Various and Sundry Monday: Vol 19

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. –Robert Brault

The Proof is in the Pudding
OK, not so much the pudding as the stuffing. And technically, it was dressing, since I didn't actually stuff it into the bird.

Mr. Bug's mom always makes home made stuffing and it is SO good. However, we spent Thanksgiving with my family, so for my contribution to the meal, I offered to make stuffing from scratch. I asked Mr. Bug's mom how she makes hers. She is one of those cooks who doesn't follow a recipe. She just throws stuff in a pot and it tastes good. Not me. I like to color inside the lines. And I like to have a definitive recipe to follow when I cook. Never-the-less, I decided to give it a try because if I succeeded my efforts would pay off and if not, we had some Stove Top to use as the back-up plan. I assembled my ingredients and started putting the recipe together.

Butter melted, check. Chopped onions and celery cooked until tender, check. Salt, pepper and sage, check. Two bags of dry bread, che . . . hey wait. There's not enough room in the pot. What do I do now? Stirring carefully isn't working. I'm just making a mess. Is there a bigger pot somewhere? Yes, that's what I need. A bigger pot. I'll move the stuffing to the bigger pot . . . uh, oh. Crap. I don't know how to cook on an electric stove and the stuffing at the bottom of the pan is burned. Dang. I hope I can get it all out. I'd better turn down the heat while it try to dig the burnt bits out.

It wasn't a complete disaster even though I burned the stuffing at the bottom of the pan a second time, while I was trying to dig out the bits from the first time. And I cheated and added two packages of Stove Top to the mix, just to get a better flavor. I wasn't sure that the sage was enough by itself. Everyone seemed to like it and there was plenty to go around despite the fact that I burned about a third of the recipe.

Still, next time I volunteer to bring the stuffing, I'm going to Google an actual recipe.

Another Toad Has Gone Missing
A while back, I mentioned that we keep fire-bellied toads in an aquarium. We started out with Henry who was the class pet in LadyBug's 1^st grade class and then we bought Henry a friend, who we named Violet. It turned out that Henry was really Violet and Violet was really Henry and then Henry mysteriously went missing. We supposed that he buried himself in the rocks and that was the end of him. I never found any remains, but I didn't go looking for them either. I disturbed the rocks as little as possible when I changed the water and cleaned the aquarium. When I finally did get brave enough to shift things around {like four months later} there was no sign of Henry anywhere. But we can't figure out how he might have escaped, either.

That's not to say it isn't possible because the other day Pants, the replacement we bought for Henry so Violet wouldn't be lonely, shimmied up the corner of the aquarium and had his nose poked out a teeny, tiny little notch in the hood meant for the cord of the filter. There are actually two such notches on the cover, but since we only have one filter, we only use one of them. I thought we'd taped over the other to prevent any more toads from going missing, but I guess we didn't, because Violet isn't anywhere to be found and I don't really have the heart to sift through the rocks in search of her.

I guess the question now is, do we get Pants a friend?

Poultry in Motion
I'm making table runners to give as Christmas gifts this year. I don't know who most of them will go to yet because we're going to play gift exchange games at most of the parties I'm taking them to. I have Kimono Garden all quilted and the binding just needs the hand stitching on it. I'll show it soon.

I've got two other runners put together, sandwiched and basted ready for quilting. I'm calling them Poultry in Motion. I can get away with calling them both the same thing because they'll be going to two different parties.

Before you think I'm all clever with the name for these, it is the name of the fabric line, but I thought it was pretty hilarious, so I kept it.

I love how these turned out. As I was putting them together, I pondered ways to quilt them. I'm excited to try a few new free-motion things. But at the same time, I still have that nervous what-if-I-mess-up feeling as I take the first stitch.

I am pretty encouraged at how quickly the tops have gone together so far. The quilting on Kimono Garden was pretty fussy, but even that went pretty fast, so I'm really hoping that I'll be ahead of the game instead of hand-stitching the binding down in the car on the way to the party.

Monday Music Spot: The Goat Rodeo Sessions
Michelle at The Gypsy Quilter shared some really great music recently and I have to pay it forward. Classical cellist, Yo-Yo Ma has teamed up with Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile and Stuart Duncan to create The Goat Rodeo Sessions. It is a little bit bluegrass, a little bit classical and a whole lot of awesome. In this clip the four musicians talk a little bit about the album and there are snippets of a few songs.


I'm hoping that Santa puts an iTunes gift card in my stocking, because this has jumped to the top of my wish list. Here's another sampling {note: swear alert. Stop at time index 4:15 to avoid}. And for more, check out The Goat Rodeo Sessions Playlist on YouTube.