And we cooked……

Lamejoun hot out of the oven!

Last Friday my dear husband and I decided that it was time to make Lahmejoun. My wondeful Armenian friends know what this entails, lots of work! For my non-Armenian friends, Lahmejoun is an Armenian meat pie, probably unlike anything you have ever eaten before. They are the best addition to any meal, or a meal by itself.

So Friday we went to the market and bought 8 lbs. of ground lamb, bell peppers, garlic, lots of parsley, crushed tomatoes, flour and yeast. For two and a half hours I cleaned, cut and diced veggies. Then I added all of that and some wonderful spices to 8 lbs. of ground lamb. Needless to say you need a very large bowl to mix all of those ingredients. That all went into the fridge to wait til morning.

The next morning I mixed 2 packets of yeast with lots and lots of flour. I think at this point it was about 6 lbs. of flour. To say that my arms were getting a bit tired is an understatement. The fun hadn’t even started yet! I let the dough rise for about 1 1/2 hours.

While the dough was rising I continued to chop veggies and made a pot of Minestrone Soup. My mother-in-law Irma taught me how to make Lamejoun and whenever we made it together we also made a pot of soup to go with it. Irma was not Armenian, she was French Canadian and Irish, she was a hell of a good cook and she happily taught me everything she knew about Armenian food. We always had fun when we cooked together.

I have 2 beautiful ovens, both were set at 500 degrees. Thankfully it was a dreary, rainy cool day so having the ovens on that high was not unpleasant.

To make Lamejoun you need to roll out the dough into a thin round disc about 7-8″ in diameter. Then you add about 1/3 cup of the meat mixture. I use parchment paper on the cookie sheets so that I don’t have to wash them between batches.

Chuck hard at work

Cooking them is a 2 step process. First they go on the bottom of the oven for about 8 minutes then they are moved to the top rack for an additional 6-8 minutes. This is where Chuck steps in. While I am rolling out the dough, he is watching the oven and counting the fruits of our labor. The first 2 Lamejoun that come out of the oven go right into our mouths. Oh my goodness! it is sooo good hot out of the oven.

We worked together for a couple of hours, until we had 6 dozen Lamejoun baked. Trust me we were tired. It is a lot of work but the end result is so wonderful. We can go to the markets in Boston and buy Lamejoun but I have to say there is nothing like homemade. At this point we have 5 dozen Lamejoun in the freezer – we will deliver some to various family members over the next couple of weeks.

5 dozen ready to go into the freezer

If it is a dreary Spring I will make more – they are a great dinner when you are busy and don’t feel like cooking. Chuck and I had a great day cooking together. I don’t know how my dear Mother-in-law ever made 100 of these by herself – she was quite a lady!

Now back to my quilting.

Be Kind…

Faith

Saying goodbye…

Feb7

Dresden Plate

Christmas Stars – one border too small

I left two of my oldest quilt tops with a friend last night to be delivered to the long arm quilter. I have seen the work of the lady who will be quilting my beloved tops and I am very excited to see how she quilts these tops. I am also very excited to have these quilts moved out of and off of the UFO pile.

I am very proud of the workmanship on both of these quilt tops. They are very different quilts. The Dresden Plate quilt was machine pieced and both machine and hand appliqued. As I have mentioned in previous posts I started this back in the 90’s. The top has been completed for a long time – I just wanted to have the right person quilt it for me.

The Christmas Stars quilt was a block of the month class taken many years ago at Log Cabin Fabrics in Selkirk, NY http://logcabinfabrics.com/. If you are ever in the Albany, NY area and can stop in it is worth the visit. The ladies ( Londa, Lisa and Bonnie) will take very good care of you. The fabrics for both of these quilts were purchased many years ago at this shop. I hand pieced most of these blocks, I added the sashing and borders using my machine. The quilt shown in the picture is not the completed top, I added one more border using the same fabric as the sashing.

the backyard

We had a snow day on Wednesday. I made a wonderful Chicken Pot Pie for dinner and settled in to work on quilts that night. The best thing about snowstorms is that it is a perfect time to work on quilts. When the world looks white it is fun to pull out a pile of fun fabrics to brighten your day.

I also have been working on blocks for a block swap but I can’t post any pictures of those yet. All I can say about them is that the background is white and the main fabric was supposed to make us think of summer. When the weather is cold and snowy it is nice to think about summer, sunshine and warm air.

Now back to my Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt – Celtic Solstice. I have 40 blocks done and a gazillion more to sew. I will post pictures of that soon.

Keep creating…

Be Kind…

Faith

What Christmas really means to me…

Dec7

Our Christmas tree this year.

Christmas – what exactly does that word mean to you? It isn’t about manic shopping or tons of “GREAT” bargains, it isn’t about getting the best gift for your kids or from your kids. It is about tradition, it is about family, it is about love, it is about laughing and memories.

A friend recently posted on Facebook that she couldn’t take 19 more days of Christmas music, she was not raised as a Christian so she does not have the memories or traditions that I do, so I suppose I understand how annoying “Christmas” can be to her. My first thought of course was – Change the station, but then I started to really think about Christmas meant to me.

As a child we decorated our tree on Christmas Eve, the rest of the house would be decorated through out the month of December but the tree was always decorated on Christmas Eve. We would start it and our parents would finish it. As we got older we would finish it with them. I do remember very specific directions about how to properly place the tinsel – I also recall some good natured arguments about the placement of the tinsel. Side note – I do not use tinsel on my Christmas tree! I also remember waking my parents up at about 4:00 in the morning (I of course did not realize that my father had only gone to bed about an hour earlier) – to open presents – “GO BACK TO BED FAITH” was what I heard from their bedroom.

I have wonderful memories of Christmas and none of them have to do with the gifts that I received. I remember my mother accidently doubling a recipe for cookies and consequently having a ton of cookies to bake. I also remember the time my mother was putting candied cherries on cookies only to have my younger sister eat all of the cherries off of the cookies. I remember my grandmother ringing bells under the table and telling me that there was a present upstairs that Santa’s helpers had left me. I remember Christmas Crackers on Christmas Eve and wearing funny crowns all through dinner.

Gingerbread Cookies

Christmas for me is about remembering precious moments and creating new ones. It is about the love that I always felt growing up, it is about the cookies that my mother made and my grandmother made that I now make. It is about talking about the memories with your children, and parents, and cousins and dear family friends. It is about going out with your dearest friends to cut your Christmas tree, drinking hot chocolate and eating candy canes and then going back to the house for a wonderful meal.

Christmas is about the season – it is about family, friends and memories. It is about being thankful for the blessings that we have and about sharing them with each other.

But most important it is about LOVE – I love the season, I love the reason for the season, I love the time spent with family and friends. I love the rush and the crush, I love the trees and the lights and the cookies. I love the Christmas carols! I love the walk on the beach on Christmas morning, when there are a few snowflakes falling and the air is cold and brisk. I love the anticipation of seeing someone that I love opening a one of a kind gift that I have made especially for them. I love the warm, comfy feelings that I have when I remember tucking my children into bed in their red sleepers on Christmas Eve. I love the total exhaustion that I feel when I have done all of the things that I feel need to be done to make it a “perfect” Christmas. What makes it perfect is the family!

I hope that you can feel some of the spirit that makes Christmas special and wonderful for me. I hope that you can make memories with people you love

Be kind…

Faith

A walk on the beach…

Oct14

I Love Candy Corn!

I love October. I also love it when the kids come up to visit. Saturday was overcast and windy here. The ocean has such a huge effect on our weather and sometimes storms just hang off shore and we have misty, windy days. It is part of living by the coast. I am not complaining at all – sometimes a drizzly day is perfect.

We had a semi-house full on Saturday. I decided that it was a perfect day for turkey. Not just any turkey, a deep fried turkey.

Deep Fried Turkey

It is amazing how moist and flavorful a fried turkey is. Of course you need stuffing/dressing, mashed potatoes, roasted butternut squash and carrots with and roasted garlic, cranberry sauce (yes jellied Ocean Spray, love it) and homemade applesauce. Pumpkin pie with vanilla bean ice cream.

YUM! We all ate well and then settled in to watch the Red Sox game. Sadly they lost but they evened up the series last night.

the beach

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Bright sunshine, clear skies perfect temperatures. Gracie and I decided that it was the perfect day for a walk on the beach. There were a lot of other furpals on the beach. Sometimes the beach is the best place in the world to be. I can’t ever imagine living too very far from the ocean. It has such a restoring effect on me, I always feel better after breathing in the wonderful sea air.

wet sand

There were several surfers in the water, lots of people sitting and reading books, just a wonderful day to be outside. We spent a good amount of time looking for heartstones. They are beach stones that are shaped like hearts.

Heartstones

I have several heartstones that have been given to me by people that I love. When I find them I keep them if they fit in my hand, they are smooth and cool and make me think about the ocean. I also give them to people that I love so that it reminds them of good times at the beach.

I hope that you had a wonderful October weekend filled with love and family and good memories.

Be Kind…

Faith

Creatively Distracted……

Sep10

unfinished projects

The weather is beautiful today – the next few days we have 80 degrees predicted and then rain. So I would rather be outside walking on the beach than working. But alas I need to work to continue with my creative habits. As I have mentioned before I purchased a spinning wheel. Oh the fun I am having!! I have worked with 4 different rovings since I brought my machine home. It is really amazing to see the difference in the yarns that I am spinning. I do see some improvement.

I plied 2 strands of spun yarn to have a thicker yarn. The fiber that I was spinning had lots of variations in the color. I am really please with the results of the yarn – the variation in color reminds me of the ocean.

while still in the process of being spun

This is the yarn after I spun the 2 strands together. Pretty cool don’t you think. I think this will be knitted into a Christmas present for someone who will remain nameless.

– the last of my fiber to be spun until the end of next week

So I will finish up this fiber that you see above and then I will dive into my quilting. I am going to promise myself that I will work on my quilting at least 2 hours every night. The way that I am talking it sounds like a punishment – it of course is not – I love to quilt and to make quilts but I am like a kid with an attention deficit problem – I keep flitting from project to project. Lots of fun flitting!!!

So my spinning is part of my distraction – the nice weather is part of my distraction – the desire to cook (because of the cooler weather) is part of the distraction. But as you can see by the photo at the top of the page there are quilts to be finished. 1 is a baby quilt, 2 are Christmas quilts that I have been working on for years, one is a mystery that needs to be marked for quilting and then quilted. Plus I have many other projects on my shelves waiting for my attention. I also have not mentioned the unfinished sweaters that are in the bags by my couch. Far too much to do and far too little time for it. There needs to be more time in the day, if only I didn’t need to sleep I would be getting much more done.

Remember to let your creativity shine – it is fun and rewarding.

Be Kind…

Faith

Too many cherry tomatoes….

Aug25

Too many tomatoes!

I planted 3 Sweet 1000 cherry tomato plants. So I have tons of wonderful sweet cherry tomatoes. The solution to that is fresh Checca Sauce. This recipe is adapted from Giada DeLaurentis – Everyday Italian Cookbook. It uses a lot of cherry tomatoes and it is fresh and delicious.

Here is the recipe:

12 oz. of cherry tomatoes halved (I used more like a pound)
3 Scallions (white and pale green parts only) coarsely chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 oz. of Parmesan cheese coarsely chopped
8 fresh basil leaves-torn
3 T olive oil

4 oz fresh mozzarella cut into 1/2″ cubes

1/2 tsp salt and freshly ground pepper

1 lb angel hair pasta

In a food processor, pulse first 6 ingredients, just until tomatoes are coarsely chopped – do not purée them. Transfer to a bowl and add mozzarella cheese and salt and pepper. Toss the sauce with cooked pasta immediately.

Delicious

Enjoy!

Be Kind….

Faith

Giving back…

Jul19

my geraniums are finally blooming

I live in a wonderful coastal community in southern Maine. Every summer our Community Club has a Seaside Fair. We have local craft vendors, lobster rolls etc for lunch, a bake sale and a silent auction. The money raised goes the the Community Club to help fund scholarships, and other community activities.

In the winter when the summer people are gone we have movie nights, bean suppers, pot luck dinners and lots of wonderful gatherings to keep us connected during the long winters that we have in Maine. It is a wonderful group of sharing people.

I believe in giving back. I love to bake and I love to sew, so the logical conclusion would be that I would bake something for a bake sale and sew something for the auction table.

As you are all aware it has been very hot lately – I don’t have central air conditioning. UGH – my house is hot, but I needed to bake a pie last night. I figured since I was baking 1 pie for the bake sale I may as well make one for us as well. Nothing is much tastier than a homemade mixed berry pie with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. I used strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. YUM!

Two Mixed Berry Pies

I also made a cute little bag for the auction. People always ask me how long it takes to make something like this. It took me about 2 1/2 hours last night. I am really happy with the way it turned out. I love to work in bright colors and this just seemed very summery to me.

cute summer bag

I hope that you are enduring the heat and I also hope that it breaks soon. It is very unhealthy for many and for others it just makes us cranky. I sadly fall into the cranky category.

Enjoy the weekend,

Be Kind…

Faith

so much fun….

Jul9

My goodness it has been way too long since I have written anything. Spring/Summer is a very busy time of year. Gardens to plant, pools to open, beaches to walk on, Fourth of July parties to plan for.

Every year we have a family reunion on the 4th of July. All of our kids and grand kids come to the house for the 4th of July week – or weekend depending upon when in the week the holiday falls. This year the fourth was on a Thursday. By Wednesday evening everyone who was going to make it was here. Let the parties begin….

We eat, drink and be merry for the weekend and it is a wonderful family memory making time. I was up early on the fourth. These are some pictures of my backyard at about 5:45 the morning of the fourth.

We are so blessed to live in such a beautiful setting.

I love the American Flag and I fly it proudly and thank those who have sacrificed for our freedoms.

We had some fireworks in the yard. The neighbors enjoy them also. We have had so much rain this year that thankfully we didn’t need to worry about any fire dangers.

I love that we make wonderful memories with our family every summer. We laugh, play games, and tease each other. Love and fun are the main themes of the weekend. Walks on the beach, swims in the pool, and lots and lots of great food. We are all back to our normal (or not so normal) lives now and basking in the memories of a fabulous weekend together.

Next post will be back to quilting – I have been working on a lot of wonderful things but some of them have been gifts so they have to be kept under wraps.

Be thankful and Be Kind…

Faith

Mabel the Mastiff visits Maine…

May29

Hmmm – how do I get up there?

Memorial Day weekend was a raining cold one here in Maine. I almost turned on the heat but it was the end of May and I totally refused to turn it on. I cooked and baked instead. That warmed up the kitchen and family room, which is really just one big room.

Is there something good to eat in there?

Yes, I am being a good girl. But don’t blink…

My son Charles, his girlfriend Charlotte and MABEL came to visit. Mabel is a 12 week old English Mastiff puppy. She already weighs 27 lbs. Yikes she is growing fast. She is a puppy and does all the wonderful and annoying puppy things. She tumbles over herself, she pounces on everything that she finds and she chews. She chews pant legs, bones, toys and hands. I was lucky enough to avoid the little shark teeth and came through the weekend unscathed, I can’t say the same for the other members of the family.

Oh dear – I am in love!!! Are you sure you want to take her home.

Mabel is quite the little con-artist… she makes you think that she is just a sweet puppy until she decides to pounce on your fingers or hand or ankle. OUCH! what a jaw she has, but somehow it doesn’t matter – you just keep loving her and going back for more. Mabel is totally irresistible! I just love this “little” puppy.

Those toes are very vulnerable!

I am being a really good girl – but just wait. HaHa…

The same can’t be said for Gracie our almost 5 year old Chocolate Lab. At first she was ok with Mable but after awhile she had had enough and just barked at Mabel. Being the puppy that she is Mabel just didn’t get the hint – she kept begging Gracie to play with her but Gracie wanted no part of it. Imagine a teenager with a 3 year old, “Please, Please, Please play with me!!!! Please, please, please!!! Gracie just barked and said NO BUG OFF!!! Gracie doesn’t mind if you are in her house, she doesn’t mind if you play with her toys but just don’t bug her. You stay on your side of the room and I will stay on my side.

So on Monday – Memorial Day when it was time for the kids and Mabel to go home the weather was beautiful. Isn’t that always the way? Your travel days are always beautiful.

We had a wonderful weekend playing with this wonderful new addition to the family. The concept of her being over 100 lbs. isn’t really anything that I can comprehend but in a year she will not be sleeping on my lap. The most wonderful thing about Mastiffs is that they are gentle giants – just don’t threaten their family and you will be fine.

I hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend.

Be Kind…

Faith

Oh Baby it’s Cold Outside…..

Jan23

Brrr – When I got up this morning it was 1 degree outside. It is currently 4 degrees – wow what a warm up. It hasn’t been this cold in Maine in years – I believe the weather man said this morning that the last time it was this cold was 2000. Thirteen years is a really long time for mild weather. Don’t panic this is not a post about Global Warming. It is more a post about past memories of cold weather and snow.

When our children were born we lived in the Town of Westerlo. It is a small town in upstate NY in the beautiful Helderberg Mountains. It is the southwest corner of Albany county but it is a world away from most of the county. It is just high enough in elevation to make it snow when it is raining in Albany. It is always a little bit colder “in the Hilltowns” than it is off the hill. When our children were little we would guess how cold it would be when we pulled into the driveway. You would have to have your guess in before we started up the hill. Very often the change in temperature could be as much as 5 degrees.

First house – Westerlo, NY 1986

This is the house that we lived in. It was built about 1856. It was a lovely home and I miss it. We have many very happy memories of family times and parties in this house.

I used to love it when it snowed – I actually still do. I like to make some comfort food – chicken pot pie, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, pot roast, just to name a few. A pot of soup or chili are always good choices on snowy days.

Charles 20 months old

This is picture of Charles when he was about 20 months old.

He loved being pulled around the yard in his sled. He was one cool dude with his shades on. I used to love kissing those cold rosy cheeks! Memories are wonderful.

Elizabeth 2 years old

As you can see in these pictures my little darlings were all bundled up for the snow.

Charles 3 years old

They were probably outside for about 30 minutes before complaining that they were cold. I am sure that Daddy had something to do with the building of the snowman.

Snowman winter 1991

We don’t have snow like that any more. Of course a big part of that is where we live. Some years we have alot of snow and other years like 2012 we have no snow. Right now we have cold but not alot of snow.

So if you go outside – bundle up and be sure you have a big cup of hot chocolate or tea waiting for you when you come inside.

Enjoy – this too shall pass. In July and August we will be complaining about how hot it is.

Be Kind…

Faith

quiltingonthecove

A peek at my life. My quilting, my cooking and a look at the beautiful place that I live!

Archives

And we cooked……

Saying goodbye…

What Christmas really means to me…

A walk on the beach…

Creatively Distracted……

Too many cherry tomatoes….

Giving back…

so much fun….

Mabel the Mastiff visits Maine…

Oh Baby it’s Cold Outside…..