Vive le Croissant!

There is nothing like a warm, flaky, buttery croissant enjoyed with a dollop of strawberry jam and coffee. YUM!! Enjoying the above at a Parisian cafe doesn't hurt either.

Unfortunately, good croissants are still an elusive thing in this part of Pennsylvania (although an hour away in NYC you find some of the best French pastries in the world...if only there were a train connecting us to the city! sigh) If and when the real thing is found, they cost at least $3 each piece, and the inexpensive supermarket ones just taste kind of boring and leave a funny feel in your mouth.

Over Christmas, I learned why croissants made from scratch cost $3 each. They are a big, huge, pain in the butt to make, although worth the time and effort...and you get really sore arms. I'd been looking up different croissant recipes for some time now, thinking that I'd like to give them a try...and what better time for indulgence than Christmas!!

I used a recipe from Ciril Hitz's Baking Artisan Bread book, which has nice photos of each step as well as a DVD component that teaches how to make beautifully formed croissants. I had to make two components: the dough, which had flour, egg, milk, yeast, salt and sugar; and the butter block, which was a mixture of regular unsalted butter and a little flour (if you use European plugra butter, it has a higher fat content thus not needing any flour added to make it roll-able)

Laminating the dough was a fun process...you place the butter block inside the rectangle of dough you've rolled out, close it up like an envelope, roll it out, fold in thirds, and repeat. I think altogether there were about 27 layers of dough and butter. The dough it also going in and out of the fridge and freezer this whole time.

I forgot to mention that this process takes 2-3 days and requires some degree of patience. And, on baking day, rolling out the dough takes some major muscle work. I thought my arms were going to fall off and that I was going to break my rolling pin. I should have recruited D to help me, but I didnt' think it would take me 45 minutes to get the dough to roughly the correct dimensions. The elasticity kept making the dough shrink back, and it needed small resting trips in the freezer to gradually achieve the 1/4" thickness for cutting and rolling. In the end, I think my dough was still too thick, but I was too tired to care by then. I made my nice even triangles and rolled them up like in the video.

Not only did they bake up beautifully, they tasted as good as they looked. The frightening part was looking at the baking tray afterward and seeing the butter swooshing around on the pan. Yikes. As usual, we were too impatient to wait until they cooled, so we scarfed down some hot croissants, which were delicious, and then after they came to room temperature, we scarfed down some more and they were perfect. With great satisfaction, I peeled about my croissant and examined the dozens of delicate layers inside...beginner's luck seems to be my thing!

Final note: it took 2 days for my arms to recover.

Happy 2010!

Happy New Year, everyone!

2010! It's going to be a big year for us. I had really wanted to squeeze in one final blog entry for 2009, but the usual things got in the way....I fully blame pregnancy for that! But I do have a few new photos to share and lots of updates to chatter on about.

D and I experienced our first ever Christmas alone here in Bethlehem. It was was restful, pleasant, and very quiet. A pretty blanket of snow covered the town just in time for Christmas Eve.

The Saturday before, the doorbell rang and a large basket filled with delicious cheeses, sausages, bacon, exotic salt, olive oil and Christmas pudding surprised us on the front porch...a present from D's parents in case our stomachs got sad and lonely. We missed seeing our families and friends, but this year we didn't think that at 34 weeks my back would have done too well on an 8 hour car trip.

We had holiday lunch at the Hotel Bethlehem, roasted Cornish hens for dinner and opened some gifts. D got me a new sewing machine! I picked it out, so it wasn't a surprise, but it's fantastic and I can't wait to try out the quilting functions. It puts my old machine to shame...I never realized what bad condition it was in until I used the new one. Over the years, bits and pieces had gotten chipped, bent, and broken off during moves and I'd just learned to sew with wonky tension. The new machine purrs like a happy kitty.

A few days before Christmas, we got a new car. I was sad to say goodbye to the old big blue car, but it was starting to need lots of repairs and we just didn't think we could keep up with the unpredictability of things going kaput, especially in the winter and after JJ arrives. Here is our shiny new car:


Our nursery is also coming together... she has more furniture and gear than D and I, the lucky girl. The due date is Feb 18, but it's possible she'll arrive sooner, as early as 37 weeks instead of 40...

Not surprisingly, I am feeling even huger these days. My weight seems to have plateaued even though my profile keeps getting bigger. I can no longer see my shoes or do up my boots. When I feel JJ move now it feels like an elephant crashing around doing somersaults, and is more groan-inducing than cute-fluttery sensations.


Knitwise, I made this bunny hat with some leftover worsted weight Misti Pima Cotton (free pattern right here)

I have also been working on the Woodland Shawl for about a month now...it's taking forever and I'm not even halfway done! Pretty though, huh?


Stay tuned for pictures of...homemade croissants!! (and a workout like you won't believe)

Bib-o-rama

Bibs! In anticipation of lots of drooling, spilling and spitting up, I sewed up a whole bunch of little bibs, modeled here by Mr. Bear.

The bib pattern is a free one from Chickpea Sewing Studio, and you can find it right here. There isn't as wide a fabric selection around these parts, but I did manage to find some prints that I liked at Joann's. The pattern recommends making the backing piece with flannel, terrycloth or something a little bit thicker for absorbency, but since I didn't have any, I made the backing with muslin, and sandwiched a piece of cut-up bed sheet (leftover from this project) in between to lessen the seepage factor.

If you look closely, there are mini Gatsbys marching across the bib...

It's been so long since I've done any sewing, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed it until I started these projects last week, so I feel like I'm on a bit of a roll. There's that quilt I started way back when that is mostly stitched up, but lacking a border, backing and the actual quilting part. That will be next. And I've got some curtains to make for the bathroom, which I have procrastinated on until now (fabric which I bought in September)

Duh, I cut the print out upside down and of course put it at the top of the pile to photograph.

We had a quiet Halloween weekend and gave out candy on Friday night (the city decided that trick-or-treating should intuitively NOT be on the 31st).

Gatsby and I spend a lot of time together these days, and he sat on the couch helping me take pictures of the bibs. He is looking very healthy as usual, and has been in a major showing-off mode for our guest...racing up and down the stairs, roughing with the catnip toys, and being a generally quite rambunctious.

Is that a pumpkin under there?

It's been four weeks since my last growth chart! Here are a few more photos of my middle since then:


Last Sunday we went to a pumpkin patch and I wondered if I would be accused of stealing a fat, round pumpkin under my shirt...There have been bibs galore over here. I pulled out the sewing machine and have been stitch stitch stitching away.

We will be giving out candy on Friday night (it's a Lehigh Valley thing, not scheduling trick-or-treating on the actual holiday - weird) and then Chris is visiting us this weekend! Yay!

Happy Halloween!

A Nice Apple Pie

Fall brings out a different kind of sweet tooth in me. Canadian thanksgiving was a couple weeks back and we didn't have the usual treats, so I made a pumpkin cranberry bread to satisfy that pumpkin craving. Um, it was all gone before the evidence could be photographed for blogging.

But I did save some pie for you. A double-crust traditional apple pie!

I'd been talking about making pie for ages, but every time I got too lazy and decided that making the crust was way too much work and opted for apple crumble or apple tarts on pre-made puff pastry. However, D just returned from a conference and I was in the right kind of mood, so I made this as a (large) treat for us.

The recipe is from Gourmet magazine, which sadly announced that is was shutting down this week. Boo! I was thinking of getting a subscription, too. So sad. Anyhow, here's the recipe for the pastry, and here's the recipe for the filling. I subbed a half cup of whole wheat flour in the crust, and used Macs and Galas for the filling. Since I didn't have any vegetable shortening on hand, I just put in all butter. My crust was flaky and tasty, but not super light, which is probably because of the WW flour and lack of shortening, although I kind of liked the texture. Macs release a lot of juice, so beware of hot sputtering apple goo if you cut into the pie before it's had a chance to cool!

After it came out of the oven, we each had a slice. I woke up at 4am needing another piece (the baby convinced me to have it). It is taking everything in me not to substitute the pie for regular meals, but as a result there is still some left. Oh, and this makes a very big pie - I used a 9.5 inch plate and we've had about 9 slices out of it so far, and there's still two left for a midnight snack.

Booties, Beanie, and Stuffed Buddies

Lots to show you today! I have one item on backlog, the blocked Amelia, but I'll get to that eventually (she turned out really well, and I have been wearing her quite a bit). First, some baby knitting. I was thinking that winter babies will need some warm things to wear, so I found this cute garter stitch booty pattern on Ravelry and made a few pairs... Aren't they super cute?!

The little hat is made from the Freshly Picked Baby Hat pattern also available on Ravelry...yes, I know it's not garter stitch to match, but whatever. What I didn't realize is that babies heads are shockingly large. Maybe that's why they're so cute. But man, their heads are BIG. I cast on 96 stitches for this on US4 dns, which is pretty huge! I just cast on 96 stitches on US6 for a hat for myself, as a comparison...


I also made a blue pair for baby Audrey (which I forgot to photo), and her mother says that they should stay on well (apparently socks can fall right off newborns, chilly feet being a bad thing). It takes about 4 hours to knit these up, which isn't too long, and I've got lots more DK superwash merino to make a couple more pairs.

Then we have: more animals! You might recognize these from a few (?) months ago, and sadly it has taken me this long to get around to putting faces on them now, and making a little bandana for bunny. I love, love, love this pattern (last minute knitted gifts)...I've probably made 6 or 7 of these toys by now!


That's about all for knitting. Now for some ultrasound pictures! Meet Jenny Junior, who is, in fact, 90% likely to be a girl:

Waving her fist at us...stop scanning me!

The anatomy scan was totally fascinating, and I pestered the technician endlessly about what we were seeing. Prior to this experience I had no idea you could see things like brain ventricles, heart chambers, kidneys, diaphragm and bones! From what we could tell, she wasn't missing any important bits and things looked just fine.

This one is my favourite b/c you can see the profile so clearly...along with the spine and heart too. Cool, eh?

Almost Amelia

Amelia is nearly done! I can't believe I actually weaved in ends and did all the finishing. Now I just need to block her and sew some buttons on.


First impressions: it's warm, but very lumpy. The sleeves also seem a bit loose around the underarms and the collar doesn't sit in a round shape right now...blocking should help all of these problems. I'm a little scared to submerse this in water because I'm sure the dye is just going to bleed everywhere - gotta find a sink or bucket it that won't stain. Will let you know how it turns out. I think I'll be able to wear it for a couple months undone at the bottom, although my belly is protruding even more at this point.

Here are some growth pictures to entertain you with:


I still occasionally forget that there's a little person in there, but I'm starting to feel wiggles and gurgles. The other day I even felt some crazy purring, as if Gatsby were trapped in my tummy. It just occurred to me that the baby is arriving in February, and will need some warm winter things, so I am planning on making a couple more little hats, booties, and sweaters....so much fun!

Last Saturday we went to the Celtic Festival (surprisingly huge!) here in Bethlehem and saw hundreds of bagpipers, a haggis toss, and ate some fish and chips. Yesterday, we wandered along Third street during Friday First night in South Bethlehem. Today we are going to Babies R Us to scope out some nursery furniture and learn a thing or two about cribs, strollers and the like. It's shocking how much baby gear exists. See you soon!