Jennifair

Our garden

2009-05-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

I took a bunch of pictures of our backyard container garden. It's pretty amazing how many plants we have growing outside at the moment, especially since our yard was really gross last summer. We've had to devise ways to keep the plants away from the dogs, who have chewed on some of them. Hence the horizontal ladder for the tomatoes made out of 2x4s. I counted 16 tomato plants a few days ago. We also have 7 brussell sprouts, green beans and peas, a whole bed of lettuce and kale in the bathtub, a bunch of pepper plants and cilantro and basil and other herbs and some flowers for color. The garden is mostly the work of me and my roommate Joey. Lance planted a tree that he bought online and some Morning Glories but Joey and I have done everything else. I go out every morning with coffee to check on everybody and to water. I think the peas have been the most fun to watch grow because they look so unlike all the other plants as they sprout. I think they're kinda cute and very stubborn - they don't want to wrap themselves around the bamboo supports I gave them but instead keep winding around each other.

This is what one of our neighbors has done with his backyard. There 8 apartments on our backyard, 4 on the ground floor and 4 on the second floor.

Mozzarella!

2009-04-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

And I succeeded at making mozzarella today! I used the raw milk that was delivered last night and I used a version of the recipe that has you reheat the curd in the hot whey, instead of microwaving it like I did last time. Unfortunately I was too busy following the directions closely (I must have reread them about 6 times) that I didn't take any pictures. I'm going to make home made dough in my bread maker before I go to therapy tonight and then make pizza when I get home.

Milk & Honey

2009-04-07T11:16:00.001-07:00

Finally had my raw milk and raw honey delivered last night, after 8 days and about 10 phone calls with the dairy. They do not have the best delivery service, but hey, they raise and milk cows all day. I guess I can't be too picky.

The honey is really good, very sweet. Did a taste test between the raw honey and a bottle we had in the cupboard, bought at the grocery store. The grocery store version tasted blande and kinda boring compared to the raw honey. And the milk tasted just like regular milk, but it was much thicker and creamier. Half way between whole milk and half & half.

Lance enjoyed both honey and the milk, at the same time (there's honey in the spoon).

More attempts at making things...

2009-03-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

Today I attempted to make mozzarella, yogurt cheese, and whole wheat bread. The mozzarella did not work out, I think because I was using the wrong kind of milk. I'm going to try and buy raw milk from a farm upstate, they'll deliver it to my door apparently.

Next I attempted to make yogurt cheese. The jury is still out on that one since it has to sit in the fridge for 24 hours. It should be pretty hard to get wrong though: all you do is strain plain yogurt through a cheese cloth lined colander. The whey drains out and you're left with thick yogurt, similar to cream cheese. I'm going to add fresh dill and spread it on a bagel.

Lastly, I made whole wheat bread. This was pretty fool proof because I now have a hand-me-down bread maker. You pour all the ingredients in and push a button. It kneads it, lets it rest, kneads it some more, more resting, more kneading, then rising, then baking. It take 3 1/2 hours. The bread was delicious - I used a honey whole wheat recipe, so it turned out just sweet enough.

I was on the right track. I followed every step correctly...

but my curds should have ended up more elastic than this. It shouldn't have looked so much like ricotta. Oh well, I'll try again once I get my hands on raw milk.

But at least my first loaf of bread turned out!

Lance approves. And he's putting my homemade butter on it!

I made butter

2009-03-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot lately about making homemade cheese. I'm going to start out with Mozzarella because it's relatively easy. It doesn't need to age and can be made with normal household equipment. The only things I needed that I didn't have was rennet and citric acid, both of which I found on a cheese making website. But this also lead me to a website about making homemade butter. Turns out it as easy as pouring heavy cream into a glass jar and shaking it for about 20 minutes. I had no idea. So I tried it today and it worked perfectly.

Posing for Lance

Shaking (20 minutes was a lot longer than I realized)

We have butter!

Strained it through cheese cloth to get all of the milk out

This was the milk that separated from the butter, otherwise known as "buttermilk." But it tastes nothing like the buttermilk in the store. It's light and a tad sweet.

This was all it took

At long last, photos of the quilt

2009-02-28T08:32:00.001-08:00

At long last, I finally finished the quilt. And I finally took photos of it so you can see it. I picked a floral pink flannel for the backing and it's very soft, I think I will use flannel for the backs of all the quilts I make.

My newest piece of art

2009-02-26T08:15:00.001-08:00

I've always loved my friend Julie's art. I had asked her about buying a piece in the past but it never came of anything, until she recently had an open studio night. I knew I wanted something of her's, and I knew it had to be this one when I saw it. It reminds me of the first work of hers I ever saw, a painting of a little boy dressed as a clown that was hanging in her old apartment. Last weekend Lance I went to Utrecht in the city to try to find a ready-made frame for it, and I think we found a pretty great one. Only $ 16.50. So much cheaper than if I tried to have it custom-framed. It's hanging in Lance's room, what is soon to become our room, and is the first thing I've really moved in down there.

My new (old) desk!

2009-02-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

I saw this desk in an abandoned section of our warehouse a few weeks ago and really wanted it. Luckily I became friendly with the building manager (I'm convinced he was stalking me, I ran into him all the time and he gave me candy bars on three different occasions. Never gave any of my other coworkers candy bars).

So anyway, dropped a hint that I liked it and wanted it and he immediately told me I could take it (men are so easy). My plan was to take it home at 6 pm last Friday, when I would have been getting off of work. But since I was laid of around 1 30, I waited for Lance to get off work and took it home earlier. Right now it's sitting in Lance's basement, waiting for a room to be emptied out down there that I'm going to move some of my stuff into. This is going to be my sewing/craft desk, and it has so much storage!

More cupcakes...

2009-01-26T17:34:00.000-08:00

It was fucking freezing yesterday and I decided to stay in and make cupcakes. I decorated them all by myself - I was very anal about it, as you can tell. But I really like pretty cup cakes, they make me happy.

Micah and Emily's pillows

2008-12-18T20:44:00.000-08:00

I made Micah and Emily each a pillow for Christmas. I embroidered the images onto the fabric that I picked, added their names in embroidery at the bottom, sewed up the three sides on the sewing machine, stuffed them with poly-fill, and hand stitched the fourth side. I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Holiday cupcakes and cookies

2008-12-18T20:34:00.000-08:00

Kristen and Lance, surrounded by cookies. Jennye made the cookies.

This little guy had a rough night. I'm not sure how he got like this exactly.

My cupcakes!

Jennye's prohibition birthday party.

2008-10-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

Jennye decided she wanted to have a 1920's era, prohibition themed birthday party in our apartment last night. Hence, the outfits and the adorable brown cloche I have on. If only we still dressed like this all of the time, I think I would be very content.

More embroidery!

2008-10-12T16:43:00.002-07:00

I've started a new embroidery project: this one is unicorns on a light pink back ground which will become a pillow for Emily. I'm embroidering the horns with a shiny, gold metallic thread and I made their manes a rainbow, in addition to the rainbow hovering above them, which you can kinda make out. I'm going to embroider her name at the bottom and then sew it up and stuff it! I've never made a pillow before, but I can't imagine it's that hard.

After that I need to make something new for Micah, because the rocking horse had an accident with an iron. I was involved, but I don't really want to talk about it. I didn't really like the way it turned out anyway. I like the way I stitched the owls and the unicorns better.

I finally started sewing the quilt...

2008-10-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

It was at the beginning of August that I decided I wanted to make a quilt. And it's taken me the last two months to decide what I wanted to make, plan it out, get all the fabric together, and cut it up into squares. The cutting took forever. Yesterday I finally started actually sewing it! With my friends Chris and Julie. Chris has been quilting for 10 years, so he had all sorts of little time saving tricks to teach me. And I had no idea how much ironing is involved in quilting. I had no idea that you had to iron at all, actually. But you do. My quilt pattern is pretty simple: 4 squares sewn together to make a bigger square, and a bigger, light pink square, over and over. Here are the two 2x2 patterns that I'm using:

And an idea of my pattern:

The two stacks of fabric in the back will become my entire quilt. That's it, that's all it takes to make a 60 x 84" quilt.

Fall is here

2008-09-19T18:23:00.001-07:00

Today was chilly, 66 degrees to be exact. I wore a hoodie all day. And was genuinely chilly tonight. Winters around the corner and I'm not ready for it. But I guess that's what Fall is for, right?

On another note, I'm totally into Battlestar Galactica right now. The 3 hour pilot was kinda cheesy, but the first episode of the real season was pretty damn good. It's far more compelling than most shows on tv.

Apple pie!

2008-08-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

I made my first ever apple pie last night! My first ever pie, really. It was delicious, but I somehow managed to not make enough dough, so it had no top. I'm not really sure what happened there, but next time I'll know to make more.

This isn't a picture of my pie. But it makes you hungry, doesn't it? I want to make a blackberry pie next.

Art in NYC

2008-08-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my friend KC and I managed to squeeze in three art shows at three different museums. The first was Action/Abstraction at The Jewish Museum, which was a survey of American Abstract Expressionist painting in the 1940s and 1950s. It opened with Pollock and de Kooning, which were amazing, and included 32 other artists, but I felt that the show tried to cover too much, too many artists, in too small of a space, and only two works were shown by each artist. That was a little disappointing.

The second show was Louis Bourgeois at the Guggenheim, which was one of the more interesting shows I've seen in a while. I'd only ever seen her Spider sculptures and knew nothing about her life or the rest of her art. She was born in 1911 in France and was raised in a large country estate. Her art and the quotes that went along with the show hinted at a traumatic childhood, but the only fact that I could glean from the cards is that her father had an on-going affair with one of her tutors. The show started with her early work, abstract sculpture from the 60s, made primarily of painted wood, then moved to more organic sculptures made of marble and stone, with abstract representations of the human body (breasts and penises) and ended with "Cells," her latest work from the last 20 years. Each "Cell" is a room, made of doors or fencing or wire, and containing, in some cases, every day objects: a bed, lamp, stool, mirrors, garments (which she sews herself), bed pans, glass jars, perfume bottles, etc. But always the tools of female domesticity. One Cell was a white model of her childhood home, surrounded by a metal fence, with a raised guillotine hovering over it. Many of the Cells are not subtle, in terms of their symbols and meaning.

She's said that each Cell represents a different type of pain and emotional trauma (presumably that she's experienced personally). Her process of documenting and portraying her past experiences through her art spoke to me in a huge way. I've been pondering the trauma of past experiences, specifically childhood experiences, the last few weeks: how do we come to terms with the unpleasant events of our past, where do we put them, what do we do with them, how much do they inform who we are at any given time, how much control does each of us as individuals have over how much they control and affect our present? Is total reconciliation ever possible? Do we ever really "move on?" How much does our past hold us prisoner (in the cells of our own making) and how much can we ever expect to escape? Louise Bourgeois is 98 years old, and made one of the "Cells" in 2008. She's still struggling with it.

The last show was Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney. It was interesting technically, but there were no emotions involved. It was a drastic change from Louise Bourgeois' works.

The Outer Banks

2008-08-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I flew with several of my coworkers to Norfolk, VA, where we rented a car and drove to Duck, NC on the Outer Banks. Our flight down there was delayed by 6 hours due to thunderstorms (and the fact that La Guardia sucks), so we rolled up to the beach cabin at 5:30 a.m., just in time for the sunrise. Overall the weekend was pretty good. The house was great, the weather was nice, the town we were in was pretty cute, we ate good food and drank a ton. We went to some near by sand dunes one afternoon, the biggest I've ever seen.

One the way to the dunes we passed an establishment named "Brew Thru." It is exactly what it sounds like: drive through beer. I've never heard or seen such a thing in my life.

You drive in and a friendly blond chick takes your order and brings you cases of cold beer. It's almost like NC wants people to drive drunk. And after doing a little online research, I discovered that NC does not have an open container law. As long as the driver is not drinking and has not consumed any alcohol, it's perfectly legal. Amazing.

Embroidery!

2008-08-05T19:07:00.001-07:00

I recently decided (five days ago) that I should get into embroidery. I did it once, as a kid, in Girl Scouts. I was given an image of a baby duck to embroider, and I didn't finish it. Hopefully it's in storage in my dad's attic; I'd love to find it sometime and finish it. For my first my project I've decided to make a pillow for my 1-year-old nephew. After that I'll make a pillow for my niece, who's 6. Hopefully I'll have them both done by Christmas. And hopefully the repetition and monotony will help calm my brain.

This is the image I picked for my nephew:

I don't have one picked out for Emily yet. But, I've found an image I want to embroider for myself:

I don't know what I'm going to embroider these two adorable creatures on, but I'll think of something. They're owls, after all, and I can't have enough owls in my life.

Here's how it looks for far:

Cute, no? I'll post the final result when it's finished.

It's been too long...

2008-04-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since my last post. I fully intended to post about my birthday festivities, and then I didn't. I'm not a very good blogger I've realized. I'm only really going to do this once a month, maybe less. Anyway, to catch you up: I had a great 29th birthday week. Bojo, Lakshmi, and Joseph came over the night of (Tuesday, March 11th) and we made dinner, cupcakes, and drank a lot of red wine. The Friday after my birthday, I and my friend Martha had a joint birthday party at a bar in Williamsburg, where I again drank too much red wine and spilled it on my brand new, reproduction 1920's era white dress. Luckily the stain came out a few days later, after a lot of soaking. And the night after that, Bojo took me out to dinner at Dressler, because I've been bugging him for months. The food was great, I highly recommend it.

Since then I've been riding my bike a lot, trying to get in shape for the Five Boro Bike Tour on May 5th, a 42-mile tour around the five boroughs of NYC. That's about. More later.

(Note Bene: these are not the cupcakes that we made. Ours weren't nearly this cute. But close.)

My first knitting project

2008-02-29T17:54:00.000-08:00

I had decided around Thanksgiving that I wanted to learn how to knit. I tried knitting in high school and did ok at it, but I didn't stick with it and never made anything. I got the idea into my head again because I decided I needed more hobbies besides just reading and jogging (the two big ones). Luckily I have several friends who know how to knit, so they helped out, showed me how to get started, and fixed my mistakes. These leg warmers were my first project; I just finished them last week. The yarn is 100% wool and came multicolored. I found it at a cute little knitting store on 14th street and 1st avenue. I'm going to either make arm warmers or a skinny belt next.

I've found knitting to be incredibly meditative. More than I expected it to be. It's easy to get lost in and I find my thoughts and worries disappearing once I get into it. It's very rewarding to see myself creating something slowly, something that I'm making with my hands.

A few facts about Pisces

2008-02-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

This post is in honor of my fast approaching 29th birthday, on March 11th. Here are some interesting facts about Pisces:

Pisceans tend to have a rich and vivid inner life and often are gifted poets, musicians, actors, and dancers. Spirituality is important to natives of Pisces, and many of them are psychic and possess mystical talents. Thus you tend to be very romantic and are usually a faithful and devoted lover. Pisceans also are known for their healing ability, and thus you would make a great health practitioner – a nurse, therapist, psychologist, or internist, though you probably wouldn't make a good surgeon. Pisceans are so intuitive that they pick up on everyone's pain.

Pisceans, both male and female, are often etherically beautiful, with large luminous eyes and an otherworldly expression. They attract a lot of attention, but in most cases they are totally unaware of their effect on others. Therefore, you tend to be shy with a lot of insecurities and can be rather reclusive, believing that no one could possibly want to spend time with you. Yet you, like most Pisceans, are gifted, imaginative, and intriguing, and you are very likely to be much more popular than you think you are. Remember that!

WHEN MEETING NEW PEOPLE:
DO: Pay attention. No matter what your new acquaintances are discussing, you're very likely to find it fascinating. And while you're listening, you're probably picking up very strongly what these people are really like – and thus will find it easy to discern whom of these people you'd like to call friends.
DON'T: Remain silent. You won't make new friends by doing a statue impersonation. Don't be afraid to contribute to the conversation, even if what you have to say might be a bit offbeat. Those whom you'd really like will find it intriguing.

WHEN DATING:
DO: Emphasize your best feature – your wonderful eyes. Visit the hair stylist and ask how best he or she can do that. Your best colors are apt to be blues, greens, and purples, so wear them. You can't help looking like a god or goddess, so accentuate it. Have fun!
DON'T: Be afraid to express your opinions or share your ideas. You can discuss just about anything – from sports or politics to the antics of celebrities or the mysteries of the universe. Do it!

WHEN IN LOVE:
DO: Let your beloved know how you feel. Obey your intuition; it will enable you to anticipate your dear one's reaction, and when the time is right, show your feelings.
DON'T: Hide in the background and keep your feelings bottled up. Your insecurities may think that you're unworthy of this wonderful creature, but he or she just might be nurturing secret feelings for you. Don't let shyness deprive you of happiness.

My nephew is the cutest baby ever!

2008-02-07T18:46:00.001-08:00

Also during my trip to Seattle, I got to see my 7-month-old nephew, Micah, for the second time. He is the happiest, bounciest baby I've ever seen. I gave him a couple of baths, fed him some bottles and banana/apple/pear baby food, got spit up on several times, and generally had the best time ever hanging out with him. The top photo is Micah and his daddy, my brother Eric.

Emily's 6th!

2008-02-07T18:33:00.000-08:00

I went to Seattle last weekend for Emily's sixth birthday. I got Emily a Hawaiian outfit for her birthday, since her favorite game lately is to pretend she's going on vacation in Hawaii. It went over very well. Emily managed to eat only sugar the entire day, in the form of too much cake, too many m&ms, and frosting licked off of two pieces of cake at the end of the night. We had about 12 kids and 6 grown ups crammed into a small apartment, but everyone had a good time and nothing got broken.

Bojo's new phone

2008-01-28T11:11:00.000-08:00

So, our email is down at work and the phones aren't ringing and I'm seriously bored. Bojo got a new cell phone today, a blackberry no less, and I had to hear about it all weekend. Here it is, it's pretty sexy.

Meat - how long can we have it for dinner ?

2008-01-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

I read this last night in bed, it's pretty interesting. And scary. Gas prices aren't the only things going up. Our children's diets might involve meat once or twice a week, instead of twice a day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?ref=weekinreview

My first blog!

2008-01-23T14:24:00.000-08:00

For my first ever blog post, I thought I'd explain where the title comes from. A long, long time ago I worked in a day care in Seattle. Most of the woman I worked with were from the Philippines and they all pronounced my name "Jenni-fair." I told Shawna, my BFF and roommate at the time, and she's called me that ever since. She's been so determined to make it stick, that she addresses all mail to me with that name, and several Christmases ago she gave me a subscription to Vanity Fair and gave them the name "Jennifair Elam." Even though I now pay for my own subscription, they still have me in their system under that name. I even get junk mail sometimes with that name on it. I hope I never get accused of having a fake identity...

Shawna, this first post is dedicated to you.

Stay tuned for more fun and excitement...