A Mystery Solved

As I've mentioned before, there's an ugly plumbing access panel in my basement sewing room. I've taken to hanging quilts in front of it to cover it up. They're suspended from clip-on rings and a curtain rod (which just happens to be a quick and dirty way to hang a quilt). It works well because it's also easy to move the quilt out of the way when Plumbing Man wants to access said plumbing.

Recently, I've noticed that the quilt keeps getting moved around and slid to one side.

As you might guess, I had a pretty good idea what was going on here, but I was a little unclear on the mechanism of action. Yesterday...

Hmmmmm...what could that be? Oh! It's Sadie! Did you guess?

Having reassured myself of the absence of gremlins in the sewing room, I got to work making the hanging sleeve for Live, Love, Teach.

When I took the last stitch yesterday afternoon, it was officially finished...everything. Binding, label, and hanging sleeve. I'll be putting it in today's mail.

When that was finished, it was time to pick up this week's CSA share. Oh. My. Gosh. Have you ever seen such huge heads of lettuce? That's Romaine on the left, Oakleaf on the right. So pretty. We'll be using the Romaine for a chicken Caesar salad this week. The Oakleaf is a sweet green leaf lettuce, and it will be used in a multitude of ways.

I'm still keeping up with the vegetables. My two weeks of shares of kohlrabi didn't work out so well. I'm still trying to figure that one out. The first share tried to become kohlrabi fritters. I probably didn't get enough moisture out of it, and so the grated kohlrabi wouldn't hang together. It tasted good, but it ended up being more like kohlrabi hashbrowns. There was an excellent sauce recipe that accompanied the kohlrabi fritter recipe, and I got the bright idea to use it to make a slaw. So I shredded the next week's share of kohlrabi with some carrot and doused it with twice the amount of sauce. Neither of us cared for the raw kohlrabi that way. It was kind of hairy and fibrous. There is no kohlrabi in this week's share, so I have some time to rethink my plan of attack.

The other one that confounds me is the radicchio. We aren't fans of bitter lettuce, and so it's one of the vegetables that I struggle to make palatable. Last night, I made Radicchio Flatbread. That was actually pretty good. It's a very sticky dough, and so it requires plenty of flour. It's not difficult. If you'd like to give this a try, you can find Martha Stewart's recipe right here.

This week's share has a head of "sugarloaf radicchio". It looks a lot like a napa cabbage, but it's more moist, like an iceberg lettuce and more bitter than napa.

It's another one I've had difficulty using, but I have some ideas for this week's share. I'll keep you posted on my victories (or defeats) with the vegetables.

When I realized I needed to get a tomato for tonight's dinner, I decided to do my grocery shopping today instead of tomorrow. Not before my morning stitching, however. I've been working on the Gingerbread Square block in fits and starts since it gets shoved aside while I work on other hand-stitching projects. This morning, I committed to finishing the Christmas tree. 

And now, I have no more excuses, so grocery shopping it is. Also, I'm heading to the post office with the Live, Love, Teach quilt. It'll be on its way to Southern California by day's end.