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Lemon Week 2012
I’m so pleased to announce that I will be blogging another Lemon Week! I figure I might as well squeeze as much out of those lemons as I can while I still live here! Ha ha. Pun intended. Anyway, I’ve got a couple new recipes and a couple of old ones and hopefully I can put something new up all week. We’ll see.
You know what’s cool about Lemon Week around here? We’ve made such a big deal about it in the past that now my kid gets really excited about it. It’s like a festival in our own house. We even dress up for it:
Here I am freshly showered, in my lemon week shirt and full of enthusiasm (and coffee probably).
I even took an Instagram of my shirt I was so excited about the whole event.
Bug dressed up in her finery which included yellow and orange accessories. We were ready!
Bring on the lemons!
So first we made lemon bars which I’ve made a zillion times and blogged about. The recipe calls for extra zest so they are extra zingy and delicious. (faster more direct link) I love them. Swoon! Swoon! Swoon! I could eat them all day until I popped.
Then we made lemon loaf which is sort of like what they serve at Starbucks but without the hard candy icing on the top. It has a sugary lemon juice that you pour on top that I think is even yummier, personally. It’s my Great Grandma’s recipe.
You’d like the recipe? Well let me share!
Ingredients:
• 2 cups of sugar
• 1 1/2 sticks of melted butter
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• 3 cups of flour
• 4 tsp baking powder (that seems like a lot to me but it tastes fine, shows you what I know)
• 1 tsp salt
• Grated rind of 2 lemonsFor glaze
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 1 1/2 tbs sugarDirections:
1. Preheat oven to 355º F
2. Mix sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt and lemon rind
3. Pour into two loaf pans
4. Bake for 45 minutes
5. Mix together juice of two lemons and 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar
6. Pour lemon mixture over piping hot loaves and serve!
It’s a pretty simple recipe. I love that when I typed it up originally I typed “flower” instead of flour. I guess that means it was passed onto me a long time ago when I was even worse at spelling than I am now. Which I guess could technically be yesterday but I know it was a really long time ago because my great grandma died a long time ago and I’m pretty sure she passed it onto me when she was still alive. So I must have been a teenager or younger. I remember eating it in her little condominium kitchen at her little metal table with the aluminum sides. I remember that and the awful disgusting pepper slaw she always used to make. Funny how things like that stick with you.
Anyway, it was fun to make and think about her making this back in the olden days. I wasn’t super fond of her in her last days. She was a crotchety old bitter woman but here and there I see clues that she had a kinder loving side. I think her lemon bread definitely spoke to that.
Especially the lemon juice topping. I think you should all rush out and make some and then come back here and reminisce with me in the comments about your Grandma. Did she make lemon bread for you? Was it better than Starbucks?
Tomorrow: Lemon Pickle! I’m so excited! You’re gonna LOVE it.
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The Fifth Craft: Plastic Bag Napkin Rings!
I got a little ahead of myself and twittered and facebooked about five crafts but I hadn’t gotten to this one yet. So HERE is the fifth craft: These are happy little challah bread napkin rings made from recycled plastic trash bags! They don’t exactly look like Challah Bread but they are braided and a whole lot prettier than the plastic bag they came from.
As everyone knows plastic bags blow. However! They are actually quite wonderful as a crafting medium. You can make all sorts of things with them: rope, crocheted into a bag, fused together as fabric…the possibilities are amazing.
Here’s how I made napkin rings:
First you’ll need the tan colored ones. These are not as common as they used to be. In my town everyone has switched to white for some reason. But check around, they still exist in MASSIVE quantities, probably in your own garage, pantry or under-the-sink hidey hole.
Next smooth out your bag of any creases and cut it into three strips. Don’t worry about the handle portions being longer. You’ll trim the excess off later.
Next you’ll need to “fuse” the ends together so you can start your braid. To do this you will need a hot iron and some tinfoil. Fold your tinfoil over a couple times so that there will be two sheets between your iron and the plastic bag strips. Now, very carefully, hold the iron down on the tinfoil in 15-second increments until it fuses. (Be careful not to touch the plastic with your iron or you’ll have a messy clean-up job later.)
Now it’s time to braid!
Braid about six or seven inches and stop. Give yourself about a half inch of unbraided ends and then trim the excess off with scissors.
Wrap your braid into a circle big enough for a cloth napkin to slip through and then carefully insert your tinfoil and iron onto the loose ends using your tinfoil. You might need to fold the tinfoil into a triangle to fit it inside the napkin right. Repeat the ironing technique used above and fuse your ring together.
Voila! You have a fancy napkin ring and you saved the landfills from one more plastic trash bag! Isn’t that a great way to start off the new year? L’Shanah Tovah!
