Saturday Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day yesterday without much to show for it. The day got off to a good start, though, when I finished the embroidery for the Summer Sun piece.

It still needs the mini quilt added. That requires some paper-piecing. And that requires holding onto rulers. And after all the cutting I did the day before, my wrist was bothering me again. It seemed like an excellent reason to do something other than paper-piecing. If you need an excuse to avoid something, just come to me. Excuses R Us. 

Machine sewing seemed the best move. Sadie was all about it. Anything but papurr-piecing works for her.

So I set about sewing together all the component parts for the Happy Scrap Baby Ribbons. In each color, I needed seven 2-patches, two 4-patches, one 6-patch, one 8-patch, and four HST's. 

It took nearly all of my sewing day. There was about an hour left when I started laying out the pieces to be sewn into a quilt top. That was when I realized I'd misinterpreted the rather poorly-written instructions. I actually needed twice as many HST's. And that meant cutting 16 more white squares and four more squares in each color. (Sigh). And I was still babying my wrist. That was all I needed to kill my motivation for any more sewing. I ended my sewing day pulling scraps for each color and leaving them in a heap on my work table. I'll get after those today.

Instead, I remembered to check outside to see if the day lilies had bloomed. They were only just starting to open, but the sight of them improved my mood significantly.

Also, it seemed completely appropriate to drown my sorrows in a Bees Knees cocktail. We sat outside and watched Smitty being a tiger in the weeds. He knows the tree squirrels are too quick for him, and so he settled for practicing his sneak 'em up skills.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we were attempting to make "burnt ends" in our Traeger smoker grill. I'd made a potato salad earlier. The burnt ends came off the grill smelling downright heavenly. Here's what we served ourselves.

Burnt ends are supposed to be made with a "well-marbled brisket" or "pork belly." We were using a tri-tip, and so we did it a little differently. Also, burnt ends can be either "wet" or "dry." If made "wet," there is more barbecue sauce added, and the meat is roasted for caramelizing. And that's probably more than you wanted to know about this process, but there you go. Oh yes, and here's something else: when smoking meats, that dark ring you see around the outer edges of the meat below is the highly desirable smoke ring. The outer crust is known as "bark." 

I'm telling you all of that just to say that we had our burnt ends in the "dry" method. We ran out of time to do the "wet" ones. I'd like to try them again soon, though. Just FYI, this is how we did it, omitting the last portion where the barbecue sauce is added.

The potato salad was a Texas Potato Salad from Cook's Country. It was published many years ago, and so I'm going to include it here. It's one of my favorite potato salad recipes.

Texas Potato Salad

from Cook's Country

Serves 8

Ingredients:

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

salt and pepper

1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds

1/2 small red onion, sliced thin

2 jalapeno peppers (1 sliced into thin rings; 1 stemmed, seeded, and minced)

3 pounds Yukon Gold potato, cut into 3/4-inch cubes

6 tablespoons mayonnaise

6 tablespoons yellow mustard

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 large hard-cooked eggs, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

1 rib celery, minced

Directions:

Combine vinegar, sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and mustard seeds in bowl and microwave until steaming, about 2 minutes.  Whisk until sugar and salt are dissolved.  Add onion and jalapenos and set aside until cool, 15-20 minutes.  Strain onion and jalapenos through fine-mesh strainer set over bowl.  Reserve pickled vegetables and vinegar mixture separately.

Meanwhile, combine potatoes, 8 cups water, and 1 tablespoon salt in Dutch oven and bring to boil over high heat.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer until potatoes are just tender 8-10 minutes.

Drain potatoes thoroughly, then transfer to large bowl.  Drizzle 2 tablespoons reserved vinegar mixture over hot potatoes and toss gently until evenly coated.  (Reserve remaining vinegar mixture for another use.)  Refrigerate until cool, about 30 minutes, stirring once halfway through chilling.

Whisk mayonnaise, mustard, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, cayenne together in bowl until combined.  Add mayonnaise mixture, reserved pickled vegetables, eggs, and celery to potatoes and stir gently to combine.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Cover and refrigerate to let flavors blend, about 30 minutes.  Serve.

Salad can be refrigerated for up to two days.

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Okay, so that's about all I know about yesterday. Today I have both indoor and outdoor chores to do, but I should have plenty of time for sewing. I'll probably don a splint to protect my wrist, and hopefully, I can get through the rest of the cutting without breaking myself.

Speaking or chores, here's a suggestion: Cats are most efficiently stored on stacking shelves, as pictured below.

Follow me for more housekeeping tips.

And now, I must get on with my day. Sunday morning pancakes are next.