cook: vegetable lentil soup

I was feeling cruddy over the weekend and cooked a fortifying soup.

I'd been slipping on assessing my fridge and cooking only with what I have because we had pizza and Chinese takeout, but I think I saved the celery, leek and onion from moldering in my fridge and finally used the can of lentils in my pantry.

I discovered that I like my vegetables in my soup to be a bit al dente or still have some semblance to their original crunch. The carrots and celery in this soup will be too soft for my liking on reheating, but hopefully the addition of Swiss chard will make the soup toothsome again.

host: galentine craft party

One year I organized the neighbors to host a Galentine's potluck brunch which became an annual thing for a couple years until I wearied of it and said someone else had to organize. I did host a Lunar New Year party the next year, and I'm thinking for the future maybe an Empty Bowls/Lunar New Year fundraiser for Second Harvest in Februarys when I get better at throwing bowls. The neighbors instead of celebrating Galentine's Day made the event a baked potato bar for Saint Paddy's Day. However, I missed celebrating hearts and love and friendship. And so this year I decided to bring the girlfriends gathering back but without enforced brunch and in the evening focused on crafting valentines and keeping the party small. 

I think the girlfriends who I knew liked crafting had fun. I taught them how to weave Swedish hearts, and my Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes were a hit. 

Nicole brought Valentine-themed Jello desserts.

Even though it's been over a week since Valentine's Day, I'm celebrating love for the rest of the month. I couldn't help myself and bought this heart-themed borosilicate glass teapot...

...and matching teaglass.

Preet had brought samosas to the party, and the two leftover became a midmorning snack.

And on the actual February 14th of this year, hubby got me flowers and Chardonnay while I got him a t-shirt. This is romance in my 60s.

cloth: bliss joy love quilt in progress

I made a quilt top and started its scrappy back about 5 years ago and decided 2026 (when I also returned to the Bay Area Modern Quilting group) to finish it.

Took a day off work to spend a Friday at a quilt shop on the longarm to stitch it.

I felt like a clueless ninny at first, but with some refresher instruction from Katrina and Evelyn, I remembered how to pull up that bobbin thread at the beginning of a row of stitching and snip it at the end of the row. 

 

Holy moly did it take me ever so long to sandwich, a little over 6 hours! At $15 an hour and $1 each for 5 spools and tax, and $38.14 for batting--renting the long arm machine cost me $137.29. Totally worth it as it would have taken me hundreds more hours stitching on my domestic. I guess someone else quilting it with a pantograph would have cost me a couple hundred dollars instead. I'm pleased that the sandwiching is done! I've already sewn binding and pinned it to the quilt, which I'll attach with my walking foot on my Hello Kitty Janome. Yesterday I printed a quilt label to embroider.

cocktail: passionfruit mocktail & cocktail

Like a lot of people, I decided to abstain from alcohol in January. I'd bought non-alcoholic wines (which taste pretty damn awful and are expensive like Proxies) and non-alcoholic spirits (which can be delicious and are also expensive like Seedlip), so I'd been on the lookout for nonalcoholic or even low-liquor libations that I would actually drink and enjoy. 

One can only drink so much sparkling water and tea (TÖST by the way is my favorite nonalcoholic alternative even if it's a tea) before needing something special and hopefully extra-ordinary for those rituals of adult life that include a drink for toasting, sharing or being alone meditatively. I didn't drink wine seriously until the age of 32, and 28 years is long enough. I need to return to just being an occasional drinker and a teetotaler most of the time. I saw a Food 52 video of a mocktail recipe for my favorite flavor of passionfruit. The recipe included passionfruit puree, a dash of angostura bitters, seltzer water, a bit of lemon lime soda, a wedge of lime and crushed mint. The drink sounded so refreshing that I’d decided to recreate it for my own personal enjoyment as I don't know if I like the bitter element. 

I had in my freezer this passionfruit puree that I'd bought from a specialty baking arts supplies shop and made simple syrup to mix with it. So easy! Just dissolve 1 cup of cane sugar in 1 cup of very warm water and then add 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the puree. My passionfruit syrup mixed with San Pellegrino or Trader Joe's champagne were delicious at a galentine crafting party.   

cloth: slow sewing

It’d been a few years since I put almost all of my fabric stash into a storage unit along with ceramic supplies. Some sewing projects, however, were still in my bedroom and coat closets along with sewing machine, rulers and tools. Finally I threaded 🪡 and hand mended first: the button fly of my favorite jeans and a string market bag from Eataly.

 

Then there was this turquoise, beige, dark gray, and forest green hand knit and felted pillow I bought from Yarn, Paper, Scissors when they closed. I loved it though I disliked the drab Amy Butler fabric (whose patterns I've loved except for a Midwest Modern one of olives) that was sewn to the wool top. I also disliked how the pillow had a 2.5" flange all around its perimeter. And so I bought a creamy beige gray linen recently at Hobby Lobby and found this spool of Aurifil olive green thread I probably picked up for free at the first ever Quilt Con I attended in Pasadena. The thread color is perfect. Before hand stitching, I hemmed the edges of the linen on my sewing machine and hoped that a 3" overlap between the two sides would be enough of an enclosure for the pillow. 

The wool square wasn't perfectly square or rectangular and wonky. Instead of blocking the wool, I clipped it to a 19" x 20" rectangle and stretched the wool at some of its edges to even out its dimensions.

And then I hand sewed the backing to the front with overcast and blanket stitches. As you can see below from the photo of my envelope pillow cover, it's not perfect, but done in this case is better.

 

The back might not be picture perfect, but I'm pleased now with the final pillow.

Patrick asked how am I to use this pillow. Dude, it's back support for a couch that is kind of too big and uncomfortable for my petite frame. My sister-in-law gave me a scarf for Christmas that is too big for me. I plan on converting it into two more couch pillows or a bolster. And there's enough linen to sew a zippered pouch embellished with a chihuahua patch and stiff backing.

clay: charcoal kurinuki box

Clay Body: Aardvark Charcoal

Glaze: Copper Red

Method/Firing: Hand built/Kurinuki, Cone 5

 

With this studio glaze, I'm never sure if the outcome will be mostly dark red with few streaks of turquoise green and blue. On Bmix, yes you'd see a lot more red, but on this dark clay, only tiny glimpses of that iron red.

  

And I love this little box made from scrips and scraps of black clay from which I made a lot of dinner plates. I compressed the scrap clay into a cube and then used a big loop tool to hollow out of the interior and a paint scraper to chisel out ridges on the exterior.

 

The blue with a creamy cast and hints of that red underneath which verge on turning purple just mesmerizes me.

consume: sunday morning

Sunday mornings are my favorite. Last Sunday, Cecilia baked bagels, and I brought over smoked salmon and cream cheese while Nancy provided dill, pickled red onion and capers.

On Sundays where I had off-season outrigger canoe practice, I'd stop by Osaka supermarket. I recently admired these little ceramic bowls which were only $1.99. I really liked the simple cobalt blue line of this bowl on the left and the addition of the lime green leaves to the cobalt blossoms on the bowls to the right.

  

And of this bowl I really liked its oblong shape and that brown rim.

However, I'm a ceramicist, and I've so many bowls despite Patrick always accidentally breaking them. And so on that Sunday, I sated myself instead with a sushi bowl and mochi donuts.

 

And I especially loved my donut and Parisian tea on Sunday afternoon.

However yesterday Sunday morning, I declined coffee from Cecilia and ran 3 miles at Sawyer Camp because I've only 2 months until the 11K race at the Big Sur Marathon. And oh I'll be stiff and sore today, so my plan is to go on the walking platform at lunch and vibrate that lactic acid in my muscles away.

create: a drawing practice

One of my resolutions for 2026 besides a dry January was to get more analogue in life. Over the winter holiday, I retrieved my-started-but-not-finished 100 Days of Drawing journal from my pile of sketchbooks and took up since a couple years ago inking and penciling again. 

This sketch of oysters made me remember my brother's birthday of Sweetwater oysters and Hogwash mignonette at Sol Food.

And this drawing exercise of the activities that give me utmost pleasure too is a favorite assignment.

I didn't adhere to the direction to listen to music or an audiobook or talk to a friend (why do I dislike phone conversations?) while sketching. Instead I listened to NPR and copied (yeah I'm more a copyist than a freehand sketcher)an illustration of a mixtape.

The drawing journal next assigns sketching faces. I remember loving to sketch eyes as a junior high student and was trying to recall the instructions for pupils and irises and eyelashes. I remember now! Draw 3 balls or 1 ball atop 2 balls and draw the outline of an eye around the balls before filling in the rest of details of eyelid, eyelines and lashes.

Faces were starting to get tedious.

And the news cycle has been shocking and horrific.

I so want to move on from faces and on to the next exercises of architecture and or more assignments of a still life. There's one last assignment in this section to create my own dots (which means breaking out my watercolor palette) and then ink more faces. And I'm not going to follow the direction or guidance to draw my own face or that of my friends. Let me figure out other parameters. However, for the most part, I like being a student and given assignments.

cook: mushroom pasta

I’d had a jar of truffle mushrooms in olive oil from a forgotten gourmet store for maybe a year in my cupboard because my colleague, Andrew raved and printed out for me a recipe for a favorite truffle mushroom pasta. I had this box of fettuccine in my pantry drawer for half that long, which I don’t  remember from where I bought. This box of fettuccine that I thought came from Trader Joe’s maybe came from Eataly. Surprisingly, the instructions on the box said to boil the egg and flour pasta (yep only two ingredients) for just 2 minutes. And so I got the pot of salted water boiling and set aside the box until I finished the mushroom sauce.

I shredded and sliced all the fresh mushrooms in my refrigerator: half a box of a mushroom medley of one king and one shitake, enoki and beech, and oyster; small crimini, and a button mushroom or three. Into a dry pan it went, and I noticed it releasing water when I put a knob of salted butter along with the minced garlic. Because there was so much olive oil in the jar of truffle mushrooms, I also chopped a shallot as well as parsley and scallions to sprinkle later.

To the sautéed mushrooms, I also added a bit of heavy whipping cream before sprinkling the green garnish.

The mushrooms tasted just okay; however, I did love this pasta.

I just can't believe how minimal was its boiling, and the noodles were springy and perfectly al dente. So maybe I won't make this pasta recipe again--I think I tossed the paper recipe from my binder already. However, I'll be looking forward to the next fettuccini pasta dish because there are still 4 more layers of dried pasta in the box.

clay: standing with minnesota

My Monday this week was a workday of professional development, and I signed up for a workshop in 3D techniques for ceramic instructors. I've been silent when friends and neighbors have been talking about the collective and universal harm being inflicted on the country. Silence is privilege, and so let me emerge from the bubble and quote Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I made this plaque from air dried clay during the workshop. The chain was initially attached across the heart, and I needed to be hopeful if I was going to inscribe a message that love trumps hate. And so I broke the chain and attached it to the heart. But that looked wrong too.

And so, the chain had to be broken more visibly and hang ineffectually down.

And this morning a group of us teachers will be standing outside in front of the school with protest signs. I made signs yesterday.

And here's one for the protest planned in March.

cook: biscuits and sausage gravy

A few months ago, I baked biscuits and sausage gravy—using chicken sausages, which made for a less caloric dish that Cecilia loved. Not this time. I had a pound of breakfast sausage which was likely intended for Thanksgiving stuffing. Before making this breakfast, I reviewed the flaky biscuits recipe on the White Lily website, read the Pioneer Woman’s website for sausage gravy which included onion, and watched the Preppy Kitchen YouTube video to which I’m adding sage, rosemary and thyme as well as the fresh parsley he sprinkled atop the gravy. And the Pioneer Woman recipe included onions.

 

Aargh the sausage was freezer burned, which I learned afterward. And I still had quite a bit of White Lily flour.

 

In addition to the fresh herbs, I added red pepper flakes and poultry seasoning. I forgot my first batch of biscuits, which got a bit burnt.

  

Craving for comfort food sated though I have since tossed the sausage gravy, but still have 2 biscuits to enjoy with butter and jam.

 

There's one more chub of breakfast sausage in the freezer, which I'll slice into rounds and just cook for future breakfast sandwiches. I told my neighbor that I'm on the hunt for a good kaiser roll to make them.