Kung Hee Fat Choy!

happy chinese new year and valentines day! i don't usually post about things that i haven't actually made myself, but my aunty wanda made these cookies the other day that were too hard to resist. she was inspired by this article in the honolulu advertiser about the tradition of almond cookies for chinese new year. it turns out it's an americanized cookie - traditional chinese nut cookies were made out of walnuts - but i'm grateful for the switch, since walnuts make my tongue swell. inspired by the morning newspaper, and taking advantage of her newly-retired lifestyle, she called my aunty billie - popsie's sister, for her masterful almond cookie-making tips. included in the expert tips is:

• you HAVE to use crisco. yep. you can't make crispy almond cookies without crisco. so take a deep breath and get over it.
• you should HANDLE them. i always assumed handling the cookie dough too much would make the cookies tough, like pie crust, but it turns out you should roll these cookies between your palms at least ten times each, till you can feel them change texture. 
• to make them all uniformly flat, you ball them onto the cookie sheet and then drape a dish towel over them all and use a rolling pin or drinking glass to flatten them all at once. this also gives them a nice waffle texture. 

these cookies are awesome. here's the recipe aunty wanda used, courtesy of the honolulu advertiser:

Brenda Leong's Almond Cookies

• 1 cup butter-flavored solid shortening (she uses Crisco)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon almond extract
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Red food coloring blanched almonds.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Using an electric mixer (preferably a hands-free stand mixer), cream shortening and sugar very well. Add egg and almond extract and cream again until built up and smooth. Mix together flour, baking soda and salt and gradually add to batter while mixing. Form and decorate cookies with food coloring or almonds on ungreased cookie sheet. These cookies spread. Be sure to place them 3 inches apart. Bake at 325 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

Makes about 30 cookies.
 

the brilliant innovation that aunty wanda put on these cookies is the heart stamp. chinese almond cookies traditionally have a red dot in the middle, and since it's also valentine's day today she made the red stamp into a heart by carving the end of a carrot and dipping it in food coloring. genius!
happy year of the tiger, everyone!

baby hat in a night

 

i had one night to make a baby present. my friend ikaika was having a first year birthday for his son, ka'uhane here on o'ahu and i found out the day before. good thing babies are small. i recalled my friend sandra saying she had a crochet baby hat pattern that she was able to make last minute - two in one night, maybe even - for a baby party recently, so i asked her to send it to me - thanks sandra!

i love the pattern, those little ear flap/tie things are super fun, though i didn't exactly stick to the pattern. i'm not good on checking gauge, and the crochet hooks i was borrowing from grandma ho were all sized in japanese, so i have no idea what size hook i was using. plus i really don't have a clear reference for how big a one-year-old's head would be, so the sizing is all an approximation. i added the little lines in the middle by crocheting into just the back loop of each stitch - something i had accidentally taught myself to do all the time, and my guatemalan host mother helped me figure out why all my crocheting looked ridged like that.
i got the idea for the variegated outline from the photos sandra sent me of her hat - that's my favorite part. so i used some extra yarn i have from the owl sweater i'm *still* working on for myself, and picked up a little hank of variegated yarn to accent.

i didn't have a baby head to model the hat on, so this stuffed dog had to stand in.
now upon meeting ka'uhane i have no idea of the hat will actually fit, he's a big boy. but it was a fun late night project to give me an excuse to get caught up on season 5 of lost.

watermelon baby quilt

aryn's done it again. she created this beautiful quilt top - in watermelon colors - for our friend claire's newly arrived baby, celia. celia arrived early and healthy, six weeks early in fact, so the quilt wasn't quite ready for her upon arrival. but with a little pushing it was ready for her baby shower - which turned out to also be a celebration of her one month birthday.

i love aryn's choice of fabrics and combination of colors. so well done. she hired me to do the assembling, quilting and finishing parts of the quilt, which was fun for me. baby quilts are a great size to work with! i want to make only baby quilts from now on. so all you people who are waiting for your wedding presents from me... take note.

i wanted to do something subtle since the pattern of the fabrics is so vibrant on its own, so i did some stitching in the ditch around all the blocks and then chose one of the stripes of fabric in each square to do some stippling on - in corresponding pink or green thread. i think it came out really nicely - it's subtle on the front but allows some of the pieces to pop out, and the back is a fun maze of swirls and lines.

for the binding i split the difference between aryn's method and mine - she does a turn over of the backing fabric and machine stitching; i do a bias tape binding and finish it by hand. So i turned over the backing fabric as binding and finished it by hand. it's time consuming, but i like the hand stitched touch.

Finally, we made a little dedication on the back for celia, and aryn wrapped it up and hopped over to the baby shower. done and done.

if you like piecing quilt tops but hate the assembly and quilting parts, give me a shout - quilter for hire. cultivatingdomesticity(at)gmail(dot)com

also have to give a shout out to my mom for making this awesome thread-catching pouch that hangs off the side of the sewing table - by the grace of gravity and a sand bag - and handles all those pesky little threads you snip off during the course of quilting that always end up all over the carpet and jamming up your vacuum cleaner. and it's so pretty on the outside and soft and furry on the inside, thanks mom!

a year of domesticity: 2009 year in review

in reflecting back on the past year of crafts and cooking endeavors, i thought it might be nice to provide some photo highlights - the best of 2009 moments in cultivating domesticity...

in january:


we learned about how to prepare and cook in a hawaiian imu, even if it's been raining for weeks.

then we learned how to make your own cleaning products at home, with the popular tutorial on making laundry detergent for less than 2 cents per load.
also, my update on green cleaning products got the attention of Clorox - who commented on my post, defending their corporate honor.

in february:


i finished my first hawaiian quilting project - a lehua blossom quilted pillow for mom. the post includes some history of quilting and native resistance in hawai'i.

we celebrated valentines day with a loving menu and decorative crafts

in march:

we explored some ideas around how to refresh your wardrobe using tired winter sweaters

and provided some tips on how to clean, mend, and repair the things you love around the house.

in april:



i conquered my fear of fermentation and made my fist batch of sauerkraut 
 

and provided some of my ruminations on pesticides and michelle obama's garden


in may:


we celebrated strawberry season at our local csa farm

and we celebrated my mom's birthday with carrot cake for breakfast

in june:



i started raising pea sprouts

and decided i like dried apricots better than the fresh ones

in july:



i hired myself out to quilt aryn and adrionna's masterpiece

and took advantage of the basil abundance to make and freeze homemade pesto

in august:

i wrote up my thoughts on julia child as a home cooking revolutionary and the state of homecooking today: what does it mean that we collectively spend more time watching cooking contests on tv than actually cooking ourselves?

and knit a tri-colored baby hat for nasra

in september:



we had much to celebrate with apple pie and popsie's recovery



and then sele and my joint bacon birthday, and finally the engagement!

in october

we honored my little sister, aliana's ninth birthday with the pufferfish pouch

and we hoarded and canned heirloom tomatoes in preparation for the tomoato-less months

in november:



we were busy creating a crafting business plan and prepping for our first craft fair

and finally, in december

the cultivating domesticity brand was born

and i was holiday-obsessed with putting cranberries in everything

i hope you enjoyed the little review of domestic moments of 2009. i'd love to hear your favorite moments - if you tried any of these things, or have your eyes set on a recipe or tutorial you'd like to see in 2010 - leave me a comment! happy new year.

holiday obsession: cranberries

this year's holiday theme for me has been cranberries. from cooking to crafting to fashion, i'm obsessed with the little buggers and their delightful color.
it started with cranberry relish. well, truth be told it started with a sale on cranberries at the korean market. but then that led to my favorite holiday dish - one that always has people asking for the recipe, so i'll give it to you now. it's the easiest dish to prepare for a big payoff in taste and compliments.

CRANBERRY RELISH
2 cups washed raw cranberries
2 peeled and cored apples (tart kind)
1 large, whole (as in peel and everything) seedless orange, cut into sections
1/3 to 1/2 jalepeno (veined and seeded), chopped fine
1/4 (or more to taste) cup sugar

fill a bowl with cold water and your cranberries - if you're buying a bag you'll have a little left over once you use two cups. wash them around and pick out any soft or wrinkled ones. then you're basically going to add all the fruit chunks above into a food processor - this is way better if you have one of those old school meat grinders and then you can feed everything through that and when you crank it the cranberries make a really satisfying popping sound. if you're using the food processor method you can pulse them until they're chopped into smaller chunks, but you want to be careful not to overblend, otherwise it'll just be mushy - you want the fruits to still maintain their structure. i find it works best for my little cuisinart to do it in batches. when you've chopped up all the fruit you sprinkle the sugar on and mix it around, then let it sit at room temperature for 45 minutes so the sugar melts (this makes a big difference), and then you can keep in in the fridge after that. we started adding jalepeno last year and i love the way it opens up the flavors with a little kick without being noticibly hot.
so there was that.
and then we still had a couple bags of cranberries, so i decided to freeze them. while i was considering what to do with frozen cranberries i made about 5 batches of these viennese crescent (aka russian tea cake, aka mexican wedding) cookies. i use pecans because walnuts make my tongue swell up, but if you can handle walnuts they're a cheaper alternative. this recipe comes from my mom:

CRESCENT COOKIES
½ pound butter
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup ground nuts (walnuts, pecans, etc)
1 teaspoon vanilla
powdered sugar for rolling

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Cream the butter, then add the granulated sugar, flour, nuts and vanilla and mix thoroughly.  Shape with your fingers into delicate crescents, about 2 inches long and ½ inch wide and thick.  Roll them in the confectioners’ sugar and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for about 30 minutes, until just faintly browned.  Cool, then roll in more confectioners’ sugar before serving.


one thing i noticed in my many iterations of this recipe over the course of the week before christmas (we consumed a lot of butter and nuts!) was that i really prefer sweet cream butter in this recipe over unsalted. in fact, i added a sprinkle of salt in with the powdered sugar in that batch to compensate for the lack of saltiness.

these cookies are crazy good. i recommend making them for a party so that you don't just eat them all week and then make more when you run out. ahem.
just to satisfy my cranberry craving, i served the cookies with a little cranberry centerpiece and a few springs of thyme for holiday cheer.
we also discovered that frozen cranberries are a nice compliment to a glass of champagne - and if you muddle them up a bit they turn your toasting glass a nice shade of pink.

and finally, on christmas i had a craving for truffles, and - you guessed it - cranberries. so i followed this basic recipe for bittersweet chocholate ganache truffles, and then added chopped frozen cranberries to the ganache and rolled them around in cocoa powder and nibs with a little salt. they're spectacular. a little on the goey side because i think the cranberries added too much liquid to the mixture, but they hold their shape and the bittersweet chocolate and tartness of the berries goes really nicely together.

to top it off, i've been eyeing this sleaveless turtleneck sweater for a while that i'd gotten from someone and had in the "might be useful for future craft project" bin - and its cranberry color spoke to me recently. i had seen this tutorial on turning old sweaters into a shrug (or "caplet" as they call it), and i'm really into drapey shawls and shrugs these days, so i tried it out with the cranberry sweater.
you basically turn the sweater sideways, pick out the side seams so it opens on the top and bottom, and then cut off the top (and bottom, depending on the sweater) and sew those together. it worked like a charm. i had to pick up the stitches on the top when i cut off from the sleaves and neck portion of the sweater because it's such a chunky knit, but then I stiched it together, and also stitched the bottom of the sweater (where it's ribbed) together and then gathered it for a little flair. i'm really excited about this shrug right now. hannah and i got our nails done the other day and i later realized i'd chosen a sparkle cranberry color, so going out tonight for new years eve is going to continue the theme: cranberry and cocktail dress, here i come!