Glass Fusing Class - look I'm an artist!

In early March I took an all day workshop called "Beginning Fusing" at Bella Glass Studio here in Denver. It was an early birthday present from Dan. The class description reads: "Explore the creative designs of hot glass. In this class you will learn the fundamentals of kiln forming while creating your own exciting fused glass pieces." We made 2 pendants, a vase, 2 coasters, and a picture frame. I really love the pendants and the vase. The white, red and black pendant was "tack" fused. In other words, it was heated just enough for the glass to stick to itself. The blue pendant was "fully" fused. The blue glass is on the bottom and a slightly larger piece of clear class was placed on top. Then I added chips of iridescent dichroic glass on top of that. Then the pendant was heated enough so all the layers of glass melted together to form a smooth surface. For the vase, we each selected a flat, square piece of class. After you polish the edges and corners a little (to make them less sharp), you simply center the piece of glass over a vase form in the kiln, when the glass is fired, it melts or slumps over the form.

With the coasters, I was trying to match the colors in our living room but the execution was a little disappointing. For the picture frame, our only color choice was black and then we could add other colored glass chips. I chose pastels because they would show up against the black and it doesn't really match any color scheme in our house.

It surprised me a little that the class was mostly about the technical aspects of the craft - very little about the artistic aspects. Over all, it was enjoyable and I might go back and take more classes.

Coconut Sandwich Cookies

Carroll, at the library, brought these to work a few weeks ago. I tried one (not realizing they were Coconut) and they were delicious. I got the recipe from her and made them last weekend. They were a big hit!

Coconut Sandwich Cookies
From “Everyday Food”

2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 package (7 ounces) sweetened shredded coconut (about 2 ¼ cups), divided
¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Creamy Vanilla Filling (see below)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside. Place ½ cup of coconut into a small bowl; set aside. Place remaining coconut in a food processor; pulse until coarsely ground. Set aside.

Using electric mixer, beat butter with sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. With mixer on low, gradually add flour mixture and ground coconut; mix until just combined.

Drop dough by level tablespoons onto two baking sheets, 1-2 inches apart. Bake until lightly golden around the edges, 10-12 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Make filling while cookies are cooling.

Dividing evenly, spread filling on flat side of half the cookies; sandwich with remaining cookies. Roll edges in reserved coconut, and chill until ready to serve.

Creamy Vanilla Filling
½ cup (1stick) unsalted butter
1 cup confectioners sugar
½ tsp pure vanilla extract

Using an electric mixer, beat room temperature butter until light and fluffy. With mixer on medium, beat in confectioners sugar ½ cup at a time, scraping down bowl as necessary. Add ½ teaspoon vanilla; increase mixer speed to high and beat until filling is light and fluffy, 5 minutes.

I love RECIPEZAAR

For the uninitiated, Recipezaar.com is a recipe website. One of many...I don't remember how I stumbled across it but I've been using it for 4 years or so. They post monthly articles about seasonal menus or recipe collections (right now they are featuring Crock Pot recipes and Mardi Gras menus). Truth be told, I don't usually read them. I usually log on searching for something specific. One of the reasons I love it is that there are many recipe search criteria (Cooking Method, Ingredients, Occasion, Rating, etc). It's taken a bit of trial and error over the years but now I can even narrow the search using multiple elements (crock pot, chicken, low carb).

Another reason I love this site is that many of the recipes have been tried and rated by other cooks. Here's one comment I found posted recently that I love: "I served this casserole at a church brunch, everyone loved it. Men wanted seconds and women wanted the recipe. It was a big hit. I am making it again tomorrow." Once I narrow down my search, I usually sort all the qualifying recipes by rating (highest to lowest). That way I get the best recipes in any given category.

Dan's Mushroom Soup

Yum yum! Several friends have asked for this recipe so here you go:

Mushroom Soup with Port
1 oz. dried wild mushrooms (such as shiitake or porcini)
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3/4 lb. cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced (we usually substitute portabello mushrooms)
3 Tb. all-purpose flour
salt and white pepper
2 tsp. soy sauce
5 Tb. tawny port
1 cup half and half
2 Tb. finely chopped fresh parsley for garnish

In a medium saucepan, combine dried mushrooms and broth. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes. In a medium soup pot, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and saute, stirring occasionally for 3 minutes or until soft. Add cremini mushrooms and saute for another 3 minutes. Sprinkle with flour, salt and pepper. Stir for 1 minute to cook flour and coat mushrooms. Whisk in the broth and dried mushrooms. Add the soy sauce and simmer for 15 minutes, partially covered. With a hand held blender, blend soup until roughly pureed OR transfer the soup into a regular blender in batches and roughly puree. Return to soup pot and add the port and half and half. Bring to a simmer and let simmer for 2 minutes or until the alcohol has burned off. Taste for seasoning. Ladle into bowls and garnish with parsley.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris...

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.”

At the Globus holiday party in December 2006, I was lucky enough to have won a set of two roundtrip tickets on Continental Airlines - anywhere in the world. We had already booked our Italy trip for March of 2007 (more posts on that later) so we had to choose another destination to travel to before December 2007. While we were in Italy we found out the offer on the house had been accepted so that put another trip off a little longer. We also figured out that we better plan to visit someone we knew so we could take advantage of their hospitality and sofa bed. :-) So we choose Paris and Eindhoven, Holland. We left for Paris in late September and arrived just in time for the Rugby World Cup being hosted by France. The photo above on the left is the jumbotron in front of the Hotel de Ville (city hall) in Paris showing World Cup matches day and night.

It turns out that the French (the whole world in fact) are pretty crazy about rugby. If you look closely at the photo on the right, you'll see an inflatable rugby ball suspended inside the Eiffel Tower!

-A

What would we do without PBS?

PBS in our house means two things. It does mean Public Broadcasting Service to be sure but it also means "Pearls Before Swine" -- our favorite comic strip by Stephen Pastis. Have you read it? I know we've recommended it to a few of our friends and family members. It features a small cast of animals - the ever cynical Rat, the naive Pig, a cadre of crocodiles (Larry, JoJo, Frank) and a zebra (or Zeeba if you're a crockydile with a funny accent). Our favorite strips are the ones pitting the crocodiles against their neighbor zebra. The zebra is generally in a battle of wits with several unarmed crocs. Check it out for yourself. http://www.denverpost.com/comics

We also live without cable so the other PBS is also a lifeline - especially because we have access to two local stations (Colorado Public Broadcasting and Rocky Mountain PBS). Tonight we're tuning in to watch "The Pioneers of Television" and "The Jewish Americans."

-A