Switching Gears

Good morning, my friends. When I wrote yesterday, I was getting ready to have breakfast with my friend, Sue. She has a birthday today. I arrived at the restaurant before she did, and I wandered around the parking lot looking at their natural garden. They had pretty anemones blooming...

and some zinnias.

And I like that they have a quilt block on their pump house.

So breakfast was good. They make a mean bowl of oatmeal there with lots of fresh fruit. Sue and I hadn't seen one another since before our Alaska trip. She's done some traveling in the meantime as well, and so it was good to catch up.

Back home again, I spent some time on my slow-stitching. There's a section I've been thinking about. When I created this piece for stitching, I gave myself some outlines, but it's mostly being done free hand, and on the fly. As I've been stitching, I've been considering how to stitch this one relatively large section, and what configuration the stitches should take. Yesterday, I decided to take it out of the hoop, and I discovered that section was much smaller than I envisioned. So, now, I know just what to do there. Here's your peek.

Before I sat down for slow-stitching, though, I put together a plum crisp. Our plum tree is loaded with plums, although it's shed plenty as well. I've been thinking up ways to use them, and this crisp seemed like a worthy cause. When I finished my stitching, it was time for it to come out of the oven.

I worried the plums might be too tart for a dessert like this. We had it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream last night, and it was very tasty. The recipe I was using was an apple crisp recipe with some modifications for using plums in place of the apples. Mainly, I added a tablespoon of tapioca, presumably as a thickener. By day's end, the topping was getting a little soggy, but we liked it anyway.

The recipe was in my Baking Illustrated cookbook from America's Test Kitchens. I'll give it to you here if you're interested in trying it. My notes: I was using Italian prune plums, but any plum would work. I baked mine in a toaster oven. When it finished the first portion of the baking (375°F for 40 minutes), the topping appeared nicely browned and the fruit was bubbling. I decided not to do the second portion of the baking with an increased temperature of 400° for another five minutes. If I'd done that, it might have kept the topping more crisp. If I ever make this again (and I will), I'll continue with the second part and see if that makes a difference. For now...here's the recipe I used:

Plum Crisp

recipe from Baking Illustrated

Serves 6

Ingredients:

Topping Mixture

6 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ cup light brown sugar, packed

¼ cup granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon table salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces and chilled

¾ cup pecans or whole almonds, chopped coarse (or chopped fine if mixing topping by hand)

Plums

2 ½ - 3 pounds plums (6 cups cut)

¼ cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon quick-cooking tapioca

1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice

½ teaspoon grated lemon zest from 1 lemon

Directions:

For The Topping:

Place flour, brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in food processor workbowl fitted with steel blade. Add chilled butter and pulse until mixture moves from dry sand-like appearance with large lumps of butter to a coarse cornmeal texture, about three 4-second bursts. Add nuts and pulse until mixture resembles crumbly sand, about five 1-second bursts. Do not overprocess or mixture will take on a smooth, cookie-dough-like texture. (To mix by hand, allow butter pieces to sit at room temperature for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, mix flour, brown sugar, granulated sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in medium bowl. Add butter; toss to coat. Pinch butter chunks and dry mixture between fingertips until mixture looks like crumbly wet sand. Add nuts and toss to distribute evenly. Do not overmix.) Refrigerate mixture while preparing fruit, at least 15 minutes.

Toss cut plums, tapioca, sugar, lemon juice, and zest in medium bowl.

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Scrape fruit mixture with rubber spatula into 8-inch square (2 quart) baking pan or 9-inch round deep dish pie plate. Distribute chilled topping evenly over fruit; bake for 40 minutes. Increase oven temperature to 400 degrees; bake until fruit is bubbling and topping is deep golden brown, about 5 minutes longer. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Okay, with that finished, I went to work making September's Kitten in a Cup. I've made these blocks enough times now that I've figured out the puzzling pattern. Any mistakes I make from here on are my own danged fault. I was going to say this face is the most complicated part of the block.

But the section with the neck, paws, and the top of the cup are actually more confusing. Or...maybe my brain was already mush from making the face. In any case, once this part is done, the rest is pretty easy.

So I added the rest of the cup and handle, and September's block was finished.

Here are the nine blocks I have for this quilt so far.

This is my project for this year's

so I'll link up there this morning.

Okay, so I'm switching gears here for the next couple of days. I've been hoping, hoping, hoping to get 40 pounds of tomatoes from our CSA farmers. They lead busy lives, and so it's taken a while to communicate with them. Mrs. Farmer got back to me yesterday to let me know the 40 pounds would be available for pick up this morning. Yay! Only now, I'm dreading, dreading, dreading all the work I have ahead of me. I expect to spend Sunday and Monday washing, cutting, roasting, seeding, chopping, cooking, ladling, lidding, boiling, and processing tomatoes. I'm hoping to get 10 quarts of pasta sauce and 8 pints of salsa from them. It's a lot of work, but we do love the tomato goodness that comes from it. Originally, I'd requested 60 pounds of tomatoes, but then sanity prevailed. I've done that many before, and so I know better.

Tomatoes will be available for pick-up after 10:00 a.m. In the meantime, I'll eat some breakfast and do some slow-stitching. Tomorrow, we tackle the tomatoes.