Sushi Zo

We went to Sushi Zo for Uri's birthday, it's alway a treat. When you taste their fish you get hooked, you should try it yourself. Enjoy.

Birthday cake

For Uri's birthday I made inside-out German chocolate cake. He's not crazy about coconut so I made salted caramel filling. The quantity of the caramel and the chocolate ganache are way to big for this small cake. It's way to rich for our healthy day to day eating habits, but birthdays come only ones a year. Happy Birthday Uri.

Quilt update II

Machine and hand stitches. A modern combo of gray floss on hand dyed pieces.

Round zucchini, apple and ginger preserve

Growing organic vegetables in your garden means that you need to be very creative with all the produce you get. Zucchinis grow like crazy in our garden. I made zucchini soup, roasted zucchinis with kasha, zucchini patties and my latest creation is zucchini, apple and ginger preserve. You can eat it on bread, meat or use it as feeling for your pie. I'm sharing the recipe, enjoy.

Kafka

A series of Kafka paperbacks designed by Peter Mendelsund using FF Mister K font from FontShop.

New crop June 2014

All but the tomatoes is from our vegetable garden including the huge kabocha squash.

To all the great dads

Walking foot

My sewing machine is back, I can't wait to start using the new walking foot on my quilt.

Tsujita LA

Tsujita LA, an artisan noodle place on Sawtelle Blvd in Los Angeles. The portions are huge and the soup is very rich and tasty. We went there for lunch on Saturday and they had amazing ramen noodles in pork soup (with or without the egg) or on the side. We ordered both. Next time I'll order the ramen on the side, it's nice to have control over how much to dip the noodles in the soup. The portions were too big for us, one order to share would be enough.

Busy summer

My dear daughter just graduated high school and heading to college in the fall. I am so proud of her, she's a happy, mature and loving young woman. It's hard to believe how time flies by.

Scandinavian coconut cookies

New favorite, Scandinavian coconut cookies. You can find the recipe here, unfortunately the salt didn't add anything to my opinion. The cookies are very delicious and because I have a chocoholic at home I dipped a few in melted chocolate. Pretty amazing.

Quilt update

I have an Husqvarna Viking Freesia 425 sewing machine that needed to be serviced immediately. I got a new walking foot to sew the layers of the quilt together, it didn't work very well with my regular foot. This project is on hold for a few days until I'll get my machine back, I can't wait to continue working on it, I'm anxious to see the end result.

Portland

A few photos taken by Uri Rodan of our latest Portland trip.

Kitchen sink dyes

The class I attended at Wildcraft Studio School last Friday was all about natural dyes. We used two different mordants, alum and iron and dyed our fabrics and yarn in different dye baths to see what colors we get. The alum mordant gives very bright colors and the iron reacher and darker colors. The different dyes we used (from top to bottom): two baths of red cabbage, one with salt and the other with vinegar. The salt made the fabrics bluer and the vinegar redder. ; Mint ; Yellow onion skin ; Wild fennel ; Turmeric ; Lupine. It was amazing to see how quickly some of them turned colorful and how different dye material behave. It was very informative, inspiring and fun class. I wish it was closer and I could attend more classes. Thank you Chelsea.

Cooking colors

I just came back from a wonderful long weekend in Portland and Washington. I attended a great class at WildCraft Studio school called Kitchen Sink Dyes. Chelsea Heffner, the owner and teacher of this class is very knowledgable and kind. We had a wonderful walk in the forest to harvest Lupine, an amazing fresh and yummy lunch and a great time learning all we could about dyeing fabric and yarn with everyday herbs, spices, flowers and veggies. More details in the next post.