Patchwork Underground

You will be missed. Tell Adorn magazine and Sassy magazine hello up there for me.

First…

The Story ———

(psst…scroll to the bottom of the post if you just want the recipe!!!)

So, no, I’m not officially vegan…yet…but things seem to be tending towards that direction. I’ve been a vegetarian for ages, so the meat thing isn’t a barrier. But giving up cheese?! I couldn’t imagine it until recently.

See, it all started with oat milk, which I discovered I like better than milk milk. Then, I started getting real serious about nutritional yeast and olive oil instead of butter….on everything! It is so-o-o yummy. (FYI- My most recent discovery in that field is that nutritional yeast and olive oil makes a totally amazing substitute for parmesan cheese on pasta.) Next, when I stopped buying dairy stuff at the grocery store I noticed a major drop in our total grocery costs - cheese and yogurt and butter are way expensive and it really adds up! Beans are cheeeap! The relative difficulty we have with consistent refrigeration on our housebus is also a major incentive to give up perishable (dairy) foods.

Enter Cookies ——–

(Disclaimer: this is NOT an actual image of my cookies…I ate mine before I thought about blogging them, dammit…)

Anyway, vegan baking was a mystery to me until last night when my friend, David, suggested making vegan cookies. We busted out the oatmeal and loosely followed the recipie on the back of the box for cookies, substituting palm oil for butter, bananas for eggs and a molasses/agave combo instead of sugar. I added a little extra water to get the right consistency. David put chocolate chips in his batch but I left mine plain. All was good until we went to turn on the oven. TOTALLY BROKEN!

Enter Woodstove ——–

David opts to bake his 4 at a time in the toaster oven. I decide to take mine over to the huge woodstove they have in their house. It was all fired up and putting out a ton of heat. I’d never baked on a woodstove before so I learned a few things the hard way:

1. You can’t just put the baking sheet on the top of the woodstove. It will burn cookies something awful. (This was obviously my first instinct - a bad one.)

2. You gotta prop cookie sheet up on something - stones, bricks, cast iron pans - to get it up and away from direct contact with the woodstove.

3. Tin foil over the top is a must.

4. The side closest to the chimney pipe is going to be getting the most heat. You may want to rotate the pan halfway through your baking session to get a more even heat distribution.

5. Don’t underestimate the power of a serious woodstove fire. THEY WILL COOK, and FAST. (Don’t be like me and wait for someone to ask if something is burning…)

In the end, David’s toaster oven cookies turned out perfect. I burned the living crap out of half of mine but there were about 4-5 that survived. They were AWESOME! I feel that I definitely won the prize for most hippie-dip baked good ever.

The Recipe ———–

Basic Vegan Oatmeal Cookies

In a bowl, mix:

• 2 sticks vegetable shortening
• 1/4 cup sugar something (we used a half-and-half mixture of agave and molasses…the standard recipe calls for 1.5 cups brown sugar, which I thought that was way extreme. There was a household debate: some people thought my 1/4 cup mixture was prefect, some people wanted more sweetness…you decide)
• tsp. vanilla
• and
• 1 bannana (instead of 2 eggs)

Beat all this together with a fork. Then add:

• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1.5 cups flour (we used quinoa flour)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 cup water
• cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

Mix that all together. Mix in chocolate chips if you’re David. Mix in raisins or cranberries or walnuts if you’re me and you have access to them. Smear veggie shortening all over your pan and plop the cookies on there. Bake at 350 degrees until it’s done. On a wood stove, this took about 15-20 mins (1/2 an hour if you include the trial-and-error period) and I think it would be 15-20 mins in a conventional oven, too. Enjoy!

I am always trolling the “hobbies and crafts” section of the magazine racks. Yesterday, we went to Borders - which seems to have the most diverse selection of paper crafts/knitting/sewing/etc magazines - and I saw this little gem for the first time:

A whole over-sized magazine full of funky mixed media aprons. Ok ok, I love aprons…sorta….but doesn’t is seem like you can’t go anywhere without apron patterns being shoved down your throat these days?? I mean, is it just me or are aprons kinda useless?? I love a lot of the designs in this mag (especially the recycled sweater apron….and the one with the collaged sun on the front) but I’d love ‘em a lot more if they were skirts or wall hangings. I mean, where ya gonna put all those aprons?! My kitchen isn’t big enough for a full-size popcorn bowl, let alone a DIY apron collection.

Apronology is put out by the same folks who brought you Stuffies - Stampington and Company (their website is here).

when all the sudden I saw this:

So, I was poking around the internet learning more about the history of the sewing machine…. ‘cus I’m a dork like that…..and I discovered lots of bizarro facts that I wanted to share with you.

For example: the first servicable sewing machine caused a handsewer’s riot in Paris. Fear of unemployment caused tailors to torch the army uniform factory that was using the “mechanical stitcher.”

For another: When the first treadle machine came out (FYI: treadle machines are those old school pre-electrical machines with the rocking foot pedal) folks in Britain suspected that the rocking motion was unladylike because it might cause arousal in the user. (No comment. Except: why doesn’t my machine do that?)

And another: I also discovered that the first zig-zag machine was invented by a lady! Her name was Helen Augusta Blanchard. She patented her zig-zag machine in 1873. She came from a wealthy family back East but when her family lost their fortune, she started patenting her inventions to support her kin. All the pictures of her on the internet make her look like a dog, so I messed around in photo shop to bring you this modern wonder….

I was excited to find Helen because I’m always looking for handy ladies in history. Crafty female icons in history are accounted for - Betsy Ross, Mme. DeFarge, etc. - but female handiness? Not so much. It seems to me that there’s absolutely no difference between the two qualities except…oh, I dunno….gender?

As a crafty AND handy lady myself, it’s inspiring to read about Helen’s 28 patents. I will always think of her when I use the zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine. (If you want to learn more about her, the best site about her that I could find is here.)

And yes, we made it to Santa Cruz safe and sound. Thanks to all for the well-wishes! =)