Upcycling fuzzy socks, for people with dogs

As we put winter in the rearview, some of your fuzzy socks are probably near the end of their useful life. ...Or are they? Gather your fuzzy socks that have holes, that have lost their elastic, or that you just never wear. I have two very easy ways for you to upcycle and reuse them—one for chores, and one for fun.

#1 - A dust mop.

Swiffer commercials. They make dusting and mopping look so easy. Just swiff your floors, la-la-la, aaaaaand just keep piling those disposable rags in the landfill. Friends, there is an eco-friendly—and just as easy—way to swiff. 

If you have pets and you ever wear fuzzy socks around the house, you've surely noticed the way those socks pick up fur off the floor. You don't even have to be crafty to make this quick DIY dust mop.

1. Cut a slit from the opening of a fuzzy sock just far enough so you can slide the sock over an old sponge mop. (Notice the bottom of my sock had grips, so I positioned the sock in a way that the grips would not be the part swiffing the floor.)
2. Secure the sock using the mop's features.
   If the mop has teeth or velcro for attaching disposable cloths, those can help hold the sock in place. You can also tuck the flaps of the sock into corners of the sponge-holder. Or, just gather the loose end of the sock off to one side and rubber-band it (like the drawstrings that close up Santa's sack).
3. Swiff your heart out.
4. Take the mop outside, remove the sock, and shake it vigorously to kick off the dust and fur. Repeat from Step 2. Throw the sock in the laundry when needed.

#2 - A dog toy.

Here is another craft project that's not even a project, and it reuses both a fuzzy sock and a plastic water bottle. Even if you never buy bottled water, you may be at an event where they're handing it out. Or you'll be around someone who's carrying a disposable bottle. 

1. Snag that empty plastic water bottle before it goes in the recycling bin (or, heaven forbid, into the trash).
2. Shove it into a fuzzy sock.
3. Optional: Sew up or tie off the open end of the sock.
4. Toss it to your dog and enjoy the playtime! (Do not leave the dog unattended with this toy.)
5. When the bottle is chewed and flattened, recycle it and repeat from Step 1.

Our dog goes nuts for this free homemade toy. He loves crunching on the noisy plastic inside something soft. I initially did sew up the open end of the sock (just a rough hand-stitch), but all the playtime has ripped new holes, so now we just shove a bottle into the sock and play fetch and tug-of-war with him. By staying involved in the game ourselves, we can make sure he doesn't pull the bottle out of the sock. The dog has figured out the key to "killing" the toy is to chew the lid off, and then he can really crush the bottle... which is why we don't leave him alone with it.

.

Adventures in Cake Decorating #15 - Football-themed Cakes

Eight-year-olds and football. Apparently.

I have now made two different football-themed cakes for two different little boys. The latest one just recently for my nephew's 8th birthday, and the first one several years ago for a friend's son... for his 8th birthday. What a coincidence! So, here are the cakes:

This first one was a football field. Just a rectangular sheet cake, with green icing for the field turf and orange end zones for his favorite team. Football candies from a party store decorated the sides, while little plastic figurines of players and goal posts adorned the field. The team logo in the center was simply a cardboard cut-out. 

It was rather quick to put together. My friend and I experimented with food coloring spray for the green. It works well for fast, wide coverage, and gave us a darker green very easily. However, I think you can taste the spray more than a mixed-in dye.

A cookie design inspired this year's cake. I originally thought I might go for the rectangular football field again, until I started browsing Pinterest and saw these football stadium cookies. So I enlarged the design and made it three-dimensional for this football stadium cake.

This was a round chocolate cake, with fluffy white icing between the layers (using this copycat Ding Dong cream recipe). The outer frosting is green buttercream, made by mixing in, not spraying on, the food coloring. Gingerbread football-shaped cookies stand around the side, and mini M&Ms are the crowd in the stands. 

How I elevated the stands: I leveled my two round cakes (gave them flat tops) by cutting off their domes before frosting and stacking the layers. Then, I stacked and sculpted a rough slope—like building an old-fashioned stone wall but with frosting and cake scraps. Then I covered it with more frosting and the mini M's. Ta-da! 

Baking and decorating cookies (while simple on their own) plus the 3D scene made this cake's assembly more complicated. Len called it the six-hour cake. But anyway, it was fun to make, fun for people to see, and delicious to eat.

.

Mini Lemon Crepe Cakes For Two

Roses are red... sugar is sweet... Yes, I like Valentine's Day, and I prefer the simple, sweet celebrations over grandiose (expensive and stressful) romantic ordeals.

A short story: One Valentine's Day when Len and I were engaged (20 years ago yesterday, in fact), I had a romantic vision of an elegant home-cooked dinner and dessert for two. A recipe for roast chicken that was anecdotally so good it would make your sweetheart propose to you on the spot—was just roast chicken with lemons. It was good (because roast chicken is good!), but we weren't blown away. Maybe the recipe writer (and her now spouse) ever made roast chicken, and that's why they both thought it was so impressive. For dessert, a rhubarb soufflé, for which we spent far too long in the grocery store trying to find fresh rhubarb, and then we had become too invested to abandon the recipe, so we settled on purchasing rhubarb jam and hoped to improvise. The soufflé did not turn out great. In hindsight, I shouldn't have trusted a recipe that calls for rhubarb in February. Just because it's pink doesn't mean it's in season for Valentine's Day.

Since then, we typically have pizza or some other easy dinner on Valentine's Day so we can just crash on the couch and relax. I'm more inclined to put effort into the dessert.

I've posted here about a few of those desserts:

• Heart-shaped "lollipies" - a sorta fail (2010)
• Valentine chocolate bark - easy and customizable (2012) 
• Chocolate-covered peanut butter nougat - Sticky work, but delicious (2013)

This year, my sweet endeavor was Lemon Mascarpone Crepe Cake. Time consuming, but not difficult.

I adapted this recipe from Completely Delicious: https://www.completelydelicious.com/lemon-mascarpone-crepe-cake/

First, I halved everything, because it's just the two of us. I used my lunch break (benefit of working from home) to make the crepe batter, the lemon curd, and some candied lemon peel, so the batter and curd could chill in the fridge the rest of the day. (Note: My candied lemon peel took a lot less than 20 minutes in the third stage of this recipe. Thinking I had more time, I wasn't watching it closely, and I got hard candy.)

Second, I did not have heavy cream, so I whipped my mascarpone with a splash (two tablespoons-ish) of whole milk and some powdered sugar. (I did this in the evening, right before assembling the cake)

Third, in the evening when I made the crepes, I used this tiny single-egg pan to make little crepes, instead of an ordinary 10-inch crepe pan. 

The size of the crepes doesn't change the flavor or—this is important to note—the time it takes to make them, so do what you want. I cut the recipe in half but still wanted to prioritize the height of the cake, so I decided to make two small individual cakes, stacking many small crepes instead of one larger, shorter cake out of half as many regular-sized crepes. Half the crepe batter recipe in my small pan created 33 4-inch crepes. Cooking the crepes one at a time, 1-2 minutes per crepe... Yeah, it took an hour. Plan for that.

Lastly, the additional decorations are hearts cut out of fruit leather.

The recipe linked above is a good one, but you could use your own favorite recipes for crepes, lemon curd, and mascarpone cream, and start stacking, alternately filling each layer with curd and cream. Or, don't stack the crepes into a cake and just eat them folded and filled. It's all good.

.

Gingerbread Experiments

Happy New Year! It's time to catch up on some holiday baking.

We did not make a gingerbread model of our own house this year, but I did experiment with gingerbread in other ways. 

First were these gingerbread cupcakes.

Gingerbread cupcakes with browned butter buttercream and cookie toppers

Another hit recipe from Half-Baked Harvest. The browned butter frosting stole the show. I'm keeping that in my back pocket for other cakes.

I happened to have a boxed gingerbread mix (It was for Ninja Bread Cookies we didn't make with the niblings), so I whipped that up to make tiny gingerbread men for topping the cupcakes. It was a satisfying and manageable balance of from-scratch and from-box.

As you might imagine, just a baker's dozen of little gingerbread men doesn't deplete an entire batch of gingerbread cookie dough. I saved the leftover dough in the fridge until I decided to make...

Mini gingerbread houses for decorating mugs of cocoa!

Under construction - pieces of mini houses waiting as icing dries (and yes, some broken pieces, too)

I've seen these cute garnishes in catalogs, but I thought it would be fun (and far more economical) to make them myself. There are plenty of templates online you can copy, and it's not difficult to draw one yourself. All you need are two walls with triangular tops, two rectangular walls, and two rectangular roof pieces. Remember that both the front and back walls of the house (the ones with peaks) should have a door -- the two doors create the slot for the rim of the mug.

DIY IRL - Clumsy little gingerbread houses for garnishing mugs

I'd recommend a thick royal icing for constructing your little houses. I used the runny, takes-forever-to-harden, easy-mix icing that came with the boxed cookie dough, so my house construction took patience. Hours and hours of patience. I clumsily fit together the four walls and had to hold them in place for half a minute before they would precariously stand on their own. Then I had to allow each house frame to sit and cure before I could come back and add the roof pieces, which then needed their own time to cure before I could safely pick them up and decorate them. In the end, the tiny houses were kind of messy, and I ultimately ran out of care for any more dainty decorating. I reached the "good enough" stage, and decided I'd had all the fun I wanted. 

And it was fun; I'm glad I tried it. And maybe I will make them again, but I will make my own icing for better control of the assembly and decorating.

.

New Orleans by foot and streetcar

Let's do another adventure flashback.

It's pretty great to arrive in a new city and not have to rent a car. We've taken a few nearly carless vacations. None were completely car-free, because there is almost always transportation to/from your main base of operations -- although if you live near convenient public transit, you could even eliminate the airport taxi. Sometimes we've combined sightseeing with visiting family, so local relatives picked us up and drove us around the entire time. I don't think that counts as going carless, because the family was essentially our rental car service.

One nearly carless vacation was our honeymoon at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. We did take a couple of excursions by bus, but otherwise the resort had everything we needed, including bicycles for venturing into town. 

Another was our Katy Trail biking and camping trip: Flashback to One of Our Favorite Vacations. My parents dropped us off and picked us up at the endpoints, but otherwise we traveled only by Amtrak train and bicycle.

Another was akin to the all-inclusive resort -- a river cruise in Germany and Austria. This was with a tour group, so we had a charter bus for longer excursions, but many day trips were walking tours right off the ship.

Our most recent example was a purer form of going car-free: New Orleans. We went last year (August 2021), and besides a total of four taxis (between home and airport and airport and hotel), we traveled entirely by foot or by public transportation. It was a blast!

Day passes for the streetcars were cheap. We rode them to get places (and at least once we rode to the wrong place, but another streetcar came along soon to take us back in the right direction). And we rode one to the end of the line and back just to see some sights.

We rode a streetcar to the City Park, which has some of those great big old live oaks, and did a lot of walking around there.

The City Park also has a very interesting sculpture garden.

There, we got caught in a downpour and took shelter by tucking ourselves up under the eaves of an old Girl Scout cabin.

We also took a streetcar to St. Louis Cemetery Number 3.

Our hotel was in the French Quarter, so it was a convenient base from which we could easily walk to just about anywhere else we wanted to visit. Some highlights and recommendations:

The "Living with Hurricanes: Katrina & Beyond" exhibit at the Louisiana State Museum. The exhibit is powerful, and the museum faces Jackson Park, another nice little walk-around and a spot to catch some local music.

The World War II Museum - worth the full price of admission - give yourself plenty of time. We fueled up with a big breakfast at The Ruby Slipper, so we toured the museum for several hours and skipped lunch. 

The mostly self-guided tour with cocktail tastings at the Sazerac House. A fun, low-key activity with plenty of drinkable souvenirs in the gift shop.

Bourbon Street, of course. It truly comes to life at night, but if you're not into the partying, you can still enjoy some excellent food and drink at a reasonable hour. 

We liked the Bourbon House's char-grilled oysters and frozen bourbon milk punch so much, we had dinner there twice in one week. Down the street, we tried a local cocktail, the herbsaint frappe, at the Old Absinthe House.

Beckham's Bookshop was one of the cool little bookstores we visited, each one crammed into what seemed like a very old house. Beckham's had a triple-hung window:

We also strolled the Mississippi River riverfront path one morning.

And, yes, we walked to Cafe DuMonde for beignets and cafe au lait, too.

.

Nostalgia rattling in the kitchen

 

Does everyone have shelves of pantry overflow in their basement (or some other room beyond the kitchen)? Or is it just my family?

This week, we added six pints of canned tomatoes to the wooden shelves downstairs. Len and I have canned apple sauce, apple butter, pickled green beans, pickled peppers, lemon-orange marmalade... But I can't remember having canned tomatoes ourselves. 

I do remember my parents canning tomatoes. 

Now, all these years later, everything happening in our kitchen transported me right back to an early-90s summer at home: The steamy air above the stove and sink, the smell of hot tomatoes, the rattle of jars in the pot of boiling water. The satisfaction of a perfectly blanched tomato skin—one that slips right off the fruit in one piece without taking any flesh with it. On the other hand (literally), the sting of fresh tomato juice on some small wound I forgot I had—it could be a paper cut or a raw cuticle. This time, for me, it was the blister on my thumb from working in the yard earlier that day.

My parents typically canned multiple quarts of tomatoes, fresh out of their garden, maybe combined with tomatoes shared by friends and neighbors with abundant crops. These quarts lined the basement shelves until they became chili or pasta sauce or soup over the winter. Len and I had about 8 3/4 pounds of Roma tomatoes, with a few "regular" round ones mixed in. According to my quick research, this amount would yield 2-3 quarts for canning. I chose to use pint jars instead, mostly because I can boil 5 or 6 of them in a regular kitchen pot rather than hauling out the giant pot that's tall enough to handle quarts for only 3 jars.

Here's a quick rundown of our method:

1. Wash and sterilize the jars and lids.
2. Set up one pot of water boiling and another pot or large bowl with ice water.
3. In batches, gather the tomatoes in a mesh bag and dip into the boiling water for about a minute.
4. Lift the tomatoes out of the boiling water and set in ice water to cool quickly. Remove cooled tomatoes to a clean bowl.
5. In the bottom of each clean pint jar, add one tablespoon of store-bought lemon juice (this acid is required for safer preservation of the tomatoes).
6. Core and quarter the tomatoes.
7. Pack the tomato pieces into each jar, using a butter knife or bubble remover tool to push the tomatoes down to fill the space and release their juices and to force any air bubbles to the surface by running the tool down the sides of the jar. Leave about 1/2 inch of head space. 
8. Add some salt and sugar to the jar.
9. Top each jar with a lid and band and put it in a boiling water bath. Boil the pints for 35 minutes.
10. Allow to cool several hours or overnight, and then check that all the lids have sealed.
11. Store with your other canned goods, and plan to eat them before next tomato season.

.

Brandied cherries - shelf life

 An update on the brandied cherries I made and stored earlier this year.

Last week, I tried a new combination. I won't say I discovered it, because others have surely tried this or similar combinations before. It was this: brandied cherries and their syrup in a glass of Cherry Dr Pepper.

And thus I learned two new things.

First, the cinnamon-clove-cherry syrup is a wonderful flavor addition to the Dr Pepper. Could it be because those are among the soda's 23 secret flavors? Who knows?

Second, you should believe the brandied cherry recipes that say you can store them in the fridge for 4-6 months. As for mine, almost exactly 6 months later, the syrup itself still tastes great, but the cherries are going mushy and now taste "other than fresh." I guess I should have been making more cocktails or topping more vanilla ice cream to use them up more quickly in these few months.

.

Tortilla soup with roasted tomatoes and peppers

Summer fades, and we stand at the confluence of cooler evenings and the long-awaited bounty of edible nightshades (if your garden has been lucky in tomatoes and peppers). Now is the perfect time for tortilla soup.

I've taken my dad's recipe, which is already his own mish mash of two or three recipes, and changed it up by adding bell peppers to the tomato base. 

And roasting them.

Dad's Tortilla Soup, modified

Corn oil
4 corn tortillas, cut into strips (can skip this to save time)*
4 large tomatoes, cut into quarters
4 bell peppers, cut into quarters, seeds and ribs removed
salt and pepper
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small jalapeno, diced (also remove seeds if you prefer less heat)
2 tsp. cumin
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 tsp. ground coriander
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
Other optional garnishes: diced avocado, roasted corn kernels, more diced tomato, grated cheese, chopped fresh herbs (cilantro and parsley are great), lime slices for squeezing juice, and sour cream or Mexican crema

*Optional: You can skip the frying in Step 2 below to save time, and instead use broken tortilla chips as garnish; however, the home-fried tortilla strips are a superior soup garnish, being thinner, crisper, and more fun. If you have time, I recommend doing it. 

1. Roast the tomatoes and bell peppers: Toss the tomatoes and bell peppers with oil, salt and pepper and spread into a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until wrinkled and slightly charred/browned.
2. Fry the tortilla strips and save for garnish: In a deep soup pot, heat 1 Tbsp. corn oil over medium-high heat. Working in batches sauté tortilla strips briefly until crisp and remove to a paper towel or newspaper. Add more oil as needed until all strips are fried.
3. Sauté the other veggies: Add another Tbsp oil to the pot if needed, and add the onion, garlic, and jalapeno. Cook 1 to 2 minutes.
4. Reduce heat and add everything else: Reduce the heat to low; add the roasted tomatoes and peppers, tomato paste, cumin, coriander, cayenne, and a 1 tsp. each salt and pepper. Cook for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the stock and cook uncovered another 20 minutes.
5. Puree: Using an immersion blender or transferring  the soup in batches to a blender or food processor, puree until smooth. (Caution: blending hot foods builds pressure. Open your blender's lid's center hole and hold a rag over it instead. You can gently plug the hole but also lift it occasionally, keeping the whirling food inside but allowing steam to escape.)
6. Serve and garnish with the tortilla crisps (or broken chips) and anything else you like.

No, I do not have a photo of the finished product. Do you want to eat it or look at it?

.

Ad hoc agua fresca - Watermelon, Cucumber, Mint

Watermelon and cucumber are possibly the most refreshing fresh produce you can eat in the summer, what with their crisp textures and high water contents. They're the perfect duo for a refreshing beverage like agua fresca. 

Agua fresca just sounds refreshing, doesn't it? Commonly associated with Mexican street vendors, this fruity water lives up to its name and, this summer, made a refreshing debut in my kitchen.

Some may argue with me, because I'm no experta en agua fresca, but I'm going out on a limb to say it's the kind of thing you can make without a recipe. For my first foray into making agua fresca, I Googled around for some recipes to inform myself on the ingredients I wanted to use, and then I walked away from the screen, went to the kitchen, and winged it.

I saw a recipe that used a whole watermelon, one cucumber, and lemon juice. A saw another for cucumber-mint agua fresca. And so on. Ultimately, I used half a seedless watermelon, one long English cucumber, a handful of mint leaves, equal parts fresh orange and lime juices (maybe 1/2 cup?), and about 2 cups water. These are the things I had and wanted to use up. Most recipes also add some sugar. I added none.

That's the basis of my argument that you can just wing this recipe however you want. You can make it to taste -- your taste.

So, you chop the watermelon and cucumber into pieces that will fit in your blender. You remove any thick stems from the mint. 

In batches, blend the solids with the juice and some water. 

Strain it to remove the pulp. 

Refrigerate and/or serve over ice.

The end result? Lovely pink water to quench your thirst on a hot day.

My non-recipe made 3 quarts of aqua fresca.

And then. Then, I discovered a quart of sun tea I'd forgotten about in the fridge. Half and half, anyone? Just point me to the nearest hammock.

Another post about gas: good news and bad

Have you been driving less because of the high gas prices lately?

The flexibility to work from home has been a boon for us while higher gas prices have coincided with some office renovations that made it even easier for Len to avoid his daily commute some days. While I have been working remotely since March 2020, there are other commutes I've made less frequent in the last few weeks. We've biked to church, for example. It's a 17.2-mile round trip we've previously taken just for the exercise and environment's benefit, but I admit the gas prices were what recently motivated us to make the time for it two weeks in a row.

We're not the only ones choosing to stay home or use alternate transportation. I just read a news article that these high gas prices are coinciding with lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Apparently gasoline sales in June were about 5% below June 2019 levels and 2.6% below a year ago (since the pandemic affected travel and decreased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as well). In April 2020, as pandemic restrictions set in, Americans drove 40% fewer miles than the same month the previous year. Two years later, people are driving more again but still a little bit less than pre-pandemic levels -- reports are that Americans drove 6% fewer miles this past April than they did in April 2019. 

That's a good thing, driving less. Continued high gas prices ought to encourage continued reductions in driving. However...

First of all, people just hate the high prices. So, we'll all be grumpy. But second of all, and perhaps more important, if we're only focusing on the high gas prices, we're not looking at the big picture of our environmental impact. That 6% drop in driving resulted in only a 1% drop in overall U.S. carbon emissions. That's the bad news. If we (the U.S.) are going to meet our goal of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030, simply driving less is not nearly enough -- but it's also not nothing. We should continue to drive less.

To sum up: On one hand, the high gas prices can be a good thing for making us think about how much we really need to drive vs. walking, biking, telecommuting, or taking public transportation. On the other hand, the gas prices are painful to the people who do not have the luxury of working from home or living close enough to the grocery store to walk there, so it would be great to see prices go back down. It would be even greater, though, if those of us who have been able to change our travel habits because of the gas prices keep up those changed habits -- even when cheap gas makes it easier to drive -- for the global good.

.

Gas or clothes? A math problem for a hot day

Here's a hypothetical situation (or maybe it was real...) that weighs the cost of having the wrong clothes. You work at an office 12 miles north of your home, a 25-minute drive in normal workday traffic. Today, it's 100 degrees out and your office space is under remodeling (i.e. the office is rather dusty right now); therefore, it is appropriate to show up to work in a t-shirt and shorts. There's an evening meeting taking place at another office location, another 12 miles and 25 minutes north of your office (i.e., twice as far from home). Midday, you find out that the dress code for the evening meeting is "business casual." There is unmistakably no "business" about your currently casual clothes.

There are several possible solutions to this problem, really. But, let's say showing up under-dressed is not a good one, and you aren't lucky enough to be able to borrow clothes from an officemate. We'll instead narrow it down to two main choices: retrieve clothes from home or go shopping? You must decide how to best spend your time and money this afternoon.

Do you drive home, change clothes, and then drive back, passing your office and continuing on to the evening meeting's location?

Do you purchase an outfit from somewhere near the office?

Do you spend on gas or clothes? Let's do some calculations.

At today's gas prices of close to $6/gallon, and your car averaging a decent 30 miles or more per gallon in suburban driving, the extra 24-mile home and back will cost around $5 in gas.

Buying a brand new outfit costs much more than that of course, but one shirt and a pair of pants from a thrift store can be less than $10. With the luck of a few thrift stores within a 3-mile radius of your office, you can spend less than $1 on gas getting to one or even two of them.

In dollars alone, driving home beats buying an outfit. But, we should also calculate time. The round trip from office to home and back to office is going to cost you about an hour. A trip to a nearby store, with a few minutes shopping and another few trying on... Let's say you might successfully purchase an outfit in under 20 minutes.

We're at 50-60 minutes and $5 on gas vs. 20 minutes and $10 on clothes. Are those 30-40 minutes worth more or less than $5 to you?

Let's think about other hidden costs here. Calculating wear and tear on the car is not precise, but we'll guesstimate about $7 for the trip home and back, using a rough average of $0.30 per mile based on various charts. And how about the fact that you simply burn the gas, adding pollution to the air and getting nothing in return except the privilege of wearing clothes you already own.

You can argue that you don't need more clothes, so it is impractical to buy a new outfit, but at least you're getting something for your money! You get to keep the clothes and wear them again -- if you happen to find something you like. It's possible the thrift store will offer only choices you find tolerable to wear for one night, in which case you can donate the clothes back later. You'll be out ten bucks, but you'll have saved at least 30 minutes and won't have degraded the air quality or added anything to a landfill. (Someone may suggest buying a new outfit from a regular store, wearing it with the sales tags intact, and simply returning it the next day to spend $0 on the clothes, but I will remind you -- beyond the fact that you'd be committing a form a fraud -- it is 100 degrees out! That outfit will certainly appear used.)

Can you tell I've reached what I consider the most logical conclusion? Thrift-store clothes win over gas. Do you disagree? Tell me why.

.

Adventures in Cake Decorating #14 - Spider-Man Cake 2

It's really more of a building cake or a city cake, and you certainly could top it with any superhero (or no superhero at all), but let me tell you the story of how this so-called Spider-Man cake came to be.

Once upon a time, I made a Spider-Man-Batman cake...

and afterward vowed never again to use red icing as the main color...

only to do it again on a Mickey Mouse cake.

The next time I included Spider-Man on a cake, I used red as the main color but only for his small section of the cake. That's right, it was the Multi-Hero cake!

A new Spider-Man cake request came up this year. Because the birthday boy and his mom had no specific design in mind, I had the perfect plan for using no red icing: a Spider-Man scene, instead of a cake that looked like the hero himself. 

I remembered that small toys make handy cake decorations (a competing interest with my preference for everything on the cake to be edible, but a much easier option than sculpting a Spider-Man figurine out of modeling chocolate!). And so I had a vision -- two skyscraper cakes, with a Spider-Man swinging from his web between them!

OK, in reality, two moderately sized city building cakes, with some spiderwebs piped here and there and Spider-Man standing atop one building, shooting a white chocolate web to the other. A white cardboard cake board underneath it all would provide a canvas for drawing city streets below to complete the scene. What follows is how I executed this plan, with a photo of the finished product, of course. One note: As with many of my cakes, I rushed to finish.

It started with one vanilla cake and one chocolate cake, each baked as large, thin rectangle. I used baking sheets rather than cake pans so I could simply cut squares out for stacking multiple thin layers of the two flavors:

I froze these stacks overnight. In the morning, I trimmed, shaved, and sculpted the uneven sides of the frozen cakes with a serrated bread knife. I spread a thin layer of light chocolate buttercream on all sides (the "crumb coat"), and froze it again just to harden the icing faster.

The light chocolate buttercream became the main frosting for the brownstone-like buildings. Fudge chocolate icing right out of the can is what's top. A little white buttercream with yellow coloring made the windows, with the remaining white used to pipe a couple of spiderwebs on the building corners.

The web coming from Spider-Man's hand is white chocolate. I melted white chocolate morsels and piped a web pattern onto wax paper (it turned out more like a net or a lattice, but within the scene it works). I propped the wax paper into a slight curve -- how I wanted the white chocolate to cool and harden, rather than just flat. It worked but was very delicate and broke when I moved it. Not to worry -- I melted the extra white chocolate and used it as glue to hold the web pieces back together... But I didn't have time to let the repair solidify before we needed to transport the cake to the birthday party. So, toothpicks are holding the broken web in place.

Ta-da!

.

Homemade tomato paste and a sun-drying experience

Don't underestimate the power of tomato paste umami. The times I leave tomato paste out of recipes that call for it ("oh, it's only 2 tablespoons"), the recipes turn out just fine, but... they lack a depth I know should be there, having tasted them with tomato paste before. I've come to know which of my recipes benefit the most from tomato paste and, for these, try to keep some handy in the pantry or freezer.

There isn't a huge need to make your own tomato paste, because the little cans are inexpensive, and you can repackage and freeze the leftovers. 

However. 

If you have an abundance of tomatoes, and you're looking for a way to use them besides tomato sauce or salsa, homemade tomato paste is another way to preserve and intensify the tomatoey taste of summer.

I usually make my tomato paste in the oven -- a great method, except that recently we had a string of 90-degree, sunny days at the same time I was dealing with a ton of tomatoes. No way was I going to sabotage my efforts to keep the house cool on a hot day by oven-roasting for three-plus hours. I considered the crock pot, a somewhat energy-conscious alternative, but it cannot duplicate the roasty flavor from oven heat. While looking for my usual recipe (just instructions, really), I discovered the eco-friendliest alternative that was shining right in front of me: sun-drying.

Hot diggity! I had the sun, the heat, and the time (it can take a few days).

Ultimately, I used a combination of sun-drying and slow cooker methods to make tomato paste this time.

Different recipes online use different amounts -- 8 lbs tomatoes, 10 lbs, 11 lbs. Whatever. I quartered an armload of Roma tomatoes until they filled my large pot. It happened to total about 8 pounds.

I cooked the tomatoes for a short time until the skins started to peel and juice started to ooze. 

Then, I processed the tomatoes through a conical food mill (a.k.a. chinois, a.k.a. "china cap"), stirred in a sprinkling of salt, and spread the puree across a baking sheet. You may need more than one baking sheet to keep the layer of puree fairly thin.

Out into the sun it went, protected from bugs and everything the maple tree drops by a rigged picnic net and cheese cloth.

Just because of the configuration of our fence, our house, and the surrounding trees, no one spot in our back yard gets full sun all day long, so I did have to move the setup a couple of times throughout the day so it maintained maximum sun exposure.

Besides protecting sun-dried foods from critters and debris, you also must protect it from overnight humidity, which can reintroduce moisture you had spent all day evaporating and promote spoilage. Temperatures were falling below 80 each night, and it was somewhat humid, so I brought the tomato-paste-in-progress inside each night, where I transferred it to the crock pot on low for continued slow reduction. In the morning, I spread it back out on a baking sheet and put it back outside.

On Day 3, my paste had reduced into a thick, brick-red paste.

Lesson learned: When I make this in the oven, I check it every half hour and stir or scrape the puree as needed to keep a nice even layer. Out in the sun, I didn't need to check it as frequently as that, but I should have checked on it a few times to scrape the thinnest edges in toward the center. Not having done this, I ended up with some areas that were more like fruit leather than paste (see the darkest smears where the metal really shows through).

Nevertheless, the portion I could scrape into a jar tasted great and is now in my freezer, awaiting its proper place in my next Zucornchile Rajas Bake.

.

Adventures in Cake Decorating #13 - Dinosaur Cake and Cookies

Three years after I made it, let me tell you about this dinosaur cake and cookies. It's a good example of combining two simple decorating components into one impressive overall look -- a frosting petal technique and cutout sugar cookies.

Sure, the dinosaur-shaped cookies on their own could suffice as a dino-themed party treat. There was indeed a plate of the dinosaur cookies served alongside the cake. But, by using the cookies as part of the cake's decoration, an otherwise nondescript (albeit colorful) cake got a thematic upgrade with a fun edible topper.

The color theme came from the party invitation or its paper decorations. I'm pretty certain the idea for the frosting "scales" look came from the images of cakes my sister-in-law sent me for inspiration. You know, the standard "I like this. Can you do it?" text messages that occur before each birthday. It was a new technique for me, and one I haven't used again but would like to.

To create these buttercream petals/scales, you pipe a vertical line of fat dots and then smear them to the side with a small offset spatula or the back of a spoon. Pipe your next line of dots over the tail of the previous line. When you've come full circle around the cake and make the final row of dots, you won't be able to smear it underneath the first set for an infinite overlap. Just smear enough to close the gap and make that the backside of your cake! You could of course pipe these petals/scales all in a single color simply for the interesting texture or arrange multiple colors in any other pattern.

For the cookies, just pick your favorite sugar cookie recipe, preferably one intended for cutouts, meaning it won't rise or spread very much while baking. My go-to sugar cookie icing is just powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and milk, combined in that order and starting with as little milk as possible, adding no more than a tablespoon of milk at a time until the icing is the consistency you need.

There are a couple of things I would do differently if I was making this cake again, and they both have to do with neatness.

1. I would have baked a few of the sugar cookies on sticks (like cookie lollipops), which I could then just poke down into the cake to hold the cookies more neatly upright on top of the cake, rather than nesting the cookies in little piles of frosting. (I guess these dinos look like they're trudging forward through a swamp.)
2. I would have been more patient when decorating the cookies so each base icing color was fully dry before I tried adding the icing accents (eyes, spots, etc.), which would prevent color seepage and help with neater, more defined details on the cookies.

We can take a brief look at the baking of this cake, in which pure happenstance resulted in rave reviews from those eating it. Something was wrong with the oven. The two 8-inch chocolate rounds were taking forever to bake. It turned out to be fudgiest cake I'd ever made, thanks to cooking low and slow and probably being a bit underdone. I also was running out of frosting ingredients and didn't want to make a late-night run to the store. I stretched what little chocolate frosting I had (for between the cake's layers) by whipping some heavy cream into the buttercream base. It whipped up fluffy and cool, and people thought it was delicious.

In addition to finding a reason to pipe petal-scales onto another cake because they look cool, I am also on the lookout for more opportunities to incorporate decorated sugar cookies into celebrations because I have so many cookie cutters I haven't used yet -- playing card suits, sports items, air/land/sea transportation, several holiday shapes... 

These are some of my previous cake-cookie combos:

Bowling cake – sugar cookie bowling pins bursting behind a bowling ball cake (baked in a bowl)

WordWorld cake – a few animals made of letters (it makes sense if you've seen the show) served beside the cake

Cookie Monster cupcakes – mini chocolate chip cookies in the "mouth" of each Cookie Monster as well as ABC and 123 sugar cookie sets served beside the cake

.

A new old furniture thing

Someone was throwing out this cool piece of furniture. Of course we carried it home, where Len got to work refurbishing.

The drawers didn't fit -- they were separating at their corners, and the wood had probably also expanded from humidity or something. Len tightened up the seams and sanded the sides until the drawers once again fit their slots. An interesting thing about the drawers is the type of pulls they have -- I've never seen drawer pulls like these, and they're tacked into place with cotter pins instead of screws.

A drawer front and inside, respectively.

The piece had a naturally distressed appearance thanks to old woodworm holes, and it was already lightly whitewashed in country chic style, but it had a pinkish hue. So, Len redid the finish to our tastes by starting with a dark undercoat and then whitewashing over that.

Tada! I'm not sure if this qualifies as a side table or a half dresser or what, but it's my new favorite unique antique chic thing to collect our random clutter near the front door.

.

Say yes to less

Earth Day was last week, and so my question to you is, What were your Earth Day Resolutions? Oh, you didn't make any? It's not too late -- let's resolve to change something now. I propose a resolution of less.

Popular Science recently published an article on how to go zero-waste at the grocery store. I have to edit this idea from simply "go zero-waste" to "go zero-waste personally" because by the time your food gets to the grocery store, some of it has already been wasted -- about one-fifth of the 40 million tons of discarded food in America never even touched a grocery store shelf; it was thrown out by the farmer, manufacturer, or distributor for a variety of reasons. The retail stores themselves then discard another fifth of that 40 million tons. Your mission, then, is to waste nothing on your end.

The Popular Science article suggests a circular-use mindset for achieving zero waste, rather than the typical linear product lifecycle of buy-use-trash-repeat. For example, you can reuse glass jars, and even if you don't, glass is more easily and infinitely recyclable as opposed to single-use plastic bags (which some cities--and now the state of New Jersey--have already banned stores from providing).

Just ask yourself, "Can I keep this out of the landfill?" If the only way to avoid answering "no" is to bury the thing in your backyard, choose an alternative product/packaging -- unless we're talking about a compostable item (like an apple core), in which case disposing of it in your backyard actually is a circular use. Metal, glass, and cardboard are all better packaging options than plastic.

But let's back up a second. The real first step in wasting less is buying less. Use what you have first--and use all of it. In tandem with the zero-waste grocery article, Popular Science also put out this handy tutorial on what the expiration dates on products actually mean. Instead of throwing things out of your pantry on autopilot, understand which foods can generally be consumed safely after longer storage. And, prevent things from expiring on your watch in the first place with proper storage and first-in-first-out usage. 

The advice of using what you already have also applies to the items that will help you reduce your grocery waste, like reusable shopping bags. Do not go out and buy new cloth grocery bags when I bet you already have some at home. Or you could even use an old pillowcase, like you're trick-or-treating in the produce department. I dare you.

Let's not let our resolutions of less stop at the grocery store. 

Drive less -- To do so, you'll combine multiple errands into one streamlined route or you'll use alternative transportation (public transit, your bike, your own two feet). When you do drive, use less fuel by driving more efficiently. Besides driving patiently on properly inflated tires and with a lighter load, you might like to try some more advanced techniques of hypermiling, a term that pops up whenever gas prices rise. Be forewarned: I've posted about it before, and you'll see in that post as well as the much newer article linked earlier in this paragraph, some hypermiling techniques may not be legal or safe. Drafting, for example, requires you follow the vehicle in front of you much more closely than the standard one car length for every 10 mph; however, you do not have to outright tailgate. Len stayed behind large trucks for as much time as possible during our last drive from St. Louis to Aurora. This method combines drafting and slightly lower highway speeds, and it resulted in our spending less than half a tank of gas -- a record low for this route.

That trip leads me to another resolution of less -- Buy fewer new clothes. It's not unusual for our family get-togethers to include a going-through of bags of clothes. An aunt or a cousin will have purged their closet, and so the other aunts and cousins sift through the outcast shirts and sweaters before the clothing continues on to some donation drop-off. I guess my style is whatever my younger cousins were wearing 5-10 years ago.

Speaking of clothes, I'll now advocate that you resolve to wash your clothes less often. Fewer washings will not only save water but also reduce wear and tear on the fibers of your garments. I tend to stick to the sniff-stain-ick test to know when it's time to throw an item of clothing into the laundry hamper. Sniff: Does it stink? Stain: Does it have food or dirt on it that I cannot simply brush off or spot clean? Ick: Did it touch something gross (e.g. raw chicken juice on an apron, a used handkerchief, sweaty gym clothes)? Many items, especially outerwear, will pass all 3 tests for at least two wearings if not more.

While we're conserving water, will you also resolve to shower less often? Or how about just shower for less total time? If your typical routine is a 10- to 15-minute shower every day, that could mean aiming for one 10-minute shower every other day or taking a shorter, 5-minute shower every day -- either way, you just cut your shower water usage in half. Maybe you could use the sniff-stain-ick test on yourself, as well as some common sense -- i.e., why would I shower in the morning before running a 10K when I know I will want to shower my sweaty self afterward?

OK, I'm ending it here. There are so many other ways we can consume less, use less, and waste less, and you get the gist. Less is more impactful.

.

Last Thursday, we had 45 mph wind gusts as the temperature slowly climbed from the 30s into the upper 40s. And, it was sunny. Time for the first line-drying of 2022. 

As the laundry basket became emptier, the wind started pushing it around the patio. I had to chase a few socks -- thank goodness for a fenced-in yard. Although, you can see the clothes were whipping around in every direction. I was pleasantly surprised to find most items still clipped to the line later in the afternoon -- and relieved that the few things blown loose were at least still in our own yard and not, say, in a tree down the block.

If it had been warmer, I'd have expected the first pieces of clothing to be already blown dry by the time I got to the end of the line, but even in these high winds, everything needed a few hours in the chilly air. There's nothing like some good flapping in the breeze to shake the wrinkles out of the laundry and infuse the fibers with fresh spring air. 

.

Parts of the whole – a more sustainable way of looking at things

Things. If there is one thing we humans all have in common, it's things. We tend to have a lot of them, whatever the things are, and we use them until they wear out. So let's talk about the importance of replacing parts and not wholes.

I've talked before about the pretty nice space heater someone trashed and then Len fixed by replacing an inexpensive part. Here's another true story. 

I was baking a cake -- in fact, it was this dinosaur cake I still have to tell you about -- and it was taking forever. Something was wrong with the oven. It turned out to be fudgiest chocolate cake I'd ever made, thanks to cooking low and slow and possibly being underdone, but anyway, I also needed to bake dinosaur cookies. We packed up the ingredients and borrowed the in-laws' kitchen for the rest of the evening. 

We explained our oven wasn't staying hot. Maybe I'd even stuck my head under the broiler to investigate and had Googled it already to determine the problem was the igniter. And, this question arose: "Oh no, so you have to buy a new oven now?"

No. We most certainly did not have to buy a whole new oven just because it wasn't working. We especially did not have to buy a whole new oven because we could pinpoint the specific part that wasn't working. And that's the thing about things. It's too easy to just buy a whole new thing, so we think that's the best solution. But, you're wasting your money and overfilling the trash heap. It's just as easy to buy a new part instead. In fact, I'd argue it's easier to buy a part instead of a whole, because parts can fit in your mailbox, and sometimes whole things (like an oven) can't even fit in your car, and sometimes even fitting through the front door looks iffy. 

Even if you're not inclined to DIY, an appliance repair person can replace just a part for you. The labor may not be cheap, but it's gotta cost less than a whole new appliance delivered and installed. And then you have something pocket-sized to throw away instead of something oven-sized. A great example -- your vehicle. When something breaks on your car, you don't just buy a whole new car, do you? Maybe you do, I don't know. I think most of us don't. You can apply that logic to so many other things -- repair instead of replace.

I mentioned new parts fitting in your mailbox, and that brings me to some sad news. We will probably have to order online any vacuum parts for our decades-old Kirby, because the vacuum-repair shop near us, All Vac, recently closed for good after 38 years. The owner retired, is all, but he noted in the newspaper article about the event that newer vacuums aren't as easily serviceable and instead have become part of the "throwaway society." 

So yeah, some things -- especially the more electronic parts they have -- are hard to fix, and it does make more sense to just replace the whole thing. But, I encourage you to take a look at your things when they stop working, and really see -- Could you just replace a part? Can it be repaired instead of replaced? If it must be thrown away -- again especially for the electronics -- Can you recycle it? We just got the City of Aurora's notice of the next free electronics recycling drop-off. I bet your city has one, too.

Don't be part of the "throwaway society."

.

Mobile bike repair shops

Here's a fun and useful thing: Mobile bike mechanics who run their business out of their own home or even set up shop like food trucks, maybe with a regular tent at your local farmers market, or an elusive nomad whose ever-changing location you follow on Instagram, or the knowledgeable technician who makes house calls.

I'm acquainted with a guy who left his corporate office job to work in a bike shop. It's not because the pay is better. These tend to be people living their passion, and some of them have found a sustainable business model in omitting a leased brick-and-mortar.

I'm not suggesting you shun your local bike shop. A permanent location has many benefits for the workers, the customers, and the community. First of all, you always know where they are. They can hold a larger inventory of new bikes, parts, accessories. They're often the host and meeting spot for riding groups. Sometimes they have a store cat, like a used bookstore. I'm in!

Today, I'm simply highlighting the cool idea of these mobile bike shops. They contribute to our sense of community in other ways. For starters, you typically have to call them for the day's location and hours. They bring more visibility to biking culture by being all over the place. Sometimes, they're just kinda neat. I was inspired to talk about mobile bike shops and to try to find a few out there by an article in Bicyling featuring a bike shop on a boat in London's canal system. How cool is that?

So, here are just a few I found that may or not be in your area. I can't give you an honest thumbs up or down on the quality of service for any of these, as I have not used any of them yet myself.

Floating Bike Repairs, River Lea, England - the bike shop on a boat.

Chad's Mobile Bike Repair, Naperville, IL - will even come work in your garage. I think maybe I've called him before about a spoke repair, and he was straightforward with me that he'd have to go to a bike shop anyhow to get the parts, so I might consider just taking it to the shop for such an easy repair. (I've replaced my own spokes before, too, but sometimes you just don't feel like doing the work yourself!)

Velofix, multiple areas, North America - a fleet of van-based bike shops locally operated by residents within those communities.

On the Fly Mobile Bicycle Repair, Chicagoland, IL - their truck brings the bike shop to you.

Mike's Bikes, mid-California - these are actual storefronts that offer mobile service. It doesn't exactly fit into the cool, nomadic bike mechanic lifestyle I'm glorifying today, but I included them because of the words on their homepage (when I visited it, anyway): 

Wind in your hair, money in your wallet! Skip the gas pump! Shop Gazelle E-bikes!

Yes! People. A good number of us could be getting around town powered by own free energy (and maybe assisted by a little battery power), instead of by car. So, I'll end with that. Bicycle commuting season is open!

.

Humane harassment, or how to get your neighbors to move (if they are squirrels)

The evidence was there in early winter. Scatterings of rough-edged little squares of paper and cardboard. Shredded leaves. A random sock. 

One evening, Len and I went out to the garage, armed with a broomstick and a bright work light to -- it turned out -- scream in terror and chase away the squirrel who'd been nesting there. Quote of the night, from Len, after the squirrel used his shoulder as a stepping stone in its frenzied path out of the rafters: "It was on me!"

Our garage is rustic. It's over a hundred years old and is really more of an enclosed carport or a well-built shack. It is impossible to completely protect it from nature, but Len closed up some particularly accessible openings to discourage the squirrel from returning.

Life went on, until another discovery in late winter. Animal tracks in the snow. Popcorn kernels spilling from the bean bag set, which we now realize should not be stored in the garage. Then, with the sneak preview of springtime weather one morning, I heard rustling on the back porch (underneath which is the best place for squirrels to sneak into the garage). Sure enough, mama squirrel was there, chewing up a piece of cardboard into fresh nesting material.

I let the dog scare her away, but she didn't go far. She was watching us, giving us the squirrel side-eye and some vocal scolding. So, I went on a stakeout. I stood still and silent in the garage, waited for her to venture back. She did soon and hesitated at the threshold under the porch, sensing my presence. This time, when I banged on the wall to scare her away, she ran away chittering and screeching -- and she kept on screeching from a fencepost nearby. Clearly, she was very ticked off but wanted to stay close, which meant one thing: baby squirrels.

I braved an ascent up the ladder to find a new nest in the garage rafters. I jostled the leaves with a broomstick and then stuck my head near to it for a listen. There was a soft irritated murmur -- a "whiny growl" as one animal removal expert refers to it.

I'm not cruel. I also know that mama squirrel will chew through almost anything to return to her offspring, so sealing off her entrance is not an option yet. Also, I mentioned the garage is rustic. It's not worth it to us (yet) to call animal removal services. The solution for now is humane harassment. Be a nuisance. Make the space feel unsafe for raising their young, and the squirrels might relocate themselves. 

Every couple of hours, I revisited the garage to make loud human-noises, rap on things with the broomstick, and turn on the overhead light. Only one other time that day did I encounter the squirrel inside. The nest was clearly empty by the next day. Either the baby was old enough to climb out on its own and follow mom to a new nest, or mom wasted no time building a new shelter and carried the baby away in her mouth. I saw her later around the neighbor's log pile...

However, a few days later, we entered the garage and heard scampering overhead. The squirrel was back in the rafters. Hoping to move back in? Or just going after a number of walnuts she has stashed in the corners? After giving her a chance to leave, I poked around. 

Another nest of leaves -- just a few feet away from the previously vacated nests. And now anytime I poked a broomstick near the nest, the whiny growl from within it was loud enough I could hear it from the ground. Another day of random disruptions, followed by another empty nest... followed by the return of growling squirrels. We even tried soaking the nest and surrounding rafters with vinegar-water to repel the rodents (one good reason to keep your childhood Super Soaker water gun). They're super annoyed for sure, but not enough to move -- especially not during this stretch of colder weather. We'll have to keep up the frequent annoyances (and our own fear of squirrel paratroopers) for several days to persuade these unwelcome tenants to permanently pack up.

And we'll add to our spring chore list: clean out the garage and take the leaf blower to the rafters.

.