Stephen's Graduation Party

We had a small surprise party for Stephen after his senior presentation, serving pirogs (kulebyaka), Russian filled breads. Bryan made the most interesting ones: a pig filled with sausage and sauerkraut, fish shaped stuffed with salmon and dill, and a mushroom filled pirog shaped like a log. Ravi brought a tray of really good Indian food as well. Considering that there was nowhere for the guests to park other than our driveway, and that our large windows don't hide anything from the driveway, Stephen wasn't terribly surprised by the time he entered the house.
Picture #1 Sauerkraut/pork with empanada filled pirog behind.
#2: Three Generations: Grobo, Stephen, Gary


















#3Kristen, Enid, Stephen, Gary, Bryan















#4 Bryan, Stephen, Kristen


















#5
Enid, Stephen, Gary



























#6 Stephen with his grandparents
















#7 Jessie and Stephen












#8 Monica with Stephen









#9 Underneath are Ravi, Christina and Kristen. On top is my dad. Being around his granddaughters tends to make him forget the dignity afforded his age.












#10 Mushroom potato filling












#11 Salmon, rice, and dill filling












#12 Lingonberry creamcheese










#13 The cake: Chocolate covered with chocolate ganache. You can see that I didn't get it square enough or stabilize it enough, but it didn't fall down, and it was generally voted the tastiest dessert.







#14 Bryan with the pig. I won't tell you what my commentators suggested that it looks like prior to cooking.


Salmon/dill/rice
Pork/Kraut
Mushroom potato
Empanada

Lingonberry/creamcheese
Marzipan/ chocolate

Used Challah dough especially for details and brioche dough

50th Anniversary Cake

We celebrated my parents' 50th anniversary party last July. I was in charge of decorations and desserts. Monica and her girls flew in from Moscow a couple weeks before the party and were in charge of the main food. Monica is a fabulous cook, so there was no question that the food would be outstanding. She's also very organized and great at doing parties. My new friend Wendy (from my parents' church) volunteered to help me with the desserts and the cake, and she walked me through the steps of creating an imitation of their original cake. It wouldn't have been half as good without her help. Since my parents were married in Canada, the original cake was fruitcake. I chose to make the top fruitcake and the bottom layers Styrofoam for a couple of reasons. First of all, most American think they don't like fruitcake. Secondly, I didn't see how a cake cutting ceremony would fit into an open house format. Stephen made the roses for the cake in June before he left for India. Then I frosted and decorated the cake a week or so before the party, and Wendy transported it and put it together.

If you are interested in more details about the party, this link is to the questionnaire we created about my parents (I'm sure we had more fun creating this than the guests did answering it), and this link is to my parents' childhood stories (my mom grew up on a prairie farm during the dustbowl years; my dad grew up in England.) I turned the stories and emails from their friends into a huge scrapbook, a project that mushroomed far beyond my initial vision.

It was a lot of work, but my parents are worth every minute of it and more.

I made this cake for Kristen's birthday. Underneath is a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. I used reduced fat cream cheese which was a huge mistake, causing the whole underneath to be soft and unstable, so the whole cake was droopy. I did plan for it to narrow down at the bottom of the cake, but it isn't supposed to look saggy. My friend Robin made the bird on top. It's a miniature of Rufus, Kristen's parrot. Kristen was pleased anyway, and I learned a lot.

Last spring, Kristen and I decided to take cake decorating classes. I love decorating fabric, so this seemed like a logical thing to try. I also like eating healthy (read avoiding sugar and fat and dyes) which eliminates most desserts. But I still make cakes for special occasions, and although I have never used food coloring in the past, I decided that chocolate and white were B-O-R-I-N-G, at least all of the time. My first assignment was a shaped cake. We chose a castle shape, and I tried decorating it in chocolate...very unimpressive. I can't even find a copy of it which is no great loss. I missed half of the first set of classes and all of the second set and made it back to cake decorating classes in time for the fondant classes. All of these are covered with fondant. Stephen made the last cake for Jessie; I only helped with that one.

Duvet Cover

I created this duvet cover 9 years ago when I had lots of waiting time in hospitals and doctor's offices. It was a very difficult time for me, and having something to do with my hands was soothing and made me feel more like I was present and available. (I confess that when we went through it all again last year, I spent my waiting time reading mysteries rather than crocheting an edging on the blankets I brought along.) I started with navy fabric and tan fabric, using the back of the tan fabric since it was the color I wanted. Then I printed copies of different types of leaves from the neighborhood, mostly from my yard, but the poison ivy came from a neighbor's yard since I try not to stock it. I painted the colors I wanted on the leaf and then pressed them down onto the fabric. My goal was to make the front mostly two tone--navy and tan, but I added more color to the back. Each seam of embroidery is different like a crazy quilt except that my quilt is square, not irregularly shaped as a proper crazy quilt would be. Some of the embroidery I made up myself and others I copied or adapted from Jacqueline Enthoven's Stitches of Creative Embroidery, a fabulous book if you love embroidery. Mrs. Enthoven copied designs from pictures of clothing in paintings. I had originally intended this for my daughter's bed, in fact, it was supposed to be the back of a different quilt. But by the time I finished, I had too much work in it for it to be the back of a quilt, so I turned it into a front and created a different back for it. It sat in a cupboard for several years until I dragged it out to accent my new couch.

The back

Close up of border of back

The Afghan Stitch

My mom created all of these afghans using the afghan stitch, a cross between crochet and knitting. The needle looks like a long and fat crochet hook. I did a small afghan with a single giraffe on it eons ago, but I no longer remember how the stitch works other than instead of casting off each stitch as you go, the stitches stay on the needle until the end of the row and are worked off on the next row. The designs are all worked into the afghan by changing the color at the appropriate place. Initially she worked with patterns created especially for this stitch, but gradually she became more adventurous and started either working with cross

Wolves

stitch patterns or drawing her own.