old out-of-print one, not the new edition."
The edition I bought is from 1981. I'll let you know how I like it.
Sew What! Skirts
: for the sewer who visualizes instead of using premade patterns. The skirt I linked to above I made without a pattern, but without knowledge of how garments should be put together... well, you saw how it came out! Yvette says: "This is the book I use when I want to draft a basic skirt pattern to my measurements. It has style ideas in it too. You need big paper (I tape together newspaper), scissors, pens/pencils, and a tape measure to measure yourself. It explains the basics of drafting a pattern and how to put stuff together."
This is the book I am looking forward to the most, because even though I can use patterns and have nothing in particular against them, I do find visualizing a garment and then creating it to be really cool and fun. (Well, it was cool and fun when I was nine years old and hand-sewing doll clothes. We'll see how it is now that I'm a lot older and making clothes for myself!)
And, finally: The Costume Technician's Handbook: A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Technicians
Yvette says this is a more advanced book than the other two, but that it is very easy to understand. I think it's very important to have a range of books available, so I ordered this one too. After all, eventually I will be a more advanced garment-maker! Might as well be prepared, right?
My next step is to find a good fabric store in my area (obviously there's Mood and a few other places in Manhattan, but I'd rather not pay Manhattan prices -- Project Runway is not financing this!) so that I can make stuff that has the potential to be wearable, instead of stuff constructed out of my mom's old bedsheets.
Of course, the first garment I ever made for myself was a pencil skirt made out of a purple plaid pillowcase, so don't think I'm disparaging wearing linens as clothes!