The List: February 2014

February may be the shortest month but around here it was an action-packed one with snow days and guests providing the most memorable moments.

Eating winter fruit salad- apples, clementines and dried cranberries. Rinsing the apple cubes in some lemon (or vinegar) water helped the salad stay fresh-looking even when I made it hours ahead of time.

The best things I ate all month: potato bourekas (baked puff pastry turnovers) made by my Israeli friend's mother and potato pierogis (doughy dumplings) made by a co-worker's mother using their traditional Polish recipe. Yes, it was the season of potato pastries made using old recipes by moms!

The most successful experiment of the month was lemon curd- a tangy and smooth dessert sauce. And the amazing thing is that this lemon curd is made in the microwave. The original recipe made a rather large batch and I wondered if I could cut it to a third. Dessert sauces can be a bit fussy and there's guarantee that fractions of recipes will work. But you know how I am- always living on the edge- and this time it worked. I cut it to a third for a smaller batch and it still worked beautifully and took 5 minutes tops.

Baking a berry yogurt cake. I used frozen berries because, well, have you looked out of the window? This is an easy, beginner-friendly cake and quite flexible- for instance, I used ricotta and homemade yogurt instead of milk and Greek yogurt, and subbed almond flour for 1/4 cup of the AP flour.

The lemon curd was whisked with whipped cream as a topping for this cake, and honestly the tangy lemon curd with the tangy berry cake did not quite work for me- too much tang all around. Next time I'll use them separately.

Making itty bitty hearts: A February list cannot be complete without a liberal sprinkling of red and pink hearts, can it? I made these tiny, puffy felt heart-shaped pins for her to give to her classmates for the preschool valentine exchange. The pattern is here on Purl Bee, but I used blanket stitch for edging.

Feb 14 is also International Book Giving Day and all the kids in Lila's class were asked to bring a gently used book from home to exchange with each other. Between valentine exchanges and book exchanges, it was a fun and busy day at school.

Sewing for superheroes: Our local domestic violence shelter gives out superhero capes to kids who come through their program as a way of offering them support and strength (and a bit of fun) during this very difficult time in their lives. They were looking for volunteers to sew some of the capes for them. I used this pattern and made a few. They provided us with this shiny, slippery fabric to make into capes. The stuff was a total pain to sew (it is not well-behaved like cotton) but after some teeth-gnashing I did get them done.

When 2 inches of snow/ice (what? don't laugh) brought life to a standstill for 4 or 5 days, a friend and her family stayed with us- they had issues with the heat in their house. We had to work overtime to keep the kids from going stir-crazy. I taught my friend's 6 year old daughter to sew and we made a little bunting. This kid impressed me with her patience and perseverance- especially since she speaks no English yet (only Hebrew) and I was teaching her using a strange language of gestures and nods.

Knitting a scarf/cowl- a gift for a friend. It looks like a shawl when worn but slips over the head and stays on without a fuss. The pattern is called Zuzu's petals and it was a joy to knit. If you've seen the movie It's a Wonderful Life, you'll remember the reference for Zuzu's petals.

Image: Goodreads

Reading Stephen King's On Writing. The first half of the book is a memoir of King's writing life- his childhood, his early fascination with pulpy horror movies, his earliest writing, his battles with addiction. The second half is a writing seminar with advice for aspiring writers: "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut".
 I've read a couple of King's novels and I find them highly uneven- I love parts of them and the others drag on or seem outlandish (this is strange since millions of people clearly love his work.) But this book I did like from start to finish.



Enjoying the unique interaction between toddler and dog.

Lila's first chore- a daily task that she does almost every morning and evening since she turned ~2- is to feed Duncan. She picks up his bowl, walks to the closet where we store the food, V or I open the closet, then she scoops food into his bowl, asking "More?" after every scoop. We say "More please" and then "Bas" (hindi for enough). Then she closes the door, carefully walks back with the bowl and puts it in Dunkie's spot and tells him, "Enjoy your khaana, Dunkie" which is his cue to start scarfing down the food (khaana is Hindi for food.)

I am always amazed at how patiently Duncan will wait for as long as it takes Lila to do her thing- sometimes, spilling some kibbles, sometimes getting distracted for a minute with something else. But she does it- and takes pride in caring for and feeding a family member just as adults do for her.

Duncan finishes his meal in record time (seconds, literally), then comes back to find Lila. He does this unfailingly after every meal- walking to whoever fed him and sitting down next to them- it feels like a thank you gesture. And then he usually burps!

One Hot Stove will be on Spring Break next week and I'll see you in two weeks. Meanwhile, do share in the comments what you've been eating, cooking, baking, reading, watching, making and enjoying this February.